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Neck prep :: using a drum sander to thickness pegheads

Neck prep :: using a drum sander to thickness pegheads.

Here I'm thicknessing the rear of the headstocks for Rogue 005 and Kalliope 001 before I laminate them.  When I worked at Santa Cruz, they had a shop-made drum sander that works awesome for quickly thicknessing pegheads.  I have always thought that I was going to have to build something similar for myself but have gotten around this task by using a Wagner Safe-T-Planer in my drill press.  This time around I decided to see if I could use my new-ish drum sander.  I was extremely pleased to find that the in-feed roller on the drum sander is easily removable.  Much better results with this method in less time, but super dusty.  I used a fan to attempt to direct some of the dust into the hood but I'll need to rig up something better next time. 

Note: the Safe-T-Planer method works fairly well, but it requires more time to clean up the transition from head to neck. 

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Chubbuck acoustics :: Rogue & Kalliope mock up

Chubbuck acoustics :: Rogue & Kalliope mock up.

The first Chubbuck guitar builds in the new shop are getting ever closer (finally!).  The necks for Rogue 005 (left) and Kalliope 001 (right) need their rear head laminates and fingerboards glued up before being ready to carve.  So far I'm really happy with the new Kalliope design.  I tried to borrow the lines of the Rogue and scale them up to a larger body.

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2013 Fender Squire Mini Strat [5.4 lbs] :: student setup

2013 Fender Squire Mini Strat [5.4 lbs] :: student setup.

This guitar was set up with 9's for a player's daughter to start learning on.  Its smaller proportions and short 22 3/4" scale make it ideal for kids or those will small hands.  Unfortunately this guitar suffers the common ailment of student instruments in that it uses budget hardware.  Upgrading the tuners would make tuning much, much easier but would add to the cost of the guitar.  Spending the money on such an upgrade would depend on the student's interest in learning to play.  I attempted to lubricate the tuners but it didn't seem to improve them.

I could see this guitar being fun to record in the studio.  The 22 3/4" scale is close to short scale Fender lap steels (22 1/2") so heavy strings and a slide might add a unique sound to a track.  Nashville high-strung might be a cool option as well.

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