I've always loved these, so I thought I'd build one seeing an original is currently out of my price range. On a whim, I ordered a body from a vendor in Italy, for €90. It arrived today, and I'm quite impressed:
It's two piece alder, which is obviously the wrong wood for a Coronet - should be mahogany - but I'm going to build it anyway, but not before I take some templates off it for future use.
I have some mahogany for the neck, and a lovely piece of streak-free ebony for the fingerboard. Plus, kicking about in my parts drawer: a 70's Gibson mini-humbucker and 70's (I think) Epi wrapover tailpiece.
Any thoughts on colour? I always thought a nice aged gold would look cool, or even TV yellow.
But first up - I need to finish this:
www.theflyingacesband.com
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I still have one Cornet, with similar roundover. They are both 64 batwing models. The one I still have was modified to take out the tone and resprayed black as a real punk guitar (a long time back). Here's a shot of it:
need to deepen the pickup route to fit the mini hb too.
An action shot of some sanding sealer being applied:
And, because we all like a mock up, here it is in Ice Blue nitro with some parts on:
The neck is roughed out and gluing up, don't have any pics of it but will take some once its closer to completion. Its a fun build so far!
I've just ordered a 16mm radius roundover bit for mine, hoping I can achieve a bullnose edge.
And today, I drilled for tuners, neatened the headstock up a little bit, and cut the binding channels:
Hopefully tomorrow I'll radius the board and get the heel fitting nicely. The board is light and a little dry in the pics above, but it looks much better with a smidgen of oil:
Whats the maple board going on ?
The flamed maple board is on the sunburst NR FB, I've not worked on that one for a while... there are a couple of things which needed doing which I haven't got round to yet, sorting out the neck / heel carve and routing the control cavity to name a couple. Should look ok once its done though:
Bind neck
Get the frets in while the bottom of the neck is flat
shape and finish
Was wondering if theres any advantage to shaping the neck first? I couldn't think of one TBH
Cheers,
Matt
And with some frets in:
Sorry I didn't respond, I didn't see it until this evening. I think I cut the fret slots, then glued the FB down, then routed the binding channel, radiussed the FB (fitted dots at that point), fretted it, ground the frets square to the binding channel, bound it, trimmed the binding nibs, carved the neck profile.... all totally copied from Freddy's Fret vid on YT : )
Not 100% convinced on the Ice Blue as is, so I might shoot some tinted lacquer over it to darken it a tad / make it look a bit green. Its easy to overdo that though, this is a body which was Sonic Blue with tinted amber on it (I masked a square between the pickups to show the original colour)