SwedishLuthier

Nut finished. Guitar strung up with temporary bridge (no pics yet). Sound is warm, midrangey and have a raw quality the really cuts through. I will not fix and fit the pick guard until I get the final bridge as there is a nail the need to go into the bridge base to hold the pick guard. Pics of that will follow.

More pictures added. The nut is started. The neck is glued. A modern repro bridge was purchased. However the customer might have tracked down a NOS Micro-Matic bridge, the correct version for this guitar, so we might need to take some time off while waiting fit the bridge to get here.

Moomin, right? Me like

Current status: Electronics fixed, it was a broken coil in one of the pickups Neck refretted Next step: Glue the neck on Make a new nut Install bridge

I had a customer bringing in a really nice 60's Hofner "true" arch top (no solid middle) Hofner (Höfner to be correct...) Ambassador, serial number 421. The neck had come off completely, the bridge were lost and the electronics were a mess. Except fot that the guitar was in really great shape. Espesially considering how the customer got the guitar; He found it in a dumpster. He had been walking by the dumpster and ssen what lookd like a guitar case. In the dumpster there were a realy besaten up case (just rubbish, not related to the Hofner), a vintage Swedish made Levin classical guitar with the head broken off and this guitar. He picked up the Hofner and let the rest stay. I wish he also had picked up the Levin.... Anyway he asked me to document the restauration process and for once I agreed. I will not post the pics here as there are a bunch of them. I will link to the Photobucket library and bump the tread when I add new picks. Read the titles of the pics for short comments. Here are the picture library Hope you will enjoy.

Very clean fret board removal thou. Good job!

Not from a structural standpoint. That is all about playability. Lets start with the nut. I have seen 12-string guitars with nuts in the range of 52+ mm (over 2") wide and they have been extremely uncomfortable to play. At the same time a 42 mm (1.65") wide nut will probably be a bit cramped. Lets play around with numbers. Say you have 3 mm between the strings in the same pair. And 3 mm from the last strings to the edge of the fretboard. That leave you with 42 - (6x3) - (2x3) = 18mm to distribute between the string pair and that is 3.6mm! almost the same distance as between the strings in the pair. You can of cause have less space between the strings in the pair, but the range 2.5-3 mm seems to be pretty much standard (check that out, I am by no means an expert on 12-stringers). My suggestion is that you go down to your local music shop and ask if you can test play some 12-stringers (that is if they have at lest a few in stock) and measure the nuts, including string distance etc, on the most comfy once. And be forthcoming with that you are not going to buy a guitar, you are measuring things for a guitar that you are building. Nothing pisses a shop manager off like someone trying to sneak in and take measurements from something he wants to sell (personal experience, I was young...). But if you are open with what you want, he will probably be interested and maybe you've made a new friend. If you have the nut size and know what bridge string spread you are going to use, the rest is pure math (or draw it out full scale, or in CAD or whatever)

Well, lest have a look at a simulation of the magnetic fieldd. This is a typical strat type of pickup: And this is how a tele style pickup with magnetic steel base plate looks like: The magnetic field spread quite a bit beyond just above the poles. That is even more clear on the tele pickup. So it is quite safe to say that the sting placement vs the pole piece placement has som relevance, but if you space the two double strings relative traditional (not to wide apart) you will be fine with traditional pickups. BTW most, if not all, 12-stringers I have seen use standard pickups Realy like the ferro fluid pick of the Q-tuner pickup. Clearly beats my old magnetic paper...

Nice upgrade to the Schatten winder. I enjoyed seeing that you too use different face plates to accomodate different pickup bobbins. I made my winder from scratch and made a double face plate. One stationary part (if you can call a rotating plate stationary...) that is fixed to the motor shaft (yeah, direct drive) and running very true and perpendicular to the shaft. Then I have another plate that snaps into the first plate with magnets holding it place. That plate have specific fixtures and stuff for different coils, like a fixed blade that means that when I wind a blade pickup I just push the bobbin in place on the blade and wind away. For a standard HB I just snap off the plate, snap the standard HB bobbin plat in place and off we go.

Shhhh, don't give away the secrets... Seriously there are IMHO no real black art involved in pickup winding. However there are, as RAD says, a lot of time and wasted material needed before you get a decent experience to be able to understand roughly what a pickup will sound before you start winding. There are a few bits of info on this forum about pickup winding. However there are at least one dedicated pickup winding forum: http://music-electronics-forum.com/f11/ I have seen RAD, veroevenc, Perry (Rhoads56) and Robinst there (sorry if I missed anyone). It is a good place to start finding basic info. However there are a higher degree of pros and semi pros there and they does not give away all the details, at least if you doesn't first prove yourself to be committed and to be sharing you own knowledge etc. And use the search engine first. If not they are a bit cranky... Soooo, a bit more hijacking there...

Sorry for late answer but I've been away for a few days... I use what I can find locally. The Araldite brand have worked for me as have the Bostic brand. They are both all purpose products that can be bought everywere here in Sweden. I switched to using epoxy for my necks some 3-4 years ago and they have all worked perfectly fine without any problems.

+1. You will be fine with a thick top. Especially if its maple. If you are worried you might consider binding the holes as that add a tad of strength.

Well you have titebond here: http://www.madinter.com/tools-glues/glues-finishes/titebond-original-glue.html I dunno about prices, but they have Titebond and are in Spain. I use epoxy for everything in the neck, neck laminates, head scarfs and fretboards as I don't want water getting into those pieces. For everything else I use either titebond or liquid hide glue.

First in??? And only two contestants??? My vote goes to killemalls explorer. Love that black ash top. and the contrast to the body Mzl's Evil is also a good looking guitar, but not as striking as the other one. Also, if you have showed it off a bit better with full back shots and things like that you have had a better chance. A lot of times, when there are several good entries, it comes down to presentation

Not to hijack the thread, but I have switched over to Epoxy for almost everything I glue that has to do with the neck, Headstock scarf, neck laminations, fretboard, as I seem to get a bit less problem with the different parts moving/swelling/shrinking due to what I believe is the water in the wood glue. And Wes is right, use the 24 h stuff.

For me an easy choice. Crows PRS clone is really good looking except for one thing (and I truly understand the difficulties of that part), but the "worn denim" neck part of the top isn't even enough in the faded (sanded) parts in the horns. I really, really understand how hard it is to get that effect even and smooth enough, but you needed to put in a bit more efforts in that part. Especially as the rest of the guitar is as beautiful as this is. Menapias Spalted beech top (isn't it flamed rather than spalted?) is nice. There are a few things that I don't really like (I'm being picky here), but there is something about the neck/head transition that makes thing look out of proportion. the first, slim part of the headstock should have been a bit shorter and the volute should have been more delicate or something. Still a very nice guitar. And the fretboard end is something I haven't seen before. However I voted for sdshirtman. I have only one word: WOW!

Is it possible to make a shim the same size as the neck pocket? A very thin wedge? that should take care of the problem.

If you place it on the rim/edge it is a good idea to make sure that the contact (or cable) doesn't hit the floor if you place the guitar leaning towards the wall or the amp (something we never do, we always place in securely in a stand, or...)

Shouldn't be to hard to draw from scratch. If no one steps up with ready made plans, PM me and I can probably quite quick give you at least some pretty accurate plans (in PDF) for the outline, neck pocket etc.

Seems that I just need to order a few of the Stumac pots and have a go. Txs for the help guys If anyone is interesting, the idea is to combine a traditional tone pot function with a mid cut function (great for getting Tele-ish spank from HB guitars) that I today have in a push/pull pot (dow = trad tone, up = mid cut). Problem is that if I want to go from sligtly attenuated treble to full mid cut I need to both pull out the knob and adjust the pot instead of just spinning the knob to were the sound is best. But maybe there is a ready made solution for this so I don't have to invent the weel here. Anyone know? EQ stomp box maybe...

Thanks curtisa Just to be sure I understand correctly: If I have a 500K blend pot like this: http://www.stewmac.c...Blend_Pots.html it will still have a resistance in the middle that is roughly 250 K? If using them as a blend pot between two pickups it would than be like having a LP, placing the switch in the middle position and turning down both volume pots to 5, wouldn't it? It doesn't sound like Stumacs description "panning from one source to another, with both signals full at the center detent"! I just need to be sure as what I'm really looking for is a blend pot that goes from 500K for the first signal and 0 on the second in one end of the pots travel, to 0K for both signals in the middle position to 0 for the first signal and 500K for the second in the other end of the pots travel. I was assuming that was how blend pots worked, but if not I need to rethink this circuit layout

I remember seeing Erik doing this. Your jig is made for more repeatability IMO. Good job. I have only made one multiscale before (or doing it right now, its in the finish booth) and I don't think I want to make another one the way I made this, old school, print out, use a square as guide and cut by hand. Next time I'll make a multiscale I'll ask how much you want to make the fretboard for me.

Did a quick search but didn't find the answer (OK, could have used more than 7 minutes of searching ). I have a tone pot circuit in mind but I need a specific pot for that. As I haven't use blend pots before I need to check one thing: Does a 500K center click blend pot have the values 0-500K on the whole travel of the knob, or only from the end position to the center position? The last version makes most sense when blending between pickups or else you would have both volumes on 5 in the middle position. Anyone knows? And yeah, I could always shoot the sellers an email...

Hmmm, I didn't take any measurements at the time, but I'd say that it was comparable with the heaviest LPs I have ever had in my shop. As a mather of facts I probably have another TB in for a fretboard reglue this week (probably had a majority of the Travis Beans in Sweden in my shop after that...) so I will try to remembrer to measure it.

Not to hijack the thread, but here are some more pics from the inside of a TB neck (actually a fretboard re-glue job with some rights and some wrongs): http://www.travisbeanguitars.com/index.php/fuseaction/repair.main.htm?ID=c93a8f45e8d3212021163b2c197668a3