Crusader

Coinciding with my purchase of the new Strat, I finally finished the Les Paul Copy 3. I made three guitars out of the one body blank I bought in 2009 and now they're all finished. I ruined the neck on the LPC3 and it took a lot of effort to fix it. Its all done now so its time to celebrate! Here's a few photos The LPC3 was finished except for lacquer and it had a very chunky neck. So one night I got a bee in my bonnet and started sanding it thinner but didn't realise it was taking off the edges as well. It left a very sharp edge on the fretboard making it something like a V-shape Its a bit hard to photograph this, the edge of the fretboard should be in line with the envelope This is something I never want to do again. It took a lot of thinking and setting up and once the router was going it was extremely nerve-wracking hoping to not mess it up I decided that I was not going to take out the frets, I had done enough work on this already. So I glued the binding to the ends of the frets then I found out later that that is the way Gibson do it as standard practice and its what they call "nibs"! Now its all done and I was hoping the repairs would blend in better than this. But I'm not going to let it get me down, I just don't care any more and besides if it hadn't been for this oversanding stuff-up I never would have done Fretboard Binding. And another good thing to come out of this, is I love the neck profile. So sometimes good comes out of bad, necessity is the mother of invention, but I would rather not, I really wouldn't I don't know what I'm going to do with this guitar if I'm keeping it or sell it. Maybe I should just accept it with its faults like me and my faults LOL All done. They could be better, they all have cracks in the lacquer and all sorts of other blemishes. Maybe I can pass them off as "Reliced" but for now its onto the next project!

I am hopelessly insane, I can't afford this, but but but its one of the last Ash bodied Fenders. And one must have! I'm not crazy about the colour, it looks pink but who cares, its Ash. Its an American Original 50s Stratocaster. Has 9.5" radius fretboard and "soft V" neck profile, nice & chunky, almost the same profile as my 59 Reissue Les Paul and with the 9.5" radius its not too much of a transition after playing the Les Paul . It only has 21 Frets but I will survive, its not a problem for Yngwie so no problem for me I tried one out 5 years ago and I totally loved it but at the time I had my sights on a Gibson Songwriter which I bought. After seeing that Strat I went and checked it out again, then the third time it was sold. When I rang up about this one this morning they said it was sold and I said "I feel sick" So I went to another shop which had one online in hope they actually had it in the shop but on the way there the other shop rang and said they've actually still got it, the sale went wrong somehow and it was out the back So I went there afterwards and tried it out against some other Strats with Alder bodies and although I couldn't tell a great deal of difference I was won over by the neck profile, fretboard radius and other features And hey here's a piece or interesting trivia. At the first shop I went to today was the guy who sold me the Songwriter, and he and the guy who sold me the Strat have the same name!

Yes I imagine thats what it means. Its written on the coil in the photo but its a bit hard to see due to the way the light reflects off it. Alloy just means any combination of metals as far as I know so its a bit vague

Cheers thanks for that, especially that last bit about removing old solder. I sometimes use a chisel with short sharp taps with a hammer Something also that has occurred to me is I often use wire that is too thick With the issue of the iron temperature the way I do it is try it or see if solder will melt on it. Either way is not ideal, sometimes you don't want solder on the tip

Hi guys, what type of Solder and Soldering Iron do you all recommend for wiring pickups, pots and so forth? Problems I have; The soldering iron takes so long to heat up and I have no idea when its hot enough I seem to have to clean the tip between every use I keep overheating pots and ruining them Solder seems to be too large in diameter, takes so much heat to melt it Solder is 60/40 Alloy 1mm diameter Thanks in advance for any comments or recommendations Here is a picture of what I've been using

yes and by the way just now I figured out how to set the delay to a dotted 8th note!

Forgot to mention I tried it through the PA system tonight and it seemed okay. It has amp modelling. Can sound like a Fender Twin Reverb, VoxAC30, Marshall, Mesa Combo etc. I don't know how accurate it is but it does the job What came out of it all is my guitar is noisy. That would be my crappy soldering efforts. It isn't that bad through my amp, so for the moment I will use it with the amp

Thanks for the reply, but well I've got over it now and I will overlook its short-falls and keep it. The cost of a few individual pedals very quickly goes over what this cost, $1459 One of the most annoying things is the built-in presets, most of them are so ridiculous you'd never use them. But you can set it to "Pedalboard" and assign each button to an individual pedal. Very happy with that feature The other thing that is so annoying is the instructions in the owners manual, but you get that with any product you buy! Oh yeah Kemper, the guitarist at the other church has one of them, over $3000. I won't be buying one of them any time soon

I started off just wanting an Overdrive, Delay and Chorus but long story short I hit the Credit Card and got this Boss GT-1000 thing as it just does everything. I can even go DI into the PA system and ditch the amp. But I want to get opinions. Anyone else have one of these? Are they good or piece of crap, any opinions welcome First thing I realised is the built-in presets are all completely useless and its a pain in the neck reading the instructions. And when you get a clean sound, it still sounds like there's a Phaser or something going on. I had an ME-30 in the 1990's and reminds me why I let it go Every time I muck about with it I'm on the verge of taking it back and getting a few pedals to the same value. But then I would have to build a board and wire it up and what a headache that would be and I think just keep it What should I do?.....HELP!!

Just for the record there's a couple of reasons why I suspect something wrong with the amp. The sound-tech guy moved it around one time while it was still on and he wasn't very careful with it, and the drummer keeps turning the power off at the wall at the end of gigs. Can't be good for it Or it might just be the valves getting old

Hi, my Rectoverb 25 seems to have a problem with the Bass Tone on the clean channel, it doesn't seem to change as I turn it up or down. Can anyone suggest what this might be, and what has caused it? cheers, Doug One of these things

Thank you so much, but I think it comes from the more incredible ability of stuffing things up! So now with the week's progress; I was thinking about adding binding to the back because it was a bit undersized and didn't quite cover in a few places, and I also didn't like how the grain was contrary to the sides. I finally decided to go ahead after consultation with Landlord's daughter I only needed the MDF base template on the Top when I realised my overhead Router setup could reach over the neck I don't like binding on the back of a Les Paul because I think it looks too "Dressed Up" but in this case due to the necessities mentioned I give it the thumbs up

^ Agree with above, man I want to get a lathe!

Somehow March became May and soon half of 22 will be gone! I've got to trim the back of this guitar, first I tried to rasp it but I thought no, no, danger Will Robinson! But to route I will need a flat surface and this is my answer as I've done before. It is a lot of work just to trim the back's edge but these templates give me the choice if I want to do binding on the back or re-do the binding on the top

My 2 cents, having an angled headstock gives the player the choice of leaving it unlocked

Thanks for asking about that, yes my current guitar the Big Les Paul, shows a frequency of B1 Hz-10 cents but I think its actually an octave below which is very low and the tuner isn't designed to go so low

I've just watched the video again and realised at 3:50 he says the first peak is the main Air resonance (110Hz) and the second one is the main Top resonance (220Hz) which are both "A" So that answers a couple of my questions Another thing is you would not hear the Tap-tone of the whole instrument because its sitting on his lap and therefore muted. To hear this the guitar needs to be suspended at one of the nodal lines, which are somewhere around the 1st fret and the bridge I think he's actually English

LOL I don't know why I chucked that in there, just to see if anyone noticed I suppose. In English I'm sure there are some rules but school was some 50+ years ago. I think German is over the top with capital for all nouns Yes they probably don't want to give out too much of their knowledge! What I wonder is, should the Top and Back be tuned the same or a harmonic. Should the Res F of the chamber have a relation to the Res F of the wood? The reason I'm keeping track of it all is once the guitar is finished if it has a Wolf note or a dead note I might be able to figure something out I've googled this to death but I never hear luthiers talk about resonant frequency of the wood (entire instrument) whether guitar, cello, violin. We all know how to get a tap-tone from a piece of wood and you can do the same with a guitar. If you hold it around the first fret, put your ear to the headstock, tap the guitar around the neck/body join you will get its tap-tone. The other thing you can get is a jab in the ear from the string-ends. If you try this, experiment for the best place to hold and tap. I hold the guitar up to a Tuner at the base, and you can get the same result from the Tuner near the headstock Perhaps the Tap-tone of the entire instrument its too low to have any effect. My BLP is about B1 which is the lowest B on a Bass guitar This video is interesting they talk about a wolf note at 110 and 220Hz (A) At first it sound like they are talking about the Resonant Freq of the guitars Tap-tone but later it comes out they're talking about the Res F of the Chamber and of the Top. How you determine the RF of the Top once its glued I have no idea. Is that what he's doing with the little hammer in the video? The Aussie guy has a funny accent!

When I first read it I thought you bought an old bed to use the timber for guitars LOL, that bed is a nice piece of furniture! You think you might be biting off more than you can chew? run away now, don't do it (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) Talking about coil tapping, do you mean tapping or splitting? I'm sure you mean splitting. Something I would say if you intend to use Push-Pull pots or Push-Push pots, don't buy cheap ones and treat them with care. I have ruined so many pots due to changing my mind about wiring choices and over-heated them to death. I've decided now to just use toggle switches Making guitars presents quite a few challenges but I'm sure you'll be fine!

That is gorgeous!, yes turn it up to 11 for sure!

Nice work there, I love the triple pickup ring!

I finally glued the Back on today. Its a bit small in a couple of places but I can fix that with binding or just sand the difference out (yeah I think I will do that) First up here's a smart idea, glue the pot washers on! - Second photo, this is the first time I haven't used a ton of G-Clamps, would be better if they were round Next Photo I used a couple of locating pins due to the Back being undersized, it had to be in an exact place (would have preferred a smaller nail but 1/16" is my smallest drill bit) Then last photo, the Nodal Line was right on the Bridge, then shifted 32mm towards the bridge after the Back was glued on. This is about the same as my LP Studio, but after the hardware is on it might shift again after learning a bit of German I often use capital letters for nouns Note the Chamber's Res. Freq. is a bit higher with one pickup hole closed off. That means if I put in f-holes, the RF will be lower than without, but I doubt if it would make any difference using the magnetic pickups or the Piezo's. Its just an interesting thing to note Apart from that I am just so happy this thing is together now, progress at last!

A bit more done today shaping the inside of the Top, rounding off any square edges and thickness is roughly 4mm all over

I decided I want the top to have a more even thickness all over so I redid the depth drilling and bought an attachment for the Angle Grinder. I found it grabs too much and although its length enables me to get into deeper places I can't feel how much its taking off. On the upside, the cutter can be swapped out for a sanding disc and that did quite a good job with a 40 grit pad Also just for the record the top was even thicker than I thought it was before. Not so worried about that little area between the pickups

The latest thing I've done is to remove the built-in lining on this guitar. When I glued it up I think the sides shifted and left gaps and that would mean a lot of vibrations would be lost. Its also unnecessary because the sides are plenty wide enough but it was a good little experiment. I was able to work on the top without it being glued on