Renovation of an Orpheo B!ch

O

orpheo

Well-known member
I made this guitar in 2018. The flamed maple is from a mill that went out of business in the early 1960s, so this is old wood. I gave it a ziricote fretboard, ziricote headstock cap and backplates, and double cream Seymour Duncan hybrids. But the guitar had issues. The low E tuner was positioned incorrectly, so the string would always bind. The bass stud for the trem was also drilled incorrectly, so the trem wouldn't return to zero. Finally, there was a hump in the neck.
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The X and V are long gone, only the Bich remains.
 
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So, I took off the headstock cap:

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Milled binding
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MOP inlay
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Plugged the holes and added wings of roasted maple, to emulate old growth wood. Yes, the Trussrod is off-center. I know.
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The headstock veneer is now centered, and I used a PRS template so the strings would go straighter. I gave it a headstock logo of the constellation Orion, in MOP dots. Thought that might've been nice. The headstock veneer is ebony.


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Added a backstrap
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And cleaned up the shape a bit but messed it up thanks to a dull bit. Fortunately for me, the issue will be covered by the tuners completely.
 

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What a mess. I plugged the hipshot holes, drilled floyd rose, for the non-finetuner version. DAMN that doesn't intonate properly. Okay, fine. let's do the regular finetuner version with the Graphtech saddles, where the intonation point is 2.5mm forward. Result? Swiss cheese and plugs.

So I glued a small block at the end of the cavity, as you can see in the pic above, dyed it proper, sealed the finish, milled the trem recess and finally, finally...

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This guitar has an action of 0.5mm on the high e, 0.9mm on the low e, with a neck relief of 1/1000 inch. Almost straight.

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I epoxied carbon fiber enforcement plates on the repairs, so the plus would a) not be as visible b) be held by epoxy and carbonfiber as well as titebond.

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The repairs are visible, slightly. I could've pushed the trem forward a bit more but that would have reveiled other issues, so this is fine. The recess is cut in such a way that the floyd can't pull up. Only dive.

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As if nothing ever happened.

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I like the fretboard & inlay & headstock inlay, and all the colors working together.

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I didn't polish too much, because the finish is thin and I didn't want it to look brand new, because, she's not. I didn't give it a new ziricote backplate either; I don't have ziricote anymore :( Might go with walnut later, but hey... it's here. it's fine.
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As you can see, tuners cover up the breakout
 
Mincer said:
Wow! That's a lot of work!
What went wrong when you initially built it?
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what went wrong?

'everything' is not a good answer? ;)

no all kidding aside. I didn't have the quality of templates I have now, nor did I understand the issues with trems as well as I do now, nor was I able to properly mill the trem holes instead of drilling, nor did I have templates that would withstand being routed with, and I didn't have small router bits with ball bearing (5mm and 6mm are in my standard arsenal).
 
orpheo said:
what went wrong?

'everything' is not a good answer? ;)

no all kidding aside. I didn't have the quality of templates I have now, nor did I understand the issues with trems as well as I do now, nor was I able to properly mill the trem holes instead of drilling, nor did I have templates that would withstand being routed with, and I didn't have small router bits with ball bearing (5mm and 6mm are in my standard arsenal).
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Hey man, that's how we learn this stuff. It looks fantastic now, though.
 
I could do this on a number of my first builds. In fact, I did on one of the finishes........stripped it and re-painted it just because I knew I could do a better job now. Has to feel good knowing you can play it as intended!
 
blakejcan said:
I could do this on a number of my first builds. In fact, I did on one of the finishes........stripped it and re-painted it just because I knew I could do a better job now. Has to feel good knowing you can play it as intended!
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I haven't rebuild a guitar in years. I have upgraded many oldies. I have a few LP's that could use a facelift like this (binding, inlay, new headstock etc) but the guitar is just not worth the effort, but this one was.
 
love the orion headstock inlay. what are the double screw pups? i know you said hybrids, but im curious. im a big fan of double screws. i have a double screw a2 brobucker in one of my main guitars, and its killer
 
jeremy said:
love the orion headstock inlay. what are the double screw pups? i know you said hybrids, but im curious. im a big fan of double screws. i have a double screw a2 brobucker in one of my main guitars, and its killer
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The original pickups were the jb/fullshred hybrid in the bridge, and a jazzB/59B hybrid in the neck, but now I swapped it for a set of Lundgrens. I have a good relationship with Johan Lundgren, and he made me a set based on his M6 pickups, but with a fiberboard baseplate instead of metal (less eddys = more brightness) and with approx 12% underwound coils. Totally my think, but very, very hot and aggressive despite being 8.4k and 10,7k. Asymmetrically wound, by the way. The bridge pickup is bright, super-attacky, crunchy, and leads explode through the amp. The neck pickup is full-fat and creamy.

I love 'm, but not that much. I would love, for example, the pegasus/sentient set, but they don't come in double cream. Not even in parchment anymore.
 
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