nollock

Google for "casting resin", there's a **** load of differant stuff you can use.

A TAKEUCHI floyd rose trem copy from around 1990. It's taken of an old guitar thats been in my loft for 12 years. Some of the black colour has rubbed off and there are some very light patches of rust here and there. Nothing that cant be cleaned up. It's missing one of the small saddle blocks (see far left of pic), ie the small block that tightens against the end of the string inside the saddle. It's also missing the locking nut screws and blocks, the trem springs, the spring bracket and trem arm. You get only what you can see in the pics. Otherwise its in fine working order, all the screw threads are in very good condition, as are the alan key heads. The trem posts are usable but worn, ie where the trem knife edges rests show some wear.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...item=7383012634

cheers,

chris

LOL, yeah i figured that, but what tools did they use? How did they do it? Or would i be better off just buying a dremel?

cheers,

chris

Everything ive found and read about doing inlay says to use a dremel / mini router to cut out the holes for the inlaid material. Is there any way to do it by hand? Or should i just shell out (Pun intended!) the cash for a dremel?

cheers,

chris

Only way to know is to test it. I know some folks havbe used it over epoxy (grainfiller) and said it works great, i tried it over epoxy and it wouldn't dry properly. So best to just do a test run, check it drys ok, and see how well it sticks. I used over super glue as a grain filler (afetr the epoxy failure) and it dried fine, just didnt stick that great.

Surely the best thing to do would be to use Createx clear coat? Use the same paint type over teh top. (assuming they do a clear coat)

chris

You can make a roundover sanding block by drilling a hole in a piece of cork and then cutting out part of the block. I did that on my first guitar and got a nice even roundover. It was very time intensive way to do it though.

I just got some pickups off Bill & Becky and they are awsome, i was truely taken back by how good they sound. Way better than the SDs i had in my guitar. The only downside is the 5 month wait.

chris

Hmmm, make sure you got a respirator, dont wanna be breathing in bleach mist.

naked girl with a couple of large air ballons surely?

hehe

There were a couple of threads about dummy coils over at Ampage recently. The general concensus was that you should use a coil with no magnet or pole pieces as they dont aid hum cancelling and will only increase the inductance. You want as little load / inductance as posible in the dummy coil as the greater they are the more it will efect the tone of the pickup being humcancelled.

The conclusion seemed to be that what matters is that the turns*area product of the 2 coils match. And as area increases squared in respect to circumference, a larger coil will cancell more hum and put less load on your pickup. Eg..

1" diameter coil, 900 turns, area turns product = 706sq", 2827" of wire.

3" diameter coil, 100 turns, area truns product = 706sq", 942" of wire.

so each coil will cancell the same amount of hum but the 2nd one uses only 1/3 the amount of wire and hence has only 1/3 of the resistance/load of the smaller coil.

thats what i remember anyway, not sure how acurate it is.

I started writing a truss rod faq a month or 2 back and completely forgot about it, its not finished and will need checking over by someone more experienced, i sorta looked through most of the truss rod related posts and did a bit of research, and i think its pretty acurate. I could finish the last couple of bits and pass it on to you if you want. I was hoping to get some pics pics of the relevant truss rods for it, maybe a few diagrams. Anyway here's its current state...

http://www.flak.clara.net/FAQ.html

To be honest i never meaure angles, i always work out the side measurments. So a 13 degree angle is roughly a triangle 9 x 2. Measure 9 across, 2 down with a square, mark it and draw a line through.

chris

Work out a specific route to paint cause with clear its somtimes realy hard to see where you have already painted. So i'd paint somthing like all the side from the neck pocket clockwise. Then paint the back from one corner to the oposite, then do the front. Make sure the edges get a good coat.

Practice as many times as you need on some similar wood first. Get to a point where you know how many coats will give you the thickness you want, do a test piece that has corners so you can get an idea of how easy it is to sand through on corners. Getting your method worked out first will save you so much trouble. My first guitar i sanded down twice after messing the paintwork up. Then i did some tests pieces lol.

Putting too many coats of waterbase on too quickly will give you a soft finish, i think i have heard that 3 coats per day is a good idea. Manufacturers often say you can apply the coats faster but that will result in a softer finsih.

Another thing that might be worth doing is using a rock hard grain filler like epoxy or superglue, that will give you a much harder surface underneath which will help the toughness of the finish.

Buy some normal brushes and a sponge brush, try out and see which works best for you, not every method works for every person. make sure you have good lighting so you can see what your doing.

One thing i have found with somthing called rustins plastic coating is that after brushing all the coats on you can rub 3 or 4 coats on with a lint free cotton pad. It smooths the finish out alot more, seems to push it in any pits / brush marks. No idea if it would work with waterbase stuff tho'.

chris

and yet still not a single post relevant to what  ask,

What happened to "any advice apreciated" ?

peace

chris

Spending $500+ on a guitar just so you can replace the pickups and bridge seems daft imo. It's a very expensive "project" considering how little you would learn from it. Imo you'de be better of buying a chunk of wood and trying to make a guitar body, see how it goes and if you're happy grab a neck and the rest of the bits later on. Or buy a realy cheap / 2nd hand guitar and mess about with that.

If you want somthing to do so you can learn then look at how best to get the most learning out of what money you have. If you want a nice guitar, buy a nice guitar.

chris

" is knowing when you've lapped the back sufficiently"

dont supose you could explain what that means?

I need a stone for sharpening my plane, i have a few but they are all quite worn and not that flat. Will this be any good? I dont use the plane much and this will be kept exclusively for it, but i'm not sure what i need exactly.

http://www.axminster.co.uk/product.asp?pf_id=22468&recno=1

thanks,

chris

I did try using a plane but couldn't get it to cut fine enough. But it turns out i had been setting it up wrong, i had been puting a 45 deg angle on the blade, oops! So I reground the blade, sharpened it on an oil stole and whe hey, it's taking tiny sub wafer thin shavings off. 10 minutes planing and my blank is spot on.

cheers,

chris

How do you go about surfacing a body blank or top? I mean the surface for gluening the top and back togther. I have a thickneser and jointer but neither are wide enough. My first guitar i glued the top and back half pieces together before i joined then into the the blank. I noticed that most people glue the bookmatch together and then glue that onto the body, i cant work out how i can get a good flat surface with the tools i have. I can use a router jig to thickness it but that still leaves it a bit rough.

thanks,

chris

Any chance you could do an mp3 of what it sounds like? I've been thinking about trying this but wasn't sure how well it would sound.

thanks,

chris

Just wondering what people think of this body shape and general design. Its a modified PRS picture, its going to have similar hardware and pickups. Cant decide if the body is a little too large or not.

check out this pickup builders forum, there a very hepfull bunch

http://www.firebottle.com/fireforum/fireBB...m=pmgd&enter=go

No, either way. A compression rod is straight and a "traditional" (fender style) truss rod is curved. The compression rod helps counter the string pull by simply adding a counter force in the neck. The traditional is a cuved rod. It is closer to the fret board at its ends, and furter away in the middle. When a curved rod is tightened it will try to straighten itself, thus bending the neck backwards, away from the strings.

That clears it up for me, cheers

Would i be right in thinking the compression rod was invented before the fender style one?

chris

Acording to these two sites the traditional truss rod works in differant ways, one by trying to straighten out in a curved channel, another by compressing the back of the neck. So my question is are they talking about the same rod installed the same way, or is it the same rod installed differant ways?

http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/Da...trussrods1.html

http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/necks/necks....tion=truss_rods

thanks,

chris

Overcaster

Fatocaster

Battercaster

Plateaucaster

One for the rege brothers...

Rastacaster

Or if your thang is christian rock...

Pastorcaster