The idea for the Catalog Queen was to have a model that captures the quirky look of 1960s Japanese catalog guitars but have it be a love letter to their designs and not an imitation.
A heavily worn Redburst finish was basically mandatory, I really should've made a template for the burst though, the black is a bit heavy.
I chose alder for the body because it's a classic body wood that ages quite nicely once the sealer coat is gone, cherry for the neck was chosen because of its hardness (between mahogany and maple)
and because of its lovely color that'll get better with age. I'm a big fan of Indian rosewood fingerboards so that one was a given, it's just a nice feeling fingerboard wood and
the piece I got has a super lovely deep brown, almost black-ish color. The fingerboard is quite thin, veneer style, I just love the look of 50/50 split side dots but I look forward to doing slab style
fingerboards or even 1-piece necks as well.

A close-up shot of the tremolo arm tip I "made", I call it the UFO tip and it just fits the look so well and it's super handy too, there's no way the trem arm will slip out of your fingers with this.
Also check out the "Worm" style masonite pickguard, in its previous life it was the backing of a shelf in my workshop but this is a much cooler use for it.
As you can see on the Harmonistress, I'll be doing a bunch of different pickguards for each model, the different Bobkat versions were a huge inspiration for that, you can decide on which one you want;
I thought about doing plastic HIPS or Bakelite pickguards and I will if the demand is there but you don't really get lovely wear like this on a plastic guard.

Check out the lovely color of the cherry neck, this is just four coats of classic shellac. The nice thing about shellac is that the wood will still get a nice patina, especially on cherry.
The red dots were chosen for their striking color and they go really well with the dark I. rosewood fingerboard too, the third white dot on the 12th fret was a last minute decision but I really like it,
gives it a nice little something to set it apart from standard dot inlays. For future guitars you'll see all different kinds of dot or dot-ish inlays and necks with binding,
I just don't do block inlays, I don't think they fit the vibe of my guitars at all and I'd rather not sell something I'm not proud of.
You can't see it here but the action is super low as well, around 1.3mm on the low E and 1mm on the high e, goes nicely with the 12-14" compound radius.

Some shots of the neck in progress, you can see the rough hand carved V profile pre-sanding on the first pic; I actually re-carved this neck two times, now it's sitting at a very comfortable hard V with 0.82" at the first fret and 0.88" at the 12th.
Check out the "Clown" route on the body, I kind of regret having routed this one for two P90s, I'm more of a narrow & tall pickup geometry guy but I might do some faux90 pickups for this guitar with a different geometry;
looks-wise the Gemini P90s are a great fit and sound-wise, this guitar is a machine, it really sings and you get the benefits of unpotted pickups too!