Almost everything on the guitar will be made by/for me (minus knobs, truss rod, pots, strap pins and tuners, ect). I have a buddy who works at a place that laser cuts sheet metal, so that's where I'm getting the bridge plate, control plate made. That will all get gold plated at a local shop that chromes car parts. I modeled the bridge block, string block, string tree on Sketchup and am having them 3D printed in polished gold covered steel by Shapeways. I'm gonna wind the pickups myself (covers were modeled by someone else on shapeways), and cut the pickguard myself.
I plan on finishing then neck and neck portion of the body with clear nitro but painting the rest of the body a fender colour: I can't decide between fiesta red, teal green or surf green. But in the end it should look something like this:
The body/neck are underway now. Just got the shape rough cut out and glued the neck and body together last night. Now I need to order and wait for a pickguard blank (Tort).
Here is the neck: its 5 pieces: curly maple, padauk and walnut.
These are the hardboard templates for laser cutting and the plastic pieces are the plastic prototypes for the Shapeways parts.
Heres after I traced on the plan; the body is ash. I wanted to go with alder but it's really difficult to find locally here at the right dimensions:
Routing the truss rod channel. It turned out great, which is a relief because in my last few projects I ended up botching and restarting the neck during this step.
Cut out the headstock and neck profile with the bandsaw.
And here is it all clamped and glued last night.
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