CityCaster-008-LP

August 2025...

I have been requested to build a custom guitar, Les-Paul style, with plenty of visual cues on the neck for providing visual support to the player. I started with a Les-Paul set of drawings, providing ample information and measurements on the build. My version will be different in many aspects as the guitar will have a Bigbsy™ type of vibrato; The body and neck will be made of American Mahogany and a top Maple flat surface to enable engraving a city map. The future owner chose the Armenian city of Yerevan.
The visual cues are a full set of green LEDs on an Iroko fretboard with Maple inlays and an additional set of cues on the side of the fretboard. These will be controlled using a PWM module. I will be using fiber-optics for the side dots, and plain 5mm LEDs for the top. There will likely be a need for correctly balancing the power distribution between top and side lighting so the resulting effect is correct. This should be possible with using a resistor or two.
I plan to use one of the pots normally used for tone control in order to manage the lighting power. As a result, the guitar will have two volume controls, a single tone control and the LED control.

Starting with the fretboard

As mentioned above, the fretboard is made of Iroko, and uses Maple inlays. Each top inlay will receive a 5mm LED. The combination of inlays, side dot fiber optics, top LEDs,  and fret slots make it look like a fragile set, but with the inlays glued in lace this should behave correctly, on the 5.5mm thick Iroko.
I prepared the fretboard blank out of a 100x700mm piece, and started with the Inlays after ensuring foth top and bottom fretboard surfaces where perfectly flat.

Next Steps

Fretboard radiusing (16"), fret slots cut to 2.2mm following the radius curve, and nut recess for a 4mm wide nut. I like the maple on Iroko contrast, even without any oil at this time and raw from the CNC!... 

I then started CNC cuts on the backside, the most critical; It receives the channels for the fiber optics (11 total)  going to sides and channels for the electrical wires for the center/top LEDs. This is a busy place... I have ordered a lot of LEDs, in different colors and shapes to see which ones will be the most appropriate when assembling the back side of the fretboard. Contrary to the previous channels I cut in my first attempts at chammeling fiber optics, I optimized CNC time in ordering 1.2mm bits that I'll use to directly cut the channels This will be approx. 3 times faster, and provide more consistent results too. 

I also cut to 3-4mm length some aluminum/stainless steel beads for using as side-dots and guides for the fiber optics.

While waiting for 1.2mm diameter bits to arrive, I received the wood for the body and neck and worked on verifying that the LED lighting part would work with no issue using 11 LEDs and 2 AA batteries, even if I'm quite confident it will work fine. I prepared a jig with an 8° angle to support the head and neck while under CNC.

The wood consists of 2 blanks of Mahogany (45mm thick)for the body, two blanks of Maple (12mm thick) for the guitar top and a 100mmx1mx26mm blank for the neck, out of Mahogany too.
I split the neck blank at a 8° angle using my band saw and glued the parts to prepare for a neck with a 8° recessed headstock. I also split the body blanks to reduce them to 35mm and saved 5mm thick planks I will likely have a use for later. The split was quite a task as I couldn't use my bandsaw. I did that half using my circular saw and a Japanese saw... Still a tedious task; But better than waste 10mm oof wood from these blanks.

Neck carving and applying Frets

With the neck ready for carving, I used the CNC to flatten and unwarp the neck (the blank was not fully straight from the hardwood provider). I then carver the trussrod channel, as usual, and the bacl of the neck with no issue. Came the 1° angle for the neck heel and the 8° angle for the headstock. I used several clamps to ensur these could be carved correctly, and that took a while, but I got it right!

With the neck ready, I tested fitting the fretboard and ensured I could glue it with no issues and enough room for the electrical wires and fiber optics. As all was right, the fretboard was assembled/glued and tightly clamped to the neck and left to cure overnight. 

The next day, I cut, prepared and applied 2.4mm frets on the fretboard using my small fret press, and worked of filing the sides clean and levelling the frets. After recrowning, I polished frets to a shine state. The neck is finally ready!

Body!

Time to start on the guitar body. The various steps a slightly different as the body is made of two parts. I fist carved the 'bottom' part of the body, ensuring weight relief areas and wiring channels were done, then glued the top part, a 12mm thick Maple top. I then carved all cavities for the body, ensuring it was complete. No particular issues

Laser time!

I ensured body and neck would fit well, and tested a quick guitar assembly. All good. It's now time to setup the body for laser engraving. I used my trusty NEJE 4 and applied the design selected with the customer. This took about 7 hours of engraving, and no issues with the laser or mains :-)

Coloring!

The future owner wanted a color applied to the guitar before oil coats. I used a mix of gray, Yellow and dark brown water based dyes to finalize a sunburst effect on the top. The guitar contours (top and bottom) are set with a 4mm round corner to provide smooth sides. Once the color effect was validated with my customer, I applied the first coat of oil... finally!
It's a long journey before arriving at that stage, but this will be a beautiful instrument! well worth the effort... Off we go with at least 7 coats of Osmo Poly-X  oil. The future owner want a shiny guitar so I ordered the glossy version of the oil to apply to the guitar and neck.

Assembly Time!

With a good number of hard oil coats (glossy) applied, it's time to assemble neck and body and work on the final setup of the instrument. A good amount of glue (but not too much!) for the neck/body joint, and 24h cure did the job, the neck is straight and I can assemble/screw in the bridge, the whammy bar, the LED circuits and battery box, and do a first few tests.

Final assembly, stringing and tests

I progressed on the final assembly of the instrument, installing pickups and wiring the different controls beyond LEDs. The guitar provides single coil tapping for both pickups and phase inversion for the bridge one. Both pickups have dedicated volume controls before going to the pickup selector. The signal then goes to a tone control before the output jack socket.

I strung the instrument and adjusted the nut so string heights are optimum at 'fret 0'. I intonated the guitar and the bridge proved versatile when it comes to adjustments. I surely will use that bridge again if I receive another LP build request. The Bigsby term bar is or seems stable, but I find strings difficult to mount with such tremolo, compared to simpler bridges such as Fender Strat ones. The sound palette is quite nice, the Wilkinson pickups are powerful and provide a good amount of treble for clean tones.

I think the future owner will be happy with this less than 3.8kg instrument!