I’m a big fan of Reverend guitar body shapes. They look sleek and modern especially if you like offsets, and are extremely comfortable to play. Unfortunately they don’t make routing templates for them so I made these myself. It was a fun and interesting process to print out a photo of the body at actual scale, tape the pieces together, and create the routing template out of MDF. I did the same for the pickguard as well.
Specs:
- Neck: Maple with 12-inch radius rosewood fretboard, finished with Tung Oil
- Nut: GraphTech TUSQ XL
- Frets: Jescar FW55090 (equivalent to Dunlop 6105)
- Tuners: GuitarFetish
- Body: Alder with flame maple top
- Pickups: GuitarFetish Lil Puncher XL
- Bridge: Wilkinson
- Finish: Hand-rubbed dye. Honey in back, green burst in front Hand-applied Crystalac BriteTone
This was part of a batch of guitars I built over the course of around 3 months. This one specifically was supposed to be the lesser of two Reverend style guitar bodies but it turned out to be the better one. It has a 2-tone green burst finish on the top and a honey finish on the back. It was the first time using Crystalac Brite tone and I have some mixed thoughts on it. It’s not the easiest to hand apply but it builds up a glossy finish fast, as long as you apply with thin coats. I also sprayed a couple coats of Mohawk’s sanding sealer before the clear.
It was also the first time coming back to building necks from scratch and it wasn’t the most fun at times but it was a good learning experience. I slightly modified the headstock so it was a little more angled than a typical Tele one, but other than that it’s pretty much a Tele-style neck.