Wanted to make this as small as possible for transport. I chose this guitar to give it the Hofner shorty treatment! (see other blog). BTW, pink was not my favourite choice of colour, but Andertons had a sale on them cheap!
Before & After shots:
Was a fairly simple procedure. No truss rod at the nut end to worry about as adjustment for this was at the body end, so I could just drill 6 holes to anchor strings after head was cut down:
....and the completed headstock:
The neck would be separated from the body during travel, so the wood screws were replaced with hex-head bolts and metal inserts for durability with repeated dismantling:
Turning attention to the bridge end, the existing arrangement was replaced with the Chinese headless Bridge system, same as I used on the shorty. This needed to be raised 2mm, in this case using a brass spacer.
In the pictures you see a corian 6mm spacer I made which proved to be way too thick and was duly replaced with the brass plate.
After setting the string heights and intonation, I levelled & polished frets and the guitar was complete:
The final test was how small a bag I could cram it into? An Amazon Basics laptop bag was perfect! 16" diagonal.
My impressions of the guitar are this is the best travel guitar I ever had. Balances well (unlike Shorty), & has a well made slim neck which I find a joy to play. Only sacrifice is limited to 18 frets, but I accept that compromise for the sake of compactness. The mini humbucker pickup is a quality unit with a great sound.
The other mod I made was added a push/pull knob to split the coil. Cant wait to take it on holiday accompanied by my Spark Go!
***********************************************************************
After discovering a new type of tailpiece on AliExpress, I converted another Carry-on, this time YELLOW!
Same techniques used as the pink one, but I slanted the headstock to allow more room for the thicker strings:
With the new tailpiece I could retain the existing bridge position, although I fitted matching bridge:
Finished guitar:
I think I prefer the aesthetics of the yellow guitar as the string hole ferrules are hidden by the tailpiece.......
***********************************************
After living with the yellow guitar, I decided to change the Roller Bridge for a Tune-O-Matic style bridge. I found the rollers the string sat on dulled the tone, and the V- notch was a much better sounding arrangement:
Meantime, I decided to convert the Pink guitar with this type of arrangement. I found the separate bridge/tuning tail end worked better than the all-in-one tail end as the tuners themselves were easier to turn with fingers, and the saddles on the Tune-O-Matic sounded better and less fiddley to adjust.
Unfortunately, I messed up the conversion and damaged the paint around the bridge posts. There were also holes left in the body from the previous tail piece. I took the executive decision to strip the paint off....and look what I found:
It was a total surprise to me too! Under the paint was a stunning piece of wood....with binding!. I used an oil/wax finish to bring up the grain and covered the holes with a brass plate. She looks great now!
I also looked at the practice amp arrangement & ultimately ditched the Sparky Go for a Mooer Prime P1, then P2 and Bogasing M5. This combination totally out-performs the Sparky and is a lot more fun!
