https://photos.app.goo.gl/ee6fSgX1XhUhs7Fa2

This one had several incarnations before it was right. It started as a fretless acoustic slide I built to play along with my son. I added a piezo which fed back terribly. I put in a single coil with volume control which was much better. But something about just didn’t do it for me.

I was chatting with my brother about the builds I was doing and that got him interested. I said I’d build him one as soon as I got time, did he want a slide or fretted? Definitely fretted. Full scale or pentatonic plus? He had no idea what that was so I sent him a link to Del Puckett’s video. He definitely wanted pentatonic plus! So I filed that away as a build to do later.

Then, sitting around still not happy with this guitar, I wanted to add frets, but I had already put screws in the fretbosrd as markers, so that made it kind of tough. Then I realized if I just glued a 1/4” fretboard on I could put frets in easily! And I could give it to my brother! I got the fretboard at Home Depot. It was labeled as poplar and a $1.50. Pretty sure it wasn’t poplar but it looked good so I grabbed it. Glued on, frets put in, string tree reconfigured a bit, grounded one of the strings and added a new bridge with a jumbo fret to ground them all. Once the fret board was sanded and oiled it looked gorgeous!

So I was sitting around pretty proud of myself, having figured a nice way to add frets to this guitar and give it to my brother. My wife just shook her head and said I had just pulled the oldest big brother trick in the book: “I don’t want this but it would be awesome for you!” She was totally spot on!

Still, it is a pretty nice guitar. Just finished it tonight. The single coil hums a bit but now it finally feels right! It’s got a decent voice as an acoustic and the 1/4” fretboard makes the neck feel much beefier. Probably a good thing since my brother is a big guy.

Now I just need to find a box it fits in so I can send it to him.

Scott