Tail Piece:

As I am watching some G3 with Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Yngwie Malmsteen doing a tribute to Jimi Hendrix with "Little Wing", I document the rather odd tail piece and bridge combo I came up with.

The kit came with a bridge and tail piece of the Gibson Tune-O-Matic type, but as you might have noticed, I am trying to stay as far away from tradition as possible, and so I went to the drawing board in my head and came up with a way to utilize them a little different.

Since the tail piece is meant to be bolted into inserts in the body, and this instrument is taking on a strong jazz arch top look, I had to have an appropriate tail piece.  I looked on line to see what was out there and found only one decent one that was for a 12 string, but it was fancy in a cheap, bad taste kinda' way, and would not have looked right, so I decided to use the existing one along with whatever I could re purpose, which is something I love to do.

A quick trip to the hardware store, and there I was looking high and low fore something hinge, chrome and tailpiece like.  There were a few options, but everything would need a lot of reworking without ever satisfying my taste.  I was just about to give up when I realized that I do not necessarily need a bolted down hinge to attach some chrome bars, and to use simple physics instead, which looks like this:

No bolts, screws, mounts, glue or other gadgetry, just a few holes drilled at an angle that will not allow the bars from a $5 towel rack I bent into shape, to come out of the holes with strings pulling on them.  Once again, I came up with something I have never seen before, and it floors me to think that no one else thought about it sooner, or if they did, put it into practice.  Of course it is possible that someone did, I just have not seen it yet.

As you can see I drilled some holes into the tail piece and reworked the ends that were made to hold onto upright mounts, but that is not done completely yet.  I bent the chrome bars symmetrically and threaded the ends.  I fastened the tail piece to the chrome bars with two brass nuts each for now, but will have to find something better looking to finish it.  Oh and yes, it is strong enough to hold all 12 strings and be played without worry.

Logo Inlay:

So I added a maple veneer to the face, and bound the sides of the headstock, and now it's time to inlay my logo.

I put the logo in a rectangle to match the fret board inlays, but used the woods in opposite order.

Some More Done:

Somewhere in between the repair jobs, other builds and shop keep I found the time to work on a few things.  I restocked maple veneers and got some Seymour Duncan chrome covers for the pickups of the same make.  A "Pearly gates" bridge pickup and a "59" for the neck position, a great combination to get a wide range of sound to choose from.  Of course there will be plenty of EQ too since it is a twelve string after all, and I want to allow for everything from high end chiming to only a hint of the upper octave strings.

I finished the pickup mounts, and also the pick guard, and found some chrome bullet nuts to mount the tail piece with:

I also bent new sides of maple and surrounded the body with them:

Duty calls, and I have other things to do:  The shop is in dyer need of cleaning and rearranging, I have jig's n' gadgets to build, and the repairs won't do themselves, so stay tuned.