guitarnut

Thanks. I'm thinking of going with a honey burst...not sure yet. The first neck was made with a "scooped" headstock similar to a Fender. I wanted a more accurate build so the second has the appropriate angled headstock. Peace, Mark

I fretted both necks and filed the fret edges...still need a final dressing. I also did some work on the body. I did quite a bit of block sanding to finalize the carve. I remembered from the video link I posted about violin maker Joe Thrift, that he only uses scrapers on his violins...not sandpaper. He states that sanding dulls the reflective properties of figured wood. Just for grins, I ran a scraper over the treble side of the body to make a comparison. There is definitely a difference in the intensity of the grain on the scraped side. I installed the tremolo. I had to take the spring cavity a bit deeper than the original route...my body started at 2" so the trem block wouldn't reach without the deeper route. This shot without a flash shows the carve pretty well. I strung the 2 E strings to put some counter tension on the tremolo. The string spacing and action are nice. I really like the spoke nut truss rod...I can adjust the trus rod with everything in place. The neck needed a bit of relief put into it but only slightly. This one's getting close to being ready for finish. Peace, Mark

I got back to work on the neck(s) today. I started by leveling the fretboards then marking, drilling and installing the fret markers. Pretty simpe stuff. I awlays like to apply a bit of clamping pressure to make sure the dots don't pop up during curing time. Ready for radiusing... Here's the neck in various stages of the radius process. Done! I used my fret saw with the depth gauge to radius the fret slots and take them to final depth.

I ended up with a few hours to work on the Wolfgang after all. I carved the back of the neck and did some detail work on the headstock. Not much, but it's more than I expected to get done today. I have tomorrow off and I plane to touch every build I have going...just so I won't feel so far behind.

Haha, there are 3 more in the equipment racks that sssist with file sharing and frame rendering. Busy, busy, busy. Meanwhile, the Wolfgang sits on the bench at home... alone. Sad, isn't it? Mark

People ask me why I spend so much time building gutars. First, I love guitars...have since I was 5 years old. And, even though I have a job where I'm allowed to be creative and enjoy a fair amount of freedom to make decisions and guide the outcome of projects, from time to time, it absorbs my every waking minute...this weekend is one of those times. Building guitars takes me away from all of the software, keyboards and video tapes. A glimpse into how I'm spending my weekend...not building guitars. Life will be much better after the 15th. Crap, I still have to do my taxes, too! Peace, Mark

Progress and updates on this build have been pretty slow. Work is kicking my ass and with 16 hour days and deadlines looming, it will probably be after the 16th before I do any serious work on this. I did manage to get a little done last evening. The second neck, with angled headstock, is coming along. The truss rod came in so I was able to get it installed, the fretboard glued up and trimmed. I also routed for the locking nut and removed the excess fretboard material behind it. This shot doesn't show it but I blended the fretboard into the headstock also. It's looking pretty good so far. I'm really anxious to get this one done...but I'll have to be patient with work...gotta pay the bills. Peace, Mark

Thanks! Yeah, the bridge is a bit farther back. As I continue this build, I'm finding problems with the templates. My guess is they made them from tracing a factory issue guitar instead of a CAD file. I haven't figured out exactly where the issue is...the neck joins the body at the right place...16th fret...and the spacing between PUs seems correct. Maybe they altered the size/shape of the body to avoid legal action. Don't know. The scale is fine and the bridge doesn't bother my eye at all. So, onward and upward. Peace, Mark

Thanks!

I got started on my pickup winder this evening. It's very simple in it's design and I know there are better ways to do this but I really just want something that will spin the bobbin and count the turns. Scatter winding is the goal here...no fancy traversing or auto shut off. I bought a sewing machine motor and foot controller. It seems to have far more power than I need...I'll have to put a physical limiter on the foot controller to avoid an accident. I started by cutting a piece of aluminum bar stock and drilling for the motor shaft as well as set screws on both sides...probably only needed one but I wanted to keep it balanced. Here's a test run of the plate attached to the motor...this file played on my machine in Win Media and Quicktime. Apologies if there are issues, I don't have a way to comvert to mp4 or Quicktime until I get into the office tomorrow. Test Run I also found a free app that use the serial pot on a computer to counts triggers and thus, revolutions. You can download it here I used the counter.zip file to be sure I had all of the runtime files needed to run the program. The trigger for it is very simple. Just a 9-pin male connector, a switch and a piece of 2 conductor wire. That's it! The wire is soldered to pins 9 and 4 and the switch is attached to the other end of the wire. Doesn't matter wich wire goed to which pole, you just need to close the circuit to trigger a count. Here's a count to 50....it warns you when you hit your wrap target. Counter Now I just need to package it all up and do some tests. Peace, Mark

I tapped the inserts in and threaded in the posts. I reinstalled the bridge and it looks pretty good. But I may have to roll the edges of the fretboard a bit to make the spacing look like it belongs...man that's roomy!

On the way to getting bridge located and mounted, I drilled the ferrukle and screw holes for the neck. I can usually clamp the neck in place and get 3 of the four. I mark and drill them, them screw the neck down before marking the 4th. I tacked a 1.625" nut with 2 dabs of Weldon cement. Then I strung up the E and e strings and set the bridge in place, with it just hanging by string tension. This is a very roomy neck...check out the space between the edges and the strings! This bridge has 2.125" overall spacing which is wider than the poles on the humbucker. I'm guessing that with a neck that's a full 3/16th wider than a Fender at the heel, EVH's branded FR bridge probably has wider string spacing as well. I didn't route the recess for the FR because I wasn't 100% confident in the neck angle I had chosen. From the look of things, I won't need to recess the bridge...might even have to bump it up a touch after the fretboard is on. It's hard to tel even from this pic becausew the strings are taped down to the fretboard at the nut to keep them in place...making them angle down too much...looks good for now. With the bridge located and centered, I drilled the holes for the pivot inserts.

A couple of shots with some goodies in place. I actually only have one SD humbucker, I just Photoshoped one from another shot into these. I'm still going to use the neck with the angled headstock, I just put tis one in since it has a finished end on it. Peace, Mark

The finished trem cavity. I got my first look at the guitar with the FR in place. After adding a 1/8" radius to the edge, I started opening up the control cavities with a flush trim bit. I used a piece of scrap screwed to the workbench, thru the trem cavity, to help stablize the body while it's laying on the carve. A clamp on one corner counters it. All done except for the cover recesses. I need to make a thicker template...even a router bit with a 3/8" cut depth cuts too deep with a thin template. Here's a look at it so far. I took this without a flash to show some detail of the carve. It still needs some work but it's catching light and shadow nicely.

Back on the front, I have the template in place and ready to route. I taped a thin strip of wood under the end of the template to level it out where the carve is farthest from the template. The depth I need is 1.125" plus the thickness of the template for a total of 1.280". I like to mark it on a scrap block and keep it handy to check my progress. I would normally remove the template after a few passes but I need the flat surface to finish this route so it stays for the whole step. You can just see the line at the template level...I'm at depth. Here, I've fl;ipped the body and used the 1/2" hole and the centerline of the guitar to place the rear template. With the spring cavity down to 3/4", I've added a block to guide the bit past this area to continue routong the tremolo block area. I'll take it down untill it meets the route from the front.

I spent some time going over the body with a scraper. The carve is pretty even. I had to plane a couple of spots but overall, I'm happy with it. It's hard to see but it's a pretty agressive carve. You can see the depth of the carve with the template set on top. Time to get the tremolo cavities routed. Normally I would have done this sooner but I didn't want to deal with the openings during the carve. Here, I've marke a 1/2" hole that I'll drill all the way thru the body. I drilled this hole on the drill press to make sure it went straight thru the body. I'll use it on the back to register the template for the back cavity. The 2 larger holes are for the control cavities that will be finished up later.

Looking good. How did you manage to route all that figured maple without getting any tearout? I was holding my tongue just right. Seriously, I used a super sharp bit, and took small bites. My feed rate was somewhere around slow enough to avoid tearout but not slow enough to cause burning. Basically, I got lucky. Mark

I took this shot without a flash to try and show the contour...it's blurred a bit but you can see the shape of the carve. The neck pocket areas are nicely blended into the lower levels. The roughed in carve. Dave has more pics for me so I'm going to take a break and study what he's shot and posted. Peace, Mark

I started working the ridges down with an Ibex plane. Before I started planing, I ran a pencil along the crease of each level...when the pencil lines are gone, I know I'm at the right depth. Here it is with the first 2 levels carved down. The next area I worked was to blend the the neck pocket level into the rest of the top...remember, the binding here is almost twice as tall as the rest of the guitar. Then I started blending in the rest of the top. At this stage, I let the plane flow with the shape of the body. With a sharp plane, you can move in any direction...going cross grain is not an issue at this stage. And letting the plane "flow" with the shape means that the result will always compliment the shape of the body...unless you spend too much time in one area and gouge it.

I decided to start on the carve this evening. I have my version of The Sawdust Generator that I saw online...apologies, but I forget the name of the guy I got the idea from. I haven't used it since my first carve, some 18 months ago. It sets up on my Shopsmith...I added a second carriage and trunion to give me a stable work surface. It's basically a support for the router and a "tongue" that limits the travel of the body. The bit overhangs it and and the body is fed thru end to end. After the first pass. Setting up for the second pass. The tongue moves back and the bit height is adjusted. Here it is after 3 passes...all I'm going to do on this one.

After doing this on both sides of the neck, I made a mark on the upper and lower horns at .250" and connected the marks from the neck pocket...the .250" line continues around the guitar. Now, I just need to figure out where the carve starts in relationship to the Floyd Rose off the back edge and I'll be gopod to go. I need to study Dave's pics some more. Looking at this pic from the side of Dave's guitar, it looks like the high spot is in the middle of the bridge...about where the whammy bar is located. And it makes a transition over about 3" to a .500" ledge at the binding. It makes for quite a little bubble in the carve there at the end of the top compared to my Les Paul which starts to roll off behind the stop tail piece and drops for about 4.625" to the same .500" ledge at the binding.

Moving back to the body while I wait for a truss rod, I routed the pickup cavities. I wanted to go with the more current route, but I don't have a template and I don't have a humbucker backplate that I can modify. So, I went with the standard route. I placed the routing template and made some starter holes for the router bit. I mat nee to take these a bit deeper later. Now it's time to figure out the carve. The standard top is .500". Mine is .0125" thicker. With Dave's (fletch) help, I was able to find out that the binding at the neck pocket will be .500" or 12.7mm tall, shortening to .250" or 6.35mm around the rest of the guitar. I set the neck in place and marked the exposed part of the side and transferred the line down the side of the neck. Now I'm able to mark the height of the carve at the neck pocket to leave a parallel line along the neck once the top is carved.

I decided to go ahead and cut the headstock detail. It was pretty easy. I didn't have a pattern so I just eyeballed the first one and then traced it onto the second. I roughed them out on the bandsaw and then hand finished them with a rasp and sandpaper. I still need to "round out" the bottom of the curves.

Hmm. Even though the nut was bought separately, you're right. The bridge was listed as "Fast Load" on eBay. I wonder what the seller means by that. If it's not a SpeedLoader, then how is it fastre to load than a standard FR? I'll need to clarify that wilth the seller. Doesn't matter really, but his feedback may be on the line. That's deceptive at best. Peace, Mark