pauliemc

I let some of the black dye sink into the binding & left it there. I think it ties it in nicely with the rest of the top. Did the same on the back & sides. Blackened it & cut it back a tiny bit. But when cleared it does not show the timber as well as Id like, turned into a big shaving mirror. You can kinda see it on the sides. Note to future self - polish black less (somehow) Headstock without the truss cover.

Taking a few days away from the bigger orders. Get to do a little on the oddball one offs & full customs - The cool stuff These were taken just after the gitir was polished & the hardware test fitted with the finish applied. These were the last piks I took of this particular gitir. But I have it here for a few more days so I will get a few finished snaps of it. Anyway. Piks. Sorry about the quality, but my camera is old & starting to crap out. the top is actualy a nice cherry red with no orange tint to it. But you get the general idea

Is this is the gitir you mean ?

The entire guitar was stained black to accent the heavy grain in that billet. So there was a fairly heavy black dye put right into the timber. Then cut back leaving some of the black in the hearier grain areas. All I did for the black burst was not sand the edges. I used alcohol based dye that flashed off fairly quickly to avoid putting moisture into the timber. The fade is easy if you just take it slow. I typicaly leav the dye heavy where I want the fade to be, then sand away the colour in a circular motion. work from the centre out & do an entire lap of the body outline in a single pass - dont stop to concentrate in any area. I would not use anything courser than 320. Get it to where you are just about done, Then run over it with 000 wirewool to blend everything. Job done. Just be sure the dye you use is not soluable with the finish you will be applying or it will change the fade when applied.

Why or how would too much drop be a problem on a non angled headstock? Looking good Muzz, this is fun to watch. SR For the tuners closest to the nut, there may be a little too much tension to allow accurate / easy tuning. & if its a very high jump in level the low E & maby the A string just wont hold on the tuning post.

I use a modified pillar drill for that. Changed out the pulley wheels that came in it to mess with the gearing from the motor to the drill head. Max speed is approx 10,000 rpm. I just use it like a pin router. But gotta be carefull to always clamp the piece to a heavy base before putting it near the tool, & only take off light shavings. Otherwise you have to replace the window accross the workshop & wait till your wrist comes out of the cast before you can do anything else Looking realy good. I think this needs a blue burst. so it can hammer everyone in GOTM

About 3-4mm from the bottom of the fret board is enough. Do you have any drawings of fender necks ? I can send you some if you want. They illustrate it very well. PM me with a mail address & ill fire you some cad files or pdf.

Not up to your own standard but thats not to be expected. Still - realy cool. Nice to see things going well for someone hope you sell a **** load of them.

Guitar is called a BLACK beauty Kinda limits his colour choices as far as im concerned But still. Initial design is cool. Id like to see it built as is.

Hmm. OK. You seem to have missed one fundamental issue here. Most of us are blokes. we dont have emotions. emotions are what women have. blokes have big dogs, harleys, beers, V8's & half stacks. But I dont realy get emotional on any level when building. Its almost kinda too involved mentaly for that. You get so focused on the task at hand that you dont realy feel anything, except maby dead calm. I suppose its kinda theraputic. But on occasion it does all go wrong, & then frustration with the project usualy ends up in rage. the gitir gets tied to one of the big trees in the yard & butchered with an axe. Then its back to dead calm again.

Personaly, Iv disliked almost every damned thing Iv ever built, Never seem to be happy. Even if the customer absolutly loved it, most of the time I just see areas I wish had come out better. But its all good. I mean, the day you start to produce stuff (be it cars or guitars) & think "yea - thats fookin brilliant" for every single one is a bad day. Ego has no real place in any atrform, Once you start believing your own hype & stop trying to improve it all goes to ****. Doubt is a good thing in a healthy dose.

Holy crap thats fookin cool

Yea. 8 of the things in a single go. hours are killin me. I tend not to keep good track of time. The chick usualy has to let me know its time to come back in from the shop. Otherwise Ill be out there till i feel faint or dizzy or something else stops me. Case in point, She was away week before last & I was out finish sanding & gluing in necks one of the days. ran out of glue, so back into the house to get some from the stash. Looked at my watch & it said 4.15. I figured "ok, so thats why im hungry. I missed lunch again" but no. open the door of the shop to complete darkness. it was 4.15 in the fookin morning - id been out there for about 20 hours strait. I usualy have a few lotus blanks on the go. Guy booked the lot in an order a while ago. 40 gitirs - biggest iv ever had. in one way its cool, but then again its kikin my ass to meet the deadline But all of this is distracting from one very big issue here - PROGRES PIKS !!!!!! WE WANT MORE !!!!!!!!!

You need to talk to Huntingdoug. you can find him on the forum a lot. Makes nice neck blanks.

OH CRAP !!!! we started a tone voodoo thing ! ha ha ha. Screw it, its all mumbo jumbo anyway. I sent out 16 guitars on friday gone. 8 each of my Black lotus & Omega models. All 8 of the lotus were black walnut with TV Jones pups, hard tail bridges & ebony boards. & all 8 sounded slightly different, one was even kinda nasal & squealed like a scalded cat. & those gitirs are usualy kinda warm & smooth. same for the Omegas. All poplar with ash tops & laminate necks with floyds & evo pickups. all sounded slightly different. I have 3 SRV on the go aswell, bodies ready to take finishes. hanging in the booth acclimating for a day & if you tap them - they all have different tap tones. Best approach to wood tone is my old mans. some guy in the club he plays in was bitching about the banjo I built him because it has quilted maple in the resonator, bell brass in most of the hardware, a 5 piece laminate neck with a truss rod, Ebony in the tail piece & inlay/binding all over the thing. its my old man - kinda had to go all out building it you know. This goon tels him its obviously a crap sounding banjo because he had played a mostly maple banjo a fews back & it sounded terrible (never having heard my old mans mind you) So the old man replies "maby yours was a crap instrument, or maby you just cant play worth a fuk" Tone voodoo can go suk it. stick in some of RAD's pups & give it to Joe Satriani & it will sound a-fookin-mazing

Yea. lots of flamboyant language. Not only did I have to plane the top off & glue the right one on, But I had to remake my template again. Wasnt the master template so not a total disaster, but still a total pain. Your Voodoo with the "bolt it all to the same piece of timber" is the basic logic behind my Lotus builds, so im with you on this one Hey RAD. My necks are 44mm at the nut. Just feels more comfortable that little wider doesnt it, more natural.

1) I use a tiny bit of vaseline. Be careful to just keep it on the threads, you don't want it to get on the gluing surface of your neck. 2) You can get away with 10 degrees without string trees. I've never used a locking nut, but I'd think that if you had any break over angle at all and locked the strings you would be fine without trees. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on that one. 3) Locate your fretboard starting at the nut end by placing the nut where it needs to be in relation to the point of the headstock angle. The nut should sit on the last piece of flat real estate with the HS angle falling away immediately past it. Make your body whatever size it should be. Just figure out which fret you want the neck join to be at. I figure that by leaving just enough room for the neck pick up to clear whatever cutaways and scoops I have planned. Locate that and butt the other end of your fretboard against it. 4) I start with 60, then 100, 150, 220, 320, 400, 600, then micromesh from 1500 to 12000. SR Scott has it on the money here apart from the locking nut-string tree thing. Locking nuts have an angled face that the string is clamped to, The string tree ensures that the string continues away from the back of the nut @ an angle that is similar. If you have no tree there is a possability that the strings will be pinched against the edge of the locking block & snap. So if the headstock is flat (strat like) you will need a tree, but if it is angled similar to the plane of the lock nut you will be fine without one. Best advice id to just spend a while looking thru the build threads on here. Go download a load of drawings & study them aswell, they will have loads of critical dimensions to guide you. then start experimenting. Someone posted this site a while ago. I forget who, but it has a massive amount of very good information. My link Download all of it for a nice library of referance info. Pain in the ass but this is probobly the best way to get yourself familiar with what you will need to be thinking about to build good guitars.

Ha ha ha, this reminds me of a cock up I once made. Realy late at night, just finishing putting the tops on a run of 15 guitars. The last one of the night all glued up & ready for the top, BUT! I grab the template from the bench beside me & glue that on instead. Didnt even spot it till the next day Still. this is lookin realy good. Im liking the Almost neck thru tennon approach

+1 to everything Verhoevenc says here. But I would add, the taller bits are great if you have a sturdy router table. 1/2 inch caul. If you are using a hand held router or a smaller table (1/4 inch caul) stick to the more shallow depth bits. On some timbers like ash or sapele, I cut with 3 passes even if I am on the table with a tall bit. Overkill, but worth it with some of the more brittle timbers like sapele.

Typicaly I use the band saw to rough cut the outline first. I try to get it about 2-3mm away from the marked body outline. then attach the template & start to clean the edges with a hand router. I would not even bother to start routing unless i was almost right on the 2mm mark with the rough cut shape. The more you have to cut with the router - the easier it is to fook it up. Go realy REALY slow aswell. Iv seen guys try get a strat profile cut in about 10 mins flat & they always end up as paint grade bodies with loads of fookin filler. take yout time & only remove tiny amounts as you go. Friend of mine once told me to think of my router as a plane. thin slices is the way to go Also. get the hardest cuting head you can & replace it often. they dont last, even carbide bits only get me 5 bodies Max.

Lookin realy good Scott. Your neck dims are prety close to my own standard dims. I use 22.5mm @ the first fret & 25mm @ the body as standard. You can make that feel very small in the hand by making the radius larger on the treble side. kinda like a fender SRV Hotrod profile. I do a few trapazoid necks that are 22-25mm, those feel tiny in your hand.

It may be intentional. probobly to compensate for wear & tear on the template with use. The template is relativly soft when compared to the pin. Each time you dock the template in your jig it will wear a tiny bit. so the is deeper to compensate for that. I might be wrong. Give them a call about it.

apart from the pickup (the colour just does not belong here) This thing is absolut filth. Im just gona take a pik of it to the bathroom for a while

Could be interesting. Thanks for those, I might get a few as samples to see how they are. I would need them dry enough to use within 6 weeks, so the ebony stuff would most likly be out of the question.

Yea. Same here. silently following. i realy like this build. I would not worry about the lack of posts from others. It usualy means you just havent fukt up badly enough for any comments.