Devon Headen

Two steel strips plus the truss rod is going to add a LOT of weight to the neck. If it's a regular six-string neck, with nothing special about it, just leave it with the truss rod. It's been done that way without problems for a long time. Carbon Fiber isn't THAT expensive, so if your reasoning for adding reinforcements is to make a guitar better than factory guitars, I'd say buy the CF.

If you fill the grain of ash with paint, it will shrink back over time and the grain will be visible again. I'd sand it off while you've only got so much on, grain fill, seal then paint.

I did a tele as my first. It's fine and dandy, but I wish I had something more like unclej's to show as my first. I'd definitely say go for a flat top. Bolt on if possible, too. That simplifies a lot of things, and if you forget to do something on the neck before attatching it, it won't matter.

Yup, they are killer woods, damn straight.

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I was waiting for that one

Parana Pine might be a good option. I think MikeB used it on one of his creations awhile back with no problems. Pine is light, too.

It's rather dense and heavy.

I had already put the fretboard on mine before angling the neck. A little more forethought and you can avoid the issue like Wes said.

Yes, there is a small gap at the end. It's invisible if you have the fretboard covering it, though.

I've used both and much prefer the small. They're a lot easier to work with.

I've angled the neck, and it's not half as tricky as you make it sound. It's actually pretty straightforward as long as you know what you're doing. I just did it with a bandsaw and hand plane.

More pictures: same quality, but different views.

Another front view

Back

Top carve

That last picture shows the dilemma I'm having with the pickup rings. I really like how the volutes on the horns look, but it adds complexity to the top.

I never thought about that. I was planning on contouring the surface of the rings so they'd flow with the top, but I think your idea would look better.

Thanks for the compliments, guys.

The string break angle piece is straight. I'm pretty confident I can make the ring slots having no gap, but there's always that chance. The recess for the break angle piece has no gaps anywhere. I'm going to have to have the piece in the slot and just tape it off or something, because there is NO room for finish. I can literally pick the guitar up with it when it's in, but it's not too hard to push in.

Thanks.

I didn't calculate what the neck angle was, I just set it relative to the bridge height. No, I didn't recess the TOM. I do have a break angle piece behind the bridge and before the string thru holes (you can see the recess for it in the picture) so that the string thru holes aren't all the way at the strap button. My carve is REALLY severe (the cap was just about 7/8" and it's carved down to 1/4"), and the TOM is high enough that the string break angle behind the bridge was going to have to go almost all the way to the butt of the guitar so that the strings wouldn't touch the back of the bridge.

How did you like working with the black limba?  Will you use it again on another project? Also now that you are done more or less shaping the body(back) do you like how the limba looks?

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It works like butter, I like it a LOT, I'll definitely use it again. Well, I put a back of black limba on the body without a contrasting veneer in between. That's the thing I'm most dissapointed about in this project. It won't be bad once I finish it, but it's gonna bug me forever. The limba does look really good other than my bad judgement about the laminations.

As far as the rings go - I had to recreate the carve on a mantel molding a few years ago and I ended up using a double cast of plaster to get the shape I needed.

First I cast a the contour of the mantel by simply putting cling wrap on it and setting it in the plaster.  I then made a new cast from the exisiting one, getting the original shape of the mantel itself.  Then I glued sand paper to the cast to get the new molding to take the shape of the mantel.  Don't really know if that is usefull in your case or not, but it seemed to work ok.  But, the cast was about 2" thick, so breaking it during sanding didn't seem to be a problem... just something to consider.

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Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think I could get it to work in this paricular instance. Plus I wanted the rings to be ziricote to match the flow of the guitar. Does anyone know if recessed rings have been done before? I was thinking it would look great if executed properly, but I've never heard of it before.

Usually I don't post pictures as many of you have probably noticed. In fact, I'm not sure I've shown any of my scratch builds other than in PMs. Anyhow, I was going to chronicle this build with lots of pictures, and as luck would have it, the camera died just before I started. Today I went and got a new camera phone, so don't expect much quality. I've only gotten one pic so far, but don't call me a tease I'll try to get more up ASAP, and hopefully better quality. I thought the boards could use some actual content, and I love looking at other builds, so I thought this could be a good way to contribute.

The wood for this guitar (other than the top) were supplied by Rich (fryovanni), and I highly recommend him. He shares plenty of info here, is great to deal with, and can get you just about anything (or so it seems). He has a thread in the classifieds and I believe he's working on a website soon.

A couple specs:

Custom design

Black limba body and neck

Deeply carved flamed maple top

Ziricote fretboard and head veneers

25" scale length

Brass roller TOM bridge with string through body

Locking Gotoh tuners

Seymour Duncan '59 pickup set

All gold hardware

Top will be dyed green

The problem I'm tring to work around now is the pickup rings. The complexity of the top carve makes it impossible to get a ring to sit flush with the body. Any ideas are welcome. I'm thinking about inlaying the rings and making them removable. That way I could just trim the top of the rings to match the body's curvature. I'm just worried it will be difficult to do and make it look good (no gaps at all etc. Anyhow, without further ado.

Get swirl remover. My guess is that you're seeing fine buffing compound scratches.

I love them. Make fun of me if you want to, but I like what I like, and they are the only band I really enjoy listening to that makes me want to break stuff other than Staind.

Check out http://www.fibreglast.com/ that'll give you any info you need. The folks at the forum seem to know their stuff.

There's a huge learning curve on hand planes, that's why it probably hasn't been mentioned. It's worth the extra money to buy the blanks already jointed if you aren't confident about getting good joints.

I've dyed epoxy with lacquer based dyes (McFaddens) and it performs just fine.

The neck looks off. I think you mentioned that the fretboard hadn't been flush trimmed, so that's probably the issue there. It looks alright, but I think if you use this design again it -needs- a carve. The upper left bout just doesn't look quite right without one. Made any more progress on that Limba tele?

You could use a stop tailpiece and then send 6 strings through the body or you could send all 12 through the body.

Definitely go for a preamp. Search the forum for the Tillman preamp/buffer. There have been several discussions about it, and I've used it with no problems. It doesn't really matter if you use a pot big enough (like the 5M or 10M that have been mentioned), because as soon as the high impedance signal hits your low impedance cable, your signal is going to deteriorate.

Abalone dots are cheap. If that's the look you want you should just buy them.