soapbarstrat

Yellow wood glue, if you're willing to wait for it to dry overnight. Or super-glue. The thicker super-glue if you want to put the glue first, then install the fret. Or the water-thin stuff , if you want to install the fret first, then run a bead of glue along the fret. it "wicks" down, then you have a rag with a little Acetone ready to wipe the glue off the fret-board wood. Epoxy is a little too thick for a tight-fitting fret and should be the long-drying kind for the best tone, but wood glue does the same thing with less hassle. Guys that use no glue are always having problems with some frets popping up later- maybe not ALWAYS, but often enough. No glue works best when frets are put in a fret-board for the first time. When refretting, glue is needed most of the time. When you install frets that are so tight, that no glue is needed, it often back-bows the neck, then you have a fret-job with a lot of "hit-or-miss" results

It's just like with guitars. You can get a 50's or 60's fender for an outragous amount, or get an 80's MIJ Fender that is just as good (as a musical instrument) but cost WAY less. With an original Floyd, you are paying for the name, not for any huge improvement in quality. I bet the Schaller is better than a floyd, but can't say for sure. I at least know of one thing that is better about the Schaller and that is the 'hardened inserts' they have where the bridge contacts the posts. But then again, that might mean they are using a softer metal for the bridge. My mid-80's Floyd doesn't seem like it would need "hardened inserts' coz it seems like the whole damn tremelo is hardened. But I never used my Floyd enough to put it to the test. I also have a WD Floyd copy, which I think gives you 'more bang for your buck'. Seems just as tough and well made as my Floyd. I bought the used WD dirt cheap ($15- it was missing a fine-tuner and trem arm and locking nut) If I was looking for a floyd type trem right now, I'd be looking the hardest for a used WD

Thanks Brian. It's not one of the very originals that Floyd Rose was making in his garage. I bought it around '86 for $175 plus shipping. Kramer was distributing them. I spent some time looking at ebay a while ago (too much time-that place gives me a headache) and found one that looks exactly like mine, except mine is in much better shape (not nearly as worn): http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...2&category=7266 It's only got a current bid of around $50, so if that's what mine's going for, it's staying on the Kramer guitar. I also just read that the first production run of Floyds (after their 'garage days') was actually done by Schaller in Germany and I'm pretty sure they were made there long after that too. Notice the guy selling this one on ebay got it at a garage sale. Wish I knew where these kind of garage sales are. I also have a WD floyd copy on another guitar and it seems to be made just as well as my floyd, plus it has individual height adjustment for each string saddle.

What does a used Floyd from around 1986 go for ? I got one in a Kramer and wouldn't be totally against parting that guitar out. It's black, a little wear on the low E fine tuner, one of the post studs is crappy looking on top coz the plating popped off when I was adjusting it. I have the box it came in and all the wrenches, I think.

The truss rod will affect the area between the nut and up to around the body-joint area. If your truss-rod is way off from where it should be, then yes, adjusting might make the neck play better, but won't get rid of the hump, if it's the kind of hump I'm assuming it is ( an area of fret-board actually higher than the fret-board on both sides of it). Something very important to consider is that many guitar have what is called " fallaway" (also goes by other names , of which I can't think of now), which means that when the fret-board was shaped, it was purposely made so that the last few frets near the body would be on a "slope" going lower towards the body. This is done to "help" get a low action , although I usually don't do it when I do a refret because I just don't see the need for it. I can get the strings set at 1/32 (High E) and 3/64"-1/16" (low E) at the 12th fret without any "fallaway"at the end of the neck . This "fallaway" can make the fret-board appear to have a hump, since the area around the body joint would appear higher than the rest of the neck especially if the truss-rod is adjusted too loose. Maybe you should press the low E string down at the first fret and body-joint fret and look at the space between the top of the 7th fret and bottom of the string. There should be very little space, just enough that you could slip two pieces of paper in between without pushing up on the string. Maybe even one piece of paper, but you need frets that are level and in good shape to have the neck set this straight. make the neck straight and see what happens with that "hump". It's common with acoustics to have a "summer saddle" and a "winter saddle" because the action does change that much.

the reason for using a tapered shim is because a flat shim would probably need to be quite thick, which doesn't look very good (the part you will see) and will make it so that the neck screws won't go as deep into the neck screw holes as they did before on all the screw holes, which would make the screw connection less stable. A tapered shim wouldn't raise the neck enough for this to be hardly an issue. It doesn't really change the distance between fret-tops and string bottoms if the string heights are properly adjusted at the nut and bridge. Well, I guess you can say that when a neck needs to be shimmed and the correct sized shim is made, that the 'parralel distance between strings and neck ' is improved , which was the whole idea. I think it's also more comfortable to have the neck tilted a little, although it might be too subtle to make enough difference. But just think about how the normal playing position makes the headstock of the guitar point at about 10-0-clock. A little easier on your left arm if it's closer to 9-o-clock, I would think. I've never tried to shim a neck with a full-sized FLAT shim, but I'm guessing it is not the way to go. I might have removed one and replaced it with a tapered one, but my memory is getting fuzzy with doing this stuff for 15 years. I sort of remember doing something like that. Wish I would have documented all the repairs and mods I've done over the years.

Very common problem to have a hump at the neck/body joint. If that is, in fact, what it really is, the problem is usually fixed by removing the frets in the hump area and the frets between the hump area and the end of the fret-board (closest to the body), sanding the hump out and if the frets were still high enough and taken out without messing them up, they can be put back in. These humps usually take years to develop. You are making it sound like the hump is getting worse before your eyes. That's not really happening is it ? Because if you are actually noticing the problem getting worse within days or even weeks, there might be something else going on, like a loose neck-joint making the neck slowly pull farther out of position. Weather changes can also make the action on an acoustic go up or down (dry air will often make the action get higher--high humidity will often make the action get lower) The clearest pictures of a hump on a fret-board are still very hard to judge over the internet.

I use a router to make full-sized tapered shims, but it's a lot of set-up work. You can use just about any hardwood, but maple is real dense, so the thinner end of the shim is a little tougher than something like mahogany. I never made one out of mahogany, but I would assume it would be very very brittle when sized that thin. There's also the issue of a partial shim causing the neck to "kink". Some say it happens. Worked on some guys cheap chinese squire bass a few years ago that got on my nerves because he wanted his action lowered. The only way to do that was to shim the neck. He didn't want to pay what I charge for a full-sized shim, so I said I wood stick a partial shim in there. Then he says he doesn't want that because he had it like that but removed the shim because he heard the neck can 'kink' from it. But he still wanted the action lower (bridge adjustment wouldn't do it alone). I got tired of his crap and put a partial shim and charged him a very low price since I couldn't perform the impossible for him. I guess he thought I would eventually "give in " and do the full-sized shim dirt cheap, but forget that. I wanted that bass off my bench to make room for the next job.

Oak is no good ? Brian May's guitar is made of Oak.(Brian May is the guitar player of the band Queen for any of you who might be too young to know who he is ) Takamine uses Oak for the back and sides of their Santa Fe acoustic. Some other popular acoustic maker made a whole acoustic with Oak, but I don't know if it sounded good enough to go beyond being just an experiment. Ok, there can be bad peices of Oak, just like with any wood and you want to avoid those (not dry enough, etc)

I'm quite sure the only thing you would need to "fill" would be the 4 little screw holes that will show when the pickup mounting ring is gone. It will be very hard, if not impossible, to make them totally invisible. Because of exactly that, this sort of mod is usually done only if the body is going to be repainted, unless the guitar's guardian doesn't mind such a cosmetic flaw. When I "direct mount" pickups, I use wood shims to put them at the proper height, then use small wood screws through the machine-screw holes, that used to be for the height adjustment screws, to screw the pickup base "ears" to the body wood, or at least to pull the "ears" down enough so the main base of the pickup is sitting down solid (I've only done it on humbuckers , so far). Some guys and guitar companies put a piece of foam under the pickup, so it's height can be adjusted up and down. I have used the foam too, but only to find out what the proper height is, then measure the distance from the bottom of the pickup base to the top of the pickup cavity rout with a small 'General' ruler. Then I make a hardwood shim to that thickness and drill out any areas where screws, etc stick out of the bottom of the pickup base plate. But for my own guitar, I prefer a wood pickguard with the pickup using regular adjustable mounting screws. I actually want to sell my 'direct mount' pickup guitars one of these days. To fill those little screw holes, i would suggest epoxy with fine (as in powder-like) hardwood sawdust mixed with it to make a good wood-filler paste-- basically what you were thinking about already, I guess. don't fill the holes all the way to the top, so you can try to finish off the tops with some paint or anything you can think of that might help them blend in with the body's paint job the best. But like I said, that is extremely hard to do.

Ok, I was just looking around and saw this thread. I don't really have anything interesting enough to post, but I'm actually curious about what all I have and this is a good way for me to see what a list of what i have looks like. Mutt strat- Bought the alder body at the corner of Haight-Ashbury in Frisco for $20 in '86 (no the guy lived there, it wasn't a guy selling it on the street) Jap Fender neck put on several years ago. Does that make the guitar a Fender ? Still needs a refret- my main guitar. '86 Fender Contemporary. Mid-80's Charvel style ( no pickguard- the body is rear-routed and just has a bridge humbucker) All black. Nice guitar , but I don't really use it anymore. Mid- 80's Chandler strat. rear-routed primer body routed for 2 buckers. Jackson style maple neck with fully scalloped phenolic fret-board. WD trem (individual height adjustment for each string) -*converted to 25" scale length with zero fret at the nut. This is a true "project guitar" (needs tuners and some tweaking and PAINTING !). nice ax, but really don't have a reason to mess with it anymore. I guess the 25" scale makes it sound kind of like a paul reed smith, but then it's scalloped and has a floyd type trem, so I guess it's kind of unique. Late 80's Kramer 'American' Sustainer guitar , but I bought it in parts form and it doesn't have the sustainer p/u or electronics. Original black floyd that I had bought way back around 1986 and duncan JB. I drilled the neck-holes the way you are supposed to (bought the exact drill bits) and bolted the neck on one time and it's never been taken off since. How often do you see a 13 year old guitar that's NEVER had the neck taken off ? The body was actually made by ESP for Kramer and it's 7/8 size with sharp edges and looks alot like the ESP M1 model or whatever it's called. The little pickup ring mounting holes were never drilled on the body, so it's the only Kramer I know of with 'direct mounted to wood pu's . This is a nice guitar, with one problem that sucks : it had all these extra mini-toggle switches next to the 3 pot holes on the body and no matter how well I plugged them up and tried to hide them, it's impossible.The only way to do it is to totally repaint the guitar ,which I'm not going to do . I'm not into metal anymore and this guitar has too much 'in your face presence' for how I play these days. Probably needs a re-fret. I guess when I get around to doing that, I'll sell it. Epiphone acoustic that I just found. A project taking up a lot of my extra time lately, since I've got a dead-line to get it done and want to take advantage of the opportunity to make some acoustic repair jigs, etc. I consider this guitar my first real acoustic. The other ones sound too much like toy guitars compared to something like this Some little red acoustic made in USA that a friend bought at a garage sale for $4.00. 24" scale, so it's a little too grungy for a lot of stuff. Did my only acoustic neck-reset on this guitar. Turned out nice. Red taiwain acoustic that I found. Just good for hanging on the wall. 15 years ago I would have tried to fix this thing up, but I'm too smart for that now. Cort Bass that I traded a "heavy metal" belt with a big buckle with a big skull and snake for. I was just looking for a way to get rid of this thing after realizing it was embarrassing as hell to wear it, so I ended up trading it for this bass which had the most twisted neck I've ever seen in my life. I fixed it though, by leveling the fret-board using the neck-jig. Did that about 10 years ago and I don't think it has ever warped anymore. It's my only bass and I will keep it until it gets replaced by at least 2 other basses. It sounds like a $600 bass on recordings, but the body is laminated and the neck is made out of "weird wood". I have a 68 Fender Bassman head that Dan Torres took the good tone out of after he lied to me, saying he had" this great mod for it, with tone that would sound better than anything". It sounds like **** and I can't stand to use it. Got a champ type amp I built from scratch. it sounded great until I started doing mods on it. Too busy to get back to it yet. Want to though. Got an old Fender 2x12 with 2 Vintage 30's in it. They are about 8 years old and since the bassman head has sounded like **** ever since torres did his con-job, they don't hardly ever get used. They got pushed hard for a few hours when I still had my marshall rig way back. I guess they're not really even broken-in yet. MXR Phase 90 mid-80's Korg distortion that I don't use Home-made Tube-screamer that doesn't work now and I'm not in a hurry to fix it because it made my guitar sound like that one Creed song - the one where he sings something like " my sacrifice" or something like that. Yeah, I was impressed that I built something from scratch that sounded like that, but that's not my sound , especially these days. Well , hell , this turned out to be a crappy looking list, but thank god I didn't list all my guitar repair tools or is there another thread about that ?

Brian, I never used one of those for gluing, but I'm wondering if after the epoxy still in the syringe dries, if it's easy to get out. As long as we're talking about glue, I'll share a tip for using super-glue, which often turns into 'nightmare glue' if you have problems with the tip getting clogged. I guess some of you notice that after you squeeze the bottle to try to force some glue out, then finally poke something into the tip to clear it, that suddenly 50 times the amount of glue you need comes out of the tip. What I do, is always have an extra screw-on tip and I rotate the tips. The clogged one goes into a jar with acetone and soaks in it. When I get a chance, I'll clean all the glue out of it. Being soaked in acetone makes it pretty easy. You always need that cleaned tip on standby, so when you want to use super-glue and the tip is clogged, don't mess with it. Switch to a clean tip, and do your gluing with no forceful squeezing and poking around in the tip to unclog it.

I make cardboard covers to go over the body of any guitar I work on. At least the area between the bridge and neck, plus around the neck, etc. I make them out of any thin cardboard I can find, like cereal boxes, etc. Never had any steel wool get on the pickups since I've been doing this. If you have to get aggressive with a coating on the frets, using just tape to protect the fret-board will not be enough. make some fret-board protectors out of soda can aluminum.

That $25,000 better be in japanese money and $25,000 in japanase money better be equal to about $250 US dollars because if it's equal to $25,000 US dollars, and they are willing to pay that kind of money for that kind of guitar, we need to set up a trip to japan. got a few guitars I'd like to sell and I could retire with that kind of money for each one.

The Peavy Ecoustic ATS had a patented rosewood tremelo bridge. Two point fulcrum with hardened steel pieces (or one piece ?) inbedded into the rosewood I guess. They also made a non trem version. I'm looking at it in an older Peavey catalog right now. You can tell by looking at it that it probably doesn't sound very good. Nothing about it on Harmony central as far as I can tell. Here's a pic of one without a soundhole and the bar isn't there, but the hole for it is: http://home.kimo.com.tw/web2002b/ch-peavey_eats.html

I agree that you should not put a big 'ol metal whammy on an acoustic. I mean I'm just imagining if I made such a guitar and put a whammy on it, then wished I wouldn't have. What you should do is BOLT an acoustic bridge on, and play the thing and see how you like it that way. Stew-mac sells a set a screws with holes through them, to do this type of thing. These screws go where the strings go through the bridge. Since there's a hole in the screw, the string still goes through, although you have to go through some trouble sticking your hand inside the body to put the washer and nut on the bolt and I guess you also have to put the string through from inside the body. Hell, leave it like that for weeks so you can get to know how the guitar sounds and you might like it and not want to alter that sound by whammyizing the thing. You can make those Stew-mac screws if you know how to use the drill press like a lathe to drill the holes through them. That's what I did. Much cheaper, no extreme stew-mac shipping charges or minimum order crap to deal with. So this is an acoustic with a bolt-on neck ? Funny thing happened to me the other night. I've been wanting an acoustic pretty damn bad for a long time, but I never come across a used one that suits me. Another problem is that acoustics have glued-on necks and I'd really like to take an acoustic with me when I travel, but with the glued-on neck it's too much of a hassle. Ok, a few have bolt-on necks, but I don't see them hardly at all. So the other night , someone was throwing away an old Epiphone acoustic with a nice mahogany bolt-on neck. Needs some work that I can do with both hands tied behind my back: Refret,bridge reglue,threaded inserts and machine screws for the neck. Best things in life are free. I got an ACOUSTIC travel guitar now. Came with a case too (although I won't use that when I travel with it). Found this guitar 2 hours after putting some pics of my great-grandfather (famous violin and bow maker) on my website. maybe it's his way of saying thanks.

You can make control cavity covers or pickguards any color you want if you have that colored paint and it will stick to plexiglas. You paint the underside, which will look like it's been brush painted, but not from the other side at all. I've made several black control cavity covers. They look even better than the ones you buy. Just don't scratch up the clear plexiglas and they are shiney and clean looking as can be. The black condutive paint even does the job just fine. Clean the plexiglas with naptha and let dry before painting. Don't sand the plexiglas anywhere but the edges.

I was wrong about where I saw that article. It's actually in 'Acoustic Guitar ' magazine, May/June 1994 No. 24. I know because I still have this magazine and happened to look through it last night. Sorry for any confusion my other post might have caused. Rob

I don't know if it's still true, but Japanese wood buyers get first pick of American wood for sale. It's part of a "we're sorry for nuking your ass" deal from after WW2. I read this somewhere years ago but don't know where and really don't want to try to find where that was. I find this 'guitar parts online' place suspicious. Plus I think the guy who runs this site sells parts and it's not too cool to go on and on about some other place selling cheap parts. I don't like the way 'guitar parts online' is so vague about describing what they sell and you can't even make the pictures of the items bigger to get a better look.

Hmmm, I was interested in the "factory second" strat body which is described as being routed for 1 humbucker and 2 single-coils but the photo shows 3 single-coils. If that pic is the real thing, I wish it was $25, I'd buy it.

It's just that I have a drill press but not a lathe and it's more common that others are in the same situation. There might be an advantage that I'm not aware of because I think the guy who I got this tip from probably also has a lathe.

I just sold my 2 'American Lutherie' magazines of which one had a guitar with frets like you are talking about. It was either in issue #12 or #19. It might have been the baroque guitar, but I'm not sure about that. The fret-board had "T-slots" running lengthwise and each short piece of fret had a little metal "T" piece attached to the bottom so the frets would be able to slide onto the fret-board and I guess moved up and down the neck whenever needed . Each fret piece was slightly concaved to help keep the string from being pushed off it's edge (the ends of the fret piece were higher than the middle). Give a guitar like this to a hard-core blues-bender and watch his head explode. You wouldn't be able to get a little Dremel saw to be square to the fret-board at anyplace except maybe the first and last frets. Best way I can think of is to drill as many .022 (or whatever width you're after)holes in a row next to each other with that size drill bit (yes they make them, yes they break if you just look at them the wrong way), then "blend" them together with the Dremel rigged in a router-base and .022 (or whatever width you want) Dental burr,Like Brian says. You'll probably be breaking bits like hell. They are fragile when that small. I only have a couple left from the package of 5-6 that I bought and I didn't even use them that much. It can be an expensive way to go. You can also make a very short .018-.020 saw blade by cutting off part of an exacto key-hole saw blade. You can use a hinge to hold it (clamp it tight in the hinge with some small nuts and bolts.

I'd fill them with wood and glue, but after it's dry, I would drill holes for threaded inserts and use machine screws to bolt the neck on. It's probably the best mod you can make on a 'bolt-on' neck guitar. The reason I would fill the holes first is because if they are too close to where you drill another hole, it can make your drill bit start to "wander off " from it's intended path if a "wall of wood" gives way between the 2 holes. Now, the problem is that it's pretty hard( maybe very hard) to find oval head machine screws with the same size head as the wood ones. I'm in the process of finding some at a good price. I'll probably have to buy a bulk amount. I'm not in a big rush to find them or get them, so it could be a good while before I would even have any. Vintique has a kit with them, but it's expensive. If you don't want to use threaded inserts, then I would drill the holes big enough that the walls are fresh, clean wood and then glue a fairly tight-fitting wood dowel into them. You should saw some "grooves" on the sides of the dowels so excess glue can squeeze up out the top of the holes. If it can't squeeze out, you can end up with an air-pocket under the dowel that will keep it from going all the way down in the hole. Hard maple is the longest lasting wood to use. Hard to find hard maple dowels though. I make my own on the drill press. Making your own wood dowels on the drill press is one of the coolest wood-working tricks I've learned. Too much to explain to write it all here right now. in short, it's using a spinning round sander attached to the drill press talble (i use a portable electric drill with a sanding drum on it and it's clamped in the drill press vise), while your wood is chucked in the drill press chuck above and that's also spinning. You bring the spinning wood down with the drill press handle and the spinning sander below starts rounding the wood. The wood in the drill press chuck can even be a square piece, just as long as it can be chucked tight enough. It ends up perfectly round.

Holy crap ! I want to know what inspired that body shape. It's got to be either ' Schmoo' or that guy in Star-Trek who changes shape.

If the best tone is what you're after, then you would want to use older wood. I have a bunch of oak from old furniture I tore apart.It has a REALLY nice crisp tone when I tap it. Only bad part is that I would have to glue a few pieces together to make a full-sized guitar body, but I'm pretty sure that will still sound better than if I went out and bought a piece of new kiln-dried wood. I'm currently making a "surrogate" guitar body, like the one Stew-Mac sells, out of some of the uglier pieces of this old oak, so I can do bolt-on neck re-frets by mail. I think the body of Brian May's guitar has a piece of oak in it. Or maybe the whole body is oak. I do find it quite amazing when guitars made out of things like formica sound good, although I haven't heard it for myself. That's really breaking the rules. A neck is less likely to warp if made out of old wood. I guess people get tired of hearing me say that, but with so many always being so quick to buy a new neck, I guess they need to be reminded. I'm just imagining finding an old piece of mahogany to make a Les Paul Jr. Between the improved tone of the older wood, plus having the option of not having to put on an overly-thick finish like Gibson did, you'd probably have the best sounding Jr you ever heard.