ESP M-II type "Invaders" Superstrat

[asgeirogm]

2 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Man, you know what the worst thing is? It's the fact that I wouldn't ever be able to get ESP to make me a repro of that original Mirage for love nor money thanks to the Jackson type headstock. I'm sure they'd reproduce the warts-and-all details like the square heel, non-recessed tremolo and zero neck angle. Even the bolt-through locking nut.

Seeing as the ESP custom shop in Japan apparently still does the lawsuit Explorer, it wouldn't surprise me if they would also do the Jackson headstock if requested. If It's actually feasible for the average westerner is maybe another matter, I don't know how their ordering and delivery system works at all. 

[Prostheta]

Difficult to say whether it would be possible or not to be honest. Gibson have lost a LOT of IP on their designs, which I presume includes the Explorer in some respects. Here in Finland it is perfectly legal to describe one's guitar as "a Les Paul" even if it isn't a Gibson, by virtue of the trademark holding zero water. I am glossing over the details, but hey.

FMIC are notoriously litigious and protective over IP and have maintained that far better than Gibson. I'd imagine that it would be an uphill struggle trying to get ESP to make one if there's any sort of potential grey area legally. Also, I can't afford it. I am about 98% short of the money it would take to make that happen

 

[Prostheta]

That time of the week again....I should be able to get some work done on the CNC. The Invaders guitar only needs cavity covers off the CNC, the rest is all paint and fretwork, etc. I've been thinking what I need to do with the other two bodies such as the necks and inlays, etc. Rejigging the position of the headstock due to how the locking nut/volute locations sit with repect to that has been on my mind also, however I doubt that I will get time to attend to that.

I think I'll put a Maple board onto the pearly guitar, which will need some sort of finishing.

 

....the multiscale is presenting me with the problem of not having all the hardware to hand. Specifically the BH angled pickup, which doesn't have specific published dimensions that carry reliance enough to take to the CNC. Really, that one needs measuring from the product (which I will make publicly-available). The multiscale will be a longer-term build that will complete when I can afford to do so. The priority as I see it is to get all of my CNC work out of the way whilst I am still able. The Maple board can be inlaid by hand since it's pre-slotted. The multiscale board can have radiusing, inlays and fret slots added with the rest done as and when....except for the pickup!

I was idly considering whether I could have done fibre-optic or LED inlays for the multiscale board. If CNC time were freely-available, that would definitely be a thing I could have tabled. Best not to get myself too married to these idle ideas eh?

[Muzz]

On 9/22/2021 at 4:14 AM, Prostheta said:

It also looks good in cream-white....muuuurrgghhhhhh

I am looking at this image and singing the Lego Movie song, 

Everything is awesome, Everything (including the not maple fretboard) is awesome 

[Prostheta]

I think I want to go Maple with that one, because I always go Ebony or Rosewood. It's time I got a feel for Maple, especially as it worked so well on my Frankenstrat. 

Lego is just expensive binding in brick form

[mistermikev]

the maple there... not that you are asking or ever need input from me... but it looks good but that headstock is screaming to me to be either maple or bettery yet the same white color as the body.  they both look great.  right now the ebony one is calling to me more but I think a matching headstock on the maple would push it to the top.  again, just this ahole's o.

[Prostheta]

Bear in mind that I took care to balance off the black and gold around there. Going all-gold all-cream would be monotonous, and I think early ESPs had a lot going on because of this. They looked loaded!

[mistermikev]

1 hour ago, Prostheta said:

Bear in mind that I took care to balance off the black and gold around there. Going all-gold all-cream would be monotonous, and I think early ESPs had a lot going on because of this. They looked loaded!

right on, looks great... just one dudes hangups lol!!

[Bizman62]

3 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Bear in mind that I took care to balance off the black and gold around there. Going all-gold all-cream would be monotonous,

Yet another piece of wisdom to be buried in the back of my brain, only to be revealed after a monotonous build.

The white binding on the headstock ties with the body nicely while the black face does the same for the pickups. Even more so with the maple fretboard.

[mistermikev]

just realizing now... if my eyes aren't deceiving me... the one w maple fretboard... white body and off-white binding?  love it.  did not catch that detail before... am i seeing that right?

[Prostheta]

This isn't to say that one way is the only way of course! I think there's a lot that can be done by building up a balance between various elements, and it makes the end product a lot better because of that. My decision making was based entirely off the number of choices made around my old ESP. That is very much the benchmark for a lot of things, and I can't overstate just how much of a loss that was to me.

[Muzz]

On 12/3/2021 at 9:40 PM, Prostheta said:

Lego is just expensive binding in brick form

So true, the people, who think that binding is just wimpy lego that can;t stand up for itself and inflict pain on bare feet, are dreaming 

[Prostheta]

Well, the relationship between myself and my employer(s) seems to be slowly souring without simple straight talking. I can read between the lines on this, but the result of this is that I know I will have very little good time to do jobs using the CNC from here. I should probably output a bunch of outlines into heavy-ish plywood and put them to one side for reference. Things like the headstock, body and various cavities.

So I didn't get chance to advance anything with the multiscale which is a bummer. In some ways that's probably a bit of a fool's errand and will burn the limited valuable time I have available otherwise. The two main bodys (Invaders, Pearly) and necks are g00d to go from here. No more CNC needed I think. The multiscale is far from a priority, however it would have been good to get the neck and fingerboard done, since those would benefit from CNC so much.

Templates, definitely.

The fingerboard for pearly will be radiused to 16" using my G&W radiusing jig and auxiliary base. That works very nicely, so no need of complicating things with another compound radius off the CNC. This will be done with the board untapered so that I can inlay the blocks prior to cutting and sanding in the taper. I've a bunch of Tahitian black pearl scraps around which - even though they're a little thin - should sit nicely over a 16" radius. The block sizes are 5x5 and 5x10 which is nice and standard; easy to file to size by hand. The pockets can simply be chiselled out after a quick drilling with a 4mm drill to excavate the centre a little. Since CA likes to invade and contaminate Maple, I think these inlays will go in with a little Z-Poxy 30. Which means that I need to buy some...!

[Prostheta]

So, how did I derive the correct thickness of the fingerboard to match the locking nut in the Invaders neck? This is a combination of a few things. Gotoh provide a PDF version of their schematic for the locking nuts which is possible to import into Rhino. Most schematics like this (for example, Hipshot) are exported directly from their own CAD production drawings meaning that if the scale is correct (things can also be rescaled) many dimensions not explicitly stated can be measured from the drawing. <edit: if it can't be derived from explicitly-provided dimensions>

The gold standard is to measure directly from the hardware itself. A manufacturer's drawing cannot be relied upon 100%, but to be fair, Gotoh are damn good at this.

Their drawing shows a 400mm radius (~15-3/4") with the lowest points of the outermost strings dimensioned. Comparing this to the locking nut itself, the low E measured at a blonde one under 5,8mm whilst the high E measured larger. This was due to the tips of my caliper's jaws being unable to seat into the lowest part of the string slot. This is still adequate.

 

Working backwards from this I derived what the height would be at the absolute centre. There's always going to be a little bit of tolerance here, especially given that the strings don't appear to spaced symmetrically with respect to the centreline. That's fine as long as the extent of that tolerance is kept in mind and quantified.

The CAD extract from the PDF shows about half a mm difference from the centreline. Drawing this out in CAD, half a mm of movement in a 400mm radius circle over those points shows about 0,003mm of height difference. Almost nothing! So in that respect we can safely simplify this by drawing out a 400mm radius circle over a 36,5mm string spread with the heights given and measure the coincident point where the circle intersects with the centreline. The result of this is a height of 6,1mm (to the nearest tenth of a mm).

The strings need to pass over the first fret by a fraction of a mm, and a lot of this comes down to personal preference. For the low E, aiming for around half a mm is good whilst the high E can be a little lower. The locking nut itself seems to have this offset conveniently built-in, whether that be by design or coincidence. Subtracting the smallest of these values (the low E) from the central height gives us a reasonable approximation of where the fret crown should lay in the middle; 6,1mm minus 0,4mm gives us 5,7mm. From this the crown height of the fretwire can be subtracted, which in the case of pearly will be Jescar 57110 wire. 5,7mm minus 1,45mm leaves 4,25mm. Yikes. That's crazy thin! The Invaders neck has been fretted with Dunlop 6150 which has a height of 1,12mm allowing for a much more reasonable 4,58mm which (surprise surprise) CNC is very good at dialling in.

The choices here are to either leave a shelf in the Maple for the nut, or to use the (0,1mm 0,25mm and 0,5mm?) brass shims that Gotoh provide with their locking nuts. There's sufficient meat on the fingerboard blank to allow for either of these options. Since shims are intended to dial in that initial bit of action over the first fret, I think I'll go the route of leaving a 1mm shelf.

So, aiming for a centre fingerboard thickness of 5,25mm is my target. Off the router I want to get about 5,5mm. Anything more and the risk of sanding going assymmetrical is too great.

[Prostheta]

Last fret slot going in (second clamp removed for the photo). I've explained previously how I do my fret slotting without using templates. In short, I manually place 0,5mm mechanical pencil marks and use the eye's ability to divide things into two to get placements within a fraction of a mm and create a more precise mark within that pencil mark using a marking knife. When placing the board under the saw, I judge manually based on whether the knife mark is in the centre or off to one side slightly in the pencil mark. The blade sites nicely so that it's easy to see whether the pencil mark is peeking out either side or centred under it. Having done this many many times now, I have a good feel for how much to adjust either direction but in general my pencil marks are spot on 8-9/10.

[Prostheta]

Ugh, I hate cutting pearl. I think I'll break out the pantograph and make the blocks that way.

[Prostheta]

I've noticed that the piece of Pine I used as the "bed" on my radiusing router jig's base has bent slightly out of flat. Either I replace that, flatten it or just don't run too close to finished sizes. Let's see how lazy I get over this.

[Prostheta]

Weapons of Maple Destruction

After radiusing the fingerboard with the router sled, the fret slots need deepening and radiusing. The tealight candle is a nice cheap source of stearine for lubricating the saw plate in the cut. One quick draw down the candle does 2-3 fret slots. If you worry about remnants of wax in the board, remember to clean it up with DNA. It's all good as long as you don't go to excess. I've made the decision to go to a more sensible fingerboard thickness and use a shelf for the locking nut. I just need to dial in a very specific depth for the shelf, which is a lot easier to do than doing it across the entire board for one small area.

[Prostheta]

The thickness at the centre of the fingerboard is bang on 5,5mm. Exactly what I was aiming for it to be by the previous calculations. I was thinking it might need to take of a hair more still, but this is already on the nose. Sweet!

[mistermikev]

i can't tell if that's birdseye or you were playing a messy game of tic tac toe there... jk, it's birdseye.  lovely piece!

[Prostheta]

Ah, I see what you mean  I mark my progress as I go. Each fret slot I've radiused, plus it's useful to note fret positions. I mark up so many things that it looks crazy at times.

[mistermikev]

1 hour ago, Prostheta said:

Ah, I see what you mean  I mark my progress as I go. Each fret slot I've radiused, plus it's useful to note fret positions. I mark up so many things that it looks crazy at times.

just figured perhaps you were singing along "my x's and oh oh ohs they haunt me... like a ghost oh oh they want me...." hehe.

[Prostheta]

No no, they're tone x's. Arcane symbols of tone.

[mistermikev]

42 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

No no, they're tone x's. Arcane symbols of tone.

lol "we need more tone x's!"  

you just reminded me of something I saw this morning if I may divert for 1 sec... this very expensive acoustic guitar was listed on craigslist.  Now, it IS really cool art... but can't help but be a hair skeptical... see "tone beeds" here: http://www.enigmainstruments.com/

 

[Prostheta]

There's no reason to believe that wouldn't sound terrible.