RGGR

Reading one of Drak's posts (incl pictures), I noticed him using an anglegrinder with a 40 grit flapdisk for some of his sanding work. At local Homedepot I noticed these cheap chinese $15 angle grinders, and these $4 flapdisks (40 grit), so I couldn't resist, and took the plunch. Making start on body and forearm contour, I have to say.......this puppy eats through wood like crazy. It takes some getting used to, and some serious care not to f*ck up, but I have to say this is a wonderful tool that will safe me some hours sanding. I'm very pleased with speed and results of the process. Now it was a *BANG* 5 min rough contouring with the angle grinder, and then some 15 minute detail/clean-up work with my files and sanding paper. Pics will follow.

Any word, Drak?

Is this 1/2" round nose bit, Drak? Or is it a bigger one.

After 3 weeks of South America (Peru/Bolivia) it's nice to do some guitar work again. Today I took out the headstock and rough cut the neck blank. I'm rather pleased how headstock laminates have turned out.

RG570 can have non-AANJ, while RG1570 has AANJ. But hardware should be transferable.

I can dream up these darn guitars much much faster then I can build them. My JS-7 build must be running into it's second year now. As it is/was my first build...........it doesn't bother me so much. Yes, I want to have it finished. But I'm not willing to cut corners. The quality of the end product is all that matters, besides the building experience in it self. The route is in this respect more important then the destination. I agree with this completely. Although see that with experience things speed up considerably.

Completed priming and sanding headstock. Will take care of body next. One final coat of primer and this puppy can go off to the painters. Saw Satch play live in Heineken Beer Stube in Amsterdam last night. Whooooaaaa! Can that man play. He didn't play his Candy Apple seven, but gosh did that Candy Apple JS 1200 look good in the hands of the master.

The frustration is part of the charme of the Floyd Rose. It takes a while to master.....but once you do. It's such a rewarding process. And yes, string, tune, adjust, re-tune, adjust, re-tune.......etc. First time it will take you 1-2 hours. Second time 1 hour, then 20 mintes......etc. Practice makes perfect.

Talking about American Television I assume.......cause here in Holland we can say anything we want on television at any time of day. Back on topic. Great guitar.

Personally I don't go for much of the Audiofile Mumbo Gumbo. But still I made the effort of buying quality capacitors. Why? Just for reason I'm using high end part on rest of my build, so why save on $0.02 vs $2 caps. Just the idea that I did everything possible to make this an awesome instrument. Time and effort spend on building custom justifies looking for higher quality caps (read: more $$$ ones!!!) You're wiring a strat, right? Do google on strat wiring.....it's has been done over and over.....tons of stuff on wiring out there.

For RGT I picked up a Coromandel Fretboard. I was toying with idea of using Rosewood or Ebony fretboard on RGT-7. Rosewood....as color would go nice with the future brown/redish tints in guitar. Ebony, for it's great wet-wood feel and classy looks. As going through the piles at local woodshop and walking out with two Ebony Blanks.....I bumped into new shipment of unsorted wood. In this pile I found this Ebony type wood with the nice streaks of brown in them. I asked he guys what it was and the said it was Coromandel, or Macassar Ebony. Also called Striped Ebony. Not alot on google on the wood. "A geniune Ebony wood with a density of 1000kg/m3. A close relative to the Macassar Ebony, streaky to jet black with very distinct sapwood seperation. This wood which is native to Indonesia/Malaysia was introduced by Luthier Jeffrey Yong and its results as a new tonewood has been getting very popular in the luthiery communities. Its grain figures can be more interesting than the BR and its tonal clarity is like the African Blackwood. It has tight interlocking grain." "Sometimes called Striped Ebony, Macassar Ebony is a tight grained great sounding wood..." " Macassar ebony is reported to be rare and is one of the most expensive timbers on the commercial market." Funny thing was that Coromandel fret blank was half the price of Ebony blank, but in my view is twice as attractive. I think it will look good on the guitar.

Sanded primed JS-7 headstock off and will put layer of veneer on. Can't have it that nicely custom painted headstock with show working laminates underneath. Guess, I should have listen earlier when one of you remarked if I would put veneer on headstock. Saw that new Ibanez laminated necks also have layer of veneer beneath paint. Funny thing that I never noticed this before.

Glued another maple cap on headstock and picked up top quality Ebony fretboard. Gosh, I love the feel of an Ebony fretboard. Now I can have it radiussed and slotted and the complete the neck.

Tell this to Audio freaks, and they will run you over with their car. Some interesting read about capacitors: http://ldsg.snippets.org/appdx-ec.php3

Drilled tuner holes tonight.

Oh man, I could wet myself........I'm such a happy camper. THE and I must say THE big hold up of this project so far has been drilling the tuner holes. I simply couldn't get these suckers right. First I tried free-hand drilling (of course giving it a try on a test-piece first....) but to no avail. Then I picked up a cheap drill press figuring it would be easier doing it like that. Well, I couldn't get the tuner holes to line up correctly. Frustrated brought drill press back to store...... Darn! And yes, I read all post on this and other sites.......cause this process couldn't be that hard I figured. Well........it was to me. So clever me draw nice template up in Autocad and had waterjet cut out drilling template out of 20mm Stainless. Must say this waterjet business didn't completely give the results I was looking for. The end result is/was usable......but cutting through thick pieces of metal, the abrassive components added to the water....while cutting kinda makes a conical shaped hole.......not something you want when wanting nice and square tuner drilling template. To my own surprise the test-drills with piece worked out wonders, and tonight drillling the real deal was like magic. Yes, yes, yes, yes....... I know I probably went from A to Z to get to B. But it finally worked. Now we can tape this thing up again....give it one final coat of primer....and one final sanding and then this puppy is off to the painter. Did I already say I was happy camper. Man, am I a Edit: And for the clever ones under y'all.....the JS-7 headstock is slightly smaller then RGT-7 headstock. More about that later.

Check this link..... http://www.jemsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45054 Seems to be nice quality. And to answer your question, for stem part of vine you might have to re-slot. No biggy I think.

Goto www.ibanezrules.com and visit the tech section for all possible guitar set-up questions.

I would drink less beer for a month and spend the money towards the OFR. You guitar will thank you for it.

Made some progress on the neckblank this weekend. Had scrap neckblank left from RGT-7 build. Do have to go the scarfjoint-route though. Normally prefer 'normal' neck, but didn't want to build complete new neck laminate. Never done a scarfjoint neck before, so this is nice first. Call it making proper use of scraps. Used router option for squaring neckjoint. Used method 1 to glue the joints together. All went pretty smoothly. Did c*ck-up though. Was too trigger happy planing headstock down, that I took couple of mm too much of the headstock. With router I planed it down to 12mm instead of needed 15-16mm. In JS-7 build I discovered that it's tough to get laminated headstock surface squared. Meaning the laminates in the neck tend to work....and push up the primer causing to show the laminates. So for this build, I had already decided to put small layer on fineer on top of headstock so primed headstock would stay nice and flat. But like I said, I took couple of mm's too much of headstock. But wouldn't building be building if there wasn't a way out. Also still have some Wenge left.....so decided to take laminate part some further and instead of fineer, now glue 3mm of Wenge and 3mm of Maple on headstock, creating my homemade fineer so to say. The maple I still have to source.....but don't foresee any problems there. In the end it will look nice and intended this way......... Here pic of scarf joint including Wenge laminate. More later.

Just run router for another pass in the slot, just not the full length, this will give you channel with slightly deeper slot in middle part. Maybe not an exact curve.....but some more room in middle. Remember you're building YOUR OWN guitar......this means you can do anything you want. (e.g. Paint it pink and play it neketh )

Arnhem. I have Alder, Basswood, Limba, Mahogany guitars already so I thought Swamp Ash would be a nice addition. I read some nice basses are made out of the wood so 7 stringer would be okay too I figured. Like I said I was also looking for Bubinga......but the pieces were too thin for body. They had whole pile of Swamp Ash......but figuring by weight it was Nothern Ash. (It kinda hard to tell them appart. Northern has more pinkish grain from what I understand.) Going through the pile I suddenly discovered these very light blanks. They were about a third the weight of other blanks. (Two piece body blanks.) Then the light went off of course........in whole pile of about 50ish pieces I only found 6-7 real? Swamp Ash pieces. I picked the two lightest. As this guitar will have solid color.....the grain pattern was of no interest to me. I don't know how much gobbledigook there is in the story that the best pieces of Swamp Ash are the lighest pieces as those are the pieces of the tree that have actually been in the water.....and have different structure from rest of the tree.......blablabla.... All I know......when I tapped them.....they sang to me.

I'm not sure yet. Guy on ebay sell pre-cut fretboard with shark tooth inlays, but I'm not sure he does 7 string fretboards. I also like the idea of completely black Ebony fretboard without fretmarkers. But without markers I do tend to get lost on board. We will see.

Okay. Promised first to complete guitar before starting new one. Darn. Failed that one. I guess the problem started when I bumped into Nuno's website www.ibanez87.it. He had such an awesome collection of Ibanez's, that it simple left me druiling every time I had a look at them. But with little bit of patience and little bit of cash, dreams actually can become reality. And next to my RG2550GK, I have added a 540Pro Power Triple-Coil, a Maxxas MX3, and JS-7 and RGT-7 is in the work (yeah, yeah, I know - I need to finish those puppies). Okay...long intro for actual story......cause guitar missing from my collection is/was an Ibanez 540PII. A guitar I didn't like at first. I thought it was butt ugly.......but like most things in life, when things irritate you......mostly there is something there that attracts you. So did the 540PII. And not for long....I wanted one. Nuno has awesome example on his site. Trouble is there guitars are quite rare and don't come for sale very often. Couple of months ago, a guy in Holland was selling one. Price was not to my liking and guitar needed refinish. I contacted him and asked him if he could draw me an outline. This way I had the option of building my own version of it. So with outline in the mail. MDF template was created fast enough. And trip to local wood supply store (Just to look, honest!!!) resulted in magically having some awesome pieces of Swamp Ash appear in the back of my car. I actually was looking for some Bubinga.....but while going through pile of Ash (advertised as Swamp Ash, but judging from weight it must have been Northern Ash) I suddenly bumped into these very light Ash pieces. BINGO. This was truely Swamp Ash. Did anyone say Telecaster??? LOL! So there we were....Swamp Ash in the car, MDF template of 540PII, and with this mock-up spooking in the back of my head. And with another Edge Lo Pro 7 recently purchased (one goes into RGT-7)........I simply had all the parts for 7 string version of 540PII. Where 7 string version of tripple bucker would be cool custom touch. Probably Blaze middle with ToneZone Bridge. Reversed 7 string headstock I can cut out of neck blank left from RGT-7 build. So there we are, the basis of 540PII-7.....or better 540PVII. What would have cost me couple of days in the past, just cost me couple of hours today. Guess past experience has paid off. Routing was easy. Swamp Ash was like butter compared to Limba I'm used to. Some more sanding needed.......and then with available templates, the trem, pup cavities, and control cavities should come out like breeze. Don't forsee much trouble with this build. Now I can go off order Ebony fretboard of LMII. Oh, and color.........it will be Tweety yellow, with matching headstock of course.

Many ways to put a pick-up in a tele, my son!!!