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So I've been doing up some CAD work tonight for a T-style inspired set of builds and it has dawned on me that it appears no two tele bridges are alike?!?!?! Does no on like making replacement parts that don't require new string-through hole drilling? Why do some have a different angle than others for the bridge pickup!? Am I insane or have others noticed this? Is there a history that explains this nonsense? Best, Chris

I did some quick calculations and I'm thinking that for a 34" scale base with a 9.5" radius and 2-2.5mm action at the 17th (Fender spec), a projection off the neck (fretted) of .4" sounds nice. This is right in line with tradition because if you took a standard fender neck (1" thick + .050" of fretwire) and sunk it their recommended 5/8" into the body with 0-degree angle you would get a projection of about .425" which comes off a tad too high to me. But in the grand scheme of things what really is a difference of .025" in this case. Even going up to .425" of projection you'd still have .118" of travel up left on your middle saddles. This should do fine. Chris

Alright, they are in! Here's what I've measured. Keep in mind this is for the four string version of the A-style Hipshot bridge. This is key, because as you'll see below, the middle two saddles are on a higher plane when bottomed out than the outside two saddles. Measurements are from bottom of bridge (touching body) to the saddles top where the string touches. Middle two saddles: .420-.688" for a range of .298" Outside two saddles: .394-.618" for a range of .224" Looks like the two saddles have different ranges... which would make sense if you notice that they're on different planes. I guess they're also included slightly different length grub screws as they assume radii get more extreme than their saddle-height-offsets, not frequently less? Makes sense to me since a lot of people use these bridges as Fender (tight radius) replacements. This means the middle saddles need more range. One thing to keep in mind is that the max heights listed above are the max the set screws will extend before coming out of the bottom of the saddle. This does not mean I would suggest using them that tall. This angles the saddle and I image you'd gain less height as you intonated the saddle backwards since the intonation screw pulls it slightly down when set this tall. Best, Chris

God I love that top wood so hard! Bass is coming along fantastically. Chris

EVer get these @Prostheta? Chris

Love this V. Minus the number of strings you put on things I think our builds mesh pretty well lol Are you doing this full time now? Chris

That little tab is only needed if you have the knob that slides for dive-only vs full floating. My issue with saying this is a JM trem route is that it's just too close to the neck. Where does the scale length line come to on this thing? That would help here. Chris

Nope, didn't seem to correlate with inlay placement. Woods that had issues (albeit now not as bad as I thought) are wenge over honduran mahogany and ebony over honduran mahogany. Wood that didn't was cocobolo over home-roasted curly maple. Inlay glue was thin CA on the ebony board, mostly epoxy on the wenge board. Yeah... I'm lost too, Chris

Then by all means let me give you my address. Chris

@Prostheta, if I see you using gorgeous masur birch for finish test swatches again I will cut you. My $0.02, Chris

Sorry, been actually getting work done (odd, I know). I can't take a picture sadly as I've gone and dealt with the situation. I adjusted the rod to the least evil setting and was able to get almost all of this out on the two affected necks. The scarfs of both of these necks are in the headstock, not the neck, so we can rule that out. West systems isn't the thickest of epoxies... so I'm guessing we can rule buildup out as well. My locator pins are all wooden toothpicks that I leave the pointy part on to help guide the fretboard into them... so they stick well out of the board and are then trimmed... so nothing there either. I'm truly stumped too. But luckily, like with all things, I'm a harder judge on myself than I should be most times, and the unevenness wasn't as bad as expected. I agree that, regardless of the "need", a caul would be a good idea. Just seems odd that out of the 3 necks that were glued up like this, one did just fine while the others had this... also, the one that did fine had only dot inlays. I really have a hard time thinking inlay work could have any effect like this though. Stumped as well, and now that I've leveled things and moved on I don't know if I'll come to a resolution here. Chris

Hey guys. I'm currently working on some basses (four) and with two of them am experiencing something kind of odd; the two effected necks seems to have a fairly pronounced bump near the first fret line, and then again farther up near the end of the neck. From what I've measured, these bumps do not correspond to the nuts in the LMI dual-action welded rods. Since they are bumps and not simple bow forward/back, truss rod adjustment doesn't seem to address them effectively. The boards were good and flat when radius sanded (checked with precision straight edge). The necks were flat and level too. They were glued up with epoxy, and therefore I shouldn't be experiencing any reaction from the wood to water content. Glue up consisted of placing clear masking tape over the rod channel, cutting the tape to within a 1/16" of the channel so that nothing could leak in with the rod, then clamping all along the length with spring clamps. When I glue fretboards on with titebond in the past I've glued them while using a straight caul as well. However, I did not do this with these necks as epoxy doesn't want "too much" clamping pressure so I didn't want to try and force anything to a straight caul and over clamp. But as mentioned above, it shouldn't have needed a straight caul since the neck and board were checked for straight and epoxy has no water to react to. This really sucks as both the necks in question represent the most complex inlay work I've probably ever done. One of which I've already tried to level sand and am getting close to a point where I'm concerned about potentially sanding through the inlay (there's a section where one piece of pearl stretches across the entire 5-string FB's width), so naturally I have concerns. Any suggestions to address this, or words from anyone who's encountered this before would be greatly appreciated. Best, Chris

I shared some of my learning process here: Chris

I believe I saw a guy use alumilite? wanting to do this myself too! Keep us posted with pics! Chris

Quite the opposite. I'm actually interested in takes on sanding finishes! I've seen a lot of folks recently on Instagram using poiwer sanders to reduce their finish times. A lot of which is spent leveling coats between days of spraying! Notable examples have been Jauer and Frank Brothers. I've seen the latter using Mirka sanders (high quality stuff from what I've read) for the job. But no info on grits, how much give the pads they're using have, etc. Chris

I went with a vintage-style wind. So let's say the SD Pearly Gates: 8.21k. So 9 isn't hugely off base. One thing you've missed though is taller could on SCs allow for more wore and more DCR per coil. I say that the neck pickup, made up of two coils, is 5k EACH. So if played in series it's 10k. That's why in the "series" matrix where the full, non-variable neck is paired with the bridge it's 19k; 5+5+9k. but no, my main concern isn't low output= bad. My main concern is drastic volume drops between switch positions. In parallel your largest differences are 10 to 2.37 (about a quarter). In series it's 19 to 9.5 (about a half). Differences are my fear, not absolute values. Chris

1- It'd be a PITA 2- There's so much surface area that a flat joint is MORE than sufficient for structureal integrity without some complex joinery 3- A lot of people don't prescribe to that voodoo about a guitar being from one piece of wood being better... mainly cause it's voodoo BS Take it for what it is, Chris

The area I'm most concerned with is getting the "one coil or the other" portion of the circuit to work in series with the bridge pickup. I thought I had the idea working here in parallel... But as you'll see with the output matrices to the left... Series would be much nicer! Chris

So I've figured out how to do the following idea with the 2-pickup combos in parallel... However, as you'll see below that's not the best idea since parallel wiring with a high output and low output pickup will lead to a fairly large volume and resistance drop between settings. The idea: I want to put a Humbucker in the bridge position and then one of those split-coil single coils in the neck (aka one coil each for the top 3 and bottom 3 strings to make a humbucking single coil). Here's the trick: in positions that combine the two pickups I want to have a pot that allows you to bias to each coil of the single coil to accentuate either the lower or higher strings. All the way clockwise would be just the low 3 strings, all the way counter just the 3 high strings, and in the center it'd be the standard neck pickups. 5-way switch settings would be something like this: 1- bridge humbucker 2- bridge humbucker and neck pickup normal 3- bridge humbucker and neck pickup with "variable coil" pot included 4- bridge coil tapped and neck pickup with "variable coil" pot included 5- neck pickup normal When I manage to find the diagram I drew up that manages to do this in parallel I'll include it. But I'll be mesmerized by your technical prowess if you can figure this out so, at minimum, positions 3 and 4 are in series! Best, Chris

I can't really find anything online about this so I thought I'd start a topic to discuss this. If you use an electric sander for finish sanding let's hear your take on orbit size, pads (thickness, stiffness, etc.), and grits. What tricks you have to avoid sand throughs. What techniques are important when going from hand sanding into the world of electric finish sanding? How do you handle carved tops? Differently? What about sides? Still hand sanding those? Lastly, any particular sanders you recommend for this? Best, Chris

I was going at .3333in/sec and .030" DOC. I think the issue was trying to get MeshCAM to actually do this radiused slot operation... which I'm having a heck of a time trying to make it do... seems to be the only limitation I've found with this 3D CAM package so far. There's no "follow this line in 3D" function. So I've have to model the slots in full 3D... and it still just isn't grasping the concept... Granted, I also haven't played with ramping at all... should probably learn a bit about that. Chris

Uhhhh.... @DC Ross, where are you getting "cheap" fret slot cutters? I'm learning and just snapped one and kissed $20 (precisebits) goodbye! I'm not seeing them any cheaper on places like HarveyTool.com either. This may be the most frustrating CNC learning step yet... Chris

So I finally made my 3D CAM decision. Although MeshCAM didn't have every feature I would have liked it to... It had enough and was extremely friendly to use! In contrast, my trial with CAMBAM just had me ripping my hair out in clumps. MeshCAM was so easy I didn't even bother buying CutViewer with it and have run code on active builds with just looking at the paths in MeshCAM. Chris

Thanks guys! The response both here and on Instagram has been really positive so I will move forward with it. The last flower I designed. That was then handed off to a local artist to use as the basis for the rest. This is the 'half vine' version. I'll attach the full version below. For color tie in I've got two thoughts. Either a light green to match the leaves (and I've never done a green dye guitar!) or a red/yellow/orange burst thing to match the amboyna burl headstock the mahogany neck has. Thanks Scott. I totally see my style similarly. It took a long time, but I really feel I've finally cemented it in the last 2-3 years. Chris

So I've gone through the work to do the inlay, so I'm obviously inclined to use it. But the question is, is it too weird? I like it, but I can see how it might just be too on the edge as well. I've included the mockup in Rhino so that you can see how the engraving will impact the piece. For context it is going on a J-bass electronic'd Model2 (offset body) with a one-piece splotchy quilted maple top and a mahogany body. Thoughts? Chris