tparker Posted February 17, 2020 Report Share Posted February 17, 2020 Working on a design for a new guitar. I'm wanting to do some custom shapes for the inlay. The color scheme reminds me of Bicycle face cards. Might play with that and use diamonds, clubs, and heart for the inlay. Or maybe even the face card profiles if I want to be really nutty. It will be a true mess of different guitars. Gibson style pickups and wiring, Gretsch sized neck and headstock, and Fender body. What I'm thinking about doing is using a cnc or laser cutter to make the holes in the blank of wood before the fingerboard radius is cut. Fill this with blue or red translucent epoxy. Then shave it all down on the cnc. My hope is to use birds eye maple for the fingerboard. Haven't worked with epoxy much so don't know the cutting and sanding properties of the material. Oh, and another questions. I'm thinking of putting two tone kill switches on the bottom horn. These would disconnect the tone pots from the volume pots. This would let me go to full tone or a preset tone level by hitting the switch. Would that work? I'm wondering if they should be bypass switches instead, because volumes need to go to ground? Being that I use to do electrical work, I thought guitars electronics would be very simple to learn. Given myself a good laugh at my mental aptitude. Learning guitar wiring hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mistermikev Posted February 17, 2020 Report Share Posted February 17, 2020 2 hours ago, tparker said: Working on a design for a new guitar. I'm wanting to do some custom shapes for the inlay. The color scheme reminds me of Bicycle face cards. Might play with that and use diamonds, clubs, and heart for the inlay. Or maybe even the face card profiles if I want to be really nutty. It will be a true mess of different guitars. Gibson style pickups and wiring, Gretsch sized neck and headstock, and Fender body. What I'm thinking about doing is using a cnc or laser cutter to make the holes in the blank of wood before the fingerboard radius is cut. Fill this with blue or red translucent epoxy. Then shave it all down on the cnc. My hope is to use birds eye maple for the fingerboard. Haven't worked with epoxy much so don't know the cutting and sanding properties of the material. Oh, and another questions. I'm thinking of putting two tone kill switches on the bottom horn. These would disconnect the tone pots from the volume pots. This would let me go to full tone or a preset tone level by hitting the switch. Would that work? I'm wondering if they should be bypass switches instead, because volumes need to go to ground? Being that I use to do electrical work, I thought guitars electronics would be very simple to learn. Given myself a good laugh at my mental aptitude. Learning guitar wiring hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be. I like your mockup and your moxy. have oft thought of using epoxy for inlay... and adding luminescence to it, but for me (no cnc) it's really hard to get an inlay hole cut with precision... so I have oft thought of just making a backing sheet full of epoxy inlay blank material... or perhaps adding some cookie cutter shapes... but I digress. have not done it... but I know there is all types of powder you can add to epoxy to make lovely colors and if you can cut the inlay shapes well... the rest is easy. Have sanded epoxy and it's a hair harder than reg wood so would just be some more wear on your bits. afa tone bypass... could be easily done. you could just run the wire that goes to to the cap from the middle lug on a tone pot (see second drawing below) to your switch... then have the switch choose one or the other caps going back to ground on the pot (just one way). lots of other things you could do there like have one side be a tone bypass, or have one side be a bass cut, etc. you could accomplish this right on the pot with a push pull too... but with switches you could use an on/on/on or even on/off/on and get three possibilities. guitar wiring is pretty straight fwd once you learn some basics... but certainly different than the typical electrician is going to encounter. I would suggest you check out a good book to get you a better grounding (pun hehe). like craig andertons elec proj for musicians. think you can find it free online. once you get your footing I'm sure you'll be schooling us all. this is a good book... great read: https://www.paia.com/proddetail.asp?prod=PFG also free one from anderton: https://msu.edu/~dougl126/Electronic Projects for Musicians.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tparker Posted February 17, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 17, 2020 thanks for the link! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted February 18, 2020 Report Share Posted February 18, 2020 While I've also not done it for the same reasons as @mistermikev , I have seen a number of examples and yes, it works well. Use a decent quality epoxy, use proper resin-designed colour additives, ensure the application is bubble free and over filled and do some trials before doing on the guitar - and, most important of all, post pictures of the results! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.