DrummerDude

I accidentally posted this in the "Inlays and Finishing Tutorials & Reference", so I'm posting it here too. Please, delete the other thread in IFTR. I'd like to know if there is a way to stain a heavily oiled fretboard using a water-based stain. It is a rosewood fretboard and it has been recently oiled with linseed/lemon oil. I want to make it look like it was an ebony fretboard, i.e., I wanna make it black. Thanks!

Ooops, please move it to the "Inlays and Finishing Chat".

Hi guys, I'd like to know if there is a way to stain a heavily oiled fretboard using a water-based stain. It is a rosewood fretboard and it has been recently oiled with linseed/lemon oil. I want to make it look like it was an ebony fretboard, i.e., I wanna make it black. Thanks!

Just a bump. C'mon guys, I'm giving away this excellent condition Stratocaster neck for any kind of "metal" neck you may have. Any neck from a Jackson, Kramer, ESP, LTD... whatever comes around. Anything pointy with a headstock angle would do. Even a neck from a cheap Chinese guitar would be fine. I would swap my Strat neck even for a battered, scratched and nicked "metal" guitar neck as long as that new neck does not need any fret work.

Hi guys, I want to trade my Sqiuer Standard neck for *ANY* neck from *ANY* brand or model guitar that would be appropriate for my future Jackson Rhoads project. Apparently my Fender-ish neck is not the most suitable for use on a Metal guitar, so I have to find another one. NOT GOOD: I need a neck that has an angle at the headstock, it must NOT be 3R3L and it must have a pointy headstock too. The new neck must NOT have shark fin inlays or bindings (hate those things). Dot inlays are perfectly OK. Another thing: Squier necks from the 'Standard' series are 41mm wide at the nut. This is too narrow for my liking and I don't care if this is the Fender standard that everybody loves. My new neck must be somewhere between 42mm and 44mm at the nut. So, that's it. If you need a Fender-ish neck for your old school project and if you have a spare neck from a cheap Jackson or whatever Metal guitar, that you want to let go, then let's trade. Thanks! PHOTOS OF MY SQUIER NECK FOLLOW:

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Fretting_suppl...aight_Edge.html Thanks man, this is what I needed. I will notch a straight edge to make one of these

Hi guys, I want to completely remove the neck relief off of a neck. I am going to try a dead straight neck and see if it helps for ultra low action. I don't want to remove the frets before the straightening but then how could I know that the neck (the fretboard in fact) is perfectly straight when the frets are on it? Another problem is that the are pretty bad leveled too and I want to level them after I straighten the neck. How do you judge that a neck/fretboard is straight with the frets on? Or should I just clamp the neck (frets down) to a straight board and base all the straightening on their crowns?

Alright, I hope they're not glued too. I will bash the heck out of them frets using a 16 pounds sledge hammer - if it doesn't work, I can always use the neck for firewood.

Hi guys, I have a Squier Stratocaster (think it is Affinity series). I was messing around with the setup - filing the nut slots deeper, adjusting action, etc. and I noticed that some of the frets on the higher positions are not stuck very well - there is a slight gap underneath each fret. Of course, those frets stand higher than the rest and cause fret buzz. I will hammer them in to make them lay snugly on the fretboard BUT before I do this I need to know if the frets on Squier Affinity series are glued. It would suck to find out that they are glued and I am causing more trouble than good with the hammer. Do you have info on this subject? Are the frets on those Squiers glued? Thanks.

Here is a wood hardness chart. http://www.silversmithing.com/1wood.htm On that chart the "wild" cherry has hardness of 950 and is close in hardness to Pine while Maple has a hardness index of 1450. I've worked with "domestic" cherry only and it was soft too - it worked like a dream and dented esily. We made a chair out of it. Looks great. On the other hand there are several "exotic" cherries on that chart and they all have hardness index of above 2000. One of them (Caribbean Cherry) has an index of 3100. This is more than twice harder than Maple. Those cherries seem to be completely different species, though.

Stratocastrer necks are different from the Tele ones. Strat necks have rounded heel while the heel on Tele necks is flat. Strat Necks will not fit in Tele neck pockets and vice versa. If you buy a Strat neck, I guess you will have to flaten its heel somehow to fit it into your Tele's neck pocket. Mind the truss rod - on the classic necks its nut is on the heel side. Or you could just route a rounded Strat neck pocket into your custom made body.

There are two popular species of cherry, I think - "normal" cherry and "wild" cherry (it has poisonous leaves). I have worked with the "normal" kind of cherry and it is very, very soft - almost as soft as basswood.

You don't wanna know. To be honest, I don't have axact figures at the moment but it is a huge height. And the thing is fret buzzing even with that monstrously high action.

Thanks. I almost thought that classic Stratocasters and their copies are supposed to have that high action because it's the "vintage" way to go. Hehe, I'm glad that it's not true. Will cut that piece of plastic down until I have same nut action as on my Ibanez. Normal action that is. Thanks guys.

Hi guys, I recently bought a Squier Stratocaster (Affinity seris). I don't have any experience with Fenders or their copies. What bugs me is the distance between the strings and the frets at the lower end of the neck. It is too high, I think The action in the lower part of the neck is around 1,5 mm from the crown of the first fret to the string and the nut itself is 3-3,5 mm high. I find it kind of uncomfortable if not difficult to fret the strings at the low edn of the fretboard - it feels like I'm playing beyond 12th fret on my Ibanez, just more difficult. Of course, I am having action issues all along the neck but this is totally killing me. I mean - some people (myself included) are unhappy when the action is 1,5 mm at the 12th fret, let alone at the first one... The action at the first fret on most guitars I have owned has always been just a fraction of a milimeter. At the moment I am staring at another guitar of mine and I am guessing that it's action at 1st fret is only like 0,2 mm or so - the fat E string is just barely above the crown of the fret. Here is a photo of the bad Squier nut I made: Am I missing something? Is a nut that high typical for any Fender/Squier Stratocaster or is just mine that is like that? Do you think that cutting the nut's fullers deeper or installing a completely new nut is absolutely necessary or should I leave it like that because this is just the way any Stratocaster should be? Thanks

Will making the neck longer help? Won't it cause even more pressure in the same small heel area because of the lever principle? Just a guess. Actually, I am customicing a Squier and making a neck-through is not an option in my case. I am also considering the idea of building myself a crossbreed between a Randy Rhoads Jackson and an Alexi Laiho ESP using that Squier's neck.

The ESP Alexi guitar is made to shred. It plays great and is very comortable for high frets access and all - no horns on your wrist's way. I love this guitar. Don't like that its body is bigger than the genuine Jackson Rhoads but this could be an advantage as well. IMHO the Razorback's shape is too flashy but again - this could be an adavntage. Chicks would like the Razorback better. My advice is to buid both of them

OK, i will take your advice and will go for a AANJ but why do you think a shortened neck pocket is a bad idea? It will make the neck unstable, I guess. I just wondered if there ar epeople who have done neck pocket shortening before. Also, if i go for the AANJ, which one would be bether: a genuine Ibanez AANJ or the Ed Roman trademark AANJ? IBANEZ ED ROMAN To be honest, I have an Ibanez and I don't think that the AANJ is helping me at all with high frets access. 1 picture per post - read the rules in the announcements section, and follow them, please.

I want to shorten the neck pocket on a Squier to make the access to the higher fets easier. I guess I am not the first one to ask this question but I couldn't find any info on the subject, so here I go: Is it OK to shorten the neck pocket? If yes, what are the limits here? How short is too short? I guess this would kill the sustain a bit and the neck would be more unstable? What about scraping the flat part on the back of the neck (it's a part of the heel actually) that protrudes beyond the neck pocket and making it round as the rest of the neck? Is it a no-no? Here's what I want to do: Anyone done that before? Is this a bad idea? Thanks!

Yeah, this sucks too. It is funny that the Tele bodies from the utterly cheap Squier Affinity series are made of alder and at the same time the more expensive (and supposedly closer to a real Fender) Standard series have agathis bodies. I will have to live with that.

Back to Squier guitars. I intend to buy a Squier Telecaster, mod it and turn it into a playable guitar. But since I'd like to have a close copy of a Fender, I simply don't like that huge pit on the Affinity series - forget about sustain, the large cavity is just ugly and kills the whole idea of having a Fender copy. Fenders don't have huge and freehand-shaped cavites. Oh yeah, the cavity is under the bridge plate and no body will ever see that it is there but it will bug *ME* to know that it is there. I will have to fill it with wood and re-route the whole bridge pickup cavity. Too much work for a cheap mod. My question was about the Squier Standard series. Do they sport that same huge pickup cavity as the Squier Affinity series do? Or does it all depend on the year and country of production? If they all are routed like a Real Fender, I will just pay extra $20 and buy myself a Squier Stand.

And you are wrong again.

^ All you said is true, but those softwood bodied guitars do not sustain as much as the hardwood, rigid construction ones. Yes, they sure work and many brands use them, but no they don't have that monstrous sustain many people are after. The neck-thru construction is there to prove that the quest for sustain is not that bogus. This does not mean that guys don't use bolt-ons made of basswood and swamp ash, of course they do. About huge pickup cavities: Let's just say that some folks like it when the guitar has neat pickup routings that fit the pickups' base tightly and not huge caves that you could park a truck in. Anyway, the topic is about Squier bodies vs Fender bodies. Another thing that grabs my attention is that the "swimming pool" cavity on the Squier body has its top part routed at an angle that would hardly fit any Fender Tele bridge pickup without leaning it to the wrong direction. The upper part of the base on a genuine Fender Telecaster bridge pickup must be paralel to the bridge and the pickguard base, but in the case with that Squier from the pic above it is sloped. What kind of a pickup fits in that cavity? I guess it is a special Squier pickup with a large base. Or at least it must be something different than the standard Fender bridge pickup. Or do they just put in a pickup careless of whether its base follows the cavity routing? After all with a hole that big who cares about the pickup's shape? :D

Okay, Mr. Tufnel, since when do huge pickup cavities kill the sustain? Well, Mr. St. Hubbins, I knew it that this would start a **** storm but it's more of a purist thing. Maybe it is BS, or maybe it is true - who knows, but fact is that most people belive that the more wood on the way of the strings, the more rigid the whole assembly and thus - more sustain. Large cavities take off too much material and people like it when there is more wood in their electric guitars than air. It is just the opposite with acoustic guitars, though.

I am trying to learn whether the Squier Standard series have that same cheap and disgusting "swimming pool" routing. I need to buy a cheap Telecaster copy that I will customize but I need it to be close to a real Telecaster even under the pickguard and the bridge plate. Huge pickup cavities kill the sustain (and since the Affinity series of Squiers are not string-thru body, the sustain on these toys would be even worse). Gotta find a photo of a stripped Squier Standard and examine it - hopefully, the pickup routing would be closer to a real Fender Telecaster. Or maybe not?