Muzz

Coming together awesome!

Thanks Levi, what has been cool is that quite a few bits of it and some tools used to make it were presents so my family who gave them to me are interested seeing their gifts turn into a guitar. I got two fret saws given to me, one gentleman's saw and one Japanese dozuki saw, so I had to make sure I used them both

Ferule holes done

I love rasping out the carve on the back by hand, I straightened it up with a spokeshave and finally with a razor blade

Good to see you girls have finally got the bandsaw/scroll saw stuff all sorted out, coz this neck looks amazing so I want to see more progress

Neck holes all OK

Dropping 5 mm for the AANJ

Rounding over with a mini file, 60 and 180 grit

Drilling the Will Ferril holes

I drilled a 3 mm diametre hole 30 mm deep from the input jack centre towards the control cavity. This shouldn't break into the cavity. The spade bit should follow this pilot hole and just break through on the left side into the cavity.

Testing the fit, all OK

Then I drilled the neck screw holes, in from the top with a drill press first on the body, then put the neck in, and follow the holes in 18 mm into the neck. This is the part that scares me, I would hate to see the drill bit pop out the fretboard, that has never happened though, right ?

Wow that looks so cool

I liked The Arctic Monkeys 'set' at the Opening Ceremony, love the groove they got going on Come Together.

I filed the top and bottom off the Les Paul cavity cover, then made a frame template.

It fits OK

And that's the routing all done. Still to do - drill the neck screw holes, finish the 'AANJ', tummy tuck and arm rest :0

It sounds rockin, great tone

not too much left to do, I'm looking forward to rasping the arm rest and back cutout, yes the switch seating worked out OK.

Drilling through to the control cavity

Try small mist sprays on the decal until a layer builds up, good luck with it

The only thing I hate is that facial hair is already growing in the second (amber) one.

I just got it

The guitar is lovely, hair and all, what kind of bridge and stop bar is that?

Hey Sup, cheers mate, it's getting closer to getting stained.

I am going to use a back to front Lezzo cover

Cavity template making sure everything fits inside

Scraped out the toggle cavity until it slotted in, it's very tight

Checking the fit, but it's not going to be able to go further in at this stage

Long shank pots so I don't have to pull so much out of the control cavity.

And one more route to do, and the router goes back in the cupboard

Connecting the pickups via the neck cavity

Bridge pick up space

Getting started on the three way toggle switch hole, 18 mm diametre spade stopping 6 mm from the other side. The switch is going to sit flat on the surface of the front.

This thing is a long way from being set up, but the wiring works correctly and the pickups sound very good so far....full of tone and vintage blues. I expect them to get even better once the set up is done and the amp is dialed in.

SR

Magnifico, you gotta be happy with that, what song did you christen it with?

but it's not finished until you get the cover on the control cavity

Love the little drum risers on the machine heads

The crunchy pat is a decent pickup...sort of like an old school overwound...think Van Halen..

But for full blown metal I like those rails they make

http://www.guitarfet...lack-_c_89.html

Be careful when wiring those...they use super thin wire

Cool, that sounds perfect, but I think I will also try those rails at some point. yes I do like the vintage style wire with the braided shield.

Trying out the trem

Routing the bridge pick up cavity, checking the depth

And that's enough for me today, I am starting to loose concentration, time to slob out on the lounge.

Put a 250k volume pot on that dimebucker and it'll be much more mid-rangey / less brite.

The guitar sounds great- the kid plays real good too. Congrats on both you should be proud.

Thanks for the compliments! The super brite tone very well could be the treble and presence both on 10, mid at 7 and bass at 5, carvin sx-200.

I'm very proud of my son, he learned well...

I agree, your son's playing is going real well, and an Ozzie fan too guitar sounds great

Also managed to get a pick up route template done yesterday

Be sure the black & red dyes are not soluable in the same solutions. you know - use alchol based black & water red. or vice versa. & make sure they are dilutable with ONLY one thinner - like only water for one & ONLY alcohol for the other. Otherwise the black will just come up out of the pores & dilute the red & all the hard work blacking the pores goes to waste.

Or at least so I hear, not like this is the frustrated voice of experiance, I am not sitting here typing this after making this very kok up on 2 gitirs this morning - I swear

Oh man, good that that didn't happen or else I would have to say commiserations but I have a theory about stained wood, the more you stuff it up and rub it back and start again, the better it ends up looking in the end.

I have not heard my GFS pickups yet but there are a few things I like already, I ordered them late Thursday night and they arrived on Tuesday.

Plus I am not paying for a stupid plastic display box, so sensible to pack them in cardboard. And, the frame, springs screws and a wiring diagram are all there, why don't all pickup manufacturers do this?

I printed the screw hole template and plastic and lined it up on the centre line, drilled about 5 mm down on the outside holes,

Put the mdf template on, lined up with drill bits, clamped and drilled it. Worked ok, one middle hole is 0.5 mm out, not enough to worry about filling and redrilling. I checked the trem travel, all OK.

I am pleasantly exhausted, two gigs this weekend, I will do a little bit more on the guitar this afternoon though

I took Wez's advice and the Ebony has came up well. I'm heading in the right direction now after a run of bad luck.

Frets now bashed in and the ends super glued. Tomorrow I'll file the ends flush and fill the holes in the fretboard fret ends.

that looks sensational

It looks great, the grain in the ash especially.

I used the plans that Paulie sent me to make templates for the trem route.

Glad I could help. I have a hefty stockpile of stuff if you ever need anything else.

Im diggin the look of this thing, You gonna put the red straight onto the timber or do it candy - tint the clear & build you tone in coats ?

Yep the plans were a great help, there was some variation between them so it was good to look at the differences and then choose the dimensions I was going to go with. For the body I am thinking a light stain with black then rub back and pile the red dye into the wood. Then candy coat it with more red dye in the 2 pack. Then a few coats of clear on the top.

wow thats such a good idea.. why didnt i think of that!? *facepalm* Im off to go make better templates haha

Here's the template getting drilled out

This is probably way unnecessary, I bet in the old days they just placed the bridge on the body and stuck a drill through the holes

Walla! plastic face hammer and it didnt cost $40

I bet some of you guys are still shaking your head

Great idea

Mucking around on PowerPoint making a template for the bridge screw positions

Ledge route

Spring cavity template lined up, no Stew Mac templates here (not that there is anything wrong with that)

Trem route finished

I like the fact you repaired it even though it would have never shown... True pride in craftmanship!

Oh man, I could never leave that big hack there, I have not had a chunk out like that since I first started using a router, thinking back I wonder how I survived that learning curve, I didn't have a clue and started straight on making a few cupboard doors, I learnt real fast after the router nearly got ripped out of my hands as I was trying to take out too much in one go Yesterday was a wake up call, check everything twice before flicking the switch on the router.

Good to see Testament is still in the magazines...I have been a huge fan since '87,and I love all their work except for those two albums in the 90s...Souls of Black and The Ritual..still good,but not as heavy as I would have liked.

Testament are awesome, one of the few metal bands with such a sense of melody, Chuck Billy one of the few growly vocalists that can really sing. Alex Skolnick can run rings around a lot of his contemporaries, his melodic sense and music theory let's him do so much with his solos. I like that he realised back in the day that an Ibanez Tubescreamer set on about half into the front end of a gain on 10 80's tube amp not only kicked it into real high gain but gave such a great definition perfect for precision metal riffs. Did he also play with an ADA preamp for a while? Great that he went with The Heritage guitars. I must have a listen to his jazz stuff sometime. Yep but I think he veered away from the heaviness in the 90s.