This one was a bit of a labour of love.
Our good friend Fred died last year and left a pile of gear, most of which was typical Fred. He would play anything, in any condition, anywhere. Don't get me wrong, he had some nice gear like most people who have been playing music for that many years, but he also had some very questionable gear, and that was Fred.
This was a kit guitar that Fred had burnt some artwork into and never finished. It was solid timber and reasonably well made but the body and neck definitely felt like a "kit"
I've assembled lots of kits and parts guitars for customers over the years. Some very good, some not so much. Unless it's an absolute mess you can usually, with time and care, make them play reasonably well. This one needed time. Lots of it.
The body and neck were sealed but unfinished and the neck had a weird, wide profile that Fred had obviously already tried to modify so I reshaped the neck and made it thinner at the nut but still very round and deep. I then cleaned and sanded the neck and finished it in clear acrylic lacquer with the "FRED" Letraset on the headstock.
The body originally had one bridge pickup, but we decided to fit a neck pickup, but I thought it would be cool to make this under the scratchplate and just have the pole pieces sticking through. This meant routing a cavity and joining the cavity with the bridge pickup for the wiring. Once this was done, I cleaned up and lightly sanded the body and gave it some clear coats as well to protect Freds artwork.
Because the bridge pickup was already routed for a P-90, and I LOVE P-90s I figured I'd work out something special based around them for this. I settled on my hand made FMF T-90s, but I still wanted something a little, special for Fred.
I wound the neck pickup hot as I usually do at 12K and used long A5 slugs. I then made the bridge pickup as essentially a stacked P-90 with a tap halfway at 8K and the full pickup at 16K using A3 slugs.
The original body only had 2 pots so I drilled another hole for a third and wired it so the forward pot is the neck pickup volume, the middle pot is the bridge pickup volume so they can be run separately or blended, and then the back pot as a blend between the 8K and 16K pickup. So, with the pot wound all the way back the bridge pickup is an 8K P-90 and as you wind it up it ends up as a 16K P-90. With both pickups on its humbucking so excess noise can be, kinda tamed.
After cutting a scratchplate it was just a matter of careful assembly using new Gotoh machine heads and the adjustable wraparound bridge. It eventually came good with a fret dress and neck angle adjustments and now plays perfectly in tune and, I think, sounds great.
I love this shape, and I think this guitar has come up really well and is a nice homage to a good friend.