j. pierce

I'd go with a mustang-esque 22.5 scale - short enough to make first position barre chords a little easier for small hands, but a size that still holds it's own when the player is full-grown. But then again, I just love me a Fender Mustang.

I haven't done much wooden binding yet - but it can be done Setch: http://home.asparagine.net/ant/blog/?p=47 Myka: http://www.mykaguitars.com/instruments/032/process.htm Of course, I think we all wish we could build like some of the guys here. My limited experience tells me mere mortals can't get that level of work. But what do I know? I think the last design you posted lends itself to mitred corners, personally. If you go with a thicker binding, you can still soften the edges somewhat.

Outch! Have you ever tried to lift a Rhodes? Í own a Rhodes and for a while I played it in a band. But that was also the only decent keys I had at home so I had to disassemble it for every rehearsal, lift it into the car, drive it to the rehearsal place, lift it inside, assemble it and finally I was ready to play. And after every rehearsal I had to do it all again. It was heavy... Oh, I know. We help him move it (and the Traynor head that ways more than my cab) every gig and practice. That's the joke, I guess. Rather than jerking around with the screw in- legs, he somehow found an industrial strength keyboard stand that will hold the whole thing, so that helps.

Beautiful! Although it looks like mission control on the lower half with all those controls... Twice on the build page, you mention a "blower" for the pickups - what's that?

Sweet! My bass player quit recently. We replaced him with a friend of mine that plays the Rhodes. Of course, now the cheeky value of the two of us playing the matching bass and guitars I built is gone. So I keep threatening to build the key player a matching keytar. (When he complains, I tell him that I'll just make it the Rhodes on a strap.) I was kidding, but it's nice to see it can be done!

I don't know about that particular router, but I will say - I used an older router for a long while - built like a rock. Got it at a yardsale for next to nothing, eventually had the motor worked on at the tool repair place in town and continued to use it for a years. I've since bought a newer DeWalt, and I will say, I will never ever ever give up "soft start"; and it seems like even the cheaper new routers these days have that feature. Starting up a router with a larger diameter bit in an old router without the soft start feature is no fun.

Depends on how much extra length you have after the break points, I suppose. (I.e., if your last tuner is very far from the nut, you can't get away with as much. Same thing could apply at the bridge, I suppose.) I find that it also depends on the brand of strings - GHS strings don't seem to be able to go quite as far as other brands; I could barely make them fit my 35" scale 5 string, while regular D'addario's had no problem. Some string makers are offering strings for longer scales now - I know d'addario's site says they sell a "Super long" string they say is appropriate for 36-38 inch scale lengths, although I've never seen them. (But I haven't had a reason to look, either.) I'm sure others with more experience with ERBs and such will chime in. Keep in mind that it can be a pain if you have to special-order strings.

I've searched and asked this question before, with no real answer revealed. Minimum surface area is going to depend on the type of glue and wood used, whether you've made a well-fitting joint or one of the monstrosities of open-space like was shown in those Gibson photos that where floating around a while back, the shape of the joint and the direction of the wood grain involved in that joint. I think part of the thing is, that unless you're planning a real ridiculous design, you're apt to have enough neck joint, just by the nature of how we usually shape and construct guitars. Obviously, for a real answer we're going to need to build a series of guitars with smaller and smaller neck joints, until one of them pops under string tension. Then make sure all your guitars in the future have neck joints one bigger than that one.

If you can work wood, you can work brass or aluminum with relative ease. You should be able to get a suitable sized piece of either material at hobby or hardware stores, or scrap yards for pocket change. A drill press and a bit of filing and you're ready to go. If you want to go with a thinner plate-style version like Godin uses, it would be even easier. Brass has the advantage that you can solder a ground wire to it easily. I've also had better luck getting lacquer to stick to it, which may be a consideration. I'm wary of the mojo-speak on the linked page. There may well be a change in tone, but when the language comes across like that and they're selling you a piece of metal like that for 40 bucks, my radar goes off.

Just to be that guy, I want to mention that you can cut out your bodies with a coping saw. And a few extra blades. I've done it. It's not fun. Buy a power tool.

I know I've seen sheets of red plastic material on eBay on occasion - should be easy enough to cut into strips on a bandsaw or such. As far as thicker inlay material - I'd be tempted to inlay it proud, and file it down. With micromesh sandpapers, it wouldn't be hard to restore the lustre to plastics. When you want really differnt colours for inlay, you'll want to start looking at man-made materials. (It sounds like you already have) There's a wide variety of recon stone materials and fancy acrylic plastics available - searches for inlay materials on google will find you some, but a lot of it gets used for knife and pen blanks, which is another place to look. Sorry I don't have more specifics. Also, you could try contacting Doug at Parable guitars - (he posts here often, search for his "Nuclear Prophet" build in the in progress section; I believe Parable is linked from the main PG site as well.) He deals with some pretty interesting inlay materials - I believe he sells some of his CNC'd inlays, (which could save you some time) at least I feel like I remember another builder here getting their unique inlays through him, and he may be able to point you in the right direction for an inlay material that suits your needs.

I used a dremel for my first inlay job - large hearts, not quite as big as LP block markers, but similar, getting smaller going down the board. Not much accuracy needed, so I just sort of rough cut chunks to make the hearts out of, and cut away the excess pearl leaving myself the finished shape. It worked, but it was very wasteful! And if you weren't careful, the dremel would grab the pearl and chip bits off or shatter the whole darn thing quite easily. It's functional, and possibly quicker, but given the price of nice pearl, I'd like to save as much as possible. It doesn't take that much longer to use a proper jewelers saw, and you'll most likely have better results. And a jewelers saw ain't that expensive.

Eh, I have one of the Stewmac Jaws II. I haven't ever gotten a fret to sit properly with it. I have it tossed aside, thinking that one of these days I'll get it to work, and I never have any luck. If you've already shaped the neck, it doesn't ever want to go in quite straight, and I can never get the fret to sit down flush. Maybe I'm just not strong enough. All the fidgeting required with the thing, you can hammer the frets in a lot quicker. I haven't found much of a use for it - I suppose it'd be handy over the tongue on an acoustic with the special caul supplied, but I've needed to shave a fair bit of the tang off for it to be able to press the frets in. I know in the Stew Mac fret work book, they talk about having to use a specific brand clamp, as they needed one strong enough for the application. (The book was being written before the tool was released in it's final form, I guess?) I don't know, it's been a while since I've tried to use the thing, maybe I should pull it out one more time and give it a go.

All I can add is my friend the electric mandolin player has a rail-type strat-sized humbucker pickup on his instrument. Sounds nice. His is angled a bit, but might be worth trying, as it could fit in the routes already on the instrument.

I think the edge guide was designed primarily with binding channels in mind. (Which I think is something that dremel tools are poorly suited for - I have so many fewer problems with tearout using a larger diameter bit, something you can only do in a router.) I've also seen it used in conjunction with a cutter for removing acoustic guitar tops. With the cutter so close to blade, the amount of variation able to be induced is apt to be mininimal. Regardless, while the cutter can swing in an arc in relation to the guide bearing, the position of the guide bearing sets the maximum depth from the edge that the cut can go. (Unless it vibrates apart on you, of course!) In the case of a binding channel, this is fine; if the cutter does not maintain an equal distance from the edge of the guitar, you have a shallow binding channel - another pass will remedy this. I think in this case, the advantages of a smaller contact point (being able to navigate smaller curves) is helpful. Now, if you were cutting a groove inside from the perimeter of the instrument and attempting to keep the groove equi-distanct from the perimeter of the instrument, then you could have a problem. But a larger edge guide would also prove problematic if you were trying to make that groove, as well.

What about something like the Hipshot countour bridges? They use hardened steel bearings, but they're captive on the plate, not sealed roller bearing units like you've shown on your site. On one side, it's two balls, on the other, it's a needle-type, they both bear against similar post to a floyd. I've used one for a while now, and really like it. It seems to avoid some of the durability issues that can plague knife-edges, but preserve whatever it is about one-piece plate construction that creates that tonality that you're talking about losing with roller bearings. StewMac has decent pictures since I'm not good at describing this. I'm sure there's more on the hipshot site.

When I was "eyeballing" it, I was using a notched edge to read the board, or the strings (capoed at first fret, and fretting at last) to read the frets, and measuring my relief with a small ruler, rather than using feeler gauges underneath. My "quicky" fret leveling the other day was mostly to identify any frets that were substantial problems - I find adjusting the board flat, marking the frets and making a few swipes of leveling, I can identify problem fret areas pretty quick. I didn't find any of these. Obviously I should have taken more measurements before touching the frets - I've gotten complacent on my scratch builds, confident that neck will end up flat under tension and leveling the frets under that assumption before I string it up or check for fret problems that need to be addressed first. That was obviously my first problem. My leveling methods appear to work well in all my other builds - a flat stew mac leveling bar and 320 paper. The neck did pull into a slight twist - when it measures flat with no strings, the relief under tension measures slightly more (about .015" inches tops) on the treble side. This appears to be because so much more fretboard is supported by the heel and body join on the bass side. Anyway - I think the major issue here was the trussrod and an unruly neck. I usually back of string tension, and try and manually flex the neck in the direction I plan on adjusting the rod - using the rod to hold the neck in place, rather than moving it. The long scale bass neck was a bit awkward to do this to. I followed a method in one of my stewmac books, of putting a notched block over the strings and fretboard at either end of the rod, running a heavy beam across those, and clamping the neck with a tiny bit of pressure to pull it in place. (Didn't take much at all.) Then I could tighten up the truss rod a hair (it's less than a quarter turn from the "neutral" position) and it seems to be holding the neck well, with relief around .02" or so. Still more than I'd like, but workable. I'll play with it some more tomorrow before I touch anything else. (Edit - entered a few numbers wrong from my notes)

I never payed much attention to setup until I started building my own guitars. On all my builds, I've been playing with lower action and less fret buzz than I ever did on a store-bought guitar or bass. I'm sure now that I could dial in one of my old guitars to the specs I play at now, but well, I don't have them anymore! So on my guitars and basses to date, with the carbon fibre or graphite rods in the neck, I've never barely had to touch the rod if at all, and dial my necks in perfectly flat, or just until there's a slightly perceptable relief - I don't remember what feeler gauge could squeak in there when measuring, but there appears to be no relief visually using a slotted rule and the board, or using the strings and the fret tops. Capo at the first and last fret and push down in the middle, and you can just feel that there's a bit of relief. Anyway, the 35" scale five-string bass I'm working on for my brother; it's got quite some relief in the neck. I did a quick fret level before stringing it up the second time, and with the action set medium low, there's annoying buzz in the upper register. I think I actually made it worse with my levelling job - it was done with the neck set perfectly flat, and the strings are adding relief. Or perhaps I was having an off day and just did the absolute worst fret job ever. (There's a reason I won't do fret work on anyone elses instruments!) It's got a dual-action LMI rod in it. It's certainly making a difference, but I don't want to torque it dow any more, I'd say it's at it's limit. There was a little creaky noise when made that last bit of turn. Thing is, I've never had to adjust a rod to where I thought the limit was, so that's got me a little annoyed, I guess this neck isn't as rock solid as I would have liked. So I need to dig out my feeler gauges and take a proper measurement; which I'll do tomorrow, but using a notched straightedge and the board, or a the strings and the frets, I'm reading almost a 1/16th inch of relief. Granted, this is eyeballing it with a not great ruler, so I could be a bit off, but it's visually more than I'm used to dealing with. I'm feeling like this is cause for concern. I can raise the action at the bridge and eliminate the buzzing, but then I'm raising the action higher than I'd like. (Although I'm getting the feeling that the low B is rubbery enough I'm going to want it a little higher than I'm used to with a low E.) Plays like a dream on the low B and E, and the other strings up to around the 12th-15th, depending on how the action is set. I've got a piece of heavy duty angle steel (old rack mounting brackets) about 8 inches long (although I could make a longer one) that I lapped flat on the same piece of lapped stone I use for my plane soles - I'm thinking of trying to sue this to level the frets in the upper register under string tension as I've heard discussed; but I wonder if this neck is in too bad a shape and I need to think about re-leveling the board and refretting, taking into consideration what string tension will do to this neck, or perhaps start with a new neck. So I guess long story short - how much relief do you let happen in a neck before you start to be concerned? And how far would you turn a truss rod from dead center?

My major concern is those trem studs again - I have suspicions that MDF isn't going to hold those studs much better than the basswood, and you'll have those leaning again shortly.

Beautiful finish on that. There's something so primal and perfect about Jrs. Can't beat it. Something like this would definitely be my "desert island" guitar. (If I could bring an amp, of course.) Love the use of a few old bits for a new build.

Ideally, you should intonate each string for note you'll have that string tuned to. So a dropped tuning may need slightly different intonation, as well as open slide tunings, etc. In practice, drop tuning by a half step isn't probably really enough of a difference to matter, and if you've intonated the guitar for those same strings at E, dropping them down to Eb isn't likely to make an audible difference. In the end, your ears and/or a good tuner will tell you if you need to re-intonate your saddles. As far as compensating for new heavier guage strings, you may not need to change anything, depending on the instrument in question and what you switched from. Particularly if your tuning down, as this tends to help counteract the increased tension of heavier gauge strings. I suppose I might be wary of switching from super light to super heavy strings, but in general, you just have to take a look at things after it's strung up. The nut probably needs to be looked as, as the new strings (if they fit at all) will be tight or binding, and that can affect tuning stability. If they don't sit well in the slot, they can sit too high as well - this can make playibility and intonation a pain. The bridge saddles are usually fine, as they set the height from the bottom of the string. If you find you need to make large changes here, it may indicative of changes in the neck relief that need to be looked at. If you have a floating tremolo, you will almost certainly need to tighten the springs to counteract for the increased string pull. You may or may not need to change the relief with the truss rod - this is a matter of taking the measurements after the thing is strung up, understanding what they mean, and determining the best course of action. Some people find they like to move their pickups closer or further away after string guage changes. In reality, it's a matter of seeing how your guitar reacts, understanding the measurements, and taking appropriate action from there. About the only thing I do prior to a string gauge change is make sure the nut will work for the new gauge strings, and maybe put a little more tension on the tremolo springs if I'm moving up in tension. Everything else is standard setup stuff that comes after it's strung and I have an idea of how the instrument will move.

Nice. I've been looking at pickup up a new, nice straightedge. For those on the cheap: I ordered a few of the polycarbonate straightedges from LMII - cheap, they're my go-to for when I know I'm going to be bonking things around a bit. If I drop it and they break, I'm not crushed. I had three of them (I can't find the third one now). The the only way three edges can match is if they're straight lines, and all the edges on these matched as good as could be from my eye and feeler gauges, so I've trusted them for a while now. I took two of them and made my own notched edges, easy to cut with a dremel.

I would have used your scrollsaw to make a template out of a thin material (MDF or plywood) and then cut your body as you did, but a hair oversized. Then use the template with a bearing guided router bit to remove all the imperfections. Works great. For sanding the round bits inside the horns, I used spray glue to adhere some sandpaper to the side of a can tha was about the right size, and used that. An oscillating drum sander would work even better. Anytime you want crisp edges, a firm backing for your sandpaper is a must. Those firm rubber blocks work well, I smoothed the backside of one, so I can use the rounded back (where you normally hold) to sand concave edges. Hardwood scraps work too. I've gotten pretty good with cardscrapers, and use those almost all the time, however. But they aren't ideal in some situations. I did all my shaping on my SG with rasps/surforms, files and spokeshaves, and used cardscrapers and firm sanding blocks to touch everything up. Leaves a nice crisp edge. I actually soften the edge just a bit, makes it easier to keep from sanding through the finish when your wrapping things up. (My finishes are bit on the thin side.)

I tried the planet waves tuners (with the lock and the auto-cut) on my last build, and I love 'em. Athough they're a bit heavy, and I can imagine on another build it'd be neck-dive city.

Woah, J - did you post a WIP thread for that build? That's awesome looking.