A New Plan?

I've been reviewing my plans on what to do next. I originally wanted to do a LP copy with parts from Dragon Mountain and then probably do a V as a kind of art piece, but the idea of doing an LP with a bolt on neck has always bugged me a little. I noticed that Dragon Mountain had stopped listing the V's on ebay so i thought I might see what else was out there and I found this at byoguitar.com. I've always liked Explorers better than V's, so I was kind of excited by it. It's also a set neck, and they have an LP kit too that's set neck. So I think the new plan is to order an Explorer kit and try it, and if I can get it put together right and finished properly then that's the way I'll go. If not I'll just buy the prefinished bolt-on parts and do what works.

The finish on the explorer will be black, I found this ebonizing process I would like to try here. I am not at all interested in trying to spray paints and laquers, so all my finishes are going to be things that can be brushed or rubbed on. The humbuckers are going to need chrome covers.

For the LP if I'm finishing myself I'll try and get as close to this, that's what I was trying to get to when I chose the original LP design in burgundy from Dragon Mountain.

A summary of my adventures in finding out about guitar finishing to follow.

Where things stand April 18, 2010

I've already done a lot of work and been through a lot of options and I believe I have a plan. I'm not going to go through what I have what I have investigated and rejected, just what the plan is today.

Body and Neck: magicdragononline Dragon Mountain Les Paul copy

This guy has pretty decent looking finished parts available for Les Paul, SG, Flying Vee, Stratocaster and Telecaster copies. Finish choices aren't huge but pretty variable. Apparently he shuffles through different ones. There is no separate webpage I can find only the ebay store linked above. There are some reviews at various places online and nobody really has anything bad to say. In fact most comments seem to be "Surprisingly good despite x/y/z". Parts are finished which is good because i don't have the patience or space to do a proper finishing job, and I'm not going to pay somebody else to do it.

I have settled after much discussion with the wife on a non-traditional bound glossy burgundy body with a matching neck. I'm going to go with basically ivory plastics and black hardware, which are all available from the same source and are guaranteed compatible. Using this online utility called Kisekae by Yajima String Works I've been able to put together what I think is a pretty good idea of what it will look like:

This is actually a really good utility. You can adjust pretty much everything but the gloss as far as I can figure out. There even several are options to build your own finishes and components.

Electronics: Wilkinson Zebras

I love that classic look, think it goes well with the design and they are pretty readily available on ebay at a really good price. Dragon Mountain doesn't have Zebra pickups available, and the ones available from the bigger name companies are pretty expensive by comparison. Again I can't find many reviews, and what I do find is very positive. Also they are a 4-wire model so I can mess around with tapping, splitting, phase etc...

Now that I have all that worked out I just need to get everything on order, got to wait a little bit for that. When you order the Dragon Mountain stuff the body and neck are shipped separately, so you are going to pay for shipping each time, though the small parts ship free. This is actually ok as you can order the body, get it all done, and then order the neck.

Next i need to figure out what I want to do for my next project after this one. I'm thinking a strat copy with rail single coil humbuckers...