Leds In Fingerboard...

[billm90]

I have done every one of my leds neck differently.

I am no pro by any means, but through barbarian tricks I can do anything.

First guitars was an acoustic nylon. I did not remove anyhting. drilled right through the top of the fret board throuh the back of the neck.

Used a dremel and made a channel in the back of the neck for the wires. glued in the leds with the dome sticking out the top of the fretboard.

pre cut the led leads to a size that will fit.

ran pieces of wire that tied all the leds to gether, filled the channel, sanded the leds flat to the top of the fret board, painted the neck.

Then I did an electric, and I put 2 leds on each fret. one on each side of the truss rod. did this one pretty much the same way I did the nylon, but I am going to do it over as I am fixing this guitar up.

The electric nylon I did, I put the mini leds as side fret markers only. same slot in the back of the neck, but this one is closer to the side of the fret board. drilled the side fret marker hole, the drilled another hole at 90 that to actually get the led in that hole with a section for the wires to come out.

later I tried removing the fretboards. this makes me nervous still... I have done it and put a channel in the fret board, or the neck, it depends on how your guitar is set up. The last one I did, I just ran bare wire up and down the the leds. this makes wiring it up a lot faster.

as for doing tricks, like multiple colors etc... I kind stay away from that as I already hate putting the leds in the necks.

The best way to do this is to remove the fret board, for a nice clean look.

if your messing around with some old junk guitars, and want it in there quick, channeling the back of the neck gets the job done.

If you take a look at the pics in the web page posted in this thread, there are some really cool ideas if you have a bolt on neck and stuff. There work is a lot cleaner then mine, but when I am done with mine, you cant tell what I did with filler and paint... lol

My channels are a lot smaller then the average ones I have seen. my channels are only about a wire wide. I run the two wires on top of eachother.

Edited June 5, 2009 by billm90