lots happening

So here's the latest news in Smojo's cigar box guitar world. The Uk's Home Grown Music Collective is now live and what a cracking line-up for the fest in October. Tickets for the full day are £25 and well worth it. Why not sign up to the collective if you're in the UK. It's only £10 per year and gives you a fiver discount on the festival tickets. you get a few cool goodies too. take a look at it.

http://www.homegrownmusiccollective.com/page13.htm

The chopped Phantom Rockmaster ratrod project is pretty much finished and I'm well pleased with it. Got it tuned to open G for slide playing. I did a quick rough video so you can see and hear it.

http://www.youtube.com/smojomusic#p/u/6/OQN10GWSNmE

I'm heavily into electronic building at the moment. CBG building is on the back-burner for now. I'm experimenting and learning as I go along and before long hope to have some sort of cool oscillator/synth machine made. Here's the box I found in a junk shop that I will be using to house it. How cool is that? I've been to a car boot sale today scouting for cheap useable stuff. It's a great way to find interesting items that can be modified or utilised in your home made projects. Among my finds were an old solid leather belt that will make a great guitar strap - cost 20p. A weird chrome thing that has blue LEDs in it and it fits over your car exhaust pipe (why) - it'll get hacked and find it's way into one of my electronic synth machines, that cost just £1. Some games machine hand controllers with dual joysticks for just 10p each - they can be broken down for parts. A pair of vintage drum brushes cost 50p. There's plenty of bargains to be had and now Spring is here, car boot season is upon us again so get out and turn your boring Sundays into treasure hunting.

latest photos on the phantom chopped guitar

Most of the tin-can cladding has been done now. Machine heads been refitted. I need to work on the wiring next. There's a brass plate to cover the opening for the wiring. I've tried ageing it with vinegar and heat which has worked to a degree but not quite as aged as i would like.

rockmaster phantom chop job

Remember I showed you a photo of a nasty looking, day-glo, yellow six stringer that I bought cheap in a charity shop. Well I have stripped it down and given it the chop. It was a strat type shape with a pointy headstock. You can see the body has been slightly reshaped and a chunk cut off the headstock. I'll re-drill two new holes for the missing machine heads on the other side of the headstock. The rest of the body is going to get covered with the same oxidised can-metal that you can see on the bottom of the body. The back of the neck will get resprayed to look sort of metallish. The two single coil pups have gone leaving me with just the humbucker and I'll re-fit the vol control and maybe a tone pot. I'm please dwith the way it's looking so far. I'll post more pics as it develops.