Ideas Archive 2025 - What's Going On Now?
Hey there! I know this says "Ideas Archive", but really, this is meant to be more of a "The Story So Far" on the guitars I own or have completed, plus the guitar I'm working on, and then the guitars I've got buzzing in my brain in the Ideas Archive. Now, because I'm trying not to waste any time, let's start somewhere you probably wouldn't have expected: my acoustic.
1992 Epiphone PR-200
This here is my 1992 Epiphone PR-200 acoustic. Laminate spruce top, laminate back and sides, 2-piece neck (not counting the built-up heel, but who the hell makes necks from wood 4" deep anyway), and some other miniscule stuff as well. This thing has been through a lot in the past 2 years, compared to when it was sat gathering dust in my parents' bedroom.
In those 2 years, it's gone through about 6 or 7 different sets of strings (not that that's weird for any guitar), the old PVC saddle broke under the low E, so I replaced it with what I thought was a brass saddle, but turned out to be aluminium (Idk what I was expecting, I got it off Amazon), so the saddle got replaced again, this time by a bone saddle carved by my aunt. Sounds even better now, to be honest. Still needs a hell of a lot of work, but those are for when I'm not busy doing 17 different other things.
Now, I will say that, despite what I seem like on here, I am at least slightly sentimental about some things. That's why, when I was given the opportunity by that youth club I went to, when it was closing down, to take home a guitar with me (because let's face it, you can't just give everything to RMS and call it a day), I decided against most of the acoustics on offer, because, as I explained then, "it feels like I'd be betraying it," which is a hell of a rationale, now I think on it, but one I still stick to.
I will say that that doesn't necessarily mean I wouldn't end up, say, going onto the Interwebs and buying an EJ-160E or a EJ-200SCE off of Reverb or the modern Gibson website (nice job, guys, you made a website that doesn't eat up 3GB of RAM within an hour!), but it does mean that, if I do, it's going to be because I want some method of acoustic amplification. Why those two specific models? Well, the EJ-160E is an Epiphone reissue of a J-160E (and you all know how much of a Beatles fan I am), down to the P90 pickup, though it does also have an under-saddle piezo system as well, in case you want that method of amplification. As for the EJ-200SCE, that's an SJ-200 with a cutaway and, again, an under-saddle piezo. The downside is that both cost money, and I'm already saving for something else right now, so no thanks.
Anyway, if I don't buy either of those, I may just nab a soundhole pickup (like this one) and do some Guitar Modification. And if I don't do the mod myself, I'll probably take it to Johnny Roadhouse and ask them to install it for me (or walk me through the process of actually installing it myself).
Next, since we're going in chronological order, one that's an... interesting guitar, considering everything about it. Let's talk about the Fretless.
Sunset Fade (Fretless Stratocaster)
This one kinda came to me as a "this would be really cool". And you know what? It honestly is. I will admit one thing, though, I really don't play it often. I have been playing it sometimes, when I want to try some licks from the White Album (if you didn't know, purportedly, there was actually a fretless guitar on there), but otherwise it just. sits there, and doesn't get played.
The finish, to be fully honest, was an experiment. I call it the Sunset Fade, but really, it's a near-perfect 50/50 split between Black on the bass side, and Fiesta Red on the treble side. As for the headstock, though, I intended for it to be Lake Placid Blue, but really it turned into just... A Generic Blue. As for what I wrote on the headstock (because yes, I personally wrote the kana on the headstock using a fine-tip Sharpie marker), it spells out "sutoratokyasutā", a transliteration of "Stratocaster" into Japanese.
That was written directly onto the paint on the headstock, before the finish was applied, and you would be surprised how hard it is to write on a right-handed neck as a left-handed person. I think that's the first time I've mentioned that fact on this blog. So yeah. Finally mentioned that. This does technically mean I'm cross-dominant, but it by no means make me any less of a guitar player. Same goes for anyone else that follows me who's like that.
Anyway, back to the Fretless, another thing to mention is that "colour contrast" was a big thing in the design of not just the body, but also the neck. Because this was built from a guitar kit (I think most likely a Gear4Music kit like my 12-string? More on that later), I had to remove the frets that were originally there (because most people would assume that a normal person would build the kit as is, rather than make modifications like this, especially to a guitar kit, rather than a bass kit. A lot more people would do it to a bass kit, I think, mostly because of Jaco Pastorius.
So, "colour contrast" ended up becoming the theme of the guitar. As such, I ended up saying, "hey, why don't we do two colours of resin, and make it kinda like a harp?" I don't know why I said it, but it came out looking kinda neat at the end of it all. Blue at every unmarked fret, and red at every marked fret, including the octave. I'm not doing that again, though. It's cool looking, but coloured resin just. Isn't fun to work with. Plus there's a little mark where some of the resin somehow got under/through the tape dam we'd set up, and it seems to have stained the maple, even if only lightly.
Now, to be perfectly honest, the only improvements I'd make are the electronics. Currently, what's in it is cheap Chinese kit. The sounds are fine for what it is, but it could always be better. Luckily, the body itself is routed for HSH, so that's always an option. Also, I really need to mute the trem springs. They ring when I play the middle strings, and that can get really grating after a while. Other than that, though, I can't think of any other changes that need making.
Now, from there, I got what some may call "inspiration", but I call "divine madness", because what else can you call "I want a Rickenbacker, but don't want to shell out 3000 or 4000 of your finest Sterling to get one brand new"? Mind, those figures are from 2023, so it might have increased since then (which it has, Thomann's got them listed for £4300, but Guitar Village lists it for £4800, and apparently they're £5289 RRP? I call bullshit, tbh), but the motivation remains much the same. Yep! Here's my 12-string.
Cherry Telecaster XII
As stated above, my original intention for this guitar was "Rickenbacker, but Cheap". It took six months to get it to a playable state, and about 15 or 16 months to get it to a fully playable state. Let's look at the date range here:
Start of construction: 05/01/2024
End of construction: 14/06/2024
Total construction time: 5 months, 9 days
Bridge fixed: sometime between 28/03/2025 and 05/04/2025
Total time from start to full functionality: 15 months
How convenient was that? Quick, easy and simple. Was building it like that? No, of course not, why would it be? I've already got a series of posts on here detailing the construction process from start to end, but I'll summarise it here, for the convenience of having everything in one place.
So, starting actually before the start of construction, my idea with the build was simple, and stemmed from seeing a kit and thinking "hey that could be cool" and no one telling me anything to the contrary. This really cropped up sometime in October or November 2023, about 2 weeks off of the release of Now and Then. I'd been keeping up with Beatles releases since the start of the year, and had heard the remixed versions of a lot of their songs since then, along with doing drumalongs to their songs à la The8BitDrummer. Still have the files on my PC. So I'd heard the sounds of that Rickenbacker 12-string, and ended up deciding "yeah, I'd like that sound, please".
Of course, the distance between me first hearing that sound, and finally deciding "I like this sound and would very much like to have it", was separated by about 5 or 6 months. Mostly because I only learned how to play guitar back in June 2023. But that's not the point here. Interestingly, as soon as I started the concepting of this build, because I knew there was no way I'd do this by modifying a brand new guitar, I was looking directly at kits, but not a Telecaster kit like I ended up going with. Instead, I was actually looking at a Rickenbacker 360 kit. Something that looked a bit more like this:
Not too dissimilar to a Rickenbacker 330. Small issue or two, though. First off, these are six-string kits, not 12-string kits. Now, a lot of people would think that you can't do anything about that, right? Well, for most guitars, yes. Unavoidable fact of life, you can't fit 12 tuners on a normal-sized headstock.
At least, not normally.
Anyone aware of the Rickenbacker guitar company, and their guitar designs as they have existed since 1963, will know that Rickenbacker solved the headstock issue in that year, by designing their 12-string headstocks to mix their stylings, in that rather than 12 upwards-facing tuners, they use 6 facing upwards, and 6 facing into channels cut into the headstock, like on a classical guitar. The slots don't exactly go through the headstock, they stop about a millimetre short of it. I will say, it seems really incovenient to change out the strings.
This is a small side tangent, but consider it. You've got to thread two strings through one hole for every course, and that's not even mentioning the mind explosion that the tuners and stringing would be if you're unused to it. As yet another piece of trivia about Rickenbackers, their 12-strings are completely the opposite to every other 12-string I've ever had experience with, including my own. A normal 12-string's strings go in this order, assuming E Standard:
eE aA dD gG bb ee
I italicised the last pair because they're the unison high E, which is two octaves above the low E, and one octave above the octave E. It's a very complicated way of thinking about this stuff, but it does in fact make sense when you think about it. Anyway, what Rickenbacker does (also Brian May, but I have no idea if he was influenced by Rickenbacker 12-strings, or he just did it because he prefers it for fingerpicking) is reverse the order of the octave and the normal string, which causes it to sound wildly different between strums, or between down-picking and up-picking, depending on how you play.
Normally, a lot of people will play with a pick on a 12-string, due to getting sharper responses from the strike of a pick, rather than the more rake-like sound of your nails or the slightly more muted sound of fingerstyle playing. This is even more apparent on a Rickenbacker, as the fundamental string is placed before the octave in each course. This all leads back to the tuner situation because, due to the layout of the tuners, and spacing of the actual strings past the nut, the strings end up swapping where they go by the time you get to the other side of the headstock.
I can say this from having actually played a Rickenbacker 330/12 (albeit a year ago now), and it is really a massive learning curve. You're tuning up to pitch, and you get to the fundamental G string, and suddenly you've got to reverse the order you've just been doing. But aside from that, if anything, the headstock of a Rickenbacker has little to no other downsides. It compacts the 12 tuners of the "traditional" headstock to the size of what would otherwise be a slightly larger than normal headstock for any other brand. This required some slight modification to the headstock's shaping, in that the walnut strips, which would otherwise be curved further inwards, as can be seen here...
...the outer pieces of walnut are left flatter, to allow the side-mounted tuners to mount in a straighter fashion. This now allows me to circle back to the kit. See, if I wanted to use the kit, and turn it into a 360/12 kit, I would have had to source tuners and then change the headstock shape, fill the old tuner holes, rout the headstock out for the channels, and-
Okay, you get the picture. Long story short, Rickenbacker kit wouldn't work. So, I needed to find another alternative. This is when I stumbled upon the option I ended up taking: the Gear4Music kit. Let me elaborate, and maybe it'll be easier to understand. So, one thing I knew about Telecasters, and had since I started looking into Fenders, is that they came in two varieties: the original slab-body that Fender had designed 75 years ago, and its variant from 18 years later, the Telecaster Thinline. Thusly, I would have two options for the construction of the guitar. Option one, go with the solid-body that came with the kit, and end up with something similar to the 620/12 or go for what I actually want, and get a thinline body, allowing me to get as close as I can to the 360/12.
Which one did I go for? Come on. You've seen the finished product, you know which one I went for.
Funnily enough, I also ended up buying a water buffalo horn nut, to use in replacing the one that came on the kit's neck, so I could do Rickenbacker stringing. Yeah, that never actually ended up happening, and that's been repurposed for the Crusader at this point.
Anyway, as I said a while back (at this point), I effectively "live"-blogged the construction of the thing as I was making it, though I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to go seek out every post I made. Also because the first post I made on the thing was February 8th, so you wouldn't even have a complete timeline of everything. So, let's rectify that, by making a quick timeline of my own:
January 5th - Collected up all my bits, and took them up to my aunt's place so we could take stock of what we actually needed to do. This included some of the following:
Smooth out the surfaces of the body we would use
Rout out the neck pocket (though that's something we figured out later)
Modify the humbucker routs to accept the single-coils (mainly the bridge, because somehow a Tele bridge pickup is longer than a humbucker).
January 26th - Okay, I'm gonna be real, I've zero clue what I did this day. I know I moved going up to this day due to an exam I had on the Friday (even though I wasn't in on Fridays during that year), but fuck if I know what I actually did. From what I can glean, though, it's likely that we realised that the neck pocket was too tight for the neck at this time. I'm kinda amazed we hadn't noticed sooner. Either way, this is the point where we started working out the jig to rout out the neck pocket so it would at least fit.
February 9th - This is the day we started working on the jig for the neck pocket. It's also the day that I gained three separate cuts on my right index finger, due to being too forceful with a 1/4" Marples boxwood-handled chisel. To quote me from when it happened: "Ouch." This resulted in a 3-week break (originally 2-week, but I overslept on the day I was gonna go up, so it extended to 3) while I healed up.
March 1st - This is a day we made a lot of progress. By the end of the day, not only could we fit the neck in the pocket, but we could also fit the bridge pickup in the cavity, which was a hell of a milestone.
March 15th - Again, a lot of progress. By the end of the day, we had a pickguard design, and a plan for the mounting. We probably should've been a bit more careful about bridge placement, but at the time, we didn't know about this. Amazing what the benefit of hindsight can give you.
March 29th - This one's a complete mystery to me. I mean, I don't even know if I went up on this day. I mean, evidently I did, because why else would I mention this date? As for what I actually did, apparently, I drilled out the holes for the strings to go through, which does make sense, now I think on it, because the ferrules on the back still look like they were done by a drunkard, except now they're also in an inconvenient spot, meaning I can't easily restring the bastard. Not that I need to very often, I take far more of a Beatles approach with it than my other guitars. But anyway.
April 12th - Fuck knows. Can't find anything. I have reason to assume that this is when we started on carving the headstock, because otherwise I did basically nothing on this day, and Idk how to feel about that.
April 26th - This is when I concepted the Telecaster-Shaped Red Special (TSRS) which then evolved into wanting to do the Marauder, and then evolved into the Crusader. Idk what else I did on this day because I just. Didn't take photos for all of April. I think I was Stupid.
May 10th - Surprisingly enough, not all that much to say, but a lot actually done, as this was the day when we figured out how we were staining the top. What I actually decided on going with was a combination of water-based leather dye and spirit-based wood dye. The idea is simple: you do a basecoat of the leather dye. Then, you do your perimeter or your teardrop shape using the wood dye. And then, if you want a cleaner blending transition between colours, you can then apply isopropyl alcohol to dilute the wood dye at its edge and achieve that blending while crucially not doing the same to the leather dye. Otherwise, it'd just result in an orange mess.
May 24th - This was arguably the most crucial day of work on it, as we finished staining the guitar (originally, I was going to have a natural back and sides, but that would've meant trying to get every last bit of dye that got past the binding out with sandpaper, which. No thanks), but also got it to the point of set-up. At least, only to the point. Going any further would have required more time than we had that day. Also, this is the day I canned the TSRS idea. Great stuff on paper, but uh. Not so much in practice. I did replace it with the Tele Bass VI idea, though! God alone knows if I'll actually do that, though.
June 7th - This is the last day of "construction" that I was involved in, as it uh. It turned out that the neck pocket was too shallow for the neck from the kit, meaning that, in order to properly use the guitar, we'd need to do several things to it in order to make it operational. Really, all that needed doing, though, was the neck pocket needed about... 0.5mm removing from the floor of the pocket. Considering that, for the next few days, I was especially busy at college, that meant I couldn't be involved, and ended up picking it up after all the fixes (that we knew could be done in a reasonable amount of time at that point) were done the week after.
June 14th - This is when I made my post summarising everything above, minus the actual origin of the entire idea. The rest of my time dealing with the guitar between getting it and fixing it was mostly spent dealing with the nightmare of the D course being out of tune with itself.
This, of course, is the truncated version, filtered through me trying to figure This Shit out a year and a half after the fact. Just goes to show my brain cannot be trusted to Figure Shit Out or Note Things Down sometimes. Which is why I make these posts to try and set my stories straight in my own head! It also helps to consolidate information, so I don't forget it.
Now, a curveball for my usual stuff, in that, well, every guitarist needs a bass or two, otherwise you're missing out on an entire tonal range. And, as mentioned before, that youth club was closing up, so this is where I got my kit Jazz Bass. Now, do I know what kit it was? Not in the slightest. Investigating the big UK sources for guitar kits (Thomann and Gear4Music, mainly) gives me no clues as to where it comes from. It seems more likely to be a Harley Benton kit from Thomann, knowing how the cavities are on my bass, but it has a pearloid pickguard, which confuses me.
Kit Jazz Bass (Bluebass? Idk, I got nothing.)
This one is a bit shorter of a thing, because I was uninvolved with the process and only got it after the fact. I would've gotten the P-Bass, but someone else claimed it already, and I like offsets more anyway. Now, I'm not here to debate which bass is better (even if I prefer two pickups to one), I'm just here to account for my growing collection of Various Instruments.
Now, being that I had no place in the creation of it, I know much less about it than the other stuff I have. I do know, however, that it does sound like a Rickenbacker if you strike correctly, and that's good enough for me.
I will say, though, I did have an idea relating to this for a simulator pedal, which'd probably sit in an enclosure about the size of the Doctor Robert by Aclam Pedals, for the purpose of getting close to (but not exactly) the sound of both an 8-string and 12-string bass. Here's the idea:
The bass signal enters at one end, and gets split over two courses.
One, which we'll call Course A, carries it straight to the end, with no additional effects.
The other, which we'll call Course B, runs it through a series of effects that you could turn on individually, and which has a master switch so you can turn the simulator on or off without messing up your settings.
The first optional effect on Course B would be the octave, to achieve the higher range of an 8-string bass. This would mean no Chris Squire-esque tuning shenanigans, but afaik he's the only person who actually did that.
From there, the next optional effect would be the chorus, to double the octave sound, and make it not exactly a duplicate, but enough that the sound thickens.
Once the signal has passed through both courses and reached the end, the sounds would be layered on top of each other again, and go through the rest of your setup/pedalboard before going out to your amplifier. Ideally you'd place this first in line before your other pedals, so you're not doubling a signal that's already been chorus'd, driven, distorted, or whatever.
The adjustible effects would likely be to do with the chorus, such as you'd find on the JedsPeds Doomscroller kit, though a lot more limited. I could understand also including settings for the octave, but I'm not sure what would be there aside from a polyphony/monophony switch and how exact the octave is i.e. how many cents off from "perfect" the octave is.
Now, is this feasible? In theory, yes. In practice, it might be ridiculously difficult, straight-up impossible or the absolute easiest thing I've ever done. No idea. It's currently all theoretical right now.
What's not theoretical, meanwhile, is my current project, which I've been posting about since November of last year, which is a hell of a thing to me. Makes me think something like, "what do you mean I've been working on this for a year, we only started a month ago," or something along those lines. Anyway, my scratch build.
The Crusader
So, first things first, unlike the Cherry XII and the Fretless Strat, I'm not going to retread old ground, and give you the full life story of the build from concept to current day. If you want to read all that, go look at my other posts. This section is purely to get us up to date since November, because God alone knows that I don't post enough to keep y'all updated.
Now then! To business.
Since then, a lot has actually happened with the build. Not even 5 days after I made that post, I got sent images of the neck tenon, along with the neck test fit within the pocket, held in place by one of those cheapo (but decent) quick clamps that you can find in your local Aldi. Decent quality, works when you need it to, that sorta thing.
It's amazing how decent it looks, even like this. That carve does wonders for making it look like an actual production-quality guitar, even though the pickups aren't in it yet. Anyway, 6 days later, back up there again, and even with shite weather, concepting does not stop. So, we got down to the brass tacks of it, and laid out the neck, fretboard, and pieces of bocote for a guide of how the installation would go.
(photo from Nov 14th here)
Now, the only thing actually cut to size in this photo is the sanding block. The neck at this point (a month ago) was straight and square, meaning it was exactly the same width at the heel as it was at the volute; otherwise known as Baseball Bat Pre-Turning. I'm not looking at making a slide guitar right now, so uh, no thanks.
Really, the Big Thing with the build right now is carving the neck. Once the weather had kinda cleared up on November 28th, it was basically a case of setting up PDQ so I could get some practice in with handling the chisel and carving the actual neck. And you know what? That practice was useful, because last Friday as I write this (December 16th, 2025 @ 20:16UTC+0), we actually started the carving process. We only managed to do the 12th fret's facet before having to pack away due to rapidly losing light, but the fact that we got the entire 12th fret facet done is good enough for me! Here's how it was before we started the carving...
...and here's how it was by sundown.
Not often I'm this proud of something I've done, but damn I'm proud of this one. And before you ask, no, I don't know why the before photo is vertical, but the after photo is horizontal. I took them in basically the same way, there should be no operative difference. A lot of the actual carving here was done using the same chisel I drove into my index finger last year while working on the Cherry XII. Still not sure they can't smell fear, but I'm at least absolutely certain that they bite. That tangent is neither here nor there, though.
Something that's probably worth mentioning is that the neck's far deeper than it'll be by the end of the project. Even if we don't take the fretboard into account, it's currently far more square than I think I'd ever be comfortable playing. At least square-neck guitars have rounded corners on them.
Now, a lot of what I need to figure out at this point is more aesthetic than structural. Actually looking at it structurally, the only things that actually need doing are:
routing the body for the pickups and bridge
drilling for the controls
routing a binding channel the binding
installing the truss rod and fretboard
...along with, of course, the setting of the neck itself. But there is an order to these things, and I'm pretty sure getting the neck carved and the binding installed take priority over damn near everything else on this guitar. Speaking of priority, I'm assuming that, once we've got the binding installed, we can then look at staining the top its final colour, which will need at least two or three passes to do - one of a (possibly diluted) black, to emphasise the ripple of the flame, then the blue I'm planning on using, and then a perimeter of black around the edge to create the smokeburst.
I'm pretty sure that's the order of things that'd want doing. Then again, I could be wrong. It's actually quite likely, considering I was wrong about how I was going to do the Cherry XII in the end.
Anyway, from there, I think the only other actions needed after all that are lacquering the fretboard (because dirty maple isn't always a nice thing to see), lacquering the body (after a nice coat of sanding sealer on the mahogany and ash, because I'll be using melamine lacquer), and then, I'm not sure. Perhaps we'd be done after that. Considering I needed to fix the XII after it was already finished once, perhaps something will crop up. Who knows at this point.
So, let's move onto something that I can quite solidly say I know about at this point, that being the next guitar that will enter my growing armada of stringed instruments.
2022 PRS SE Silver Sky Rosewood
No photo.
Why no photo? Why the future tense? Because I don't actually have the guitar yet. It's not precisely a Christmas present to myself, mostly because I won't get it until after New Year's, but it counts insofar as "I'm buying it for myself with my own money" matters towards Christmas things.
So what actually is the Silver Sky, when we get down to brass tacks? In short, it's PRS's version of a merger between two Strats that John Mayer owns, one of them a 1962 model, the other a 1963. Yes, this is a signature model for John Mayer, but about 99% of everyone forgets that. Anyway, it's everything that a classic Strat is, but with some modern improvements.
Starter for 10, the electronics. Like the original strat pickups (or every authentic Fender you can find), the pole pieces are staggered like a vintage Fender, height-wise. If I'm remembering things correctly, it's because at some point, someone noticed that all the electrified guitars at that time had a massive response spike in the B string. This is a trend you can actually notice across a lot of pickups from the early days, as it's the same case with the original single coil magnet that Gibson came up with, the Charlie Christian pickup. It didn't have a name before that, so people named it after its most famous user, jazzman Charlie Christian. So, the thing about it is that it had 3 styles:
one with a complete chromed steel pole piece
one with the same pole piece, but notched under the B string
one notched between the strings, so the pole only rose up under the strings
Back to the staggered pole pieces in Strat pickups, from what I can find on the interwebs, apparently they were designed like that because of string sets originally having a wound 3rd string, the G string, which was lower output than other strings. Makes sense, but it doesn't really effect the sound all that much, in my opinion, especially from my experience with the Cherry XII. That's doubled with a plain G string exactly half its diameter (0.010 plain and 0.020 wound), however, so take my opinion with a pinch of salt or seven.
So why am I getting it? A couple reasons: decent sound, plays nice, makes a sound I want. Again, it's a vintage Strat for about a tenth of the price, with modern improvements like a 5-way switch, 22 frets rather than 21. This should be expected for PRS, though, it was only Fender doing 21 fret necks when PRS came into the business, and, interestingly, Fender only switched to 22 fret necks in 1986 or 1987, with the American Standard series. That honestly astounds me.
The bigger reason I'm getting it is that my aunt offered it to me for a decent price (£350, quite below most resale prices I can see on Reverb), and I just said "yeah, I'll have it." This is why I said back in the section about my acoustic that I was saving for something. Funny how I do allusions like that. So, what am I gonna do with it? It's a Strat, and it plays well, so the answer is that I'm gonna play it until I get bored of it, which is unlikely to happen very quickly.
Now then, we can move onto the ideas that are still fighting for dominance in my head, even a year later. The actual Ideas Archive part.
Epiphone Casino Mod Project
Yep, this one's still here a full year later. I think it's because it's one of those projects that would take a month and have immediate benefit.
For anyone who didn't read last year's variant of the Ideas Archive, the idea is simple: take a current-era Epiphone Casino, replace the P-90 Pro pickups with a P-90-sized humbucker, and potentially add a Bigsby B7 to it.
Well. Maybe a B7, maybe a B3, if I feel like messing about with 11s and a slightly higher action. All I know for certain about it is that I'm doing what Gibson didn't, and putting humbuckers in a Casino. So, ground rules! To start, what finish would I get? There's about 5 or 6 (that I can find, both brand new and second-hand) to choose from. To be honest, though? It'd either be Natural or Vintage Sunburst. Worn Olive Drab is nice, same with Blue Denim, but there's something far more appealing about a double-cutaway in a burst or natural.
Secondly, the pickups I'm looking at are a boutique set available in both 2-conductor and 4-conductor configurations, allowing for the coils to potentially be split. There is exactly one issue with this, though, and that's how coil splits work. Splitting a humbucker with, say, a reading of 8.19 or 8.2kΩ on the coil sends one of the individual coils to ground, while keeping the other coil live to output its half of the power, which would result in 4.1kΩ over the entire pickup. This would be "normal" for most pickups.
This is not the case for P-90s, however. They were designed to be a replacement for the Charlie Christian pickup, with a similar single-coil sound, but a much hotter output due to using Alnico bar magnets instead of the CC pickup's cobalt-based magnets. Then Gibson "invented" the humbucker (come on, they didn't even get the patent first), which had about the same output level (approx. 7.5-8kΩ), but avoided the hum problems of a single coil by putting another bobbin of magnets in opposing phase and polarity to the original coil, then wiring the two in series, which causes both bobbins' outputs to stack additively, rather than cutting into each other. It's why the middle position of a two-pickup guitar with the pickups in parallel will have an output roughly half that of either pickup on its own.
Now, because the P-90 and Gibson-style humbuckers are similar outputs, if not the same output level, this means that spliiting a humbucker results in a pickup half the output of P-90s. Understandable for either a PRS or a Fender, but not for an Epiphone where the single coils are just as powerful as humbuckers. As such, I'll probably stick to a 2-conductor set-up for my needs. Get it breathing fire, but not with all the hassle that would come with installing a mini-toggle or a push-push or push-pull pot.
Third off, the Bigsby. This one is a big point of contention in my head, although I think I've just found a solution to it. I think, to start with, I'll keep the tailpiece as is. It's £709 to buy the guitar currently, shelling out an extra £400 for pickups and a vibrola off the bat would be mad. Then, as and when I feel like I want to do the project, I can get the other required bits on their own, starting with the pickups, and then the B7 or B70. The only reason it's actually a major point of contention in my head is that the B7 and B70 have An Issue: the snakebite.
For those not versed in guitar resale lingo (or just haven't watched as much Trogly), a snakebite on a guitar with a stopbar tailpiece inevitably means that that guitar came stock with a Bigsby vibrola, but, for one reason or another, it's been removed for the comparitive simplicity of a stopbar to anchor the strings and that's that. I can understand that, honestly, the last time I restrung a Bigsby that wasn't string-through, I actively Did Not like it. Now, the only issue with doing that over leaving the Bigsby on there is that it leaves the snakebite, which is from the foremost mounting holes on the assembly.
This is why I was considering a B3 or B30 in place of a B7/70. Unlike the B7/70, the B3/30 has no top mounting holes, securing to the body via four screws into the wood surrounding the bottom strap button. All well and good, but then I did research about what that'd mean for a set-up on it. From what I can find, the prevailing opinion on the interwebs is that if I did all that, my end result would be more '60s-inspired than I'd probably like, with a higher action and probably more requirement to use 11s than my preferred gauge of 10s.
So, decisions must be made: do I go with a B7/B70, and deal with the snakebite if I ever come to sell it? Or, do I go with a B3/B30 and end out with a higher action and heavier strings? These are both legitimate questions in my mind, and the decisions must be made. However, they don't need to be made for at least a year from now, possibly a year and a half. Long story.
Either way, I leave these problems for Future Me to solve, and boy howdy, I'm gonna hate me for it. Next project!
Telecaster Bass VI
This one's still around as well! Oddly enough, as things go, this is the closest one to happening, due to being based on the 12-string kit's body. Unlike the body I ended up using, which is sapele (evidenced by the wood grain), it's made of (most likely) poplar, which may give it a different body tone, but considering the stuff I have that I'll most likely use for it (mostly official Fender parts, courtesy of the guy who gave me the bridge pickup I'm using in the Crusader), it shouldn't actually matter what the body is made of.
Yes I'm one of those people who says that tonewoods are bullshit. They are bullshit, but only because electric guitars generally don't get played acoustically. On an acoustic, or a hollow-bodied guitar, tonewoods are, in fact, important, and this fact should not be misconstrued as me saying "tonewoods are important". I'm not Fred Jones.
Anyway, a few things I need to figure out:
How many frets do I give it? I know I said I'd do 24 frets last time, but I'm honestly not sure at this point. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
Trem or no trem? To be honest, for safety's sake, I'm gonna say "no trem" to this one - I don't want to find out if a Maverick Super-Vee can deal with the tension.
What wood do I want to make the neck and fretboard from? Options are mahogany, maple, and maybe rosewood if I can find a piece of lumber big enough to make it from. As for the fretboard, it's maple, laurel or rosewood, simple as.
These questions could quite easily be solved by me saying "fuck it, I'll use what I have available", but it's rarely as easy as that. I'm pretty sure I used some of the best of the door's mahogany making the body, and making the neck is another piece of mahogany that's being used for other purposes. So, the best option would probably be the guy in Staffordshire, wich opens me up to far more options than just the typical "mahogany, maple or rosewood" Big Three of guitar tonewoods.
For example, I could go with padauk for the fretboard, with cherry wood for the neck. These are all valid options, and arguably they might make for a better bass than otherwise. I'd probably also carve out an arm and belly contour, because you'd be surprised how uncomfortable Telecasters can actually be, but all told, this could be solved a lot sooner by me going "fuck it" and buying the materials. The only issue is that I'm currently busy with another project, so this one will have to wait.
Now then, one that's new to the archive was inspired by the fact that the aforementioned guy in Staffordshire got East Indian rosewood lumber in a while back, although it appears to have disappeared. Not surprising, I would've snapped it up if I had a use for it.
Rosewood Telecaster/Stratocaster
This is also inspired by a guitar I mentioned in the (currently only) installment of "X Was A Mad(wo)man", in which I mentioned the original Fender rosewood Telecasters, made of completely solid slabs of rosewood, with a maple "pancake" layer. Yes, Fender did the pancake body first, even if Norlin pancake bodies are more well known.
Modern replications of this will eschew the "dark circuit" wiring for the more preferable option of selecting one or both pickups, which makes it inaccurate to the original that George Harrison got. There's a lot of contradicting literature out there about whether or not there were multiple prototypes, who got them, and similar. What I can at least confirom is that there was at least two rosewood Fenders produced before 1970, the Telecaster for George Harrison, the other, a Stratocaster, intended for (but not received by) Jimi Hendrix.
A simple solution to this is to use a 4-way switch, to get both the middle position and the "dark circuit" treble cut on the neck pickup. Hell, maybe you could have a 5-way switch, and have the best of all worlds by getting the neck pickup treble cut, and the bridge pickup tone bypass!
That's a lot of wiring however, and I don't know if I could even fit all that in a Telecaster control cavity. Considering this would be made of 99% rosewood, however, it'd most likely be chambered out even more than my current build, so I could probably get the controls to sprawl wherever, unless I cut everything tight.
If I didn't make this a Telecaster, meanwhile, I could envision myself making it either an SSS or HSS hardtail Stratocaster. Personally, I don't like the idea of a hardtail Strat, but not as a stock instrument. Really, it's less because I don't do hardtails - if anything, they're some of my favourite guitars - and more because what people do to non-hardtail guitars for them to act like a hardtail - specifically, that people, for some godforsakenly insane reason, will deck the trem of a Strat in order to have it act as a hardtail. Why. If you're buying a Strat with a trem, don't buy it only to deck it. Try a hardtail, try a trem, and choose what you prefer. For God's sake.
Sorry, had to get that rant off my chest. Anyway, I honestly think that I could go either way on which one I make. A hardtail all-rosewood Stratocaster would probably be heavy as well, but I'd likely be chambering it anyway. That would, however, make it a lot harder to do any comfort carves on.
Maybe I'll come back to this years from now, maybe not. Who knows.
Anyway, one last idea before I wrap it up for now.
Resonator Kit Acoustic
This one's because I do kinda like the tone of a resonator. The kit I'm looking at in specific is this one:
This is a more unconventional resonator, in that it's:
a double-cut, like an ES-335
electrically amplified, which some would say defeats the purpose
has both the mini-humbucker and a piezo pickup, which I hope doesn't need outright removing for poor quality or another reason.
Now, this isn't to say I couldn't just upgrade the piezo, but I'm not even sure how it works on this thing. Like, if it's not obvious from looking at the roster of parts up there, but I'm not entirely certain what's the piezo in this thing. Presumably it's the black strip with wires attached, but you can't reasonably tell right off the bat.
Other than that one issue, I think this'd be a really fun build! It's simple enough - the electronics are "solderless" so it's an easy-ish project for me to do, and the only "difficult" bit would be the neck, and even then, that's just making sure the body doesn't shift while the glue for the neck is curing, which itself would only take about 24-48 hours.
Anyway, that was the last one I wanted to include.
Why? Well, the reason why this is much shorter than the original Ideas Archive is because I'd like to spend less than 3 weeks on this one, and definitely not 3 months. Plus, a majority of my ideas are back in the old Ideas Archive, which is not to say that I'm canning any of those ideas, especially not the Höfner Violin bass (3 month prediction: RIP Höfner 1887-2026, God I hope that's wrong), it's just that I don't want to spend 3 weeks writing this one as well. I'm just under 2 weeks as is.
So yeah. This will probably become a yearly tradition for me, compiling all my ideas at the end of the year, seeing what got completed, what's still to come, and maybe some better shots of my guitars. The ones I did take were kinda rush jobs, so maybe I'll get some better ones in future.
See when you it's Almost Christmas! And then? Who knows! I can at least guarantee the Crusader will be done some time before August 2026, so maybe I'll drop some tone samples when it's done!
Have a good one!
