WezV

The stew-mac ones i have had have all been very close to thickness and perfectly usable, in fact i prefer to use them when i am after a skinny neck because they are thinner than the fretboards i make myself from blanks. Some of the pre slotted and radiused boards i have had from them have been quite pale indian rosewood, wheras the blanks have always been darker and prettier, probably just down to chance but there you go. They dont have the zero fret but some have the nut slot for fender style nuts. I just ordered the fret slotting jig to replace my home made solution because i rarely use ebony or rosewood for fretboards at the moment.

I just watched Sin City the other night. Looks a lot like the Kevin character, after his arms and legs have been chopped off. Hes not wrong, i think it needs to be a bit curvier at the waist and i would probably ofset the body shape a little. It really depends on what the guitar will look like at the end, i think the shape would suit a highly figured top but would not look good as a solid colour.

Looks like we are all learning some things about image posting

Its worth having a picture show with in your post because a lot of people just skim through them quickly and wont bother following any links unless you give them a teaser. Just remember that you can only have one picture per post, the rest can be links. The basses are very nice so people need to see them. If you make a mistake at any point you can always edit your post afterwards. You should probably practice by trying to post a picture one of the other basses and links to the rest. Can you tell i work as a teacher during the day

Glad you like it, they are hard things to design because they always look wrong at first. Have i mentioned recently that i love ziracote, i wanted solid ziracote necks on two of these but larry davis said he would have to use acoustic side material and it would be prohibitively expensive. He did offer me a good price on macasser ebony neck blanks but i have had reactions with that wood in the past so i went with some very nice maple instead

Thats better, You can use the code photobucket provides for you. To link to an individual picture you need to copy the text from the url box underneath the picture. If you use the button thats the earth with a peice of chain (when writing your post) it will ask you for an url (copied from photobucket) and then it will ask you for a name for the link (whatever you want). That looks like this: low end fuzz's bass to put a pictue into a post you copy the text from the img box below the picture in photobucket. it comes up like this I still dont know how to do clickable thumbnails though..

I now have the first three roughly cut out (the forth will have to wait a couple of months!!) sorry pics are a bit blurry and a bit large One is thicknessed, the other two are not. sides singlecut guitar back singlecut bass back doublecut guitar back bass front (not wiped with owt) doublecut front (again with nothing on it) Ziracote fretboards for all three

looks pretty cool but you need to sort out posting your pictures here if you want people to take an interest. I suggest you get over to photobucket.com or somewhere similar and set up an account (its free). Uploading pictues to photobucket is no harder than uploading them to myspace. Photobucket then provides you with the code for posting an image or a link here which you can copy and paste into your message!

Yea!! finally on the front page The counter on my website has doubled today This vote still needs closing though!!

why not design your own and have something truly original!! what sort of guitars do you like the look of already, exotic can mean different things to different people.

NICE!!!!!!

Now come on Setch, dont you think you have had long enough By the way, i will be trying your method of doing the wooden backplates in the next few days.

This is unusual aint it I thought they were normally quite prompt at getting the new GOTM onto the front page.

You basically need a large flat clamping caul that covers the entire top of the guitar, not as good as a vacuum but passably in the home workshop situation. The caul needs to be dead flat and thick enough so it wont distort. I have had good results using an off cut from a kitchen worktop, the kind thats 2" thick chipboard with a plastic veneer on it. I use a sheet of greaseproof paper between the veneer and caul to make sure it doesnt stick. I also put an extra caul that goes along the middle of the body to make sure that the worktop isnt bending at all. If someone is having a kitchen fitted near you see if you can get he sink cutout from the new worktop, should be just about the right size.

never had any problems, even with heavily spalted maple!!

It took a bit of drawing to get it right . . . as you can probably tell if you look at all the rubbing out in the plan The body still needs a lot of truing up, but it should start to make sense once i have the neck sorted, looks a bit weird on its own!! I wanted to keep some similar themes running thru this batch, thats why wenge and maple stripes and ziracote fretboards are a common feature. I was drawing plans yesterday with my cousin for another guitar that might be in this batch. We are building it together cause he's been spraying for me and wanted to learn more. Its a basic superstrat shape (strat with deep cutaways and longer horns) but we narrowed it down and slightly ofset the body. Its looking pretty nice and quite original but i dont have any pictures at the moment, we wont be starting it for about a month, need to gather materials first. It will be Swamp ash with another maple burl top, which i do have a picture of: ignore the outline, anyone who orders from gallery hardwoods will recognise it I love this peice of wood B-) This guitar is having the left over wood from the bass neck blank, 3 peice flamed maple with wenge pinstripes. 2" thick neck blanks are great, its always nice having offcuts you can make another neck from. It will probably be dual humbuckers and a tune-o-matic bridge, Nath doesnt stray far from that combo. So thats a lot for me to do before november the 2nd (also the day my brother decided to get married, the bugger), and i still have a LP jnr, 12 string and another bass that are nearly done.

I hate stating new inprogress threads when i still have others running, but i am waiting for lacquer to cure on the last few so i have started some new ones I am working on 3 or 4 guitars that will hopefully be going to Music Live 2006 in november so i am going a bit higher spec than the last few guitars i have built The first one is a 35" scale length 4 string bass. The body is lacewood (not sure which kind) with maple and wenge accent lines and a dyed acryicized (sp) flamed maple top from gallery hardwoods. The neck is 3 peice flamed maple with wenge pinstripes, and the fretbaord is ziracote. It will have a hipshot bridge and seymour duncan soapbar pickups with active 3-band EQ Heres the design: and the work so far, i wet the top with white spirit so its probably darker than it will end up: Body cut out (still need to remove more from cutaways) another angle neck blank, ready for final thicknessing wenge and maple accent lines The second one started is the most basic, its another ravelle type thing. Body is african walnut with wenge and maple laminates and the neck is black limba with matching laminates running the whole length of the guitar (like a neck through, but not). Its also gonna have a ziracote fretboard. Not sure whats going on it yet but heres the body roughly cut out: body The other guitar is a new double cut design. Its gonna have a black limba body with wenge and maple accent lines again and a maple burl top. Neck will be birdseye maple and ziracote fretboard (again). It will have bareknuckle H/S/S pickups and a wilkinson trem with graphtech F.A.A.S saddles and preamp (always wanted to try it) Heres the design: doodle top wood

I use my very cheap drill press with stew-mac's fretting caul and neck support. The drill press provides more than enough pressure but i do have to put blocks of wood under the drillstable to stop if moving when i press down. I carve first then fret.

Fair point , but i dont want to get cocky about it!! You never know when those other 5895 members will turn up to vote.

Whoops, i thought voting ended on the last day of the month. Sorry for being premature.

OK, Ok i get the message, it aint authentically vintage Really i just wanted to try them out to see what all the fuss is about, and i am making a real effort to clean up my bad wiring habits and have control cavities i can be proud of. They definately look better than the disks so i got some. what about these: hovland musicap That definately seems excessive for a tone pot

I though adding the carve would be a good way to make it look like it was meant to be there rather than an afterthought I didnt suggest the rick way because i thought it would be a bit difficult to pull off on a already completed headstock, it takes a lot of design work and carefull tuner choice to pull it off. The normal tuners are very close to the edge of the headstock because the channel for the other tuners dont leave much room. The headstock also needs to be a bit thicker than normal so there is enough room to fix tuners to its edge. Also notice that the rickenbacker 12 string headstock has straighter edges than they normaly use or you already have on the guitar. Its all possible, i would trim the headstock edges down and attach new ears so you could cut a straighter headstock shape. Fill in the old tuner holes and veneer the headstock till it was thick enough to take tuners on the side (although yours looks quite thick anyway). Then you would be at the stage where you could easily do the rick headstock, and it would look better (more fitting with the guitar style) than my original suggestion. As for the frets, you can make them lower but you cant really make them any thinner, if you want to change the profile use a small triangle file rather than the wrong sized fret file, it gives you more control of the shape. Making them more pyramid in shape may make them feel thinner

Thanks to everybody who voted for me!! My first GOTM, yippee!!!!

You should be able to take a bit of wood of the back of the neck without any problems, I would take material mainly from the cheeks of the neck rather than directly behind the truss rod but thats because i carved through to a truss rod once (it aint something you do twice!!). And there should also be no problem with milling down the frets as long as you leave enough material to put a proper crown on them. The 12 string idea is nice but you would need a solution to the tuner problem, i dont think you have enough room on that headstock and i dont think they would look great on the end of the body.. ...Although!!!!! ....... Maybe you could carve the end of the body behind the bridge in a similar shape to a real rickenbacker, and route a ledge on the back of the guitar to mount tuners on (probably these if i was doing it steinberger tuners) It might just look alright heres a quick pick of what i mean, this would be a view from the end of the guitar, its about as complex as my computer drawing gets

What does Nathan sheppard recommend if he says the axminster stuffs no good? Or better still, will he let you use his