Hi Folks
I've had some time recently to make progress with my Firebird build. I'd gotten it to the stage where I had the body shaped and the neck joint cut and the neck roughed out with the truss rod fitted. It didn't take much work to glue in the neck, sort out a wenge fingerboard and do some routing for the control cavity.
Some changes from the original Gibson design (actually, the Firebird was designed by Ray Dietrich, a famous car designer of the time). I have put the jack socket on the end of the body like a Les Paul rather than on the top front of the guitar. The SG has a similar layout and I hated it on the SG, so on the end it goes. The guitar also has a glued in neck instead of neck through like the original. There are just as many Firebirds with broken headstocks as Les Pauls, so it obviously isn't a stronger method of construction!
Tuners/machineheads. The early guitars featured banjo style tuners, the later non-reverse and budget version used regular tuners. I've gone for regular tuners as the only banjo style ones I can find are the delicious but expensive Steinberg ones.
So the next step is frets followed by routing out for pickups (going for mini humbuckers) then I can string her up and see how she sounds. Finish is going to be a solid colour - I fancy vintage white but metallic red is also on the books. Or gold....... ;)
Cheers
Philly
I've had some time recently to make progress with my Firebird build. I'd gotten it to the stage where I had the body shaped and the neck joint cut and the neck roughed out with the truss rod fitted. It didn't take much work to glue in the neck, sort out a wenge fingerboard and do some routing for the control cavity.
Some changes from the original Gibson design (actually, the Firebird was designed by Ray Dietrich, a famous car designer of the time). I have put the jack socket on the end of the body like a Les Paul rather than on the top front of the guitar. The SG has a similar layout and I hated it on the SG, so on the end it goes. The guitar also has a glued in neck instead of neck through like the original. There are just as many Firebirds with broken headstocks as Les Pauls, so it obviously isn't a stronger method of construction!
Tuners/machineheads. The early guitars featured banjo style tuners, the later non-reverse and budget version used regular tuners. I've gone for regular tuners as the only banjo style ones I can find are the delicious but expensive Steinberg ones.
So the next step is frets followed by routing out for pickups (going for mini humbuckers) then I can string her up and see how she sounds. Finish is going to be a solid colour - I fancy vintage white but metallic red is also on the books. Or gold....... ;)
Cheers
