Here is a rather nice shot of the electric guitar I made in wood shop when I was 17 years old in 1977.  I thought I was the "only boy in the whole world" who
made his own electric guitar.  turns out Brian May made his before I did.  I sure a ton of other people did too.  I didn't find out about Brian May making his
own guitar until 10 years later.  Of course, when you grow up in the country and "don't get out much", you get to make all kinds of assumptions. 

The body of "Jack" is made of 2" thick, nicely figured, black walnut.  I had this cheap electric hollow body guitar I had gotten at a yard sale that had a really, really playable, laminated maple neck with rose wood finger board.  I didn't like the pickups and body on that guitar, and it did not have a name on it (no name guitar, literally), so I used the neck on Jack.  The machines were a gracious gift from my high school room-mate Tharpa Doyle.  He had just changed his Les Paul Deluxe machines from stock to Shallers, so he gave me these from his vintage Les Paul.  Theses have worked wonderfully for the last 30 years, and add a certain credibility to the neck.  I don't plan to change them out.  I like them.

The pickup is a Dimarzio Super Two.  I was looking for a pickup with some oomph, but not a super distortion because I did not like the overall tonal qualities of those for the wide range of styles that I play.  The Super Two has been perfectly suited to this guitar.  As you can see from  the back pictured here, a good portion of the body wood has been routed out leaving a thin (not quite as thin as an acoustic) top surface.   In addition, I jammed 2 locust pegs in the back to transmit sound from the bridge to the neck.  I got these pegs from a carpenter who was bu9ilding a barn using nothing but beams and pegs to hold the beams together;  old fashioned style.  Locust wood is one of  the hardest woods you will find, and is often used for fence posts because of it's durability.  These pegs ring when you drop them on the ground, as if made from glass or metal. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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go here to see the pictures of the newest bridge installation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The locust peg that forms the top of an up-side-down "T" is only touching the black walnut body on the ends of the peg.    This allows the middle of that peg to reverberate slightly as it transmits through a single copper cent (you can see it n the photo) to the vertical locust peg to the neck.  The pickup is screwed directly into the wood just above where to "T" top goes across, just at the beginning of the thin wood top.  The combination of the thin top, the locust pegs, and the 2" thick wood gives this a unique tonal signature with blended aspects of acoustic richness and heave wood sustain.  The super two pickup captures the ringy-ness at low volumes, while giving monster rock crunch coupled with the sustain at higher volumes.  The bridge is from the same "no-name" electric guitar that I got the neck from.  I had to build up a Plexiglas saddle to get it up to where the strings come off of the neck.  The no-name guitar was an arch top hollow body, so the neck is higher on the flat body of this guitar than it should be.  The electronics/circuitry are patched together from several old junked guitars.  Volume, Tone, on/off switch; pretty basic.  I had no knowledge of electronics back then, other than ohms law, and positive and negative, so I just sort "copied and pasted" what I thought would work until I heard noise coming out of the amp. The knobs are my favorite vintage bake-light "radio set" knob and vintage telecaster chrome metal knob.  I couldn't decide which I liked better, so I used one of each.  The jack plate is a replacement Les Paul piece that was a gift from Ross Campbell, who was the Bass player and singer in one of my first successful bands "Shallant", in 1979.  The original jack plate was made out of the tin from a coffee can....yeah, nice job....and it was getting more and more pathetic looking, and sort of pulling off of the guitar.  I was using this axe every night for practices and gigs, and Ross just took pity on me and tossed this jack plate at me one day with the implication that I should change it out then and there.  It was a beautiful improvement.