Blackdog

I am working on this korina/rosewood/korina laminated neck at the moment: It's going to have a hot-rod TR, an I wanted to use two CF rods at the sides (Stewmac 3.2mm x 9.5mm) . The centerpiece (RW) is 19mm wide. How would you suggest to install the CF rods in this neck ?? If I do it like I did last time they would sit pretty much astride the korina/rosewood joints... Wouldn't that defeat the stiffening advantages of the lamination ?? I was thinking that fanning the slots for the CF rods a little (as in not parallel to the TR: closer at the nut, farther apart at the heel) might allow more of the wood joints to remain undisturbed... How would you do it ?? What would you suggest ?? Many thanks in advance.

This 4th project is for myself. It's sort of a plainer looking build compared with the last one. Possibly the last solidbody for a while too, as I want to start exploring with big chambers-semihollow things in the future. Last time I went to the Amsterdamse Fijn Hout I bought me a reasonably nice plank of Korina for 45 euros and I HAD to do something with that. After some careful measurements I could cut a two piece body blank and a long piece that I made into a laminated neck blank. I wanted to try a laminated neck at this point so the 50mm wide piece of korina was split in half. I prepped a 19mm thick centerpiece from some indian rosewood I had around. The grain of the Korina pieces was essentially at 45°, so I reversed one of the pieces, laminated the whole thing and cut the neck blank from that. It is a rather simple laminate but I think is good enough for my first attempt. For the body I am trying a "new" shape. I know, there's nothing really new around, and certainly this one is way too close to a known design to qualify, but at least it's new to me : It is an offset LP-DC inspired contour of sorts. The specs: Solidbody Korina, doublecut, carved top with a rosewood binding. Laminated Korina-RW-Korina neck, 13° tilt back headstock, my usual shape (offset) Maple bound rosewood fretboard. 22 frets, 25" scale. Possibly just one inlay at the 12th fret. Hotrod and twin CF rods. Unbound rosewood headplate. A P-90 for the neck slot and a humbucker for the bridge. Vol, Vol, Tone, 3-way toggle. Aluminum wraparound bridge and Sperzel tuners. To round off the woody look I think I'll cut a rosewood P90 cover and humbucker ring. Rosewood knobs too. Possibly finished in glossy nitro. Amberish as a Korina guitar should be. Here's the body and the neck blank already cut: Hard to show the offset of the body without a full frontal pic, but this one comes a little closer.

Well, it is a commission because I'm building it for someone else, but the end user is my son, and he's definitely NOT a paying customer. So that relaxes the situation quite a bit and gives me more freedom with the design. He wants a Les Paul. Obviously he's thinking Gibson Les Paul all the way (teenagers...), I already said I'm not building a clone or a copy, and we sort of reached an agreement. It's going to be my take on a singlecut with most of the LP elements in there. So the specs: One piece mahogany body. LP-thick and 100% LP outline. I'll make a nice chamber in there, for weight relief and improved resonance. Heavily flamed maple top, 17mm thick for a significantly more dramatic carve, more PRS-SC than LP. Will also have faux-binding. One piece mahogany neck. No surprises here, 13° tilt back head, HotRod, CF reinforcements. LP style mortise and long tenon (my first). Rosewood fingerboard, 22 frets, Gibson scale. Maple binding and real pearl trapezoids. unbound rosewood headplate on a Gibson-ish headstock. I still have to thing what to inlay on that, but it will definitely be something personal. Two humbuckers, LP-style control arrangement, ABR bridge, aluminum tailpiece, Grover locking tuners. Finishing will be traditional glossy. Either nitro or PU. Some amber/tan/maybe sunburst effect on the top to enhance the faux binding. The back and neck most likely natural or just amberish tinted. So far I have the body cut and the basic profile of the neck blank: The body The maple top

Thanks for the replies, Yes, I guess I'll be sticking to the formula. The finished neck is far more expensive in hours than it is in materials, so why run the risk... Sometimes I wonder why the major manufacturers still use simple rods and no CF. It's not all that expensive for the casual builder, it should be a lot cheaper to them... Thanks Erik. Exactly what I wanted to read.

That would be great! Thanks in advance! My email is mcomio@gmail.com Hi Mc, I'll try to send this file to you this evening. I replaced my main computer at home and I only have Corel installed in the old one. I need to make sure I'm sending you the right file (which I cannot open on the new one).... This evening I'll turn on the old PC, will check for the file and email it to you. Cheers,

I have the original satin knobs stored away. I might try them to see what they look like... BTW, I was reading your email to my wife in the other room and she barked, rather loudly... Well, make that she kindly reminds us that the inlays are not leaves, they're feathers !!!!

Thanks to all of you !! Bryan, I'm not sure I get your point. The polished/satin chrome of the bridge perfectly matches the polished/satin chrome of the tuners. Granted, the tuners are only visible from the back... My first (poor) excuse to get into building guitars was that I had too much unused hardware in boxes and drawers... What would you say if I tell you that THAT bridge was the centerpiece around which the whole guitar was conceived ?? I am not a whammy-bar player myself, I have just had that bridge in a drawer since the early 90s and wanted to finally put it to some use !!! Some people would have sold it on ebay, I decided to build a guitar around it... Many thanks for the feedback !!

Hello people. I have just finished my second build, the first where I actually built the complete neck myself. This is a one-piece, quartered IRW neck, with an IRW 25", 24 frets board. Kind of a long neck as it joins the body at the 23rd fret. It has a dual action HotRod and two CF bars along its sides. I took a lot of care in keeping the neck perfectly straight at every step. Down to the fret leveling and dressing right before glueing to the body. All of this with the TR loose (i.e. in the dead zone between pushing up and pushing down). When I stringed the instrument up to tension for the first time I expected some up-bowing, but got none. I's been tuned to pitch since last friday, and still nothing: perfectly straight. Needless to say the guitar plays like a dream. Much better than my previous one. I have since tightened the TR a little bit, just to the point where it engages, to avoid any rattlings. But the feel and action are still amazing without any further setting up. Why do you think it's so stable ?? Are the CF reinforcements that efficient ?? Is it the neck wood ?? A combination of both ?? I am considering a laminated neck for my next build (padauk/RW/padauk with some maple accents), and was originally thinking of skipping the CF rods altogether, as the neck itself would be far stiffer. But now I'm rethinking the strategy: it's fantastic to just glue the neck in and have nothing else to do to it !!! Opinions from the more experienced ?? TIA

Supplebanana and McOmio, Thanks for the nice words. About the plans/drawings, this is what we did: We scanned a front, full view picture of the PRS Santana from an old PRS brochure. Imported that into CorelDraw and draw the curves around the perimeter on top of the scan. Added some references, like the approximate position of the bridge/scale end. Knowing the scale length of the Santana we extrapolated the width of the lower bout. It was pretty much the same as a Les Paul, so I decided to use that figure to scale the whole drawing, as it was likely to be the proper one. From a full scale print of that drawing we cut the templates. The positions of the bridge and pickups had to be recalculated and drawn on the templates as my instrument has a different scale length (25" instead of 24.5"). That's all there is to it, really. If you still want the Corel .cdr final drawing of the body shape I can send it to you. Let me know.

Many, many thanks to all for the nice words and encouragement. More pictures can be seen at the "Finished build" thread. Thanks for all the help along the way. Mattia, I will definitely bring it along to the DGBM, I only hope I can make it myself, as I'll be working the whole previous week in Germany I'm supposed to fly back on friday, let's hope it does not get much longer than expected.

Our second build is now finished. So after about 6 months of sand-dust and nitro smell it's finally time for some glamour pictures. I call her Cassandra because it kind of rhymes with palissandro, as rosewood is the theme of this one. And Bloody, well, because that's the color of the top. Clever, eh ? Another angle The back The headstock front and back Detail of body Detail of neck joint Detail of top inlay Looking nice in this sunny Dutch spring day... Being a much more ambitious project and just the second build there were many new challenges with this one, like the maple top and bindings and the nitro finish. All in all I'm very happy. I plays like a dream. Much better feel than the first one. The neck shape and fretwork are much better on this one. Thanks to all of you for the help and support, and for making this community the friendly space it is for all of us newbees. I enjoyed building this one a lot, now let's enjoy playing her and on to the next building challenges... See you around.

Pheeewwww !!! I finally got through my first proper finish job. Many lessons learned and quite a bit of experience gained... I had a little bit of everything: runs, sand-throughs, polish-throughs, among other more common delights like scratches... All in all, after some repairs and re-sanding/re-polishing I think my first nitro finish is a solid 90% good.: Another (rather blurry) one. With a few coats of Danish oil the neck looks rich and dark. This picture shows the glueing process, yesterday evening. But that's been enough of "progress" pictures. The guitar is assembled now. Still needs the correct Graphtech nut to be cut (shown here with a plastic cheapo nut with some maple veneer shimming), and a final setup once the neck does it's thing under string tension. As of now only the magnetic pickups are wired, so I can't test he piezo yet. Soon I'll post some proper pictures of the finished guitar in a new thread. First impressions: Plays and sounds beautifully !!! The frets are just perfect and the neck feels great. I'm a VERY proud father. Please be kind and ignore the belly...

Hi, sorry I didn't reply before. I'm not sure what kind of advice I can give you... For the recurve you're looking at a consistent routing along the edge of the body. I found that the contour-follower accessory of my router was very crude. The square routing along the edges seen in the first picture of this thread was originally done with the original router accessory, and the width of cut was inconsistent, as the accessory is too bulky and ether the plate or the rods were getting in the way of the clamps or the body itself. So I built a new contour-following accessory to redo this square lip and the recurve that follows. This smaler device allowed a much more accurate edge routing. Now I think I'll build a similar accessory for edge-following routes, like those used for truss rod channels and the such. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the replies. When you say clear epoxy, do you mean something specific or just the usual, available everywhere, garden variety ?? The clear epoxy I'm using for the inlay work is the one I bought from StewMac some time ago, and it seems rather thick and too fast-curing for pore filling...

Hi again, Let me elaborate: it's not that I don't like it per-se. I think they look killer in bigger jazz boxes where the neck pickup is farther away from the end of the neck. It's just not my cup of tea in a LP. In my mind (quite narrow and limited) having the neck pickup separated from the neck end in a les paul looks kinda wrong. But the only thing that matters is that YOU like it, right ?? In anycase, perfectly executed. Congrats !!

Somehow I had missed this thread... Lovely work with the laminates !! And the hell-body transition is fantastic, do you mind if I get some inspiration out of it for my next one ?? Get it finished, it's going to be beautiful !!

Hi Johnson !! That is going to be a great looking Paula !! Not a big fan of the open-book thing at the end of the fretboard, but that's just me. As it was asked before: f-holes of any kind ?? I'll definitely follow this one, I will have to try a neck through one of these days... Keep us posted !!

Hello Mattia, I know that Setch has had great results with the stuff, but I "still" don't have any spraying equipment. And I am really interested in using something else. I'm pretty confident (now that I have sprayed my current build) that I can get a decent finish using rattle-can nitro, that is why I wanted to move in that direction. Rattle-can Poly-Urethane is another option available to me (GuitarSupplies.com), mybe PU will have a better affinity with the PC ??

I'm posting this one here too (it's already in the finishing section) hoping to reach a wider audience... Hello, I'm in the middle of my first paint job (build number 2), spraying nitro from rattle cans. And I have to say that I'm liking the results so far. For my first build (all-mahogany carved body) I rubbed-on 50% thinned Plastic-Coating, without any pore filling for an oil-like effect. I'm now considering refinishing this one to something more protective and durable, like commercial all-mahogany electrics usually sport. Iwill be sanding the current finish off, but I can't do anything with what's inside the pores. So, questions for the more experienced finishers here: - Will a pore-filler like Rustin's work at all with some plastic-coating in the pores ?? - Suppose I don't fill the pores at all, will nitro still adhere well to the sanded wood AND the pores with some of the original finish still inside ?? Thanks for the help.

Hello, I'm in the middle of my first paint job (build number 2), spraying nitro from rattle cans. And I have to say that I'm liking the results so far. For my first build (all-mahogany carved body) I rubbed-on 50% thinned Plastic-Coating, without any pore filling for an oil-like effect. I'm now considering refinishing this one to something more protective and durable, like commercial all-mahogany electrics usually sport. Iwill be sanding the current finish off, but I can't do anything with what's inside the pores. So, questions for the more experienced finishers here: - Will a pore-filler like Rustin's work at all with some plastic-coating in the pores ?? - Suppose I don't fill the pores at all, will nitro still adhere well to the sanded wood AND the pores with some of the original finish still inside ?? Thanks for the help.

You're wellcome, I'm glad it helped. If you're talking about switching between .022u and .047u, then yes, you should be able to hear the difference. Now if you generally find guitars muddy sounding and never move the tone off 10, then maybe you're best option would be switching (maybe with a push-pull switch on the pot itself) the tone control in and out of the circuit. Removing the tone control will have a noticeable effect in the top end, crispness, or whatever you wish to call it. Give it a try and see if you like it.

The short answer: You'll likely find .047u in single coil guitars (usually with 250K pots), and .022uf with humbuckers (usually with 500K pots). Technically speaking, the higher the value of the cap the more high frequency cut you'll get when the tone pot goes to 0. The long answer: With passive pickups (high impedance), every component you add plays a significant role. It's called loading. It works like this: If you run the pickups directly to the amp (without vol or tone controls) you get the full range of frequencies the PU is capable of. As soon as you add a volume control you're adding a load to the pickups. This cuts some of the high end already. The lower the value, the higher the loading and high end cut. Humbuckers are intrinsically darker (and have about twice the impedance) than single coils, so 500K pots are used to achieve a minimize the loading. On the other hand, even though 250K pots are the norm for single coils, if you want an extra bright Tele you would use a 500K or even 1M volume pot. Enter the tone control: Adding a treble-cut tone cotrol (as the basic tone control used in guitars is called) will always cut some highs. Even with the pot at 10. The amount of cut will be less with a higher value tone pot and a lower value cap. Hence, for humbuckers the preferred combo is 500K/.022u and for single coils is 250K/.047u. This works exactly like the loading, only that the load is now frequency dependent. The capacitor in this configuration loads more as the frequencies go higher. That been said I prefer .015u for neck tone and .022u for bridge tone if I have a 2-vol, 2-tone arrangement with humbuckers. With respect to the type of capacitors, that's a whole new can of worms in its own right. There are some quality issues, but different cap technologies will indeed produce differences in the sound (subtle, but real) for a different reason. There are three different ideal passive electronics components: The capacitor, the inductor and the resistor. Real life components of any kind (like commercial capacitors) are always a combination of all three ideal components. What makes a capacitor a capacitor is that the dominant characteristic of the component is the capacitive one. The other two characteristics are parasitical, and mostly negligible. The tubular/canned type of capacitor you mention have a higher parasitic inductance than the disc (ceramic) ones. This produces a different sound when interacting with all the other components in the circuit. People have described the sound as sweeter. In any case YMMV. Better try by yourself and decide. Hope this helps. (Edited for clarity, hopefully....)

...and probably reflows nicely. Sorry, maybe this info is somewhere else in the thread, but how did you apllied it ?? Spray ?? I used 50% thinned Plastic Coating as a rub-on finish on my first build. Applied unthinned It's supposed to be that kind of strong durable finish. There's even a version of the product specially formulated for flooring. However I think I'm going to refinish her at some point. The current finish is not standing well the normal use. I was looking for alternatives, but I think I'll go the full nitro lacker treatment after all. Maybe just skip the pore filling and finish it satin instead of glossy.

Simply AMAZING !!!! Muchísimas Felicitaciones, es un trabajo excepcional !!! This is a serious contender for GOTM !!! Original, practical, incredibly well implemented, and a level of involvement hardly seen around: Next time don't be lazy and wind your own pickups ;-) !!! My only criticism (if you could call it that) is that I would have opted for a solid color. Something like Gold, Copper, Candy Apple Red, somethink bold like that. That said, the natural finish is impeccable too. What kind of lacquer did you use ??

No need for doweling and redrilling, a set of these will solve your problem.