Q418 Luttis's Dashing Sparklecaster...

WezV

LuttiS said:

Just noticed In the MLP bowling episode the entire cast of the Big Lebowski are in the bowling alley as ponies.. so that was cool..

Along with Dr Hooves.

LuttiS

Really like how the rainbow came out.. toying with the thinkings of considering making the neck some bright colour on the back & headstock... The bright colours will only be used on such a small area seems a shame not to use some elsewhere... Imagine a neon green and yellow neck... Like some sort of sick wasp..

LuttiS

Ah-ha! Oh-Ho! Marks in the snow! The kit part of the build is here!

Many thanks to @Alegree for supplying and for pointing me in the right direction for turning it into something potentially useful to a guitar

Stay tuned for pick-ups part II - Luttis & the horrendous failure.  Glue, stars & foam dinosaurs ready.. What could go wrong!?

Modellista

Loving the story so far. 3 hours sleep after drinking...

LuttiS

So it feels like an update may be overdue.. i have been very slowly working on this..
Slightly bought a wreck of a house apparently fixing up a house to live in is more important than making "another bloody guitar"

So the house is now habitable, so can get on with the important things.

So here is an update montage in picture form. GO!




 I'm not entirely happy with how it came out.. turns out making a rainbow tail is not as simple as winging it.. i originally sprayed it blue with a taped off stripe for the tail, which was fine. I started with the red and freehand (mistake) drew the rainbow in light pencil and taped off the other colours.  assuming the paint would cover it when i sprayed. It didn't. pencil mark could clearly be seen through the neon red paint. 

Here what i should have done is sanded it off and tried again. Me knowing better thought,

Hmm.. i'm in a bit of a hole here... i know! I'll dig my way out!

And promptly put another layer of red paint on. And another. I then taped this off, and un-taped the orange stripe.. then remembered the pencil.. i removed all of the pencil at this point and instead made a template stencil. 

This was a better idea, and worked mostly ok for the rest of the colours. I hadn't realised it, but the red was somewhat raised due to some fool overspraying it to try and hide a cock up, and also a little messy on the join to the blue due to some fool overspraying it to hide a cock up. Pointing no fingers here...

I should have just redone it all with my newfound wisdom. Obviously not since for the most part this whole build is a trial, and next time i should (fingers crossed) know better.

Anywho..

Next came sparkles. So many sparkles. Best bit of the build. Liked it so much i put even more sparkles on. Then Mrs. L saw the sparkles, spaced out a little, and also wanted a go so even more sparkles went on. 

(lots of rubbing, scrubbing, sanding and swearing involved in all the stages)

Clear coat went on next. Spray, sand, spray spray, fine sand spray, spray finer sand, spray, super sand BBUUUFFFFFFF. Stand back and admire my sandywork. Be disappointed, get a little closer, hold it in the sun, see the sparkles and glassy smoothness, caress, whisper sweet nothings. ahem. 

Left it on the dining room table. 

Next is the most affirming bit of the entire build. 

Daughter (now 3) goes into dining room - OOHHH WOOOWW IS WAINBOW DASSHHH!


Sweet. Worth it. 


Pickup wind time now. I have everything ready, built a little jig with counter and stuff.. but i need some pickup coil tape for taping the pickup coils. Harder to get hold of then i imagined. Out of stock or unavailable or silly price in most places. Luckily Alegree has some coming in in a little while, so this bits on hold.

Soo.. i started sanding the next in an effort to make it not shite. Ideally i'd get a new one as i think a maple neck would look much better than the rosewood one.. but funds say no. 

And here we are. I'll update again next year. 

LuttiS

The day of failure.

The wind begins... First time doing it so most things get adjusted as I'm figuring out wtf I'm doing. 




I break it fairly regularly.. top wind count was around 2000.
Here is my box of failure:




Another try, another day. I'm going to blame it on the humidity making my fingers uh.. humid. 

mooncat

It looks to me as if you are trying to get your wire to come of the spool by letting the spool rotate, if so this will cause the wire to snap. The better way is to place the spool on the floor vertically below the desk and let the wire feed of the end of the spool and also the spool does not need to rotate this way.

I hope i have explained this clearly.

LuttiS

Thanks @mooncat I'll give it a go. Tried quite a few different positions to make the least resistance, but not the floor

darthed1981

LuttiS said:

The research and design committee has been assembled... Some pretty serious stuff being discussed here.

To be fair, Rainbow Dash is definitely the coolest one.

Funkfingers

LuttiS said:

here is the first fail of the build... removing the paint...

What were you using?

This week, I have been mostly removing the semi-transparent urethane finish from a G&L Tribute ASAT Classic body. 500w heat gun and manual paint scraper. Ugly but efficient. 

I had been thinking to refinish with Wudtone wipe-on products. On a G&L, sparkles could look very Will Ray.

LuttiS

Funkfingers said:

LuttiS said:

here is the first fail of the build... removing the paint...

...

What were you using?

This week, I have been mostly removing the semi-transparent urethane finish from a G&L Tribute ASAT Classic body. 500w heat gun and manual paint scraper. Ugly but efficient. 

I had been thinking to refinish with Wudtone wipe-on products. On a G&L, sparkles could look very Will Ray.

The heatgun approach failed here, not sure what it was finished in, but it really didn't work so well for this - it's worked in the past, just not this one.. ended up using whateverwasinthecupbard brand paint stripper to start then sanding it like a bastard. 

One thing i have come to appreciate is that sparkles go with everything.

Will Ray is a man of taste. Silver sparkleteleshineee!