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Optiskate

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  1. Well, heres a little update. The pick guard and electronics wouldn't fit in the new body. Solution, slap the guitar on the mill and mill away. 25 minutes later it looked like my guitar body came from the factory with ability to accept a humbucker at the neck. The cuts are literally perfect. God I love having access to a machine shop. So I dropped the pick guard on, bolted the neck up, and dropped in the jack plate just to feel like I actually accomplished something. I took some pics of it... sadly there's still a ton of work to be done. I have to fill in the tremolo cavity still, which my dad had a pretty slick way of doing.... with the mill and a block of wood... Then I need to locate the bridge and it'll be all down hill from there. I think my dad and my friends are more stoked about this project than I am. Here's a couple mocked up pics... nothing special... nothing really bolted on except the neck...
  2. I met John 5 this year..he was real nice,my son additioned for his band once,he got his band together cut a cd and video ,then quit his band and went to work with Rob Z. kinda wierd but I guess he does not need the money. He seems like a really humble guy with a huge obsession for Telecasters. I really wish I had the chance to meet him just to thank him for inspiring me to keep at playing guitar and to work at taking my mediocre playing to the next level. From what I've read about him it also seems as though hes played for/with tons of people. If I recall correctly, I remember watching an interview where he said hes played and written music for many people and that he spent a lot of time studying their music to better help him play with them. Seems like he has a lot of discipline. I have seen his band Loser before and it is really weird that he started it and then jumped on with Rob Zombie, but I think hes a good fit and his style really compliments Rob's style. I'm a huge White Zombie fan though, so I love watching youtube videos of Rob playing old White Zombie songs with John 5 live.
  3. I've had many big influences. First it was Robin Finck who at the time was with NIN and then Wes Borland. Both of which I still really admire. I then discovered John 5 and was totally blown away and inspired to try to better my guitar playing skills. There are a lot of really good guitar players and I could go on all day naming talented guitar players, but these are the ones that have really stood out to me.
  4. That is one sweet looking guitar. How bout a video demonstrating its sound?
  5. I'm really just theorizing here, but I think that before it possibly had a 24 3/4 neck on it or something. I'm kind of wondering how likely it is to find a pickguard that will fit it, since it would have to be quite a bit smaller than a normal strat pick guard. My solution to this problem was just to go out and get an actual strat replacement body made of Alder. I'm keeping this epiphone body though. Unless some one else here wants it as a project. Then they can have it for $30 + shipping. If no one wants it and I can find a pick guard, then I'll see what I can build out of it and I'll probably go HSS on it instead of HH. The trick will probably be finding a neck. I'll probably have to rework the neck pocket to even use it. Either way, the project continues. I'm just stuck here waiting for another body before I can do anything.... all over again. Its amazing. I haven't done hardly anything yet and I've learned a ton.
  6. Here are some pics of the neck bolted on so that you can see the gaps I'm talking about. It looks to me like the guitar didn't originally accept a strat neck and was routed out by the previous owner. Who ever routed it didn't do a good job. When I bought it, it was claimed that strat necks did in fact fit. The screw holes for the neck don't line up with the neck plate either. They're off just by a little bit. I could actually get the screws in and it would move the plate and seat it. I'm not sure if the neck is straight though. Another thing I noticed is that the strat pick guard doesn't fit this guitar. I'm not talking about screw holes being in the wrong place either. It flat out does not fit. Its like the guitar was originally set up for a smaller scale length. When I tried to drop the pick guard on the first thing I notice was that it hit the tremolo, so I pulled the tremolo off. Then I noticed that the bridge pickup was hitting the body and so were some of the pots. The back of the cavity for the pots might not even get covered by the pick guard.... I'm wondering how much work this body is really going to turn out being. Especially if its even worth it. Maybe I can find a real fender or squire strat body setup for the proper scale length that will take less work. I'm not sure though because my budget is really tight at the moment. My wife would most certainly kill me if another new body showed up. Any advice is appreciated, especially on working around my current issues. I mean, I have ideas of how to work around most of the stuff, but maybe your ideas are better than mine.
  7. Alright, new questions. My main concern is that my neck doesn't fit snugly into its pocket. The pocket itself is not far off from fitting the neck. Probably some where between 1/8th to a 1/16th of an inch too big from top to bottom. I haven't measured it yet as my wife was in an accident and we didn't get home from the hospital until 2am. I know that the pick guard will cover the wavy cut at the back of the neck pocket. My concern is about wobble because of the fit at the top and the bottom of the neck. I was reading that if you took some screen from a screen door that it would bite into the neck and the body to prevent wobble. I don't want any gaps. I want the fit and finish of this guitar to be damn near perfect, even if its a fairly plain and boring looking guitar. A little bit later tonight I'll take some pictures to show you guys exactly what I'm talking about and maybe you guys will have some ideas. I was thinking about taking some cardboard and transferring the shape of the end of the neck and marking it out in the pocket. Then I'd add an epoxy based filler and sand it out until the pocket snugly fit the neck. This kind of seems like a trial and error sort of deal though and I'd like to avoid this. I probably wont have hours upon hours at a time to sit down and work on this guitar, probably just a few hours a weekend. Thus trial and error methods would be too time consuming and frankly rather irritating to me. Another solution that I've thought about based on things I've read is that I could use the finish to help fill the gaps on the top and bottom if they're small enough. Say its 1/16th of an inch. Well that would be 1/32" of a gap top and bottom. That's not a huge gap. If my paint and clear coat is thick enough, then maybe it will eat up this gap??? Any ideas guys? I've got a couple, but I'm not sure if they're worth it or would turn out an end product to my standards.
  8. Got my body in. I'll post pics a bit later. This thing is rough. Its pretty beat and the previous owner obviously tried to do some body work and botched it horribly, making it look even worse. For some reason who ever it was also routed out the back of the neck cavity and now the back is all wavy. This POS is going to be a hell of a lot of work.
  9. I've been sifting through tons of post, both relevant to what I want to do and not, and came across the Liability and Legal Issues with Copying Guitars thread. I had no idea that there was a book out there about making franken strats and my naming of the thread has nothing to do with any of that. It just sounded good to me. Any I don't plan on reselling this guitar. Its my project. Maybe the name to Franken Guitar would have been better instead.
  10. That's a pretty neat idea. I am painting the neck. I think I want it to be matte black to match how the rest of the guitar will be. Sounds like its worth trying. I mean that could mean less filler.
  11. My pick guard came in. I'm still waiting on the body. It should be in soon though. I'm considering buying the Hipshot tremolo cavity block instead of making my own to save time on the build. Any way, to the point. I've got some pics of the new pick guard, the old cracked body, and the neck. You can see the ding in the neck in one pic.
  12. I'm really sorry if I'm asking a question that's been asked a million times or that's really dumb. What should I know about puttys and fillers, especially to repair dings. I have a neck that has a ding in it and its not horrible, but I'd like to fill it before I paint it. Is there anything I should know about work on the neck? I remember in the tremolo to hard tail conversion that an epoxy based filler was used. Is it safe to use something similar on the neck?
  13. For a hard tail (I assume a Tune-o-matic?) for Fender scale the center of the high E string side screw would be 25.5" the low e string side is roughly 3.5mm further back to allow for greater intonation adjustment. Although when I say the screw really it is the high E string saddle that should be 25.5" from the string side of the nut (12.75" from the 12th fret) - and of course if you set your high E saddle a couple of mm forward at the install it allows for further intonation adjustment. I remember seeing a good article on the Stewmac website about the placement of bridges - giving all the distances for the types of bridge they sell. Thanks. That's some really helpful information. It was pretty close to where I was thinking the bridge placement would be +/- about a 1/4". I did find the article on Stewmac about bridge placement. That's what got me mocking and measuring. Thank god I still have my old body. I'd probably be a bit more lost without it. I was actually thinking about using a fender Hardtail, not a tune-o-matic.
  14. I did a little research this morning and I'm just looking for some confirmation. I mocked up my neck on my old strat body and measured from the inside of the nut to the center of the pivot screws. It came out to 25 and 3/16 roughly. Is this going to be where I want the fore most mounting screws of the hard tail? It makes sense to me based on what I read, but maybe I'm wrong. After all this is my first guitar build.
  15. Yeah I notice it got moved there. I must have missed that section while I was looking for where to put my thread. Thanks.
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