Innovative Custom and Semi-Custom Electric Guitars

 

What's New at BMG?

A page dedicated to news and musings, added to whenever the spirit moves.

If you missed us in the "Modern Builder Vault" of the June issue of Premier Guitar magazine,

you can check out a retrospective all 12 builders in the December issue:

 

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Happy 2011, everyone! It was pretty crazy around here just before Christmas; presents to buy and ship, packing for a 2-week family trip

to visit relatives and attend a reunion/90th birthday party for my mom-in-law, and oh yes, finish guitars in time to ship for Christmas!

It was nuts.

Accordingly, I've resolved to make some changes in my business practices.

First, I'm going to avoid promising an instrument for some drop-dead date. It always turns into a stressful scramble, and I make mistakes.

Not good, when I'm asking people to trust me with a bunch of their money.

Second, I'm going to start farming out most of my finish work. My shop is quite small, so when I'm spraying, wet-sanding or buffing

there really isn't room to do anything else. It takes ages to do properly, and I just don't have the patience for it any more.

Third, I am changing the payment schedule. I used to ask for a small deposit and balance upon completion, but now that I need to pay

finishers, I'll be asking for 30% down, 30% when moving into finish, and 40% upon completion.

That way, customers can space out the payments a bit instead of a big chunk all at once. Better all around, I hope.

 

 

Friday, December 17

Merry Christmas, everyone, and A Happy New Year!

May 2011 find peace for us all. Time to bring 'em home, Mr. President.

 

Thursday, November 18

After a month of sanding, pore-filling, more sanding (and more sanding), more filling, soaking sore hands in warm water, and more sanding,

finally all the lacquer is on and I'm ready to start wet-sanding. Soon I'll be able to touch them with the buffer and reveal the glory of the wood!

Then it's final assembly, when they metamorphose from beautiful but inert things into actual musical instruments, then, at last, delivery.

There is a bit of emotion which arises when I send them off into the world; relief with a subtle tint of sadness around the edges.

Offset, of course, by the anticipation of the next batch, which I plan to start after the holidays.

 

 

Monday, October 18

Wow. A month since I wrote anything. I guess I need to try to be a bit more forthcoming with news, such as it is. Well, let's see.

 

I have completed all the rude construction on the current run, and have started the finishing phase.

This part involves a lot of waiting for things to dry, so this is usually the time to work on new ideas.

 

One new notion is a neck which doesn't waste so much wood. Traditionally, a TorsionLogic neck requires a 2.5" thick blank. I install the truss rod, attach the slotted fretboard, then radius. Then I bandsaw the rough profile, fret, then shape. The large portion sawn off the back is discarded. The idea (which I nicked from Bob Taylor) is to use luthier's scarf joints at both ends. This would enable me to construct a very strong neck from 1" thick lumber, thereby saving a great deal of wood. Added benefit would be lower risk of breakage at the headstock, because the grain would be running parallel to the faces. A properly executed scarf joint is immensely strong, so that's not a concern. My only worry is the stability of the center section, which might be more susceptible to warp since it's a single piece of wood, so I'm doing a couple of test necks; one of solid 1x boards and one laminated. It will be interesting to see if I can produce a neck capable of withstanding the huge climatic swings here in Florida, while conserving valuable hardwood.

I also want to try some different fretboard woods. I have hopes for ipé, a South American wood commonly used for decking, flooring, threshholds and stair treads because it is incredibly tough and impervious to moisture. Harder than ebony, this stuff rings like a gong and can be polished to a beautiful gloss without an applied finish. I am concerned about the impact on my tools from milling such a dense, oily wood, but there is a hell of a lot more ipé in the world than ebony. For those who like the crisp, ringing high end produced by a really hard fretboard, this stuff might be an answer to the concerns raised by dwindling global supplies of ebony. It's gonna play hell with my fret slotting blades, though...

I recently purchased a decent Korean-made Thinline Tele for another experiment; to investigate the viability of the idea of retrofitting a TorsionLogic neck to an existing instrument without the need for refinishing anything. The resulting lesson is that while it is certainly possible to do, the fact that I am limited to the number of frets on the original neck and the depth of the cutaways means that while the neck/body joint is certainly better and the tilt-back headstock is there, the other advantages of the TorsionLogic design, more frets and better access to them, are lost. I could make a fretboard which hangs over the body to get more frets in, but without concomitant deepening of the cutaways (and resulting re-finishing fun) it's sort of a moot exercise.

"Anybody want an alder and maple Thinline with a 21-fret TorsionLogic neck?" he asked, only half jesting. Actually, with better pickups and hardware it would make a good gigging axe.

 

 

Friday, September 17

Logicaster 010-033 has sold, so that means there is only one more Logicaster available from the current run...check the For Sale page for details! I've had a bit of a delay with a couple of the guitars, but it's all cleared up and I'm moving forward again. Pickups are all here, hardware is all here or enroute, so I should be completing all the gross contruction this coming week and moving into detail work and then on to finish.

 

Saturday, August 14

Work continues, although I had a spectacularly loud high-speed disassembly of my router/shaper table. That stalled out the body shaping steps

until new parts arrive so I'm doing necks instead; truss rods went in yesterday, today it's making fretboards.

 

Thursday, July 8

I'm getting started on the next run of six guitars, two of which, a Logicaster S-Model (010-029) and a Logicaster T-Model (010-033),

are still up for grabs; you can see the mockups over on the "For Sale" page or on the "For Sale" page at www.logicasterguitars.com.

Three others are already sold and the sixth is one of the two partial-builds (P-0801) I'm finishing as a sort of experiment for a retailer in Atlanta.

 

 

For all you masochists out there, the full text of Clint's interview for the magazine can be struggled with here:

Cap'n Jack Bull-finch sez "Aaarrrr, click on me and say yer prayers, ya swabbie! And change those hideous drapes!"

 

 

all images on this website ©Clinton S. Dougherty