Metropoulos Forum

So this is my latest build to come from the "Fill Guitar Factory". It is a gift for my brother in law, who lives in San Francisco, a monster player, along with being a great husband to my sister and a great dad to his daughters.
A while back, after seeing a clock that I built for my sister, he asked me if I could build him essentially my interpretation of a double cutaway LP with P90's.

Specs are:
Five piece mahogany/maple Carvin neck-thru body neck, ebony fretboard, pearl block markers, 24 medium jumbo frets. The guitar has a mahogany back and a flamed redwood top with a 1/8" birdeye maple trimline. The Cocobolo pickguard is 1/8" thick, bordered with Partridge wood, inlayed and flush sanded to the body. The black trimlines between the birdseye and the redwood are black birch veneer, and on the back, the neck is framed with the same wood on either side of 1/64" padauk, strictly for aesthetics.
The pickups are Tom Anderson PQ-1 neck and PQ-3 noiseless P90's, and the pots are 500k audio taper volume, 300k linear taper tone with Marshall amp knobs (!) and a NOS Sprague .0047 tone cap.
Hardware is Sperzel tuners, a recessed Tone-Pros tune-o-matic, strung thru the body.

14 sanded and buffed coats of lacquer later, and she's a done deal. Sounds and plays real nice, IMO.

Whoa Ralph! That's as sweet as heaven dipped in golden syrup.

MORE PICS!

Beautiful work! Never ceases to amaze me how talented the members are here.

Do you have some more sisters? I'd like to merry one and let you make me a Les Paul. Nice work.

That is fantastic! Just beautiful work fillmore! That neck thru is fine fine fine, and cool take on the pickguard too! Very unique. Wow. Thanks for sharing. I'd love to hear it!

Thats nice!

jimmyride wrote:Do you have some more sisters?

Thank you so much!! I really appreciate the compliments!!

More pics as requested, Demon:

A few more, with a "gut-shot".

Why sir, that's a nice neat cavity you have there (ooer)

Even from the back it's gorgeous.

Tasty

Nice handy work !
Kool config with noiseless P90's.
The shape of that pickguard fits nicely. Compliment's the offset ferrule's.
Was that cosmetically planned or preferred string tension ?
Subscribe to audio/linear myself.

JimiJames wrote:Compliment's the offset ferrule's.
Was that cosmetically planned or preferred string tension ?

Thank you for the compliments, Jimi. The angled ferrules was sort of a combination of cosmetics, and not really string tension, but string STRETCHING behind the bridge.

Aesthetically, I liked the look of the angled ferrules, but believe it or not, I also had the headstock of a Gibson Firebird in mind when doing that... the reverse FB headstock is functional as well as unique. The 1st 3 strings being a shorter length to the tuners is designed to minimize string stretch between the nut and tuner (and therefore lessening any tuning issues) from bending strings. The 4th-6th strings are longer between the nut and tuners because stretching is less of an issue on those strings.

So it was a bit of both... I liked the way it looked as opposed to them being parallel to the bridge, and whether or not the stretch thing comes into play, I did it for that reason too.
It also seemed like a comfortable angle to rest the palm behind the bridge, though that was a pretty minor consideration.

Probably makes for more satisfying noises when picking behind the bridge too...