TomHofstätter.com

As a sometime professional musician and sound engineer who has been recording and gigging for over twenty years I have always been pretty picky about my gear. Being a serial tinkerer, most of my equipment has big dose of homebrew, my guitars are no exception.

Last January I decided it was time to start planning some long overdue repairs on my favourite stage guitar pictured here:

 

This simple Yamaha Pacifica has been my go-to guitar for about 12 years. It’s a very versatile guitar capable a wide variety of sounds from bell-like Strat tones to well sustained Hard Rock crunch.

It has a two piece oiled swamp ash body with a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker up front and a Blue/Gold Fender Lace Sensor at the neck. The bridge is a hard-tail Fender type string through body with Mike Christian Piezo saddles and a Bartolini active preamp. The neck is very narrow and very thin with an oiled bubinga fingerboard (which needs frets and the fingerboard is pretty worn). The original plan was to source a new neck, but that is the back-burner until a suitable replacement is in working order.

I knew I wanted a similar guitar, this time with with an all maple neck and just about the same pickup configuration.

Let the Search begin…

I started looking around for a good hacker guitar made with decent parts that I could swap out and build my guitar.

At this point I should mention that I am also a big time Eddie Van Halen fan. I have lurked at some of the forums for years (eddievanhalen.com being the best one) but never really considered myself quite as fanatical as those folks…Until I thought about it a little.

As I recall now, the first thing I did with my first guitar (Squire Bullet) when I was 13 (22 years ago) was to stripe it like a b/w VH-1, but I never had the guts (or the chops) to bring one up on stage.

No, I am a fan, but I’m not obsessed.

Then again, I would also need to explain these…

 

Maybe I’m just repressing some desires here?

OK. So I might fall into the fanatic category. It’s out there now. The rest of the story can begin.

I am fond of the less traditional single cutaway style guitars (no Les Paul, no Telecaster) and the Ernie Ball EVH/Axis always struck me as a nice design. Expensive, but very appealing. A little searching around and I came across the OLP MM1 . Very interesting!

I found some positive reviews which seemed to support my objective; a guitar with ‘good bones’ that I could tinker with. Specifically, there seemed to be allot of info about successful mods and part compatibility. Add to that, there are plenty to find on eBay at decent prices too ($200 Canadian shipped to my door), it was a no brainer.

It comes with two Humbuckers and Fender style fulcrum trem. Most reviewers seemed pretty impressed by the stock pickups, but I was pretty sure I would go with my usual Duncan JB and Lace Sensor combo. While I would prefer a hard tail string through body, the simple trem would allow me to add Graphtech Ghost Saddles to add the acoustic tones and hexaphonic output options to complete the tonal possibilities.

The only downer for me was the brutal selection of stock paint options. I realize this is a budget/replica guitar, but the choice of the ‘photo-flame’ fake wood top bummed me out.

Given the options I found on eBay, I decided to go with the black flame top. At least it was subtle.

 

I tend to shy away from opaque painted guitars especially black – You never know what is concealed under the paint, and black guitars are always dirty. However…

$200 Canadian and 4 days later… This arrived at my door!

I was surprised to see it was not a ‘photo-flame’ laminated top, but rather a ‘Piano Black’ MM1 with binding and a maple neck. This opened up some interesting possibilities. Without the plastic laminate top I now had the (seemingly) simple option of refinishing just the top, keeping the back and sides black.

I liked the idea of exposing the wood and making a more ‘earthy’ instrument.

I played it for about 5 minutes and then… 10 minutes later…

One screwdriver and half a beer was all it took to reduce this brand new perfectly working guitar to a pile of parts.

The next job was to fire up the orbital sander and see what was hiding under the paint.

I knew that the OLP was supposed to feature a basswood body like the Ernie Ball Axis, so you can imagine my surprise to see that this particular body was made from not one, but four pieces of basswood…Should sound 4 times better right? Again, serves me right for breaking the no black guitars rule. Dummy.

It only took about ten minutes with 150 grit paper to completely remove the black finish and what appeared to be a primer or sealer layer. Also visible is a patch where a knot or ding had been filled with some kind of filler… Did I mention never buy an opaque finished guitar?

Here is a look at how I masked off the back and sides with 2 layers of low tack painters tape. I was pretty careful not to damage the finish on the edge of the binding in the hopes that whatever finish I ended up using on top would blend into the sides of the guitar.

At this point I had a vague idea of how I wanted the guitar to turn out, just not much of a plan on how to get there. I’m pretty handy with all things mechanical and electronic, wood finishing is not something I have much experience with.

I was sure however that the absolutely character-less butter yellow wood needed some character. I bought some water based wood stain (mahogany red) with the intention of creating a more interesting canvass to work with.

The first ‘technique’ I tried was in hopes of emulating a curly maple or splatted maple top.

If Mother Nature and 80 year old trees can do it, surely and idiot with a squeeze bottle and roll of shop towels can do it too.

As you can see below, my plan was to splash a random pattern of splotches and build a deep looking texture of many sizes and variations of hues.

After applying the first layer, I waited for the stain to soak into the wood before feathering the edges of the droplets with a dry brush.

After waiting a long time I came to realize that while I had a indeed removed the black finish, there remained a rock hard sealer layer which was impenetrable by the water based stain I was using.

My unfortunate realization was this: If I wanted to expose and dye the wood, I would need to remove all traces of the sealer layer.

There are no pictures of the next process, but you can make up your own narrative based on these facts:

• 2 nights
• 12 beers
• 3 full sheets of 80 grit paper
• New sander
• Flowers for my wife
• 1 missing fingernail

The photo below shows the remains of another attempted faux finish, this time a flame maple/tiger stripe idea. It was not quite what I was after either and I sanded most of it off.

It was at about this point where fate and opportunity came crashing together. The further I got into this project, it was becoming clear that I really wanted a Eddie Van Halen inspired 5150 type guitar. However as I mentioned above, I just don’t have the sack or the chops to bring one on stage, and I can’t afford to build a guitar just to hang on the wall either.

So there I am with a blank canvass, but no inspiration. Then I came across this forum posting at the aforementioned eddievanhalen.com.

Just brilliant!

One look at that post, and my concept for my perfect guitar was born.

Why make a copy of one of my favourite/inspirational guitars when I could make a hybrid of them all?

My vision was clear. This guitar would roll up all my memories of the guitars I love. I already knew how to make a versatile sounding instrument, now it was time to make one that would conjure up all my warm fuzzy guitar memories just by looking at it.

My Favourite Guitars…

This guitar would be a combination of:

• Tobacco Sunburst Strat
• Yellow/Black burst LP jr
• My Yamaha Pacifica pictured above
• My First Squire Bullet (which I also tried to hollow out and turn into a Rickenbacker)
• An Ernie Ball EVH or Peavey Wolfgang
• And of course 5150

In fact, the reason I have those two goalie masks pictured above is in addition to EVH being one of my favourite players, the album 5150 was the soundtrack of some of the most formative years of my life. Memories which I enjoy every time I step onto the ice…But that’s for another blog entry!

Time for some Stripes!

First thing to do was mask off some stripes.

There are a surprising number of resources out there for getting as authentic as you dare to go. The design is actually protected against reproduction for comercial purposes, I won’t credit my source just to err on the side of caution.

Not bad. The stain ran under the tape a little, but I was not after a showroom finish.

Next step was to mask off for the ‘black’ lines.

Don’t use electrical or stretchy tape for this. After a minute or so it started to stretch and lift distorting the pattern in every direction.

The photo below shows the second attempt at masking for the ‘black’ stripes.

This photo reveals the walnut brown stain lines. At this point I should remind you I don’t really have any idea how to do what I’m trying to do.

At this point I decided that the design was too dull. I started to build the sunburst in hopes of making the 5150 theme a little more subtle.

I mixed up some Antique Pine stain and got this:

Interesting. It’s actually even more yellow than it looks (if you can imagine that).

Next I tried a variation of this DIY sunburst technique from Guitar Reranch.

For my purposes I used some disposable aerosol/jars filled with the walnut water stain.

I managed to get a fairly smooth blend from edge to center, but also managed to almost completely cover the 5150 stripes.

Luckily, because the aniline dye I used was water soluble, I was able to mask off the negative space around the stripes and with a little ‘spit & Kleenex’ I was able to expose the lighter colour below and reveal the stripes.

I had to be careful to feather the edges into the darker edges of the burst pattern, but this method only took 20 minutes and produced very crisp lines.

Here is a look after all the staining, before any clear coats or sanding.

Over the next couple of weeks I wiped on about 20 very thin coats of Polymerized Tung Oil, sanding lightly with 1000 grit automotive paper and 000 steel wool every 5 coats or so.

On top of that I buffed with 4 or 5 applications of good’ol Turtle Wax. While it does not quite shine like a Grand Piano, it is certainly glossier than the salad bowl I made in 7th grade wood shop.

This off angle shot reveals the stripes quite well.

I tinkered with the colours in these two last pictures to highlight the edge of the sunburst. As well you can more clearly see the four pieces that make up the body.

Because I prefer the tuning stability of a fixed bridge I built a simple Trem Block with two bolts and some locking washers. It takes allot of fiddling to get things aligned, but it’s worth it in the end.  The battery powers the Bartolini power amp for the piezo bridge saddles.

Here is the finished result.

In the end I chose to reuse the Mike Christian piezo saddles and use my usual pickup configuration. Up front is a Seymour Duncan JB4 Reverse Zebra, and in the neck a Lace Hot Blue Hot Red Dually.

Together with the brothers.

There is still a evasive hum coming from somewhere, but a quick visit to the doctor will sort that out.

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