We’re into the home stretch.  

I drilled for the bridge posts and drilled a small hole from the lower post hole into the control cavity for the ground wire.

I routed for the pickup, making the cavity deeper than normal. That’s because I used a ‘dummy coil’ under the pickup (a regular P-90 pickup with the magnets and polepieces removed) to reduce noise that single coil pickups (like p90s) have. I used a ‘push-pull’ pot as a way to switch the dummy coil in and out of the circuit.

Originally I was going to put the dummy coil in the control cavity on the back (which is why it is bigger than a normal Junior cavity).

I drilled the hole for the input jack on the side of the guitar.

Okay, now we have photos. Of the finished guitar.

I cut out the pickguard, though it’s not an exact copy. I always wondered why the Junior pickguard looks like it does, but now that I built one I see why. The pickguard goes under the strings to the butt of the neck so that  it covers the place where the mortise ends because the fretboard doesn’t go all the way to the end of the mortise.

I painted the guitar yellow because Gibson used a color that has come to be called TV Yellow. Back in the 50s, when TV was black and white, white guitars played havoc with cameras, so Gibson came up with a color that looked white on TV and didn’t make the cameras go haywire.

I’m sure it’s a lousy color match, but for HK$30 it was close enough. I didn’t grain fill the wood because I wanted the grain to show. I sprayed very little paint, and this one will probably wear through quickly. Which is fine, since that’s what I want. 

I put mahogany veneer on the cavity cover so it would match the rest of the guitar.

Here you can see the neck heel, the maple laminates in the neck and the roundover in the heel area. The roundover that’s perpedicular to the neck is the one I had to do before milling the mortise. The parallel roundover was done after the neck was glued in and the excess was trimmed away.

The neck joint area came out really well, probably since I did it the right way for a change. I decided to get a little funny with the paint line:

As you can see the body’s not very smooth. The real Juniors were budget guitars that were made quickly and cheaply. I tend to see guitars as tools more than works of art, so I don’t get too carried away trying to make pristine finishes. Besides, I don’t have the equipment for that kind of thing.

The headstock came out  pretty well, though it needs more lacquer. The patina is really nice because of the angle-cut quartersawn wood.

The headstock design is different from Gibson’s; Les Pauls are notorious for tuning instability because the strings come off the nut at a horizontal angle. My headstock tries to straighten the string path as much as I can.

I need to do a better job with drilling the tuner holes. On this build, I forgot to do it before I glued the neck to the body, so it was awkward. It still works, but the holes are out of alignment.

The truss rod cover is missing too. Not just from the picture, I mean I can’t find it!

I wanted to do some sort of inlay, and I wanted to do a simple Chinese character. Given my personality, and the expectation that people will ask if it’s a Gibson, I chose NO:

The bad part about those pretty maple laminates is that they make it easy to see how wrong the tuner placements are!

Speaking of wrong, I mixed up the tuner buttons because I wanted white buttons but only had 4. I have 6 brown buttons, but I like the white ones better. Hopefully soon I can get some more.

Below you can see the end of the laminate I glued on with the ‘wings’ of the headstock. It makes a nice detail.

You can also see the volute, which I think could be refined, and it may be.

Tuner button update: I ordered replacement buttons from a eBay seller in Taiwan (so it got here quickly).

They’re bigger than the old ones, but they fit, I like the color, and they’re actually more comfortable than the small ones.

The guitar sounds really good, and plays well. I need to work on the frets a little, and tweak the setup some, but it’s just what I was hoping for.

All I need now is for Rick Richards to sign it!

Posted on May 4th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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We’re working on the neck. 

Down at the heel end, I needed to figure out how thick the neck needed to be. On a Les Paul, where the neck joins the body, the fretboard should be right at the top. Like this:

Since the mortise was already cut, I just needed to see how deep it was, then measure that same distance from the top of the neck without the fretboard.

That way I could mark out the neck and cut off the excess on the back of the neck with the table saw. 

I also used the table saw to rip the neck blank to just over 2 1/4″ wide. I leave it ‘plump’ so that I can work it slowly down to where it fits very snugly into the mortise. Ideally, you should be able to pick up the body by holding the neck.

That was before I rounded the corners of the neck. Once I did, it fit up against the end of the mortise.

I used a template I made (after the HKGSEC neck template problem) so that I could rout the final dimensions in the top of the neck; 2 1/4″ where it joins the body and 1 3/4″ at the nut.

I cut away the excess on back of the neck and started shaping it. Rather than using the router, I tried a different approach.

In my internet research over the years, I had seen reference to a Japanese Saw Rasp, and during one of my trips to Japan I was lucky to find one in a hardware store. It’s a great tool for luthiers (and me), and it makes shaping the neck easy and almost  fun.

I started by rounding the neck at each end to provide reference points:

Then I shaped the whole neck between those two points. 

It is at this point in our narrative that the photos run out.

Once I got the neck shaped, I shaped the heel and the volute (photos later). This neck doesn’t need a volute, but the wood was there and I wanted to experiment with something I hadn’t done yet. 

I glued the fretboard onto the guitar, put in fret markers on the face and sides, and fretted it. Then I glued the neck to the body. 

Posted on April 30th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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90 minutes of my life I’ll never have back.

I watch every Wong Jing film, and sometimes my penance for that dedication is the watching itself.

I even went to the Grand at Elements to watch this turd. Because it was barely playing here. 

How f@#$ing broke can Gigi Leung be? She took her career to China and it got disappeared faster than a dissident.

 ———————————————————-

 You know what? F@#$ this. 

It used to be fun to watch movies I knew were garbage. It’s not fun any more. I’m tired of being insulted by movies. 

I know many of you were looking forward to a review of Nightfall, the new movie from the arrogant halfwits that brought us Murderer. I’m sorry, I couldn’t bring myself to waste the time and money to see Nightfall and the time to write the review. 

From now on I’m not going to watch many movies, and I’m going to review even fewer. I’m bitter and cynical enough in my life without knowingly amplifying it. It got so bad I became afraid of myself. 

The movies are what they have become, and they are entitled to it. If I find them so annoying, I have no choice but to walk away. 

I sincerely apologize for stopping, but I quite simply don’t have the heart for it any more. I really don’t need to be reminded that the major reason for my moving to Hong Kong is now a horrifically bad joke. 

So long, and thank you for laughing. It made it much easier and I am sincerely flattered and grateful.

Posted on April 28th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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It’s time to make a neck for this guitar. But there are a few things to take into consideration.

Les Paul necks were notorious for being weak at the point where the headstock meets the neck, because there isn’t much wood (thanks to the truss rod adjustment cavity) and because often the grain is horizontal instead of vertical.

In wood terms, it’s flatsawn  or plain sawn instead of quartersawn.

The closer to quartersawn the wood is, the stronger that area is. If you had a flatsawn neck, it was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Nowadays, people build these kinds of necks using quartersawn lumber, since it is stronger. 

Because Les Paul necks are glued into the body, they need to be made from much thicker pieces of wood than Fender-style necks. I didn’t have any thick quartersawn mahogany stock. 

But I did have some leftover wood from building my bed, and I also had a bunch of maple veneer that had been sitting around for a while too. So I decided to make a quartersawn neck blank. I took three pieces of mahogany and put maple veneer between them simply for aesthetics:

 I glued it up and let it dry overnight. 

The maple in the photos is overhanging; I trimmed it off and we’ll see the result later.

Once I had the blank cleaned up, I needed to cut the headstock angle. I have a jig for this using a miter saw, though to be honest I need to make a better jig.

I cut the blank at a 14 degree angle:

This gives me the face of the headstock. Then I needed to cut the excess off the back of the headstock. Mahogany is pretty easy to cut, so I used this extra-large coping saw:

I used it to cut away the excess wood on the back of the headstock: 

To clean up the back of the headstock, I used the router jig I showed you above. I put the neck face down, and clamped it so that the headstock face was dead flat on the bench. Then I used the router to get the back of the headstock flat and  parallel to the face. Here’s a very simple drawing to illustrate:

The headstock wasn’t wide enough at this time. It’s very common, actually. There’s no sense using up a lot of extra lumber along the entire length of the neck when you only need two little pieces around 5/8″ thick on the sides of the headstock. Gibson has done it that way for years:

I needed to make some wings. I’m going to finish the headstock in clear lacquer, so I need to try and match the wood as best I can. The best thing would be to use the same wood.

Like, for instance, the piece I cut off when I did the headstock angle. I cut it in half, not worrying about the cut because it would get machined away:

Once I had two pieces, I could glue them onto the sides of the headstock. This is a different neck, but you get the idea.

I also put pieces of maple laminate between the pieces, just to carry the concept forward. Photos later.

Posted on April 24th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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We’re cutting out the body, right?

I used a jigsaw to cut the excess wood away, and then attached a template to the body.

I screwed it down in a place where I would be routing the pickup cavity anyway.

I made the template from a full-size drawing of a Les Paul. It’s slightly different than a Les Paul Junior; the Les Paul has a smooth transition from the cutaway to the neck, but the Junior doesn’t. You can see it here:

And here:

I prefer the smooth transition of a Les Paul:

And after all, it’s my guitar.

Which reminds me of a joke: [holds up middle three fingers of right hand] Do you know why Madonna can’t masturbate with these  fingers? Because they’re my Godd@mn fingers!

Good grief, that’s awful. Where was I?

Since I was going to do a smooth transition, I needed to leave some wood near the neck mortise. 

By milling the mortise with the blank uncut, and then by leaving excess, I could save the wood that would be in the joint area. If I tried to mill it first, the joint would be more obvious. As usual by now, we’ll see more later.

I routed the Les Paul shape into the trimmed blank:

After a few passes, I could take the template off and the router bearing would ride on the finished edge:

 Eventually, I flipped the body over and used a flush-trim it to get rid of the last bit of excess. Going different ways on the wood makes for some uneven grain patterns, but this guitar is getting a solid paint finish, so it didn’t matter.

Once the body was shaped, I used the 1/4″ roundover bit to round over (duh) the edges.

I needed to place the controls, and for once I wanted them to be in the factory position. It’s funny what you can and cannot find on the internet. I could find exacting dimensions of the 4 controls of a Les Paul, but not for a Junior. I assumed the top two controls of a Les Paul were the same, but I wanted to be sure. 

Doing an image search, I turned up this little gem:

Which, in case you can’t tell, is a template for locating the controls. I printed it out and lined up the edge and boom, I had my controls. I drilled those holes through the face and then aligned the control cavity on the back. The cavity I made is much bigger than the factory one, but that’s for a good reason (which I will explain later).

This body needs a neck, don’t you think?

Posted on April 20th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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So now the body blank was ready to be routed.

I made a template for the neck pocket, or, if we want to use the correct woodworking term, mortise. I used 1/2″ plywood that I found next to the dumpster.

I needed it to be 2 1/4″ wide with a square end. I didn’t need the corners to be sharp because the router bit is round.

Once it was done, it was ready to use:

 As usual, I applied some common tricks to help ease the workload. A forstner bit is used to ‘hog out’ as much of the wood as possible so that the router can work more easily.

It’s capable of working harder, but why waste the energy (and router bit sharpness) when you don’t have to?

I used a template and a flush-cut bit in the router:

I routed out the neck mortise, and it looks much cleaner:

Here’s the view from the front. You can see the rabbets on the face clearly, as well as a partial view of the roundover on the back side of the front edge of the neck mortise (wow, that’s an ugly sentence).

I also needed to cut the mortise on an angle. I didn’t get any photos of that part, but all it entailed was putting a small strip of wood under the back end of the template until I got the angle right.

Hardly revolutionary.

But it was effective: 

I needed 4 degrees of pitch because the bridge on this guitar sits rather high off the face of the guitar. I achieved this goal: 

Now that I’ve got the mortise finished, I can start cutting the outline of the body.

Posted on April 17th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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I’ve spent some time recently trying to streamline my life, and one big part of that is trying to get rid of, or consolidate, a lot of the crap I have.

Way back when, when I was gainfully employed, I bought a lot of guitar parts, because I could. I knew that if there was ever a time I wasn’t very employed, at least I would have the time and parts to keep myself busy and not slide into misadventure.

I also had a lot of extra wood laying around from certain projects, musical or otherwise. For example, I inherited a slightly larger bed from someone a while back, so I had to change the dimensions of the bed platform. Not a problem, and I naturally didn’t throw the old wood away.

That would have been silly, and wrong.

On my frequent trips to the HUGE dumpster in the loading dock where my workshop is, I always keep an eye out for useful stuff. I found some Philippine Mahogany, but it had angled corners. Still, I figured I could make some use of it.

——————————————————————————-

Lately I’ve been collecting ‘audio documentaries’  (read: live bootlegs) of one of my favorite bands, The Georgia Satellites.

They were, too. It was great.

The Satellites were one of the best live bands of the era (along with Jason and the Scorchers), and there’s plenty of ‘audio documentary’ proof. I’d suggest 1987′s Reading Festival appearance among others. Roskilde 1989 is pretty good too, and there’s video:

I interviewed lead guitarist Rick Richards once, and he said that he spent that entire gig utterly terrified. There’s a couple hundred thousand people there, so I don’t blame him.  Considering how well he played and sang, I guess he coped.

Singer/rhythm guitarist Dan Baird (right) played a Fender Telecaster, and Rick Richards (left) played a Gibson Les Paul Junior. They’re both amazing guitar players, but not in a speed or technical sense. They both have an uncanny ability to play the right notes. They can still be flashy, but in the best kind of bluesy way.

I’m lucky enough that I’ve met all of the Satellites and worked with them at least once.  My former boss Warner E. Hodges now plays with Dan in Homemade Sin (and Satellites drummer Mauro Magellan), and I’ve been lucky enough to have watched them close up on more  than one occasion. 

I love the Satellites, and I love their guitars.

I’ve built a couple telecasters, and I use them a lot. But I didn’t have a Les Paul Junior. They’re not ‘bolt-on’ guitars.

They have the neck glued in.

I have glue.

They’re made of mahogany. 

I have mahogany.

They have a p-90 pickup.

I have a p-90.

They have a certain kind of bridge.

I have one too.

You see where this is going, right?

Well, then let’s go!

First thing I needed to do was glue up the wood, which I did using big bar clamps. I don’t have photos, but its not very exciting anyway.

Some ‘tone snobs’ say that glued wood isn’t as ‘toneful’ as a single piece. They can’t quantify it, they just claim that anyone that can’t hear the difference is obviously tone deaf.

I promise that when I start giving a sh*t about that sort of thing, I’ll put some in a tupperware container and mail it, still steaming, to them.

“Fuck those people.” – Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

But the wood I used was not all the same thickness. So I had to do something about that.  I used a jig I had made up with my router, seen here:

The router shaves wood off the top to make one side uniform, then I flip it over and do the same thing on the opposite side. Crude, but effective.

Like me.

I also had to do something about the angled edges of the thinner pieces of the mahogany. In the above photo, the large center piece is taller than the rest. But the others have gaps because the edges aren’t square. 

What’s a girl to do???

Well, simple. I used the table saw to cut small grooves (or rabbets) into the face and back of the guitar where the gaps were.

Yes, I made them bigger.

That way I could put small strips of mahogany into the rabbets. Once they were glued in I could cut them flush and sand the faces smooth. You can see some of them below:

In a rare fit of insight, I realized that it would be better to rout the neck pocket before cutting out the shape. That way I could have as much support as possible for the template.

But I also knew that in order for me to do that, I would need to do some things to the front of the guitar before I did them to the rest of the guitar. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll show you later.

I cut the wood close to the line, then sanded it flush. I also put the 1/4″ roundover on the back of the guitar.

I’ll show you later.

Posted on April 13th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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I’ve been too busy lately with a lot of things, and my blogging has suffered accordingly.

But I managed to finish this guitar (more or less) and so here it is.

Having gotten the neck done, I started on the finish of the guitar. The neck got clear matte lacquer, and the body was sprayed flat white and then fluorescent orange:

Then it too was sprayed with clear matte lacquer:

After letting it dry a couple of days, I started on assembly. Remember that I’ve decided to let this guitar ‘relic’ pretty fast, so I wasn’t really concerned with keeping the finish looking nice.

Especially since my sense of humor, which has been described as being “on the harsh side of crass,” comes into play more than once in the details, the color being the least of the insults.

Let’s start with the benign ones. Here’s the normal decal for a Stephens Extended Cutaway:

Here’s mine:

The more egregious (!) decal is on the headstock. Again, here’s the stock model:

And, here’s mine.

What’s funny is that it has already fooled one person who didn’t catch it and wanted to know what “Washburn gently” was supposed to mean.

The other part says Hong Kong Guitars.

One of my favorite details on this build is that I painted the ‘outside edge’ of the headstock:

I didn’t paint the ‘inside curves, though. This way, the outside corners make nice straight breaks. Otherwise it would be a much more involved process.

I had a heck of a time finding the reflective stickers for the guitar body:

Everywhere I looked, I came up empty-handed.

I could find the holographic sticker paper, but I couldn’t find anyone who would print them.

As Hunter Thompson used to say, “F@#$ those people.”

I ended up making the letters myself.

I also nearly destroyed my printer, but eventually figured out how to print them. The trick is to use just enough paper to have the letters, but not so much that it can heat up and melt inside the printer.

Don’t ask how I found out.

So I managed to print out and hand-cut my own letters, but me being me, I wasn’t going to use N4, or N3, or anything else like that.

The same person who got fooled by the Washb@lls logo had, oddly enough, predicted the alphanumeric (!) combination that I ended up using. Behold:

This is the best photo for capturing the actual shade of orange.

Oddly enough (or, me being me, not), in English it’s a homophone for a fairly common Cantonese invective. I won’t say what it is, because I don’t want to offend anyone, but I’ll give you a hint in this photo:

Digression: The amazing power of the internet is that I could find a photo of a picture disc I hadn’t laid eyes on in at least 20 years. I always remembered this disc (mostly because of the hat), and so when I found it in under five minutes, I was pretty impressed with this here internet thingy.

While pulling together the parts for this build, I got lucky on eBay.

Not that way.

I found a Peavey locking bridge. Most people would consider that unlucky, but again, the internet makes it possible to find things out.

Like, for instance, that Peavey didn’t build those bridges. A company called Ping did. They make nice stuff. But if you don’t recognize the Ping logo on the underside of the bridge, you might miss it.

Let’s just say I got a really good deal on a really good bridge.

I attached all the parts, did the wiring, and pretty soon I had it all together:

I even got the Kill Pot wiring correct on the first try.

Will wonders never cease?

The guitar still needs some tweaking, but I don’t mind allowing that sort of thing to occur over time. That way I can get the setup adjusted to just the way I like it.

That’s why, for instance, the back plate is not on; I need to access those screws to adjust the spring tension:

I realize in the above photo that it looks like the toggle switch has a zit. That is not the case. I tried something new with this guitar, and I must report that it’s a success.

Instead of using plastic for fret markers, I got hold of some 3M glow-in-the-dark tape.

I used some leather punches that I have to cut out 2.5mm dots for  the side of the neck and 4mm dots for the face. So those dots you see are just stickers. But it sticks really well, so I have no fear of them falling off.

I’ve been trying to get them to fall off, and I can’t.

Just for fun I stuck one on the toggle switch tip, and its’s stayed on there quite well. 

I tried to make a video that shows you how well this stuff works, but I build guitars a lot better than I work with cameras. Let me say this: when you have a big strip of that stuff, you can literally use it as a light source. I’m sure its monumentally carcinogenic, just because it works so well.

It’s not just a luxury to have interesting details like that; they’re very useful. I have found that in some places, you end up playing literally in the dark, so this will be a big help. 

There we have it, folks; the HKGSEC is done. With any luck, I will be using it live sometime this year. I’ll let you know. 

Thanks for reading.

Posted on April 5th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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I’ve broadened my scope, or, in this instance, widened my ‘beaten zone’ (look it up).

For the first and hopefully last time, I review a K-pop CD. 

Posted on March 15th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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If you want to watch this film, you are subject to the Allure of Shit.

If you try to take this film seriously, blood will shoot from every orifice in your head after the first five minutes.

The Allure of Tears/傾城之淚’s plot, acting, and ‘directing’ is so ham-fisted that it has been banned in Israel and most of the Muslim world. 

As is now the nauseatingly usual case, the time and energy required for me to explain just what a pathetic, ridiculous pile of failure this ‘film’ is would by far exceed the running time of the film (an excruciating 123 minutes) and its just not worth it so I refuse. 

I could much more honorably and productively spend that writing time playing with my own feces and fellating simians.  

The only way this pile of garbage is entertaining is if you think of it as a parody of a tear-jerker. At which point it becomes wildly, side-splittingly entertaining. I mean that sincerely. If you watch The Allure of Tears/傾城之淚, take it as comedy. Because it will make you laugh. It only makes you cry for all the wrong reasons.

Someone please stop Barbara Wong before she directs again.

Posted on March 11th, 2012 by Dr. Sean Tierney
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