The original MJ guitar with camo motif paint job.
A musician friend of mine from Owen Sound, Ontario, came to me with a project in mind. He wanted to update his California-made MJ Guitar to a new and improved shred machine! I was happy to oblige.
His goal was to retain the neck which was cut from maple, had an ebony fingerboard and ‘hockey stick’ style, reverse, slant-back headstock. The body, on the other hand, had to go - he was not fond of the single coil neck position pickup, and felt the camo-paint-scheme was dated along with the early 80’s Kahler tremolo.
His vision for a new body was to have a soloist-style body cut from swamp ash, with a stained, black top, subtle burst, sculpted chamfered edging with natural wood binding, recessed Floyd Rose with dual humbuckers, 3-way toggle switch with 1v and 1t pot.
I set out to design the body digitally first. Once approved I began to run a test cut on blue rigid foam board (see video below). Test cuts allow me to ensure dimensions, alignment and pocket depths are what they should be. It’s better to make a mistake on the foam board vs. the expensive wood, work stock.
Once the temp body was cut, it would be test fitted to the neck to ensure a snug fit. But prior to this, the neck had to be stripped entirely - all hardware had to be removed, including the brass nut and the Kahler locking nut which resides on the slant-back portion of the headstock. Mounting holes had to be plugged with maple dowels (I make my own). All paint and finish had to be stripped down to the bare wood.
Originally, I considered laminating end-cuts discarded from the cut swamp ash body to the top of the headstock to match. However, upon discovering how nicely figured the maple headstock was, we chose to leave it as is and stain right over it with a black burst as well. Good choice!
Since the locking nut for a Floyd Rose IS also the nut (meaning it meets the fretboard at the 0 fret position), a shelf had to be created for mounting purposes. Unlike the Kahler which sits on the same plane as the slant-back headstock (and thus also acts as a string retainer of sorts), the Floyd nut has to reside on the same plane as the fingerboard. Mounting holes had to be drilled and counter bored.
The shelf also had to match the outward contours of the headstock from the 0 fret position. Nut height was critical to ensure the right action would result during the final set up. The neck also had to be sculpted where it joins the neck pocket of the body. The MJ body had a traditional, Fender-style, bulky, square neck pocket contour - the new body, on the other hand, would have a stepped, curved pocket to provide the fretting hands unencumbered access to the higher registers. Thus, re-sculpting the reclaimed neck at the join of the new body was necessary.
Then the body was cut on the CNC machine from the swamp ash work stock. The really nice thing about this piece of swamp ash was that it had, prominent, “curly” figures in the wood - something usually not seen in ash. Once the body and pockets were cut, I used a 45 degree beveled router bit on a router table to provide the natural wood binding around the body contour (front and back).
Then, all other contours and chamfered edging was done by hand. The next step was to mask the body and begin the staining process. Since swamp ash has such deep grains, I had to literally douse the grain valleys with undiluted black stain and a brush to ensure no natural, wood show-through. I was also attempting to ensure the deep grains would reflect far less light than the higher plains of the wood to provide a contrast and sheen when held up to the light. As it relates to the neck, I applied 3 coats of hand-rubbed, polyurethane, satin finish to the neck profile and back of the headstock.
Once staining was completed for the body and top-side of the headstock, both received approximately 8-10 coats of water-based, satin, polyurethane finish applied via an HVLP spray system. This resulted in a very hard, protective, matte finish. Between each coat, 0000 fine steel wool was used to prep for each subsequent coat.
A control cavity cover was cut from curly maple with a dry-rub transferred logo applied before the satin, polyurethane was applied over top. And since this was a “signature” guitar, I asked my friend Bill, to provide me a scan of his actual, hand-written signature. I would digitally recreate this and emblazon his signature, (using the CNC machine), onto a prepared piece of maple which would function as the cover for the spring cavity. Some final, and careful, sanding and cleaning up of the cut edges (see photo above) and it was ready for a little bit of black stain.
PHOTO GALLERY:
Assembly BEGINS
I re-attached the machine heads to the headstock, installed a new hex-key holder on the back of the headstock, lined the control cavity with copper tape to create a proper Faraday box (shielding), installed CTS 500K ohm pots, 4-point Purtone jack, Switchcraft 3-way toggle, and added a Seymour Duncan 59’ pickup to the neck position. However, before pickups were installed, I opted to not only stain the cavities black to ensure a detailed finish, but I also used a matte, black paint on the steel base of the pickups to eliminate any shimmy coming up from the pickup cavities. Interestingly, the original humbucker for the bridge position reclaimed from the old MJ body, had a nice coil/bobbin fabric wrap. The new 59’ pickup for the neck position, however, had a cheap and poorly fitted wrap beneath the bobbin. So, I chose to add new bobbin wrap around the pickup to not only match the bridge position, but to give the pickup a much nicer look.
Intonation was completed on the Floyd Rose, she was tuned up with the customers preferred Ernie Ball slinky, hybrid strings, soldering completed on all the wiring, then tested. Some adjustments were made to the guitar after delivery to refine tone and action. Nonetheless, I can report this beauty is in the customers hands and shredding has begun!
If you are interested in a custom guitar, or pairing a new body or neck to an old favourite, feel free to reach out to me here.
Cheers!
Nigel \m/