Mattia

The third option is the only correct option for a strong joint. All scarf joints are done in this way. There is no other that is stronger and more economic in materials. I'm assuming you mean the one labelled 'gluing option 2', in which case you are 100%, completely and utterly dead...wrong. You can do it both ways, yes, and I've done it both ways, but these days I almost always use 'gluing option 1'. There are a number of reasons for this: 1) Larger glue joint surface area. Option 2 carves away a large portion when carving the neck. This depends in part on your headstock shape and thickness and neck thickness, but a back of the napkin calculation for my own common figures/shapes certainly confirms this for my guitars. 2) Glue plane is not in a position where shear forces can cause fingerboard humps: glues like titebond, if left in a hot car, can let Option 2 shift under string tension, leaving you with a subtle but present hump. 3) Option 1 can be reinforced by headstock veneers (and thereby also prevent the shifting mentioned under point 2), option 2 not so much (the joint itself, I mean) 4) Option 1 can be hidden/seamlessly integrated into the neck with the aid of backstrapping (elegance AND hiding the joint AND adding significant stiffness to the headstock all rolled into one. Ergo, my choice? Option 1. Option 2 can be fun, though, if you use a contrasting headstock, maybe even add contrasting veneer to accent the joint. To be fair, none of the guitars I've made the other way have failed or shifted, and millions of guitars have likely been made with option 2 that are just fine, but it's definitely neither the only nor the best nor the most economic way to do a scarf joint.

Dummy coils don't have magnets, but hum can still be induced in a coil of wire without magnets wrapped around them. Wire that out of phase with the rest, and you get rid of some of the hum. That's how I understand it, anyway.

Sweet! What german e-bay seller did you get it from/how much was it? I've got a few ideas kicking around my head with woven CF.. re: tooling: it's carbide or bust, really.

I keep unbraced thin plates lying around in a relatively climate controlled area; once braced, I want them on that guitar within 2-3 days, and either weight them lightly or leave them in the go bar deck with one bar.

Spruce is not uncommon, but it's not as common as mahogany, baswood or cedrella (spanish cedar) for lining material.

No, that's the woodworking one. My rasps are significantly faster, more agressive, and leave a smoother finish than the microplane I have, to the point that I hardly use the microplane any more. This is because I have decent quality hand-cut rasps (none of the machine-made stuff you can get at most hardware stores), like StewMac's Dragon rasps.

The P-rails are very high on my 'to-buy' list. And also on my 'to cover with a custom-made wood pickup cover' list, because, as said, they're not particularly attractive pickups.

I do this all the time with guitars with tops on. ie, almost every guitar I build. I plan out my builds precisely, so it's not like my pickup or other cavities are going to be anywhere near 1/2" off. Maybe, on a bad day, 1/16" off. Then again, as I tend to build semi-hollow electrics, I need to be pretty picky about where things go.

Rosewood can be almost black-dark, but always has visible grain. Ebony (and ebonized maple ) do not. Plus, they smell different when scraped. As for adjusting the rod: apply force and bend the neck, then adjust the rod. Decreases the odds of premature nut wear/stripping.

Sap content has little to nothing to do with dryness; as the wood ages, the sap tends to become more brittle/harder/less sticky, but you can have perfectly dry wood with slightly sticky sap pockets. The pain in the butt bit is clearing them out and filling/repairing them in some way, shape or form to make sure they don't interfere with finishing.

You want to take them in/out as little as possible, IMO, as each time you do they go in slightly differently and sit that little bit looser. If you're doing it once, to test fit a neck and bridge while building, that's one thing. I would, however, take them out for finishing in this case. For a recessed floyd (f'r instance) I have no problems leaving them in and masking while finishing, since I'm not going to be spending crazy amounts of effort bringing the trem cavity to insanely high gloss. On anything you need to sand properly, especially if the studs are not flush and you do not want to get sanding marks on the finish/sand through the plating, pull them.

Question: why a soft, dent-y wood like spruce for top AND back over a mahogany core?

CNC machines can have runout issues, etc., and do not in and of themselves guarantee absolute perfect flatness; the user needs to fine tune the machine and ensure it all works - CNC is nothing more than a tool, after all. Reference flat plates are still the gold standard for reference flatness in machine shops. Doing it 'by hand' can mean someone spends the time to make sure everything is ground perfectly flat (not just cast, which can warp and move) and square, and there's no reason for it to be inferior to CNC machined parts.

I usually carve with 80 grit - I want to remove wood, not just sand it; if I'm close to the right shape I shift to the orbital sander at 80 grit (far less agressive) and then 120, 220, 320.

If you need a really, really good tool for a fair price, there's Lie Nielsen and Veritas. This stuff's a cut above, it's the top end custom shop of the plane market. The workmanship, quality, etc. is worth it, and no, CNC will not achieve that all on its lonesome. As with most of these things, if you don't understand the price, it's not for you.

I don't know the Gibsons very well, has to be said, since I don't own any Gibson guitars, but I am quite partial to the 'boring old standard' combo of the JB/Jazz Neck. I don't really do really high-gain pickups in my own guitars, though. The Alnico II's seem like they'd be right up my alley, although I've yet to play a set. They're not high-output buckers. I quite like the '59's in my first build, although they're a touch on the bright side. Not sure if that's just the guitar they're in, however, or the pickups themselves. The duncan pickup I really, really want to try out is the P-Rail. Very likely will be going into one of the next builds I make for myself, unless I can convince the buddy of mine who was thinking about getting P-90s to go for the P-Rails...

Axminster are being pains in the butt and will not ship any liquids or waxes internationally any more. The downside to Baptist is that they're occasionally out of stock. The upside is that they're out of stock because they refuse to order titebond at times of the year that it might drop below zero during shipping (ie, winter), because they know it'll damage the glue. They're a cool place, lots of really nice tools, and in the same city as one of the nicest wood yards in the Netherlands to boot.

Sadly, I don't have any good process pics of volute carving - nothing more than 'look, rough volute, and now quasi finished volute!', so that's no help. The way I approach it is this: 1. Mark the high point on your volute (roughly at the nut, for me) with a line perpendicular to the neck shaft 2. Sand (drum sander, beltsander, thickness sander, your choice) the back of the headstock flat and in so doing create the curved lip at the headstock end. Looks like this at this point. Except probably without backstraps: 3. Now use a rasp to shape the part of the neck by the nut to *roughly* where you want it; leave it a little oversized, as you'll fine-tune that last little bit when the whole neck is done, and you can never add wood, only remove it. I tend to go to within 1mm of the target thickness, and not worry too much about the profile other than to make sure it's 'rounded'. Looks like this: 4. At this point, I usually rough in the neck shaft, as I feel a completed neck helps me visualise and feel the flow for the volute carve. 5. Use a half-round rasp/cabinetmaker's rasp to create a gentle curve from neck shaft to volute peak. The bit you've done this too is now sort of a mirror image of the headstock side of the volute, just very short. Not rounded over yet. 5. Now comes the volute carve! Draw the smiley shape on the back of the headstock, in the shape you want it, and then use the half-round side of a cabinetmaker's rasp to remove the stock. It's sort of like dressing fret ends after you hog away the bulk: roll the rasp over the volute. I start with the rasp almost flat on the back of the neck, and then 'roll' it towards the headstock wing tips. Aim for a flat, fair curve first, then gently start rounding the curve in the other (front to back) dimension. Sometimes I carve from headstock wing to neck shaft (mostly, actually), sometimes the other direct, depending on the grain direction, risk of tearout, etc. This picture is about the best I can do, and shows a rough carved volute, quite clearly highlighting where I have and have not carved: The neck is still very much 'in the rough', as I glue the board and finalize the carve after a rough-carving stage, so the lines (other than the back of the headstock) are not terribly smooth, but it gives you an idea. I hope. Honestly, though? Make a headstock end of the neck out of scrap and practice if you don't get an easy 'feel' for what it is you should be doing.

I use an angle grinder and either a flap sanding disk or a sanding disk - easily found attachement that takes plain sandpaper disks. That they're for metal is sort of irrelevant. Picture:

Arjan, check out Baptist.nl for great tools and - yes - titebond. Also, if you haven't found it yet, check out the Zelfbouw section of the gitaarnet.nl forums. Nice little builder's community, and there's a meet coming up in just a few weeks (June 1). Mattia

Looks like a good machine. Plug it in, check it runs smoothly (no vibration), check the quill for runout (chuck a long, thin bit in there, see if it runs true or vibrates/moves a lot) and wobble when plunged. Eyeballing it, I'm guessing that has something like 6" throat depth, which should be enough for pretty much all guitar work.

Go to http://www.stewmac.com/fretcalc and type in the figures, and will give you the correct stud locations for a Gotoh Floyd, which is the same as an OFR in terms of spacing and installation. In terms of space: butt the neck pickup as close to the end of the neck as possible.

Have to disagree with Daniel; just because epoxy has cohesive strength doesn't mean the adhesive strength is any poorer than titebond. Thousands, if not millions of wooden boats laminated with nothing but epoxy can attest to its strength and durability (and yes, I'm talking about the good stuff). It creates strong bonds, doesn't creep much if at all (titebond is a PVA, does creep, but not a lot, and that's a non-issue for a lot of joints), and doesn't introduce moisutre. Some top builders use Epoxy to laminate necks for this reason and many more use it to glue fingerboards on. That being said, I don't see an advantage over titebond for laminating bodies, unless you want to build a guitar that will not fall apart if ever subjected to flooding or similar. If I was gluing up multi-lams with difficult to glue exotics, I might consider epoxy. As it stands, I'm very seriously considering switching to epoxy for neck lamination, because of the lack of added moisture.

Methinks you need to try some better high-gain passives; there are some fantastic pickups out there, even at very high gain. And if you want to clean up the sound, and want some warmth/grind to a clean/overdriven sound, EMGs aren't quite the ticket. I do quite like them in certain settings, but they are relatively sterile. I can't say I'm terribly impressed with Gibson's buckers - give me Duncans any day. As for crunch/cleanness/etc, that very, very, very much depends on the interaction between the pickups and the amp you use; a new amp will reveal aspects of pickup sound that cheap tranny amps

...go to the store and ask? Because not refundable is all good and well to claim, but if they sell you something unfit for purpose or faulty they still have the obligation to replace it/repair it...