Wonky Frets 2 - Multiscale Sixer

[ScottR]

Yeah you are just going to need to get picky about the piece of scrap you use to mend the gremlin bite. I guess the little buggers went back down to where it is summertime. You may want to take a blade and continue the pores or grain lines from your body into your plug to break up that straight line a bit too.

When you covered your fretboard with tape, is that just one wide piece, with slots for the frets razored in? Clever. I always cut the tape into strips and lay them along each side of the frets. I may have to try your way.

7 hours ago, curtisa said:

16" Radius beam gets 400 grit paper stuck on and then the neck gets levelled on the beam:

You used your 16" radius beam to level your frets? If your fretboard was radiused to 16" then the crowns of your frets have a radius of 16.08" or so, and the beam will take more off from the edges, if used for leveling. How did you get around that?

SR

[psikoT]

2 hours ago, ScottR said:

You used your 16" radius beam to level your frets? If your fretboard was radiused to 16" then the crowns of your frets have a radius of 16.08" or so, and the beam will take more off from the edges, if used for leveling. How did you get around that?

Well, you got me thinking... live and learn, I never would be able to figure out by myself!

I had to make a drawing to calculate the amount of material you remove from the edge. For a radius of 16", a 2mm fret gets exactly 16.1575" radius in the crown. A 16" radius beam will remove exactly 0.0007" more material in the fret end (0,017mm or a pussy hair in the metric system)... something to consider, although I could no reach that level of precision even doing it well.

(I forgot to say that the width of the fretboard in the calculation was 55 mm) 

[ScottR]

That's pretty precise math. I only mention it all because of guy that started a thread last year and was using his radius beam to level his frets as well. He expressed surprise at the fact the edges of his frets were getting more material removed than the centers and worried that he was doing something wrong. I had to think for a bit before I realized what it was. Andrew doesn't appear to be having that issue based on his pictures......so I was kind of wondering how he got around it. Your math shows it to be a pretty small issue, which probably worked in Andrew's favor. And the fact that it was his first attempt was probably more of the newbies propblem.

SR

[Prostheta]

In the metric system, that's an ant's bollock. 

Interestingly, my phone suggested "bollockgulls". That must be a joke about the seagulls on Helsinki having danglies. 

[psikoT]

Actually, I think the fact of having a different radius in the crown is not a problem at all, as long as you can adjust the height of the saddles individually... anyway, this is one of those things you have in front of your nose and you don't see them.

First build?... Seriously?... I don't believe it.

[Prostheta]

I prefer to use a straightedge in line with the string paths, however there's nothing wrong with using a radiusing beam method since the variance is negligible in real terms. Not even worth thinking about.

[ScottR]

2 hours ago, psikoT said:

First build?... Seriously?... I don't believe it.

Not Andrew's (curtisa) first build, the guy that was having trouble's first build.

SR

[curtisa]

Yep, the radius beam will take the edges of the frets down ever so slightly, but the excess material removed is so miniscule it's not worth worrying about too much. I guess if I was using a really small radius fretboard to start with or really low frets I'd probably use a flat beam instead.
 

Quote

 

Yeah you are just going to need to get picky about the piece of scrap you use to mend the gremlin bite. I guess the little buggers went back down to where it is summertime. You may want to take a blade and continue the pores or grain lines from your body into your plug to break up that straight line a bit too.

When you covered your fretboard with tape, is that just one wide piece, with slots for the frets razored in? Clever. I always cut the tape into strips and lay them along each side of the frets. I may have to try your way.

 

It'll be the colour of the chip that gives me the most grief with a fix like this. As you say, I can always fake the grain lines at the point where the two differing timbers meet.

I use 1" wide tape for the fretwork. On the lower frets I just lay two pieces overlapping each other flush up against the side of each fret. As the gaps get narrower I just use one piece, push down the excess into the adjacent fret with my fingernail and gently slice off the excess with a sharp scalpel under the fret. As you go further up the board the offcut of tape starts becoming wide enough to be used on the upper frets too, so it gets repurposed as well.

 

[curtisa]

Attempt number 3:

 

Better than the last two attempts. Still not wonderful, but I think I could live with it. Probably the worst of it is where the taper of the replacement piece runs out and the faint glue line is visible, but that will probably always be a problem no matter how well the patch matches the surrounding grain.

[Prostheta]

It always will be since it runs parallel to the grain. That's a pretty damn good improvement over the last couple of tries. Look at it this way; the router bearing dropping into the jack hole gremlin will now be truly exorcised....this will be permanently imprinted onto your brain to bear this in mind in future. 

[ScottR]

Much improved. Rub some good fashioned grime into that area and take a few blind stabs at it with the jack pin and it will completely disappear.

SR

[curtisa]

For the last two multiscale builds I used EMGs pickups. Low impedance active pickups negate the need to ground the strings to reduce noise, so I simply omitted grounding the saddles. This time round I'm installing Lace Alumitones which do need the strings grounded. Grounding a standard bridge with a metal baseplate is easy, where any contact point on the bridge automatically conducts through to all six strings by virtue of all metal components being in contact with each other. Grounding the strings on these multiscales presents a challenge in that each saddle must be grounded separately.

Here's yet another anally-retentive solution:

 

First coat of oil on the body. Going to be redder than I expected:

[Prostheta]

I wouldn't call it anally retentive, that is unless you believe that all engineered solutions are a product of that....

That's a great idea, and really nicely implemented.

[KnightroExpress]

That grounding solution is fantastic. I'm doing something similar with my guitars, but just using a 1/8" strip of conductive tape as the ground strip rather than your much nicer plate. 

[pan_kara]

Another way of doing this with string-thru saddles is what I saw on my Mayones - they connect all the string ferrules on the other side of the body with a wire in a sort of "multiple figure of eight" weave. I suppose it's for the same reason.

[curtisa]

I had seen a similar bare wire method elsewhere, where the wire is laced under the saddles, but I felt it was a bit rough around the edges to look at...Not that you can see it once the saddles are screwed down.

[Prostheta]

I've seen it done that way on many commercial instruments, including my Yamaha RBX-775.

[curtisa]

Time to get the Evil Twin finished off. Finally feels like it's playing nicely for a change.

If this looks a little more complicated than usual, it is. These Alumitones humbuckers have a coil split function which I've incorporated as a push-pull function on the volume pot:

 

Neck finally on for good:

 

[curtisa]

A fresh bone nut blank to get fitted:

 

Mark the edges of the fret board. Have to remember to mark both back and front faces, as the nut sits at a an angle, so the amount to come off the sides also gets cut at an angle (I have botched this up in the past and trimmed the nut edges square):

 

Use the old half-a-pencil trick and trace the curvature of the frets onto the leading face of the nut. The nut is then trimmed down to almost this line to get rid of the excess:

Don't forget to mark the angled sides:

Trim/file/sand off the excess:

 

[curtisa]

Measure in from the edges of the fretboard the position of the outer edges of the E/E strings, in this case about 1/8":

Fit a couple of strings  and trace the outside of them onto the nut top face:

Mark the centres of each outline and measure/mark the gaps using a string spacing rule. Even with the angled nut the ruler still works perfectly well:

I like to scribe some notches into the nut with the scalpel, just to give the files something to guide into. Makes it easier to start filing, as the pencil marks are hard to line up underneath the file visually:

Rough-in the slots with a cheap and nasty nut slotting file, just to get things started:

Then switch to the guaged nut files for the final slots. Note the angle of the file relative to the fretboard and headstock. This helps guarantee a good breakpoint at the leading edge of the nut face where the string takes off towards the bridge. The trailing (tuner end) of the nut slots can be feathered downwards further after the nut slot depth is cut to help alleviate strings binding in the slots:

Check the depth as you go. It's easy to gradually go lower if you need to, but disaster is awaiting if you go too quickly. I'm shooting for about 0.007" with the feeler gauge. Also need to remember to do this with the string at pitch. as the string tension will squish the nut down into the nut shelf, which can make the slot slightly lower compared with no/low string tension:

After all six slots are cut the nut comes out and gets polished through the grits to 1200g. The Top edge gets angled downwards, and the corners and edges can be softened a little to make it a little more comfortable to the playing hand:

Time for one of these:

[Prostheta]

That should be a nut-making how-to.

[curtisa]

Your people should call my people and we should do lunch,

49 minutes ago, curtisa said:

Check the depth as you go. It's easy to gradually go lower if you need to, but disaster is awaiting if you go too quickly. I'm shooting for about 0.007" with the feeler gauge. Also need to remember to do this with the string at pitch. as the string tension will squish the nut down into the nut shelf, which can make the slot slightly lower compared with no/low string tension:

Just realised I missed a bit of crucial information to this pic. What I would do if I hadn't been holding the camera is pressing the string between the 2nd and 3rd frets and measuring the gap between the string and the 1st fret with the feeler gauge.

[Andyjr1515]

These are coming along just great.  Some excellent tips and techniques along the way, too.  Thanks for this great thread 

[Prostheta]

5 hours ago, curtisa said:

Your people should call my people and we should do lunch,

 

Can. Open.

Red tape. Everywhere.

[ScottR]

Excellent work, documentation, and cheers to James Boag!

SR