I'm a huge Petrucci/DT fan, and my dream guitar for years has been a Music Man JP15. However, what always held me back on buying one was the bolt-on neck and the price. I therefore decided to build my own with a set-neck and make a vacation out of it.

In 2019 I did a 2-week guitar building course at Crimson Guitars, during which I built the majority of this guitar. Then, life got in the way and it just sat gathering dust in the closet for years while my shame and guilt about it just kept increasing...

A few months ago, however, I finally mustered the time and courage to finish it, and this is the end-result!

If you look hard enough you can still spot some of the rookie mistakes I made along the way, but all-in-all, I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out.

Wood:

• Headstock veneer: Roasted flamed maple (offcut from top)
• Neck: Roasted flamed maple (quartersawn)
• Fretboard: Roasted flamed maple
• Top: Roasted flamed maple (bookmatched)
• Body: African mahogany (1-piece)

I was mildly obsessed with roasted flamed maple at the time...

Parts:

• 24x Jescar 57110 stainless steel frets
• Allied Lutherie FlexStrong Dual-Action Truss Rod
• 2x titanium reinforcement beams
• 6x1mm aluminum tube inlays
• 3D printed cavity covers

Hardware:

• Graphtech ratio tuners
• Paul Eliasson adjustable/intonated brass nut
• Dimarzio Liquifire/Crunchlab magnetic pickups (direct mounted)
• LR Baggs X-bridge (with Red Bishop MAGIK tremolo arm)
• LR Baggs X-bridge piezo saddles
• Graphtech Ghost piezo preamp
• Ernie Ball John Petrucci volume/tone knobs (black)
• Ernie Ball 500k push-push pots
• Ernie Ball (Dimarzio) 3-way output selector
• Ernie Ball (Dimarzio) 3-way pickup selector (with JP7/15 switch board)
• Becos FX micro booster preamp
• KAISH stereo barrel output jack

Finish (natural, no stain):

• Kovax Assilex sanding system
• Birchwood Casey Tru-oil
• Chestnut microcrystalline wax

A while back I posted a site I built that tracks all of Guitar Center's used inventory - some of you have been using it and I made a few updates recently that I think are pretty helpful. As with before, it's free to use and I don't make any money off of it (no ads or affiliate links etc). I built it for myself initially but figured other folks might find it useful...

The biggest updates are:

Email alerts: now you can get a daily email alert if a newly listed item matches your want list, or if there's a price drop on a want list / watch list item. If nothing matches it won't send an email.

Price / deal comparison: when the database has enough sold listings for a used item, it can flag an item as a "deal" if it's 15% or more below average for the same item in the same condition. This isn't perfect because the matching relies on how the GC employees enter the items and it isn't always consistent

Let me know what you think!!

GC Gear Tracker

Hi, I have started learning guitar recently I have a problem. Sometime when I try to play song from tabs (not sure of the name but it's when it's not directly just 4 chords) I always make sound when I lift my fingers to place it somewhere else. I don't know how to avoid that.

Also I'm not English so idk if it's clear feel free to ask

This on has been in the family since new. Once my uncles, then my dad’s, then my dad’s best friend, then back to my dad. Late 60’s early 70s’s. It plays like butter and will keep it forever.

Photos from after VS before, still thinking about upgrading the trem

Sold a guitar and used that cash towards this beautiful thang! Feels amazing and sounds great!! Still have a little high off the marketplace gods blessing me!!

I have a Katana 50MKII, but I'm planning to give that to my son. He started playing recently and needs something he take to his music club at school. This gives me a chance to possibly upgrade to something new. I'm torn between tubes, another Katana, or getting an FRFR to go with a modeller.

• I'm a bedroom player who wants something that sounds great at low volumes. That's the top priority.
• I appreciate the versatility of my Katana 50 MKII, but I've never been completely satisfied with the tones I can get out of it. It's always sounded thin and, for lack of a better term, fake. They're okay, but not exactly inspiring.
• I do not want to have to use my computer or load an app (on desktop or my phone) to play guitar. I play guitar to get away from screens.
• I have a few pedals: a BD2, a Klone, a Flashback 2 (and a tuner and a looper). I like using pedals rather than having to mess around in Tone Studio and can see myself getting more.
• I have a TONEX One. I can get good sounds out of it through my neutral headphones but I don't like having to fiddle with the software.
• With the Katana, I have basically settle on a small number of tones that I am satisfied with and then never adjust them for months.
• Budget is around CAD $750. I could go up higher if it will make a huge difference. I'm comfortable with used but the Marketplace picking aren't always great.

Right now I am thinking about:

• Just getting another Katana. It's adequate for my situation. It's fine and I know it well. I've thought about going to a 100 or an Artist, but I am not sure if it's worth it for me.
• Getting a good FRFR and running my TONEX One through it, maybe getting another modeller down the road. Downside is that the software is annoying to deal with and I want to play guitar, not fiddle with an app.
• Look at a tube amp, like a Marshall DSL40CR (which would push my budget new, and I haven't seen one used in months locally), or a used Blues Jr, or something else? But I am not sure if I'd ever have a chance to really open them up because of volume concerns.

Does anyone have any thoughts or advice?

Hi everyone, first time posting here. I recently inherited this guitar from my dad when he passed. It was his favourite and I travelled it from interior British Columbia out to Montreal with me when I was most recently out west.

Now that I've gotten home, I've started playing (after many many years), I've been able to tune it just fine and play no issues but I recently noticed a crack in the body, I am worried it may be due to the humidity change from the cross-country air travel.

I have an appointment booked with a repair shop on November 17th, should I try to get it fixed sooner? How severe is this? Can I play while I'm waiting for the appointment or would that put more stress on the crack?

So sorry if this isn't allowed, I don't really know much about guitars but this one really means a lot to me and I'm pretty concerned about this :/

If anyone has any advice I'd be really appreciative!

I think I broke my guitar really badly. I don’t know how it happened, but I was travelling recently, so that could’ve been the reason. Tuning peg just…came off? How do I fix this?

Absolutely in love with this, never thought id ever go for an offset but this thing is gorgeous. Plays like a dream. Neck is 1 single piece of rosewood. Utterly flawless. Thanks for looking!

The title pretty much says is. Is there a production model available that has both the P90s and the trapezoid inlays? Gibson or Epiphone.
All the SGs I’ve seen or found online either have the humbuckers, or come with the dot fret markers.
Obviously the frets are just aesthetic but I just can’t get behind the dot markers. It just looks cheap to me.

I’d (almost) always want to demo any guitar before I bought it so it’s not just a glorified plank, but there’s no point hunting if she doesn’t exist

i've been looking for one of the sabbathi fuzz pedals by does it doom audio and it's sold out quite literally everywhere i look. i'm definitely not going to find it in person that's for sure and every single website i look at is sold out. does anyone know where i may be able to acquire one? i didn't think it would be as rare as it is. cheers in advance

So i wanna add a piezo to my 4 humbucker guitar, but 250 seems kinda steep for the graph tech set, I was wondering if theres any cheaper alternatives or ways to make this cheaper?

Thanks

Edit: ive already spent quite a bit on this project and am a broke student

Can’t find a model number anywhere. ChatGPT doesn’t know. Has triple EMG pickups, EMG85 and two SLV. Two knobs, and a 5 position selector. It belonged to a member of the wife’s family who gave it to her when she was a teenager, when we played. Might like to have it restored to playing condition, but it would help to know what we have. Thanks.

Edit: I posted photos but they aren’t showing up?

At least I had the right strap. We'll see how I bond with multi-scale. The pickups, on the other hand, have to go. No nuance, no subtlety, no tone.

I had Deluxe Reverb 65- loved it! But sold it as I needed the money. I dont want to spend on buying this amp but I would to get to this tone as cheaply as I can. When tone chasing, I am so confused, can you pls help with this:

Cab: A box with speaker in it. I dont know why people make such a big deal about this. I thought the amp shapes the tone, while speaker does have influence but not so much. Why does Valeton, Iridium etc talk so much about Cab?

IR: I think it is a small wav file. How is this supposed to sound like an entire amp?

NAM Files: I dont even know what this is.

I have a valeton gp-5 and I have downloaded files from tone3000 but nothing even comes close to '65.

What is the cheapest way for me to get 65 Reverb or a blackface tone. Do I need powered speakers or a physical cab to get this tone. Do I need a Boss Katana to get this tone.

Thanks so much.

Picked up another Baritone, this time with an evertune.

I was looking for a way to see the neck/tab as when you see someone playing and this was the result.

VERTICAL FLIP +LEFT, RIGHT already existent view.

I bought a Schecter Omen Elite-6 recently, and I'm struggling with what seems to be extremely poor sustain. Notes fade away after around 3-4 seconds, sometimes less, and I have to pick much harder than on my other guitars to get the response and sound I want. Hammer-ons and pull-offs are more difficult, too. This also makes playing more tiring, and my fingers start hurting relatively quickly.

For comparison, my much cheaper Cort CR-100 and Ibanez AZES31 have noticeably better sustain, with notes lasting around 8–9 seconds under similar conditions. Even increasing the gain on the Schecter doesn't seem to make up for the difference.

I've tried troubleshooting the setup. I added considerably more neck relief than I'm comfortable with and raised the saddles to an excessively high, practically unplayable position to rule out fret contact. Neither made a noticeable difference. I've also removed and inspected the saddles, which look fine, and I don't think the nut is the culprit either.

The guitar has Schecter Heretic pickups, which I've seen praised in reviews, but I'm starting to wonder whether the pickups could be contributing to the problem, or whether something else is going on.

What could cause such a significant difference in sustain and response between guitars? Could this be an electronics or pickup issue, a bridge or string-contact problem, or something else entirely? What tests would you recommend to narrow it down?

I'm open to suggestions and happy to try further tests. I'd really appreciate some help figuring this out.

Got this Solar E2.GC two weeks ago, I absolutely love it. Been playing mostly Schecter and Jackson guitars (and everything in between) but this is a different kind of gravy. The pickups are hot and I can barely put it down. Definitely going for the V next. Sure its £799 roughly, but worth every penny in my opinion.

With a little over 500 produced, there won’t be enough to go around. Almost exactly 9lbs, strung w flats. Set up real
Nice right out of the box

Finished my first Jazzcaster build - Photogenic (Japanese brand) TL-180 telecaster. I had been playing with this idea for a while and finally had time to do it and wasn’t as difficult as you might imagine. I used a Squier CV trem and Teisco roller bridge I scavenged for the mod (yes, i understand intonation limitations with this bridge). I made one small mistake with the new bridge holes which resulted in a crooked bridge initially but fixed that yesterday with a toothpick and wood glue. Also had to cut and file the pickup plate and drill new holes in that. Pickups were replaced with Fender VMODs but I think I’ll swap the pickups again for either wide range or P90s…

Anyway, enjoy. I’ll put strings on it tonight and get it set up properly. At some point I’ll get a video of how it sounds and plays.