sebbeklang

I decided not to do anything too funky with the wiring, I'd gotten a pair of fairly standard jaguar style pickups and went with standard wiring, except a mod I found where both pickups in the down position puts them in series. So many wires, at least they all fit! I got some wires with connectors which I thought would make it easier not only to wire everything up, but to be able to easily fix anything that breaks or if I just want to redo it differently at some point. But I opted on just soldering everything, it was a pain to try to decide where the connectors should go and keep track of everything. Hopefully I wont feel a need to rewire anytime soon. I think if I do it'll just be something like changing cap values or similar. As I mentioned in the first post, both of the tone pots also lowered the volume when used. I made a thread in electronics and managed to find the culprit, there was a resistor missing in both of the diagrams I’d found! That was the issue for the lead circuit at least, for the rhythm circuit it was correctly wired and also working correctly, I'd probably just been trying it out with too low volume on the amp (how is that possible?!) or something. Anyway, this is all the progress I have documented. It was a really fun build, I got to try out some new stuff and managed to do better on aspects where my first build was a bit lacking. I definitely want to do more, but I probably wont do any woodworking at home, at least until summer when I can use the balcony. Maybe I'll do a kit to try out some more finishing and wiring, maybe I'll go to this workshop I have fairly nearby, maybe I'll take a break. Who knows! Thanks again for all the inspiration

Oh yeah, this is a good point. I only ever airbrush water soluble acrylic paints and even then I prefer to do it outdoors.

So, funny story! The guitar was supposed to be blue/turquoise. I searched the web for a suitable colour and found the pictured tube at a store nearby. Needless to say that’s not at all what it looks like. But I decided it was a sign and went with it since I actually had considered dark green at one point, I made a handle/neck cavity piece out of some scraps from a wine bottle rack and tried spraying it on the balcony just holding it. That did not work at all, it was far to heavy and I wasn’t even able to reach all over it. Instead I turned my shower cabin into a spray booth, adding hooks from two clothes hangers and vacating a wardrobe for it to dry. As a bonus I got paint dust all over my apartment from not keeping the door closed while spraying. As I mentioned before I used the wipe on varnish guide, which worked out nicely with just a little bit of solvent smell in my apartment Checking out the result with the pickguard and hardware. Also the tedious work of leveling and crowning the frets. At this point it was an advantage to work in my bedroom/home office since I was able to watch movies/shows while filing away. The neck turned out really great, way better than on my previous build. One of the most gratifying parts of the project, to notice improvements. As a side note I got the wiring fixed after a short visit to the electronics forum, I'll write up a wiring progress post next!

Oh man... I used those diagrams because they were easier to read and understand. Now that I look at others that I just glanced over before, most of them have that resistor. I'll try it out and see what happens! I also thought I had the same issue with the tone on the rhythm circuit, but now that I look at more diagrams that seems to be by design, since the tone pot is only 50K. I'd only tried it out at very low volume on my amp, but now that I try it again I realize I get volume, albeit lower than I prefer. I'll add the resistor and try it out for a while before I decide if I want to change anything. Thanks!

Hey guys I just finished a jaguar build, but I'm having wiring issues. The problem is that my tone pots also affect volume, as in when I roll the tone down to zero I also get zero volume. I followed these wiring diagrams: https://www.fralinpickups.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Jaguar-Diagram.pdf and https://www.seymourduncan.com/images/wiring-diagrams/Jaguar_Standard.jpg (should be identical) along with this series mod https://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1277 (but I don't think that has anything to do with this) What seems odd to me is this part. When I use the lead circuit, the orange and the white wires are connected, and the yellow is the pickup hot. When the tone pot is all the way up there is no resistance between the top and the middle lug, and full resistance between the middle and the bottom one. When I turn it down it is supposed to decrease the resistance between the bottom two lugs, causing the higher frequencies to go through the cap and ground out. But doesn't this also mean that the resistance between the top two lugs increase, hence the volume effect? I've looked around at a bunch of wiring diagrams for other guitars and haven't found another one where the tone pot has something attached to all three lugs. Should I just connect the yellow wire to the middle lug instead? Could something else be wrong? I double checked the wiring and it is wired like this and there shouldn't be any issues with accidental connections.

Some of the progress has been lost due to me not taking as many pictures as I should have. Hopefully I’ll be able to present a somewhat decent picture of the progress anyway. Firstly, the body was cut to shape and the horn added. I have a few clamps at home, but nothing big enough to fit an entire guitar length wise, but what I can do is to turn my balcony furniture into a makeshift clamping jig while reversing one of the clamps! I didn’t get a super neat glue line, mostly because I don’t have a hand plane, but it will hold up at least. Another little quirk is that the body I started out with had some channels for wiring routed in between the two 20mm layers of wood. I have no idea if i would have been able to actually get wiring through, but now I never have to find out! Anyway I made two plugs to fill in the holes that ended up on the side of the body and now the guitar counts as chambered I guess. After rasping out the outline of the body I got out the drill and got some chisels to make the cavities. The 25mm drill bit was not fun to use at all, so slow! The neck pocket was the worst part, as can be expected. I used two small sanding jigs and a caliper to get it good enough, but a router would have saved me a lot of time! Chiseling away for the arm and belly cutouts and the edge radius. This was the most dangerous part as I sometimes chiseled while holding the guitar body with the other hand. I did cut my finger at one point but luckily enough it was just a small cut. If I were to do it again I definitely would have been more patient at this stage. The neck went through the same process: rasp, saw and chisel for the basic shape, then neck profile with rasp and a spokeshave. I always go for a baseball bat profile, otherwise I’ll be super anxious about it breaking when I tune it up (I still am, a little bit) So anyway, after a bunch of hot summer evenings sanding, rasping and chiseling, I have a guitar shaped piece of wood and half a baseball bat that can be attached to it! At this point in the project I start to dream about moving to a house with a workshop so I don't have to get sawdust everywhere in my living space. This concludes the woodworking part of the project, now on to find pictures and write up the finishing/electronics parts!

Yeah that might have made it slightly easier! I think I would have been able to do it that way. I don't remember what cutoff I ended up using for the horn. Either way, a workbench and a hand plane would have made it a lot better! It's also still a little bit visible even after finish, which I should have fixed If only I hadn't already glued it to the neck

So about 10 years ago I started two guitar projects and two threads on this forum. I finished the first one this summer and started looking at my second project, the LP junior double neck. The problem was that I've since bought a 12 string electric and have no need for another one! So I decided to try my hand at another guitar I've been craving - a Jaguar. Here we go! Here is where I left that build at. Two necks and a body blank all roughly cut out to shape. One of the fretboards got one pass too much in the planer and is only like 5mm thick, which is just a little bit less than what I'm comfortable with. Maybe I'll have to get a new fretboard for it, but for this build I used the good one. The body was almost big enough to become a Jaguar, I only had to glue on a piece for the horn. The rest of the build took place in my apartment and on my balcony, mostly done with hand tools. Hence the title, stolen from the andyjr1515 varnishing tutorial (Which I also used for this project. Incredibly useful - thanks for making this guitar happen!) For this project I actually (somewhat) finished the build before posting the thread, so I'll get right on to the finished product in this post and add one or two posts with the progress later (or rather hacks for building stuff without a proper workshop, ranging from genius to incredibly stupid and dangerous). Here it is! On my previous build I got some nice comments about the headstock so I decided to make this one like that as well. I'm not a huge fan of the fender style headstocks and the head was already angled so it made sense. I quite like how it looks, especially with paint just on the front face. The setup isn't entirely done and the high E string keeps snapping, but the other five strings sound and feel really nice so far! I also managed to get something wrong with the wiring on both tone pots - they also affect the volume. More on that when I get around to posting the wiring progress! Specs: Mahogany body Bolt on mahogany neck Rosewood fretboard, 10" radius Jaguar Alnico 5 pickups, standard wiring + series mod (also quadruple volume pots as mentioned above) Chrome hardware, gotoh tuners and a lovely tort pickguard Body/head finish is airbrushed acrylic paint (don't forget to always keep the door closed when you use your bathroom as a spray booth) and the Andy wipe-on varnish Neck finish is a satin hard wax oil - super happy with this, it looks and feels amazing. Have a nice day and lots of love to you all for all the inspiration!

Look at that! The 15 minutes I spent typing up that post are already worth it, thank you so much!

So I finally finished this project and thought it might be fun to post the results here despite not being active for 10 years. Here it is in all its glory! As mentioned above it's walnut and maple neck-through. Finish is oil and wax. Closeup body. The top knob is a 4 way rotary switch (Bridge HB - Split Neck+Bridge - Split Neck - Neck HB). The other two are volume and tone. Headstock. The recessed tuners aren't by design, I made the headstock too thick to fit them and didn't feel like sanding it down. Back side. Some of the more visible mistakes. I took too much off of the neck and had to glue on a scrap piece. On the back the ferrules are uneven and I had to file two of them just to get them in. Also, mid way through the project I decided to change from having back loaded electronics to putting everything on a pickguard, after having already started to work on the control cavity from the back. I also got a bunch of wax stuck in pores and gaps. I've also broken three screws by not drilling pilot holes well enough! All in all I'm really happy with the project. I still love the design and it turned out pretty much exactly like I wanted. I think I'd maybe prefer a more glossy finish. Best of all, it's actually playable!

good to hear yeah, i realized that might become a problem (at one point i was even worried that i wouldn't get enough room for my hand between the necks while playing the 12-string), but after measuring i think it'll be fine. it'll probably still be a hassle to tune it, but at least it'll be possible.

Routing for truss rod. Didn't get it exactly in the center, will have to remember that when i saw out the neck shape Fretboard being glued on, using the other neck as block. Managed to resist the temptation of gluing both at once to save time. Drew out the shape on the back of the necks and sawed. I'm pretty sure I got it centered. Everything laid out on the floor. This build is finally getting to the point of looking like a guitar. Next up is deciding on headstock shape, sawing that up and basically get the rough shape of the necks done. I don't know whether I'll get to inlaying, fretting and contour shaping before I rout the body cavities, we'll see. Nothing's going to happen before christmas anyway I think. For headstock shape I'm thinking I might make it like on a melody maker, except a bit wider. Or just standard les paul shape

Body is sanded to (almost) final shape . The glue joint isn't perfect, but it'll have to do. Next up: making templates for cavity routing and ordering fretboard blanks and truss rods.

Today I glued the body pieces. Routing for wire channel. Some tape to cover Clamps clamps clamps. I have to get some more, this isn't the ideal amount I guess. Final decisions made today: It will be a solidbody, it will have two pickups. On monday I'll sand/rasp the body to its final shape. I guess I'll see then whether or not I should've used more clamps.

Neck gluing in progress. The tape method is working like a charm, Both necks. Body pieces band sawed and a bit sanded. I'm going to wait until they're glued together before I do the final shaping Body pieces with plans on top. I've sketched the rout channels for wiring, but they're not final yet. Have to make the decision whether to have two pickups or three first. I'm leaning towards two. It would be cool to have a 12/6 label instead of rhythm/treble on the switch plate.