javacody

crafty, I'm not dissin the MIM Standards at all. I've owned two of them, one was blue agave and the other the midnight wine. Both excellent guitars. One got Texas Specials and the other got Tex-Mex. Great, great guitars for the money. Great necks, good finish, good hardware, good electronics (other than the pickups which are just ok). Also a great project guitar. Most guitar shops have a lot of them, so you can really dig through and find a true keeper. You can pick em up used for $200 to $250. I give them a

Lex, would you use one of these without a neck angle as well:

?

That's the lightweight aluminum wrap around tailpiece from pigtailmusic.com.

Fender MIM Standards were made of poplar up until 2001. Poplar will be fine.

What I'm trying to figure it is why the heck is this guitar so heavy? Wes, can you give us separate weights on the body and neck?

Other than that, it looks like a great guitar. If I was still into playing metal, my mouth would be watering!

John Catto's great LP 59 template is there. I would highly recommend it. John is an amazing luthier!

Speaking of MIM Standard Strats (and probably tele's too), they are good starter guitars, however, be aware that they are not the normal 3 piece Fender bodies, but anywhere from 5 to 7 boards glued together, then laminated with alder on the front and back (or poplar on the pre 2001 guitars). Also, the bridges are not vintage width, they are smaller, so your upgrade options are limited. Pickups also are more cheaply made versions of Fender standard offerings, they feature ceramic bar magets under steel poles as opposed to the typical Alnico Poled single coils usually found on Fenders.

Speaking of Epiphone, I would argue that guitars like the Agile's are similar or better quality for much less money. Made in Korea in a lot of the same factories as Epi's, the LP copy has a maple neck, 2 to 3 piece mahogany body, with flame or quilt maple veneer. They are good solid guitars available for $200 to $250. They have set necks and a nice carved top.

Personally, I think that building a guitar yourself (from USA Custom Guitars, or Warmoth) is the best way to go to get a quality instrument. Resale is not that good, but you will get more money if you part it out on ebay, anyway.

My next project is going to use the new open back sperzels with plastic buttons for the tonal reasons specified above.

Not to hijack this thread, but thanks, its good to be here. I'm going to take it easy and start off doing bodies. Tommy makes great stuff, but Fender type guitars only make up for about 1/8 of the different guitars I want to play and I prefer the quality of custom made stuff.

Plus, I really like hunting down the wood for myself.

I read somewhere that pointy guitars will give you vd?

Just kidding, that is a beautiful guitar, and I can only imagine the long hours spent sanding.

Couldn't you make some half circles in your chosen radius with a fret groove at the center of the rounded edge? You would bend your frets onto this (being fed from lex's fret bender). Do you guys think that would help at all?

I know Drak, I was just thinking that newbs like me would be less likely to kill ourselves and possibly our families (LOL) using epoxy.

USA Custom Guitars might be able to make you a strat neck with that shape headstock.

perhaps a slow setting epoxy would have more time to sink into the pores?

Sorry to hijack your thread Dugz Ink, but how big of a piece of poplar did you get at home depot? Is this a good place to pick up a practice blank?

I'd read about the pencil in a block at an angle trick. It is a good one, but even simpler (from this forum?) is sanding half the pencil off so you have a flat edge to put up against the body. I think I'm going to try that first.

Thanks for all the awesome tips guys!

I'm about to do some research on sharpening router bits.

If I buy a router with adjustable depth, could I use the same bit for cutting the body and the cavities?

Another thing, there is a local woodworkers association here in Des Moines that has over 300 members. It's membership is $20 a year. They have a library of videos and books that members can borrow, they have classes, and I figure it'll be a good chance to properly learn how to use the router that I'm about to buy!

I just won an epi bolt on LP jr on ebay for about $100. It is plywood and has some problems. Anyway, I saw it as an opportunity to make myself a template of a bolt on lp copy. It also comes with the original p90 (epi) and replacement electronics and p90 (gibson). I figured I'd keep the upgraded electronics and pickup, make a template and sell it back off on ebay for close to what I paid for it.

Anyway, it is 24 3/4" scale and I was wondering if I could (on my homemade version) use a USA Custom Guitars 24 3/4" conversion neck?

This will be my first project (well, technically not first, I put together two USA CG strats) and I love p90's and LP juniors, and thought a bolt neck joint would be the best logical place to start on learning to make my own guitars.

This first one will have a black limba body with flame walnut top and a USA Custom Guitars Rosewood neck. My first body attempt will probably be a throwaway made out of pine or whatever cheap wood I can get. I will even bookmatch the pine to get a feel for the process.

Also, I'm going to buy a router soon, but could somone give me a list of a good, small selection of essential bits for this type of guitar?

Also, I wanted to say thanks to everyone here for building such an awesome community and for sharing (and in advance for all the help I'm expecting I'll need LOL!)

I've read about the e-nut, it's from a www.monteallums.com, he sells great copper strat pickguard shields too.

The thing I don't care for too much about his system and the Feiten system are that you have to tune differently. With the Earvana nut, I use standard tuning.

I'm sure all three systems are effective to varying degrees, but I'd rather do a little more work up front replacing a nut rather than doing more work the rest of my life taking extra time to tune. I'm lazy that way. LOL

I'm new here, but I've built a USA Custom Guitars S type guitar with an Earvana Gibson OEM 1 3/4" nut. It uses the same nut cut as an LSR nut. I've also used a regular Earvana nut on a MIM Standard Strat I had. It had a significant impact for the better.

Also, the Earvana site has a great installation tutorial in pdf form (donated by a customer).