Blog
Highland Hot Club visit to check progress on The Spaceship
Steve wants his guitar to light up like a 50’s UFO!
Steve and Evelyn from the Highland Hot Club came down from Inverness at the weekend for a blistering series of gigs and dropped by to see how the Spaceship was getting on. Me and Steve spent the Sunday afternoon in the workshop where we did a bit of work on the drawing to fill in a few of the missing details like the finger-rest, tail-piece and headstock. The black parts of the art deco style designs will be ebony and the rest blue azurite which should look amazing.
During the conversation he casually murmured something about blue LED’s inside the guitar. He has a microphone which lights up blue, so he wants the guitar to match! Shouldn’t be a problem but I’ll have to look into that…I know blue LED’s have been hard to get in the past but I checked and they seem to be readily available nowadays. I will probably mount the watch batteries and a on/off micro-switch for this under the finger-rest. Not sure how I’ll mount the LED’s inside but I’ll work something out…
While he was here Steve showed me some of the three note chords he uses in the ‘Hot Club’ style…I learned that Am6 is also D7, D9 and F#dim and Adim and Cdim…Amazing… 6 chords in three notes…Now I am really confused!
Custom Bailey for Skerryvore- working on the body
…Getting the feel of it……
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- Disassembled and ready for spraying
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- I dropped the wiring loom in to check everything fitted Ok including plugging in the jack
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- After fitting the trem I decided to assemble the guitar for a test before final sanding
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- The belly carve is done by and with a rasp
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- Routing for the trem springs, controls, and battery box
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- The ‘trem hole’ completes routing work on the front of the body
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- The ‘Fernandez sustainer’ comes with a pattern- I fixed it with double sided tape and used it as a guide to drill the control holes
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- I bolted the neck on so Alec could test it before I go any further
Alec from Skerryvore popped in to see how his custom job was going and finalise a few outstanding issues. The main point was to check the feel of the neck before it gets finished- after this it becomes more difficult. I bolted the neck on so he could try it and he was pleased enough that I didn’t have to make any adjustments to it at all. I checked he was happy with the position of the controls- not a lot of room for choice so we went with the recommended layout. Alec also confirmed the colour of the body which will be wine red.
That just about covered everything, so after he left I spent the rest of the afternoon and the next day working on the body. This included routing for the tremolo and the control cavity, drilling all the holes: jack socket and pick-up link holes, and all the mounting holes for the hardware that is going on this guitar. It is best to drill all the holes before it gets sprayed to help prevent damaging the finish.
Just to make sure everything fitted and worked how it should, I strung it up for a test. As a result, I decided to change the neck angle slightly, a few small adjustments to the trem route and it all checked out brilliantly. After this the guitar was disassembled and then sanded ready for spraying.
Bailey custom one string bass-7/7- assembly and set up
…’One is more not four’…
The One string wonder is packed up and ready to be sent out today so Andy will receive it tomorrow, all being well. It came out pretty good just a few minor niggles which got ironed out along the way:
When first plugged in it sounded distorted. This was easily remedied: the ‘one’ piezo saddle was connected to the wrong pin on the ‘Ghost’ preamp. It was connected to the pin for the g string which is a lot thinner. The preamp must be balanced to the gauge of each individual string, so the thinner ones sound the same volume as the thicker ones. The higher gain was causing the distortion, once I corrected this it sounded great.
There was some minor fret buzz. I had cut the nut too low, known in the trade as ‘blowing the nut’. I made another one but there was still a little fret buzz. It was slightly difficult to level the frets as there is no truss rod fitted to adjust the neck. In the end I levelled the fretboard with the string on and tuned to pitch. Easy enough, as there was just the one string I could work around it and very accurately remove the high spots. After this it played great too!
It has been great fun to build something so completely different to anything else I have done, I have grown quite fond of it, just looking at it makes me smile and I will miss it being around. Back to Part 1
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Update 16:08GMT
The courier just came- One stringed wonder is winging its way there now!
Custom Bailey for Skerryvore- Inlays and water decal logo
Bailey inlays and Alec logo
About Inlays and water decals:
The Bailey logos are made from Black Tahiti Pearl as are the fret position marker dots. This is what we call an ‘inlay’. These are carefully cut out by hand using a jewellers coping saw then a slot is cut for the piece to fit into using a mini router. Inlaying by hand is very labour intensive and can be quite an expensive procedure. It is very hard to inlay light coloured wood as the glue is usually visible, although you may have to look pretty close! Darker coloured woods are much easier, especially Ebony which is black. With Ebony I use black glue and the join is virtually invisible. For this guitar I mixed up a paste of wood dust from an off-cut of the fretboard, and epoxy, to try to match the colour. After the glue has dried the inlay is sanded flush to the surface.
The ‘Alec’ logo was too fine to be made like this, it would just break, so we made a water decal instead. These are much cheaper and sometimes they can look better. The ‘laser transfer’ paper requires a laser printer but means anything that can be printed can be easily used as a logo. It works just like the old ‘airfix’ kits: soak in water for 1 minute and then paper backing slides away to leave the transfer in place. When dry it is buried under 4-5 coats of lacquer to seal it in.
Preston Reed plays his new Bailey guitar
Bailey custom acoustic from 40,000 year old Kauri
…Amazing honour bestowed upon us!…
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- sealing the body of the guitar by gluing the back on
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- ‘closing the box’
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- ‘The Southern Cross’
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- inscription
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- Three piece rosewood back
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- centre-seam reinforcement diamonds
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- gluing the sides
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- gluing the heel block
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- scalloped bracing
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- routing the truss rod slot
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- The sound hole is cut
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- rosewood sides
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- The angled headstock
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- planing the headstock
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- gluing the rosette
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- cutting the rosette
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- spalted maple rosette
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- ‘Ancient Kauri’ soundboard
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- Rosewood back
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- mahogany and rosewood neck laminates
Sandy turned up about five weeks ago to tell us he was moving to New Zealand and he had some wood he wanted me to make into a guitar for him before he leaves. He has been on the course twice and then went on to build several more very nice guitars at home for friends and family, so I’m pleased that he wants one of mine. It’s always an honour to make someone a guitar but this one even more so, as he supplied some extra special wood he had collected over the years during his guitar making adventures.
The soundboard is 40,000 years old (!) Ancient NZ Kauri- he explained how trees had fallen into peat bogs and been preserved…just….waiting to be dug up turned into a guitar! It is the only piece I have ever seen, so I will need to be extra careful. It is quite soft and light, like cedar or spruce, but I will be able to tell more when I have worked it some more. It is quartersawn, golden in colour with a faint ripple, has a great ‘tap tone’ and should make a great soundboard. It is a rare priviledge to be making it into a guitar.
The rest of the guitar body is rosewood as supplied by Sandy. The back was not quite wide enough for the shape he wanted (bootlegger) so we decided to make a three piece back. Two glue lines means two centre-seam reinforcement strips as you can see in the picture..
As if that wasn’t enough he also gave me a side-bending jig and a pile of wood that he didn’t want to take with him, so BIG THANKS for that as well!
The ‘box’ is complete and ready for binding and I’ve already started the neck so I think I am over half way there with the wood work- hope you enjoy the pics…
Cross The Border come South for the Fastest Repair in the West
Sunday 11th April – the day after the night before
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- here we sit – Duffy, DJ Buddha, Lew and Stoo
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- Here We Stand – by Cross The Border
Half of the Celtic Roots band “Cross the Border” popped in for a cuppa and a workshop tour this weekend – the summer sun appeared from somewhere and we drank tea in the warmth of a glorious day. Like most visitors it wasn’t the tea or the amazing conversation they came for. It certainly wasn’t the cake (didn’t have any..ooops..sorry) I think they liked the guitars….
Stoo Nichol and Lew Robinson make up the half that arrived, along with the marvellous music man DJ Buddha who has created an inspiring internet radio station. There was much talk of St Anne of Duffy’s curry…. which is the link between Bailey’s and CSB … Mr Duffy himself. All are part of the Artistic Freedom Collective (AFC) which is a collective of musicians who play and organise events all over the place.
We were honoured that they came down for the Acoustic session on the Saturday – “the best open mike around ” said Stoo. They played a great set – both being guitar players, singers and Lew adding percussion (when not playing the guitar ) and sprinkle of Duffy’s Bouzouki was the cherry on an otherwise delicious trifle.
The band in full swing includes fiddle by Yuuka Yamada and percussion from Kris Padbury and they are all off to Germany in June – a Celtic radio station over there – (schottenradio.de ) has been getting so many requests for their tracks they just have to go
Lew qualifies for the Bailey ‘fastest repair of all time’ award – he went in with a guitar case, we all had a gulp of tea, he came out and said it was fixed. Think it took Mark as long to do the repair as zip the case back up. (if only all repairs were made that way )
Great guys and musicians – we wish them well in all they do. Hoping the cat drawing Buddha’s blood will not stop them visiting again ( more apologies)
Their album “Here We Stand” is a lovely thing to behold – the artwork is great and I do like a CD with a cover you can look at like an LP . Full marks for no plastic shells also.
It is available from http://www.crossthebordermusic.co.uk/ or iTunes Amazon etc , and supports the charity CRY, which raises awareness of Sudden Death Syndrome.
Bailey custom one string bass-6/7- making the body
…and stringing it up for a test…
The bass will get another coat tomorrow then hang for a while to dry. We are still waiting for the acoustiphonic volume control. It is expected in about 10 days so we will have to wait till then to find out what it really sounds like.
Meanwhile I strung it up ‘in the white’ to check all is OK and it looked great. If you remember: There is no truss rod in this neck- I was pretty sure it would be OK as there is only the one string but I wanted to make sure it didn’t bend too much under string tension. As it turned out it hardly moved at all. Result…
Next time I write about the ‘one string wonder’ it will be finished!..Part 7