I’m still building guitars for my spring breakout, which I’ll cover later but anyway I got a commission, yay. She wanted a Strat in French Blue and I asked why not just buy one? She wanted my work, I was humbled. I had never done a solid color guitar before but accepted the challenge. I like to lay down the color on the headstock so I get a sense of the color I’m dealing with.

Nice color

The body was prepped with 5 coats of white primer, sanded between coats, now was the nerve wracking point, paint.

 

I got so happy with the paint I started building and forgot the pics, it’s a good start.

and the finishing touches,

Now it’s time to set the guitar up. I start by installing my strings in an odd way. Low E first as it’s the heaviest then High E all the way up to A, this destresses the neck and lessens warping, remember this is a brand new piece of wood. Next is initial intonation, my chord lentgh is 25.5″ in this case so I measure from the nut to the 12th fret. At this point I use a castaway  E string and intonate the E position at octave, relative to the bridge, Once I find the sweet spot I set the entire bridge at the same distance, cut the test string off and then voila! more setup.

Now I pull out my fine tuners and begin,every string must be tested, detuned if needed and then tested again and every string effects the others. It takes about 3 hours if the guitar is close, on the other hand I have needed to pull a neck and shim it to work  at all, ah well.

                                                                                                                                 

I’m not done yet, this as well as my other things are studio bound, maybe I can get the La Jolla people enthused, next time we are green!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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