Building JS-7 copy

[RGGR]

They are a strange company........I guess they are really motivated and nice but simply a little chaotic....

I have send them an email, including pictures. Will see how they reply. Will keep you guys posted.

[RGGR]

Tumbs up for lmii.com, this was their reply:

Thanks for writing. We do not consider the grey patch to be a defect

(this would be a crack or knot, etc.) but it is a bit off of our

description for the WF1B. We will be sending out a replacement

fingerboard, no charge, as soon as the slotting is done!

How you can turn a disappointed customer into a happy one?? ;-) It's nothing short of what I expected, but still great customer service.

And I could use the current fretboard for a future RG-6 string I might build next. As 6 sting fretboard is slightly less wide at bottom, so coloration will fall off fretboard.

Yibbidi Yibbida fooks!!!!!

[RGGR]

Finally!!!! Got my wood back from planers. I guess the trick of sending my girlfriend in hotpants worked.

Just kidding!!! ;-)

Sanded sides of Limba (Korina) body blank with 280 grit and glued them together.

Used small pieces of wood to line the blanks up, cause wood tends to drift a bit as wood is being clambed in. Some say you shouldn't sand the wood blanks before glueing as you take the small wood fibers off that are needed for bonding. I did anyway, just to make sure all sides are nice and flat.

Used small pieces of fat-free/kitchen paper under small pieces of guiding wood, as wanted to make sure they wouldn't be glued to body blank. I think you also can use some pieces of plastic bag or so......but being in the kitchen it's amazing what you find.

To be honest I tested the fatfree-paper-not-sticking-to-glue trick last week when someone cute was making cookies. ;-)

Edited January 24, 2005 by RGGR

[RGGR]

With glueing of body wood done, I sanded the center of the blank along the glue line nice and flat again. I had cleaned up most of the glue that gued out of there while clambing, so hardly any sanding was needed. Next with doublesided tape I stuck my JS/Radius template to the bodyblank. I traced template with pencil so I had some reference in case template would move.

If I had a bandsaw I would have sawed the rough body shape out of the blank, but as I don't have a one available I needed to come up with other plan.

I'm planning to use a template with template router bit to route out the JS/Radius bodyshape. From what I learned these template bits are not really designed to plow all the way through the bodywood. There are mearly to fluss trim little edge off.

As I didn't have a bandsaw I decided to use a frostner bit to do most of my heavy lifting. I cut holes in my body blank as close as possible to the template. This limba wood really dulls the frostner bit fast, and took me most of the morning to get all holes drilled. My body blank looks like swiss cheese at the moment. ;-)

I drilled for 80-90% through the blank, this way I still have nice flat working area (think neck pocket) once I'm done with routing first couple of passed.

With maple neck blank cut, I started glueing my neck. I copied Marcel's (see GOTM) design with the the two dark wood lines running along the neck. I'm using Maple and Wenge. More on this later.

Can't wait for my router bits to arrive.

Edited January 24, 2005 by RGGR

[GuitarMaestro]

Looks good so far. Nice to hear that lmii does care about their customers as always. I like the JS guitar alot and think about building one after I have completed my current projects. Therefore I wonder how you are going to carve the top. You wrote you will do it by hand. But will you carve it by feel or did you take exact measurements? Would be quite difficult for a non-mathematical shape like that. Lemme know how you plan to get that right....

P.s.: Nice Ass

[RGGR]

I wonder how you are going to carve the top. You wrote you will do it by hand. But will you carve it by feel or did you take exact measurements? Would be quite difficult for a non-mathematical shape like that.

When I first started looking into building my own guitar I thought of ordering a Warmoth strat body, then I contemplated doing an RG body and quickly I made up my mind of doing a JS/Radius design. Looking at the decision tree, you can see trouble written all over it.

;-)

As a first project I'm in well over my head, cause as you said, the JS shape is not the easiest of body shapes. It's simply impossible to take exact measurements......(a dupli carver could come handy in project like this, I guess.)

I'm thinking of using something in between exact measurements and carving by feel. (And even if you have exact measurements you still have to use a lot of feel anyway.) I have tons of pics of JS and Radius guitars from all angles and together with the Cad drawings (http://www.speakeasy.org/~sven/site/radius.html) of the Radius I think I can come a long way.

On the Cad drawings the side curvatures (on multiple spots) are marked out. I will make templates of these curves........it has rough shape detailed on there and a final detailed shape. I'm planning to use both drawings as base.

But I won't shy away from making changes to original design. Cause I don't see how a AANJ/Radius/JS/7-String/24 Frets/Tilted headstock can be an exact Ibanez copy, anyhow.

Although I discovered lately there actually has been a AANJ Radius available in the past. So I guess my guitar will be a Radius-7 string copy with 24 Frets. But who will care anyway, as long as it sounds and looks good, right!!

AANJ Radius

I haven't decided exactly what type of control cavity shape to use........Radius type design or JS type design. They both have slightly different knob/switch position and resulting cavity shape.

JS control cavity

Radius control cavity

JS has angled output jack and more round shape control cavity cover. Personally I'm leaning a tid bit more towards the JS design.

And as I will be using 7 String trem, my control cavity will have to be adjusted to accomodate this anyway.

Edited June 3, 2005 by RGGR

[RGGR]

As I'm still early in my built, I still can make adjustments as I go along........and I would like your input on what 7 string tremolo to use.

This are the options I'm considering:

Ibanez Edge Pro: 299 Euro

Ibanez Lo Pro Edge: 225 Euro

Original Floyd Rose: 160 Dollar

I was planning on using the new Edge Pro......but I have little difficulty with spending 299 Euro on just a tremolo.

What are your opinions on the alternatives? Would like some input.

I saw Marcel used a Lo Pro on his awesome 7 String, I know LGM is using Original Floyd Roses on his new guitars........

Edited September 14, 2004 by RGGR

[GuitarMaestro]

Hi!

Several things:

1. Seems you are quite well prepared concerning the carve of the top....I am really looking forward to seeing your results.

2. DO NOT use the original Ibanez countrol layout. In my opinion it is just stupid. You have two to THREE(!) cavities in the back on Ibanez guitars. One for the trem, one for the pots and sometimes one more for the jack. Every single one of them is way oversized. Look at the pictures of my 7-string. I did much smaller cavities and only two of them. Additionally I only routed them full depth where needed. The pot cavity has three deep holes for the two pots and the switch the rest is only 15mm deep. That allowed me to keep alot more of the good tonewood. I think it's a shame how much wood Ibanez decided to waste for their cavities.

3. If you don't want a Low Pro Trem then buy the Floyd unit. It's way cheaper then the Edge Pro unit and about the same quality. I had to go with the expensive Ibanez Low Pro Edge trem, because I HATE all floyds that are not low pro. But if you don't need a low-pro why pay 299€ for the Ibanez unit?

Just my opinions,

Marcel!

P.s.: Thanks for calling my 7 awesome

[RGGR]

DO NOT use the original Ibanez countrol layout. In my opinion it is just stupid. You have two to THREE(!) cavities in the back on Ibanez guitars. One for the trem, one for the pots and sometimes one more for the jack. Every single one of them is way oversized. ......

I have seen that too. I was always under the impression that this was done to safe weight or so. Cause my limba body is still quite heavy, and although I'm still early in the built, I thought it would be rather okay to loose some wood by routing the control cavities like that.

Additionally I only routed them full depth where needed. The pot cavity has three deep holes for the two pots and the switch the rest is only 15mm deep. That allowed me to keep alot more of the good tonewood. I think it's a shame how much wood Ibanez decided to waste for their cavities.

The control cavity route will be last route I will do on guitar anyway. I can always make up my mind how I design these cavities. I do like your idea of leaving some additional wood there for tone.

If you don't want a Low Pro Trem then buy the Floyd unit. It's way cheaper then the Edge Pro unit and about the same quality.

Trouble is, I don't like the OFR design that much. I think the Ibanez Lo Pro and Edge Pro are so much more beautiful. I think Ibanez prized their trems rediculusly on purpose, so people won't be building knock-off with their trems.

Huuuuuuuuuu!!!!

I think I have to bite the bullit anyhow. I have chosen quality parts up to now, and might as well ride it out. Pain will be temperary, pleasure of great guitar forever.

Edited September 15, 2004 by RGGR

[RGGR]

Just received my new grade "B" Ebony fingerboard from lmii.com. Great service.

[GuitarMaestro]

I got a new Ibanez Low Pro Edge 7 for 225€ at my local musich store anthats an okay price I think....maybe look arround a bit more....

[RGGR]

Today I finished glueing the neck. Tomorrow when glue is dry I will plane it one more time and then I'm ready for routing the neck shape out (that is hiding in the wood...)

I figured I can get 2 complete necks out of this piece of wood, and with still a complete Limba body blank available I think this won't be the last guitar I'm building. ;-)

225 for Lo Pro is good price. I might go that route. Haven't made up my mind yet.

Still lots of work waiting for me. Don't worry about it now.

Edited June 3, 2005 by RGGR

[dead_lizard]

Might I suggest also buying some sort of tremsetter (a device which allows you to bend or even break strings without affecting the others), not sure how effective these are on 7strings though, guess you have to tweak it.

Personally I would go for the edgepro. It's got saddle chips, a more aerodynamic shape and you can string-thru body. Plus everytime you look at it you won't have to think "i wonder what the expensive model is like".

I agree with the above about cavity holes. Have you got your plastic for the covers yet (stewmac)?

With regards to the neck, i assume you are not going to carve the back just yet, before the truss channel and fingerboard glueing? By the way, did you decide to get a longer truss rod?

Keep up the good work.

[RGGR]

After planing neck blank one more time (with glueing, laminates tend shift a bit as they have mind of their own, no matter how good you clamb 'm) it was time to route the truss rod channel.

Well, I must confess I'm glad this truss rod channel hides under my fretboard, cause it wasn't pretty. I had bought this cheap Dremel knock-off machine and the little guiding rails that came with it were a piece of *&^%. During route, the bit would be all over the place. A firm hand and some additional guiding was needed to get decent channel routed. After hour into it, my Dremel knock-off was getting overheated!!! What a piece of junk.

My advice......buy real Dremel tool and not cheap Chinese knock-off that I bought, it's a pain in the butt.

Next up was getting the 13 degree headstock angle in the neck blank. With Japanse type saw I cut the neck. Maple and Wenge are some hardwoods and it was bit more work than I expected. ;-)

After cutting neck angle I discovered the cut to be crooked. I think the guiding wood I used caused me not being able to correct when cutting. I re-did the cut but this time without the guiding wood, and now it was straight as an American Freeway. Bit of sanding and this will look awesome. I have to re-do some of my trussrod routing, but that's okay. Wenge looks real nice in between the Maple. Almost like tiger stipes of black and chocolat. Very cool. Almost shame the top of headstock will be painted.

So, today I started with having some screw-ups, but I recovered nicely. Still happy camper.....although today there have been times I really wished I'd bought some second hand "project" of Ebay.

)(*&^%^%#^%!@(&#(!@# ;-)

Edited June 3, 2005 by RGGR

[ProjectGuitar.com]

RGGR- In case you missed it, the rules about pics are:

- ALL pics must be 600x or less in size

- 1 pic per post, except in the Tutorial section. After that, links to pics should be posted.

- Project content only (no pornography or inappropriate material).

Please follow these rules or you will be warned and/or suspended.

[GuitarMaestro]

Sad to hear about the messed up truss rod channel. Depending on how bad it is I would start over. I did that with the first neck I wanted to build for my 7-string and I am very happy I did. I know it would have worked perfectly otherwise and would have been invisible, but I would hate o always think of the messed up channel if I take that axe in my hands....

[RGGR]

As for the rules on this site. Can someone explain this one pic rule to me. Aren't the pics hosted on my server??? Don't quite understand???

- ALL pics must be 600x or less in size

Sorry for asking, but what is 600X or less in size??? Kb???? Mb??? GB???

- Project content only (no pornography or inappropriate material).

I wasn't aware of posting any pornography...........(although religious right may disagree.)

Okay, back to topic.

Sad to hear about the messed up truss rod channel. Depending on how bad it is I would start over.

Neh, didn't mess up that bad. And the fingerboard is covering up this area anyway. Overall the channel is routed very nicely. Just on initial go the router bit wobbled all over the pace. I want my guitar to look good, but I'm not a purist who needs every little detail to be perfect. (at least not the non visible parts. ) Still glad the fingerboard is covering up this area, though. ;-)

As a next step, I have started putting Bondo (Dupli-color spray putty) on headstock area. Thought of doing this early on in the project as I currently still have the whole neck blank to work with. (easy handling.)

Sprayed first layer of Bondo and after drying sanded 99% back off, leaving a nice flat headstock area and filling most the grains in the Wenge. Sprayed second layer of Bondo and after sanding this back I will have perfect flat area for routing out the headstock. Bondo is such a nice product as it clearly marks and fills all lower areas. By doing Bondo first and routing later, I still will have clean wood on the sides of the headstock.

As top of headstock and body will be painted, these will be the areas where I will use Bondo...........gosh, do I love that stuff........

And, nooooo, I know........Bondo should never replace good workmenship. ;-)

Edited September 19, 2004 by RGGR

[Maiden69]

Can someone explain this one pic rule to me. Aren't the pics hosted on my server??? Don't quite understand???

As you stated it's not about bandwidth, it about loading time for the few of us that are on dial-up. To include Brian, one of the owners. And to keep it cluter free.

And the pics are 600kb, once again for those that don't have a bigger display, like my self. I got a lap top and it's 800X600 and I can't increase it without having to move the darn thing around.

I wasn't aware of posting any pornography...........

In this case it wasn't pornography, but it was inappropiate for the forum, especialy when my 10 yr old ask me what's that picture of the girls but for!

I don't know if you have noticed but this is a family forum, we all here try our best to abide by the rules, and most off us are old enough to have kids that will like to involve in our extra activities, like building guitars and playing them instead of having them go outside to the park and waste their time with some low life that might get them interested in something not good!

Back to topic, so far nice job, sorry to hear about the thruss rod rout but nice that it won't hinder the placement or function of it , I use bondo a lot too, just because the 2 part one doesn't shrink, (at least I haven'thad an issue with it ), I haven't tried the spray one, 'cause I haven't seen it. It's hard to get a perfect straight line with te hand saws, it would have helped if you had placed another guide in the bottom part too to prevent the edge from deviating down there.

Keep us posted of your progress.

[GuitarMaestro]

Simply use a hand plane for making the headstock flat instead of using something like bondo which works but is a quite nasty and unproffessional solution in my opinion.

[RGGR]

I use bondo a lot too.....I haven't tried the spray one, 'cause I haven't seen it

The stuff I use is called Dupli-Color Acryl Spray - Spray Putty. (not sure if it's available in the US.) After spraying couple of even coats on wood, I have sanded it back with 180 - 280 (dry) sandpaper (loading up very quickly.) After second layer of Spray putty I will sand it back again with 180 - 280(dry). This should leave me a nice smooth surface.

After routing headstock, I will sand back again with 280 (dry) - 400 (wett). And then layer of Dupli-Color Acryl Spray - Filler and Primer to get layer of primer on the spray putty.

It's hard to get a perfect straight line with hand saws, it would have helped if you had placed another guide in the bottom part too to prevent the edge from deviating down there.

I handn't thought of that. That might do the trick next time.

Simply use a hand plane for making the headstock flat instead of using something like bondo which works but is a quite nasty and unproffessional solution in my opinion.

I did use a handplane to plane the head stock, but that would still leaves me with having to use a grainfiller or a putty/filler to fill the grains of the Wenge laminates. With using a little Bondo the headstock is planed at same time as woodgrains in Wenge are being filled. Not nasty or unprofessional....just smart.

But I agree with you that Bondo never should be substitute for good workmenship.........And as the best Hot Rod and Bike builders use tons of this stuff to get their body panels totally flat.......I don't think Bondo is a 5 letter word in guitar building.......

Can't wait for my router bit to arrive, so I can get going on body and neck.

Also made up my mind of using the Edge Lo Pro trem on this built. Here is nice link with some nice pics of the Lo Pro.

Lo Edge Pro Details

And as Joe and Steve are still using the Egde and Lo Pro's it actually will be closer to the real thing. And the OFR??? Well.....I simply don't want a OFR on my Ibanez copy and paying $350 for Edge Pro just doesn't make a lot of sense. (then trem would be as expensive as all the rest of the guitar).

Edited October 15, 2004 by RGGR

[Kevan]

As for the rules on this site. Can someone explain this one pic rule to me. Aren't the pics hosted on my server??? Don't quite understand???

- (1) pic per post. All other pics in that post must be links (even if it's on your own server). The exception to this is the Tutorials section.

- No hot-linking of pics.

- ALL pics (even in the Tutorial section) must be 600x or less in size.

Sorry for asking, but what is 600X or less in size??? Kb???? Mb??? GB???

Yeah....the pic size limit is 600GB. LMAO

"600x" means "600 by xxx" in pixel size.

600 pixels width is the max posted pic size.

I wasn't aware of posting any pornography...........(although religious right may disagree.)

T&A is not allowed, regardless of context. I'm sure your girlfriend has a great body, but post her "assests" on AmIHotOrNot.com; not here.

[Maiden69]

Nice link, is that your tremolo reference page! I haven't seen that spray putty here, they have a filler primer, like a high build one, self etching for bare metal paint, and regular ones.

[GuitarMaestro]

Not nasty or unprofessional....just smart.

Depends on how you use it really. For grain filling it is fine. But for everything else it is a dirty solution in my opinion. Every good luthier can plane a flat surface without using cheats like that and I would not want a guitar where this stuff was used to hide obvious flaws in workmanship. But as I understand your post you think that way too....

[RGGR]

GuitarMeastro, I think we are on the same page. Bondo has gotten bad name from people using it to mask bad workmenship. That doesn't mean Bondo CAN have a place in building a great instrument.

I read the painting tutorials from ReRanch:

http://home.flash.net/~guitars/solids.html

but it was Marnix Gghesquiere:

http://users.pandora.be/marnix.ghesquiere/ondex.html

(Under body - body work - finishing: Preparing the body)

who got me thinking of using filler and primer direct on the bodywood. In the store I discovered this Dupli-Color -Spray putty. I read Marnix used quite some layers of Filler/Primer to get all grain and imperfections filled. That got me thinking using layer of Bondo (spray putty) to get grains filled and fill in all other imperfection, before using the primer. All I can say it worked out magically.

Some epoxy filler probably would have worked just as good. And although epoxy might sound little bit better than bondo. I'm still loving it.

T&A is not allowed, regardless of context.

I totaly agree with you.

Edited September 19, 2004 by RGGR

[GuitarMaestro]

Agreed 100% concerning the Bondo!