soapbarstrat

Around .100" is pretty common. I find it interesting that StewMac's clear pickguards are spec'ed at .085" thick, when clear plexi sheets that are so common are around .100" And I mention clear, 'cause you can paint the back side any color (that will stick to the plexi) and it looks top-notch on the shiny side. Or you can do something more simple, yet crazier looking, by backing the clear guard with Christmas wrapping paper or whatever (not gluing it to the guard, but a carefully cut match)

I saw that email about 1/2 hour after making my post here, and when I saw that the neck in that email appears to be a mid to late 80's MIJ Fender, it really got me wondering if they drilled the holes a little too big on those, 'cause in my own experience those MIJ Fender strip out a little too easily. I also got confused when I saw right in the middle of that article, there was a plug for the StewMac notched straight-edge. Uh yeah, a notched straight-edge comes in real handy when dealing with stripped screws

Well, if you mean fail as in the neck flying off the body, no, but I've seen more stripped bolt-on screws than I care to count, sometimes with enough separation between neck heel bottom and body pocket to fit a credit card corner into the gap. Fairly easy fix in every case I personally know of. And then I've seen the loose set-neck joints. Much bigger deal to repair, 'cause now you've got cracks showing right through the finish. It's actually SG's I've seen this the most on, coincidence, I guess. I prefer bolt-on with machine screws (on electrics and acoustics). Don't think I'll ever be able to say if there's a sonic difference between bolt and set, 'cause I'll probably never get my hands on two guitars at the same time, where the only difference is the neck joint.

Seriously, I just ran through the list and figure $200 US dollars because it's unlikely any one person wants every item there and they'll want to sell what they don't want, without taking a loss, and even making a few extra bucks to offset the hassle.

'bout tree fiddy

I have always used a Dremel with the brown disc (the ones that break so damn easily) with the screw sticking out of a scrap of wood (although I think a scrap of laminate flooring would be better). The scrap of wood is what's clamped in the vise. A tight enough fit into the scrap, so the screw won't turn while cutting. A caliper measurement of the original protrusion will tell you how far to let the end of the screw stick out of the scrap block, which you'll cut off flush at the scrap block. Thread distortion should be minimal with the Dremel cut-off wheel (for rougher cut-offs, like with a hacksaw, I like to first put a bolt onto the threads which will clean up mildly distorted threads when backed off). Good idea to round ("safe edge") the cut-off screw end, so it won't make ugly marks on the bridge base-plate.

Ok, so sanding a radius onto a piece of wood is tedious, but recrowning the flattest ground down fret-tops ever seen, not so tedious ? Back-track when you bought your sandpaper. At one point, did you walk through a doorway underneath what looked like a sign with the words 'Harbor' and 'Freight' ?

I usually get 'em out with nothing worse than shallow scratches on the sides of the crown. I have re-used pulled frets before. It's no big deal if you know what you're dealing with (especially how consistent the crown heights are with each other). And I'm pretty good at bending a radius into a short piece of fret-wire with different kinds of pliers. But, it would often be more trouble than using new fret-wire, so it's mostly been in special situations for me, mostly partial fret-jobs. I once put all used frets on a $1.00 yard sale acoustic. Lot more fret leveling involved than I would have liked. Should be obvious that I don't compromise much on my pulling tools. First one I'll grab is mini end-nippers with the jaws ground so thin, I had to add a scew stop on the handles to keep the jaw tips from touching each other and also to help keep them from bashing too hard into the fret tang. They don't lift the fret up a whole lot, but enough that I can switch over to another pair that's not ground so delicate.

I'm fairly certain each roller is an individual needle bearing. The main shell is supposedly brass and plated with either chrome or the satin plating. Those things often have enough trouble working properly as it is. Add paint or another coating to the mix, and be prepared for more problems with the thing working as smoothly as it should. Show us a picture of how out of place it looks not being black. All black hardware is so freakin' 80's (Ok, maybe early 90's too, as if that helps)

Silver strings, silver frets : It'll blend in well enough with some essential parts of your guitar.

Thanks. It was no easy task. Most impressive part for me, is that a bottle of Everclear on the shelf went untouched even after I broke off a tap in the tool steel (eventually got it out and tapped through with a new tap) And the 4-40 nut is a "jam nut" , to keep the 4-40 bolt locked in it's set position.

Red body/black guard is fairly common. I think of Brad Gillis right away. I actually searched around for black bodies/red guards not long ago, when I thought I might want to do that on one of my own guitars. Based on my search, not many like that around. I like that look better though. Well, at least I'm not as bored with it as the other option. How about red body/wood guard ? Makes me think of the old Dodge Lil Red Express Truck.

Crudely made tools make baby soapbar cry. That's my " oh man, dude's obsessed" version. Started out as this. Main thing I wanted was a "depth stop", which is the 4-40 bolt/nut you see sticking out of the right side. Then I thought I'd use carbide shafts from broken dremel bits for the punch part, so had to drill a hole for that, then a set-screw plus grind a little flat in the shaft. Ground different punch shapes. One punches tang from top to bottom, another punches little dots in the middle of the tang. Pretty sure Frank is the original inventer of fret tang expanding pliers. Maybe I would have made ones identical to his if I had a belt sander like he does. Before such pliers came along, tang expanding was usually done with the "B side" of a hammer head which had been ground to a chisel point. Fret-wire would be held upside-down on a table or whatever and chisel gashes would be hammered along the bottom of the tang. I had also thought of making a set-up that would work with a drill or arbor press, where the fret would lay in a table with a half fret-crown notched into it (picture the table part of the Klein tang nipper tool, only bigger, mostly longer) then you'd bring down a punch with the presses handle. Also important to know that if you radius your fret-wire, then use pretty much any "tang expander" on it, it will flatten out the radius, so on jobs where I know the whole neck is going to need expanded tangs, I do it while the wire is still in long lengths, then radius after expanding.

Already sent Keith these links. Reluctant to post for all, because of the potential recipe for disaster, so use the info at your own risk. a.k.a don't come crying to me if you trash a perfectly good tuner. http://usera.ImageCave.com/soapbarstrat/sic_7_1.gif.jpg http://usera.ImageCave.com/soapbarstrat/sic_7_2.gif.jpg http://usera.ImageCave.com/soapbarstrat/sic_7_3.gif.jpg Links will likely go dead, as the photo site seems to put a cap on usage.

" Slice-away" view in case anyone's interested.

You can't expect a 20 year old guitar neck to remain as flat as when it was made. It's *wood*, the string tension is around 80 pounds, it was made when that freakin' Bon Jovi "livin on a prayer" video was playing on MTV every hour.

Peavey Ecoustic ATS . Acoustic Electric Guitar with Tremelo. Bolt-on 25.5" scale neck. Bridge is wood, looks much like a regular acoustic bridge, but appears to have 2 fulcrum points (I'm looking at a catalog pic. Don't see a date on the catalog but Eddie sure has a full blown deal with Peavey at the time). Maple top, poplar back. Rosewood bridge plate with Graphlon saddle. Ok, says here : Hardened steel 2-point fulcrum bridge plate. (so it's like a thin rosewood veneer stuck to a steel plate or something (???) I hate to say a guitar sounds bad just by how it looks in a photo, but put this one in that file folder. Heck, I think you'd likely get a better sound putting acoustic bronze strings on a Jackson soloist.

Nice to see Ansil posting outside the electronics section. Yeah, of course a single tuning machine can get replaced, but watch how a cheap guitar starts to get expensive when you go chasing down a few single parts. OP didn't even say what part is bent. Probably the main concern is busting the casing apart while trying to bend anything. Most people don't know that most, if not all, sealed tuners can be taken apart. (in case one would want to bend a bent shaft straight by itself). But if it still works, might be best to leave well enough alone.

Then there's the blog style way, which I can imagine is quite appealing, because with that, you can really take your good old time, and not even feel so obligated to finish anything. LOL. I suppose if I ever get a digital camera again, I might make a blog, but only to try to prove I know what I'm talking about. Not so much to hold anybody's hand and Lord knows I never reveal all of my secrets, so it will be a suck-ass blog.

There's also been cases in the past where some no good thief took someone's forum tutorial or article and was selling copies of it on ebay or something like that. Nobody needs that crap. The better the article, the more likely that happens. Most of the time when I come across a good tip on a forum, I copy it and save it in my email draft box. Quite a mess in there now, , but I have tons of info in there. There's actually a small numbers of guys on the internet that whenever I see they've posted, I read it and often save it, adding to what I saved of theirs before. I don't think of any single forum as a "one stop shop", but I guess there are some who want to create that for some reason. What's really pitiful, is when people take info from one forum (written by someone else) and take it to their "safe haven" forum as a way of making the home base bigger and better. And they think the original author ain't watching the whole thing. I once posted some of my router-planing stuff at MIMF. A guy takes it over to OLF and one of his buddy's writes " let's make a few changes and call it an OLF design". Oh yes, I'm ranting. Have been the whole time I've posted in this thread. Don't think I'm not aware of it.

I wish I was able to watch youtube videos (computer and ISP too slow), 'cause I can tell you as someone who had a lot of Dan Erlewine articles in print for years, until finally getting all his videos, that printed words of a lot of luthier stuff just doesn't do it justice. Videos rule with this kind of stuff. Things I read ended up being quite a bit different from what I thought after seeing the same things on video. I guess a lot of people know that and it makes it seem a little more futile to try to "write" articles. I guess the whole thing with "asking" for tutorials puts some negativity into it, at least for me. Sure, I'd like to be able to watch a video on how to convert an import doweled neck acoustic to a bolt-on (I've actually seen enough written articles and photos to be able to do it, but still , videos rule, even when you already know how to do what they show, they still rule). But I would not feel right posting anywhere, " can someone please make a tutorial or video on this ?". I guess anyone craving more tutorials should just lead by example.

Ok, thanks for clueing me in, Sheldon Cooper, um, I mean Frank.

I'd like the opposite. That anyone starting out do some of their own legwork to get them more at the level of those they'd like to ask qestions and share ideas with. Yes, I realize if you spend $50 on some books, you won't be able to get that Chinese floyd rose copy on ebay. How about a tutorial on how to earn money for books and tools by cleaning out gutters for elderly people around your neighborhood . I don't mean you Mexi, I mean these "blank slate" guys who show up and want to know all the tools needed. I don't get that way of thinking. Anytime I wanted to learn something new (like glass cutting), I looked up articles on how it's done, and the freakin' tools involved are mentioned in the articles.

Ain't the only part of the neck I solo on, but I have to admit, since I've got a lot of the 80's shred playing out of my system, scalloped necks are more unfavorable for me. I really feel putting the tallest frets on a neck is the best compromise. The weirdest thing for me on a scalloped neck is how the edges of the neck feel, especially under the High E string. On the B through A strings, there's not much of a different feeling between a scalloped neck and a regular neck with the tallest frets. If your fingers ain't touching the board, doesn't matter if the air-space is 5 thousands, or 1/16 of an inch. On a scalloped neck, I never had much of a problem with strings going out of tune from fretting pressure, I just know not to press harder than needed, same as on tall frets on a regular neck. I think using the fret-board wood as a "stop" to tell you to stop pressing harder is pretty much bad fretting technique on any neck. What does happen to me on a scalloped neck is I can sometimes bend strings too easily from side to side and I suppose that could cause tuning problems with chords. For the final sanding of the scallops, my favorite sanding block was an oval shaped BIC lighter, for most of the scallops.

I've had plenty of fun playing a couple I did, but I hate the way it takes a lot of stiffness away from the neck. Where's fret-wire with a 1/8" high crown when you need it ? There was also the problem with my being a consistency fanatic. I was so worried one scallop would be deeper than another. Got the best of me and I made a custom Dremel base that had a rail that rode in the fret-slots and then I could set the bit a certain distance from the fret-slot and of course set the depth of the cutter. The bit was one of those carbide spike balls. I'm not sure how much I used that set-up, it was so long ago. Must have been as tedious and slow as it sounds. On the other hand, I remember very well, starting many of the scallops with a drum sander on a drill, sacrificing frets in the process. This was before I ever knew about Petillo triangle frets, but I had triangle frets alright. I pulled 'em and refretted of course.