catnine

I have used spray guns before and airbrushes and own them . Right now I really don't have an area to use the small spray gun nore do I want to screw it up using fast drying water based finishes . I do have a few aztec plastic made airbrushes designed for the sort of finish and large enough nozzels to do a fair job . I got the finish from stew mac . I also got white and yellow pigment to do the body a light yellow . It directs you to mix up to 20% to get a opaque color . Aslo when I spoke to the people at stew mac to order this finish I was told I needed no sealer , the boby is alder and neck maple . I was also told I could not brush the finish on , but on the can of finish is says you can if thinned 20% with their retarder . I have brushed nitro before and yes you do need to sand out brush marks , this is not a hardship . Based on what I have said here which way would be best ?

This is something that perplexed me when I received the Stewart-Mac Hot Rod double action truss rod I used when building my first Strat copy. It was not possible to use an allen wrench to adjust that rod. The hex nut at the adjustment end was a 1/4" hex nut, but the hole in the end of the nut was not a hex shaped hole it was round, as in circular. There was no way to insert an allen wrench in the end of that adjustment nut. I ended up having drill the access hole for the adjustment nut bigger in order to fit a 1/4" nut driver type tool in to do the truss rod adjustments. This was not too big of an issue as I put the access hole in the heel on this neck as it was my first one. But I am curious as to whether the truss rod I received from Stewrt-Mac was defective, or has everyone else found that same thing on their Hot rods ? And on a side note. Has anyone here used a Hot Rod for a Les Paul style neck ? Does the adjustment nut set too low in the channel to work as a peghead adjusted rod ? Or does the deeper setting nut actually make it better on an angled peghead ? I am working on a Les Paul copy as my next project, but I am using very cheap wood and such because this is a practice piece. I don't want to spend alot of money on Mahogany and good figured Maple, until I have my technique perfected ( or at least somewhat know what I am doing. ) Even though It is a practice piece, I would like to make it as viable and playable as possible. I was considering using a Hot Rod, but was not sure if it would work the way I want it to. You got the wrong model , there are three types of nuts on hotrods , one a slotted head for fender necks with the adjustment at the heel , another with a spoke wheel not , also for heel adjustment position for set neck guitars or neck through designs and the one you needed , a 1/4 nut with allen adjustment whicj is used for peghead adjustments , also if you wish you could use this on a bolt on neck for heel adjustment position . The only one for prghead is the 1/4" OD allen nut type and a 1/4" hole is drilled .

The U channel martin rods I am refering to are faily thick aluminum 1/8 " all three sides . Also the rod itself is 1/4" in diameter and is of hard metal like a bicycle spoke . Also the rod is set on shims between the rod and the top of the channel to give the rod a bit of bow . The open side of the channel is taped over so epoxy does not enter the channel and bond the rod . I can't sit here and say necks twist more with one type of rod against another with facts to present . This is my personal view based on a rod which is let only into the wood itself . Now here you do have a single action rod with a fixed not or T at one end and a washer and a threaded nut at the other end , it works by being set in as deeply possible , you need more wood above it than below to compress the neckwood to bring up the upbow caused by string tension , it you have it in the center it could go either way and to close to the finger board and it will not work at all . This is one reason that along came the dual action rod also because many necks are so thin and add todays light gauge strings and you may end up with back bow . The channel type rod does not depend on compression of the wood , if bonded to the neck slot it will transfer the bow to the neckwood . Like I said , I have only used one hotrod dual rod and I don't like the idea of it , now if I were concerned about back bow then yes . I have never had this concern . You should design a neck with a certain amount of upbow built in so you can always put a little tension on the rod , it does not take much . Just as a neck without an adjustable rod which martin used for many years , it was just an added bar of steel for strength , the neck was purposely designed with a bit of backbow so when strung to pitch you would end up with just the right amount of relief . My strat necks since they are all rosewood slabs and all as all strats are one section of maple , not three sections as gibson uses with the center section with the grain running opposite the outside sections , this gives a stable neck , just as all wide boards are done . Other wise a wide board will go with the grain and bow .naturally . My necks on the strats stay and I never need to adjust the rod , I put it in with a bit of upbow and snug the nut and leave it there and for the high action heavy gauged strings jumbo frets combination I prefer a .012 " relief . Certainly for a modern guitar with a thin neck and light strings which seems to be prefered these days a dual action rod would be a better bet in getting the relief where you want it . The hotrod if installed as directed and on a bolt on neck heel adjustment , can be pulled out and replaced if broken as is the case with Rick's two rod system . Of course if someone is wrenching on it this much the guitar is in the wrong hands . The one main reason I do not like hotrod truss rods it here you have a round rod with just the very narrow surface of the rod in contact with the back of the finger board , now remember the rod is round so only a small area is in contact with the back of the fingerboard . You are putting alot of pressure there . The channel is flat and has a great deal more surface area and you can add a maple filler for added strength and added gluing surface for the fingerboard . A hotrod you are routing 7/32" wide with a neck width at the nut say average 1 5/8 " now you have 1 3/8 " (give 1/32 back if you like ) left at this point near where the brass block resides for gluing surface . You have taken away about 6 % of the gluing surface . I suppose if I had a choice with a hotrod I would rather the fingerboard split or pop loose than the back of the neck breaking through . Call me crazy but I routed my hotrod a 1/16 " deeper and added a maple filler on top , since my neck is 1 inch thick overall I am not concerned about the back being too close .

I always used aluminum channel style truss rods like the ones stew mac sells for martins , they are only 3/8 " deep and are wider though 7/16" . I route a 1/16 " deeper and used a maple filler , spread epoxy in the route and drop in the rod and then the filler and clamp . This way there is no water to swell the neck that needs to dry out well before going on . Beside this the nut fits in hole drilled into the heel end rather than like hot rod . I could not find the channel type for the strat I'm building now so I got a hotrod , after I got the 7/32" proper bit and routed the channel I still went a bit deeper to allow for a maple filler . I did'nt like the idea of the rod getting glue on it or it being against the back of the fingerboard . Also I made a filler strip for the end so the nut was not sitting in an open channel . I f I would have looked further on stew macs site I would have found the channel style . To me they are more stable and do have a thicker rod , once this is epoxied in place it is not going anywhere and becomes part of the neck . However it is a one way rod but I always make certain I have a bit of upbow . I already did install the hotrod but I don't think I will use one again . It's precision made and I don't care about thin necks for me , I like deep necks . The one thing I found is the nut is welded on and it is not centered so it rubs one side of the route when rotated , not a big deal , you are not making 360 degree turns . I would rather have the width cut from the neck than the depth and one unit with one moving part and not bother with silcone to keep it from a rattle . I got one from LMI a single action double rod but I did not care for the quaility , it was not welded straight with one rod perfect above the other and the flat welded 3/16" square stock they used for the nut to bear against was not true to the nut set and the threads were running crooked on the rod . It may have worked but I personally would not use something that I did not fully trust , not in a neck I'm going to spend hours making and years playing . When you think about rods more , think about neck twist , a single or dual rod with fittings on one or both ends acts as a pivot and will move with the neck if the wood should decide to twist . An aluminum thick walled channel bonded to the neck on all sides adds strength and would take alot more effort to twist it , and ther nut and rod cannot act as a pivot , the rod can only rotate in the channel . If you take a metal rod and tighten it to cause a bow it wants to flip and twist against the pressure . Maybe this is a small issue but to me it is not .

hipshot just seels the entire hardtail , I just need the saddles for a tremolo I already have , I ordered the stew mac chrome saddles , if they are cast or junk I can return them . The brass ones I have will raise my strings over 1/2 " above the body , this is where I have them set now to get the 7/32 " high action between the low E and the 12th fret top that I want without shimming the neck . If the saddles I had were a bit wider for a 2 3/16 spacing instead of 2 1/8 spacing all would be fine . They fit they just slide against eachother when I bend and don't return on the string center . Since they are brass if all else fails , maybe I could solder a brass shim to the side of each saddle just to take up the in between gap like 1/32 each saddle .

I can't use the stock saddles because I need a bit more string height and I'm not going to add shims . I got a bridge off ebay said to be a mighty mite but they are cheap cast saddles and the height adjustment screws are all drilled crooked so it is junk . I have a set of brass saddles but they are a bit narrower and shift from side to side . I don't want the graphite ones either . I went all over the internet searching and all I could find that may work are stew mac's replacement saddles for a hardtail that are the correct width but they can't tell me what they are made of . cast may be ok if they are well cast and not soft metal . I would like stainless steel without inserts but none seem to fit a standard vintage trem 6 screw . Anyone know where to look ?

The body is 14 years old kept sitting in a bag waiting for the day I would put it to use , but the rest I just made this last month . Things have certainly changed around town . There were two very well stocked hardwood sources near me and now both are gone . I had to go online and get wood for the neck from stew mac . I made two fret boards also 14 years ago and this was still a prime piece of brazilian rosewood with a nice dark purple hue . So the body and fingerboard are well aged . There were even alot of guitat shops that I could get parts from and many now sell nothing but pickguards and strings straps and other accessories . I had warmoth make the pickguard and bought the rest of the hardware from stew mac except the tremolo that was warmoth as well . I set the slots in the nut today and strung it up and it sounds great . Just a little lower in the nut slots , I set them at .035 over the frets across the nut so maybe another .010 off will do just fine . I like it a bit stiff so you can really dig in and no buzz . I am not looking forward to doing the finish , it does not have to be perfection with a mirror glass gloss , this will not last long anyway . Every guitar I have made has the sign of use on them . I was thinking maybe water base no stink fast dry brush on finish that can be buffed out nicely . Once I used a clear that was not true clear and it turned the white a yellow green tint . I thought I saw something usefull on stew macs site about clear water based finish . All I need is that and some yellow and white to lighten the yellow and I'm happy . I made the neck almost 1 inch deep at the nut and it is 1 3/4" wide at the nut with a 7.5 mm string spacing and the neck tapers to just over an inch deep at the body . So it would be like what warmoth calls a fatneck of boatneck shape . The single pickup seems to let it ring long and clear without the additional magnetic pull from the other two , a benefit I did not count on .

I built this after the single pickup SRV yellow strat , I made the body some years ago maybe 14 and it has sat . I made it for a left hand treolo and sunburst but the finish did not come out to my lijing so I made another . This time I scraped the finish off , converted it back to a right hand trem and built the neck . All I have left is to fit the nut slots to their final set depth and final sand and apply the yellow finish ( if I can come close to the light yellow ) and add my intials to the area where the two pups are not and play the blues .

good old fashioned klusons with a press in bushing for everything .

30.3 " scale and the pickups and body , bridge and trem are very much like the jaguar .

Here is a link http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/I-4003.html William

Thanks for your help . I just found on the stew mac site a builders guide and it has a step by step process with all the dimentions .

I thought I had mine too far back and it' a hair over 25 1/4 " from the body side ooof the nut to the centerline of the 6 trem pivot screws . It is a standard strat trem , not fender brand but a replacement from stew mac .

Just from the body side of the nuts face to the centerline on the 6 trem screws . If anyone can give me this it would certainly help .

I use .013 to .060 roundwound and have the action at 7/64" low E at the 12th fret bewteen the bottom of the string and the top of the fret and 5/64 " on the high E . This does present a little problem with the low E , I had to cut part of the saddle spring away to go back far enough on tther three strats I made and the high E there was just enough screw to get it right . So going by the others with the same action I may only have trouble with the high E being to flat past the 12th fret . I still have to mount the tuners and the fit and mount the nut , then I can string it up and see . You know this day is not going well at all , right after I posted this instead of removing the neck I decided to hang the guitar on a hook stuck in the ceiling right above my computer . I had a much heavier guitar hanging by this very hook for years , well as soon as I hung it there and gave a bit of a slight tug the hook snapped clean off and the guitar fell a foot and hit the corner of the monitor and put a nice dent right in the bottom rounded edge . being alder which is soft I was able to steam it out . It sure sounded like it fell 100 feet to me .

I thought about getting a fret press , the noise alone hammering frets in makes this a job for the daytime hours . I have gotten pretty good with the hammer anuhe stew mac saw and their frets so it come out a good snug fit . I just went through your strat making pages , There is alot of info there and it is also nice that you provide different ways of doing each job . I posted today about my latest strat and the screwup I made drilling the trem pivot screw holes and a few photo's of it . I only have a router and table top drill press and the array of hand tools to build my strats so it takes a bit more time for me . I am hoping the guitar will intonate without dedoing the holes . I don't really care for the gap between the pickguard and front edge of the trem but if it plays in tune I can ignore this or make my own pickguard to close the gap . It is only 1/16 " I need to move toward the neck but it stands out like a sore thumb .

There is a link to this screw up photo below . I don't know what I was thinking , I plugged the holes for these 6 pivot screws and moved them back so the centerline is 25 5/16 inches from the board side of the nut 1 13/16 " from the end of the 21 fret end of the fingerboard which is ther end of the neck pocket . I moved then back from info I got from warmoth telling me this is the correct distance and since I made this body years ago and just made a new neck for it and I did not want to have to trim the pick guard to clear the trem , somehow I ended up not checking and there is now a 3/16" gap between the edge of the trem and the pickguard instead of no gap where trimming would be needed . Now I am afraid I will not be able to intonate the high E . My other strats that I built all vary as for as intonation goes even though they all use the same string gauge and action , but this one seems like I may need a 1/16 to make it work . So since I already plugged holes once and redrilled I can't do this again so now all I can think of is routing out the area where the 6 pivot screws go and drop in a fitted plug to cover all the new holes and plugged holes and make it almost as deep as to reach the spring cavity . The body will be painted so a wooden filler section filler won't show . Any suggestions ? I test fit and drilled all the other holes today and oncew I dropped the pickguard into place I saw this . I have been concentrating on building the neck and never checked this until now . Don't you just love it when you have to redo something like this , first time for me not to double check things . Now I'm kicking mysef all around the garage . It may tune and intonate but I won't know for certain until I finish the nut and string it up . But I have my doubts . Things just don't go this easy . I already converted the body back from a left hand trem to a right hand and now this . and a full view of the body , I used brass bridge saddles so I could get a high action and did not want to shim the neck pocket or route it deeper . The stock saddles are stamped metal and just don't have the amount of adjustment as the machined brass . William The forgetful measurer

Guitarfrenzy You have quite a setup there I must say . I am on my fourth strat and this makes my 12th guitar . I just did my frets today and I still do it with a fretting hammer and wood glue . I always cut my slots to follow the radius of the finger board to leave as my wood as possible . And I cut the slots just a tad deepththe tangs and leave the tangs show as an unbound board on a strat . Reason being I don't want the ends to snag or lift . I suppose over radiusing and glue would keep the ends down . I had old white marker dots that I had for years and already set them in the neck but for side dots I could only find the pearl ones from stew mac . These are odd dogs , even though they are perfectly straight and in line the illusion is that they are not and at certain angles you can't see some but this is all I could find and they are in there now . I did one neck as you leaving the neck unshaped and finishing the fretwork , the only problem I ran into was once I did shape the neck even though the fret slots were the proper width for the tang , the neck did go into a slight upbow from waht I suppose was fret compression , and I installed a oneway truss rod . I was lucky though , the string tension was just enough to pull the neck into a very slight back bow . Since I use very heavy strings I lucked out . Are you concerned about this issue or is there a specific reason you are installing the frets in advance ? Just curious if you don't mind my asking . William

you are working with a very low action here and light gauge strings , part of the problem is the pickup height . if they are too close to the strings as you go higher up on the neck you are lowering the action on any guitar . So if you lower the pickups ( magnetic pull on light strings pulls string down ) in effect this would have done the same as going up in string gauge . Heavier strings also have the advantage or added tension and more mass = more punch and increased inductence .

I always use the twp piece body joint as my center line for the neck pocket and pickups and bridge and route it all at one time . Then for the bridge what I do is I have a maple block 2" wide , 3/4" thick and the length of the width of the body . I mark this with a center line and drill it the size of the 6 holes that the screw theads with tap into . SET this on the centerline , clamp in place and drill guided by this block , this way I know the block is dead accurate and I am not going to worry about a drill bit wandering off the centerline of my spacing being off . So far I have not had to plug any holes and try again , all the trials are done on the guide block first . If I screw that up , I make another one , much easier than plugging and fixing the body holes .

Thanks ; Pretty interesting setups for sure . I just don't make enough guitars to build these nice jigs . I went with the lines after trimming the neck side taper and used a sharp scrapper to make flat areas and you start out with five and keep adding new lines to add more narrower flat spots . It is very time consuming to do it this way but so far it gives my an accurate contour . I try different neck shapes for my strats for variety , and since I like fat necks they vary in nut width and thickness . the hard part is getting the shape to blend with the peghead and heel and stay symetrical . I just go slow and keep checking the contours and use lines as a guide . Maple is not the easiest wood in the world to shape by hand . I almost got a warmoth neck and filled the 22nd fret slot but figured my time is free and the necks cost quite alot and then it's not my guitar in the end . I did use one of those self setting metal gauges with all the metal rods but that thing is to cheap so not I use a backlight with a straight edge with the neck face down and the straight edge set on 1 1/4 blocks on either side of the neck and I use the shado case from the blocked light to check the progree of the conture . This way you can see every hump or valley and even mark the areas that need more shaping . Next time I think I'll rough in the neck and then form a scraper into the proper contour so it bottoms out on a flat surface on either side of the neck with the neck proped so the taper is level to the table surface . This way at least you can't screw up and go to far and the neck will come out perfectly even without constant checking of progress . Well as long as you keep the scraper 90 degrees to the neck length . Sit in a chair and pull , good for the stomach muscles .

I did a search but could'nt find this question posted . I am on my 4th strat neck . I have built many other guitars and I have not done any in a few years . I always roughed a neck in with a close to finish taper ( SIDE PROFILE ) and then marked a centerline on the back and used a spoke shave and worked a bit on each side to stay even . This time I marked several lines the length of the neck and fanned them out to match the width and depth and did smaller flat sided areas then took of the high points and sanded with a cloth belt strip cut from a beltsander belt . I wish I had a roundover bit and a shaper , this would do a great job . How about others here , how do you perform this task ?

I have built three strats so far from scratch ans I like a very high action and tall jumbo frets . if I cut a pocket the stock 5/8 " deep and have a neck that is the standard 1 inch thick at the heel and add on the height of the frets , I can't raise the saddles enough . I alway check after I route a 5/8 " pocket and end up with one a shade less than 3/4 " deep . Most saddles you can add longer screws but there is a point where the intonation screws bind in their holes and you cannot raise them higher that this unless you file the holes a bit . What I do now and for one reason , just in the event I want to install a neck that is a bit thinner . What I do now is cut a 5/8" pocket and then I make a shim that fills the pocket perfectly including the small area past the route and glue this in place with the shim cut at a 1 degree pitch , peghead up . If I need to I can heat this and remove it and touch up the painted edges . I know this sounds like alot of work and I could just install a shim under pressure of the neck plate screws . The only other simple solution would be to make a metal shim the same shape as the trem base and then mount this under the trem plate but then the trem sits up higher than the pickguard .

I have had my share of mistakes . One fingerboard slid when I glued it down , now I use pins to keep it in place , after I hand planed the fingerboard off and made a new one . Once routed a strat for a left hand trem and did tha back for a right hand . I almost shot myself , I could have sworn I checked it three times but it was one of those days . So I had to fit a hand shaped plug and reroute and give up on the sunburst finish and go with second choice , white strat .

You can do a very good job with a hand plane if it's setup right and has a sharp blade . I use hand planes for most all of my work , you get a feel for them after some use . Also I made a long 2 inch wide by 2 inch thick sanding block and insatlled a bass truss rod in it , this way I can adjust it straight and it stays there . Also a thick sheet of glass with 100 grit paper glued to it makes a great straight sanding surface , to get a side at 90 degrees to the face you mount a straight block as a guide fence to keep the work at 90 degrees .