Formentera-Fritz

My Formentera Dottie

built in 2006, in a 3-weeks course by myself on

Formentera Island, Spain,

with a lot of help from Ekki Hoffmann of

"Formentera Guitars".

25" scale

rosewood neck

ebony fretboard

chambered khaya body

with maple top

guitarfritz wiring for 10 sounds

from 3 singlecoils,

a 3-way and a 5-way-switch

I can`t decide how to call

this tasty

self-applied acrylic finish.

Shall we name it ...

AGED VEAL,

RELIC BEEF

or

WORN PORK

(I swear I`ve never thought about exchanging any initials in "worn pork" like Daniel Sch. suggested, although it would be a cunning stunt to do so...)

further suggestions are welcomed

Dottie in spring 2015: Some crisis mastered and some changes made, waiting for a new wiring concept. Click to enlarge

2006: Shortly after it was completed. On the wall in the Formentera Guitars` workshop together with luthier Ekki Hoffmann`s own beautiful creations. Check the crown inlays on this Les Paul on the right. Click to enlarge.

Normally at the end of the guitar building course the guitars will get an oil finish. Not mine. I knew I wanted to apply a finish at home. The other instruments were oiled and thus don`t look as pale as mine. Click...

The 5 guys from the guitar building course, Ekki (out of fokus but playing very well!) and a local drummer gigging the brandnew instruments in the centre of the San Ferran village, Formentera island, Spain. This was like a dream!

Ekki Hoffmann`s assistant Kiko looking for ... well, ...this giant was a male, too! What the fuck?!?! But since Kiko didn`t wear his high heels that night ...

Fretboard

DOTS

where they don`t belong!?!?

Luthier Ekki Hoffmann thought I was crazy

(... and was probably right):

But I wanted the same distance between the fretboard dots.

From the 3rd up to the 15th fret the dots keep exactly the same distance from one another... From the 15th to the 21st fret the distance is exactly half a s long between these smaller frets...

Sounded like a good idea to me,

looks like shit.

the same idea was applied below and looked better:

My Formentera was called "Q.T." when I designed it in 2005 together with these 3 other guitars. Instead of fretboard dots these guitars have small blocks - or stripes - ... all with the same distance. This way it looks cool. click to enlarge.

These 4 guitar design projects

were my humble contibution to competition

called "build your dream guitar"

that the German guitar magazine "Gitarre & Bass" organized in 2005.

The blindfolded jury didn`t like any of them.

so I had to build this guitar myself.

I still like the body shape a lot. A 3-way toggle AND a 5-way-switch? Yes, guitarfritz-wiring.

Not really a posh top, which is good. Ekki hated the idea that the 5-way switch is the wrong way around. But I`m still convinced that it is a good idea. I have better control over it especially when I switch to positions 2, 3 and 4.

the wiring

A 3-way toggle selects the neck pickup or everything that is coming from the 5-way switch. Or - in the middel position - both, the neck pickup and the 5-way option.

The 5-way-switch provides:

bridge pickup

bridge and middle parallel

middle pickup

bridge in series with middle pickup

bridge in series with neck pickup

(The P-90 bridge pickup is RWRP)

Two P-90 pickups and one pickup with a hybrid construction: P-90-style coil with 6 Fender-style rod magnets. I found these very rare WHITE P-90 covers on Ebay.

My take on the Fender-style headstock and two inlays: My first one and my last one. Ekki hated the idea of doing an inlay at the first fret. But John Petrucci and Music Man liked it and stole it from me ;-) Click to enlarge

the inlay

a heart and a bone

symbolize my love for this guitar (and all electric guitars) and the work that was required to build it.

It took a lot of epoxy filler to hide the gaps that I routed into the ebony fretboard... Doing an inlay is definitely not what I do best.

How it shouldn`t be done: The inlay cracked and you can see some of the filler, too. Too much of it. Click to make it worse.

shaping the body contours and sweating like a pig. So I felt it was appropriate that a bone should stand for all the "hard labour" that went into this guitar.

Khaya thinline back, fat maple top and a subtle "natural" or "fake" binding. I`m proud of this even if I doubt whether Ekki approves it ...

Of course you`ll find flaws where the finish is not perfectly applied but I really like this "worn" look. And after all: Some folks pay a lot of extra money for reliced, worn, aged or fucked up guitars, right? Click to enlarge

rosewood neck glued in with animal glue. I should not have dyed these maple backplates... I `ll sand that off. Click to enlarge to see that Nik-Huber-inspired elegant neck joint

the "life-size" Photoshop design I took to Formentera ...with a pickguard option.

...more ideas how the body could be bevelled .. I still like it and would like to build these two as well.

trouble, trouble, trouble 1

Troubel started in Formentera:

the guitar body fell of the pin router

one pickup rod magnet was the wrong way around

one pickup had to be rewound

I lost a piece of the pearl inlay

we didn`t find it. I had to redo it.

searching a heart shaped piece of pearl inlay on this beautiful floor was hopeless. Nevertheless we tried. Click to search as well

The set list for the open air gig on the square in front of the curch in San Ferran, Formentera. I only knew two songs.

Ekki and the other guys really rocked that village and all the hippy-freak tourists! I am "backstage" on the left, waiting for my two songs

PART 2

SHRINKAGE!

trouble, trouble, trouble:

Back at home I disassembled the guitar

and started applying the finish.

I dyed it red and then applied some clear acrylic coats.

This took approx. 3 months.

But once it was finished, the guitar had shrunk

CONSIDERABLY!

I assume the climate was the problem:

Formentera Island has a very moist climate and central europe where I live is a lot dryer.

Two long cracks coming from the truss rod hole where the little acrylic cover (not pictured) that had refused to shrink had cracked the shrinking ebony board. Click to unshrink!

Considerable body, neck and fretboard shrinkage:

The ebony fretboard had cracked: The little cover for the trussrod adjustment screw had not shrunk, but the fretboard around it had ... Of course the cover beeing too big in relation to the fretboard cavitiy it was sunk in caused cracks.

Also the fret ends were stinging out of the fretboard sides ...worse than on an average Gibson guitar!

After I had finished the guitar this f...... hole had shrunk so much, that I could not get out the plug and had to destroy it, redrill the hole and stick in a new plug...

The guitar body had shrunk ...

... so that the hole for the guitarjack was too tight as well.

Unfortunately this plug was the only part I had left inside the body when I applied the finish. After that, when I wanted to take it out and resolder it this was impossible and the plug could not be moved and not be removed.

I had to use a metal drill and distroy the original plug in order to get it out...

The guitar had shrunk considerably... and so had the pickup cavities. I had to hack them wider with some chisel strokes, damn! Chisel to enlarge!

The guitar body had shrunk so much ...

that the P-90 covers were too big to fit back in their routings The cavities had to be hacked and chiselled wider again...

the high E-string was too close to the fretboard edge... Click to slip off

...MORE SHRINKAGE ...

The worst thing:

After the shrinkage the two posts for the PRS-style wraparound bridge had moved too close together.

The bridge didn`t fit well in between them anymore. It had to be jammed in and was blocked and could not be properly adjusted.

And:

the string spacing was fucked up, too. The high E-string was much too close to the fretboard edge now and slipped off all the time when I played.

The postes were too close to one another and consequently the bridge was jammed and the high E-string was too close to the fretboard edge ... click to suffer bigger

Apart from the shrinkage ...

I disliked the sound, too. Maybe this was a consequence of all the frustration that came with the shrinkage of all important wooden parts of the guitar ...

But I found that the neck singlecoil sounded way too thin and bright and the P-90 in the bridge position was honky, boxy and narrow.

In short:

I HATED

this guitar

(and built, modded and bought some new onest)

7 years went by ...

3 rosewood dowels for two bridge posts! Ready for resetting the bridge posts... Click to drill deeper

...7 years later I decided to give it another try ...

I had some rosewood dowels made to fill the bridge post holes with and then redrilled them a bit further away from the treble side fretboard edge.

Also I decided to try a different bridge:

The Schaller Les Trem.

Done. you can see the darker dowel under the tape and the new holes. Click to dive down

The next chapter is

the next desaster:

..."The Pete Townshend Attitude" or:

Why does God

HATE

me so much?

I have no fotos of the thing that happened next:

I put the bridge and strings back on this cursed asshole-guitar and everything was fine.

At first.

But then I realized that the dowels were too soft and the bridge was too high. And the strings had pulled the bridge posts forward. The bridge posts stood out of the body at an slanted angle.

WRONG AGAIN!

This was the moment when I thought that smashing this fucking guitar could be very, very satisfactory...

guitars can missbehave like real assholes! I realized that the pickup cavities were not deep enough for other pickups types than P-90s ...

I "worked" on with an all new attitude. Fuck you! I made this bastard suffer! Click to enlarge and see the Schaller Les Trem bridge

A second attempt

... to reset the bridge took place...

(with some kind of "I-have-nothing-to-lose-attitude")

I chiselled and hacked away 5mm from the guitar`s top in order to get the bridge posts a bit lower.

I had new dovels made, bigger ones.

I redrilled the slanted post holes.

I refilled them with the bigger dowels.

I redrilled new post holes (the 3rd generation of damned holes!)

I drilled, chiselled and hacked away a lot of wood in order to get deeper pickup cavities.

I drilled new holes going directly from every pickup cavitiy to the electronics cavitiy.

They turned out to be really ugly. (But "she" deserves it.)

Make space for a humbucker, dumb sucker! Chisel to enlarge cavity

If you want to exchange a pickup it can be very annoying having to take out the other 2 pickups as well because all the wires run through the same hole.... Now every pickup has its own hole.

New dovels, new bridge, all problems solved except for the aesthetics. Don`t bother about beauty! For this guitar it`s only about survival! Click to enlarge chances

waiting for the wiring and endless pickup exchanges...

Coming soon:

the making of this

Formentera

guitar

go up

here

go home

here

Some older ideas and digital sketches

Luthier Ekki Hoffmann thought I was crazy

when I showed him how "well prepeared" I was

(... he is probably right). But I`m glad I created so many veriations because after 10 years I still feel that the result turned out well and looks better than early versions.