Mattia

yeah ive heard that mahogany doesnt take to stain very well... but im not gonna have any scrap wood cuz i ordered this body from warmoth unfinished... i even called a local luthier and he said he doesnt use figured maple (probably just getting me off his back)... but is there any other wood i could use to practice on that i could get easily?  And is there a non-stewmac brand black grain filler i could use for the mahogany i can buy at a hardware store? and how do i apply this incorperating the quilted maple top?... do i tape it off... cuz i think im gonna do the natural faux binding like myka does on this... i dont think splatters of black grain filler would look very nice on that

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In that case...good luck!

Plenty of luthiers out there don't use flamed maple, or at least don't go crazy with the stain jobs, so it's not that uncommon.

David Myka explained his 'faux binding' method very well with pics in his stain tutorial already, but the short version: mask off everything but the binding, seal it with your sealer of choice, unmask, clean any sealer that got under things, mask the whole top+ edges, grain-fill the back, seal, then start working on the top. If you're gonna stain the top, do yourself a favour and at least get some 'boring' maple from the local yard, or something, just to get a vague feel for how the stains will work. It's not going to be the same as testing on scrap, but it's going to be better than testing on a completely different species of wood.

Also, why do you want black grain filler per se? Me, I like natural coloured stuff. If you want to, you can always tint whatever grain filler you find locally with a compatible stain and make your own black grain filler, or use epoxy (which, again, you can tint).

Guys, I need a Band saw too, but dont know the measurements that has to have for guitar and bass purposes. I´m newb so could anyone explain to me the measurements of height, weigh thickness of cut that would be ok for that ? ?

I read that you suggested to buy a 14" band saw or better but what is 14" ? ?

Thanx,

Demian.

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Dude, go up a few, and click on that link to 'American Woodworker'. There's a nice link to a 'what to look for' PDF file which gives you an idea of what the heck a bandsaw is, what all the numbers mean, and what things you should pay attention to when buying.

Short version, 14" = the diameter of the wheels on the saw.

When I'll do this project I'll be in Edinburgh, I was only in A'dam for the summer I'll remember that for this winter and later on though, thanks a bunch!

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Ah!

In which case, check craft supplies, touchstone tonewoods, and particularly David Dyke's luthierssupplies.

True...it just seemed like the most handy option to be honest, and with the favorable exchange rate...

I'm in The Netherlands (Amsterdam) for now but in Edinburgh during most of the year, and I'm French technically But yeah I kinda live here.

I think I'll need something thicker anyway for the neck. Just to be sure. I'm not too familiar with scarved joints as well, I'd rather do it all in one piece to be honest.

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Heh. Well, I'm half Dutch, half Italian, and I've been living in Amsterdam for, oh, 6 years now.

Since your in Amsterdam, I'd reccomend heading up to the Amsterdamsche Fijnhouthandel, which is up in the Houthavens (above Westerpark, like). It's where I go a-woodshopping for pretty much all my (non-figured) electric guitar wood needs. Don't always have great stuff, or great prices, but they're friendly enough for me, and occasionally have stuff you might want. I know they have some quartersawn maple neck blanks, which are overpriced simply because they picked 'em out, planed them square and labled them as neck blanks. I prefer to go through their stacks of 'regular' wood, and leave their 'guitar woods' by the wayside. Fijnhout.nl is the address, in case you care.

3/4" (about 19-20mm) planed, surfaced wood is perfectly good for either a scarf-jointed or a fender-style neck, but too thin if you want to do a 1-piece fender neck (no seperate fingerboard). Remember the 'board adds a good 1/4" or so (maybe slightly less) to the overall neck thickness.

Scarf jointing isn't terribly hard if you've got moderate skills with a hand plane; almost all my necks are scarfed, with a veneer on top (and the next few will have one on the back as well, to hide the joint completely and add still more support to the whole thing.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of 1-piece angled headstock necks, both because they're potentially weaker (lots of short grain) than a well-scarfed neck, and because they're inherently, well, pretty damn wasteful in terms of wood. It's also a whole lot easier to find a smaller piece of clear, quartersawn wood. The fact I don't have a bandsaw to saw out the basic shape probably doesn't help either :-)

Pott: you're in NL, right? A flatsawn maple blanks (which is probably what you'll get from warmoth for 15 bucks) shouldn't cost that much, even here. I got a whole board of slightly flamed (flatsawn) maple for about 26 euros, enough for three to four necks. If you're ordering from warmoth anyway, might as well, but remember the shipping costs for transatlantic stuff ain't negligible.

I don't know if it will be available to you, but i'll be purchasing a Scheppach 12" bandsaw in the next coming months - going to upgrade from my basic 10" SIP

The scheppach 12" Basato is a smaller version of the Basato 5 which is regarded as the best european bandsaw. The 12" is about £350 which might be out of your budget ?

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Well, one of the best, anyway. The 'big guns' are still generally Italian, such as Meber, Centauro, Agazzani and similar. But those are really, really, really huge monsters of machines. I'd love to own one, but sadly, no space..

Fair enough. Just pointing out that many roads lead to Rome. One of my other reasons for being a bit more 'stingy' with dyes is that StewMac won't ship the damn things internationally any more, so I'm kinda stuck with the colours I already have (red, blue, amber, black), and I've as yet been unsuccessful in finding metal-acid dyes/stains anywhere here. I know Target Coatings still ship transtint stuff (same stuff, different label) internationally, but their shipping charges are really quite insane.

Well.... MAbey its not possible...  But what i mean (And thanks alot for helpin me somewhat) Because each humbucker has 2 coils, then thatd be 4 coils in total.. I just would like an on/off for each individual coil... If your still confused, then ill have to carefully try again....

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Ah, ok, I get it now. But let me explain why that setup isn't the most versatile/useful setup you can get.

In theory you could have an on/off switch per coil, but why? All that would give you is weak single coil sounds (tapped buckers aren't quite the same as real single coils, sound wise, as each coil is often quite a bit weaker, thinner sounding), and if you turn both coils on, they'll be in parallel, giving you a 'fat single coil' tone, rather than a real humbucker tone.

Humbuckers consist of two coils joined up in series, out of phase with each other so that they 'buck' the hum. ie, the + of one coil goes into the - of the other, and the other two leads are used as overall + and - (simplified version, electrically perhaps not quite 'correct' version, but it should help). Daisy-chained. Parallel operation: the + for each coil goes straight to output, the - straight to ground. What a coil tap usually does is 'short circtuit' one of the two coils, so only the remaining coil goes to the output. Now, there will be some difference between selecting one single coil vs the other, but it's fairly minimal. IMO the most useful sounds out of these 3 are, in order: True humbucking (series operation), Parallel (single-coil-ish, less midrange/fat sounding than standard series operation, still humbucking, still quite high output), Single Coil/Coil Tap (Generally fairly thin sounding, lower output, character similar to parallel operation but not quite).

If you want real single coil tone, install single coils.

Now, you can have one switch per pickup that'll select series, parallel or coil tap for that pickup. That's plenty of versatility right there, and fairly idiot-proof when it comes to 'at a glance' evaluation of what pickup's doing what. It's what I do on pretty much all my humbucker guitars, because its versatile.

You still need a 3-way to select the pickups themselves, of course.

Now, the other two possibilities, tone-wise, that I see are: putting the two humbuckers in series with each other, and phase shifting one or both.

Starting with the series operation: what this does, essentially, is create one giant mega-humbucker, with each humbucker being one 'coil' in the big 'bucker. Regular operation (switch selection) is parallel, and that's the sound you're used to. What you get if you put the pickups in series is a fatter, fuller, slightly higher output, bit of midrange emphasis. It's fairly easily done, just look at the switch, the leads (+ from one into - of the other) and figure it out. I find this a pretty useful sound, and generally put it on a push/push pot, usuall the volume control. Tap for more punch, basically. One detail: the way I wire 'em, if you select bridge only and have 'em in series, it's like a kill switch. By making one 'giant' bucker, you only have one output, and that one output goes to the switch. Necessities of working with gibson-style leaf switches, anyway. I suppose it could be gotten around with a multi-pole switch.

Phase shifting a pickup is simply done by reversing the + and - leads for one pickup. You probably won't notice much if any change if you only have the one pickup selected, but if you have both selected, and you phase shift one, the change will be pretty darn clear. The result is generally a thinner, twangier, nasal tone, as you've basically inverted the sine wave; frequencies that reinforced each other now cancel each other out, and vice versa. Personally, on the one guitar I did this on (phase shift for bridge pickup only), I didn't find it useful. It's the control I really pracitally never use. But that's just me, I guess.

As I see it, you'd need three mini switches (On/On/On) for the series/parallel/single per pickup and pickup selection, plus one more, or a push/pull pot if you can leave the stacked pot alone and use two controls instead, for the series. If you really want the phase shifting as well, a second push/pull can take care of it.

Order of pickups -> output:

Pickup -> s/p/single switch -> (phase switch) -> series switch -> pickup selector -> volume control (or vice versa if you want independent volume controls per pickup) -> output jack.

Doing all this stuff yourself, on paper, and understanding what signal's going where is going to help immesurably. Don't worry if you can't read electronics diagrams, though; draw the actual pots and switch terminals, and use some coloured pencils/markers. As long as you understand what's happening where, you'll be able to trouble shoot, and honestly, it's not horribly difficult.

Stain was the Stew Mac Colortone, and I added stain to 4 oz of water until I reached the tone that I wanted.  The mix ratio that they recomend is way too weak.  I think that a 25 stain to 75 water should get you close to the one I did, now I did those top very wet, and once I finished the whole top, I let it sit for a few minutes for it to soak, and then with wet clean rags I started to "clean" the excess stain and this brings up the highlights on the top of the figure.

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A note on this: I find I need very little stain dissolved in water (much less than 25%) to get nicely workable results. The advantage, to me, of a 'lighter' stain is that I can simply re-stain over the top with a bit more if I want it marginally darker. I don't shoot for a stain mixture that'll give me the colours I want in one application; I'd rather do it in layers. Yeah, you get more solvent on it this way, but it gives me some extra control.

Oh another question: did you drill the string through holes straight down, or at an angle?

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I'm not Perry, but I'll say that I've never seen string-through holes drilled at an angle, and those look pretty darn straight to me. Millions of guitars out there made that way.

I have always heard and experinced this statement :

"Plywood and luan are “layered” wood products".

I have used luan in 1/4" sheets for backing on furniture I have built.

This is not a layered wood that I have. Nor has any of the luan I have seen been "dark reddish brown" in color, always a light tannish looking. I am not saying anyone is wrong, I am saying thats a whole new ....... Board to whack me with if you are correct. I will check into it tommorow after work, now I have to crash (gotta be up in 3 hrs.)

night!

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Luan's a species of Asian wood, like Meranti (and might be the same thing). It's most often seen in plywood (ie, Luan outer skin ply), but saying it is plywood is like saying Birch is a layered wood product, because a lot of the birch you see is in plywood.

I really need a wiring diagram for the guitar im building....    Its going to be  2 Buckers.... Id like to have 4 mini toggle switches, one for each coil so that i can have any possibility between the 2 P.u's.  Im also going to have a concentric Pot. for the master tone / vol.  I cant find anywhere that has this.... so id appreciate more than you can imagine is someone could get me a scematic. thanks!

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Um, get ye to a wiring site for most of it. StewMac has various wiring diagrams in their free info section for concentric pots, if you want that.

Basically, 2 of your mini switches will do series/parallel/single duty (on/on/on, stewmac has wiring diagrams, as do Seymour Duncan). Next mini switch (I suppose) you want to do phase and/or series wiring (although I'm not sure you can do phase shift and series in one pickup, and I'm too lazy to figure it out), and one to simply select the pickups (N,N+B,, right?

Don't count on new Deltas necessarily having the same quality as the old stuff that's lasted decades. This holds true for many brands out there, in fact.

Normally I'm not one for big funky paintjobs, but....wow. Just, wow.

Just throwing this out there, Luan Mahogany is often used to make doors and it is not considered the best mahogany as a tonewood. Not saying it is bad, just below the South American and African variants.

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Luan is luan, and other than vaguely resembling mahogany in coloration and grain, has pretty much nothing in common with the African and American mahoganies, which are generally members of the same family (Meliceae) but different genuses (Swetinia for 'real' mahoganies, Khaya and Entandrophragma for the African mahoganies. Spanish Cedar, Cederella Odorata, is also in the same family). The Afr and Am mahoganies all work pretty similarly, are similar in density, some slightly coarser grained than others, etc. Luan, Meranti, often used for plywood, are significantly heavier, and seem to be quite a bit more splinter prone.

Me? I'd avoid Luan and Meranti (which I *think* are two names for the same thing..most all 'tropical wood' ply over here is labeled as meranti) if any of the african mahoganies were available, since they're generally in the same price bracket, ish.

Damn!!! I spent a whole evening searching for someone willing to sell me som WENGE and perhaps some other delicious stuff, someone might have stashed away for my use.

What could i find??? nothing!!! perhaps I'm not this big nerd, who can just click the buttons, and find anything in a second. If anyone "in here" might know something about finding some of the good stuff to build guitars from (and perhaps a kitchen table, just to impress my wife ) I should be most obliged. It just can't be true, that one can't find what he needs these modern and interactive days. did I mention that I'm from Denmark???

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Ah, the joys of huntin' for wood in Europe!

First stop: check your yellow pages for hardwood sellers. Bound to be a few around. There ain't no such thing as wood that's 'specially' needed for instruments; hit the lumber yards and dig through the piles until you find a piece of the right quality. Or let specialist suppliers do the choosing for ya :-) The yard around my corner (Amsterdam, NL) has more african mahogany and Wenge than I can shake a stick at, and lots of other woods, too. Bit on the expensive side,, that's true, but still. There are tonewood dealers in Germany (google tonholtz or similar), but I've never used any of 'em, and the UK has Craft Supplies (hit and miss quality, at times, talk to the wood guy by phone if you want something specific) and Dave Dyke's Luthiers Supply (bit pricey, but very good service, very good product). For fingerboards/any acoustic woods, consider one of the spanish suppliers like Maderas Barber or Madinter (15 euros for a top grade ebony board, 3.50 for a top grade EIR board), but if you go acoustic and want tops, Italy (riwoods) or one of the swiss/austrian tonewood suppliers is probably the best way to go.

Hi,

I have not posted before, but appreciate everyone's post as I have learned alot from stopping by every few day to read   all the wisdom from forum memebers.\

I am getting ready to move from bolt on necks and wanted to try a set neck or even a neck-thru. 

can anyone suggest the best resource (book...etc...) for step by step instructions on building the neck?  with the angled back headstock, truss rod, shaping the neck and the radius of the fretboard.

I may be getting ahead of myself, but I would at least like to start moving in that direction.

thanks.

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Melvyn Hiscock's 'Make Your Own Electric Guitar', and various pictorials/discussions on various forums all over teh interweb should get you what you're looking for. The book's a very good basic text, and covers the basics of set necks and neck throughs (neck throughs are, I find a touch easier than set necks if you're not comfortable with your mortise/tenon making skills). I say go for it! My first scratch-build was a set neck, and the next 6 were either set neck or neck through.

Hey there forum,  So I'm getting around to the last portion of my first build.  We just glued the neck yesterday.  We built up a crude paint booth.  I practiced spraying on a twisted piece of birdseye maple...boy the scrathes really come to life when you get a finish down...but I digress... I wanted to ask if it was desireable to pore fill under the nut.  My instinct says nothing should be under the nut but naked wood and system 3 epoxy.  That would mean attaching the nut before the pore filling, or masking off the nut area before pore filling.  Any thoughts?

Of course reading up on the threads on fillers and sealers, lots of you use system 3 as a filler, so there wouldnt be any harm in having a filler layer under the glue layer. However, I am using a paste filler on the mahagony parts.  I have the maple top and the rosewood board masked off. 

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Seriously, don't worry about it too much. I'd want to keep the system3 filler out of the nut area, but only because it means less cleanup, assuming you've already got it properly shaped and all. Mask it off if you want to, take you no more than a few secs, and be careful not to glue the masking tape down inadvertently. Alternately, just clean out goops afterwards, won't take long.

It really doesn't matter what kind of finish/not finish/bare wood/filler/sealer is or isn't unde the nut. The strings hold it down, along with a tiny amount of a nice, weak glue. Two tiny dots of CA are probably already overkill, although they'll do fine, elmers or titebond in tiny amounts are also perfectly good materials to use. Removing a nut should be very simple, and require little more than a light tap with a hammer.

Everyone has a little secret he keeps

Like your original post?

Tele's fall into the same category as a Les Paul Jr (etc) does. It is nothing more than a plank of wood with a neck and a simple bridge that is easy to purchase and install. That is why people are so obsessed; you get quick results with Tele type guitars. Beginners like that, it is near instant gratification.

From the perspective of a woodworking challenge Tele's don't offer much. Especially when you can purchase everything and simply put it together. Just building a body and screwing the rest together may produce an accurate Tele but it does nothing for your skills as a luthier. If you really want to begin building guitars then build everything. Or try Warmoth, they can help you get out of actually building it.

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I'll second that, for sure. My 'staples' are carved top (and back), generally chambered set neck instruments, so I figured I'd try my hand at a strat and a tele (in part because, well, I didn't have any maple neck bolt ons with single coils, so I figured I'd build me a couple. That's a normal way of doing things, right?). They've been on hold (for various reasons) for a good while now, but basically, I'm the equivalent of 7-9 days into the actual building, and I've pretty much got two instruments I could, in a pinch, bolt together and wire in an afternoon. The necks need a bit of finish sanding work, one needs a small amount of shaping (doesn't feel quite right), but they were very, very quick and easy to build. I'll probably be making another couple of Teles (because, though I don't quite understand the hype, quite a few of my friends like 'em), and I guesstimate I could probably, now I've done it, knock out a body and have it ready for spraying in a day, maybe another day and a bit for the neck. Couple of templates, good router bits, and yer body's done.

Neck building's neck building, doesn't matter overmuch if its bolted, glued or neck-through. In a sense, it's what makes or breaks a guitar; assuming a good setup, the quality of the fretting, the shape of the neck define what a guitar feels and plays like more than any other feature. This said, it's a huge amount of fun, and not that obscenely difficult to do, even if you're a beginner with little to no woodworking experience (though it helps), as long as you've got a lot of patience, a good eye, and a good hand (your sense of touch will tell you more about a neck than any amount of looking will.

Anyway, given a long weekend, a Tele's a very doable project if you know what you're up to. Excluding finishing, natch, and that's a whole other can of worms.

Well as you guessed, I want to get started with building guitars and some of its components.

The first try I will do will be a 16" radius maple fingerboard. Then I'll try and build my own neck without inlays, and then hopefully a bound, inlayed neck.

I am also planning on getting started on fretting as son as I can.

So I was thinking of buying:

Stew Mac's fretting kit

One of Stew Mac's radiused maple fretboard

a 16" and a 12" radius block (for later one when I will want to do compound radius

frets (mhmm duh)

Wood glue

Right now, what matters is what I'd need for the first project only, but I'm also looking for suggestions on what I'd need to build my own neck.

If you can think of any tools I may need aside from those I mentioned, I'd be more than happy Thanks!

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If you want a compound radius, get all the different blocks between 12" and 16". Not just the extremes. You could simply join up the two ends with a flat block (in a sense, the easiest way for getting a conical fingerboard; the point of a concial/compound radius is that the fingerboard is flat and straight under each string, which isn't the case with a cylindrical/normal radius). Fretting tools that I feel are essential: SM fret tang nipper, fret nipper, fret file, something to level frets (file, flat old #5 plane body with sandpaper on, up to you). Good place to start. For inlay, small files, dremel with a good base, jeweler's saw, pateince. Binding fingerboards is really quite simply if you've got a tang nipper, BTW.

Neck building tools: if you're doing a scarf joint: good hand saw (Japanese saws == Teh Best), hand plane (decent block plane is my most used tool, followed by a jack plane, say a #4. UK made Stanley's aren't half bad for the price, but need some tuning. Any plane that's not a Lie-Nielsen, and to a slightly lesser extent Veritas, will need tuning.) If your wood isn't squared and planed already, you'll need the bigger of the two for that as well. Planes also make short work of trimming a fingerboard to size (taper). A router for truss rods/Carbon fibre. A jigsaw will do just fine; bandsaws are in the 'nice to have, but really not essential' category. I don't own one, won't own one for a while due to lack of space to store one, and I get by. Do I wish I had one? Yeah. Neck shaping: spokeshave if you want one, but I reccomend a microplane rasp, a half-round file, a set of scrapers, plenty of sandpaper. Re: clamps, Cam clamps are great. Won't mar the work (they're wood), easy to use, lightweight. I use about 8 clamps per neck when fixing a fingerboard. Bit overkill, perhaps, but I really don't believe in the mythological 'starving the glue joint', or that I'll ever get enough clamping pressure for that to be an issue.

Re: Glue, buy some titebond original. Not any of the other 'better' glues.

There's also the fact that you'll probably pay about twice what US folks are quoting for any given tool, if you get one of equivalent quality (Blue Bosch stuff is good, we don't have Porter Cable here). Pretty much forget finding small bandsaws of any quality at all for cheap; tools here tend to be either hobby quality, or full-on industrial quality. Annoying at times, but there you have it. OTOH, when you're ready to drop 1500 on a bandsaw, you can usually find a good deal on a quality Italian-made piece of kit.

Shopping tip: axminster.co.uk. UK-based shop, lots of power tools, including quite a few 'American' style ones (more or less the entire range of Jet tools, for quite a bit more than you'll see them in the US), all sorts of routers, and a pretty darn good selection of hand tools. Also carry titebond if you didn't know where to dig it up.

I'm new at this so this might sound seriously stupid...but. If I make pickup covers out of solid wood,

will it read through the wood like its not there or should I drill holes through it for better sound?

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Keep 'em thin (mostly just so you can get the pickups close enough to the strings) and they should do fine. Wood isn't magnetic, and shouldn't interfere with the magnetic fields involved. Plenty of high end basses with wood covers out there.

well, 12" sound too far for me. Try 9", thats what id do with pressure packs.

The coat needs to look wet, but without runs.

If it goes dull when it dries, you havent put enough on. If it runs, well... you know....

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I agree, 12" seems a tad excessive. It's amazing what getting the distance, pressure and movement rate will do for your finish. I have a spray gun, but I shoot at about 20cm/9"/distance from thumb to pinky when doin' the 'Hang loose' and/or 'telephone hand' thang. If it goes dull immediately/feels dry to the touch, chances are it's dried on the way to the body, istead of hitting the body and then drying.

Short version: I shape the two 'ends' of the carve with a half-round rasp, facet the neck (mark out straight lines to follow, remove wood between them, until it's vaguely the right shape), generally using a microplane rasp, smooth out the countours with saidsame rasp, sometimes a file, sometimes a japanese hacksaw rasp, clean up/fine tune with scrapers and sandpaper.

Even more basically: remove wood until it feels like a neck, and make sure all the lines are smooth, even and straight. Sanding blocks helpful.

Yep, good place to start. Melvyn's book is pretty much the 'standard' work, IMO. Also, look at the tutorials section here, the strat building one (Guitarfrenzy's, I think) very nicely illustrates how to cut a body to shape with a jigsaw and trim with a router+template, and is just generally very informative.

Guys, I have received from Amazon The first book that I ordered. Is´s The Melvyn Hiscock´s one  .  I´m still waiting for the Martin Koch´s one.

I didnt begin reading it yet, but I´m a little dissapointed because the photos are in black and white. 

DO YOU KOW IF THE PHOTOS OF THE MARTIN KOCH´s BOOK ARE B&W TOO ?

Demian

I know that it is stupid or irrelevant but... just curious!!

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Uh, I'm not sure, but I think Koch's book also has B/W photos in the text. Honestly, the only place where full colour really adds necessary info is in sections on staining/colouring finishes, and even there, photographs don't always capture what you're trying to explain. Full colour printing is pricey, and honestly, the illustrations in MYOEG aren't any less useful for not being full colour.