10pizza

some places the underlying sealer came off as well I'm afraid  so I'll just strip it. Using a heater it works pretty well.

Thanks @Prostheta, that's a great tutorial for woodfilling anything on the guitar.

I've got some supplies today, hope to get working on filling it up soon. First however I need to remove umpteen coats of paint/lacquer.

the Ibanez guys in Japan weren't cheap when it comes to paint. Also it looks like a previous owner added his own finish on top, so even more layers!

and yes, the arbor can easily break the neck if handled incorrectly. Maybe I can customize it with some heavy springs to counter that.......

ALways liked oil finishes and see the wood. Good luck @bassplr19 !

@Andyjr1515 that's a brilliant EVH! gorgeous wood and finish! Did you build that yourself or did you use an existing wolfgang for that?

2 minutes ago, Guitaraxz said:

That's a great fret-press jig you made

thanks Raxz! based on an example I found here. Cheap as well: only 30 EUR for the press and the rest for free. Needed to stabilize the caul a bit but after that it works great!

I'll find me some basswood then to fill it up.

Started today with removing the paint using a hot air blower. Not very effective. I'll get some paint-remover tomorrow. See if that makes the job easier.

thx for the advise scott.

I've seen some pretty incredible  builds on this site and on some of the guitars I can see special hardware like tuners, knobs, bridges.

How do you guys get these? do you make your own? or some special shops not easy to find?

I Always end up with the 'standard' stuff from the likes of allparts, stewmac or in Holland guitarsupplies, vox humana.

any links available or members here that build and sell?

thx!

great looking strat man. It looks like you just shake 'm out of your sleeve!

do you have a website as well for your shop? or is it just building for friends?

Hey man, looks good. Already have an idea on what pickups you'll put in?

And I'm still messing around customizing stuff in stead of building from scratch ( which is on my list ) to learn stuff so don't feel bad about not building yourself a neck! you can Always do that with the next one.

good luck!

nice Woods! keep us updated!

great guitar. Very nice finish and overall it's clear to see the quality of build and finishing.

sounds good too!

thanks Scott

would you make the piece of wood to fill the cavity level with the body or maybe a bit higher and then sand it back down after putting in putty/bondo in the gaps?

A request for advice:

what do you use to fill up pickup-cavity holes and why? 

I'll need to fill a single-coil sized hole in one of the bodies. 

thanks for sharing!

As said, I've been working on this already for a while, so here's where we are right now.

One body has been stripped and is now with my dear friend who also finished my Mosrite for me. He's going to paint it white, after which it will go to another friend of mine and artist who makes/designs clothes/belts and stuff (see pic). She'll make a nice custom art finish on top of it, after which it will go back for lacquering.

the other body is still to be stripped and prepared for finishing. I've found a company in Holland that do chroming of wooden objects, so I'll give that a try.

One neck has been stripped from frets and thanks again to the tutorial on this site I've created a 250mm radius sanding block and sanded the radius of the neck to 250mm. I'm going to wait with the other neck until I've done one guitar. It might be that I want to make changes.

Also with help from this forum I've created a fretpress.  I've made a 250mm caul out of stainless steel. And based on a video on youtube my dad created a nice fret-bending tool, it's in the same picture as the fretpress.

some pics attached.

Time to start a new topic after finally finishing my Aria/Mosrite project last year.

This one comes with a story.

A long, long time ago somewhere in the lowlands I got my hands on an Ibanez JS10th guitar, aka Chromeboy. I'm a big Satriani fan and really like the chrome finish. It also played like a dream. Really great neck, great versatile sound and the Edge trem setup was superb as well.

However, I somehow don't feel comfortable to play very expensive guitars like that so a few years back I got the idea to build/customize my own JS type guitar to keep it relatively cheap and ofcourse have fun doing it! 

To that purpose, I've picked up 2 Ibanez R440 models. Which are almost identical in shape to the JS body and also made of basswood. 

The goal is to create 2 JS type guitars out of these: 1 Custom art JS2400 style JS and 1 JS10th style in chrome.

To that effect there's some work to be done:

• Changing radius of fretboard and refret with 6105 fretwire
• Filling up and routing of one body for HH-setup and one for HS - setup

I already started with some of it, which I'll post below. 

As I've had this idea for a long time, I've had some time to collect hardware needed:

• Dimarzio ProTrack and MoJoe pickups for the custom art JS
• Dimarzio PafJoe and PafPro for the chrome JS
• Push pull pots and electronics
• 'New' used Edge as one of the two I had was not in the best shape anymore
• Fretwire 

nice Project and great looking wood! Curious how that neck is going to look when finished!

better picture of the headstock

Last update on this thread as I've finally managed to put a decal. First time doing that, so after a few failed attempts I got it right. Also again with help from all the information on this forum.

Also changed the TOM-bridge to a roller-bridge with heavier posts to increase tuning stability with the trem.

Currently working on a project to customize an Ibanez guitar. I'll share that in a new thread. Hope it won't run as long as this one.

some more pictures:

on the right in this picture another refinish project I did at the same time of a Grand Suzuki Les Paul copy. Also refinished in gold.

5 years later. time for an update.

Last year a good friend of mine was so kind to apply the gold-finish after some attempts of myself that were not succesfull. Spray-painting is not my cup of tea I'm afraid.

only thing left is to create a de-cal for the headstock to finish it off. Playability is great. Due to the thin ash-body feedback kicks in pretty quickly, so that's something to be carefull with.

when played without amplifiying the sound is already quite 'big' to my surprise and when amplified the sound is great too. Really like these pickups.

thanks for the tips;

I measured the pickups once; they are same width as P90's but the length is just a bit shorter than a P90. With a little luck I could use P90 mounting rings, but haven't found any since they are usually mounted without rings.

I'll see what I can achieve with finegrit on the pickups covers. would be nice to have them look new again.

Wow!

I didn't know it was 2 years already since I last posted on this project.

that means that I didn't do j*ck*ss on this for 2 years!

But, better late than never!

FINISHING

last week I started with finishing of the body; did several ground layers. Since this is my first spraying/finishing experience I ran into some stupid mistakes like spraying to much the first time, so I had to do a lot of sanding again to get the runners of

Last night I started with 3 layers of the gold-finish using my compressor with paint spraying kit. Works very well, had to thinner the paint a bit, but things start to look goldish!

Got myself some decal material as well so I can create my own logo and get it on the headstock.

plan is to try and get a few extra layers of finish on this week and then give it two weeks to harden before polishing. Then I can put on the lacquer.

Finish before 1st of may should be feasible.

PICKUPS

unfortunately the original pickup rings are damaged, so I need to find a solution for that. Problem is that these mounting rings are special size. Standard, humbucker/mini-humbucker rings do not fit. So, maybe I'll try to make my own rings from MDF and spraypaint them black.

also I need to polish the pickupcovers. Any ideas on how to make old pickupcovers nice and shiny?

thanks Acoustic Smash

I don't want to drill another hole for an extra mono-output, so I'll stick to the stereo with external box.

I'll do some experimenting with the grounds and a footswitch, see what happens!

Hi Saber

I'll maybe need another switch for that in my guitar, but something worth checking, thanks.

My preference is a foot swicht however, so I can switch between bass/guitar faster.

ultimately I'd also like to build in 2 LED's in my switchbox to show which signal is active.

thanks

Hi all

hope someboy can help me with this.

I have a Bass/Guitar doubleneck:

To be able to send the guitar signal to a guitar amp and the bass signal to a bass amp, I've installed a stereo jack to send both signals seperately to a switchbox. in the switchbox, I've split the stereo signal to two mono-jacks, 1 for guitar and 1 for bass. Ground is shared.

using the selectorswitch on the guitar, I select either bass or guitar.

the problem is however that when I play bass, my guitar amp is giving a lot of noise and vice versa when I play guitar.

My idea of a solution is to bypass the selectorswitch on the guitar and have a DPDT footswitch installed in my switchbox to mute the guitarsignal when playing bass and vice versa, by shorting the non-used signal to ground.

I'm afraid however that when I switch back from 1 instrument to the other, this will result in a <plop> or <crack>sound in the amp because of the switching from ground to signal at once.

Will this indeed happen? Is there a way to prevent this?

Schema:

thanks for your help!

Another update and picture.

Yesterday I levelled the frets and did a testsetup of the complete guitar to find out:

1. is it playable ( action, setup, nutheight etc )

2. how does it sound with the original pickups ( never heard them, did they even work? )

Because the original pickups are a special size with special mounting rings, I wanted to be sure I'd like the sound, otherwise I'd need to get replacement pickups and more importantly, I'd need to fill up the existing pu-routes and route new ones.

BUT!

even without (re)crowning of the frets after levelling and just a quick installation of electronic components available I must say I was surprised!

Since this is my first project and fretjob I was afraid I would end up with an unplayable instrument but following good advice found here and in books does help!

The action on the neck is great and also the sound of the pickups surprised me. It's very versatile. I only had a small problem with the neckPU of which the plastic cover came off and now and then I lost it's signal so I have some soldering to do probably.

apart from that I'm very happy with the result so far and now I can start with the finish with confidence!

some other pics:

test setup 2

tuner test setup

regards