The Billocaster

Bill came round to the House - he was the Super Tech at Master Rock and he was bearing this lovely Phase Linear Amplifier he'd had in his shed for 30 yrs. So we sat chatting catching up and he said he had this guitar body that he'd built when he was 17, so me being me said bring it over.

It duly arrived, covered in thick gloss varnish which immediately came off. and underneath was this lovely slab of Mahogany beautifully seasoned. Every now and again when you start these projects you get a lighting bolt when you realise exactly what you are going to do with the build. This guitar was crying out for an Epiphone neck and proper vintage P90 pickups on it.

So a bit of routing on the body (actually rather a lot) an ebay search for a neck, the pickups were already in the drawer, so it was a case of figuring out how and what to apply as a finish to the body

I had bought some Montys guitar wax that i had tried to use to darken down fretboards sitting on the shelf and applied that - bought out the grain of the wood beautifully and made a mental note that I must do the dining room table with that one day (a family heirloom that they slept under during the Blitz) So now I had a lovely finished guitar with a big hole in the middle of it for the pickups.

Over to Jacks Instruments up in Manchester for a custom Bakelite plate - they did a brilliant job and were very patient with me (only two gos :) Wired up decent pots some witches hat knobs and a 3 way tele switch and it was good to go.

Lovely guitar, perfect balance, lovely sound, didnt want to give it back - ha