Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Self built and self assembly ;)

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NippleWrestler
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Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by NippleWrestler »

Howdy,

Another one for you. Mostly native timbers and my first build was the prototype for this one. I designed the body in Illustrator, going for a cross between a PRS, a Schecter, maybe a bit of Les Paul in there, but something sleek and aggressive and derivative without being too out there or weird. It kinda reminds me of Skulltullas in Zelda games for some reason. Then I take that Illustrator design, print it at 1:1 then literally sellotape that to the wood(s) being used and cut around it, like a massive stencil basically. I put the pickup and neck routs on there too and hopefully everything aligns at the end. I toyed with making templates but every guitar I've done is a different shape.

So, it's a one piece chambered totara back with a bookmatched sapwood puriri top. The neck is 5 pieces of padauk and rewarewa with walnut veneer between the laminates. I also added some heart puriri to the laminations on the 10 degree scarf joint and at the heel. I had some leftover bits from the fingerboard (which has rewarewa dots like the last guitar I posted here).

Here's the body after gluing the top on, cutting to shape, and routing out the shit:

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I think that was sanded to like 80 grit after shaping the top with an angle grinder. You can see the grain on the puriri really coming out and it has these weird streaks in the top that (to me) look like Elvish writing. I saved a bit of this top for the headstock cover as well.

With the neck in it looks a little like this:

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Here's the headstock with the puriri faceplate thing.

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Then I finished it with tru oil. I love this stuff, it's practically foolproof and makes even the shittest wood look awesome. Luckily, this puriri at 400 grit had some real figure to it and it looks a little like this when it had some tru oil on there:

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I ended up doing about 10 coats on the body and 8 on the neck.

I'm not sure about you guys, but the longer I play the more refined I become in my tastes. I used to like a bunch of pedals, tons of switches and pots and everything right there. Now I'm a master vol/tone kinda guy and 3 pedals on my board. In this guitar there's a master vol/tone (one is a push/pull), 3 way switch and that's about it. That's a Gotoh bridge and the tuners are now Hipshot (although they were Grovers when the pictures were taken).

Electronics wise it's a similar story to all my guitars - 500k pots (Bourns on this one), a switch, and pickups wound by a dude in Howick called Geoff. Now I'm going to devote some time to these pickups because they're goddam insane. I put the idea to Geoff about making some zebra coil pups but with the coils made from wood to match the guitar. We've got the 2 shades of puriri on the go so what about coils to match? Something like 50 man hours later and some fabricated jigs the bobbins were made. And each bobbin is a single block of wood, it's not wood on a plastic base, the whole thing is wooden and they look a bit like this:

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That's an absolutely monumental feat of engineering.

Here's the finished dude:

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The knobs were turned on a lathe from neck offcuts. Why pay for plastic shite when you've got great material to work with?

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And this is a recording of the puriri beast, going through some different sounds. It growls like a mofo.

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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by Zaulkin »

Nice!

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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by alanp »

That is beautiful. The B&W photo really doesn't do it justice!
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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by willow13 »

That is very cool ... I really like that body shape
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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by Jay »

Beautiful, love the way you use the different timbers. Those pickups are gorgeous. Say hi to Geoff, he truly is a master craftsman.

When I saw the first photo I wondered wher you were going to put the strap button. I see you rebated it but no button yet.
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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by NippleWrestler »

There's a button now :) Black strap locks all the way.

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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by zedhed71 »

Very nice work.

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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by mrmofo »

amazing, only change I would make is full wooden pick up rings
There are still some that think the neck PU is moved to accommodate the extra frets which only proves they cannot detect the difference in length of each.

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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by NippleWrestler »

Not really a point, they'd just snap along the thin bit because it'd be across the grain. This does exactly the same job.

I suppose you could make a laminate of alternating grain to get the strength but that seems like a ton of work for zero improvement. It was a consideration I had earlier in the process but decided against it.

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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by AiRdAd »

NippleWrestler wrote:Not really a point, they'd just snap along the thin bit because it'd be across the grain. This does exactly the same job.

I suppose you could make a laminate of alternating grain to get the strength but that seems like a ton of work for zero improvement. It was a consideration I had earlier in the process but decided against it.
Did you consider direct mounting to the body like on a wolfgang?

The pickups look the business don't they!
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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by KentNZ »

I have to say, really great work! BUT those pickup mounts?! Airdad may be onto something ... Is there any way you can mount the pickups without using those little outrigger things ? I guess you have screw holes in the body now. Boo.
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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by Cdog »

purty!

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Re: Build 2: Sapwood Puriri

Post by Marshmallow »

This is cool. Dibs

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