dpm99

Well, I like it, for what that's worth. What's around the bridge pickup? Is that gonna be a homemade pickup ring or something? It looks cool.

Yeah, I love the pot belly! Then again, my project has a pot belly too, so....

You stand a better chance at winning if your project is finished. I'd wait if I were you.

Um...yeah. Cut the ends off your strings. Seriously Kenny, it looks awesome. I love the multiscale inlays, the shape, the carve, all of it. I think my favorite part is the bridge shape. That's a particularly classy touch. Now come carve my body for me. kthx! -Dave

I think it's nice clean work. The body looks like a Warwick (but not exactly, of course). Is that what you were going for?

Nice work, and that wood is looking really good. Did you carve the top? I can't tell.

Because I'm close enough to the truss rod that it would be problematic.

Thanks again everyone. I'll use Rich's method to remove the fretboard and post progress in my build thread when it's done. To bring a hopeful note to this thread, I picked up a great piece of wood for the replacement neck. You'll see in the bottom picture that there's sawdust all over my front seat. I couldn't wait to find out how close to quartersawn the wood was, so I stopped at Home Depot and sanded it before going to band practice. Looks like I did pretty good. I was very careful this time to pick one without knots, wormholes, or pitch pockets, but I guess I won't know for sure until I cut into it. I'm sure jaws will drop at this, but I actually picked up this piece of 4/4 Granadillo (36" long) for $11.85. (Yes, that's USD!) Did I do good?

Scrap it is. Thanks guys. I would have never been able to make that call on my own. Hopefully I'll be able to pop off the fretboard without too much trouble, and the second one ought to be much quicker than the first, especially now that I've learned how to use a spokeshave.

It's for an electric guitar. 25.5 scale, bolt on. Yeah Kenny, with that first pic I was really trying to capture the horror of it. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do at this point. I'm leaning away from the epoxy idea at this point. I could probably run a stripe down the back of the neck and be ok. I'm also trying to think of some way to turn that obstacle into a really neat feature, but that idea hasn't hit me yet. Also, Rich is a really smart guy when it comes to wood, and as emotionally attached as I am to this neck (being the first one I've ever made), I'm sure I could build a second one much more quickly than the first. What a shame that it came out right at the end! It would be finished otherwise. I probably should have identified a tell-tale sign of that knot from the first anyway. Beginner's mistake.

Maybe I'm grasping at straws here, but as I look at that first pic, it looks pretty horrendous. As I kept taking away wood, it got better. Here it is after (almost) final shaping. Honest opinion?

Thanks for your reply, Rich. What would you think about cutting out the knot and putting in a contrasting piece of wood, sort of like this: I could do it with matching wood too I guess. I'd wonder about expansion, and maybe it's just a bad idea anyway. I'd hate to scrap the first neck I ever made, and a month's worth of work. But I trust your advice.

Looks like he did that already. blinkknot, this is a really great build. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Very clean. Nice work.

Well, today I did the final shaping of my neck only to reveal a knot just right around the seventh fret. Grr! Here's a picture: So what can I do? How big a problem is it? The neck has two 0.25 X 0.25 carbon fiber rods, and a dual-action truss rod from StewMac. I didn't see the knot in the truss rod slot, so it apparently doesn't go all the way through. The following ideas have occurred to me so far: 1. Dowse it with epoxy to fill the hole in the middle of the knot and sand back the excess. 2. Do the same thing with Titebond and sawdust. 3. Do the same thing with Titebond and no sawdust. 4. Fill it with wood putty (which is pretty much glue and sawdust anyway from what I understand, so I suppose that idea is redundant). 5. Cut out the knot entirely, glue in another piece of wood, and sand flush. 6. Throw the neck in the fireplace and head to the lumber store. 7. Cry. 8. Sell the neck on Ebay with a "grain feature." (Ok, kidding on that one.) HELP!!! Oh, and thanks. -Dave

I've wondered about mounting one under a bridge. Hope it works out. Thanks for your response.

Nice work on those necks, Ken. I hope you go for it and post build pictures along the way! Pete, sorry to stray from topic, but I've been thinking about piezo saddles lately. Would those be easy enough to make, or do you even know?

I'm not exactly sure how those things work, but I've looked at them a lot. As I understand, they're not actually catching vibrations from the top, like a traditional piezo strip would. They're capturing the vibrations from the saddles in the bridge. So if that's true, it probably doesn't really matter much what type of wood you use. If you want to get voodooey, the answer to your question is spruce. We could debate as to what's the best acoustic wood, but spruce is probably the most popular choice. It's not used much for electric guitars because it's softer than most people like and scratches fairly easily. I say use whatever you want, and let us know how it goes. I'm particularly interested to find out. -Dave

Awesome. But I'm assuming you left out a step or two. The final pic doesn't look like you have a straight line carve. Did you do anything else to shape those lines?

If I wasn't able to fix it, I was considering scalloping past the twelfth fret. I'm pleased with what I did though. It's a pretty good fix. As I was looking at it last night, I realized I have another problem. It's nothing major, but it sure would be nice to fix it. I seem to have grain filled with MOP, leaving a bunch of little white marks on the board. Anybody have a fix for that?

Carousel, that's like...perfect. It's not exactly what I was describing, but I think I may like it better. I hope you don't mind if I use that a inspiration for my carve. I'd be very interested in hearing some details on how to replicate that kind of work, if you're willing to share.

You don't. But gold star anyway.

It would be a real shame to let this thread slip to page four. The fretboard is attached, thanks to help from jmrentis, and the inlays are done. As I said earlier, the fretboard is Pao Ferro, cut by Erik Bojerik. The dot inlays are black MOP from LMI, and they were installed with a hand drill and a brad point drill bit, as per a tip from Bluesy. Isn't this community great? I did make a pretty awful mistake when I was putting in the dots. At the nineteenth fret, I put in three dots rather than two. I had everything marked ahead of time, but somehow confused myself and wasn't paying good enough attention to catch it before I made the mistake. Not smart. So I made a dot from the cutoff at the end of the board, cut specifically from the same grain area as the mistake. I got it shaped as well as I could, and glued it in with Titebond, filling gaps with sawdust from the board as I did so. You can see the repair in the bottom two pictures below, between the two dots. It will always be visible if you know where to look, and that's a real shame. Nonetheless, I think I did a pretty decent repair job for someone with my very limited experience. A gold star to the first person that identifies the inlay pattern (not exactly obscure trivia)! Thanks for looking. Be nice. -Dave

Yeah, it's been a design feature from conception. It's huge and heavy, and I'm sure someday I'll look back at that and laugh. Practically speaking, if I made it any thinner I wouldn't be able to put the recessed Floyd in without modifying or switching out the block, and I'm not keen on doing either. It's actually slightly thinner than a Tele now (very slightly), but it's a bigger shape. And once I carve the top and the cavities, it'll be a little lighter. I'm not really concerned about the weight anyhow. Then again, if I got used to a guitar like your Ibanez, it might just spoil me.

So c'mon! Build it already!