2012 May | Crimson Guitars | redefining custom

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The custom Guitar Builders blog | 280512

Follow each stage of every custom guitar build from start to finish in this weekly blog from luthier Benjamin Crowe at Crimson Guitars.

The Rosewood drop top on this Dissident model guitar is sealed using thin superglue.. not a standard option I know but something I’ve been wondering about for a while, in a small test it seemed to work perfectly though so it should be good.
Last week I created these custom planished pickup covers, most of the talk on our various social media channels was saying I should leave these looking like this.. I think, however, that a more streamlined look will work better with the rest of the guitar..
To that end Mike is set to sanding the covers flat.
This guitar is on its way to being finished.. still a few coats of oil to go but the end is in sight and it is a pretty end indeed!
The sun has appeared in England.. and it is pretty out the back of the workshop.
Almost as pretty as the freshly polished (though still to be anodised) pickup cover
Here you start to see what I had in mind.. much much better. The planished look will be making a come back at some point though.. maybe someone will order that Steam Punk guitar I’ve always dreamed of building 😉
Back to the detachable twin neck guitar.. this has been very long in the coming but I’m working on the final little bits now..
Yet more padouk is turned on the engineering lathe.
It is carefully inlaid around the steel hollows that the bass side fixes in to, the jointing was causing some unsightly flexing in the lacquer there, but no more!
The joy of my job, or the curse while you’re learning, is the sheer variety of the work.. I move into the spray booth.
The flip flop strat and the Muse 45rpm are up for..
lacquer!
In between applying each coat I get to grips (bad pun I know!) with some wiring.. this is one part of the job that has taken the entire decade of my career to get comfortable with!
The guitar is first..
Oh my, it sounds great!! A new guitar is officially born, and it’s only half of the story
On to the bass side.. obviously totally shielded etc..
By the end of the day the pair are both sounding awesome.. when connected the signal from the guitar is routed through to the bass jack socket, or you could just use two jack leads to separate amps. That legendary Crimson Guitars flexibility!
While I’m in the mood, and despite the pickups not having any screws in, I decide to wire the Dissident for sound!
It was somewhat of a challenge getting all the bits in such a thin guitar! Good old SwitchCraft
Even without the screws this is a great guitar.. almost the polar opposite tone from the lightweight guitar side of the Eyry but very nice in its own right.
There is some room to play inside these pickups and if there’s one thing I do it’s play with my stock guitars.. I re-thread the holes for larger screws.
And here is the result.. These are in danger of becoming a staple part of my repetoir.. what do you think?
For a moment I was really worried about the tone of the Eyry guitar.. then I realised that my 3 year old had been changing settings.. but then that’s what little girls are for!
With the Eyry Twin neck guitar build coming to a close it’s time to start moving on.. this acoustic is a departure from the norm and is going to be great fun to build.
I do, however, have an adjustment to make. The fantastic luthier Andy Manson follows our work on facebook and shared something he’s learned over the years.. a traditional neck and heel joint is aligned with the grain perpendicular to the grain of the sides and that can cause lumps in the top due to differing rates of expansion and contraction.
so I will be replacing the work I’ve done already… there’s no going back once you know a better way of doing things no matter the pain involved in redoing a job!!
In order to get the old end blocks out successfully a few hours are spent sharpening some chisels.. a job I tend to do at the start of a build, it a good way to clear your head and prepare for the new guitar.
For starters I cut as much as possible away with a good old saw (also sharpened many a time!)
I end up with an empty, clean, shell.
The new blocks with grain now matching the alignment of the sides are glued and clamped up.
I’m stealing an idea from a friend who’s just built his first acoustic..
some veneer is cut out
the guitar is slipped back in to the mould
and I start playing with veneer..
The idea is to replace the kerfing and side supports with one homogeneous piece.. this veneer was a bit too brittle for the task though. I’m very very tempted to try the same with some carbon fibre one day!
Ok, these little plastic clamps are amazing.. originally sold to hospitals to close intravenous drips
The are perfectly suited to holding kerfing in place.. and pretty too
so pretty in fact that I can’t resist taking another pic!
New sections of veneer are cut to fit.
and clamped in place with foam between the cauls and the veneer to spread the tension evenly around the curves.
The excess around the top and back are planed away with my little block plane.
and I start carving the edges of the new veneer away..