I started playing guitar in my young days – and a few years ago I began to build my own electric guitars.
After thinking about building my own guitar for a while and some experience I had from repairing my old guitars and a first refret I decided to start with a guitar kit. It was a single cut model. I finished it in a classical Sunburst made with nitro cellulose rattle cans. I replaced all ingredients I didn’t like with better ones.
After so much fun with the guitar kit I bought a router and some additional tools and planned a guitar that is a mixture of a Les Paul and a Music Man EVH. I fretted it with stainless steel frets and made a fat neck, so I call it ‘Fat Ed’. I even made a hardshell case for it.
For my next guitar I wanted something special. It has the same shape but another top wood – Ovangkol. It has a zero fret and an unradiused fret board. I milled the brass bridge and wound the clear humbuckers.
I was thinking about getting a Flying V for a long time but wasn’t sure if this shape would suit my playing so I decided to buy a cheap 80s Hohner FV Devil. It was in bad shape and I planned to restore it in light blue and on a tight budget. I removed the finish and sprayed it with a graffiti colour named ‘Cool Candy’. The neck was oiled and refretted with stainless steel jumbo frets. After simulating the final look on the computer I added a layered scratch plate. I really like the result and think that it won’t be my last Flying V.
I always wanted to play a semi hollow and am a fan of the Yamaha CV820WB. So I planned my own interpretation of this guitar – my guitar is much smaller, made of mohogany and has a flamed maple top I stained green. I gave the guitar a complete oil finish and polished it.
Some of our songs at Mihrax are played in drop D tuning, and I had been thinking for a long time about building myself a seven-string guitar with a free-floating vibrato system and fanned frets to get even lower. The planning took some time, and I had a few problems to solve, such as milling the channels for the carbon neck rods and sawing the slots for the fanned frets. I also bought an old scroll saw for the templates.
I originally planned to use a swirl finish and had already done some tests on a small dummy body, but in the end I wasn’t satisfied with the results and decided to go for a bold colour with a spray can instead. I chose ‘Acid Green’ and am very happy with the result. As it wasn’t exotic enough, I installed Lace Alumitone humbuckers in the guitar.
A crazy instrument that is really fun to play. By the way, it takes its name from comic book characters of the story ‘Space Smith – The Thinker’ by Fletcher Hanks.
At home I usually play guitar through my HX Stomp, sitting at the desk and the pedal is not within reach. Switching via the included HX Edit I find a bit cumbersome, I would like to have hotkeys.
While looking for a small, programmable desktop MIDI switch, I came across a MIDI JavaScript library that runs on the Chrome browser. I wrote myself a small script that can also access my connected HX Stomp via USB MIDI and is easily customizable to my own setup. I tested it only with my HX Stomp, but it can also send MIDI messages via other MIDI interfaces. Have fun with it!
