The Guitar Show 2020 Charity Raffle Guitar Part II
Following on from part 1, it was time to get the freshly assembled guitar set-up! Willams Guitars had made the neck, and had installed a neatly fitted bone nut blank in there ready for slotting. So it was there where I started the set-up work.
I marked out the outer string slots, then calculated the slots from there inwards using a string slot gauge.
With those roughly slotted, I then decided to do something a little bit unnecessary but fun nonetheless. Inspired by my good friend and luthier, Tom Sands Guitars I decided to cut decorative slots between each string like he beautifully does on his instruments. As I say, just a bit of a fun as an extra attention to detail on this guitar helping raise money for a great cause. You can see my markings for this in the above photo, and the filing work began...
Willams Guitars had took care of the fretwork on their neck, so I just gave the fretboard some oil and got ready to string it up!
Again, seeing as this will be going home with a lucky winner, I wanted to donate to the build a set of handwound, round core 'Gabriel Tenorio String Co' strings, and fitted their Super 10 gauge set to the guitar.
Feeding all the strings through the Grainger Guitars through-body hardtail bridge, and strung up to the Gotoh tuners at the top. It was time to let the guitar settle under a bit of tension for a short while before I began refining the nut slot depths and getting everything else tweaked. Looked great to see it strung up for the first time though!
I started refining the nut slot heights firstly, getting them filed for the 10 gauge Gabriel Tenorio strings, and bringing the depth down to a comfortable playing height down at the nut end of the fretboard without any buzzing.
All done there! Took chance to enjoy the fancy nut shaping with the strings on each of their perches too. Shout out to Tom Sands again for the inspiration there!
Now onto adjusting string saddle heights on the Grainger bridge and setting the radius to match the Williams Guitar's neck.
With those roughed in, I move onto the intonation. I did like the attention to detail on the Grainger bridge where the intonation adjustment is recessed into the bridge baseplate, looks neat!
With the neck relief settling in nicely, bridge adjusted and nut slots refined. Just a matter of adjusting the Oil City pickup heights and plugging it in to hear and play it for the first time. I'll save any further photos for my final blog post and full guitar reveal on behalf of Jason at The Guitar Show. But rest assured, this is a great guitar and the winner is going to be happy I'm sure! But ultimately, I do think this guitar will help raise some great funds for the Prostate Cancer charity chosen for this raffle. So be sure to support that at The Guitar Show on 29th Feb & 1st March 2020 at New Bingley Hall in Birmingham. For more info on all of that, be sure to checkout The Guitar Show's website and various social media channels too.
See you at the final reveal post shortly!
I marked out the outer string slots, then calculated the slots from there inwards using a string slot gauge.
With those roughly slotted, I then decided to do something a little bit unnecessary but fun nonetheless. Inspired by my good friend and luthier, Tom Sands Guitars I decided to cut decorative slots between each string like he beautifully does on his instruments. As I say, just a bit of a fun as an extra attention to detail on this guitar helping raise money for a great cause. You can see my markings for this in the above photo, and the filing work began...
Willams Guitars had took care of the fretwork on their neck, so I just gave the fretboard some oil and got ready to string it up!
Again, seeing as this will be going home with a lucky winner, I wanted to donate to the build a set of handwound, round core 'Gabriel Tenorio String Co' strings, and fitted their Super 10 gauge set to the guitar.
Feeding all the strings through the Grainger Guitars through-body hardtail bridge, and strung up to the Gotoh tuners at the top. It was time to let the guitar settle under a bit of tension for a short while before I began refining the nut slot depths and getting everything else tweaked. Looked great to see it strung up for the first time though!
I started refining the nut slot heights firstly, getting them filed for the 10 gauge Gabriel Tenorio strings, and bringing the depth down to a comfortable playing height down at the nut end of the fretboard without any buzzing.
All done there! Took chance to enjoy the fancy nut shaping with the strings on each of their perches too. Shout out to Tom Sands again for the inspiration there!
Now onto adjusting string saddle heights on the Grainger bridge and setting the radius to match the Williams Guitar's neck.
With those roughed in, I move onto the intonation. I did like the attention to detail on the Grainger bridge where the intonation adjustment is recessed into the bridge baseplate, looks neat!
With the neck relief settling in nicely, bridge adjusted and nut slots refined. Just a matter of adjusting the Oil City pickup heights and plugging it in to hear and play it for the first time. I'll save any further photos for my final blog post and full guitar reveal on behalf of Jason at The Guitar Show. But rest assured, this is a great guitar and the winner is going to be happy I'm sure! But ultimately, I do think this guitar will help raise some great funds for the Prostate Cancer charity chosen for this raffle. So be sure to support that at The Guitar Show on 29th Feb & 1st March 2020 at New Bingley Hall in Birmingham. For more info on all of that, be sure to checkout The Guitar Show's website and various social media channels too.
See you at the final reveal post shortly!
