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The Guitar Builders Blog | 070512
Welcome to the Crimson Guitars guitar building blog where every week we publish photo and video following each and every process involved in building some of the finest and most imaginative custom guitars and basses in the world today… We start with a new Guitar Building tutorial video for all you hobby builders out there.. or, more importantly, if you’re thinking about ordering one of our custom guitars you’ll get to see first hand the care and attention that goes into your guitar when you buy from Crimson Guitars.
We left the last workshop diary having fitted these steel locating pins into the detachable double neck guitar we’re currently working on..
The next stage of this process is to make a pair of bespoke control knobs and for this I have to start right back at basics and make a custom tool for the engineering lathe.
A start.. the padouk is pared away on the first attempt..
When I finally have a shape I’m happy with the knob is replicated and oiled.. at speed!
Finally here is the result, much more attractive than the small knob I had in there in the first photo.
I’m very happy with the way the wood and metal works together, strength, beauty and functionality in one fitting.
I’ve finally gotten around to adding this guitar to the gallery, our first attempt at a Muse guitar with Kaoss pad controller and built in fuzz factory fx pedal.. meet our Muse Descendant guitar.
More lathe work as I start prototyping the rest of the fittings.. cross your fingers everyone!
I take a standard stainless steel bolt, reshape, drill and then thread it.
having fun making swarf 
I also customise several nuts.
But before I get furthur with that I have a coil of shielded wire to get to grips with.
First I rout into the, very very, thin section on the upper bout of the bass.
then the two wires are fed from the holes and into the pickup cavity.. matching the look of the custom dragonfly flight trails on the from of each of these instruments.
The firs half of my fitting system is bolted in over the wires.. You may well be sitting there going wtf is he doing?  (excuse my abbreviation 😉 ) Basically, the inner core of each of these wires will go to a switch on the bass and they start at the output of the guitar, every time you bolt the guitar and bass together you create a hard connection at these points and the output of the guitar will route to the switch and from there to the bass jack socket.. one jack, or two if you like.
I’m particularly pleased with the fact that the fitting is doing duty as both a part of the wiring and is holding the disparate parts of the whole instrument together.
More fittings are turned to go in to the guitar side.. (these will need replacing though, I’ve found a problem with the way the thread is aligned, every time you bolt the guitar on it wants to loosen these fittings!)
Test the first.. and it is pretty successful (the cosmetics will be sorted next week!)
The postman has brought me a present!
I love the details that they put in over at Adrenalin flight cases..
And I cannot fault either their workmanship or customer service.. well done guys this is beautiful!
One of our Robert Fripp models in for a set up..
Shiny shiny frets.. my favourite!
In the background the stock guitars are coming together as well, Richard finalising the rosewood back plate for the Dissident with the rosewood drop top..
From the back here is the view of the guitar and bass when combined..
and another look at the wires..
The two bolts were holding them together alright but felt a little flimsy, one more hole is required.
And also some leather.. this is normally punched out into small disks that I use underneath my strap buttons..
this time though it becomes a removable cushion between the guitar and bass.. not only does it protect the finish
it stops excessive vibration between bodies and little mechanical creaks and other noises as you play..
And so.. this detachable double neck guitar/bass combo is coming together.. quite literally!
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All my best,
Ben
Crimson Guitars | Redefining the custom guitar in the UK