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damn kit
what fun eh
and them red pickups
holy smokes

sorry for the delayed updates...sanding maple generates so much sawdust that i have to work outside, and it's been successively broiling and rainy. i finally got the back of the Musima neck pretty much done. there's still a little weirdness with the contour at one spot in the first position. apparently Lothar the Loony Luthiers' Apprentice had a flat electric sander as well as the wire whisk, the former of which flat-spotted the contour of the back of the neck at the head and heel. i got the heel transition nice and smooth, but there's a little dent on the bass side at the first fret that irritates me. daylight pics tomorrow.

also, Musima project #2 is on the way from Poland. body (in a truly hideous partially-sanded neon John Deere green!), neck, bridge, tailpiece, neck plate and bolts for $27.42. i'm trying to find some original Simeto pickups from a 60s Musima, which have more of a P90-ish bark than the Hagstrom-ish "mark III" single-coils on Brownie. i'm going to do the Ry Cooder rattlecan finish with auto touchup paint, something in a deep teal. i still have to decide whether to leave this one as a hardtail or to add some kind of tremolo. i loves me some Maestro vibrola, and a shorty vibrola would fit on there real nice.



still waiting for the neck for the Hopf...i'm going to have to do some drilling and dowelling, because there are now seven neck bolt holes none of which i trust to line up with the Hofner neck. but once that'sdone and the new holes are drilled, it should be a fairly simple proposition to drill the correct holes. then it'll just be a question of truss rod/bridge placement and height/neck shimmage. i'm DYING to hear the effect of the tone switch...i've seen a demo of a Klira with a similar switch which gave all kinds of useful tone colors.

Man! Some cool stuff in the works there.

sorry for the lack of updates, which unfortunately is life in the city.

I've done some more sanding on the Musima neck. the front of the headstock is done.



the back of the headstock after a bit of sanding with 220 and the sanding block.



in the close-up you can see the damage done to the wood by the rotary sander.



another hour and a half with the block on the back of the headstock and it's almost done...it needs to be flattened more, though. there's an annoying high spot about an inch above the volute (the large bump at the bottom of the headstock). you can see the dark,low spots that are still retaining the old finish at the level of the low string tuner and out at the tip of the headstock.



next: dowelling the Hopf's NINE neck bolt holes of various vintages, and prepping the Hofner neck to mount on the Hopf body.

meanwhile, i have another project. since i bought the Hofner neck to use on the Hopf, i have the Hondo neck left over and figured i should do something with it. so i got a Kent 3-PU solid body for $25, the snazzy chromed pickguard for $1 plus shipping, and three vintage pre-lawsuit MIJ single-coils for ~US$115. i have a Tiesco style bridge already, and found a very boss surface-mount tremolo which is different to most Japanese trems and is oddly Germanesque. so unless i decide to change the tuners to the Fender/Schaller locking tuners all i need to do is decide how to wire it--probably a rotary PU selector and 3 volumes/one tone knob--wire up the electronics, and screw it together.

i decided to make the second Musima a hardtail, and i'll probably put banjo tuners on that one. i'm waiting to see what the neck is like.

ooh lets see that trem buddy

your wish is my command:



this isn't the exact one, but it's the same model from a different seller. it's the only trem for them i could find which wasn't either a cheap Bigsby type or a post-Jazzmaster trem whoch would require additional routing. i'm really looking forward to seeing how it works.

That is awesome in its simplicity.
What's it called/are they selling more than one?

"TEISCO + KAY + KAWAI + SPRING TREMOLO 1960s - NOS in the plastic!" on eBay; the seller is jboz310. he appears to have a stock of them, posting a new listing about once a week and/or when one sells. if you feel patient you can bid starting at USD$45, but after missing out bidding on two of them i decided to pay the Buy It Now of $65. with that great honking long handle i'm hoping it'll be good for the Kevin Shields hold-the-bar-and-strum chordal wobble.

ive logged quite a bit of hours
lookin for trems on the internet
that thing i pretty damn cool
i do like the paddle feel of the other teisco trem
and im so tempted to throw it on my samick

i spent hours and HOURS looking for a suitable trem. if you just search ""tremolo" on eBay you get literally 12,000 hits. i had to construct a complicated Boolean search where i told it not to retrieve hits with the words "Strat," "Floyd," "Fender," etc. and it still took two hours to wade through all of them. i thought of going with the Maestro vibrola, but i already have the SG with vibrola and a shorty vibrola is like twice as expensive as the Tiesco ones. hell, you can get brand-new Tiesco trems with the butter-knife handle from ezpzparts on eBay for about $35.

i got through sanding the Musima neck with 400 and 600 grit sandpaper yesterday. as the wood becomes more polished, there's a lovely birdseye figure in the headstock that makes me think that i'd rather stain and finish it with the grain visible on the headstock than use the plastic facing with logo. i'll still get my guy to make one for the other neck, which will go on the teal-colored guitar...for this neck i can get him to make a decal for the logo. the figure is a little difficult to see, but the sunlight brings it out.

i've been working on sanding the Musima body, but it's going to be a while before it's done...using 220 takes a long time on the radiused edges without messing up the contours.

in the meanwhile, i've been working on the Hopf/Hofner hybrid, and it's done except that i have to put a Tunomatic on it so it'll intonate. i started with the body:



and the neck:



note the seven bolt holes in the neck pocket. i filled these with dowels and cyanoacrylate, and then redrilled the holes to the pattern of a Fender-type neck plate; the neck heel already had this pattern of holes along with the 6-bolt Hofner plate pattern.

i took apart the tremolo and figured out how to set it up...it's roughly similar to a Jazzmaster trem with a collet and cotter pin to hold the handle in place. i also tightened up the tuners. the Bigsby bridge i intended to use won't work because the scale length is off, and i'll be installing a Gotoh long-travel Tunomatic on old-school threaded posts, which will fit right up against the edge of the pickguard. other than that it's done. after shimming the front of the pocket it plays without buzzing all the way up the neck, though the frets could use a good dressing.