A.J.Lucas Obelisk
Electric guitar with inlaid fretboard.
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In the late '70s I studied architecture, and left college with a degree and a sense of structure and form. A stint as a joiner reinforced my interest in working with wood, originally absorbed as a chi...
See all A.J.Lucas luthier guitars →About This Instrument
This Obelisk electric is a special collaborative project between me and my Daughter, Rose. I built the guitar using very lightweight Honduras mahogany that was cut in the early 1940s or possibly earlier. The neck is reclaimed mahogany and the fingerboard Indian rosewood. The pickups are a pair of P90s wound by myself and housed in English sycamore (acer pseudoplatanus) covers - the same wood used in some of the inlays. I also made the knobs using the same wood. The inlay was designed and executed by my daughter, Rose using abalone, mother of pearl, reconstituted rock and sycamore and ash wood. The finish is Osmo Oil which is tactile and shows off the beauty of the woods and is quite hard-wearing. The machine heads are Gotoh The bridge is a Schaller Signum Nut width: 42mm Weight: 3230g Scale length 650mm The guitar comes with a Hiscox Pro II case.
The Build
By A.J.Lucas luthier
My daughter, Rose, is an inlay artist. For a brief period she bred flower beetles with beautiful iridescent carapaces. These were the inspiration behind the inlay theme of this guitar. The inlay materials are abalone, mother of pearl, reconstituted stone and wood (maple and ash). Many of the details such as the beetles' legs and the flower details are engraved into the material and filled with pigment.
The mahogany for the body came from a friend of mine who makes Les Paul replicas. He sourced some lightweight and very resonant mahogany and gave me the offcuts from those planks. I glued these up to make the body. The neck is a piece of reclaimed mahogany from an antique table.
We wanted to avoid using plastic on this instrument so I made the pickup covers and knobs from the same piece of maple used in the inlaid flowers.
All the glue joints are done with traditional hot hide glue and the finish is Osmo oil, which gives a very tactile feel to the guitar.
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