soapbarstrat

Oh So it was the strange router bit that threw me off . Should have first asked that router bit about his childhood, his likes/dislikes, all the typical "get to know him" stuff so that he won't want to lie to me.

Yeah, my 1983 Fender Lead II was Northern ash. 3/4 size body (like a junior strat) yet heavy as hell. I also did some drilling and pickup routing on it, so I know how hard it was in that respect too. And I'm not sold on light weight wood only being good for a guitar. I've certainly heard plenty of swamp ash strats that sounded horrible. And heavy ash strats that sound great (pretty sure Jake E Lee's main whitey is heavy Northern ash)

I thought I was totally sick of how single bucker rear-rout strats look, but you got something there with that color, and how you made the maple neck look so appropriate by using that cream pickup ring.

Alternatives to nut files ? Boy, now THAT'S a new one

I wonder if he's got .008 - .038 gauge strings on that Bolin tele, since it apparently has a short scale, and he used to have 8's on his Les Pauls.

I can't tell for sure if the one in your photo has a control plate or not. But that crazy Gibbons dude does have a convoy of custom teles/esquires that do indeed have rear routed control cavities. http://www.bolinguitars.com/homejb.html Not typical for a tele/esquire to be like that, though.

Ok, I see now where you can give someone the stars, but it doesn't make much sense to me. I just gave someone one star. I figured that's probably all you can give at a time, but no, I then gave someone else more stars and now they have a whole mess of stars (it's ok, they deserve it). So, apparently I could have given that person 5 stars.

I'm always coming across new forums when I do google searches for stuff. And so often it's like that, where they have so much crap plastered in their sigs. Hard to find what they wrote half the time. Maybe it's the internet equivalent to people pulling up next to you at a traffic light with their stereo blasting away. Like " IN YOUR FACE WITH EVERYTHING I LIKE !!!" What's with the little row of stars people have in their profile. Can I give someone a star if they post something useful ?

SS wire I have has tang widths anywhere from .020 to .022. Yeah, it'll fit ok in .024" slots, but I still like a match more perfect than that.

You guys and your .024" wide fret slots. Far East budget imports love that .024" also. Wish they would have copied Fender and Gibson on the width instead of going wider. All the best fret-wire these days is meant for a .020" to .022" slot, or am I wrong ? Is there some great wire out there with a .024" wide tang ? I got handfuls of used wire with a .024" wide tang but the stuff is like aluminum. I keep planning to get a saw Like Brian Galloup uses on the neck-resetting video, after he plugs the steamer hole in the 14th fret-slot, he plugs it, then saws a new fret-slot through the plug with what appears to be a veratis flush-cut saw. Not 100% on that though.

Still better suited for the "off topics" section (so we can add tons of nonsense !!!) I found out the other day, that you can write an awful lot in the 'interest' section of your profile.

You get that stuff from the bad, mean industrial supply places (I call them bad and mean, because you can easily blow a huge wad of dough on stuff you're not even sure is the right thing you need) I'm fairly sure Ron Thorn has said he prefers the "glass filled" delrin over regular Delrin, because he thinks the regular is too soft. Stew-Mac's "slip stone" is delrin with teflon added. Don't know if it's "glass filled" too. Kind of doubt it (I have one blank of it on stand-by). What I go back and forth with is : should I use a material thats slippery from top to bottom, or just add lubrication to another (cheaper) material right where the strings sit against. A little Tri-Flo teflon lube quickly makes a corian nut act like a delrin nut, in my experience, so far. But I'm not 100% sold on any of these options (maybe just because there *are* options)

Any kind of wood, as long as you take it out behind the shed and piez on it.

Stew-Mac wire seems to have a tang width of .022". Been a long time since I've sawn fresh slots in a board. Don't you end up with a slot width at least .001" wider than the saw's kerf ? I like a 1:1 match most of the time. Take a Fender neck with .020" slots (love that even number !), and then my favorite fret-wire (stuff made in Germany and sold through several outlets) has some sizes with a .020" wide tang. haven't had any back-bow problems lately from this 1:1 match (of course new fret-boards these days just don't seem as stiff as ones from many years ago). Of course if you are not going to shave down the barbs if needed, then go wider on the slot.

Just to clarify, the gaps I'm more concerned with filling are between the fret tang and slot walls. Such as a fret tang being .021" wide sitting in a slot .022" wide (or wider, but then I have to use that crazy crimper thing- wish high quality fret-wire had more tang width options).

Is that your experience ? Not mine. See necks all the time, with no glue and every fret not fully seated, or several frets not fully seated. On a *refret*, that's a plus for me. My fret pullers fit easily under those gaps. Never heard of frets popped up on any of them after I was done with them (well, with super-glue. There was a bass I used epoxy on and one fret popped up later).

That's right ! Don't even use *Me* to clean the grime off your fret-board, even though I'm rough and scruffy like the cheapest, coarsest steel wool that's been left laying at the back of the garage for eons. Seriously, if you're going to re-fret it, I would first scrape off crud with a plastic credit card (put a sharp edge on it, if needed). Kind of creepy to dilute that kind of crud and have it flow down in the fret slots. I also used to always wash my hands before playing and that keeps a board real tidy. My hands would actually absorb dirt from the board instead of putting more there.

Not dropping out, but on the factory frets on one of my Fenders, the 21st fret just popped up one day, without me doing anything to cause it, and the neck was at least 10 years old at the time. I did a fret level on a customers guitar, everything seemed solid (no glue used on factory frets). He gets the neck back and the 14th fret pops up on the bass side. I had to eat the shipping for him sending it back, fixing it, then returning it. So yeah..... I LIKE THE FREAKIN' GLUE ! I think super-glue makes the wood in the slots stronger, so there's usually less chipping when frets are pulled with heat. I think once those slots have been strengthened with super-glue, and frets always taken out correctly, there should be no end to how many fret jobs that board can handle (I've read old repair books where they were against gluing frets, and at the same time said a fret-board can only take so many refrets before the slots are too chewed up, etc) But I always coat the wood with accelerator first, so the glue doesn't seep so far into the wood. I like to keep things right where they're needed (at least stuff that tends to go soaking as far as it can) I do think a quick cure epoxy or any glue that doesn't dry brittle hard could cause a loss of good tone. I do like to crimp the tangs if the frets are fitting loose. * I don't like solely relying on glue to hold down a fret *. Glue to me is partly added insurance and a air-space filler and seems to help eliminate "dead spots". I've had many people say their neck "came to life" after I refretted it, and I just assume the brittle super-glue might be part of it ( I don't care a whole lot if that's the case or not) Actually I think Frank Ford came up with the fret tang crimping pliers. Dan made his own mod to that tool, and also Stew-Mac came up with another version. I like to surpass things when I can, so I came up with my own tang crimpers. I just had to have an adjustable stop so I would get a consistent crimp all along a fret (If that's what I want). And I also thought, why not have interchangeable carbide punches, so sometimes I can punch a small dot in the middle of the tang, and other times crimp the whole tang from top to bottom, or whatever.

If that's all the fret is doing, then there's sure a lot of nonsense going on about NS frets sounding different than SS frets and brass nuts sounding different than Corian nuts, etc. I think his test were real basic. Probably some kind of device where one thing was placed on a fret and another placed on wood some distance away and measuring how vibration was transfering through. I suppose you could do the same test, if you think it's something that needs to be investigated. I've got other reason for gluing the frets, so not an issue for me.

Yes, impossible if you live where there's no electricity to plug a soldering iron into.

All the common nut materials wear down. That's just how it is, when you want to use a material that's not an ultimate bitch to work with. I like corian just fine. Use a little synthetic lube (teflon, moly, graphite, or mixture of all 3) and the wear goes way down, tuning instability goes way down. The scraps are the best thing going for anyone learning how to make nuts from scratch. If you are finding that the "Corian" you're working with seems soft, you might not have genuine Corian. I always get a kick out of Rick Turner saying how much Corian sucks for guitar nuts. The truth is, it doesn't suck, and Rick has bad feelings about the stuff, because he had a period where he was doing kitchen counter work, using Corian, and apparently didn't like being in that line of work, so the Corian gets associated with it. Kind of like me never going to a certain department store ever since I worked there. People are funny that way.

Erlewine did some kind of "sound transmission" test which showed that non-glued frets tended to have a poorer transmission than glued frets. I always use glue. I spend way too much time going the extra mile to get the frets seated and leveled as perfectly as I can, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let humidity (or an increased lack of humidity) go into that end grain on both sides of the frets and change things. I think you also get better seated frets if they remained clamped down for a while, instead of pressing them down and then releasing the clamp right away (as in a typical arbor press fretting). Those barbs on the fret tangs push/compress end grain wood and if given a little time, some if it will spring back, helping to keep those barbs from raising back up. But I still like super-glue added to really freeze everything up in there.

Well, I certainly wouldn't expect an under $100 set-up to include a "classroom course". I tend to think the term "trade secrets" has a double meaning. One meaning more obvious, the other meaning : I'll share a tool or technique I came up with, if you do the same. Not so much : " since you're willing to stand here for an hour, I'll cut to the chase and tell you all about what took me years to figure out and cost me plenty with books and videos, tools, too much of my free time, etc". "set up" : I've seen a fret-level included in that catagory sometimes. I don't agree with it a whole lot, but that's how some see it. (in other words I think a fret-level is going beyond set-up work) And maybe most important : There's some things that if you show someone, and they try to do it, they're likely to make a real mess. Showing someone how high to adjust their pickups is one thing (that's the kind of info you should give to the guy standing there), but fret leveling is just not something to casually discuss (if the person is going to actually try to do what you talk to them about)

edit : replied to the wrong thread !

I like that StewMac link with the set-ups. I especially like the Gordon-Smith set-up since it seems to go beyond what I am capable of. Makes me feel like I still have something to learn.