demonx

I though I should add a bit more to this conversation. I live near a well known/respected accoustic luthier who's instruments sell for massive dollars up to five figures. He does not fret level. He hammers and uses only a fret rocker. I've had lengthy discussions with this guy as he is one of my mentors, even though our builds are a complete different beast there are many carry over skills. I've tried his fretting method to no avail, buid after build I have tried. Then I worked out what the difference is and why I couldn't pull of his method. Every single time I attempted it I had to mill the frets afterwards. His action is a lot higher, which means dead spots will not show themselves. Acoustic guitars are WAY higher action than what I desire in an electric build so a board thats very close to level but not filed level does not show any imperfection. With this in mind I have succumbed to the fact that no matter how perfect I endevour to get the blank fingerboard perfect, no matter how much I try to get the frets in even and sometimes I get it bloody close testing with the fret rocker, I'll still have to level the frets every build if I want them to be great. Just my 2c. I'm sure there'll be opposing opinions, but that's what makes this site great!

Hammering the body down onto the dowel guide pins: I'm not using the dowel to aid the joint, I'm simply using them as a guide so I can cut the timber close to the desired size, minumising wastage, but it also stops the timber from sliding all over the place when I clamp it, which I can assure you, the couple minutse you spend making, hole punching and drilling the guide holes definitely makes up for the hassle of glamping unguided timber and removes and chance of a position error. I also make sure the pins are located in a spot where I will either be romoving wood, or where wood won't be carved, so they'll never be seen. Body in clamps: I clamp alternating side to side so the clamping pressure is spread even. If you only clamp from one side, the pressure pulls to that side making a imperfect joint.

Interesting build. Certainly not my cup of tea in styling respects, but I definitely like the appearance of the neck laminations. Curious what finish is going to look like, as when I've sprayed ebony with 2k it can just look like black plastic, meaning you may as well just paint it solid black, what I'm suggesting is 2k might not be the best choice of finish for the top, but the neck would surely look insane with a 2k finish.

Nice and tight truss rod slot: Headstock on:

Bit of progress. Made the board yesterday and did some planing on the neck blank getting it ready for the truss slot. Routing the inlay using a very fine spiral bit: Collecting the ebony dust to create an epoxy paste later: Test fitting the inlay. I keep them on a piece of sticky tape, keeps them the right way and in order: The inlay after being seated using the ebony paste. Fret slots are covered to prevent the epoxy seeping into them:

The fret process is really subjective and everyone has their own opinion. I fret mill every time. Obviously I try my best to get everything perfect each time so I dont have to, but it's never perfect. So yes, I level every build and re crown etc. Do I wish I didn't have to: yes.

I won't use a gotoh truss rod. I don't care what kind. As someone who has built a guitar in the past and used a gotoh rod, only to have the hex bolt on the end round off when I did the first ever setup on the guitar - I refuse to every use a **** truss rod again. I had to remove the fretboard, re route a new channel for a decent truss rod which was longer, reinstall fretboard and sand/repaint the whole guitar (was a neckthru) just cause of a cheap truss rod... Not going down that road again! Back on topic though, I'm also ears up for solutions on making a clean truss rod adjustment area. So far the best sounding is drilling the hole, which I can imagine is qwuite fiddly.

Just for the sake of conversation - I went back to using my old polish which is twice the price as I found a little bit left in a tube I didn't know I had. Used it on the top of the cabinet I finished recently. I must say that after using it I prefer the 06198 perfect it by 3M. That tub of 3M polish will probably last a lifetime if only spraying guitars. I've painted 4 or 5 guitars since buying it and it hardly looks like I've touched it! Like I said in an earlier post thats now deleted, if the polish is spraying at you and flicking off, then you're using too much. Just wipe it on lightly and keep your polishing pad slightly damp to make up for the lack of polish. Cheers

Looks pretty cool for a "theme" guitar! It's easy for them to turn out cheesy but this one doesn't look cheesy at all. Good work!

Electronics is definitely not my strong point, but I tried to "wing" a circuit I thought would work where I combined passive and active together. End result was when j connected the battery the wires caught on fire in a bright white fuse like burning fashion. I pulled the battery and conceded that I'm an electronics dunce and left it as active only!

I'll be spraying it using the exact same paint and process as the rhoads I recently did, so it'll look like the rear of the rhoads does, except all over with no gfx, unless the customer changes his mind over the next few months which is always possible.

If you check our join dates I actually joined 3 years before you! I just wasn't posting much. Anyway - I appreciate any help or constructive feedback from anyone I can get. Anyway - I hope to have the fretboard inlays done over the next few days. Pics will come.

Welcome to the forum and I look forward to seeing your build threads! Cheers Allan

Since this has become a discussion about clamping, I thought I'd check back over some of my older build pics to see what I'd done. This pic is from guitar #13 - Seems I used at this time the same **** clamps I have used in the current build (#17) This guitar #13 has toured all over Australia for the last year or two on an album release reguarly playing live shows, state to state, crazy hot to freezing cold wet - Australia has some crazy weather variation. According to the owner who I spoke to a few days ago this neck is rock solid. No drama except for some cosmetic paint damage that occured on the road which is why he contacted me to have it touched up. So I'm confident this clamping method has passed the test and will further survive the test of time, being on the road in weather variation like that is a brutal test on any instrument. For the point of comparison, these clamps are what I usually use if they are not holding furnature or something else at the time which is often the case: Years ago I remember a piano maker talking about advanced/complex laminations. Piano makers are well known to be master joiners. He spoke of where most people go wrong and try to get "clamping pressure", they tighten up as hard as possible and they squeeze all the glue out making a weak lamination. Another thing spoken of is when people wipe the glue off their joints while its wet and don't allow for the glue shrinkage. Even firm pressure is the way to go according to him. I tend to agree, however I do tighten clamps tight. No so tight I'm going to have trouble taking them off, but tight enough that It's creating a solid joint. I also leave the glue and don't wipe it.

Looks great! Can't wait to see more The missing posts has happened all over the forum. I think there's a few days worth of posts gone as the forum had to be restored to the last point of backup, so don't take it personally!

I hope it's a smooth hassle free straight forward project. I was going to start a new guitar this week when I had a local artist contact me and ask for this, so I jumped right on it. The dark slab in the back is Victorian Blackwood. the pic below is a superstrat bolt on body I started making for myself from this but when I screwed up the neck I never went back and finished it as at the time I was commissioned to build the Groges guitar. Anyway, the Vic blackwood is a lot lighter once dressed.

I agree, I usually only use them for "tacking" a piece until I can get real clamps onto it.

Here in Australia we don't have any of those stores, but we have our own variations.

I usually use large furniture clamps which I've got a dozen of, but when I went to do this they were all in disposed with another project ( I've been making furniture for around the house) so I went the smalls but seems I've lost a few.

Specs: Mahogany Neckthru Mahogany Body Mahogany headstock Ebony fingerboard Abalone inlay - large diamonds 25.5" scale 24 frets Solid Black paint Hardwired pickup Grover tuners Kahler fixed bridge Roller nut Day started with template making so I could slightly alter the neck angle I'm using on Kahlers so I have better adjustability: Checking approximate moisture content: Make a new variation of my headstock to fix a flaw I had where the thin E was at too steep of an angle. Wasn't an issue with a lock nut but if a guitar (like this build) didn't have a lock nut it could've caused some problems. Marking out the 3 piece neck blank: Setting up the position markers (two pieces of dowel I use to make a neck kebab!) In clamps (mental note, need to buy more small clamps):

I've never broken a bit doing inlay, but I try to move really slow. I just use the ones stew Mac sell and i use their router base. A razor blade helps for tight corners. For a while I was using a chisel over the dremel but after screwing up too many times I've gone back to the dremel. I love the look of inlay but really hate working on it, I wish I had a CNC for that sort of job!

The pic I posted will still be on photobucket, a bit later when I'm on a desktop pc I'll hunt for it and repost. The pic has the part #. Cheers Allan

Click on their name and their profile will open. Have a look under their pic in the top left of the page and the second link down will be to message them.

The whole forum is like this. Seems everything that was posted over those few days has been lost and one of the mods posted somewhere to say it cannot be recovered. What info were you wanting?