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231111 | hand built guitars start to finish

At Crimson Guitars we built utterly unique guitars by hand and over the last decade the arsenal at our disposal has grown, it used to be that the basic wood and set up work was the domain of the luthier and everything else was farmed out to third party contractors, no more! Along with the ability to apply our own custom paint finishes and create one off tremolo systems comes the ultimate in control, and with that comes quality. Soon we will also be creating our own special brand of scatter-wound pickups and maybe even a few fx pedals and on-board effects units.. but that is in the future.. for now please enjoy the photos of our last weeks custom guitar work.. and don’t forget that you can now receive an email copy of this workshop diary as we publish it, just subscribe on the right of the page..

We are working on several nearly complete custom guitars at the moment, clearing up the much mentioned backlog has been the work of the past year and we are finally nearing that goal… This is David’s custom amalgam of the Robert Fripp Hollow and PAF Hollow, two of my favourite models!
The lacquer has been curing for months and it is past time that it was rubbed down and prepped for polishing.
I love the way the multi-ply binding and red stain works together..
Once all the wet work is complete the masking comes off the ebony fret board..
And after some buffing this beautiful beautiful guitar comes into its own.. I’m still very excited by the quality of the finish we are finally capable of.
This PAF Hollow, a stock guitar until last week, now has someone to love her.. a particularly talented man called Fred Wisdom.. check him out here.
This lacquer, applied last week, is rubbed down in its turn, we flatten our lacquer down to 2000 grit with wet and dry paper.
The initial buffing process begins.. or at least carries on, using a stitched mop..
The last shine eventually comes with a loose leaf mop.. and a lot of time of course, too few things in life comes easily!
On to the last of the current trio, a new Robert Fripp model destined for an artist in Wales, the masking is removed and buffing continues..
A hard week, tendinitis and a bastard of a cold that won’t go.. still, there is always lemsip!
The paf hollow continues in the flattening process, I’ve found that it is best to do this part of the job soon after the lacquer is applied and while it is still partially cured.
The final polishing compound..
and hand buffing gets us the best result.. The extremely accessible neck to body joint looks fantastic under this solid finish..
The fretboard is masked off, leaving each fret clear this time, the frets are then marked black..
and leveled, profiled and polished.. really really polished! Our frets are faster and more comfortable because of an extra 20 minutes at this stage.. it all counts.
The first of many coats of lemon oil are soaked into the padouk fret board, there is no point in a dried out board.
Back to Freds PAF Hollow..
Instead of going straight for the gloss I’m pausing for thought here.. at a matt finish.. I like it, and I don’t.. mmm I’ll leave this up to Fred I think.
In the meantime the fretboard is cleaned up, some masking tape gunk and lacquer got through the masking tape.. a scalpel used as a scraper and some fine wire wool does the job perfectly!
… still musing on that finish.. leave your thoughts in the comments section below.. I’d love some outside perspectives (I do spend my life in a shed after all!)
Now, after two years of stop start development (mainly spent learning how to use the tools necessary and learning basic engineering) our ball bearing tremolo design has reached fruition.. all it took was a step change in my mind.. going back to first principles really really works.
stripped down and rough sanded..
then shot blasted
and anodised..
This looks like a mad scientist has been let loose in my engineering department… fun fun fun!
While that is going on the brass tremolo gets buffed up.. this will end up on Roberts next personal guitar.
I’m trying out some anodising stains for the first time.. the stain has to be heated and agitated using fish tank heaters and air pumps..
Out of the anodising tanks here is the first example..
The staining failed to work.. but the first attempts tend to, back to google to find out why
The first tremolo to go together has its piezo loaded graph tech string saver saddles installed….
This is how our tremolo works.. I’ll put some video of it up soon on our YouTube channel.
It’s amazing how much water my dehumidifier can pull out of the air.. and how clean it looks!
Now, the tremolos are higher than I thought they would be so a new template is needed..
the guitar is protected from any damage while a recess is routed in.
like so..
A matt black paint fills the new cavity.
and it is finally time to start putting this beauty together.. the Fernanades sustainer and custom hand made single coil pickup are installed at the neck position.
alongside a matching custom humbucker from Wizard pickups.
The locking sperzel tuners are installed, their finish matches that of our new tremolo..
of course, after the Delta 1 I can’t look at standard tuners again without wanting to customise the knobs but these are rather sexy!
On to the nut, an ivory blank is brought out and sanded down to size on the disk sander..
and the nut is carved and fitted..
With everything ready for strings bar the tremolo it’s time to install that and hear this guitar play for the first time.
my pretty.. you can’t beat a well engineered tool!
With the strings on and the trem working perfectly with the ball bearings there is nevertheless a problem, in drilling the holes for the screws I’ve weakened the bar holding the bearings and it can’t take the tension.. I will need to re-make this using steel tomorrow..