Les Paul style guitar

Bravo!

Love your fret wire radiuser

Fantabulistic!

Super job, Dave. I'll bet it plays as good as it looks, too!

Nice "amp" in the last photo, too. Love my XT Live. Still wrestling with the HD500...it has tons of potential, but I have a long way to go before it's dialed in to my liking.

Here is the start of the case I built for it. For some reason when I am getting to the end of a project I seem to forget to take pictures, so this is all I have for now. I am going to have to borrow back the guitar and case and take a few nice finished pics. I used sure-ply plywood and hot pipe bent it. I then bent some reinforcement strips to fit inside. They went at the top and bottom as well as where the lid opens. I routed a rabbet for the top and bottom pieces to fit into then glued and brad nailed then fast. After I had a "box" I cut it open to form a lid. It got covered in a nice leather like vinyl and I cut a custom foam insert for it and covered the foam in crushed velvet, or at least I think thats what it is, i'm no cloth expert. One thing I learned is that contact cement will cause the vinyl to expand a little, I had cut and sewed the vinyl perfectly to fit around the edges and after applying the cement the edges no longer fit perfectly. After letting the contact cement sit for a while it shrunk back some, but not quite the whole way.

Thats the friend I gave it to in the last pic. He is just learning electric, my brother has both a xt live and a hd500. He uses both of them still. But from a sound guys perspective "me" they both sound great, at least in a live setting.

Vaughn McMillan said:

Super job, Dave. I'll bet it plays as good as it looks, too!

Nice "amp" in the last photo, too. Love my XT Live. Still wrestling with the HD500...it has tons of potential, but I have a long way to go before it's dialed in to my liking.

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Amazing work Dave.

Oddly enough, I'm impressed by the method you used for the case. I've got a couple instruments that could use a nice case.

If you use sure-ply you have to bend it going with the grain of the inner plys. In the case of my sheet I had to cut the strips off the 4' side. I didn't really have to soak the wood much before bending, just a minute or so. I mainly used a spray bottle to keep it went during bending.

Brent Dowell said:

Amazing work Dave.

Oddly enough, I'm impressed by the method you used for the case. I've got a couple instruments that could use a nice case.

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That's a cool case design too. Hope you can get a picture of the finished product.

Oh wow - a custom case, too?? Awesome!

Ok now you've inspired me to do the same ... next guitar i build gets a case, too.

Wow, a custom case, too. That must be some friend. Add me to the list of guy who hope to see pics of the finished case. You do very nice work, Dave.

The POD stuff is great for my current needs. Playing electric guitar with a relatively low-volume acoustic band, I can just run straight into the PA with no onstage amp at all. Makes for an easy setup and teardown, and it's much easier to balance my volume with the rest of the band...a sound man's dream. One of the mains is typically set up behind me, so it's my onstage monitor. That way I can hear if I'm overpowering the acoustic guitar or vocals and adjust the volume of my rig accordingly. Conversely, I can tell if the lead guitar needs to come up in the mix for a solo, and handle it with my volume pedal.

I know the HD500 will eventually sound better than the XT Live...it definitely has more capability and better modeling technology. I just haven't had the time yet to get all my patches set up the way I need. And it's a classic example of McMillan's Law of Musical Electronics: Anything with more than three knobs has more bad settings than good settings. The trick is in finding the few really good settings in between. Digital amp modeling is still not quite as good as a real tube amp (or at least a GOOD tube amp), but a rig like the POD is sure a lot more versatile, and in a live setting, I doubt most people can tell the difference between a handmade boutique tube amp and the POD's model of one.

And I thought the guitar was cool. Holy cow. That case is amazing!

The first case I made was for my 5 string bass a few years ago, I used the same method to build it except I used solid maple around the sides. It is soooo much easier to bend the sure-ply, Its also lighter too. I would definitely build another using the same method. Make sure that the handle is placed at the balance point of the case. I did a little testing where the balance was on the guitar and determined the handle location based on that, I also made the handle a bit long so you can grab the exact balance point, or you can choke up on the handle to tip the front up or down if you're going up or down stairs. Also handy if you are a six fingered person.

Wow! Just catching up here. Great job on both the guitar and case!

Yeah, it'll do.








Absolutely awesome job on both the guitar and case, Dave. You have a very fortunate friend.

Thank you, yes he is a fortunate guy

For those of you who may be interested, I used target em6000 water borne lacquer on this. The sunburst was done with transtint in a 50/50 water, denatured alcohol solution and was sprayed on the bare wood. The first amber coat was rubbed on then sanded part way back to pop the grain, then another coat of amber was put on. The pictures really don't do the grain much justice. In decent light it looks so much better than any of those pictures. You can see the flame the whole way out through the black. I was very fortunate to end up with some flame maple that was that nice. All that maple came from my wife's aunt's property and was cut up by my father in law and I 2 years ago.

Sorry I missed this thread somehow.

This is one of the most impressive builds I've seen here. You are a talented guy