12 Angry Men and a Guitar Called Elmer

Well, other than attention-grabbing marketing initiative bobbins, the weekend was a bit on the slow side of life.

Firstly, I was planning to tell you all about the debut of James Sant's band 12 Angry Men, featuring the one and only The Psychedelic Surf One, still a bit of a personal favourite Jook for me, it has to be said. Unfortunately, it was on Thursday night, so I messed that up good and proper.

On the plus side it means that I have a rather lovely action-shot of James and the 'Surf', well, in action - even a promise of possible video type contentment to follow. I can't wait.

I do love seeing my kids doing their bit in public, if that doesn't sound oddly wrong.

In other news, I did finish the lacquering of the colour-filled Tele, The Elmer One. I even went for a rusted iron pickguard, just to offset the effect. Obviously there are still a few parts to add to the party, with pickups being rather top of the list - or at least a neck one if I decide to keep the Catswhisker one in place at the bridge, but there we are - it looks a bit tasty to me, to me, it looks a bit tasty to me.

The finish, as you may have guessed is a bit of an experiment. Firstly, there is the variegated gold leaf which itself is stunning. On top of that I layered and then feathered some active copper paint. The idea of this was to give a kind of rippled effect - like sand when the tide goes out, so that you can see parts of the leaf shining thru.

This worked rather better than I thought/hoped/dreamed and gives a kind of flamed/quilted maple look to it bizarrely. Naturally the copper was finished off with some selective corrosion which has given a gorgeous bluey-green colour. The headstock got a similar treatment using corroded copper paint allowing a bit of the grain to show thru the corrosion.

As for the back and sides, I've kept this au natrel so the wood shows thru, which has been Danish Oiled and then Beeswaxed, with a naturally Jooky bit of overspill from the top creeping here and there...

I mentioned parts and apart from the usual saga of pickups, I've gone for some locking Kluson type Wilkinsons, and your normal Tele control plate bobbins. At the moment I have a modern Stratish bridge on there, but I'm thinking it is more likely to end-up with a traditional one instead, as to me Teles don't quite sound like Teles without them. Sad, I know, to find yourself in the 'Leo got it right first time' camp, but I guess it is true in a lot of ways.

So there we are, The Elmer One has so far tootled along under the radar quite nicely. But, like I've been saying, I'm not really starting anything new until I catch up and complete the others. It's all about one-at-a-time around here these days.