Unveiling the Frankenpeavey!
Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 4:28 pm
Finally! Years ago I started to get the itch for a hybrid superstrat kind of thing. Strat body shape, humbucker. Single humbucker, because I wanted a stripped-down rocker. Tremolo, but not a Floyd (too fiddly, IMO) or a traditional Strat trem (doesn't hold tune well, IME). I looked around at a few options, and then at about the same time, a Peavey Nitro body and an Impact neck popped up on the market for good prices. The neck and body are compatible - same scale, same pocket. (Same factory, probably.) And so a plan was born...the Frankenpeavey!
I went with a Wilkinson/Gotoh VS100N for the bridge, Hipshot open-gear tuners, and a Railhammer Hyper Vintage humbucker. The pickup was not what I'd originally been envisioning, but someone offered it to me when I mentioned this project, and unfortunately that exchange is now lost to the old site, so I don't remember who it was, but after looking at the specs and listening to some samples I decided to go with it! I went with a stacked pot for volume and tone because I didn't want a bunch of controls cluttering up an otherwise very clean-looking body.
The body was originally routed for a Kahler, and it was adaptable to the Gotoh with only minimal woodwork to put in the new studs and enlarge the tremolo rout a touch on one side. I wanted to go with white, and fortunately the neck was already white, so I decided to leave that mostly alone. The body was red, but it stripped easily enough with a heat gun.
The body finish is Montana Gold "shock white" in satin. I wanted white white, not "vintage white"! I don't have any other satin-finish guitars so I thought, what the hell. Plus you don't have to polish it!
The artwork is based around a positive of a Lancaster bomber silhouette. It's kind of a tribute to a famous album... My friend Patti helped me by making a Cricut vinyl cutout from an SVG of the silhouette, and after the body paint was dry, I put the vinyl on the body, and carefully set to work with acrylic paint and a bunch of squeeze bottles and little spray pumps. The painting was all done "live", and it was the most nerve-racking part of the whole process, because spraying acrylic by hand is not the most predictable technique. I wanted that wild, anarchic unpredictable feeling, but doing it that way also means if you screw up there is nothing you can do but keep going, and if you screw up badly there is nothing you can do but sand the whole thing back, repaint, and try again. In the end I'm fairly happy with how it came out even though it's not exactly how I'd envisioned it. There's some texture to the acrylic, which is an interesting contrast to the satin body. Finally I covered the whole thing in Montana varnish.
What else...I wired the tone control "Peavey/Rhodes" style, because I like the possibilities offered by the "adjustable split" kind of thing it offers. The strap was made by my wife out of some fabric she made a friend a bowling shirt with! (Yes, the strap is "backwards", but it photographs better this way. We'll be reversing it.) And, of course, it's held on by Well-Hung Pro-Pins! I would not bother using anything else on a build.
On to the pictures!
I went with a Wilkinson/Gotoh VS100N for the bridge, Hipshot open-gear tuners, and a Railhammer Hyper Vintage humbucker. The pickup was not what I'd originally been envisioning, but someone offered it to me when I mentioned this project, and unfortunately that exchange is now lost to the old site, so I don't remember who it was, but after looking at the specs and listening to some samples I decided to go with it! I went with a stacked pot for volume and tone because I didn't want a bunch of controls cluttering up an otherwise very clean-looking body.
The body was originally routed for a Kahler, and it was adaptable to the Gotoh with only minimal woodwork to put in the new studs and enlarge the tremolo rout a touch on one side. I wanted to go with white, and fortunately the neck was already white, so I decided to leave that mostly alone. The body was red, but it stripped easily enough with a heat gun.
The body finish is Montana Gold "shock white" in satin. I wanted white white, not "vintage white"! I don't have any other satin-finish guitars so I thought, what the hell. Plus you don't have to polish it!
The artwork is based around a positive of a Lancaster bomber silhouette. It's kind of a tribute to a famous album... My friend Patti helped me by making a Cricut vinyl cutout from an SVG of the silhouette, and after the body paint was dry, I put the vinyl on the body, and carefully set to work with acrylic paint and a bunch of squeeze bottles and little spray pumps. The painting was all done "live", and it was the most nerve-racking part of the whole process, because spraying acrylic by hand is not the most predictable technique. I wanted that wild, anarchic unpredictable feeling, but doing it that way also means if you screw up there is nothing you can do but keep going, and if you screw up badly there is nothing you can do but sand the whole thing back, repaint, and try again. In the end I'm fairly happy with how it came out even though it's not exactly how I'd envisioned it. There's some texture to the acrylic, which is an interesting contrast to the satin body. Finally I covered the whole thing in Montana varnish.
What else...I wired the tone control "Peavey/Rhodes" style, because I like the possibilities offered by the "adjustable split" kind of thing it offers. The strap was made by my wife out of some fabric she made a friend a bowling shirt with! (Yes, the strap is "backwards", but it photographs better this way. We'll be reversing it.) And, of course, it's held on by Well-Hung Pro-Pins! I would not bother using anything else on a build.
On to the pictures!
