Bmth Builder

Is the mill you are using CNC?

If not is there a simple way of explaining how you do curves on a mill by hand?

Build looks great

Paint job looks great!

Stick a red LED in the electronics cavity, shining through the black plate would carry on the industrial look nicely

The thing about the SM rule is that while it does give wider spacing as you go towards the bass strings, it still doesn’t account for gauges, the instructions tell you to mark the centre of the E and e strings and then fill in the 4 middle strings, so anyone playing with thicker gauges or irregular gauge string sets, e.g. guys playing with drop tunings will still experience crowding on the bass strings.

I'd always though equal gap between the strings was the correct way to space a nut, but all the production guitars and graph tech replacement nuts I've measured are equal centre spacing.

With equal centre spacing the highest part of the strings will always be the same distance from each other and so theoretically it is easier on your fretting hand to remember the distance between strings?

So how do you do it?

Just had an email back from Switchcraft,

their barrel jacks are rated to a minimum of 5000 mating cycles (plugging it in) that should be well over 10 years use.

Their standard open frame jacks are rated to 10,000 (probably more both due to it being an easier design to construct well, and because it's more popular)

I've seen that the Chinese arm of Neutrik make barrel jacks with 1000 cycles, I dread to think how many cycles you would get out of no name chinese jacks.

So I guess high quality barrel jacks are fine.

I recently read on here some concerns over barrel jacks failing, has anyone else had these problems, what brand were you using?

Is it the brand that is the problem or the barrel jack design that is the problem?

What makes me think high quality ones might be ok is that Ibanez use barrel jacks on probably 80% of their guitars and I would have thought Vai and Satriani would change to something else if the Ibby ones suck (or they don't know the techs change them like strings?)

Anyone have any experience with the the switchcraft ones like Allparts sell? They seem to be the highest quality I can find,

http://www.allparts.com/Switchcraft-Stereo-Long-Threaded-Jack-p/ep-0152-000.htm

Cheers

That is so awesome!

Great build so far!

Yeah you want some homemade pickup rings out of sexy woods, Myka is the king of stuff like that,

http://www.mykaguitars.com/instruments/059/default.htm

Is it worth worrying about the two different depths in the cavity, or is it safe to just route the whole thing to the deepest required depth and use the pivot screws to raise the height of the FR (resulting in less pivot/stud contact than if the ledge were there)?

Hey,

According to the Floyd Rose depths diagram, the studs should be on a ledge at one thickness (0.2650") then the rest of the FR route drops down deeper (to 0.44") to allow for pulling up on the trem arm,

Depths,

http://www.floydrose.com/pdf/Floyd%20Rose%20Original_(route%20pattern,%20depths).pdf

Top view,

http://www.floydrose.com/pdf/Floyd%20Rose%20Original_(route%20pattern,%20top%20view).pdf

You can kinda see the ledge the studs are on in this pic,

Do you follow the Floyd Rose dimensions exactly?

On the Stew Mac templates there is no stud ledge, but the saddle area is at one thickness and they have a second template for routing a deeper recess just for the back end of the bridge, here you can see the two different templates that overlap to create a recessed FR,

That works but if the saddle section isn't routed deep enough the plate could hit the bottom of the route, with the stud ledge there is less chance of that happening as the route is at a shallower depth for less time before the deeper recess.

Or do you just route the whole thing at the full recessed depth and just not screw the pivot bolts into the body studs as far to create the same bridge height?

This is the simplest way but if the pivot bolts aren't screwed in as far they may wiggle a bit more than if the studs were at a shallower depth,

Is it a small enough difference not to worry about it?

So clean, looks awesome!

hooglebug - Sakura Hanami is amazing, the inlay + the f hole are just awesome.

All the big companies make their neck throughs so the tenon doesnt quite cover the entire width of the bridge,

is this simply economy of materials or something else?

Heres what I mean,

Hey,

I've got some tops to glue up in the future and I'm thinking about making some bow style clamps,

Any one know the arc or radius needed to get even pressure across the whole top? and a suitable wood material and thickness?

Is it as complicated as they make out on their website or is it simply a 50" radius or something?

You can see it at 1:20 here,

Cheers

You can do it for looks ala alembic,

http://www3.alembic.com/img/inst/14100_pegheadbackL.jpg

But also a good reason to do it is so that you can scarf the headstock (and there for use a thinner neck),

When you do the following type of scarf joint headstock, it leaves a visible glue line right across the headstock,

By gluing veneer on both sides you hide that glue line and makes the whole headstock stronger.

Laminated necks also look great

If its a bolt on electric then worst comes to worst you could offer the customer to complete the guitar using the heavier ash body until you can source swamp ash and swap the bodies over.

^ and ex UK builders

Welcome, south UK here.

Have you read the latest review (or did you write it?)

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bodies,_necks,_wood/Electric_guitar_body_blanks/Swamp_Ash_Body_Blank.html

It seems someone else is having the same problem in that Stewmac is selling normal ash as lightweight swamp ash.

Also CNCs leave tooling marks that need to be cleaned up with radius blocks, and a lot of people would go up through the lower grits using a radius block to get up to the polishing grades for mirror finish fretboards.

Course looks awesome though, neat idea doing the cnc side of things.

Stewmac lists both slotted and unslotted rosewood as being available to ship outside the US, the only thing they have marked as not exportable is honduras mahogany.

(they dont list the rosewood as indian on the fretboard page, but they do list it as indian on the headstock veneers page)

I thought the problem with Gibson was that is was indian law the feds were trying to enforce not US law? (the law being export of unfinished fretboard blanks is illegal).

and so if Doug has bought the wood in the US legally he should be able to slot and export the wood to the UK no problem.

According to wiki,

In June 2011, the United States Department of Justice filed a civil case against Gibson, stating: "Gibson sourced its unfinished ebony wood in the form of blanks (for use in the manufacture of fingerboards for Gibson guitars) from Nagel (in Germany), which obtained it exclusively from Roger Thunam (a supplier in Madagascar). Madagascar prohibits the harvest of ebony wood as well as the exportation of unfinished ebony wood." The filing also made mention of internal emails from 2008 and 2009 that discussed ebony species from Madagascar and plans to harvest it.[26][27] The case against Gibson Guitar was the first under the amended Lacey Act, which requires importing companies to purchase legally harvested wood and follow the environmental laws of the producing countries regardless of corruption or lack of enforcement

Gibson Guitar's offices and factories in Nashville and Memphis were raided again by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife on August 24, 2011, although no details were released about the nature of the raid or what was found due to the ongoing legal proceedings.[23] However, according to a statement issued by Gibson Guitar the following day, these raids focused on rare wood imported from India.[30][31] In the release, Juszkiewicz lashed out at the Justice Department, claiming that it was "bullying Gibson without filing charges" and stating further: "Gibson is innocent and will fight to protect its rights. Gibson has complied with foreign laws and believes it is innocent of any wrong doing. We will fight aggressively to prove our innocence." He also criticized the government's use of the Lacey Act because it interprets and enforces the laws of other nations, in this case India.

Looks great so far!

Heel looks great!

Cant wait to see the 7 string PRS

Nicely done, but surely the logo style and music are copyright of Fox?