Tell us about The Starla Clinton!

Starla, 

  A build for my childhood friend who is fond of stars. I got the idea from a 1960 Epiphone Century thinline Semi Hollow with a single P-90 by the neck tone and volume. I tried to get it as thin as possible and surprisingly managed to get it at 1 1/4 inch with a set neck at 2 degree set neck break angle and just enough meat to glue up. Purpleheart top and neck, Koa bottom and fretboard and Mahogany chambered rim/body. Vintage style Jade tuners, knock of bigsby with roller tune o matic bridge. Surprisingly works and stays in tune really well with no binding along with graphite self lubricating nut. Star inlays are from corian and decided to create a round cavity of epoxy resin mixed with sawdust for the stars to lay into. I was not confident attempting to use my dremel and chisels to carve out starshapes to inlay. Turned out really nice and effective. It is a scarf joint headstock at 12 degree, straight string line for smoother tension on the vibrato tailpiece. Kept it simple in shape with just ABS bindings as an added detail. Natural oil finish and lacquered with several coats. Will polish buff in 3 weeks eventually. Surprisingly loud played acoustically and intonated instantly all across the fretboard upon assembly with standard compensation and just a quarter turn on the truss rod for less relief. Much thanks to Mark in his methods of thinking through the set up. Very clean direct sounding with a bit of warmth and not as noisy at all as I thought for P-90s would be. Upon cranking it turns into a very beastly sounding instrument with low subtle feedback of Hollowbodies. I am loving the sonic properties of this build. Perfect tool for recording purposes. As a preference I decided to go longer than Gibson and slightly less than Fender in scale length and took a gamble and challenged myself to decide in 25 1/4 inch scale length. Fret calculations was spot on. The only major mistake I had was underestimating the density and hardness of Purple Heart. All my blades have gone dull and upon assembly. I broke of 2 screw heads by the tuners and 1 screw head on the strap button. My heart sunk in disbelief having gone this far without a hitch and this happens. I managed to make a broken drill bit extractor using a 1/8 inch aluminum tube which I made saw teeth on one  end and drilled to be able to bore out the broken screws. I plugged and filled with Purple Heart scrap and dust, sanded it off and blended well. Luckily it is covered with the hardware and not seen at all. In hindsight, the pilot holes should have allowance in depth and width of screw should not be smaller for such hardwoods. Another mishap, upon routing out the control cavity, my template moved for I did not depress hard enough for the double sided tape to stick well. Yikes. It was somewhat of a blessing. I had left over binding and decided to route the cavity bigger to fit the binding in and actually turned out much nicer look for the cover plate to flush right into it and made for a cleaner fit actually. This has been an awesome journey with the 3 builds I made in a matter of months for my childhood friend and his two sons thanks to Mark Bailey’s methods and tutorials and hungry to learn more and more. Will be signing up soon to be a premium member. As of now I am just a supporter for with the Pandemic I have been furloughed but once I start working full time again I will definitely sign up to build a Bailey Bandsman Semi Hollow chambered centerblock!!! Cannot wait. I have walnut and ebony reserved just for it.

Regards

Clinton