Soliciting build advice for FrankenTwisty

[mr.twistyneck]

So what we have here has taken nearly six months to source.
One spotless Warmoth VW model neck - 24 fret maple. drilled for Floyd Rose nut.
One slightly dinged but very cool solid mahogany carved top VW body, set up for two tones, a blend and dual humbuckers. drilled for Les Paul style bridge assembly
One vintage flat mount Les Paul Floyd Rose assembly.

The neck mates perfectly to the body (gotta love Warmoth), but the extended fretboard lip hangs over the neck humbucker cavity. I could give a crap about 24 frets - if i saw off the 23rd and 24th frets, I'm cool. But....should I?

This body is actually painted a sort of silver glitter-y. should i strip it? frankenstein it?

suggestions please.
thanks,
mr.twistyneck

[Tone Slinger]

Keep it as it is, I like that color. You could saw the 23rd & 24th frets off like you mentioned, or, you could mount a single coil towards the far end of that hb'er cavity and keep the extended fretboard. The EMG style single coils (active or passive) dont have the larger base/bottom like traditional sized single coils. That would look sweet (and probably sound pretty cool too).

[dazzlindino]

get your kids to walk all over it with paint on their shoes......

[vanhalen5150]

It looks like it was made by Apple.

[Bore Em at the Forum]

If you are gonna re-fin it, maybe consider removing some wood and moving the neck pickup closer to the bridge - mount the neck, drop in the pickup and fill the front edge as needed - and keep those 24 frets!

If no re-fin, yeah, consider a single coil (or stacked SC) - cutting off the frets isn't the end of the world but would be nice to keep that intact.

[Tone Slinger]

Exactly ! I honestly HATE the EVH red/blacl/white striped thing. The B&W Franky Era was cool, as was his Bumble Bee. Still, I just have a thing against having another's guitar identity. It goes back to being 15 and 'dreaming' of a future in the R&Roll buissiness, and not wanting to be a copy cat.

But, I do like how Ed said "Fuck how it looks" regarding 'perfect' paint job, etc, etc. The spirit of Ed's 'function above form' attracts me more. So I say mount a single coil in the hb'er cavity, leave it 'homemade' looking .

[Bore Em at the Forum]

It's hard to watch experiments and innovations and NOT want to try them yourself. Doesn't mean you have to go with the same paint job or detail-by-detail replica. Things like Vai's claw recess, Gillis' floating trem, etc....... I spent a solid 2 yrs (85-86) with my bridge floating because of Gillis' ability to pull notes up rather than just go down. I got over that and went back to standard setup, but have enough guitars now to set up different ones for different uses.

My Collen Destroyer got retired in the 90s cos you couldn't play that live without being considered an 80s hair metal dinosaur.

Speaking of "identity".....did anyone catch Rick Springfield with the Foos on Ellen DeGeneres? Don't flame me, was working from home y'day and stumbled on it. It's Grohl's new project (working with Springfield, Corey Taylor, Rick Nielsen, Stevie Nicks, etc). Pat Smear was playing a Collen Destroyer. I love how all of the anti-hair metal punks of the 80s finally own up to the fact that they liked the SAME THINGS WE DID in that era.

[mr.twistyneck]

Wow, you and me both. I couldn't bear back-routing the Floyd on my US Kramer, so I built a body out of solid maple and used it for "experimentation". it was back routed so far the G string would go up a full fifth. also, i stuck a door hinge with a bolt on the end of it and a lever so that if i broke a string (which i did quite a lot), i could flip the lever and return the bridge to the zero point and still be in tune.

one of my high school buddies was obsessed with Brad Gillis - the ability to pull up, the butterfly warble on a floating Floyd - but he was "all about" his Kahler flat mount tremelo. Yep, it pulled up, but it wouldn't warble. i used to piss him off when we would jam and like warble a five minute solo. he ended up wrapping an entire roll of duct tape around the kahler's arm so that it in essence acted as a pendulum and could do a slow warble...although it sounded more like a sick duck to me. eventually, he went mad, and last i heard was working as a manager at a fast food joint in Kentucky. Why? Because he tried to make a Kahler do what a Floyd does. Don't let your children try to make Kahler's do what Floyd's do.

[Bore Em at the Forum]

Y'know, he COULD have just loosened up all of the bridge mounting screws on the Kahler - THEN he could've gotten the warble.

Of course, it would have never tuned, and it might've hit him in the mouth when it finally popped off the guitar.

Question: he was Gillis mad and had a Kahler????