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keeper of the crystal skulls

Here we have my “ keeper of the skulls “ one stringer .
I used and antique 1950’s plexi glass sunburst tissue box as the body ,
The neck is pure Lucite .
The bridge base is real jade with a brass bridge . the large diamond shape cut piece is actually smelted quartz . the faux “pickups” , are aquamarine stone and quartz stone both wound with copper , and the thing in the middle came from a clock .
The cluster on the top is a real amethyst cluster .
And there is a metal skull by the nut .
And the buttons are off my dragon telephone (the one I made the guitar out of ) .
I had to heat up a hole cutter on the stove to melt through the box without cracking it etc ,, to allow the neck to slide in . other than that , it’s a pretty straight forward build .
She sounds better than this recording ,, sorry I have a crapppy set up that needs tweaked every time to record nicely . .. after an hour messing around with it ,, this is what ya get ;-)
I have a rod piezo in it, “adjustable “ ,, and as you can hear when I switched over to distortion .. the rod slipped out a bit and got a bit rattley . .. sorry bout that messiness at the end . ;-/
Sounds way better live ;-)
Hope you like the keeper of the skulls ..
(and yes those are real crystal skulls ,, a small part of my collection )

enjoy .

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Comment by the anonymous pick on December 17, 2011 at 12:34am: thanks slowpaw and tea ;-) i'm giving it some tweeks , that jade bridge base likes to slide around .

Comment by Slowpaw Steve T on December 16, 2011 at 10:57pm: sounds 50's too, cool! (-:

Comment by the anonymous pick on December 16, 2011 at 6:39pm: hi ed . the sound and tone are actually really good on this thing .. (the vid sound does not do it   justice .)

that   tissue box is more of a hard plastic and has i   nice tone when you "tounge " an end of it .

i'm using a rod piezo    in this one .. it seems to work   great .

i put a bead of hot glue around the   neck hole   and let it dry      then slipped the neck in and let it act as a cushon for any rattle . im sure that would work freat   on the front and   back too for you (without actually ""Glueing"" it on . ) use the hot glue more as a washer or seal then "glue    , if ya didnt wanna keep it glued shut for   good   . ;-)

Comment by eK on December 16, 2011 at 6:22pm: Now that is just too bloody cool to be real! Terrific sound too. Really like that neo-surf/rockabilly vibe you get out of it. I'm in the middle of a build right now and was debating using plexiglass for the top and back and wondering how it would sound. Thanks to this, I'm a lot more confident about using it.

Comment by the anonymous pick on December 16, 2011 at 6:16pm: thanks .. there a few bucks worth of real gemstone and crystals on thet thing .. so i guess its "a real gem " ;-)