The Cleopatra Chronicles

Building a new "girlfriend"

Since the 70's I have basically played the same guitar, my trusty old battle-scarred warrior '58 Fender Strat.  The most notable exception is during Lord Tracy when I played the little Strat-shaped Steinbergers.  They were great guitars, and I wish I hadn't sold both of them, but that's the breaks.  The old Strat has gone through many changes, humbuckers unceremoniously dumped into it, the sacrilegious adding of a Floyd Rose trem in the heavy metal days, until I finally saw the light and turned it back into what it was supposed to be in 1991.  It has been the greatest and most loyal friend I have ever had in my life.

I have owned many other guitars, from Les Pauls to doublenecks, from cheap to expensive.  I played 'em all at one time or another, but nothing really could take the place of the Strat.  I was always in love with the body shape, the scale length, single-coil pickups, the whole package.  It's not that I was getting tired of the old babe, I have finally come to the point where I trust my playing abilities enough to want to try something different.  I had been experimenting with some old crap parts this past year, and decided that I was ready to tackle something serious. 

But in which direction to go?  I had originally planned on another Strat design, with some differences.  I decided that I would use Warmoth parts for the guitar.  Located in the Pacific Northwest, Warmoth has a great reputation for both the quality of their woods and their workmanship.  They were the first company to start making the compound-radius necks which give the best balance of comfort and playability.  Their staff is friendly and knowledgeable and will answer any questions you might have.  They want you to be sure of what you want before you order.

I went to their website a few times and surfed around, checking prices and specs and stuff, and gathered enough information to finally get serious.  I was looking at their chambered Strat bodies with extreme interest, when I decided to peruse some alternate body styles.  I noticed that they made Les Paul type bodies also, and after clicking on that link found that they made carved tops and flat tops (like the LP Junior's), so I checked out the carved variety.

On that page was a picture of a body with a 5-way switch slot, 3 pot holes, and routed for two single coils and a humbucker.  It was 'epiphany time.'  I made the choice then and there for a Les Paul body.  Upon further examination, I found that they came with a contour neck-heel and you could get the body chambered for nothing extra.  I chose to get it routed like a Strat, with 3 single-coils.  I had always been wanting to do that since Van Halen stuck humbuckers in his Strat.  You know, just be reverse since hardly anyone I have ever seen did that.  Besides, that is the sound I like.  And with the chambered body, I would lose some of the weight that I didn't want.  I have never believed that weight = sustain and tone.

I decided to make it as Stratty a Les Paul as I could, so I chose alder for the body wood.  For the carved top, I went with flame maple.  I always loved the way Steve Ingle's Les Paul looked, and I wanted to kinda get that vibe.  I knew from the start that I wanted to have Warmoth do the finishing work as well.  Paint and I just don't get along!  I went with the two-tone honey burst for the top, with the back a traditional dark carmel color like you'd find on most Les Pauls.  I agonized over whether or not to have body binding, in the end I didn't and the result is beautiful, but if I ever do it again, I think I will bind.

I went for the Strat-type pickup and control configuration.  In this rout, they leave off the chamber for the LP pickup switch at the top of the guitar, and route the control cavity a bit larger to accommodate the pots plus the 5-way.  All the controls would exit perpendicular to the carved top to keep the aesthetics intact.  I asked if a Strat cable jack would work on the carved top, and Ken Warmoth said no, it wouldn't.  So, in the traditional Les Paul place I had them bore the hole to fit the cool Electrosocket jack that lots of Telecaster guys use.   

Of course I wanted a whammy bar, and a Floyd Rose was out of the question.  Been there, done that and don't wanna go back.  Since the carved top is a bit arched, it precluded the use of the standard Strat temolo so I had to choose a different one.  After looking at everything that was out there, I settled on the Wilkinson.  It's built like a tank, precise to a fault, and I found out later that the matte finish on it is absolutely beautiful.  Warmoth would press the studs in the body if I bought it from them, so that settled that.  All the hardware was going to be gold, to set off the honey burst.  Pickup covers, knobs and all plastic parts I elected to go the cream route.

The neck was to be a Strat-style bolt on, but I felt I needed a tilted peg head to keep the look of the guitar from being too way-out.  I was shooting for different, not gaudy!  Warmoth makes every kind of popular peghead imaginable, and they will even make one to your specifications.  I fell in love with their own Warmoth-style peg head that is between a traditional Gibson and a Paul Reed Smith look, small with sexy curves.  I wanted it to be a good maple neck with a rosewood fret board, sporting some big-ass 6100 frets.  The nut was going to originally be a roller nut, but with the angled peg head, it just wouldn't work.  I went with a graphite nut blank (3 of them in case I screwed up!) and some gold locking Schaller tuners.

The most radical part of the guitar for me was going to be the neck, specifically the fret board.  I had been playing around with scalloping the fret board in the past year.  One of my funky project guitars has a board that I spent a good part of a weekend hand-scalloping and wearing out my damn fingers!  Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a Ying-yang speed player, but I liked the feel of touching only the strings, and I also figured that one of the reasons I always liked high action and big frets on my old Strat was the fact that unless your action is kinda high and your frets are rather large, it's hard to get your fingers underneath the strings to get a good bend on them.  Especially since I also use pretty heavy strings.  This way, I theorized that I could get a fast low action, and still be able to bend 'em.

After bouncing a few emails back and forth with the Warmoth folks, I was ready to order.  You can't order from them over the web, but you can download their order forms and then fax it in, which is what I did.  I bought the lion's share of the parts from them, the rest I ordered from Stewart-Macdonald guitar supply, with the exception of the pickups.

I had originally decided to try those Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups, and even bought some from Musician's Friend.  After thinking about it and reading some reviews, I wasn't so sure these were the pickups for my playing style and tone, so I sent them back.  Thank God they're the Wal-Mart of the internet music biz.  When I turned the old Strat back 'original' years ago, I bought a set of pickups from an old guy that used to frequent Eugene's Guitar Shop named W.L. Van Zandt.  We all called him Van.  They were the best pickups I had ever played.  He made a true vintage, a blues model, and a rock model, which I put in the old Strat.  His rock pickups are a tad overwound, but they don't sacrifice tone for pure output.  I finally decided that I wouldn't have anything other than Van Zandt pickups in this guitar.  Although ol' W.L. has gone home to glory, his wife and nephew still make 'em like he did.  Check out Van Zandt pickups website.  I found the best deal on them at Music Toyz.

So, 'way back before Thanksgiving, I ordered up all the stuff.  Warmoth told me that it would be anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks before my parts would be done.  I took that time to plan and dream about my new love chile and how I was gonna go about putting it all together.  I read and re-read Dan Erlwine's guitar repair book, and thought I could do most of what needed to be done.

I had toyed around with the idea of ordering some nut files and cutting the grooves in the nut myself, which is why I ordered two extra blanks.  But since the nut is such a crucial point in the guitar's playability and intonation, especially on a piece that uses a tremolo, I got cold feet and chickened out.  I decided that if I was gonna spend the bucks to have a nice guitar, I wanted to make sure it played great.  After all, I could experiment with my 'junk' stuff all I wanted until I attained a measure of proficiency.

So I made a call to AB Stephens music store in Huntsville and talked to their well-regarded repairman Tommy Shepard.  Tommy was recommended to me earlier in the year by Mike Roberts, guitarist extraordinaire and leader of the band 5 O'clock Charlie when I needed the frets and nut tended to on my old Strat.  We'd hit it off really well, and I was glad to find someone I could trust in this area to do guitar repair.  Tommy was keen on my idea of the guitar, and offered for me to call him whenever the parts came in and I was ready.

The stuff finally came in in two boxes on the 9th of January.  I had planned on putting it together over the weekend and seeing Tommy the next week.  I called him and he said that he was off to the winter NAAM in LA all the next week, could I get it together and be there on Saturday?  I said yes, hoping all the while that I would be able to do all the work I could without rushing it and screwing something up really bad!

The first thing I did when I got home that Thursday night was lay out all the parts on the kitchen table and take stock of everything I had.  Once that was done, I sat down and wrote out a little outline of what needed to be done and in what order.  I decided that I would shield the control cavity, mount the pickups, and wire everything up first.

I used some sticky real aluminum tape that I found at Wal-Mart to do the shielding.  I put it all over the inner cavity of the control area.  Next, I put the pickups in and pulled the wires through the channels drilled for them, mounted the pots and the 5-way switch and I was ready to wire.  I used to be the worlds worst solder guy, leaving huge blobs all over the place, but I have been practicing and even Tommy thought I did a really nice job.  I took way more time than a pro would have, making sure that everything was right.

When that chore was half-way done, I quit before I got burnt-out and fidgety.  I finished all that up on Friday night.  By Saturday morning when I got up, I put in the tremolo, drilled the holes and installed the strap buttons, and then mounted the tuners on the headstock.  I had to drill six miniscule holes for the dinky phillips wood screws that anchor them down.  I was cursing that second huge cup of coffee, lemme tell ya!

I got it all together as much as I could just in time to leave for Huntsville and the appointment with Tommy Shepard.  Tommy immediately took the parts and started in.  The only flaw we found in Warmoth's workmanship was a small nick on the 10th fret, no doubt caused by a slight slip of the router when they were scalloping the     fretboard.  You could hardly feel it, and Tommy rubbed it out with some fine grit sandpaper.

The first 'problem' was one I had seen from the start, and it was concerning the stud-mounted tremolo.  I would dearly love to have a trem that floated, which is the only way you get true tremolo as the pitch is both raised and lowered.  But I am just too heavy-handed and my attack would ensure that I would be out of tune more often than in.  I noticed that the tremolo mechanism would pull back past the level due to the tension of the springs.  Add strings to balance this out, and you have your 'float' but nothing to hard-stop it's movement back after a push on the bar.

Tommy's solution for this was to cut and glue a small piece of particle board into the tremolo cavity so that the tremolo block would rest up against it when the springs pulled the tremolo back.  He opted for the fiber board because it gave a softer 'stop' that wouldn't make a 'plunk' when the block came back against it.  He ground down a piece of the fiber board, glued it in, and in the end it worked great.  You can see the bit of the board at the picture on the left, hanging in there in the tremolo cavity.

The next thing he did was to set up and cut the nut.  I watched this with great interest, as I want to be able to perform this operation in the future. First of all, the blank had to be cut down to size as it was way too wide.  Nothing wrong, that's just the way they come.  Then, he had to sand it down as it was obviously too high.  He did this by holding it onto his band sander.  Looks like a way to sand the ol' fingers down to me!  Next, he pretty much squared the bottom off and the next thing you know, he had an un-grooved blank that looked like it should fit on the guitar.

The next step was to cut the grooves for the strings.  Tommy pretty much opted for the easy way out, which I can't argue with, and found a pre-cut blank that looked like it had the proper string spread and used this for a guide.  He used the small nut files to start some preliminary grooves in the nut material while it was being held in the vice.  After this, he put a dab of regular super glue on the bottom and stuck it on the guitar.  The guitar was strung and the strings were set in the shallow grooves to check for spacing.  The string tension was then relaxed while he finished out the nut grooves for depth and width, smoothing these out as he went.  A couple of passes and it was ready to string up for good.

That done, the truss rod had to be adjusted forward and back just a bit to keep the neck straight.  Actually, we added just a tad of relief, barely perceptible.  Tommy fooled around with the height of the bridge, but left the final adjustment up to me.  He set the intonation using the absolute wildest gizmo of a chromatic strobe tuner I have ever seen.  I just had to take a picture of it!  It was surprising how close the intonation was on the Wilkinson bridge from the factory.  And no individual bridge height adjustment was necessary---just tweaking the height of the studs.

It was almost all done, except that he had to correct some of my wiring and get rid of a buzz I somehow in my ignorance wired into the mix!  After that, we set the nominal pickup height (he added several of those little rubber boogers that come with the pickups) and I gave it a test drive.  Wow, really great but different and took a bit of getting used to, especially with the deeply scalloped neck.

I did some tweaking when I got it home, and after playing for a couple of hours on my own rig over the next few days came to really feel at home with the guitar.  I ordered a custom-made Egyptian cartouche with 'JimmyR' spelled out in hieroglyphics from the Decal Zone and that's pretty much it.

I am very satisfied with the way the guitar came together and impressed that anything I had to do with creating actually ended up so well!  Many thanks to Tommy Shepard for making sure it was first-rate.  I hope to put Cleopatra into active service very soon, so we'll see ya around!

       Do I look surprised or sumpin'?                                        The finished product, ready to rock!

Yeah, yeah I know....I'm no photographer!  Come and see us live!