Daniel Schmolze

Well, the fretwire didn't end up arriving yesterday, much to my disappointment, so I decided to go ahead and glue in the neck anyway. Also got the headstock veneers on, and did a little carving of the headstock to complement the body. Pics: I'll blend the neck/body join at the heel, and add a wenge veneer to the back of the headstock. Headstock closeup. Not quite finished, but you get the idea. Unfortunately, school is starting back up for me, which means I'll be a couple hours from my shop, but I'm gonna try to go back this week and I should still be able to work on the weekends. Hoping to more or less finish this thing next weekend.

Thanks for the comments guys. I'm really pleased with how it's going so far, definitely much smoother than I had feared. First for the questions. maikman: definitely gonna contour the neck heel after it's glued in. Upper fret access is gonna be a breeze on this thing =] Xanthus: getting the carve roughed out went pretty quickly with an angle grinder, once I got the hang of using the thing. Maybe an hour for the first draft, then another hour with a round rasp perfecting it. (Oh, and thanks for the photos) Alright, got a bunch done on the neck over the past couple days. Here are some new photos: Fretboard and ears gluing up. Fretboard glued and radiused, headstock cut out. Side view at this stage. Ran out of fretwire halfway through the job. Damn! Hopefully more will be arriving tomorrow, and at least the fretting itself seemed to go smoothly. Headstock thicknessed, neck rough carved. Neck carve close to finished. Need to finish installing the frets before I continue.

Major progress today, shop looks like a sawdust bomb went off. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves: Here's one wetted down. Pretty impressive color change. Front agan Back carved Front carved and wet Here's where I stand now. Body pretty much done, except for bridge and controls. Front Tomorrow: neck stuff (got the scarf joint gluing now, and the fretboard has been slotted and tapered).

Following my post here I've finally gotten started on my first project. Here's the final design I came up with: I managed to get access to a monster Epson 9600 printer, so I printed a bunch of back and front views of the design full-size: I then cut out one of the views, taped it to a piece of MDF and traced the lines with an Exacto knife. I used a band saw and a spindle sander to cut out the shape, and did the same thing to get templates for the headstock, neck pocket and pickup cavity. I calculated out the fretboard dimensions rather than printing it, and then traced around the resulting fretboard template to get a nice tight neck pocket template. finished templates So now I'm just waiting for my wood to arrive (should be here Monday). A bit about the specs and hardware: 25.5" scale, mahogany neck with wenge headplate and maple veneer, mahogany body with 1/4" wenge top and maple veneer, hipshot fixed bridge, Planet Waves tuners. Not sure about pickups yet, will probably postpone that decision until the very end.

Thanks for the comments guys. Guess there's no reason not to do 24 frets, so I will. I have big hands, which is why I was thinking of the 26" scale length. I was planning on buying a board pre-cut and slotted from Allen Guitar, but I could do 25.5" if it looks like it's gonna be a hassle. Do you guys think the increased string tension at 26" would make it difficult to play (with 10s, say)? I'm still waiting for my parts to arrive, at which point I'll get the neck taper down and firm up the other design details. I'll see what I can do to make sure the upper horn is strong enough - I like the current shape, but it sure would suck to have it break!

Hey folks. Great website you've got here. For a while now I've been wanting to build a guitar from scratch, and I've finally decided to just do it. I've started buying tools and supplies, and I've been working on designs. I started on paper, and once I had something I was happy with I took a photo and imported it into TurboCAD. Anyhow, here's what I have so far: Some things to note: The inner lines on the body represent a carve. The guitar will have a 26" scale length and 22 frets - I drew 24 for reference. The lines from the end of the fretboard to the bridge are also just for reference - it'll be a set neck, but not a neck-through. Still working on the headstock shape. The current one is a copy of the ESP F-2E shape, and although I like it I'd prefer to come up with something original. As for wood choices, I'm thinking mahogany for the back and neck, with a wenge top and a thin light-colored veneer sandwiched in between. Hardware will be black, with the Hipshot hardtail bridge and Planet Waves locking tuners. Dunno about pickups yet (open to suggestions). One volume knob, one three-way switch. OK, so thoughts? I'm open to any comments or suggestions at this point (still easy to change things!) Also, a technical question: does anyone know how to make TurboCAD draw smooth lines? Thanks! P.S. - Here's my original pencil-and-paper sketch. Smoothed the horns out a bit, but otherwise pretty much the same.

Thanks for the responses guys. I'll call the local lumber places and see what the story is. The router idea also seems like a good one. I'm new to guitar building, and eventually I imagine I'll buy the tools to do thicknessing myself, but for now I'm trying to keep expenses down and farm out where necessary.

I'm planning my first guitar build, and I want the body to consist of 1 1/4" mahogany (1 or 2 piece) and a 1/2" wenge top (1 piece) with a light-colored veneer in between. I've scoured the net and eBay, but I can't seem to find someone who can supply me with those dimensions (everyone has 1 3/4" mahogany bodies and 1/4" wenge tops). Any ideas? Thanks!

Nevermind, I was just misinterpreting the color codes on my GFS pickups (I think I had them wired out of phase). They're the same as Seymour Duncun's colors, for future reference.

That seems to work, but positions 1-4 are abnormally low output compared to 5 and 6. Any ideas?

I've got two 4-wire humbuckers and this switch and I'd like to wire them up with one volume and one tone pot as follows: 1 = neck only 2 = bridge only 3 = both in parallel 4 = both in series 5 = both coil-tapped in parallel 6 = both coil-tapped in series Anyone have any ideas as to how to go about this? Thanks.

It gets better if I touch the bridge, strings, or stuff in the control cavity, but worse as soon as I let go. I tried switching the wires on the output jack, and I got a much louder buzz, so I'm pretty sure it's not that. One thing I'm a little confused about is the use of shielded vs. non-shielded wires, and I think this could be the source of my noise issues. Right now I have four non-shielded wires running from the pickup selector switch to the control cavity (two to the volume pots, one to ground, and one to the output jack). These should probably be shielded, right? But I'm not sure where I would attach the two parts of a shielded wire. Thanks.

I'm trying to wire up a couple humbuckers with a push-pull pot for coil tapping. Everything seems to be working, but I'm getting an annoying buzz. It goes away when I touch the bridge or random wires in the control cavity. I'm pretty new to guitar electronics, and I'm not completely confident that I'm following the diagram correctly (http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/WDUHH3T2206). Could this be a grounding problem? I soldered all the grounds to the back of the bridge volume pot -- this is what you're supposed to do, right? Also, for the humbucker wires in the diagram that are connected, I soldered the ends together and then soldered on a longer wire to connect to either the switch or the back of the bridge volume pot. Thanks.

Pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dschmolze/set...4781615/detail/ I'm trying to wire my overhauled Squire in a standard Strat configuration. I misinterpreted the wiring diagram the first time and ended up with pickup wires that were too short (hence the spliced-together wires in the photos), but I think I have it right now. Except when I plug it in I get nothing (the unplugged buzz does quiet down, but I hear nothing when I tap on the pickups). I know it's not the prettiest wiring job in the world, but can anyone spot something wrong in the pics? Thanks.

I'm doing a complete rebuild of a lawsuit era LP. The fretboard has seen better days (so has everything else, actually), and it has a bunch of dings that I would like to fill. I plan on staining the board a dark rosewood-ish color after I degrime it, so I'm in search of a filling technique that will not be noticeable after staining. Any ideas? Thanks.