Dad of the year possibly : NGD content

FelineGuitars

One lucky girl has had the best 18th Birthday ever! 

Her dad has had us make him custom guitars since before she was born, and she has always wanted one. 

She would often accompany him when he called in on us to have guitars fret dressed or set-up , and totally fell in love with an aqua-marine coloured Tabby Special we had on display, and would often mention it to anyone who would listen. 

So with her 18th Birthday approaching he and his wife hatched a plan to get a guitar that would suit her down to the ground in that same colour scheme. Here are the result and we were very pleased with how it came out. 

We got to see a private video of the birthday morning unboxing and she seemed to tally bowled over too. 

We'll let the pictures do the talking:





TheTabby Hybrid has a general Tele outline - except the lower horn is a strat size horn whichlets us use standard pickguards , so much easier if the player ever wants to change the look.

Pickups are Bare Knuckle VH2 and Mother's Milk combination

Tremolo is a Gotoh 510 series with a steel block and narrow string spacing

Comfort contours like on a strat make the guitar more comfy



As well as the all access neck joint you can see that we used threaded inserts to fit the neck to the body and locked them tight with machine thread bolts


a lean back headstock and an Earvana nut feature at the top end

Dominic

That's a lovely bit of kit

viz

Awesome. Birds eye maple fretboard?

Strat_a_tat_tat

Very nice work.

Kittyfrisk

A very lucky person indeed. Long may they enjoy it. 

roberty

Loving this particular strain of Tele strat mashup

stimpsonslostson

Does he need any other children? 

DrBob

I’m 50 in five years, I must start leaving hints around at my Mothers house...

prlgmnr

That's slick.

More Felines with maple boards please.

Guitar_Slinger

Hey @FelineGuitars, how much effort does it take to set up and take pictures?  Yours are really good - have you thought of offering pictures as an extra to jobs done? 

With hindsight, I would have loved pics of this quality taken of my refretted guitar. 

hotpickups

Actually that is very much the exact thing I’m looking for in my next guitar whenever that is. Tele style, Trem but a rosewood or ebony board and red it has to be red

FastEddie

The strap line is that she is a drummer.......
It looks a stunner. Great work.

Whilst I guess it's a fair chunk, she will now know what a proper guitar feels and plays like. I'd wager she will still have this in many years to come.
A great investment in her own future and well being.

FelineGuitars

hotpickups said:

Actually that is very much the exact thing I’m looking for in my next guitar whenever that is. Tele style, Trem but a rosewood or ebony board and red it has to be red

Thankfully Jon who ordered this knew EXACTLY the spec he wanted and didn't go back and forth with spec changes or exploring ideas for what he may or may not want. Two quick emails and we were done ironing out what the guitar would be.

I've come to realise that if you have to spend excessive hours, weeks or months effectively being a "consultant" either on the phone or by email/messenger, going over design issues and thrashing out minute details then the cost of the guitar needs to be much higher to cover those lost hours or it's not a viable proposition to be building guitars, especially when you have a queue of repairs you could be attending to.

We've been building less guitars of late because our good fretwork reputation has kept us very busy with repair work, but we do like turning out pretty guitars as long as the consultation & admin side of that doesn't become a ball-ache.

Vibetronic

Looks amazing. What does the Earvana nut do, out of interest?

FelineGuitars

Vibetronic said:

Looks amazing. What does the Earvana nut do, out of interest?

It makes things more in tune , correcting some tuning oddities that annoy many players. 

The benefits have been detailed elsewhere but for the most part it is getting rid of notes near the nut coming up slightly sharp even though the 12th fret intonation is correctly set. I find that they help guitars have more of a musical zing too.

Philly_Q

That's great.  I know the Strat/Tele hybrid thing doesn't work for everybody but I really like it.

monquixote

FelineGuitars said:

hotpickups said:

Actually that is very much the exact thing I’m looking for in my next guitar whenever that is. Tele style, Trem but a rosewood or ebony board and red it has to be red

Thankfully Jon who ordered this knew EXACTLY the spec he wanted and didn't go back and forth with spec changes or exploring ideas for what he may or may not want. Two quick emails and we were done ironing out what the guitar would be.

I've come to realise that if you have to spend excessive hours, weeks or months effectively being a "consultant" either on the phone or by email/messenger, going over design issues and thrashing out minute details then the cost of the guitar needs to be much higher to cover those lost hours or it's not a viable proposition to be building guitars, especially when you have a queue of repairs you could be attending to.

We've been building less guitars of late because our good fretwork reputation has kept us very busy with repair work, but we do like turning out pretty guitars as long as the consultation & admin side of that doesn't become a ball-ache.

@FelineGuitars ; That looks amazing what an awesome dad!

I can imagine all of the time you spend dealing with tire kickers must be a real drain on your business.

I'm always really careful not to bombard companies with loads of questions unless I feel I'm really close to making a purchase.

PC_Dave

Oh my!! I want one of those!!!!

Bridgehouse

monquixote said:

FelineGuitars said:

hotpickups said:

Actually that is very much the exact thing I’m looking for in my next guitar whenever that is. Tele style, Trem but a rosewood or ebony board and red it has to be red

Thankfully Jon who ordered this knew EXACTLY the spec he wanted and didn't go back and forth with spec changes or exploring ideas for what he may or may not want. Two quick emails and we were done ironing out what the guitar would be.

I've come to realise that if you have to spend excessive hours, weeks or months effectively being a "consultant" either on the phone or by email/messenger, going over design issues and thrashing out minute details then the cost of the guitar needs to be much higher to cover those lost hours or it's not a viable proposition to be building guitars, especially when you have a queue of repairs you could be attending to.

We've been building less guitars of late because our good fretwork reputation has kept us very busy with repair work, but we do like turning out pretty guitars as long as the consultation & admin side of that doesn't become a ball-ache.

@FelineGuitars ; That looks amazing what an awesome dad!

I can imagine all of the time you spend dealing with tire kickers must be a real drain on your business.

I'm always really careful not to bombard companies with loads of questions unless I feel I'm really close to making a purchase.

More importantly, it’s the tire kickers that put the overall price up for the genuine buyers - the time and effort required to deal with any enquiry has to be paid for somehow....

Modulus_Amps

Wow!! That is a stunner. Well done and lucky young lady.

FelineGuitars

We generally have brilliant, easy times speccing out a guitar and building a stunner for them, but you get someone who does endless messages and calls (often out of hours) which eventually fails to become an order, or you get a customer who wants to micro-manage you while you do work for them and that destroys your will to live or to carry on making stuff.

We try to keep that to a minimum, but when it happens it really puts you off doing this for a living.