Electric Guitar (001)
This was the first guitar I designed and built from scratch. Mahogany body, maple neck-through body. Painstakingly carved in my own custom body shape that evokes thoughts of waves or fluid flames. Of course, electric guitars are somewhat easier to build than acoustic guitars (the sounds is determined mostly by the pickups installed), but it was an excellent learning experience, and this is my electric guitar of choice to this day. I built this guitar in a relatively short period of 4 weeks in 2004, although granted I worked around the clock out of sheer enjoyment. Other unique feature include a contoured fretboard end and a modified fender 5-way switch to coil tap the neck humbucker pickup in certain positions (giving a broader range of sounds from the pickup selector).
The beginning: just a pile of boards. You can see I did a fair bit of laminating, mostly to keep cost down. (materials and hardware came to only about $250!)
Since I opted for the neck-through body design, the entire guitar was built as one piece as shown here. However, this means even one rookie mistake would jeopardize the entire project. Needless to say, I put a lot of though into this.
The heel-joint, after extensive contouring. The advantage of the one piece design is a very smooth neck-to-body transition.
Headstock after carving and routing. The anchor block for the truss rod is also installed.
The front, after the countouring and the first coat of sealer.
The sole fretboard inlay at the 12th fret (my initials). The walnut on maple is especially striking.