Daniel Sorbera

You can use either. The guitar will be slightly warmer with the 250, and slightly brighter with the 500.

Alder isn't a bad wood. It's very commonly used. Seeing that it's on a Squire, you can bet they weren't too picky with the quality of wood, though.

The problem is sometimes they are made out of ply, particle board, or many (12 or more) pieces of alder with poor glue joints.

So while it may actually be alder, I would still suggest building a new one if he is going through the trouble of changing everything else about the guitar.

Basically your keeping the tuners and the body wood, both of which are rubbish on that guitar.

If you plan on doing that extensive of work I say build a new body as well. Now if you just wanted to put in some new pickups and maybe fill the single coil and call it a day that would be a different story.

Limba works just like mahogany, feels like mahogany, and finishes like mahogany. It needs grain filler but finishes very easily.

Very nice. I love your headstock shape.

Daniel, how are you measuring the temperature?

I have one of those IR pistol grip ones used by mechanics. You just point it at an object and it instantly tells you it's temperature.

It bent amazingly well at 270, so I was thinking of trying like 245 next time to minimize scorching.

oh and it was mahogany.

Yes it's the guitar that is having the problems.

I'm going to mess around with it a bit tonight and see if I can figure it out.

EDIT: I found out what the problem is. I don't know exactly what you call it, but there was a wire that was soldered in one of the lugs on the volume. I added solder to the joint and now it works! distortion is back!

Thanks

Mike

So you had a wire that wasn't soldered to the switch? Cool, glad you figured it out.

He had a cold solder joint.

The blankets each have a heat control. Is 270F a good temperature to shoot for? I read in another thread that between 250 and 300 is good so I split the difference.

I just used it for the first time today.

After letting the metal/heatblankets come up to temp (270F) I put the (soaked) wood in and immediately started bending, waist first, than lower bout, than upper bout/cutaway, at that point the blankets were turned off and it cooled for an hour before taking it out of the bender.

What I got was less than perfect, some scorching and quite a bit of spring back.

Any suggestions on how to use it better?

I usually use a cutoff of the back wood.

+1 on the large hand planes. I don't use it on anything over 3/4" but anything under that is fair game.

I never sand in the radius on the bridge plate, and why would you want a gap between the plate and the braces?

Your still going to need to trim it than dress them. So why the need for precut? Your paying extra for a essentially useless service.

Use the radius dish. I guess he thinks you might not get enough clamping pressure over that wide area with the gobars, but I've never really had a problem with it mating well, I use 4 or 5 gobars just to be sure.

Cool stuff. I like how the gold goes with the walnut.

5"x35"

Not sure on the Au supplier, but thats the size.

It's not too bad, but it's not any fun either. I've done 3 guitars with a pipe, and I never want to do it again, hence this jig.

Ok I'll be sure to post some pictures detailing how it's built.

Nice job. Looks great.

Is that steel the same as this stuff?

Yep that is exactly what I bought

Except I selected UPS ground, and they sent it out next day air and charged me for it.

Yeah I was thinking I should get thicker steel that doesn't spring back and line the bender with it to provide extra support. I guess I'll do that now that you say it's a good idea.

It's .007 tempered steel being sold as "shim stock". It has no memory whatsoever, I tried to bend it very tightly and hold it there and it springs back strait perfectly.

You don't even want to know what I paid for it.

Oh sorry, I thought that was obvious, yeah you pull it around to the back side of the frame and glue/staple it back there.

Still there sadly.

In my experience on all the amps I've taken apart the grill cloth has been glued with some kind of glue (I would try epoxy, heck it works on anything) and than stapled with nice big staples.

Just make sure you get that sucker good and stretched on there.

Just completed the new bender. It has 2 silicone heat blankets and .007 steel shim stock to support the wood. It heats up to exactly 290 in about 15 seconds and holds the temp perfectly. We used some long eyebolts to clamp down the sides. It has a removable piece for the cutaway.

picture 2

picture 3

haha, yeah we were having an after church party at our house and thats when Kurt and his family came over as well so everyone had name tags on.