Life on the frozen tundra of South Dakota Life on the frozen tundra of South Dakota

Instrument Completed On 08/06/2014

Instrument Completed On 08/06/2014

This guitar was heavily influenced by a picture of a Reverend Rocco guitar I saw back in the 90's. I took some of the ideas from that picture and then tweaked it to fit my tastes. What came out in the end is probably my favorite guitar I've built so far.

I have a good friend who asked me to teach him how to build a guitar. Rather than just telling him what to do, I built this one along side of him. Our guitars turned out very different (body shapes, colors, bridges, pickups, pickguards, etc.) but both wound up being pretty cool.

One of the things I like most about this guitar is the color. I mixed the finish by eye, starting with a base of white and then slowly stirring in drops of yellow pigment until the color looked right. Unfortunately the pictures I took don't do justice to the color. Some of the pics make the guitar look white. Anyway, because of the color Tundra Boy started calling the guitar "Banana Pudding" and the name stuck.

I actually built two necks for this guitar. The first one was a 25" scale and after assembling and playing the guitar I decided I didn't like the way it sounded. So I built a 2nd neck with a 25.5" scale. I'll use the first neck on a different guitar so it won't go to waste. Because of this however, the body has serial number #12 and the neck has serial number #16. And likewise, a future guitar will also have mismatching serial numbers when I use the original neck.

Here are all the completed guitar pictures. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos during the construction of this guitar. Not sure why other than laziness. I always kick myself later when I don't take photos. Also, these aren't the best quality pics I've ever taken. I used a different camera this time around and now I know not to do that again.

The specs on the guitar are as follows:

  • Body: Poplar body, front-routed control cavity with a custom made pickguard, standard hardtail bridge, string-through design, strap locks, comfort contoured.

  • Neck: Bolt-on neck. Neck-through design, curly maple, mahogany and walnut laminates, maple fretboard, black dot inlays, 22 frets, 25.5" scale, locking tuners, Tusq nut, dual-action truss rod.

  • Electronics: GFS premium alnico single coils, master volume and tone controls, 5 way switch, pickguard mounted output jack.

  • Finish: Nitrocellulose lacquer on the body, satin poly on the neck.

First, a full shot of the whole guitar:
Whole Guitar Front View

A couple full shots from different angles:
Whole Guitar Left View Whole Guitar Right View

The body close-up:
Body Close Up

Front view of the neck:
Neck Front View

Close-up of the headstock:
Headstock Closeup

A couple different angles of the body:
Angled Body View Another Angled Body View

A full shot of the back of the guitar:
Whole Guitar Rear View

A few different angled shots of the whole rear of the guitar:
Left Guitar Rear View Right Guitar Rear View

A couple close-ups of the back of the body:
Body Left Rear View Body Right Rear View

The back of the neck:
Back Of The Neck

The back of the headstock:
Back Of The Headstock

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This page last updated on 06/28/2018