Tuesday, January 31, 2012

' The Crapocaster'

The suspense is over!  You can now see what I created from the bed pan referenced in an earlier post.





A '50s style unused female bed pan in the original box' was found in a renovated house on Lake Erie, and it became the latest and most outrageous TotalRojo creation to date.  This thing is so damn cool I want to sit on it!  And, it sounds awesome through my amp!

A Fender Stratocaster neck, complete with tuners and string trees, is attached to a support beam with screws from the under side, just like the real deal, but they are hidden from view.  The support beam is attached to the pan body with one visible bolt in front under the neck, and this is designed to serve as a strap knob as well.  That's it, no other visible attachments.  However there are two screws supporting the back of the beam to the pan body, but they are hidden under the bridge.  Adorning the neck is the hand painted Crapocaster logo visible in the photo.

The shape of the pan lent itself to the unique design for the custom poplar wood scratch plate, which covers the opening of the pan.  This turned out to be a really neat mini-guitar shape, which compliments nicely the over all guitar body design.  It is attached to the main beam with screws hidden under the bridge as well.

All controls (single coil pickup, volume pot, tone pot, and output jack) are recessed into the underside of the scratch plate.  A custom designed pickup enclosure was crafted from a discarded piece of Spanish cedar that came from one of the cigar boxes I used for a guitar some time ago.  I keep all that stuff for future use, and you can see it comes in handy.

A Fender-style solid body bridge is attached to the scratch plate, hiding the attachment screws referenced above, and the bridge/string ground wire from internal electronics . . . gotta have that to eliminate hum from the amp.

I received a complimentary set of SIT (Stay In Tune) Power Wound extra light strings a while back, so I strung those on to see how they perform, and they are great.  I like the lighter gauge strings on my guitars, 'cause there easier for my old fingers to move around.

And, last but not least, are the hand painted flames on the back of the pan.  Base color of the flames is vermilion with a darker rust outline and with blue-green accents on the tips to make them come alive.  I liked the clean look of the bare white pan, but I just had to lay down a few lines of flames to set this thing afire.

I hope you like it.

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