The Making Of Burla

WavMixer

WavMixer

Tone Rooms Founder
Administrator
Country flag
A couple of years ago I had a dream to modify my stock Epiphone G-400. I wanted to make my own pick guard from wood as I had seen our very own Col. Mustard do. I started off experimenting with different wood types in Photoshop until I found the wood that I liked, walnut burl. Below is the Photoshop rendering that I did. This thread will be picture intensive with a brief description of each picture. I'll do it in multiple posts as there will be around 30 pictures for all you guitar porn loving, SG playing TTF family members.. To start with, here was my Photoshop dream...
1.jpg
 
My first step was to go to my local Michael's hobby & craft store to purchase a small piece of birch plywood.

2.JPG
 
With the new template I cut out of heavy card stock, I used the screw holes to keep the template in place and scribe a line for the new pick guard.

7.JPG
 
With the new pick guard cut to shape, I applied a coat of Woodweld contact cement to both the veneer and plywood surfaces and gave them a few minutes to get tacky before joining them.

9.JPG
 
The next day after the contact cement had cured, I used a fine 220 grit sandpaper to bevel the edges. Using my finger powered drill, I used a drill bit slightly larger than the hole to create a tapered edge so that the screws would fit nicely in the tapered holes.

10.JPG
 
The same steps were used for the truss rod cover, the back control cavity cover and the plastic piece between the neck pick up and neck.

13.JPG
 
I used a left over piece from the first attempt at the pick guard that I was not happy with the shape as well as other scraps and glued them together to get the height needed to make the pick up surrounds using the stock plastic surrounds as a guide.

14.JPG
15.JPG
16.JPG
 
Now that the outside was all dressed up, time to do some open heart surgery and replace the guts with push-pull pots, orange drop caps and Iron Gear pups. I got the speed knobs but later replaced them with gold Tele knobs.

21.JPG
 
I covered the inside of the control cavity and the inside of the cover with copper shielding tape to help eliminate any buzz when splitting the coils. The new pots, switch and jack were all soldered together on a cardboard mock up so they could just drop into place.

22.jpg 23.JPG 24.JPG
 
That is some real nice work Grant! I don't even know why you want a Gibson...

...well I guess GAS keeps up continually wanting something new.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top