dpm99

Nice work! That sap pocket is sort of funny though. Where did you get the wood?

Scott beat me to the punch. The reason I suggested laminates is because you could eliminate the knot (or whatever it is) that way. I'm all for solid Bubinga necks though. It's stiff, requires no finish, and feels like silk.

I can say a little about Bubinga. I'm sure others will add some. I'm almost finished with a solid Bubinga neck right now. Weight is going to vary per sample, but it should be similar to a rosewood neck. The advantage of the Bubinga is that its added strength means you can build a thinner neck, if you want. Looking at that particular piece, I would consider using it for laminates. Bubinga makes incredible laminate stock, and pairs well with maple. I have zero experience with Bamboo, but I've always wanted to play around with some of that Bamboo plywood.

Welcome!

You could do that if you really wanted to. This is from the Ernie Ball website: As for three piece necks, they can cut costs, but they also add stability, and give you racing stripes. When Fender started making electric guitars, they were TERRIBLY cost conscious. Their solution was not to make laminate necks, but to make the entire neck out of one piece of wood. But instead of ripping it in half like EB, they just route a channel down the back and plugged it up later. It was a cost cutting solution, but has since become iconic. A lot of people think that you're going to get better tone and sustain out of a single piece of wood. I don't happen to be one of them.

+1 The added bonus is that you get to use cheap, rift sawn wood. If I have a good piece of quartersawn or flat sawn wood, I'll generally leave them alone. There are a lot of ways to strengthen a neck. But there's nothing wrong with the "rip and flip" method.

Welcome!

How are Brad and Angelina doing, anyway?

I've been out of town and just saw this. Congrats man. It's almost always something just like that. Sometimes you just have to fight through your frustration and dig in there.

I've always like the idea of a radial arm drill press. A lot of people have reported stability problems with them, but I'm still tempted to get one some day.

I was hoping Wez or Mender might chime in here. I'm not familiar with what's available in the UK, but the general consensus is to get a large floor model, if you can afford it. Consider that if you're ever going to do string ferules, you'll need something like a 7" (180mm) reach or so. Personally, I get by with a small benchtop drill press, but I sort of hate it. You'll also want to build yourself a big drill press table.

Hey, I just like P90s anyway, so my suggestion to get achieve what you're trying to do is to add a third pickup in the middle, and add some switches or push/pull pots to allow for series/parallel configurations. If you go parallel in combination with the middle pickup, you'll get some strat-like sounds. If you want to get a thicker sound, go parallel. If you want to maintain that same appearance, you could stealth a really hot, overwound strat pickup, like on an Esquire. Then I bet you could wire a 5 position superswitch with the following configuration: 1.) Bridge 2.) Bridge/Middle in series 3.) Bridge/Middle in parallel 4.) Neck/Bridge (in series?) 5.) Neck Or something like that... Honestly, I think you ought to just buy a chunk of Alder and go with your plan. It's not like you'll never want another guitar again. Unfortunately, recent evidence points GAS being a chronic condition, and no amount of gear seems to cure it.

How are you going to pull strat tones out of two P90s?

I vote for a good solid piece of anything that will look the way you want. Tonally, Alder is very versatile, and it's cheap. After that, I would consider Ash, Maple, Canary, or Butternut. On the next tier I'd put Cherry, Basswood, Hickory, and Poplar. Then Oak. Then I'd look to woods like Pine and Spruce. But that's me.

The importance of shielding is debatable. I still think it's a grounding issue. If it were shielding, you wouldn't be able to "fix" it by touching the metal knob. Can you take some pictures with an accompanying diagram or something?

No. Right now you are acting as the ground for the guitar when you touch that metal knob. Ultimately, you want the ground to go the electrical ground through your cord.

Gavin, It looks like a fine guitar, and the the top looks close grained too. I would suggest you post this over at OLF (http://luthiersforum.com/forum/). I could give you some suggestions, and there are a few people here with extensive experience with this sort of work, but you'll not only get advice on how to fix it, but someone might be able to help you figure out what happened. Of course, if you wave a capacitor at them, most of they'll tremble in fear. Look at this as another great learning experience with this guitar.

Just cut a straight line down the edge of the neck. As for the pocket, search here for "Myka jig."

The first guitar I ever wired was a simple strat clone. The second one had two P-Rails. It had neck/both/humbucker switching on a tele-style blade switch, one volume and one tone, push-pulls that switched between single coil/P-90/series humbucker/parallel humbucker mode, a six position varitone that alternated capacitors and effects, a variable treble bleed on a hidden micro-potentiometer, and a kill switch. When I plugged it in and it didn't work, you can only imagine my frustration. I'd wired it according to what I thought was a good diagram, and it was, except that one of my switches didn't work the way the diagram said it should. I pulled the whole thing apart and started over. I used test leads. First I played around connecting pickup wires directly to the jack and holding a tuning fork over the pickup until I understood how that all worked. Then I sat down and took a hard look at the switch to see how the connections worked. I tested my theories, and realized that you should never, ever buy one of those ridonkulous tele switches that StewMac passes off as a decent guitar part. (I like StewMac...just not that particular item.) Then I started experimenting with the push-pull pots until I understood how they worked. I tried random lug connections, just to see what would happen. I did the same with all my components, and each one was easier than the last. By the time I was done, I didn't need a diagram anymore. I'm no expert on this, and there are a lot of guys here who know much more than I do about guitar electronics. My point is that for those of us that don't have a background in electronics, there's a learning curve. I used to hate wiring, but that was just because it was all voodoo to me. There was a point when I really did want to just throw my guitar in the river to see if it would sink. Stick with it and you'll get past that point. Ask questions. And if you do happen to have on of those pitiful tele switches from StewMac, film yourself smashing it with a hammer and send it to their customer service department. This is the one, curse the day it was made! http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Components:_Switches_and_knobs/Lever-action_Pickup_Switch.html

The hot/lead/positive wires are the ones you want to shield. The ground wires can be unshielded. Some will disagree with that statement, but I hold to it. Most everyone will tell you to ground the lead wires. And like I said before, if you don't ground the actual shielding that surrounds the lead wires, you haven't shielded anything. It's a frustrating process sometimes, huh?

How far along are you? If you're in the early stages, there are a couple of things you could do. If you have the tools for it, you could rip the board in a few spots and turn it into a laminate neck. You could also do an asymmetrical neck carve, sort of like this one that Warmoth does: Or you could just go with it as is. What kind of wood are you using anyway? Pics would help.

It's probably some tiny little piece of wire that's touching something it shouldn't, or not touching something it should. Just make sure it's all clean. Are your hot wires shielded? And if so, is the shielding in those wires connected to the ground? (They should be.)

I think I know what he's saying. The neck pocket and the heel of the neck are supposed to be tapered. That's because the guitar strings hold a steady taper throughout their length. Therefore, the fretboard has to taper along the heel. And having a fretboard hang off the edge of the neck isn't ideal. So the whole neck has to be tapered - even the heel. You were expecting 90 degree angles in the neck pocket though, right? The luthier could do that, but it would leave a very small gap between the neck and the body. It sounds to me like the luthier you're dealing with is doing the job correctly.

Welcome to the forum. I'm going to leave this to some of the more experienced builders here, but personally, I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over it. To start with, is it off center from your final neck contour or just from the neck blank?