mistermikev

very nicely done. really popped w some finish on it. that top is something else... love that you've left the edges like that. nice job.

so... what I'm hearing is that you don't have a bridge in hand... which suggests to me that you may be headed in the wrong direction. A wraparound bridge WILL require an angle to the neck (typically 1.5-2deg) and you really want to have that in hand before you adjust the height of the heel... putting a neck w/o angle together with a wrap tail is going to mean your neck will likely be 1/2" tall sitting off the guitar... and then pickups would be too low... all sorts of potential issues. Unless you are going to 'recess' the bridge itself... you'll need an angled neck pocket. If you go with a strat bridge... no such requirement. hope something there is helpful.

so I will answer you best telling a story... back in 95ish i lived in L.A. and walked into the carvin store over on sunset (the rock walk yeah!) and bought a carvin neck thru body blank. Idk if it had issues when I bought it (I was pretty inexperienced back then) but after building it and investing in it... I realized that at the 3rd fret it had an incredible back bow. I took it to a reputable luthier in L.A. that had a "steam box". He was sure he could fix it. Gave it to him for a week... and at the end of that week he gave it back to me and said "no charge"... it couldn't be fixed. For years I just set some heavier strings on that guitar and dealt with sub-optimal action. Years later I moved to AZ and had my own "steam box" - that's just what I call my garage when it is 120 degrees out. Like a sauna in there in the summer... dry but easily hits 130... maybe 135 when it's that hot. I had bound the neck to something perfectly flat, set that guitar in my garage over a heat spell for about a week. Then took it inside and let it acclimate for a day or two. Unbound it and it was now perfectly straight. put some strings on and it played like a dream w 1/16" action. That lasted about 3 weeks and on it's own it slowly returned to exactly where it had started. The moral of this story is: the wood wants what the wood wants. I am aware that people steam bend wood all the time... acoustic guitars for instance. I have steam bent it myself... but that is typically very thin wood. I think when you are dealing with something as thick as a neck... it is not possible to permanently bend it with precision w/o some other force holding it in place. with this neck... if I HAD to try to fix it... I would try to bind it to something straight and apply heat/steam to it to get it where it needs to be... then immediately glue in carbin fiber strips to fix the truss rod channel and reinforce, then glue the fretboard to it and bind it to something flat. the fretboard/carbon fiber MIGHT hold it in place. That said... it is well established that musicman bakes in a fwd bow to their guitars by glueing them to a radius. this is typically not done with dual action truss rods, but the sm principle will apply. It doesn't HAVE to be straight... but you might want to ensure it is a perfectly straight arc that you are setting into it. You can force it straight to do the fret leveling or use a 'katana' to get it leveled. just know going in... all of this is not GUARANTEED to work. You may put a lot of effort into this to find it is twisted and too resistant to straightening. You may find that after all this the wood is just fighting too much. at that point: "kill it before it grow". hope something there helps.

I'm not sure if I've picked up on something no one else here did... or if I've misunderstood... but here goes... when you say "the fretboard was too high above the surface of the body" that makes me wonder how you determined that? If you were putting a tom bridge on this guitar... it was supposed to have a neck angle... and if routing out for a strat style bridge... then not. Just wanted to point that out, and hopefully you determined this by laying a straight edge over your neck/frets and placing your bridge on the guitar at the intonnation line and ensuring that the straight edge is a little higher than the bridge(not including saddles)... and also keeping in mind that you typically would cut string grooves into the tom saddles. the piece you are talking about is the tenon. typically it is cut a hair proud of the pickup cavity as the legs of the pickup need to extend further into the guitar anyway... and often times folks will router this piece flush after the neck has been glued on. looking at your pic above... that neck is got a lot of space there. as many have mentioned a piece of veneer on either side might do it. Sometimes if it is closer than that, you can just spritz some water on both parts and let them swell... but in this case it's not close enough to get away with that. I guess it's captain obvious over here but I thought it worth mentioning that you def don't want to 'fill' the neck channel on one side only... as the neck needs to be centered. hope something there helps.

Thank you Scott... very much appreciate it!

very much appreciate it ash, thank you.

thank you! well... there is a lot of conflicting info in the world in regards to purpleheart. I've read that the sun turns it purple, and that the sun turns it brown. I've read that the only way to keep it purple is to use uv protection. I've also read that if you seal it well it will prevent browning. Then there is my intuition... I've seen at least a few old alembic guitars that are purpleheart and maple... and they most def did not have uv protectant on them... and yet they are still purple. I've seen lots more that have browned. Having seen the "pen blank guys" take a torch to purpleheart and make it vivid purple, my thoughts were: #1 get it as purple as possible to start with and #2 use osmo polyx which is opaque white when you see it at the right angle... figured this would help keep the sun off a little since I'm not interested in doing a gloss.. I guess time will tell... but for now... I put some tru oil on first and it made it a hair 'magenta'... then the osmo. it is looking pretty good and I'm working out the electronics as well as a few issues with finish and setup. I hope to get to a video of that one in the next week or so. You'll have to check back a decade from now to know for sure if it's still vivid!! hehe.

couple other random ideas... just rule out issue with cable by trying a dif cable, or try another guitar just to rule in that it is def not an environment issue. I would check your input jack very carefully... ensure that the live prong isn't making minor contact with the body wood/shielding.

just go look at 'true bypass dpdt' and you'll see what you need. I do this for every preamp I make/install on all my guitars. Typically mount them on a push pull pot and use the dpdt part to send the signal straight thru if the knob is in down position. from stinkfoot site:

Just my way of acknowledging that I haven't done any of my builds alone. You hung in there with me on that bad driver board issue way longer than I could ever have asked and I deeply appreciate it. Plus you learned me something, and all my high school teachers collectively gasped at how you/Mikro succeeded where they failed lol!

thank you sir! very much appreciate the support!

thank you Biz. Yes, lot of potential in the opposition build. Its def an honor for me.

I don't use a big wheel, but use dremel and polish wheels when polishing my frets and I'll confirm what biz said - he's spot on. I use macguiars and when buffing the body it all is fine and white but polishing the frets I have it all taped off because that compound turns grey and gets in every nook and cranny. Once you get it on the fretboard and under the frets it is almost impossible to get off altho a damp rag will remove most of it.

it's good to have goals right?! with that in mind I think a lot about my own build bucket list... helps me see in the short term what is important in the long term. Basically a list of things I haven't done that I'd ultimately like to achieve. Would love to see your list! build bucket list: study the masters: I've built a dano, tele, strat, p-bass... but in my mind there are a number of instruments that represent the "storyline" of building over the last 70 years (or more) and I want to learn by building them as close as possible to the original with some obvious deviations of my own. for example... I really want to build a 59 burst. other milestones -rick 4001, spector ns2, gibson les paul custom, gibson sg, gibson 335, flying v, explorer, gretsch white falcon or country gentleman, ibanez jem, alvarez scoop, guild jumbo, headless build a semi hollow bass build a 'one piece' neck with skunk stripe on back build a guitar using a compression style truss rod build a neck thru guitar build a 335 center block style hollow body build a "no center block" ie "true" hollow body build an acoustic build an entire guitar out of one piece of wood build as much of the guitar as possible: diy tuning machines, frets and pots aren't practical... but I could see myself build my own truss rod, I could build my own bridge, pickups, pickguard/pickup-rings, knobs, nut, electronics bucket list: - build my own pickups other: - build my own guitar stand

wow, they are offering all sorts of variety for sheets. cool beans.

I'm sure your back is thankful!!

wow, somehow missed this thread but has a look of cool going on. where does one even buy richlite for tops? I've seen the cool fretboard carves on them with the crazy patterns... def on my todo list... would be cool to do a 5/8 carved top out of it. anywho, headless looks great. s/b a killer look with all that flat black.

nice job. very light - that's never easy for me. love the pickup cover and overall style.

Damn... look at you son... built your own cnc and making cool stuffs right off the bat. Impressive. Looking fwd to you breaking a champaign bottle over your first cnc build!! "you go boy"

as mentioned, mineral stains. nothing going to take that out other than possibly creative carving. I would cut a template out of paper and draw your guitar on both sides and see what it will actually look like and how you can minimize it. Better yet, go buy a cool tamo ash veneer from b and b... 2 * $11. You won't even see the transition on the sides if you blend them right and it will look amazing. https://www.dyed-veneer.com/product-p/7424g.htm

where was that brazilian? that's actually fairly reasonable for brazilian. mahog... I am certain you can find stuff locally a lot cheaper than that assuming you can work it from rough. I know my local spot sells genuine mahog, and their price for 8/4 kayha is only $8/bd ft. all this said... yes prices have gone out the roof in the last year. from allenguitar, you can get an indian rosewood fretboard for $17, but you can get a radius'd and slotted one for about $25. their stuff is top notch and they haven't raised their price.

if you want to reduce the grain... one thing you might try is a grainfiller that is as close a match to the wood color as possible. You say you want a clear finish... but you might consider mohawk color tone. It's typically an opaque finish. You'll def still see the grain but it will mute it a lot - think "mary k finish". The more layers you do with it the more muted the grain becomes, so you could essentially just start spraying and decide where you want to stop. It comes in cans and sprays very easy. It IS nitro so you will want to do it outside (fire hazzard) and use a respirator (toxic). They have hundreds of colors, you could def find something close to what gibson would have used on their 'tv yellow' finishes as those are just nitro lacquer with some opaque white and yellow mixed in... or you can look for a darker mahog match for the mahog. just a thought. https://www.mohawkproducts.com/MohawkTone-Finish-Toner-Trend-Colors-p/m115.htm?psafe_param=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwoIqhBhAGEiwArXT7K2etgHN7onQvMVTjBa90RQrJgk3lwWABAa_eqHsycX7b6mx4t8WfeBoCaZMQAvD_BwE tele below was their butterscoth over ash (relic'd after) and the strat here was their 'frost' which is very similar to mary k... over flamed maple. I put it on fairly thick and had used a dark brown dye and sand back on the flame.

throw in a few switches, push pulls, maybe a pcb... you are right back to square lol. good to see you overcame your cavity issue and right back on the horse.

Not true... it is the encouragement of you and others on this forum that makes it all worthwhile. I also very much appreciate your appreciation!!

I specifically mentioned that mine were from the 90s because I'm not sure. That said, even in the 90s... nobody but me seemed to care about that fact. Reading through the modern literature... there is no "unlike lace sensors of the past... blah blah blah" so I suspect they are the sm but can't confirm. It's not like you'll hear a lot of noise when you combine them... they are in fact a quieter pickup... but ime when you combined mine they aren't "totally quiet" like two std single coils are. SRV - op also said: "I have a bunch of vintage spec Strat single coil guitars already...I want to try something new" so I was going off of that. lot of folks have analyzed the srv strats and like anything else you find all sorts of mojo sauce there. I've read a lot of differing views. I've read that he had selected 3 singles from several vintage sets and they were .2 overwound, that he had the original pickups re-wound to a slight overwind, and that they were stock with a neck pu overwound but the bridge/middle were 5.95k spec. Fender did this "#1 autopsy" on his guitar but failed to release the actual measurements... reminds me of hiraldo rivera and the al capone vault. Tex specials are 6.7, 6.5, and 6.2. Funny that they are marketed as "SRV Like" but that different. I have a set in a guitar but just can't like them, altho it might have a lot to do with the heavy stagger and the fact that the guitar they are in is not a 7.25 radius. John Mayer sure makes them sound good.