J.F. Custom Electric

[J.F. Custom]

Hi All.

Still trying to re-dig up the photos from my other gallery threads but until I do, here is the latest finished off.

This lefty was made to customer specifications, derived from numerous conversations we had. This includes the timber selection, the modified shape, the pickup choices, scale length etc. Based obviously on a Tele, it maintains the same basics but varies mostly by the way of a lowered and rounded horn adjacent the cutaway; an angled back headstock; a set (glued-in) neck; a combo of a humbucker and a P90; locking machine heads, a Five-way switch with taps and the solid tail bridge. It sounds fantastic; Mick Brierley did an awesome job of the custom wound pickups - Thanks Mick!

Specifications are -

Extended 26" Scale Length
Queensland Walnut Body Cap, Neck and front/rear Headstock Caps
Tasmanian Blackwood Body
Ringed Gidgee Fretboard and Truss Cover
Queensland Maple and Queensland Walnut Laminated Pickguard
Silver Ash "Stylized Leo" inlay and JF logo inlay
Mick Brierley Custom Wound Humbucker and P90 pickups
Hipshot Hardtail Bridge in Black
Planet Waves (D'Addario) Locking Machine Heads
Bone Nut, Ebony Knobs and Five way Switch
Mirotone Pre-Cat Lacquer Finish

Jeremy.

[Taffy Evans]

Very, very tasty, a real class act and every thing works well together. Nice work.

[Nick]

I'll echo Taffy's words, very classy looking piece of work Jeremy (as usual!). I'm particularly liking the 'modern' look of that Hipshot bridge, not that that is the only thing but it was the first thing that drew my eye after the wood porn.

[DarwinStrings]

Mmmm chocolate, I agree very tasty indeed.

Jim

[sebastiaan56]

I noticed you got a mention in the AWR again Jeremy, well done! You are a great ambassador for the art.

[seeaxe]

"It's a Telecaster, Jim, but not as we know it"

Very cool indeed.

[J.F. Custom]

Thanks for the comments all.

A pretty basic guitar, which was precisely what was ordered. No bells and whistles and now in the hands of a very happy customer.

Oh and thanks Sebastian. Pretty cool to have made it to the print cut of 15 entries.

Jeremy.

[Tim Mason]

I love tele bodies, this one definatly has the class you expect from the infamous shape. Stunning

[ozwood]

Now That's a Classy lefty , very very nice. love it !!!!!



Congrats ,

Paul.

[Dominic]

I missed this one first time around. Very nice work. Was the longer scale for drop tunings are does the guy have sausages for fingers? I love the signature on the truss rod cover. Can you let us in on the secret for doing it?
Cheers
Dom

[J.F. Custom]

Thanks for the compliments Tim, Paul and Dom.

I never met the customer so am unsure of his particular finger attributes! It was simply his request from the get go and combined with the Brierley pups, certainly had impressive growl.

The signature I have done several ways over the years. As for the 'how', I have previously drawn the signature on paper, glued it to the timber then hand carved it with a very fine V-gouge, but it was laborious work as you can imagine. Then I followed the same procedure but instead of using hand gouges, used a detail bit in my micro-router (Foredom set-up with Stew-Mac base). This was faster but came with inherent risks as the router can wander easily without care. With practice the results were good and I have a few on hand I have done this way - you can get on a roll and do several at once. However, dull bits and experimenting using some harder material; ie Gidgee made me consider other alternatives as it was tricky to get smooth flowing curves on it. None were forthcoming until I had access to a CNC router for a couple of hours once. So I duly 'whipped up' my signature in some software, and had it carve me five in a small piece of gidgee. Worked well enough and would now be my first option... if I owned a CNC that is...

Jeremy.

[Dominic]

Good job Jeremy. I am planning on making a pantograph to do something similar with an inlay but your un-inlayed version looks very cool. I have seen a couple of designs for simple inlay pantographs using drawer slides on the OLF and have the bits to do it. Not sure if you have seen it but they use friendly plastic to create a negative of a pre-cut shell inlay and then copy that into the headstock or whatever. Getting a good accurate template to copy is the first step which is why I was asking. Or a good carefully cut shell inlay.
Anyway, thanks and again, nice guitar.
Dom

[woodrat]

Simply Beautiful Jeremy. Some Lefty has himself a nice axe.