So I got a call from John… his phone call to me was different, the sound was odd. I asked where he was and he say….. “300 miles south of hawaii running a tuna boat. I’m building one of your guitars on this trip during our down time… ”

Now this is cool.. thought I would share…

 

 

Truly a one of a kind. I set out to build an Alex Lifeson tribute guitar, and what followed was a journey that culminated with a spectacular instrument. I spared no expense with my hardware and the result was truly impressive. The combinations of voices are seemingly endless  between the piezo bridge, the coil splitting magnets, two three way switches, and a mid/dark switch. It also has stereo output via a combo jack and the magnetic pickups work with the battery for the pre-amp removed. The stats are as follows;

 

• Graph Tech Ghost Acousti-Phonic System
• Graph Tech Percision Tremolo
• DiMarzio pickups: DP159 Evo (Bridge) DP156 (Neck)
• Orange Drop Capacitors
• Switchcraft/Graph Tech switches
• Gibson Push Pull (Tones) CTS (Volumes)
• TonePros Kluson KB3 Tuners
• Locking Nut
• Combo Mono/Stereo Jack (Via Cable)

 

A note to builders regarding the bridge,  I feel I should mention this. Because of the nature of these arch top guitars, the swept back angle of the neck and the thickness of the body, I have had to modify the stock bridge to function in this guitar. The bridge height required for sufficient clearance is quite tall. I started by making a single master shim under all the saddles, 2/32 thick hardened bridge steel from an Edge Pro I used as a parts donor. This allowed me to set the base plate lower to the body. Also this high quality bridge came with a brass block, however due to thickness of the guitar, a brass spacer was made as well between the base plate and the block allowing for proper spring angle and clearance.

 

The result however is fabulous. Fully functional and tonally angelic. I am also quite blessed to have a small shop with a milling machine which I had to modify for the project. Without the mill, I would not have taken this on as the utmost precision is needed. The standard specs for the Floyd Rose route do not apply here and measurements were done custom by myself.

 

This is a great example of how anything is possible. I could not be more proud and happy with this guitar. This one instrument can sound like over a dozen guitars and can dive all day.  It is a tribute that became allot more. It is a love letter to the guitar itself.

 

Very special thanks to Phil at Precision. For working with me on this so very well, and providing the best by far arch top kits on the planet. This is the only kit I would recommend, the highest quality foundation. I would also like to thank master carpenter Steven Battles for teaching me how to glue wood properly, and providing me with this incredible burst which amazes me every day. Also a thanks to Gary over at Best-Decals for providing me with these fantastic vinyl cut decals for the headstock, which you can design yourself or thru their design team. I designed them myself and sent him the vector files.

 

Best of luck to all you builders. Build, play, smile…. and thank you again Phil.

Look at this.. awesome!

Phil,

Greetings!  Want to say my read the bread crumbs and for Christmas Santa left me your 58 Double Cut Jr Kit.  Gotta say I have lusted in my heart after one of these for years…..but not willing to plunk down several thousand bucks for one….well it just wasn’t going to happen.  And then I found your site!  I think I bookmarked every computer in the house this kit in the shopping cart.  IT WORKED!

So, I started on it just after Christmas 2013.  Have pics here after I glued up the neck, the tolerance is so tight that I am baffled as to how you do that.  Neck and body fit together so tightly that there is no “lining up” required of the two pieces as there simply is no play.  It fits perfectly!

So, went with Heritage Cherry for the body and neck.  Basic black for the front of the headstock.  Historic Kluson (tone pro) Tuners.  Historic Lightning Bar tail Piece, P90, MojoTone 50 style wiring kit, brass nut, tortoise Shell pick guard…………….and a whole lot of attitude!!

The pics speak for themselves.  It rocks as good as it looks.  I am thoroughly stoked, and completely satisfied, it could not have came out any better.  Actually had the pleasure of playing a 57 Jr (single cut) yesterday at a nationally known guitar super center (sorry no plug from me) and at the risk of angering the guitar gods and losing my mojo…….MINE IS BETTER!!! Plays better, sounds better, feels better….is better.  So I will not go forward thinking somehow its second best….don’t think so, I would not have swapped for the 57 (ok maybe I would have….I know I can build another of these).

At any rate, thanks…here are some pics showing some of the progress and the final product!!

He Used This Guitar

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This is exactly why I love doing what I do… best job in the world. Check out what Jim did with one of our humble lil pieces of wood…:)

Phil,

I wanted to write and thank you for putting out such a fantastic product!  I bought your SG jr kit last fall and was blown away by the quality, craftsmanship and service. I finished her in an antiqued Pelham Blue nitro with a Lollar dogear p90 and I have to say that it has become my absolute go-to guitar so I thought I’d send some pics of the build.

Can’t wait to start my next one!

Peace,

Jim

 

Check out how the grain pops on this beauty, Awesome work. You’ll also notice in the pics green grass and palm trees and no snow… lucky man!

Hi Phil,
Just thought you might want to see my latest one.
The kit was awesome, so I put the best into it.

Tronical tuners, supervee bladerunner with magloc, overdrive custom black pearl pickguard with a Fender custom shop fat 50’s neck pickup,fender custom shop custom 69 for middle pickup and a seymore duncan custom hand scatter wound reversed polarity bridge pickup. graghite nut and fender locking strap nuts.

These are pictures of final mockup before disassembling and doing the final sand and buff. Have 1 more week for lacquer to cure. Body was blacked first and sanded to bring out grain, the vintage amber and orange stain. sanded down to final color. and about 12 cans of lacquer to make a glass like finish. Once again I say youall make the finest kits. Can’t wait for my custom to dry and be built.

Thanks For Everthing
Have a Great New Year
Don

 

Okay okay, that’s a bit of a lame title.. but look at what Jay Cole did to one of our kits… absolutely awesome…

Here’s his words:

Finally!! Bought this kit from you about a year ago, and I’ve been working on it kinda casually, since I’m recently retired. It has a Curtis Novak MM-PAF humbucker in P-90 dogear case, Pigtail adjustable bridge, your Kluson tuners, handmade tortoise pickguard and control cavity covers, and handmade truss rod cover (I’m a home brewer). Finish is Behlen stringed instrument clear over Stew Mac Cherry Red aerosol.

Phil, I’ve built 3 other kits from different manufacturers, and yours is by far the highest quality. It’s easy to see that you use (and maintain!) good tooling, and pay attention to the details. Virtually no wood prep was required; I went straight to grain filling, sealing and painting. Some other kits I’ve built required gouge, tearout or scratch repair to the wood before any finish work could start. And this guitar is perfectly balanced; it hangs just right, so your hands fall in just the right spots. Super slick polished frets too; well done!

Keep up the good work, and thanks for a great build,
Jay Cole

Jay used this one to build his awesome guitar!

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I attached a couple pics of the finished guitar. Hope you dig it.

He Built it with this:

this is from Brent Blair… see adept I am at word play.. lol

Hi Phil, just wanted to give you an update on the DG Vee I ordered a few months ago.

I can’t get over how great this guitar is.
The whole body resonates when played.
The neck is amazing….amazing. I don’t know who does the fret work, but if you fire them…. I will have to kill you.(you know what I mean)
Workmanship on this body and neck is so clean and precise I could not find a flaw or misfit anywhere.

It was slow going at first due to work and other commitments, but I was able to finish her last week and wanted to let you know how fantastic this build turned out.
I decided to go with nitrocellulose lacquer just to keep the vintage vibe going. I sealed the grain with 5 minute clear epoxy, which turned out well but found the 5 minute epoxy would set a little quicker than I wanted. No biggie, just a little more level sanding.
The pick guard I ordered from you was beautiful. I had decided to try a 3 ply pick guard material I had laying around as a headstock veneer. I liked how this material looked on the headstock but it did not match with the single ply pick guard. I ended up using the single ply guard as a template and cut a 3 ply guard with the rest of the material I had.

Sprayed something like 12 thin coats of nitro, wet sanding every 3 coats starting at 600 grit to 1500 grit after the first 3 coats, to 1000 to 2500 grit for the final coats. Finish is like glass and the Korina grain shimmers. I did not add any amber to the clear knowing the lacquer will amber on its own in time.

Buffed out the finish with my Porter Cable buffer using Lake Country fine cutting and polishing pads with Meguiar’s Ultimate Compound.

All hardware ordered from Stew Mac.
Pickups are SD JB-SH4 in bridge and Pearly Gates in neck.
Switchcraft pots and switches
50’s wiring
Tusk nut

It has been strung for maybe a week. I have done the initial set up……Truss rod, filed the nut, adjusted bridge, intonate. I am going to give the neck a couple weeks to settle while I play the snot out of it. The action is super low and looks like I may not have to do any fret levelling at all. This is a killer guitar. Every body who has seen this guitar always comment on the quality of the wood grain.

I HAVE ONE BEEF HOWEVER WITH PRECISION GUITAR…………WHERE THE HELL IS THE MATCHING KORINA EXPLORER????

He Built It With This Guitar Kit:

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Hi Phil..

Here are my guitars.

I can not get the Jrs TV finish to work with a flash and it is too cold to take them outside.  I will keep trying!

My finish, while super thin, was like glass and not sunk into the finish (yes, it is all scratched now from being loved!)  I also went for the same idea for strap button placement.

Both guitars have as perfect an intonation up and down the neck as any guitar, the Mojoaxe stopbar and steel bushings (1 3/16″ long) as well as retrospec studs.  Both guitars have sustain that would make Nigel Tufnel blush!  (you could go out and have a 7 course meal….even unplugged!)  The guitars are so alive compared to any TOM & stopbar guitars I have played I am not sure I would go any other way.  Tuners are Tonepros, pickups are Zhangbucker Cherrick neck (7.2k) and Blues 90 bridge (9.3k) for the carve top (CT) and a Zhangbucker Honk 90 on the Jr (9.7k).  On the CT I use a silver Russian PIO .015 cap for the neck for great “Woman Tone” and a .033 silver PIO cap on the bridge to get wah-wah sounds from the tone knob.  The Jr uses a push/pull for the tone pot http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/PMT-DMTG/Dual-Mode-High-Low-Pass-Tone-Control-For-Guitar.html  so I have a choice of regular low pass tone or when I pull up I get a high & mid pass filter to get a bit closer to a Tele sound!

You may notice that the controls on the Jr go to 11 as does the Swart Amp(s) I use.  The faux binding was scraped by me though I seem to have run a bit of the amber color top coat moved during the clear coating over a few areas.  All finish was Colortone and Reranch.  The CT has a rosewood fingerboard and as fate would have it the day I brought in my completed Jr and my half finished CT a guy at the store was showing off his real 57 goldtop and I could not get over how black the fingerboard was!  Silver switch tip is an old present from my friend for a long gone 335.

Both necks and bone nuts are held by hot hide glue!  Gunbarrel Custom Guitars will be officially open for business in Spring of 2014!

Check this out boys.. this is Fred, from the Netherlands, work. Quilted maple on a single PUP, carved top, ebony fretboard and his own headstock design. I really like the way he opened up the burst to the neck. It’s like its flying…

Here’s what he said..

Hi Phil

as promissed herewith some new shots of my new favorite Single cut, it turned out really great, thanks to your works assembly was a breeze and I just had to stain and paint it to turn it into a really special guitar.
I can’t wait to start the next one.
Now for this. I used a gibson Tommy Iommi for the pickup, I had a few spare and upto now I had not found the perfect guitar for it In combination with the ebony fingerboard the harmonics really jump off that guitar, it sounds huge but still has clarity on a high gain amp.
for the bridge I used the tonepros wraparound from your site, at first I wanted to go really simple and use a standard wraparound but this is a guitar I’m going to use heavily and then it better be in tune, it turned out great;

the tonepros bridge is a very nice piece of engineering and easy to intonate before painting I used stewmac’s new colortone grainfiller, it is very easy to apply and sand back, using it enables you to get a glass like clearcoat on the mahogany back very fast for the stains, which were applied using a sponge (for the yellow basecolor) and an airbrush (for the burst)

I used colortone stains: vintage amber with a drop of golden brown and a single drop of red when using an airbrush, contrary to the video’s on your website, I spray inwards, I guess with a rattle can it would be different but as I sometimes lose some little drops from the tip of my airbrush it is actually safer to work inwards and the airbrush enables me to spray the colors on really thin with a nice gradation so i keep total control.

I started painting the neck and body separately as that made it easier for me hang the parts to dry and only before the last 5-6
clearcoats did I glue in the neck (remember to tape the tenon and neck-cavity with low tack tape)

I have build single cut kits before but this was by far the easiest to complete (and I must admit the best playing, the baseball profile is just perfect)

I thought this was a bit interesting.. on the single pickup..

This is what he built:

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Hey Phil, i wanted to share these with you. my finished v kit. Just waiting for truss rod cover to come in the mail. I modeled it after the classic Gibson V’s. The finish is natural with a tint of Vintage Amber.
the parts are pretty straight forward. the pickups are Joe Bonamassa signature from seymour duncan. The guitar sounds and feels great! thanks

 

 

He used this guitar kit…

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Phil, just wanted to share with you some pictures of the latest finished guitar.

Once again, just wanted to thank you guys at Precision for another fine kit. This was a chambered ’59 kit with with a lightly flamed maple cap. As always, the kit went together like the precision instrument it is claimed to be with very little work required to level the frets once it was all assembled.

Every guitar I have ever built has developed it’s own personality, this one was no different.

It fought me tooth and nail from the start. It was telling me it didn’t want a black base coat, so it went back to almost bare timber. Then when i sprayed the “burst” on to the vintage amber, it was telling me it just didn’t feel right. In the end, it was stripped back to bare timber for a 3rd time, a base stain of vintage amber was applied, then the burst of tobacco and mahogany combined was added and the 2 colours just bled together beautifully. 12 coats of clear nitro and countless hours of hand sanding later, the finished guitar is a joy to look at and even better to play.

It is blessed with a pair of Chris Carter PAF pickups which are just magnificent. I bought the best of everything for this guitar including , in my humble opinion, the best Guitar kit available.

I have included a few pictures of the build and will share with you the other 3 guitars when they are done. Thanks once again Phil.

I think the finishing approach was pretty standard for this type of finish.

I used Colortone dye to stain the figured top black and sanded it back.

Then had to practice on scrap to get the cherry red to match up between the mahogany and maple.

Once I had a good match of dye, and the mahogany had been grain-filled, I stained the body\neck and top.

The binding was also stained. I wasn’t really after an aged look, but did want a yellowed binding.

Once all the color was down I sprayed 4-5 coats of satin on the neck & body, and 4-5 coats of gloss on the maple top and headstock.

I used shielding paint in the cavities while the lacquer was gassing off, and after a ~30 day wait I dove into the wetsanding and buffing.

I grabbed a wiring harness and pickups from sellers online and had things ready to drop in once the finish was buffed.

I went with a Gotoh TOM Bridge\tailpiece, and Kluson tuners. Seymour Duncan ’59 bridge and A2-Pro neck pickups.

There’s still a little fine tuning that I expect to take care of next string change but nothing major.

Matching dye samples took some time, and working with the binding was a new twist as well. Not too many surprises but the anticipation was hard to work through. I can’t wait to show this baby off.

Corny title I know, but I had to use it…:)

Precision Guitar Kits’ SG Junior Kit.  Mick Brierley Vintage Spec P90 pickup, Faber Vintage Spec Compensated Aluminum  Bridge, Bourns Pots, Grover Keys, Danish Oil finish.  Superb quality guitar kit and great folks to deal with. Very high on my recommendations list!

My personal take on getting a great vibe out SG Jrs:

(1) There seems to be a tendency to go with small light tuners as these guitars tend to ‘neck dive’ due to the inherent weight imbalance with the neck set way out at the end of the body.  Resist this urge!  Put some mass/weight in the headstock = i.e., full size Grover tuners.  If you want an SG Jr. you have to deal with the neck dive.

(2) Get the best P90 you can afford and be willing to try a few.  8k dc resistance seems to be the sweet spot.

(3) Bridge is critical, so don’t cut corners here.  I tried a few and settled on the aluminum Faber with standard (plated brass) studs.  I’m not big on ‘mystic mojo’ type of stuff but there is definitely a lot more difference than I would have thought between different bridges, especially in the style or type  of the bridge.  Overall I find the solid compensated bridges and adjustable saddle bridges to be in 2 separate classes as far as tone is concerned with the solid bridges way out in front.

(4)  Use good pots and output jack.  I don’t find any sound differences between pots or tone capacitors (more mystic mojo voodoo stuff IMO).  I like the quality of the Bourns conductive polymer pots and they generally have a more even volume taper than carbon pots. I just used a 500v ceramic cap here.  Don’t need the voltage rating but the wire is heavier and easier to deal with.

(5) With the great necks on these kits I set action at 3/32″ clearance of high E string at 12th fret, and 1/8″ (4/32″) clearance of Low E String at 12th fret.  Truss rod adjusted so that when fretting the low E String on 1st and 15th frets simultaneously you have just the very slightest clearance in the middle.  I find nut setup to be critical (but not necessarily the material) and also one of the more difficult to get right, especially if making your own nut from a blank.  I used unbleached camel bone on this one simply because that’s what I had in my little parts box.  Best instruction I’ve seen on making a nut is here:http://www.lenaweelutherie.info/page6/page26/page26.html

(6) Of course all of this is subjective.  Your mileage may vary J  No disputing the quality of the kit though, great bones to work with!

Duane, Sydney Australia

 

This is my favorite line ever…… ever.. about a guitar.. too funny…

Here is where Graeme’s build took him. I wonder if he’s having guests over now?

Well my junior is finally done. Took me a lot longer than I expected – mostly because work took me away for a month.   I commandeered one end of the dining room table and fought off the barbed comments about “we can’t have people round cos SOMEONE has turned my dining room into a WORKSHOP!!!”    – nyahh!

I wanted it kept simple as possible – but still wanted to be able to intonate the bridge.  You lot supplied the guitar and the bakelite parts and I bought the rest from Stewmac.  There was nothing to do but glue the parts together and start the painting.  I read the TV Yellow tutorials and gave my guitar a thin coat of white, yellow and then a rubbing with some mahogany stained PVA that was wiped off before it could set up.  It looks great.

The biggest headache was the headstock – I couldn’t fill the end grain to get a good finish and the American made enamel paint I’d used to set the inlaid plastic logo I’d made didn’t set hard enough.  Ended up digging it out and overlaying a 0.8mm birch ply sheet to it and fret sawing a logo from thin brass sheet.  I found a Gibson style font and made a Gibson like logo of my own first name- it is my guitar and I made it and I’m proud of it.

Set up was difficult too – the bridge was way too high leaving cheese cutter action. Seeing as I couldn’t back angle the neck, I counter bored the bridge posts  and when screwed right down against the body, got the action into the ball park.  truss rod had me scratching my head until I realised it was dual action. I decided to make my own nut from a Tusq blank and learned the benefits of baking soda and super glue.  Next time I buy a ready cut nut.

Electrics went in OK – final setup then plug her in.   Mmmm .  The single P90 sings nicely and the Steinberger Jackpot volume control really does give a punch when wound up.   Through a 5 watt Blackstar the guitar can go from twinkly to a tiger roar with just the guitar’s volume control. My first P90 and I’m impressed.   There is a heck of a lot of sustain in the guitar’s body – chords hang long enough to break into feedback that curls the hairs on your neck.  The guitar plays very nicely – I like the fat neck feel.  The fretting is great , the playing action very nice and I have a simple guitar that looks cool and can blow the socks off an elephant at forty feet.

A well made body and neck, Sir.  Well done.   I will recommend your company to anyone who wants to follow my lead and build their own.

Now I’m eyeing up a 59 Carved Top – maybe with a bit more attention  to the finish but as I write this, I feel the wife’s breath on my neck and she’s got something sharp digging in to my back and aaaaaarrrggghhhhhhhh!