henrim

I’m not familiar with the guitar in question but, according to this page: https://ibanez.fandom.com/f/p/3030452839383346575 the five way switch has the following options: 1. Neck humbucker in series 2. Neck humbucker in parallel 3. Both humbuckers in parallel 4. Inner coils in parallel 5. Bridge humbucker in series If so, this is possibly a helpful diagram: https://www.dimarzio.com/media/1447 Depending on the pickups you have the wires may have different color coding.

Some fine tuning needed, but getting there. Next time though, warn me against doing stuff like this without a mortise machine.

If all the wiring is good, I guess polarity of the magnets is something to double check.

Any reason why not make that hole bigger? I understand it’s not always straightforward but there’s usually a way around it.

If there’s something I’m good at, it’s shooting my self in the foot. It would have been a lot easier to make the neck joint before glueing the fretboard, but no. Rough cut is now done with hand saws and chisels. It needs some adjustment still but the most scary part is done without causing any damage. Started to chisel neck pocket too. And planed the top to a 3 degree angle around the pocket. Pocket needs still to be deeper and it will have the angle too. Neck pocket will continue inside the body where the neck extension will be seated. Plan is to make it bolted. But it’s possible to glue it as well.

I guess there are many ways to do it. Hard to say what is the best procedure, but I would consider at least: - Clean and degrease the surfaces before applying glue. - If you have to scrape or sand carbon fibre, use respiratory protection and eye protection. It's nasty stuff and the fine dust apparently stays in lungs forever. - It would be good to have glue on the bottom and the sides. Epoxy has good filling properties so in that sense I think a little loose channel is not a necessarily a bad thing. - Epoxy is high viscosity stuff so the rods want to raise when pressed in. Clamp them good to get any air and excess glue out. - Try to clean any squeeze out before the glue cures. Messy business though. - Wood glue or super glue may be easier or less messy alternatives. They don't hold as well, but should keep the rods from rattling. With them I'd have a rather tight fitting channel.

Ok, I cured them with the help of an UV light source. Mdf to mdf joints obviously doesn’t get the needed UV light so they may not have been fully cured. But they were dry. No real bond there, as expected. Mdf to acrylic sticks to some degree. The joints still come loose without much force but the surface of mdf may stick to acrylic. Beeswax seem to stick to acrylic to some degree. Still easily removable but affects the surface. Paraffin. Lifts easily from paraffin treated mdf. And paraffin doesn’t stick to acrylic. So, based on this highly unscientific test, I would do a test piece resembling the real mold and treat it with paraffin.

Ok. Couldn’t resist. Have to wait till they are cured, but here’s a couple of test pieces with Acrifix. 1. mdf glued to mdf. 2. acrylic glued to mdf, factory surface 3. acrylic glued to mdf, sawn edge 4. acrylic to paraffin 5. acrylic to beeswax I’ll report back.

Likewise, if I search Weldon the results show Acrifix Good question. I don’t think it’s a good glue for MDF, but as the acrylic cures it will stick to anything it can hook into. Probably a protective layer of something would help. I say “something” because I don’t really know what would be the best option. Bees wax or some other wax maybe? You have to test. Or quite likely that information exists already somewhere.

Seems like Weldon has a similar product as Acrifix. Same principle as with gluing scale models. Although scale models are polystyrene and the solvent is different.

I’m not familiar with Weldon. The stuff I use is called Acrifix. Melts acrylic and creates a seamless joint. https://www.plexiglas.de/en/products/acrifix

Fr_tt_d. Want to buy a vowel? I see I accidentally omitted one consonant too.

Area as such is not decreased as the carbon fiber rods are glued in to the neck. Typically with epoxy. Granted PVA glue you typically use for gluing the fretboard doesn’t bond to CF quite like it bonds to wood. So essentially there is less bonding area. Some people cover the CF rods with a strip of wood. Others don’t care. While carbon fiber itself is not plastic, the rods are carbon fiber reinforced plastic. Typically epoxy.

Frtd.

Yes, and as far as I understand that’s the only distance you need to care about. String length is never shorter. You place the bridge based on that minimum distance. Which is the scale length. Other strings are then corrected to proper length when setting up intonation. Of course some bridges, like the LP bridge, is set on angle and there you have to set the maximum length as well.

Yeah, can’t go wrong!

Called "ring clamp" apparently. https://webshop.sar-machine.fi/verkkokauppa/en/home/2293-ring-clamp-no-233.html Easy woodworking project for a handy man, but with 7 € price tag may not be worth the trouble.

Punched. Only thing missing is a place for the zero fret! But zero fret is a special case anyway, which will be done separately later. But it somehow started to bother me Probably not enough to make a new block though. Funny that I didn’t notice that it looks metal in the picture. It’s actually maple and ebony. I guess it’s dirty from metal dust and in the shadow. Originally on off cut of a neck with 12” radius fretboard. I have widened the fret slot so that a fret can be pushed in to the slot easily and removed just by lifting it. It’s for holding the fret steady while filing the tang. I’m holding it upside down so that the fret crown is placed in the groove on the wooden block that can be seen in the front on the picture. If that makes sense. A picture would help. I‘ll see if I can snap one later. The wooden block mounted to the table is a bench peg (“naakeli” is what I have learned to call it). It is a goldsmith thing. It’s mounted to the front edge of a table top that is close to eye level. The block is removable. It is wedge shaped so that it can be rotated around for a flat surface. It’s a sort of sacrificial surface where you can file grooves, drill holes, saw slots or whatever to hold small pieces down while working on them. Another goldsmith tool. “Klova” in Finnish. Or in goldsmith language as I don’t think the word is widely known. Another handy tool for holding small pieces while working on them. I have sawn a groove in it to hold a fret in place. Although I now prefer to use the above mentioned neck-off-cut instead for tang filing. Other than that, I use two files. A bastard file for filing the tang and a wedge shaped needle file for marking the cuts and to cleaning the coarse cuts. Both files have one smooth edge that is ground and polished.

Progress is slow but there’s some. I bent and cut the frets and filed tang ends. I’ll just fill the fret slot ends with tiny strips of wood. Padouk in my experience is quite forgiving and I expect the filled spots to be nearly invisible. But I might very well be wrong. In which case they will be visible.

Tone works in all positions in that diagram.

Yeah, the cover is better. I guess I would do a solid cover, but this has a connection to the neck. Or. Since the cover is kidney shaped an intarsia of a kidney anatomy would be neat. Doesn’t necessarily need ureter line to the output jack.

Truss rod channel would be perfect guide but it depends on your router base and guide if you can use it. Other possible way is to mount the neck to a square piece that you use as guide. Clamps, double sided tape, screws (on peg holes) etc. Probably easier with a table top router but shouldn’t be too bad with a handheld either.

I chose padouk. I actually radiused two boards but I didn’t quite like the first one. There was a tiny knot in a wrong place on the first board. I made a table saw slotting jig while working on my last build but I guess I didn’t remember it as I started to saw fret slots by hand. Only then I remembered why I built the jig in the first place. Because my slotting saw was dull. Completely dead. I have never sharpened a blade like that so I first thought about moving to the jig. But decided to give sharpening a go. I had no idea what I was doing but apparently my method worked pretty good. That blade is now plenty sharp and it only took like 15 minutes with a needle file and magnifying loupe. Those teeth are small. Considering the coarse procedure I was surprised how good it became with minimal effort!

Lookin good! That’s great! With my history of changing profiles after finishing a guitar I would love that kind of re-profiling feature. Although I guess your reason is to able to shape a neck on a neck-through guitar. Which of course is a great feature too.

Outch. Hope it’s all ok now. I have nowadays several goggles around the house, because if they are not right where I need them, I may not bother finding them for “just a quick cut”.