New Creations

The attached photos are of the newest creations I've been working on for a couple weeks.

During one of the many excursions to the music store to lust over beautiful instruments, I saw a violin laying in a pile of crap.  It looked great to me, new, shiny, not a ding, so I asked the ol' gal who owns the place about it.  Her comment was, "It is a piece of Chinese shit, if you want it I'll sell it to you for $15."  So, 'Gitfiddle II' was in the works before the end of the day.

I ripped off the strings; fingerboard; cut the neck apart; modified what was left of the violin; built a neck of red oak; cut an opening in the back to install a pickup, and commenced to fit and glue the pieces together.  

There are a few little differences with this build and the previous Gitfiddle.  For example, I left the tailstock as it was originally, flexible, and replaced the original tuning pegs with modified guitar pegs to make tuning it less difficult.  And, the attachment of the headstock to the neck, and the neck to the body was a little less problematic, in that I didn't mess around with recessing anything.  I modified the original bridge to accommodate the lower action of the four guitar strings.  After all this, I tuned it to DGbd tuning, and fired it up.  It sounds great acoustically, as one would expect, because of the original construction, and through my amp it is awesome.  Sure it's no Strad, but it plays Chinese real good.

Next in line out of the workshop came 'Ol' Smokey'.  It is a twin to 'Big Red', the six-string I dubbed to be 'Almostafender', because it has a Fender Squier neck.  The box is a Tatuaje cigar box just like the red.  Everything is exactly the same.  I just wanted a black twin to the red one.

This week I finished 'The Spider' .  It is one of my favorites, not because it is such an unusual build, but because it incorporates the two hobbies I find most pleasureful . . . pinstriping and cigar box guitar building.  I sprayed a Tatuaje box a deep royal blue and added process blue and dark magenta freehand pinstriping to set it off from anything else I've done.  Added a silver black widow spider to give it a little character, and I'm happy, until I take a look at the back.  It just didn't light up my board, until I added the 'real' spider with exposed bones and a human skull.  Now, it's a real spider guitar, and it really sounds good, too.  I'm happy!