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I’ve reached out to a few – Daniel, Bill, etc. I know Daniel’s got his hands full with two kids and a very active music schedule.
I’ve got a set of the SCGC tuners, but they are the nickel butter bean button rather than ivoroid buttons. I suppose you could do a button swap using ivoroid buttons from StewMac if you wanted.
If you’re interested, ping me.
Yeah, they’re nice, and while they’re designed for blues – that is, after all, what OT plays – the scoop at the end of the FB also works if you’re doing banjo-style frailing, so the player doesn’t smack their nails into the frets.
Gorgeous.
The trick to get them out is to very gently press on the back of the bushing. I made up a jig with the above-mentioned shouldered post, a small screw clamp, and a block on the face with a relief hole for the bushing, and they came out without cracking the lacquer,
Mine were not glued in. They were a very snug press fit, and I made up a tool to press them out from the back very gently – it was a piece of maple turned to 1/4” with a slightly larger shoulder (a bit less than 11/32” AIR) to push on the bottom of the bushings.
Euro spruce is, as Irvine says, picea abides, although noble fir, abies glauca, has also been sold as such. With acid rain, European forest yields are reduced and what is available can vary.
There’s an excellent article in one of the older GAL RedBooks that discusses ‘which spruce is which’; the consensus at that time more or less divided the world into generic European/Alpine/Italian, Englemann (which could and often did sub for European), Adirondack (then barely coming back), Sitka, and a few other things like spruce from northern Japan which Kohno and a few others used. Preferences were very builder-specific.
I’ll see if I can find it and photocopy it for you if you’d like…
mh
Pickup makers like Jason Lollar will wind nearly anything you need – and, as you’ve noted, current tech allows them to create bobbins and magnets of different sizes with mess less fuss than in the pre-CNC era.
If you’re looking for something that’ll feel like an F with a cutaway, though – and by this, I’m thinking a solid body or semi-hollow – try an old (1970s) Gibson L6-S (solid body) or ES225 (semi-hollow). Both come with good pickups – the ES225 has standard PAFs or PAF derivatives. and the L6-S has Bill-Lawrence-designed pickups that are humbucker-sized but have a good deal more versatility, and can mimic anything from a Tele to a Les Paul to a jazz box.
The body sizes are pretty large for electrics so they would have some of the arm-filling feel of the F. The necks are a little small but the overall size might be worth checking out.
If you want to try to make something like that, grab a neck from Warmoth, or a neck-through blank from Stew-Mac and roll your own.
