First was that it sounded good. After adjusting to the scrawny feel of the first position chords, I could play it without messing up too many notes, and I did so at my old band’s first (and last) reunion gig.

The second thing was that it looked cool.

I got a lot of interest in it, and a couple of people asking me seriously what it would cost for me to make them one.  To date, I still haven’t made any of these for any one else.

But I’m happy to say that I have finally started making another one.  This is the guitar that I hope to someday make the flagship model of the Paul Rhoney Guitar Co..  Most obviously inspired by the Supro Dual Tone/Martinique/Sahara/Coronado body style, but mixed with my other favorite guitars, the Fender Jazzmaster and the Gibson Les Paul.  I spent the last couple of years, after making the first one, refining the curves and “perfecting” my design.  I feel like I’ve really made it my own.

Work continues, and the plan is for it to have a metallic blue top and only clear coat on the back and neck.

The body is made from a five-piece Swamp Ash back with a two-piece slip-matched Maple top.  It has hollow “wings” like any Thinline.  The neck is Hard Rock Maple with a fingerboard re-sawn from the same piece of wood.  It will get a black lacquer top with tortoise shell binding, and the back and neck will just be clear coated.  Pickups are still being decided, and there’s going to be a six-shooter inlay around the twelfth fret.

When I walked in the door of his shop he was in the middle of repairing some pickguards for a long-time customer of his.  He told me that he actually stopped doing repairs some years ago, but that here he continued to do anything that this one guy asked him to do.

I do repairs.  Lord knows I could use the money!  Yet somehow, the vast majority of my work has been my custom guitars.  I do repairs, it’s just that no one ever asks me to do them.  But I have a guy that is to me as this other guy is to Saul Koll.  I’ll probably be doing any random guitar repair/modification/custom build for this guy until one of us dies.

This one is for him.  It started life as at least three other guitars that he picked parts from.  The neck is from a Japanese Squier Jagmaster, the body is from a Japanese Fender Jaguar, and the pickups are from an old Teisco.  Some of the plates are custom ones that I’ve fabricated.  The most notable feature is that I’m adding four tuners on to the headstock to convert it into a ten-string guitar (thus the Roman numeral “X” designation).

Here’s one of my favorites, I made the body and pickguard and the customer finished it and added the parts/electronics/etc.:

Another body and pickguard by me, and the rest of the work by the customer:

Check out this video of D-Rock playing his Starblaster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuhXw3A9vNM

I’d already started making short-scale six-string basses when I heard about somebody who was looking for a custom builder to make a high-quality lookalike of the Teisco TB-64.  The TB-64 was Teisco’s version of the Fender Bass VI.  You can see one in the hands of Blonde Redhead and Jet Harris.

I raised my hand pretty early on as being interested in doing the build.  I started out drawing it full-scale and posted the screenshots for the client to see.  He liked what I had done, so he sent some funds over for me to get started.

I ordered a set of my drawings laser cut, and we patiently waited for them to show up.

I copied the templates onto 3/4″ thick plywood, and prepared my body blank.

Then it was just the typical building schedule.  Band saw, flush trim, rout cavities, carve contours…

Now I’m waiting on some parts to come in the mail, to fit it all together.  I’ll start the neck within a few weeks.

04/01/10

Quick picture of the neck.  The truss rod is installed and I’ll be gluing the fretboard on soon.

04/08/2010

Fretboard is glued on and the binding channel is routed.

04/27/2010:

05/18/2010:

06/02/2010:

07/21/2010:

*I’ve been recently informed that the brand name Teisco is currently owned by Westheimer Corp.

Bass VI® is a trademark of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.

I was pretty motivated to get this design started, because I managed to score an original Fender Wide Range Humbucker for a steal.

I decided to keep the prototype simple.  Solid body, single volume and tone, rear-rout the electronics and just fake the ƒ-holes.  The body blank that I started with had this amazing knot on the back, that I cut as much away as I could with the tummy cut.

Consequently, the finished body has insane contours.

Like so many of my other guitars, this one awaits unfinished while I catch up on my commissions.  But I’ll update this post when some more progress happens on this one.

Starcaster® and Wide Range Humbucker® are trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.