Okay, so if you wondered what ALL of the guitars I ever built were, here's the list, starting at age 14, all the way to current - which pictures (if I have them). I might make a separate list for my modding pages.
Make/Model
Picture
(If Avail)
| Year
Built
| Description
|
Harmony H80T
| 1998
| I bought this Harmony H80T Strat copy from classmate Jim for $10 in 1998. It was sanded up with 60 grit on one part of the body, had stickers, and all the wiring was cut with scissors. I put the guitar temporarily back together so I did not have to haul a glass jar around all day in my backpack in 1st block typing class. It then was brought home, sanded down, repainted Turquoise, and later had my first pickguard I ever made, a plexiglass one using some chunks of broken plexiglass from the abandoned old Lee Scott Academy private school site on Frederick Road in Auburn. The guitar had some weird mods, mostly inspired by Paul Dean's resourceful rebuild of his old Funky strat such as a Dot Matrix Printer paper holder bar for a whammy bar (wrapped in UL listed electrical tape), tone control wired to the bridge pickup (to fatten up the sound), and for awhile, it had a skinnier Harmony H804 neck on it (see below). The guitar was eventually sanded back down into a bigger project (an HHH Superstrat in Ford Cayman Green metallic with a original Floyd Rose) but it never was finished, and then was to become the "Duct-Tape Strat". This guitar was actually my main guitar in it's turquoise incarnation while my old red Kramer was being rebuilt into the first version f it's current form, but it only really spent nights in my bedroom rocking out to Loverboy, Journey, and Night Ranger.
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Jacobsen BASICA
| 1998
| This was bought off classmate Wade for $90 in late 1998. The Harmony H804 it originally was was stripped down, the neck entirely stripped down, headstock re-cut into the "key" headstock shape I used in high school (this was the first one). The Zero fret was removed and replaced by a giant honkin bone nut (my first nut) milled from nut stock from the Auburn GUitar Shoppe. The entire headstock logo was done in Gel Pens. The fretboard had the original pearl inlays removed and replaced with Abalone dots and side dots, and the frets were replaced with wide-flat frets. I put a Nashville style Tune-O-Matic on it but kept that cool old Teisco style tailpiece. The original pickups were replaced with an EMG Select SES Single coil in the neck, and an EMG Select SEHG Humbucker in the bridge - which I routed wiht a Dremel. A new extended pickguard was made using pickguard stock from Stew Mac, and then Radio Shack Rickenbacker-esque knobs installed. It had actual switchcraft pots, Gibson 3-way toggle (Les Paul Style!!), and later a STrangle Switch and Faux Rhythm Circuit selector were added to the guitar. Sometime in 1999 the pickups were removed and replaced with Samick K10 humbuckers from an old Cort or Hondo guitar I bought at the Auburn Guitar Shoppe for 45 bucks. The bridge pickup was later replaced with an even hotter Peavey Nitro humbucker, which was hidden under the regular Gibson style chrome cover from the Cort pickup and "potted" with duc-tape enough that it did not squeal at stage volume. Later, a trip to Florida in 2000 lead to me obtaining a shoter scale 24.75" Scale Harmony Les Paul custom copy neck, which had the heel chopped so it would fit the H804 body and intonate correctly. This is where this guitar was seen in Lithium. Later on, it was repainted in Rustoleum Hammered Metal textured paint, and the neck in "sea corrosion teal" paint from teh same brand. It was used as the dedicated guitar for "Crystal" before the Trashmaster was built.
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Jacobsen Lynx VHII
| 1998
| This was the first body I made. FIrst I got some free wood from the chop-off pile at the Opelika Lowes. Then I glued the 4 pieces together with some titebond II wood glue, and let it sit over night. I LOVE the Jaguar/Jazzmaster shape and was desparate for that shape, so I took a copy of Tony Bacon and Paul Day's American Guitars, and used a math class "hack" on a photograph of John Entwhistles Fender Jazzmaster in the book by drawing lines over it estimated to match 1" on the picture. I got pretty freakin' close but because the guitar was not photographed dead on, the shape was a little distorted, a little too big, and somewhat offset. It was painted yellow/black like Edward Van-Halen's "Bumblebee" and I cannibalized parts off the Harmony H80T to finish it including the neck, 2 of the pickups, and the bridge initially, which due to the soft pine, got yanked out while I was tuning it. So instead, I put on a $20 Kahler 2700 Gibson Branded tremolo with 2 Lawn MOwer cylinder head bolts in place of the Gibson tailpiece studs it's suposed to use - which I bought from the parts pile at Crossroad's music sometime back in like...1997. It didn't play as well as I'd liked but it sounded fucking awesome with 2 strat pickups wired in series like a Humbucker. It really did have a Van-HAlen type tone to it. I would reprise this guitar again - a bit better - about 22 years later (see lower in this list). Later on, the neck fell apart while I was playing it, strung up and setup like a six string Bass VI.
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Jacobsen Trashmaster
| 2000
| This guitar was made out of 3 pieces of pressure treated pine that I roiginally routed with a gap for a piece of lattice to slide through. Mom was having me put lattice all over the car port and patio for her cats - a "Catiary". So this unused piece was cut up, and remembering Paul Dean (Loverboy) talking about resonance slots in the necks of his guitars...I thought "what happens if I do this with the body instead". So I nailed on a COnstruction Grade plywood top with glue to hide the top of the guitar. The paintjob was done with leftover black rattle can paint on the front, and then I drew ivy patterns with some very old Testors model car paint in green - inspired by a local Auburn musician who brought me his 80's Peavey Patriot that got smashed to reglue the body together (that's another cool story). I had parts from a partscaster my AUnt Karen bought me at a pawn shop that xmas - which was a Kramer Focus 6000 body, a Harmony Les Paul neck, Harmony H802 pickup (installed on an upside down humbucker frame), Harmony H802 bridge and tailpiece, and I had parts from a Teisco TB-4 bass laying around (pickguard, pots, switches) - so I slapped this together with the H804/BASICA's old neck on it - basically the "worst" parts in my parts bin at the time. I went to Crossroads and bought a cheap $14 IBanez L.A. neck position Humbucker - for the bridge. I chopped up the aluminum TB-4 pickguard to accomodate that and the H802 pickup - all screwed into the Wood Eddie Van-Halen style - and a trim ring was duct-taped on to cover my sloppy metalwork. The guitar was then taken to FX Studios in Montgomery to record LIthium's second demo (Crystal b/w Creeping Death), and I used it on Crystal and it turned out to be f***ing magical sounding. It had that crazy Paul-Dean-like resonance thing going on (think "Always on my Mind" or pretty much any solo from the first three records with the strat or his Dean MAchine guitars). I played that guitar a lot and wrote quite a few other tunes on it, one called "Dain Bramage", and the other was some Sammy Hagar meets Metallica sort of thing I wrote about a failed relationship not too long after the band broke up. It was taken apart before I moved to Seattle and probably is long gone now for all I know.
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Jacobsen Excalibur
| 2001
| In 2001, my guitar class teacher at Opelika High School - the late great Robert Orr - gave me this old Harmony Deluxe Series 780 body painted white like James Hetfield's guitar - complete with the sharpie middle finger. I think one of his students gave it to him. This guitar was beter known at the time as "Kendalin/Kandi-Lynn" and was a hippie-sandwhich (I stripped off the paint and found a pretty hardwood body underneath), bolt-on neck explorer with a gold painted plexiglass pickguard (originally painted black), and a revolving door of pickups, and my first modified trem system, and a Kramer 100ST neck (the same one on my Kramer 100ST now after I moved the Warmoth around a few other guitars). Initially, it got the Harmony's 16K Peavey Nitro humbucker in the bridge, and the Kramer STriker's 10.5K bridge pickup in the neck (the STriker got another old Hondo K10 in White). The vibrato was one of those wacky ambidexterous Kahler copies made of pot metal from the 1980's - the crappy one where the spring attachment would bend and break off if the bar was used in any capacity. So I ruined a few drill bits drilling 3 holes in the bottom to install a STratocaster inertia block on the bottom, and ran it through the body of the guitar. It worked great! Guyker has something similiar to that now, and the Rick Toone vibrato is a similar-ish setup as well. That was the guitar LIthium wrote "without you" on and also is the guitar I was playing on the "Book of the Dead" demo we did at LArry's practice space. Post-Lithium, it was used a lot on the Killing Alabama demo. In the mid 2000's, I managed to procure an EMG H and EMG 60, and later swapped those into it instead. The guitar ran a few SMokin' 66' rehearsals that way. At some point, the body got destroyed, so unfortunatley, I don't have this one anymore.
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Custom Warlock for Hawk
| 2002
| Another custom build, this time for LIthium's rhythm guitarist, and the first one for someone other than me. He got a cheap Warlock body off e-bay, I think it was a Hondo FAme series body in black crackle. We cannibalized a very rare Fender HM Strat in bowling ball blue crackle to put this together (which was later put back together when the neck on this broke), having the pickup, tremolo, and some other parts from that strat and one of Hawk's other guitars installed in it, and a B.C. Rich Bronze Series neck IIRC (the one that broke off his red Bronze Warlock when it went Lawn-Dart in my yard imitating CC Deville). I had the body in a dresser drawer at home, and due to the not-so-amaciable split, it just sort of lived there for awhile.
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Black DiMarzio Strat
| 2005
| So this was an earlier version of the black strat I bought for $40 while I was in Lithium. Sometime around 2004 or 2005, I repainted the body black, my best finish to date, and installed the neck from my Arbor red/black Strat copy, as well as the tremolo, and the wiring. The trem sucked on this body, so it was later swapped with a Pro-Tone tremolo with a proper 42 mm intertial block instead of the 34mm one for the Arbor. Even later on, I put a neck from a Squier AFfinity strat on it because the Arbor neck sucked ass (it was off-center). This guitar was awesome. Somehow, it could imitate Paul Dean's old Funky Strat perfectly - and it's even heard in a video fo me ripping some Loverboy riffs on it from circa 2007 or so for fun on YouTube. I used it a LOT. Almost any clean tone strat thing that sounded like a classic strat between 2005 and 2009 was this guitar. I later moved all the parts though back to a regular Squier AFfinity STrat body - which I later sold as a complete guitar, and kept this body for a future incarnation.
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Kramer/Aria Parts Mutt
| 2005
| I built this for my room mate Kat and I feel looking back, I probably could have done better. I believe the Vester's original humbuckers went in this (the single coil was broken), an Ibanez Hard Rocker tremolo was installed on it, and a Kramer neck that I now think was the original neck for my Kramer STriker 300ST asI bought the body and neck at a closeout from Hot Lixx music in Everett. The body was from an ARia ZZ Explorer copy in candy apple red. IT was a real challenge building a guitar in a rental house.
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Hodunk Testybum Signature Guitar
| 2005
| I bought this battered Rogue-rebranded Harmony H804 in 2005 for $25 at Hot Lixx music a short time before they closed during my "I have a YouTube Account but I don't know what the hell to do with this thing" era. So I thought I'd put it back together and use it to make a "viral video" (chuckles) of me pretending to be the then infamous guitar shill "Esteban" - like a parody of Esteban, but this time, shilling an electric guitar (those Burswood Les Pauls with the 3 single coils had not come out yet), calling it the HOdunk Testybum guitar. There were a few attempts to make such a video, but the split screen idea was something I never figured out. So the guitar was put back toggther with a Bill Lawrence XL500 humbucker in the bridge, weird wiring that allowed me to swich between all three pickups, the XL500, or the original H804 wiring, and the ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic that came off my Fender Jaguar when I upgraded it back to the stock bridge. The guitar also was plastered punk-rock style with all sorts of random stickers on the back....mail stickers, shipping labels, medicine bottle labels, I even drew in fine sharpie a nice blonde BBW in jeans and an 80's t-shirt sitting cutely on the back between the stickers...like my own crazy version of a pinup. The guitar lasted in this condition for awhile, but eventually was stripped down in 2016 for it's next incarnation.
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"MTD" Explorer
| 2005/2016
| THis was an Arbor Explorer copy body I bought from Hot Lixx in 2005. IT was red with a black lightning bolt. I believe it had 2 different necks but I forget WHICH necks it was before the Kramer Striker 300ST neck went on it after Kendalin's unfortunate demise. It had chrome knobs, chrome trim rings, I forget what humbuckers it had, I think originally it was a DiMarzio Super II - PD Style - and the Peavey P12 in the bridge, and a Floyd Rose II Tremolo. In the later incarnation, it had black trim rings and the Kramer Focus 6000 neck that's now on the 3000ST Strikus guitar. It always had serious issues with the neck pocket because it was a lighter plywood body and the neck would constantly shift, making tuning unstable, so it never gigged and maybe got on a handful of recordings. It was put back together for awhile in 2016 with similar results, so in the end, the parts were recovered and the body scrapped because by then, the neck slot looked like swiss cheese and the delaminating body layers looked like some kind of adhesive disaster.
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XX Flying Vee Build
| 2006
| This was an ARia XX Flying Vee body I got from Hot Lixx in 05' as a part of that stack of bodies for dirt cheap. It was put together with an original Floyd Rose locking tremolo (from the DiMarzio body's original incarnation), Gibson 500T humbucker in the bridge, and a DiMario Super II in the neck IIRC. It was wired up basic 500K 1v 1t 3-way, and had the ARbor's old neck on it without a locking nut. It sounded and played awesome, but the Arbor's neck was off kilter leading to intonation problems. Turns out when they milled the neck for the Arbor strat copies, they lost the centerline somewhere along the way, leading to a fretboard seeming like a slight version of those wacky "metled" looking Bender Distortocaster guitars from the 1990's. I did use this for an early demo of some of the EGA Stereo tracks - the Jagmaster replaced it for those - having the pickups and Floyd Rose from this for awhile before hading those over to my Musicmaster, HOndo Paul Dean II, and Kramer Focus 3000.
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2010 "Fender" Jazzmaster 81'
| 2009/2010
| After years of taking a break from building as I was insecure building guitars in a studio apartment, I finally found some cheap FEnder Licensed Jazzmaster bodies on E-bay, and bought one. It turned out to be a beautiful piece of swamp ash. I spent MONTHS in the Offset Guitar Dressing Room at OSG making designs and photoshopping them with Microsoft Paint and/or The gIMP. It was narrowed down to a blackguard blonde "natural" finish guitar, or a pepto-bismol pink copy of Ric Ocasek (the Cars) 1974 Jazzmaster he used a lot for the "clickety 8ths" stuff in The Cars catalog....with the chick from Candy-O on the arm contour in tribute. When I saw the wood, Blonde was chosen, and it was the more original option anyway. For the next six months - while out of work BTW, I managed to put this guitar together. IT's a Allparts body, ACME Pickguard, vintage cloth wiring, FEnder AVRI JM Pickup (neck, 8.3K), Pickup Wizards (Canada) JM pickup (Bridge, 10% overwind, 9K), Tommy's Custom Bodies and Necks Neck, and import tremolo. In the end, it's one of my proudest builds, I'm still using it all these years later, a lot. In Smokin' 66', I used to use the Jazzmaster a lot for "HIp Disco Junkie" live after it was built, it was the backup to the Mustang for "listen" and was the guitar "Faces of Death" was written on, probably the first "metal" song ever written on a Jazzmaster. Since then, it was used on Zombie Jihad's "You Will See Demons" recording sessions for Army of Revenge, and was used at a few shows at Tony V's garage as well. It was one of my main stage axes in "SWeaty VEdders", and it was also used a lot during the Murderock/Candy Apples/Rippers/Sonic Dead era. Demonia features this guitar doing all the Venture's sounding bits on "Devil Girl from Mars" (that whole stereotypical reverb drenched down slide rapid pick thing surf guys do - that's this guitar), and I used it on a TON of tracks on BandLab between 2018 and present. Essentially, I achived my goal, a loud, mean, nasty, resonant Jazzmaster with 22 frets that sounds and looks like a Jazzmaster, but can play well doing classic rock, hard rock, or heavy metal without losing that Jazzmaster character.
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1973 Fender "Hempmaster"
| 2014
| IN 2009 I bought a 1973 Fender Music Master body and neck from Tommy's Guitar Shop for $245. I originally intended to either restore it or do something cool with it. It sat for years, with the best paintjob I'd done up to that point, strung up with a six saddle Tornado bridge, waiting for me to finish it. Eventually, Zombie Jihad had a gig at Hempfest, and I decided to make the guitar thematic for that gig. So it premiered at that show with a wacky home-made single coil pickup with Hard Drive magnets (neodymium) that made it sound HUGE in the bridge, and a Washburn MG45 single coil in the neck (From Rev Phantom's Washburn I repaired). The pickguard was 1/8" thick Tap PLastics orange acrylic, and one piece like Kurt Cobain's Ferrington guitar. It was then plastered in some punky stickers including a "Super Barrio Bros" sticker, and some dispensary stickers. I played the show wearing a safer shirt and a lei of leaves. The guitar would last like this until 2017 or so, when I'd convert it into a surrogate "Mustang".
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2016 CreepingNet Classic SSS
| 2016
| THis was the DiMarzio body's third incarnation, it used the second Tommy's Custom bodies and necks neck I got for my Jazzmaster ( they sent me two by accident and I tried to send it back but USPS failed me on that one), and was refinished in Minwax Woodsheen Walnut over the bare Alder body. A new kit of chinese parts were installed on it including a black strat trem, black pickguard, with Alnico "V" pickups (probably ceramic really), and tuners. In late 2017 or 2018, seeking more "Fatness", I bought a cheap hot rail from The Trading Musician in Seattle. THe guitar was later repainted in 2020 by me and my wife into the current "Female Eddie" paint scheme it has now. It's been used on a few things here and there over time in this incarnation, mainley a guitar-driven demo of Saga's "Times Up", a few remakes of older M.J. and Lithium tunes, and anything else I need a more classic "Strat" sound on for the most part.
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2016 H806 Prototype
| 2016
| This was the fate of the Hodunk Testybum. The guitar was stripped to bare plywood, a new black "Anti-scratch" H802 pickguard was made for it, omitting the 2nd pickup hole. 2 Harmony H802 pickups were bought for it, one going in the stock spot in the neck, the other being relocated next to the bridge. Instead of slide switches, I used a 3-way Gibson style switch, and wired it up with the regular 2-pickup setup. THe neck came off my MEmphis 302HB guitar, so it looked a bit funky, like an over-exaggerated H803 with H802 electronics. I used it like this for a few Youtubes and recordings at the time. Later these parts would go on Spence's old 2813 guitar (which was...well...lost for lack of better terms), which would go to my wife, and the parts from that were moved to this guitar after I repainted it one more time in Sharpie trying to see if that cool blue/red flip-flop effect could be achieved on a guitar (you know, when you draw with a blue sharpie and in certain light it looks a dark cherry red color instead). That didn't work out - so it got reworked again in 2023.
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2017 CreepingNet Madrite
| 2017
| Pine tablestock body, original MOsrite-Inspired body shape, black anti-scratch pickguard, First Act ME-437 (neck) and ME-636 Adam Levine (bridge) humbuckers with "series link" wires added by me, 1 volume, 1 tone, 3-way switch, 2 "tri-mode" selectors for the pickups, Washburn Wonderbar tremolo, Kay KE-17 neck, Kluson Tone Pros tuners. This guitar was made while my wife and a friend were out together over a weekend. I was on a real B-52's kick and wanted something Moseritey. Three of my favorite guitarists played them: Kurt Cobain, Ricky Wilson, and PAul Dean had a version called the Robin Raider. This was a CreepingNet format guitar that sat between the Mosrite/Gospel and the Robin Raider. I wanted something that could handle rapid tuning and tuning chicanery, without going out of tune, and still sound like a surf guitar, but also be a formidable metal beast. So the pickups were pushed to their extremes, with the neck up against the neck, and the bridge up against the Wonderbar trem, to the point the first coil begins at the tip of the furthest north bridge saddle. This leads to a very tight, punchy, distorted, biting delivery - like a Mosrite. THe body shape was made by tracing my Jazzmaster and Strat backwards, then using lines from the H802 and some freehand drawing to make the body shape. I used the Kay KE-17 neck because it's got a great profile and looks cool. I have used this guitar a ton...covering various B-52's songs, writing in some Ricky-esque tunings on my own. In 2019, it was repainted transparent blue for awhile with a Solarez clearcoat, and was used as one of Mikey Ferox's guitars in Murderock toward the end of the band's tenure. In 2022, I stripped it back down, and just clearcoated it in Behr brush on clearcoat, after some body refinements to make it look less "home made".
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1973 Fender "MurderMaster (I)"
| 2018
| This was a reincarnation of the Musicmaster above, same body, same neck, but now with a JApanese Mustang pickguard in orange/white/black, with a chrome control plate, and a frankenstein Dynamic VIbrato mixing Chinese/Japanese/American parts, giving it a wacky, janky, weird, sort of feel fit for Murderock. THe guitar was assembled at the beginning of 2018. It had a Peavey P-12 humbucker in the bridge, and the old Alnico V pickup from my sTrat in the neck. It was then plastered instickers including a lawn mower caution sticker I got at a small engine repair shop in Reno, and a mix of kiddie stickers and stickers from local businesses. The guitar broke some switches at another gig at some point in late 2018 or early 2019, so when I played the Virginia Street Ale house it only had one Humbucker and the lawn mower sticker was put over the hole for the neck pickup. In early 2019, it was used interchangeably with the Blue Madrite and Murdermaster II - which was just my Jagmaster plastered in stickers with the Warmoth neck. When the Pandemic had been going on for several months, and the band decided to do one last gig in 2021...I wasn't invited. So that weekend, I stripped off all the Mikey Ferox attire and started the process of the next incarnation.
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2020 CreepingNet VHII EVH Tribute 98' Reissue
| 2020
| Edward Van-Halen died in late 2020 during the pandemic (but not of it). Edward Van-Halen was one of my biggest influences and I learned a lot of my guitar design and building ideas from reading about the crazy stuff he'd do. Him, Paul Dean, and Kurt Cobain really did a lot in their interviews to make the crazy budget stuff I do acceptable from a musician standpoint. So I decided to reprise my firs body build. This time, the body was built out of abandoned cedar fence posts, and the body was traced from my Fender Jaguar. The neck was the warmoth neck that was on the Jagmaster, the bridge is the original Kahler that was on the original VHII Style Jaguar build, but now I had the Bill Lawrence humbucker back there for awhile before being replaced with a much more fittingly hot 12.5K Ohm B.C. Rich Bronze Series humbucker. The guitar still has THAT sound to it, and it plays much better with the Warmoth neck. It also was one of the best Van-Halen finishes I'd done to date at that point. It's been used on some BandLab tracks since then and hasn't really changed much.
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2007 "Fender" Jagmaster HM
| 2022
| So with the Jagmaster fully disassembled, I decided to experiment some on the body on this one. The body was stripped of it's original SUnburst finish, and then stained with green powder acrylic paint. Then sprayed with several coats of green-tinted clear from Michael's, then gloss clearcoat which had to be a little rushed in the end. The pickguard was a brand new HH Jazzmsater pickguard bought from e-bay. I kept the stock Duncan Designed pickups, which are perfect, and reworked the Jazzmaster wiring to be part JAzzmaster, part Jagmaster, and allow hthe tri-mode pickup selection and phase/off/on switch for the neck pickup in the scheme - possibly the most complex wiring I'd done to date. The guitar would get a gold Floyd Rose licensed tremolo unit and locking nut, a new neck (blocks+binding 24" scale 22 fret neck, which I had to demolish the front wall to the neck pocket to get it to intonate properly with the Floyd Rose licenced trem). The result was a very comfortable, great sounding offset "shred machine". Later, in 2024, while building one of the later guitars in this list, the JagMaster got upgraded to a matte-gold Floyd Rose Special locking tremolo with the big brass block in it. Since then, it's seen a lot of action on Bandlab.
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CreepingNet H806 REV2
| 2023
| IN 2023, for our 10th wedding anniversary, I replaced the guitar of my wifes that...uh...had a bad ending with this. Needless to say, she wasn't happy with it. The blue color was already being used on another build, the headstock looked stupid, the body was too heavy, the pickguard was dumb...she didn't like it, so I used it for awhile. In 2024, I ordered a new 24" scale neck from someone's parted out "Kurt Cobain Jaguar Kit" - one of those cheesy chinese guitar kits - so I put THAT neck on it and it really changed the outlook on the axe. IN late 2024, the guitar was stripped down again and is now being repainted muted pink with a new white anti-scratch pickguard, and matching headstock (plus the third or 4th guitar of mine to get my own waterslide decal on it).
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"Kramer" Strikus 3000ST
| 2024
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2003 B.C. Rich Warlock Bronze Custom
| 2024
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2024 CreepingNet Flying Fuji/Guitari/AtariCaster
| 2024
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2024 CreepingNet Classic HHFR
| 2024
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