Instagram is both a blessing and a curse. It's altogether too easy to take pictures and upload to there any interesting or unusual jobs I take on, which has made me lazy and starved my website of any updates! So with that in mind here's two of the larger projects I've done recently:
This Dobro has been electrified. It had a humbucker attached, with an external cable and jack, before it came to me, which needed to be wired internally. A Fishman resophonic piezo was also added to the cone and a blend control which you can see in the f-hole in the second picture (actually an in-line volume for the piezo) and both pickups run to the same jack socket on the lower bout of the body. The humbucker was a little dark, and captured little of the cone, which is where the magic is. The piezo is fixed directly to the cone underneath the bridge, but is a little harsh. These pickups compliment each other perfectly however and once blended together sound great.
I also made a new bridge for this out of maple and pau ferro to fix some fairly serious intonation issues, however I forgot take a picture of it so you'll have to take my word for it.
This guitar is owned by Skin Tyson who is currently heading off on tour with Robert Plant, and he was kind enough to record a quick demo for me when he collected it. This was recorded directly into my Kemper (acoustic pre profile, flat eq), with no mic of any kind.
Then there's this handmade acoustic, which had scuffed and heavily cracked lacquer on the top, and a lifting bridge which was about to pop off at any minute. This was taken after it was stripped and the bridge helped on its way:
After everything was cleaned up the bridge was glued back in place, and the refinishing began. It also received a new heel cap made of indian ebony which closely matched the board and bridge.
The finish was french polish and oil, it took some time but the result turned out to be a nice satin gloss:
