sirspens Posted March 16, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 16, 2016 8 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said: i love the overall look, by the way. Really nice design. Thank you very much! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 16, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 16, 2016 1 hour ago, ScottR said: Yours looks like it is going to feel great. Carry on and get it finished and set up and see if that is not the case. Thank you! And that is the plan. I am going to get it strung up and wired before the weekend. I want to hear and feel this thing. And I am excited about moving into the finishing process. Still a lot to learn there. And I am really interested to see how this pickguard turns out (of all things). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 Some progress... I got the bridge installed, tuners installed (I was half way through stringing when I noticed, "shit, I'm doing this backwards" ugh), pickup installed, volume pot installed, The neck angle isn't a problem at all. Here's the problem... There's a huge gap between the fretboard and the strings. Even with the saddle all the way down... So, I fretted the low E at the first and 17th fret, this picture is around the 8th or 10th fret. LOTS of space... The neck, now that it has tension on it, has a good deal of forward bow. So, I am slowly adjusting the truss rod. I'll have to do that slowly over the day tomorrow. Also, even though I measured this thing like a THOUSAND times, I may have to move the bridge forward a 1/4", because it is dead on 25.5" with the saddles moved all the way forward. Even though the neck has a huge forward bow, so there is absolutely no way to properly intonate this thing, I did sit down with it and play it for a few minutes. I am a pretty big guy, 6'-4", and this is a pretty small guitar, only 12" tall, it is surprisingly comfortable to play. So, onward and forward. I'll get the neck straight. Probably have to move the bridge forward. See if I can get this thing intonated correctly. Then I'll wire the thing up and see how it sounds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 Oh, I forgot to mention. I assume because of the huge forward bow in the neck, and the inability to intonate it with that kind of bow, if the low E is tuned dead on, the F plays fairly sharp, by 1.1Hz... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 I just sat down with my Gibson SG to do a few comparisons. It's intonation is dead on (of course, because I set it up that way). But what was surprising, and what I had never measured before, was each note going up the scale. They were WAY off. I mean, it plays beautifully. But going up the low E, from one fret position to another, they would be off by +/-1 to 1.5 Hz. All over the place. Wow! And you'd never guess that just sitting down and playing it. I also checked the neck angle in comparison to the center of the bridge. Not dead on. I'm trying to get a feel for necessary precision, here. The more surprising find... my "cheapo" $140 SX Liquid (which I am not ashamed to say is my most played guitar since I bought it about 8 months ago) is far more accurate going up the scale than my SG! Most notes are right on, with only a slight variation on a few fret positions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 Don't move your bridge yet, @sirspens! I'll post more a bit later when I'm back on the desktop, but there is a sequence for set up that is quite important and, assuming you are actually doing a 25.5 scale, there is nothing I see that tells me anything is wrong at all. immediate points that come to mind: the saddles are always further back than the scale length...never forward of it The action height is probably simply that it needs a tiny shim to angle the neck a tad no point in trying to set action height or intonation until the truss rod is correctly set...and that's easy to check I'll post more in the next couple of hours... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 One option to lower your string path is to deepen the heel. The other is to lower the neck angle. I'm confused....when did we add in a neck angle? Sorry if I didn't note this earlier....usually Fender-type hardtail designs require zero neck angle. Deepening of the heel is the first thing that crosses my mind, simply because it can be done using a template bit in the router if you have one short enough. That said, it would need to be deepened by the excess you're seeing at the saddles. That's a lot, especially since the fingerboard will drop into the pocket. I don't see this as tenable. The angle can be lowered either in the pocket or on the mating face of the neck. This again will drop the fingerboard into the pocket. already lays slightly below the body, so lowering it further would be visually weird. Shimming the neck is a last resort since it adds in its own visual issues which the open pocket only exacerbates. Unless thinning the body presented its own issues, that is what I would consider. Not thickness planing (which can blow out wood on shaped pieces such as the pickup rout) but thickness sanding in a drum sander. Do we have one of these on hand? Taking 3mm (about 1/8") off the top of the body would make all the difference. I guess that since the pot is in place there is only so far the body can go, right? Another - more complex - solution would be to taper the body so it reduces in thickness marginally back to front. This would allow whatever geometry adjustment you need at the front without the fingerboard dropping too far into the body and leave the meat at the back. This requires a bit of experience and confidence to get right first time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 Personally, tapering the body is what I would choose. The Aria Pro II SB-1000 (a favourite of mine) had a tapered body from back to front. Even many owners don't realise this (paging @PDX Rich)! The last time I did this, I did so in the thickness sander. I made a plywood sled to hold the body, with small offcuts of wood placed around the perimeter to hold it securely in place (below the sanding line of course). Underneath and across the leading edge of the sled (corresponding to the front of the body) I placed a shim which raised the front of the sled up by the amount I wanted the taper to drop by, plus the amount that the angle brought up the back of the body. A few passes through the sander dialled it in perfectly. This kind of idea: A couple of safety notes of course. If you screw the offcuts down, make sure they don't end up above the sanding line. Sparks plus dust extraction mean fire or explosion. The surface of the sled bearing onto the conveyer is low. Following the sled up with a flat board and hold down the trailing edge so that it doesn't get tipped forward is important. You can always plane the front shim so that it sits flat to make it better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 There's a lot of options that can be tabled, and I am sure that @Andyjr1515 will only bring more to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, Prostheta said: There's a lot of options that can be tabled, and I am sure that @Andyjr1515 will only bring more to it. I am impressed with your wholly misguided confidence in me @Prostheta Actually, I'm going to be really controversial here. What @Prostheta says above is perfectly correct, but for a 'first build; learning the techniques; limited equipment; not sure how everything interacts with everything else', then the last thing I would personally do is sand the body or even the neck pocket. Simply too much can go wrong too quickly! For a pro-job, then absolutely. But for a 'weekend build' first off - assuming the objective is to build something that looks OK and plays great - I would keep it simple and safe. Yes, theoretically teles and strats are zero neck angle, but many of them - even top drawer ones - I've come across have shims...even Fenders (don't know if the shims in the Fenders were there from new, but some of the other decent makes I've come across certainly have been). My quick ABC of first set-up is this. Please note, @sirspens , that @Prostheta and most of the guys and gals on this forum are much more experienced and talented than I am, and please do feel free to ignore everything I say - I won't be in the least bit offended . How I personally do it is. The reason I do it in this sequence is that everything affects everything so you need to pin down one variable at a time: Realise that the first time you string everything up, it is likely to be cumulatively all over the place and seem to the unwary as an impossible task. So in good old Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy style: DON'T PANIC! First I check the neck relief. With the strings tuned up at full tension, I pop a capo onto the 1st fret and hold the top E (or bottom E) down at the 16th fret. In the middle, ie 8th fret, I tap the string and am looking for just perceptible movement. If there is no gap at all, the truss rod needs loosening. If there is a gap any bigger than the thickness of a business card, it needs tightening. Loosen the strings, turn the trussrod 1/4 turn in the appropriate direction, tighten the strings and recheck. Repeat until the gap is just perceptible. Re-check on the other E string to make sure it isn't hard down on the 8th fret. If it is, loosen the trussrod a bit until there is just perceptible movement (the reason you do this is that the neck might not be exactly straight and whatever, you don't want either E string to be hard down) Now I can check the action height (because the neck relief affects the action height big-style) For starters, I aim for the top E at around 1.5mm and the bottom E at 2.5mm (I can always fine tune in the future, but this starting point will get me a playable and intonateable guitar) If the saddles have enough adjustment, then Ido that and move onto the intonation. If not, then I go to the next step If the action is way higher than that, even at lowest saddle positions, it indicates that the neck needs to be angled slightly downwards. The easiest and safest way of doing this is by adding a very thin shim under the neck heel at the body end of the heel. We are talking VERY thin, usually - a snipped strip of credit card is often/usually too thick! Re-tighten the neck, restring, tighten to pitch and check if you now have enough saddle movement. If they now have to be adjusted to the limit of their reach, then you could consider a thinner shim. If the action is still too high at the saddles bottomed out, it needs a thicker shim. (By the way, in the less likely event that the action was too low at top saddle stretch when you'd sorted the neck relief above, the shim simply goes at the headstock end of the neck pocket) Now I have a decent starting point for the action, I can check the intonation. The reason I can't check before this point is that the saddle positions generally have to be lengthened by between 1mm and 3mm from scale length, because pressing the string down to the fret basically 'bends' the string - albeit vertically - and the pitch rises. It follows that, if the action is too high, the string bends more than normal and the string sharpens more than it should. So you can't set your intonation until the action is broadly correct. Normal procedure - with a tuner, ring the 12th fret harmonic and then, taking care to press only lightly and not bending the string sideways, fret at the 12th. If the fretted pitch is sharp, I move the saddles backwards to lower the fretted pitch, if the fretted not is flat, I bring the saddles forward. Finally, I fine tune the pickup heights, double checking the action height once I have just in case the magnetism effect pulling the strings down have affected it (it usually hasn't) What I now have, is a guitar that plays OK and in tune, feels OK and now I can assess properly if I need or want to make any further tweaks to get it 'perfect'. Hope this helps. Andy Edited March 19, 2016 by Andyjr1515 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2.5itim Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 This is new to me so please don't take anything I see seriously or go and do anything that I say without confirmation from others, but I don't think a fender style bridge requires a neck angle? Would it be possible to inset the bridge into the body to bring it down in the back? I would think this would lower the string height right? i wouldn't say your bridge needs to be moved, the way all these guys explained it to me was the high e should be a right at 25.5" and the other strings should be a little farther back on each string. So it should be fine I would think! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 5 minutes ago, 2.5itim said: This is new to me so please don't take anything I see seriously or go and do anything that I say without confirmation from others, but I don't think a fender style bridge requires a neck angle? Would it be possible to inset the bridge into the body to bring it down in the back? I would think this would lower the string height right? i wouldn't say your bridge needs to be moved, the way all these guys explained it to me was the high e should be a right at 25.5" and the other strings should be a little farther back on each string. So it should be fine I would think! You are quite right @2.5itim Theoretically, they don't have a neck angle. But that pre-supposes that EVERYTHING is to Fender CNC spec - flat neck, flat heel, flat neck pocket, flat body, genuine Fender bridge, exact fixing heights. With home builds, that is rarely the case. And absolutely yes - there are many ways you can compensate - take a bit off the body thickness, angle the body, adjustment of the neck pocket, routing out a small step to drop the bridge down a tad, grinding a mm or two off the bottom of the bridge. But in my view (and based on wrecking more guitars than I would like to admit to) the simplest and safest - if it's close - is to shim. And we are talking tiny, tiny, tiny - the movement is hugely exaggerated once amplified between the length between the nut and the bridge. A business card thickness shim at the back of the neck pocket can make a difference at the saddle of 1/4" !! That is why getting the router or sander out on the neck pocket is so risky... Absolutely right also on the bridge. Rule of thumb is the top E saddle at c 1mm back from scale length and bottom E c 3mm back from scale length. So...assuming it is a 25.5" scale...the bridge position looks to be spot on to me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 @Andyjr1515, @Prostheta, @2.5itim.... First, thank you very much for your encouragement and advice. Second, you are WAY over reacting! haha. I don't want to step on any toes here, but that is my job. While this is my first guitar build, I have set up a few guitars in my day. If you go back to my original post last night (from my perspective for you Old Worlders), you will see that I test the neck bow by fretting the low E at the first and 17th fret, and found a HUGE amount of relief. I even had a picture of it. It's a bit fuzzy. Taking that picture actually took quite a bit of planning. I'm fretting that string with my hands.... While it is certainly possible that the neck may need to be raised a bit with a shim (it does sit a tad lower than I had planned on), the vast majority of the problem currently is that there is a huge amount of bow in the neck. So much so that it is obvious when you are holding the guitar. Before strings were added, you could run a line from the nut to the saddle and it was pretty straight and evenly spaced from the fretboard. Now, with the full tension on the neck, it just needs to be adjusted. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 Oh, also, @Andyjr1515.... Thanks. I won't move the bridge yet. I already planned on getting the guitar set-up before making any moves like that. But thank you very much for the education there. You too, @2.5itim! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 I suspect that when you straighten the neck, you will find that the action magically comes within adjustment limits. No probs - been meaning to get down on paper the 'how I do a first set up' for ages 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 6 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said: I suspect that when you straighten the neck, you will find that the action magically comes within adjustment limits. No probs - been meaning to get down on paper the 'how I do a first set up' for ages Yeah. It's a good list. Especially considering setting up a guitar and setting up a self-built guitar are slightly different animals. I plan on using your list. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 3 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said: I suspect that when you straighten the neck, you will find that the action magically comes within adjustment limits. No probs - been meaning to get down on paper the 'how I do a first set up' for ages We have (very old) articles on setup, however I do agree that articles specifically relating to first setup are far more important given the nature of the site. Hold onto that idea. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 So it would seem that I have no clue what I am doing. Ugh. First thing this morning I got my drafting straight-edge out to make sure about the bow in the neck, and indeed there was a wide gap at the middle frets when laid across the entire neck, both low and high side. I have spent most of the morning and afternoon slowly adjusting the truss rod to bring the action on the neck down. Figuring this is a Fender style neck, clockwise to reduce forward bow. Quarter turn, wait 15 minutes or so, check it again. Until I got all the way to where it wouldn't turn anymore, and it doesn't seem to have changed anything. ... So I let it rest for about an hour. No difference. Then I figure maybe I am wrong about the direction. So I slowly, with even longer breaks between my quarter turns, start going the other direction. Until I make it all the way to the other side. No difference. So either I've lost my mind or this truss rod is not doing its job. In good news, I got the string trees installed. They look good. I did a "temporary" wiring to hear the pickup, which sounds really good. Does anybody use one of these? I built it a while back so I could bypass any portion of the wiring to isolate problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 That looks a great idea, @sirspens ref the truss rod, how many 1/4 turns do you think you did before you stopped? I ask because some truss rods have a sizeable midpoint movement before they start to actually bend the neck. At that point, the truss rod suddenly gets very stiff but is starting to actually do its job. Difficult of course to advise, because if it is actually at the end of its travel, you risk breaking the rod if you keep turning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 1 minute ago, Andyjr1515 said: how many 1/4 turns do you think you did before you stopped? ... 6? Maybe it was just getting engaged. I mean, if I destroy this neck, I'm not going to be heartbroken, so I'll give it a go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 If there was very little resistance for those 6 quarter turns, I suspect it wasn't yet engaged. I have known truss rods that had at least one full turn slop in the middle so it is a possibility. When it is engaged, even with the strings fully slack (and you should do this with slackened strings) there is quite a resistance to turning the wrench.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 51 minutes ago, sirspens said: So it would seem that I have no clue what I am doing. Ugh. Does anybody use one of these? Man, did I EVER get spam mail about those. You should have consumer rights about distance selling if they sent the wrong size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 Let me backtrack and see what type of rod you used.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prostheta Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 Ah, third party neck. Might be a duff rod. Bummer. I guess now you get to make a neck to solve the angle? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sirspens Posted March 19, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 8 minutes ago, Prostheta said: Man, did I EVER get spam mail about those. You should have consumer rights about distance selling if they sent the wrong size. I think you might be high? 7 minutes ago, Prostheta said: Let me backtrack and see what type of rod you used.... Didn't. I cheated. I used a neck I had laying around that I bought when I was trying to figure out how necks are made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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