20 Strings - 3 New Projects

[TripleFan]

Hey!

I want to show the progress on my first ventures in guitar building.

I´m working on three guitars.

No.1

alder body

maple neck with bubinga stripe

pao ferro fretboard

6 strings

scale 670mm

chrome hardware

Schaller Wraparound bridge

Kluson machine heads

Seymour Duncan Blackout pickups

stainless steel extra jumbo frets

6mm nickelsilver dots

arched superstrat bodyshape with 3+3 headstock

binding around body, neck and headstock

body and headstock dyed blue or maroon

No.2

mahogany body

maple neck with bubinga stripe

ebony fretboard

7 strings

scale 25.5"

black hardware

Fenderstyle hardtail bridge

Schallerstyle machine heads

Dimarzio PAF7 pickups

stainless steel extra jumbo frets

4mm offset MOP dots

superstrat bodyshape with Ibanez headstock

body and headstock color bright white

No.3

mahogany body

Ibanez RG7620 neck (maple with bubinga)

rosewood fretboard

7 strings

scale 25.5"

chrome hardware

Ibanez EDGE LoPro trem

Gotoh machine heads

Dimarzio DS7 and AN7 pickups

extra jumbo frets

superstrat bodyshape

That´s the wood I started with. Two slabs of sipo mahogany, maple, bubinga and two pao ferro fretboards.

The rough cut bodies and the joined and glued neck blanks.

A very early mockup of a body with a scarfed neck blank.

Closeup of the scarf.

Another mockup of one of the bodies with a half finished neck I have done as a test.

The neck blanks with cut, sanded and drilled headstocks. The fretboards are bought preslotted. The ebony one has it´s sidedots allready fitted.

[TripleFan]

The neck blanks are thicknessed to 20mm. The trussrod slots are routed and the headstocks are thicknessed.

When I routed the access for the trussrod wrench the router bit damaged the side of the slot. Nothing serious but in the future I have to figure out a better way.

The fretboards glued on. The neck blanks got routed flush with the boards.

I cut back the fingerboard for the binding on the sixstring neck. Not the nicest job in the world but I hope it will work. It was the first time I used StewMac´s Purfling Cutter and a chisel.

[TripleFan]

The binding channel on the headstock. Even worse...

But I managed to clean it up a little.

The glued on binding. The edges and points came out nice but there are some gouges I have to clean up.

I hope the pictures are OK when linked as thumbs?!

Anyway, that´s where it stands right now.

Next steps will be to clean up the bodies and route the neck pockets. After that I will radius the fretboards and shape the necks.

[Xanthus]

http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3000019qn6.jpg

In that pic, the necks look like they were cut at an angle on the board. Was this intentional, or are you trying to pull some forced-perspective camera trickery on us?

Looking very good, very clean work! Not a fan of the hardware and paintjob on the first mockup, but if you like it, go for it!

[TripleFan]

Thanks for your kind words. But I fear my skills as a photographer are even worse than my guitar building. There are many small failures that don´t show in the pictures and I hope to resolve in future builds.

I´m not sure what you mean? Remember in this pic the fretboards are not glued yet.

Anything else is probably only a bad camera angle.

At least I tried to scarf the headstocks as even as I could get them...

The bridge choice on No.1 kinda... evolved...

Don´t want to go into the details. I´m not too much into wraparound bridges myself but the Schaller piece looks nice and sturdy. I think it will make a nice break from my usual trem bridges.

I´ve heared many good things about the Blackouts and want to try actives for quite some time now.

Well this isn´t a paintjob so much in the digital mockup. I just colored the body that way to get a feel for the different parts. That´s all.

[PTU 7's.]

The guitars are looking very good. I want to see both 7 strings finished.

[TripleFan]

Thanks.

How´s your eightstring build going? I´m following your thread at sevenstring.org carefully.

[PTU 7's.]

It's going very good. Waiting to glue the wings, but this week i have been working a lot and didn't have any time to do it. I need more time for the lutherie, but it's going great.

Frank.

[TripleFan]

Minor progress on the two sevenstrings.

The necks are in and I mounted the bridge of the hardtail one.

The hardtail seventring with aligned bridge.

Closeup of the bridge

Bridge mounted

Trem sevenstring with neck

Back of neck with ferrules

Sadly the neck pockets are a tad bigger than I wanted them because I reused the routing template of an earlier sample. It´s not so bad on No.3 (the one with the trem) and on No.2 (hardtail) painting the neck will take care of the play.

All in all I´m fairly happy.

[PTU 7's.]

Hey man, that 7 string it's coming amazing. I like a lot the combination of mahogany + the ebony fretboard.

[TripleFan]

Thanks man. But No.2 will be painted bright white. I hope the black hardware, the jet blach fretboard and the white paint will make a eyecrushing contrast.

[PTU 7's.]

White colour plus black hardware it's an awesome combination.

[TripleFan]

Meanwhile I´ve done the holes for the string through. It went fairly well and I´m quite satisfied. I drilled from the frontside to half the thickness of the body using the brige as template. Then I measured the hole positions flipped the body over and marked and drilled from the backside. This way the holes are inline on the backside and match up with the holes of the bridge.

Holes frontside

Holes backside with bigger diameter for ferrules

On thursday I sanded the fretboard and inlayed the MOP dots. Sanding went well, also. The radius is nice and even over the length of the board. But I screwed up the dots completely. I didn´t mark the positions carefully enough and the drill bit wandered. At least I didn´t sand through.

Overall imperssion

Botch job

16" radius and a little bit of gloss (sanded with 800 grit. Maybe I´ll go over it with 1000 grit before fretting)

At the moment I´m debating if I should backstrap the peghead. The center laminate runs through the volute and ends near the first tuner hole. If I would glue on a veneer I could make it look like the neck laminates end right at the crown of the volute.

But I think veneering just one side of the peghead may cause problems down the road? Any suggestions? Should I try it or is it better to leave it alone?

Back of peghead

The penciled line represents the crown of the volute

Next will be shaping the neck and fretting.

[PTU 7's.]

Hey man, that RG it's getting awesome.

[TripleFan]

Yeah, I´m still abit pissed about the dots. I thought about replacing/fixing them but would probably screw it even more! You live and learn, I guess, eh?

Anyway, anybody any sugestions or answers regarding my veneering questions?

[TripleFan]

Up we go...

After several tries backstrapping the headstock I wasn´t quite satisfied with the result and finally ditched the idea. Instead I started shaping the back of the neck. I really like it so far. The neck is a nearly perfect copy of Ibanez´ Wizard-7.

Sorry for the partially shoddy pics...

Just some more detail work with a scraper removing some scratches and I´m finally there!

Just to be sure: next will be fretting. Is the radius of this fretwire OK or should the curve be tighter?

[TripleFan]

Over the last few days I fretted the neck.

First I deepened the fret slots and bevelled them.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000791.jpg

Then I cut the frets to size und nipped the tangs. I then hammered in the 24th fret to get used to it.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000795.jpg

I proceeded with the remaining frets for the next two evenings.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000800.jpg

The frets were cut flush to the fretboard and bevelled to aprox. 35°. I sealed the fretslots with ebony dust and superglue. Then I polished the fret ends with sanding sponges. The burrs are removed in the process. Finally I polished the fretboard and the frets.

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000802.jpg

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000804.jpg

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000805.jpg

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000808.jpg

Some things I want to do differently in the future. I didn´t like that I lost the gloss of the fretboard. I fill the fretslots with titebond to get rid of any voids under the frets. This usually leaves me with glue spilled over the fretboard. Any attempt to wipe it away with a damp cloth doesn´t make it any better...! Next time i will try to cut titebond with water. I then can use a syringe to inject it directly in the fret slot. That should reduce the mess significantly.

I´m under the impression that the stainless steel fretwire took a little more force than nickel-silver to get seated. Besides that I had no problems preparing and using the wire. Only problem I could think of it doesn´t take a polish as well as nickel-silver. But I´m pretty sure there´s a solution when I finally level the frets.

[TripleFan]

After 2 weeks my third attempt to make a pickup routing template was succesfull and I finally routed the body.

Nothing special but I´m happy with the result. There´s minor tearout where I got a little over eager. On the other hand I think the router bit starts wearing and should be replaced.

I really would like to do a test assembly now. Unfortunatelly I noticed a backbow of approx. 1 - 2mm of the neck which I have to get rid of first. I will work along the lines of this thread; particularly post #5 by "LGM Guitars".

I hope the problem will be solved in one or two weeks and I can finally assemble this beast for the first time.

There is no electronic cavity yet because I maybe will install a Ghost piezo system. This decision depends on my first impression, playability and sound however.

[Bygde]

The only thing which isn't up to my dreamguitar specs is neck-through. Other than that, you've nailed it!

[TripleFan]

Thanks man. I think I will try to do a neckthrough later after I have finished the ones I´m working on at the moment.

Finally I was able to assemble the guitar for the first time. After clamping the neck for a week and a half it had about 2mm relief which was easily adjusted with its trussrod.

The guitar with the neck, pickups and strings and a "family shot" of my current projects...

This is the "jig" I used to correct the backbow of the neck. I clamped the neck solidly to the beam and heated and wetted it twice a day. In between it was stored in a warm and dry compartment. On the pictures the shims looks to be a little bit on the thick side.

The nut nearly drove me crazy! I screwed the first nut blank immediately filing it shorter than the fretboard.

This was rectified on the second blank. Instead I screwed the string alignment and the strings were far above the fretboard. I decided to file the nut even more and start the string alignment all over.

This finally worked out. The alignment is still far from perfect but it does the job and the misalignment isn´t noticable while playing. Because the nut was too low after all the filing I had to glue a veneer which I later dyed black to blend it in.

After the initial setup at first I was a little bit dissapointed. The guitar didn´t stay in tune very well especially the low B string.

Further the headstock needs a string retainer. Does anyone know a place where I can get the bar type for a sevenstring?

After I stretched the strings and the neck stabilized it slowly got better.

The pickups also didn´t sound like I expected. The PAF7s are very tame compared to other pickups I usually play. After playing with them for a few days now I have to admit that they start to grow on me. Perhaps I just have to give them a little bit more time.

The playability is rather good. It buzzes and rattles on all frets because the they are not leveled yet. Further I have to knock down the shoulders of the neck profile because they feel a hair too bulky.

But all in all I can say it´s easily the best I have built so far and there´s potential. I can only imagine how well it will play and sound once it´s leveled and set up.

[TripleFan]

Finally some progress.

All the bodywork is done.

I´ve drilled the holes for the jack, pots and switches and routed for the battery box. Finally I routed the electronic cavity and the recess.

At last I shaped the back of the guitar and the heel section of the body.

Most of it went pretty well but as always I experienced some minor screw-ups. I counterbored to deep and the battery cavity isn´t centered properly. Nothing major and everything can be fixed but it´s annoying to say the least.

Additionally I veneered the headstock.

Over the weekend I assembled the guitar. After I solved some minor electrical quirks it finally worked.

This is how it stands at the moment (the string ferrules aren´t mounted yet):

The bridge drilled for the piezo wires and for laughs the shoddy (and yet to be improved) wiring.

Everything works, it sounds fine and it feels pretty solid. I´m quite relieved!

Meanwhile I have started to do samples to test various finishes. The guitar will be oiled and I´m experimenting with different oils, stains and pore fillers.

[Xanthus]

That came out beautifully! What comprises the rat's nest in the electronic cavity?

[TripleFan]

Thanks man!

It looks rather good from half a metre away but up close there are many small flaws. It´s nothing major it just means that there is still room to improve on further builds.

Having said that I still love that friggin´ thing!

OK, the electronics consist of

two Dimarzio PAF7 pickups

a Schaller Megaswitch "P"

a Graphtech Ghost Piezo system

potentiometres for mag Vol/mag Tone/piezo Vol

toggle switches for mag/piezo/mix and piezo mid boost (not wired yet)

Stuffed in the cavity are also the the piezo preamp and the piezo wire summing board.

[Jon]

If I were to build myself a 7-string guitar, it would look much like yours. Very nice work!

[TripleFan]

Thank you.

These are various samples I´ve done over the last two weeks.

All of them were sanded with 100/150/240 grit. After that I wetted them five or six times and sanded them back with 320 grit in between.

I liberally applied "Hartöl" by Clou with a brush and wiped off the excess with a cloth after about ten minutes.

This one is a piece of sipo which had its grain filled with black wood putty. The grain really starts to pop out which is very obvious on the side. I like how the grain shows on this one but the color of the wood gets too dark for my liking. The more shallow camera angle shows how the putty filled the grain.

This one was stained black. I wiped/rubbed back the stain immediatelly. After the stain dryed I continued to oil as usual.

The result once again shows the grain very nice but leaves the pores natural and open. Unfortunatelly the natural color of the sipo also gets darkend.

This one I like the most: just oil. The grain doesn´t stand out as well but I really like the color of the wood.

On the backside I wetsanded the freshly oiled wood resulting in a slurry which fills the pores. The excess is wiped off across the grain after ten minutes. This results in a very flat and even surface which keeps its natural color compared to the one filled with black putty.

Finally a scrap piece of the neck blank.

It was finished with two layers of danish oil and two additional coats of "Hartöl".

The reason is that danish oil colors the wood somewhat while Hartöl is nearly clear.

I like this on very much.

I always thought oild surfaces would retain their natural "woody" feel? All the samples I did feel more like "satin cleared". Not exactly sticky but definatelly not like wood anymore. Did I do something wrong?

Furthermore I wonder how much coats do I need? Are there any indications when there´s enough? Right now each piece is coated three or four times. Is this enough? Too much? Too less?

Finally I would like to know if someone has experience with StewMac´s conductive shielding paint and an oil finish. Is it possible to apply the paint over oil? Should I apply it to raw wood? I´m doing tests anyway but if someone has tried this already I would like to hear about it.