So I bought this Router to go with the Bit I had been playing around with in the drill press for minor trim jobs (remember the oversize over shimmed Nashville Neck Pocket?). And I bought this great Humbucker template. Then I bought the proper Router Bit with the nice ball bearing guide and another template to replace the one I trashed. I was ready to Route.
I had been pursuing my usual hobby at work of Googling for left handed tele bodies - I had my serious face on so all the guys thought I was doing something proper and managerial like. I came across Clandestine Guitars (www.clandestineguitars.es) down in Spain - they know about guitars in Spain they even have one named after them and everything, it was going to be great. They had an unfinished Bound Basewood LH body. There was no plan to this, it was going to be a plank to try things out on. Everything previously had been a guitar to start with with things and holes mainly in the right places. This one was a blank Canvas - lots of positioning and accurate holes to drill and stuff.
I rummaged through the boxes full of parts down in the Shed and came up with the second Chinese Neck from my man Ben the Dealer, which I had flattened off at the heel to pull it into spec, the original cutoff Bridge from the Thinline, placed for extreme flexibility of scale length, the Controls from the Nashville Donor body and a pair of Humbuckers that I had replaced with Genuine Gibson 57's to surprisingly little difference on a Parlour Jazz guitar at the Office, so they had promise. Enough bits to start it off with.
Apart from the layout from cold, the real object of the exercise was to hone the techniques that I would need once the proper stuff arrived - by this time I had got a Custom Build body underway from a bespoke Luthier somewhere off in Eastern Europe - RH bridge Route on a LH Body to match the string layout. (that took a lot of persuading) and a P90 neck route. The third full set of Hardware was already being shipped from Armadillo.
I had put studs in the neck of this one, so I could easily drop it off and try stuff, and had a hankering to try a Rosewood neck from Musikraft in the States, as they were doing the Cites documentation properly, meaning that Rosewood as a protected species could be shipped to Europe. Wasn't sure on this step, and maybe my technique of just trying stuff till I hit a match might pay off, as I had a few necks lying around, but it was certainly on the cards for the future.
Since this was a bound body and had a demarkation line for the finish between front and back, as well as going for the oil finish, I dyed the back a deep mahogany. I wasn't holding my breath for a result and still waiting to see on that one, but that was part of it - this was the risk build with no serious end game - apart from the Body from the Guys in Spain, which wasn't a lot and very well made, it hadn't cost me anything to re-arrange parts I already had.
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