WIP - The Futuristic One

Step 1- Cover it with Fabric

Well, inspired by the need to do something while I wait for a variety of couriers to bring/take-away multitudes of objet de delight, I side-tracked myself from the 'Must finish the Blue Moon One' mantra I've been chanting for months now, and started something else.

Surprise, surprise.

So here we have a bit of WIP of The Futuristic One, and a lovely bit of purpleness it is too, you'll have to admit? This was going to be called The Starship Trooper One, or maybe it was The Super Trooper One, but then I changed my mind and called it The Futuristic One. I don't really know why. Maybe it would just fit on the headstock easier, like.

Step 2 - Tidy it up a wee bit

I think I said before, but I chunter on so much I can quite easily forget what I have said, but the body will basically be covered with this 'period design' with the period being that '70s crossing into the '80s time that taste forgot.

The guitar top will then be covered with Spacetastic platinum leaf, which in turn will be distressed in a big way so that the purple can be glimpsed thru, as it were. Kind of like all those people's houses, where they covered the lurid '70s wallpaper with bacofoil so that it would look like something believably futuristic like Buck Rogers. Or maybe that was just down my street and didn't travel any further than the Pershore and Alcester Roads

Step 3 - Roughly put the Leaf on

But to the platinum - well, after that is dried out, I might melt it with acid or I may instead just scratchcard it with an old threepenny bit. A silver one, not one of the modern bronze ones, pah. A bit of Queen Victoria as a girl, it has to be done.

Just to make it even more futurama-o-tastic, the larger variety of SG scratchplate will be used, and it has got a nice bit of variegated gold on it already and has been lacquered and even dried. Talk about organisation, and I rarely do.

Step 4 - Cover it with bubbles of acid

Why the golden scratchplate, I hear you ask. Well, I was worried that it might be too taste-filled to represent the '80s if I didn't do something flashy and golden around the edges. Or at least on the top.

Pickups, are the Gibson 'Original' XXX ones I waffled on about before, and I expect it will be the traditional twin volume, twin tone, three-way-switch control scenario, unless the mood takes me elsewhere. Which it might, of course.

Step 5 - Let the leaf eat away to show the colour thru

The neck is something more Stratty and is a lovely bit of maple or maybe mahogany, I can't remember without looking and for some reason has Fender writ large on it at the moment. That will go, of course.

Step 6 - Give it a few admiring glances

So there we are, though I guess I should be going for lasers, LEDs and all that, but probably won't
It might get a bit Andrew Lloyd Webber and I really don't fancy betting my balance on a set of roller-blades.

Step 7 - Wash the acid away and let it dry

So I'll stick with Buck Rogers.
Wilma Dearing, where are you now?
Beely-beely-bip.

Step 8 - Go and buy some lacquer

(Yes, I know I will finish this and still have the Blue Moon One staring at me with evils, but such is life).

Blue Days Are These...

It came as a shock earlier on, when I realised that somehow I'd managed to complete 20 Jooky guitars since I started my crusade to paisleyify the world. There have even been a couple of 'influenced by Jooky' cases out there, which in a way is cool, if a little amusing in another way.

Still, all good fun.

Anyway, I'm finally finishing The Blue Moon One this weekend, and then hopefully putting The Old Burny One together, which will be a couple of long-term 'aims' realised.

I can't help thinking about what comes next though, and the SG body, The Super Trooper One, with the purple geometrically-challenged fabric and platinum leaf finish looks likely to be next, along with the Gibson 'The Original' pickups I wittered about the other day. I'm really keen to hear them, as they are meant to be 'hot' and there we are...

Other than that...

A Kick Up The '80s

I was talking about the SG body I picked-up the other week - if you remember it was going to have a geometrically challenged finish - and still may.

Anyway, I was trying to get my head around what pickups to put in it, when I happened across a chap flogging a couple of pickups from an '80s Gibson SG. Being a geezer of little brain, "SG = SG", to me, sounded like a good idea.

Well, it turns out that the pickups in question are the HB-L ones Gibson made in conjunction with Bill Lawrence for a couple of years before moving on to the hot ceramic thingies we know and sort of love these days.

Now I've not tried them yet, clearly, but like the T-Tops I mentioned before and included in the rather wonderfilled Loveless One, they are a bit of a Marmite thing. They are either revered or reviled, though like most things scarcity seems to be increasing their reputation  nigh on twenty-odd years later. I haven't got them to hand yet, but reading around it seems that they have little circuit boards on the back ... most odd. I did find a picture, but whether mine will look the same, I'll have to let you know.

No surprise then to hear me say that I'm rather curious to discover how they sound - loud at a guess as they are rated at a whopping 13K - so it should be fun.

A Little Red Charvette

As I'm-all-a-waiting parts yet again for those I should be doing, I've been having a sneaky think about what to do with the SG body, and I am going go for the '80s thing and stick with the geo-fabric, but give it a platinum leaf top, suitably shredded I expect.

Bit of a Super Trooper One then.

I've always wondered what Angus would have looked like if AC/DC had emerged as Disco....

Speaking of the '80s, I've just picked-up a rather bright looking, pointy guitar - a Charvette - which is crying out for some diamante, I would imagine. I've never had a proper pointy guitar (as basically at the time they were everything I hated about guitars, to be quite frank), but I don't mind trying something different, and you never know it might be fun...

Shield those retinas kiddies...







UPDATE:
Well, the pickups arrived and they do indeedy look super-cool, and all very Matrix-like.
In fact this whole post looks particularly Keanu Reeves inspired in many ways.
But the pickups - they are a matched pair - a HB-L and a HB-R, known as 'The Original'.

Methinks that wee SG is going to Raawwkkk

Have a fine weekend