kmensik

I love this tele. I just do not like the pickup ring, because it is wider than the bridge, and to my eye it disturbs the convergence from bridge to nut. What about leaving the ring off? The cavity is so cleanly routed, looks perfect.

You are right. I tried different profiles with each neck I made (only 7 so far). This guy wanted an exact copy of his previous custom made neck. I made a rouded square profile for my tele and that V like profile for my Ibanez S copy. Each feels very different in hand, though the absolute thickness is approx. the same.

The player asked me for some adjustments. Enlarge the lower horn cutaway for absolute neck access, make the nick thinner, different pickups with different cable outlet.

Finished, ready to be played.

Than you, I really appreciate your appreciation.

The wiring: the three upper switches are for the three pickups, up for single coil, ceter is off, down for full humbucker.

Lower two switches change phase of B and M pickup. So you can e.g. have neck humbucker + bridge single out of phase.

On the back there is a nice tremolo stabiliser from China, a Blackbox workalike.

Completion, setup, wiring.

Well, after the play test the client wanted better access to the 24th fret, so I extended the cutaways by some 6-10mm, so all the fine carving had to be done again. The same for cutaways, he wanted them much deeper, where I lost my patience with the hand tools and reached for an angle grinder with 60 grit flapdisc. It made the concave shapes much easier to do. Then back to scraper and sandpaper. The body edges are almost sharp in the lower part and gradualy get rounder to where the arm and ribcage touch the upper part. Finaly I got to the oil-waxing, where some not perfectly sanded spots appeared. But it starts looking awsome, if you like natural wood.

Thank you for the replies.

The fretboard is plain dark ebony from a luthiers eshop in Slovakia,

http://shop.sollerguitars.com/product_info.php/cPath/319_412_381/products_id/148gitarove--drevo/hmatnikove-dosky/eben/language/en/gitarove--drevo/hmatnikove-dosky/eben/eg1.html

A friend of mine made the fretboard on a CNC, we made a test piece of some light brown santos (or whatever species it is, it comes from a crate in which exotic hardwood or veneer is being shipped from overseas).

The pickups will be Duncan JB Junior. I have 3 bridge pickups branded Framus, hopefully they will play nicely also in the neck and middle position.

Yesterday we made first test with the client, strung up with one pickup. It plays awsome, as it always does when you plug it in for the first time. Neck profile confirmed, body awaiting more contouring and roundovers, then all the sanding and hardwachsöl finish.

The crab sign on the back of the headstock was also done on CNC by a friend luthier Michnov Guitars. Look how we bolted it to the machine's baseplate by the headstock. Imagine the torque.

Hi. After a one year gap I'm building again. It is an all ash guitar with only one centeral mahogany strip and ebony fretboard. My first neck through, sixth build from scratch.

Custom ordered from a friend, a loose replica of his trusty old axe made 30 years ago by a czech luthier Stanislav Lysák.

Two years ago I made a trapezoidal neck profile. Nobody liked to play it, nor did I. Cut the edges to a transition between C to medium V profile, adjusted the volute and rounded the heel. Now the shellac finish is not that easy to touch up as it seemed.

Again. You must have a great courage to cover such nice timber in solid colour. I always retract and keep my build natural, for I love nice wood. Go for it, you heve a good eye to pick some awsome hue.

You have a good taste for design. Original shapes and construction details. I maybe liked the natural ash a bit more than the solid color. The white looks perfectly done. Awsome.

Wormy Birch

• Very wormy birch core wood, baked in kitchen oven a little, carved top and back contour, hard wachsöl finish
• 25,5" anigre neck (19-21mm thin C profile) with wipe on nitro + sapele fretboard 12-14" radius with hard oil, dual truss rod in heatshrink tube, bone nut 43mm, ebony side dots
• Framus Duncan Designed TB-6 and WSC HotRail neck pickup, one volume (hand turned sapele knob), recessed jack in strat position (almost collided with the bridge post, that is why nobody does it like this)
• Ibanez wraparound bridge with custom brass bushings
• My fifth build from scratch, hobby builder, attic workshop
• I wanted to build a double bed of these birch planks I had for a decade in a barn, but I realized the treasured wood is all holes, unusable for furniture. To cure my despair I drew my favourite body outline on the worst piece and started this build. I intended it to be a dirty rough build, well the process was a bit dusty, but at the end the result is quite refined.
• It plays very nice, very comfortable neck, the sound is firm and crisp, warmer than ash, brighter than alder.
• Build Thread: http://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/48952-wormy-birch/

The workbench photos look the best.

Awsome. Like the headstock, finishes, all of it. The story leaves me speechless. You are very brave.

I let the body re-acclimatize for maybe three weeks. Actually the worm holes are completely filled with solid white powder, it is hard to remove. I tried 10Bar compressed air with little success,  had to use steel brush to remove the powder from the surface tunnels. Only the few fly-out holed are emty. Nothing will loosen with vibration.

BTW it plays like solid wood. And the neck is so nice, comfortable, and no nut buzz even without retainers. The biggest issue was hiding the lenght of pickup cables in the minimal cavities.

I made one quick and dirty fret bender of a broken circular saw. Nice to find the right part in my garbage after a week of thinking how to build one.

Frets seated, body oiled, neck wiped with first coat of nitro.

Interresting. Thank you. Maybe if they were a little higher above the body they could act as two friction points instead of the whole front edge of the tremolo scrubbing the body. A little trick similar to Ron Kirn's https://www.strat-talk.com/threads/callaham-floating-trem-sticks.345840/

The two outer holes for the strat style bridge screws. I thought they are metal inserts for the special bridge you have replaced. Now I see they can not be that. Were they like that originaly fit in the factory? Or are they just dowels?

Well done. The scratch could be hidden by some wipe on poly or nitro. I like the natural wood a lot, I believe it is alder.

What screws or bolts have you put in the outer two holes with those metal bushings?

The neck will be afican anegre with a thin sapele fretboard. Flat headstock, two way truss rod in hetshrink tube.

I've had some birch planks from a tree my father cut 13 years ago, they are all too wormy now. I made a tele of it some 4 yars ago, since then the worms ate a lot of the remainig wood. Looks so bad I had to try to make something useful of it. A guitar.

I let it bake in the oven to make sure there are no worms left. The board warped and shrunk a lot.

Wrong. The loose mechanical parts - baseplate, magnet, spacers - cause more microphonics than the coil wire itself. Been there. It will come back to you later when you turn the volume up. Even when you tighten the four little screws and everything is firmly reassembled, it might vibrate and squeel at you.

You are lucky with the cable, most mice have unshielded USB 1 cable. Some cables heve very different power wires and data wires, also not good.

Now don't forget to remelt the wax by heating the baseplate gently, otherwise it would squeel badly. No neet to dip the whole pickup in wax though.

It is a beauty anyway.

For the trem routes I usually make templates of MDF scraps, just put them on the body with double stick tape in the shape I need at the moment, no permanent templates.

Your neck heel is pretty thick still. Consider sloping it towards the neck so that the offset ferrule hole would disappear, then drill a new one. That is how I fixed the same mistake, plus it is a more comfortable neck joint.

http://kmensik.rajce.idnes.cz/DIY_S/#P1140800.jpg

http://kmensik.rajce.idnes.cz/DIY_S/#P1140802.jpg

Depending on the pickups you might actualy like the wrong value cap, 4,7nF just cuts the treble and keeps more mids. 47nF makes a guitar more muddy. I like 10-22nF.

BTW it is good to know the colour code or have a chart at hand, mine that I lost was printed on a backside of a local parts shop business card, very practical.