j. pierce

Couple of ideas, and I'm just going off my experience here; You're still doing all your painting with rattlecans, aren't you? While a spray system is awesome, and probably a better choice nothing else taken into consideration; understandably, it's not realistic or valid for a lot of folks for a lot of reasons (Space, money, etc.) However, I have had great luck (or at least, I'm happy with the results) spraying my sunbursts using an airbrush. Airbrush setups take up less room, and are cheaper to get going than a full-fledged paint setup. The other thing I've had luck with when airbrushing my sunbursts was thinning the paint down with clear to make it translucent. This allowed me to slowly layer my coats for better control, and get a better fade in the burst. (I like a burst where the gradient fades across a longer distance, rather than solid black with a half inch of burst into the center color.) Might be something worth trying with a Preval sprayer or some such? I don't know. If you're going to sand to touch up your burst, it helps a lot of if you've got a bit of clear between the burst and the underlying color to help prevent sanding through the stain. I know it saved my butt on the first burst I did.

I guess I meant taking P-90 covers (the plastic part that covers the pickup itself in soapbars) and cutting them down and height, and making a whole in the middle to convert them to rings. I don't think I've ever seen rings for P-90s, mostly because that's not how they traditionally mount. If you're going to go with sanding on the pickup covers, I'd start somewhere inconspicuous, like the sides where it will be in the guitar, and see if it looks okay. If you can remove the covers from the pickups themselves safely, I'd imagine you'd get better results wetsanding. If you want them to go back to gloss, you'll really need micromesh brand papers, as it's the only thing that goes to a fine enough grit to get them back to gloss. You may be able to buff them out by hand with a little rubbing compound or something. I've restored the luster to some plastics by hand with 3M's Finesse-it and Perfect-It polishes. I'd hold off, someone with more experience may prove my advice wrong on those fronts though - I know that those solutions have worked for me in the past, but there may be someone here with a better idea.

UniversalJems sells gold bobbins toppers - not a perfect solution, but it could look all right.

I'd be tempted to make pickup rings out of plastic, or even wood, as I've never been able to have MDF as thin as a pickup ring be sturdy at all. Perhaps if you soaked CA into it. What are the size of those rings - could you cut something close enough out of P-90 covers? This fellow could also probably help you out, he makes custom pickup rings: http://www.fretsonthenet.com/other_parts.htm As far as polishing plastic, if it's just hazy, buffing it out can do a lot. I've used liquid compounds, although some bar compunds will work too. Read and see what's suggested by the manufacturer for plastic. I've also had great results with Micromesh sanding papers - they go up to ridiculously fine grits. I wouldn't ever go too coarse if you do need to sand out scratches - I've never started with anything coarser than 320, as you're apt to put scratches into plastic that are very hard to remove. If you're buffing, be careful. Heat can melt plastic, and vintage plastics can be brittle or more prone to deformation from heat. Some older plastic materials are actually flammable, but I don't think that would be the case on a guitar from the 70's. I could very well be mistaken.

I've seen folks use the foam, but I like this solution better: Foam inside the springs works well too: I've had less success with foam outside the springs, and this just looks a little cleaner, also. If you're playing with a lot of gain, this is nice, but I've found the sound of the springs really adds a lot to the strat "sound" or character of a guitars tone when playing clean or at lower gain levels. I also like the sounds you can coax out of the springs under high gain at times too, but that's not for everyone, and if you're playing at high gains more consistently , than you probably want to address this issue.

Sweet. I love the sounds Matt Pike has been getting with his 9 string, (Same idea as yours, but it he only doubles three, rather than four, treble strings.) it'll be interesting to see what you get out of 10.

I'd paint the back black. A nice gloss black looks classy and goes with anything.

Hrm, interesting! I was thinking about using birch for the carved top on my next build, simply because it was available in the sizes I needed, relatively cheaply at the shop I buy most of my wood. It was going to be painted anyway, although for a bit of a markup they had some pieces with decent figuring. I didn't end up buying anything that day, but now at least I feel a little better going that route, as it has been done before. Is there a major difference between red and yellow birch, I wonder?

I had a strat copy like that - a lot of the tinny reverb he descibes could be the springs from the trem. On the build I made with a strat-style trem, the springs seemed to vibrate whenever I hit a certain note - (I think it was A#, but I can't remember now) I put plastic tubing inside the springs to keep them from vibrating so much, but took it out, because I kind of missed the weird sounds I could coax out of that guitar with a whole lot of gain going on. The strat copy I had (swimming pool route) that made a lot of noises like that, I thought about that, maybe the scratch plate was vibrating. I ended up replacing the springs holding the pickups in place with compression tubing and it made a lot of difference. I think a little foam under the pickups could do it too, I don't see the need to go filling the whole cavity. If those kent armstrong pickups, the double rails are the ones I'm thinking of, they're just kind of shrill pickups too. At least, the ones I tried once where. But I think a lot of what he describes are the things that give strats their character, the weird little noises you get from the trem cavity and such.

I don't think at this point, any more vouching for Erik's service is needed, but I just got my cocobolo fretboard in the mail today, and it's awesome. I gave Erik a rough idea of what I was looking for as far the cut of wood goes and such, and he got it perfect. Professionally done, and showed up a lot quicker than I thought it would. Everythings perfectly squared centered and it's right to specs. Awesome! I can't wait to start building the neck to my next build.

How about those Nicholson rasp/chisel combos? Those are weird tools. The rasp gets in the way of chiseling, and you can't hold both ends of the rasp because one ends a chisel, and you only have a couple of inches of rasp... I can actually see them being useful for rough framing or something like that; but for 90% of the jobs I use either of those tools for, it'd be just so much more useful to have a dedicated tool... http://www.amazon.com/Nicholson-WC34CMN-4-...4073&sr=8-2

Not that odd in the scheme of things, but this is my favorite "weird" tool: http://www.woodcraft.com/product.aspx?Prod...p;FamilyID=4867 I've stuck sandpaper to just about everything as well. I've also got all sorts of little pieces of steel refashioned as scrapers.

Turns out none of the local lumberyards sell Alder. Fair enough, it's a relatively "boring" looking wood, and not something you'd find in the northeast. I was hoping to experiment with some for my next build, however. Usually I buy enough wood to make a few bodies, but I'm just looking for enough for one. Anybody have some S2S Alder, around 5/4" thick give or take, that they're willing to part on for a reasonable price? I need to laminate up a body blank around 13x18, (although smaller works too if I'm making a multi-piece, the treble side doesn't extend nearly as far)

Yeah, Depaule was where I purchased the pre cut shell from for the two builds in the last picture. I think I'll go back to that again - on your advice, and what I'm reading elsewhere, I don't think Abalam is the material I want to use. thanks!

Hrm, somehow I missed several pages in the middle of this thread, and all of Tranber's mockups!

Yeah, I had seen most of those suppliers - finding strips isn't the hard part, it's finding someone who sells 1/8" thick strips as a regular catalog item. That's a bit wide for most purfling applications, which is why I assume I'm not finding it. I'm sure I could cut sheets to the proper size strips, but I'm hoping to find a supplier that carries that width stock, or would accurately cut me up those strips to size. (Monday I'll be contacting a few places to see if they can do that for me - I assume anywhere that's CNC straight purfling strips out of abalam sheets can most likely do something imple like this, the question is how much will it cost.) I do have an idea for a jig to help me size the small cut shell purfling pieces I have to a consistent width, so may just go that route after all...

On every bass I've had, I've needed to move the saddles of the lower strings quite a bit back when intonating. Particularly anything set up with higher action. That's why bass bridges usually have much more travel in the saddles than guitars. When I place my bridges, I put the 34" in line with the saddles at their absolute most forward position, leaving myself plenty of intonation room. (I learned this the hard way the first time, where I placed my bridge with the 34" length with the saddles at the middle position, thinking I would leave myself room to move either direction. You don't need movement forward unless something has gone wrong, but not having enough room to move back can ruin any attempts at intonation.) My 25" scale guitar's low E string isn't 25" inches anymore either, because I moved the saddle so it would intonate. The scale length is always a measurement of the string lenght before intonation - if you weren't fretting the string (playing slide for instance) you wouldn't need to move the saddles and could leave it at this length.

Just a little vector-art wrangling. I think I'm the only person who likes this for what it is, warts and all. I tried tweaking the original design, but nothing really worked. Of course, I only spent about 10 minutes on it. So I settled on keeping most of it as is, but simply moved the bass side up enough so that the strap button would end up in about the same position along the length as an LP. (Although probably a little bit closer to the strings in the plane perpendicular to them.) I think a little creativity on the the lower strap button combined with this tweak, and you might be able to make this balance. This is tempting to toss off a quick build of this thing, but between moving and projects I actually care about, there's no way I'd get this done in a timely fashion. The headstock is left as an exercise to the reader.

It's amazing what you can balance with Hipshot ultra-lites on the headstock end and some big old heavy brass bridge on the other end, but yeah, I can see this pushing it. Thing is, if you make it bow-able, you remove all the problems with balance! Give it a retractable pin, or a mount for a small tripod/stand, like many EUB, and make it to be played upright. If it's a stand mount, you also get around the fact that you can't put this thing in a guitar stand or lean it against an amp. I'm liking the bevel in some places, and not in others. The bevel coming to a point at the rear bass end, combined with the "ax-like" bevel back there on the rear treble end gives it a little "grr" without being too ridiculous. I also really like the bevel that lines up with the cutaway in the back. I'm not sold on the bevel meeting the corners and coming to points on the vestigial "horns" at the upper end of the body, though.

Well, this bass stands out enough, if I ever see it on stage, I'll remember to say hello!

I'm looking to do the same "open block" inlays I did on my matching builds a while back. The biggest hassle with that setup (besides all the mitre joints on each inlay) was that the natural pearl strips I used weren't quite all the same thickness. It meant having to sand some of them down along their long edges to get them uniform, and make them fit. I'm thinking that abalam, since it's usually cut on a CNC (correct?) would be more likely to be all the same thickness. Which is nice, because it lets me route the fretboard for the inlays with a jig, with the width of the bit being the same as the pearl, and everything fitting. Thing is, I'm looking for 1/8" wide straight strips, which I guess aren't quite a normal size (a bit large for purfling) and I'm not having any luck finding them. Anyone got any leads on this?

Looking nice. I know what mean about the weather here - always makes spraying an adventure, even in the summer. I'm getting tired of the teasing warm weather. If it's going to get this warm, it ought to stay this warm!

I loved that shape when Yamaha brought it out as the SGV300, I didn't realize they were recreating one of their instruments from the 60's. That's a build I could get behind. Kind of like the katana, not a fan of the performer (although I like the similar design aspects echoed in Wez's build.) But god I hate the headstocks on those handful of models Fender made with the point.

I don't think that the blue inlay clashes with everything else, I think it just looks a little awkward being isolated to the fretboard. A bit more blue somewhere else could tie it together and make it look more unified. I think a purfling or binding scheme on that body might be a bit much - what about tying it together with matching blue pickup rings and a switch tip? That could pull the color from the inlays down into the body a bit. Actually, that might be a bit much too. EDIT: I'm bored, cruddy photoshop mockup; The aftermarket blue rings and knobs I've seen have been a bit bright to match, but you could paint parts. It's kind of a neat look, but I can see how it would be very different from the plan. If it were a single neck build with just a couple knobs, I could see tying the inlay and plastic bits together like that looking very cool, but with all the scattered hardware on this, I can see it being a bit much! Maybe just something like this You get to tie in the gold hardware and the blue in the inlay

Okay, cool. I guess I (vaguely) understood the concept, but wasn't familiar on the terminology. Better understanding of the concept now, though. Thanks so much for the information, folks.