This reader’s doubleneck guitar sports one rather unusual feature—a fretless neck.
I’m always looking for things that push my guitar playing in new directions and challenge me, whether it’s new music, rediscovering old music, or new gear. Though I’ve played fretless bass for years, I’ve always wanted a fretless guitar. Yet, the fear of being on stage without the safety net of a fretted guitar, coupled with the inspiration of Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, pointed me towards a doubleneck. I put this guitar together with Warmoth parts, since a comparable Kiesel headless doubleneck was out of my price range.
I started with an alder body, finished in cinder red gloss by Warmoth. The fretless neck has maple fret lines on a black ebony fretboard, on a roasted maple neck. The fretted neck has a scalloped ebony fretboard (a nod to Yngwie) on a roasted maple neck. The ebony peghead veneers came out really nice. I didn’t have the courage to do a lineless fretboard on the fretless side, though it would have made the fretless side more obvious. Most people roll their eyes when they think there are just two fretted necks.
The pickups are Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in the neck, and Jupiter Rails in the bridge. In between the necks, there’s a 6-way Free-Way Switch. It operates like a 3-way toggle, but in the up position, it selects the fretless side, and the down position selects the fretted side. Despite the electronics separation, I still need fret wraps, because the sympathetic vibrating of each neck can be heard through the other neck’s pickups. They’re easy enough to slide on and off.
This guitar also has LSR roller nuts. Combined with the Gotoh locking tuners, tuning is pretty solid. I love the LSR nut, though you gotta be careful when changing strings because the little ball bearings fall out if you’re not careful.
“Most people roll their eyes when they think there are just two fretted necks.”
The fretless side is strung with D’Addario flats. I prefer .011s, though I know some fretless users go for heavier gauges. I’m considering having the fretless board epoxied, though the flatwounds don’t really chew up the fretboard. Anyway, I can always just replace the neck in the future if it gets chewed up. The fretted side has .009s, and I don’t have a problem with pushing them out of tune on the scalloped board.
One thing I learned, while I ordered the vintage spacing hardtail on the fretless side, is that it’s virtually impossible to find vintage-spacing bridges in black. But I managed to cobble together some bridges to make it work.
Lastly, I had a battery cavity installed in the back, though I knew that I wouldn’t use active electronics. I figured it would lighten this heavy guitar, even if just by a few ounces. Still, it “only” weighs 13 pounds.
I’m really surprised that various techniques work well on the fretless side—conventional picking, sweeps, and tapping. I had initially wanted a sustainer in the neck position of the fretless side, but that would have complicated the wiring beyond my meager abilities. Fortunately, I don’t need it. Sustain is not too much of a problem—maybe more so on the higher frets of the plain strings, but that’s nothing that some tremolo picking can’t solve. Chords are a different story, though. Hard to intonate any chords other than simple fifths. But that’s what the fretted guitar is for!
A 6-string tinkerer found a guitar neck with a unique inlay design, inspiring this bright color scheme and some active-pickup experimentation.
It all started with this yellow inlaid neck I saw on eBay/Amazon from China. I loved the inlays and thought it would be fun to design a yellow-themed guitar.
You all will recognize the body as an Epiphone Les Paul SL, which I bought new without the neck. I’m not a single-coil guy, so I swapped out the single-coils and electronics for two Wilkinson Hot Rail pickups. I ordered the neck ($80 total) from China, and it arrived in 12 days! The neck is high quality—the inlays are done very well, and the frets were smoothed and polished with an unfinished plain headstock. I took the body to my local hardware store and found a yellow spray paint for the headstock that was a very, very close match to the body color. The neck fit well and matched up perfectly for intonation.
The Wilkinson Rails worked out fine, but I had a couple of issues. Even though I put two layers of shielding paint in the body, there was still some minor buzz.
Also, I couldn’t get the bridge pickup high enough under the strings and had to use some spacers to raise the pickguard just around that pickup. Even then, I wasn’t happy with the tones. The neck played great, and after sleeping on it (the decision, not the guitar), I decided to go active. I had an extra set of active Guitarheads humbuckers. These are great active pickups, which I use in many of my guitars.
Terry Kempler
I carefully measured a way to put a 9-volt battery compartment through the back and into the control cavity. This way, I only needed to cut through about 1/4" of wood instead of routing out an entire body section. I had to widen the pickup routes in the body, with the bridge being the most work and dust flying everywhere. I then needed to widen the pickup cutouts on the pickguard, which was easier by using a Dremel saw and some filing. Lastly, I had to relocate the output jack because this was where the battery compartment was located.
The output jack was relocated to the side of the guitar where it belongs anyway. All the wiring (volume/3-way switch/tone) and such fit perfectly under the pickguard, and the guitar sounds great with no noise.
I don’t even consider the guitar an Epiphone anymore—it’s my Custom Yellow Active LP.
Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.
After a California wildfire destroyed his home and all his instruments, a guitarist took matters into his own hands and started building for the future.
So, I came up with a new plan for my newfound free time: start building guitars. I started off with the basics—I found myself an inexpensive guitar that I could modify without fear of damaging it. My theory was that 90 percent of the tone is due to the electronics, so this would be my prototyping unit.
I spent $150 each on boutique pickups, settling on a Curtis Novak Gold Foil in the bridge position, (thanks to a demo by PG’s John Bohlinger: “You can’t get a bad tone with these pickups”) for those awesome-sounding distorted tones, and a TV Jones Classic in the neck for that sweet Gretsch-like clean sound. I used a Seymour Duncan Liberator volume pot, since it has solder-free connections which allow for easy pickup swaps. I used top-notch push-pull pots, capacitors, switches, and jacks. The gold-foil pickup sounds great but has lots of treble, so a good tone-knob circuit is essential. I’ve never been a fan of the tone knob on any of my guitars, so I figured I needed to do something different. I tried ’50s wiring, along with a lower capacitance “warmth knob” (both with guidance from PG’s Dirk Wacker). For the first time ever, I loved using the tone knob!
With a background in the aeronautical industry and Malibu beaches, I wanted a body shape with hints of surf, space, and aerodynamics. I took a napkin sketch and started plotting it using Excel. That quickly got out of hand. Next thing I knew, I had a full design spreadsheet, complete with pulldown menus for scale length, pickups, tremolo, body thickness, etc. I was even calculating guitar weight and center of gravity because the last thing I wanted to do was invest all my hopes and dreams into this guitar and find out that it constantly falls off my lap.
After iterating on the design for far too long, I got to work. I wanted the first prototype to be cheap; I knew there would be mistakes. I got the cheapest body blank I could find (poplar) for $60. I wanted a Jaguar-like 24"-scale neck, but those aren’t cheap, so I got a 25 1/2"-scale Mighty Mite neck for $100 and will do the 24" version next time. The first bolt-up revealed that the body and neck resonated shockingly well when I tried them acoustically, but the body required some reshaping for better upper fret access. I finished the body with Rust-Oleum spray paint: primer, metallic blue base coat, blue sparkle, and clear glaze on top. This cost $40 and I’m very happy with the result.
I went with a Staytrem bridge, a Jazzmaster-style tremolo (placed relatively close to the bridge to minimize string buzz), and Steinberger tuners. Finally, I added two additional push-pull pots with solder-free connections for future exploration and wiring adventures.
I love the sound of this prototype, and it fed into my other Covid project, which was to release my first ever EP under the name “Plectromatics.” I learned so much on this journey and can’t wait to see how the 24"-scale version comes out, and what songs it will inspire!
Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.
Battling a scary health diagnosis during the pandemic, a guitarist set out to conquer some bucket-list items and learned how to build his own pickups. He’s built 13 guitars and counting.
I’m an avid reader of Premier Guitar and have been modding Fenders since I can remember—way before the name “partscaster” was ever used. I’ve been battling bladder cancer the past few years. Little did I know just how important my love for single-coil Strats was going to change my life. Due to the Covid-19 shutdown, I couldn’t have surgery for five months until hospitals opened surgical wards again. I was going through chemo treatments and cancer was consuming my life. I had to find a way to keep myself and my mind busy. I couldn’t be around anyone, so what was I supposed to do? It seemed like every waking moment was being consumed by thoughts of cancer, cancer, cancer.
Believing I had very little time left, I decided to tackle some “bucket list” projects. Two things I’d never done: 1. Learn how to paint guitars, specifically vintage nitro paint jobs on unfinished bodies, and 2. how to make pickups.
Jobe Jude holds one of his handwound pickups.
And so, it began. I contacted Gary at Branzell Guitars in Nevada, a luthier originally from my area. He told me there was a learning curve (boy, he wasn’t lying) and started guiding me through the ins and outs of making great pickups. He recommended a Mojotone Pickup Coil Winding Machine for me. My favorite vintage Fender pickups are the ’57/’62s, but they’re lacking a RWRP (reverse wound, reverse polarity) middle pickup, which really gives you that Fender quack in position 2 and 4. So, if I could get in the ballpark of the Fender ’57/’62s and Mojotone 59s, I would be a very happy builder. After trying three types of wire, my favorite tones came from vintage Formvar wire and the plain enamel. I only use Remington wire. It will unwind from the spool with no issues and the wire sounds the same, spool after spool. I soak my flatwork in lacquer and let it dry overnight before winding.
If you’re a player that has no issue dropping $400 to $500 on some handwounds, I encourage you to buy a pickup winder and learn to make your own pickups. It takes time, but you’ll learn faster than you think. You can make them get the tone you’re after. Just about any handwound pickup will beat any factory pickup. One reason I think is in the tightness. It’s all about the feel you get when doing the windings. Once you have it down, you can make the same spec pickups time after time.
Now to find unfinished bodies for painting. I ended up with six new and one used. The used body was a 1999 MIM Fender I purchased from a young lady named Julie. This was a gift from her father. After many years, she decided to repaint it. She was unhappy with the results, so she sanded it down, all the way back to unfinished wood. I bought the body and painted it shell pink. My first question about paint was: Do I buy a sprayer, or can I do it from a can? My friend Frank Harrison, who owns a hundred Strats, (he says the number is much lower) told me to find Gracey’s paint. And yes, the can works. I added a rosewood neck and named her Julie, of course. It is one great guitar.
Jobe Jude’s “paint locker.“
So far, I have seven paint jobs and 13 other “partscasters” going at once. Screw you, cancer! I am keeping busy. I have learned more in the last two years than I have in 50 years of playing and working on guitars.
In 2022, I had a setback with the cancer and several rounds of treatments. On August 26, 2022, I had retesting to see if it had worked. My closest guitar warriors gathered for a cookout the following day. Good or bad news, we were all going to be together. Good news! No evidence of disease found. I’m not out of the woods; it’s cancer. But I have hope.
I hope my story can help someone. Special thanks to PG for letting me share it and everyone who helped me through this pathway.
Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.
A guitarist enlists his friend to build a teardrop guitar like the one he saw Brian Jones playing with the Rolling Stones in the early 1960s.
Since I was an 11-year-old in 1963, I’ve been drawn to the teardrop-shaped guitar I saw Brian Jones playing in pictures of the Rolling Stones. It had such an artistic and classical shape compared to the Strats, Jaguars, and traditional ES guitars that were so popular among my preteen friends. I never lost the attraction to the Vox Mark VI guitars.
In December 2021, I was talking to my good friend Jeff, a builder and guitar tech extraordinaire, and mentioned that I always liked the teardrop. On a whim, I asked him if he’d consider building one for me. I seriously doubted he would have the time, and if he did, I would be waiting a long time. “Well,” he said, “I really would need a plan….” I thought, Hm, he’s a little interested.
I searched the internet and found a great drawing from the TDPRI forum and brought it to him. Jeff said he had a piece of mahogany that might fit, and that he’d also been looking at vintage Vox necks on eBay. He showed me the listing for a neck from a 1964 Vox Spitfire or Hurricane (the seller wasn’t sure which). We sealed the deal when he pointed out that the headstock didn’t have the same paddle design as the classic teardrop, and I told him that that was my least favorite part of the teardrop design. I preferred the headstock on the Spitfire/Hurricane.
The project went quickly from there. The plan was not to replicate an exact 1963 Mark VI, but to create a modern, roadworthy guitar with all the visual appeal of the Mark VI. Jeff went to work and four weeks later, I demoed the guitar before finishing. It felt and sounded incredible.
The pickups are a pair of Seymour Duncan P-100s wired through a 4-way modded (series/parallel) switch. The bridge and tuners are from a hardtail Fender Strat that Jeff happened to have hanging around. The maple headstock complements the warm white lacquer finish perfectly, and the guitar is appointed nicely with the obligatory Vox-style chicken-head knobs.
When I took delivery of the guitar, it looked absolutely beautiful, and I was onstage with it that weekend. I had a feeling that it would raise a lot of interest at shows and sure enough, on most nights, a guitar player in the audience finds their way to me and wants to talk about the guitar that they too remember from the ’60s. Every time I put the teardrop on and plug it in, I feel like I’ve come full circle with that kid from 1963 who dreamed about playing electric guitar in a rock ’n’ roll band. It’s pretty cool when dreams come true.
Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.