Happy Birthday To Me!

My gift to myself this year is a bad-ass custom carved guitar :)  I actually completely finished the guitar about 2 weeks ago and have been playing it pretty much every day since I completed it.  I'm just now getting around to posting pictures however.  It sounds awesome, even better than my American Strat that I have had for a few years.  I think it is because of the Texas Specials I put in it and all the shielding in the pickup cavity.  It has a super clean tone with almost zero noise.  It plays beautifully and I've set it up with low action on the strings for now.  I may tweak that a bit but overall it is very comfortable to play.  It weighs a little less than my American Strat, probably because of the type of wood the body is made from.  But it has great sustain which is something I was a little worried about.  Now for the pics, enjoy!

rosewood pickguard & volume/tone knobs, walnut selector know & pickup covers

Cocobolo heartwood tuner knobs

back of the guitar

Rosewood cavity plate & inlay

Paisley neck plate

Closeup of the controls

Walnut pickup covers

Whammy bar with carved wooden cap

I already had this leather strap on my acoustic, but it looks great on this guitar so I'm going to keep it on this one

This project was definitely a labor of love and it was way more effort than I anticipated.  But the end result is better than I could have anticipated.  It looks great and plays great.  I started in early May, and finished mid-October so it took about 5 months from start to finish.  But totally worth it.  I think I'm going to do another carved guitar in the future, but I'm planning to just enjoy this one for now.  It'll be a few months before I even want to start thinking about starting a new project.