Self playing Doppelcaster

Life is cruel: the very day i finished the Doppelcaster, I played on it one hour - enough to understand that it will take a long time of practice to figure out what to do with it - then I turned it into the sound installation for which it's been made. So it's currently hanging on a wall of the Akademie Schlos Solitude in Stuttgart, next to the video I posted previously, both being part of the exhibition Angel Meat I already mentioned. Now I'm back home, won't see it before one month - then the hardest will come...

Doppelcaster

Ladie and Gentlemen, the Doppelcaster!

Here it is, the Doppelcaster is born (and I must say that I'm quite proud of myself)! 

The lower neck is stringed in Nashville tuning (you can buy the set from D'Addario), the upper one is supposed to be replaced by a baritone one as soon as I've saved enough money to buy one. There are two outputs, so I can play each neck with its own effects... Better pictures will come soon, and a demo once I figured out what to do with a double neck guitar... I feel like playing like John McLaughlin but I'm not able to, so I have to find my own way...

You can also noticed that I'm extremely bad at soldering, but after a lot of sweat and some help from Seymour Duncan's wiring diagrams, I managed to do the job - and it works... 

more pickguards

Ferrules and pickguard variations

the finish

Two layers of wood stain and one of oil - still drying... 

in spite of the hours of standing, there's been a few small patches of the previous finish left, that I discovered too late, after I put the color. At first I was  desperate and decided to cover it all with lack, then I put all the gear on and after all, the few flaws end up looking like a slight relicking - absolutely involuntary since I usually hate that - and it feels good. Tonight I finish the oiling and tomorrow I start soldering (gasp!)

sanding the doppelcaster

Had to interrupt the Doppelcaster making for a few days because of performance tonight (yes, the performance for which the guitar was initially planed - didn't make it!) 

Thought I would post a few some beginner's considerations. First, the polyurethane finish goes deeper than I thought, I made a first sanding that felt good enough, but when I tried wood stain on it, it proved not enough and it needed a few extra hours sanding to reach the bare wood. 

I learned a few things doing this: it's way better to work in your basement with protecting goggles and dust mask than in your living room (yes, I can be dumb sometimes)! And you shouldn't spend three hours machine sanding in the morning when you rehearse music in the afternoon - I actually still have sore hands one week later!  And wood stain is not the best solution for refinishing, because it requires a perfectly neat wood.

doppelcaster project | stage 8

pickguard sketch 2

I'm know thinking of 2 pickguards Jumior style...

Doppelcaster body

Here it is! Body adjusted and glued, thanks to my friend Brita and her carpenter's skills and machines! 

The next stage requires a little bit of plastic wood to fill unused screw holes and a lot of sanding, then the next difficulty is drilling for the string-through-body system - probably a details if you have a drill press but quite tricky made by hand on the kitchen table...

pickguard sketch

Was watching yesterday at the short lived Tele Junior with its very cool reduced pickguard - on the Doppelcaster it would look quite good... Now I'm suffering trying to make the two bodies fit exactly to glue them together... Will ask soon the help of a pro because I have the feeling that what I try to do might be completely stupid!

doppelcaster project | stage 7.2

Doppelcaster project | stage 7.1