WezV

Actually mickguard the stew-mac bridge is just the same, i have one of them and it also has staggered holes. I comtemplated doing something about it too but just left it as it was in the end, what i was going to do was install a flat single coil shaped peice of brass on the back of the guitar that surrounded all six holes, the holes still wouldnt be in line but i think it would look more correct than the six individual ferrules being staggered. I am not sure about drilling a new hole in the base plate because they have been staggered for a reason, i dont think there is as much intonation adjustment on these bridges compared to the six string version

Well done dude!!

I just put some (one tone and one treble bleed) in my Wez paul junior purely because of the way they look. Its shallow i know but the guitar already feels so vintage it wouldnt have been right to put owt else in

Go over to talkbass and have a look at some of the instruments in the luthiers section. Its hard to come up with new guitar designs that guitarists will actually buy over the famous brands, i think bassists are more willing to try unusual shapes and designs if they think it will suit them, they seem more open to new technologies being used on there basses as well.. I like building guitar because i am a guitarist but i find designing basses much more fun because you can start to think outside the box without alienating your target group.

Hmmm.. I just saw a gently flowing water fall cascading into a crystal clear pool of water with unique sedementary rock formations. My psychology degree is trying to tell me something here, what could it be we could set up some interesting personality tests with those chunks of wood

Looks like your starting to get some skill at this Ben The shape of the whole thing looks pretty cool, i like the carving, should look good when it smoothed out. However: Pine for a fretboard!!???!!! I dont reckon its gonna last very long or sound to great but if you want to improve its chances you could start soaking it with water thin CA to harden it off, or at least giveit a good coat of epoxy. Dont skimp dude, sometimes its worth paying the £6 a fretboard blank is gonna cost you from craft supplies. The headstock does look awfully fragile.... I dont think hitting it on the worktop will help its chances but i suppose its all good practice and as long as you make the neck bolt-on it can always be replaced when you have a bit more money for materials. Have you considered putting an acoustic pickup/bridge on this and stringing it with nylons. At least that way the fretboard would stand a better chance of survival, still might not sound great though!!

Is that right!! About 10 years ago the 60's fender basses were dirt cheap compared to the guitars of the same age, i always presumed bassists were less bothered about the whole vintage thing, being more forward thinkers and all. I had a 60's mustang bass in perfect (closet classic) condition that i payed £300 for back then from a guitar shop, i sold it quite quickly (for the same price) because i never got on with the short scale length

RELIC!!!

Are you joking!! Most vintage freaks would go just as mad for a 50's les paul as they would a 50's strat, personally i would prefer the gibbo anyday but i dont have that kind of money The only real difference between fender collectors and gibson collectors is people dont mind (as much) old fenders being well worn, gibson collectors get very finicky if anythings been bashed about too much. Fender people want used but original, gibson people want pristine but nicely aged although strangely they dont seem to mind the odd headstock reglue OLD gibbo's look great, i love the old sunbursts where the red has faded (unburst).

I am also in the market for an angle grinder after seeing that video!! Ben- Go buy yourself some better router bits!! The free ones are usually pretty useless, i used them for ages till i brought some perform and CMT ones from axminster, suddenly my cheap router was producing lots of fine little shavings rather than dust - and i was making less router slips!!! I have a very cheap router but i make sure my bits are good quality. My workshop is the small bedroom in my two bedroom terrace house, the workbench is thrown together from a few left over roofing timbers my dad had and a bit of kitchen worktop. Tools wise i have a small delta bandsaw that was given to me, a small drill press, router and i have recently got a scroll saw and belt/disc sander. The first guitar was done with just a router and hand drill and the only specialised tool was a fretsaw, dont think i ever want to cut a body out by hand ever again. I know a wood turner with a planer, table saw and thicknesser that helps me get wood to the sizes i need but if you use suppliers that thickness wood accurately to quoted dimensions you can get away without needing these (stew-mac and gallery hardwoods spring to mind). This guy was a great help, he gave me his old bandsaw when he upgraded to one we could resaw with and he gave me enough honduras mahogany for 7 guitars, wood turners dont really go mad after mahogany like we do!! Things are starting to get very dusty no matter how much i clean so i think the next investment will be an air filter thingy from axminster. Luckily i am no longer finishing in the bedroom. My cousin has just taken over spraying duties coz he has a large shed with a decent sized compressor in it, hes gonna be doing a bit of building with me as well. He also has a lot more experience with an angle grinder than i do and has voluntered to be the gineau pig with that technique. Sooner or later i am looking at building a large wooden workshop in the back garden where i can do most of the grunt work and still keep the bedroom workshop for the gentle things.

Those headstock veneers just made me dribble, wheres the dribbling smiley when you need it!! Oh, there it is

Dont worry mickguard, i tend to avoid doing too much with flamed maple but i knew it would suit my cousin down to the ground, i do try and be a bit different to the norm. I have a LP jnr just about finished that i need to make the pickguard for soon, probably more your tastes

I liked the rainforest paint job alot, with this and the jimi relic in the work in progress ection i am tempted to get the paints out The cigar box is also great, seems like a lot more care has gone into it than people usually put into a CBG i wanna build one but the two cigar boxes i have are far too thin. Need more cigars!! I like the contours and wood on the bass but i am distracted by the fact the bass wing is so much narrower than the treble side. Lee's got a black limba body, that always does it for me but i dont like the maple headstock. I reckon you should try a laminated neck with contrasting woods if you do this again. A bit about mine: The shape is based on a fernandes ravelle (as i am sure alot of you have noticed), its not a direct copy though. When i am asked to do a guitar a certain shape i look at the guitar and draw my own version rather than focus on doing an exact copy. My cousin said he loved the fernandes shape but would never buy one because it was a fernades. I have developed the shape to make it more original (see website link below) Its not really an arch/carved top. The maple top is quite thin and i just do a soft, shallow bevel around the edge and set the binding deeper to give the impression of a fully carved top on a budget. The locking jack socket is probably not a great idea, people forget that its there and start tugging on the lead so i wouldnt be surprised if it breaks at some point and i have to replace it. How often do leads fall out anyway?

What are you hoping to achieve by swapping the fretboard to ebony? A mahogany/ebony neck should have a little more tightness and clarity than the mahogany/rosewood combo but this is all theory and generalisations, the fact is that wood varies so much from peice to peice that it might not make any difference at all. Its a lot of work for a small chance of tonal improvement that could be achieved by other means (turning a knob on the amp ) If you are doing it heres the general process: 1, DEFRET: Basically you can just rip these out if you are scrapping the fretboard, if it was a refret you would heat them and pull them out carefully to avoid chips 2, REMOVE BINDING: i would score along the length of the edge of the binding so the neck finish doesnt chip(where mahogany meets plastic), then wiggle a knife in the top edge and it should pull off quite easily. 3, REMOVE FRETBOARD: This can be done quite easily with a clothes iron and some pallette knifes. You heat up the fretboard and wiggle the knifes in the join, takes a while at first but once the glue starts to soften it should come up easily. It will probably look like a banana but clamp it flat coz you can use it as a template for the new fretboard 4, NEW FRETBOARD: I would follow the advice above and buy a pre-slotted and radiused one. You have a couple of options on how to attach it. You can either trim it slighlty oversize, glue it to the neck and trim it back to the neck after or you can use the old fretboard as a template and cut it bang on size. Either way i would stick a couple of staples in the neck and cut them so little spikes stick up and act as locating pins. One staple at either end should be enough to help locate the fretboard and stop slippage. on an already carved neck you can use stew-macs fretboard clamps or just a really large rubber band wrapped round the neck loads of times. 5, BINDING: This step depends on what you did in the last one, if you glued the fretboard oversize you now need to route for binding which is made harder by the radius on the fretboard, if you did it the other way you should have a ledge ready, just in need of a little clean up (assuming nothing slipped in glue up stage, if it did you have a problem) 6, INLAY 7, REFRET 8, SET-UP 9, PLUG IT IN AND REALISE IT WAS NOT WORTH THE EFFORT

Yeah its from were i routed for the truss rod, i like em at the body end, i suppose i should have filled it but its gonna be covered by the scratchplate anyway. The body is about 1 1/2" thick on this guitar cause the ash was heavy

heres my Jnr DC with long tenon, its an ash body and solid wenge neck: I made the tenon as long as possible with the neck blank i had. I will have to redesign the scratchplate slightly as the tenon is a little too long for the standard Jnr style, but i was never going for authentic anyway. The tenon is flat and the pocket is angled slightly, although i am using a hardtail bridge so it doesnt need as much neck angle.

I finish up my flawed guitars as cheaply as possible and keep them for myself to play, although i usually end up stealing the parts off them within a few months for whatever new project i am working on. Anything other than a cosmetic flaw gets scrapped pretty quickly now i am trying to sell these things, although i think its important for people to learn how to fix their mistakes rather than just trash things as soon as they have a problem. I have shown a few people how to build guitars, the first guy i showed how to slot a fretboard ended up cutting the last fret slot at a slight angle. He was ready to throw it agaisnt the wall and give in there and then. I grabbed the bottle of superglue and a sliver of wood and five minutes later we had the slot re-cut and a nearly invisible repair, it only pokes out from the fret about 0.5mm. That was fine for his first guitar but not for anything you are trying to sell and put your reputation on.

I like the top picture because there is something seperating the two peices of walnut and i like the second because its one solid peice. Not sure how it wood look with two different peices right next to each other but i am sure that with the right wood it would look fine

Most of them rely on the biscuit jointer too much!! A couple of months ago I was adding some new pickups for a guitar my cousin built, when i was routing for the larger pickups i found the biscuits he had used and routed stright through them, they looked quite untidy compared to a normal butt join but he couldnt believe i did it without them. I always say 'the join being stronger than wood' stuff but i guess they have to justify the money they spent on their biscuit jointers Fast Young & Just Plain Good said: It does work and it is that simple, dont be bothered about reinforcing the join

A lot of carpenters and cabinet makers i speak to cant quite believe that its that simple, they usually tell me i should be reinforcing it with biscuits or dowels. It aint neccisary.

it is better to rough up the finish slightly before applying any paint but you dont need to remove much, just a quick going over with fine wet and dry paper will do the trick. You can just mask what you want then stick paper over the rest of the guitar to reduce wastage of masking tape. Its quite hard to get a really clean line with masking tape, have you considered buying a roll of speed stripe tape from an automotive supply place.

I think a large part of the skill in this game comes from being able to interpret peoples ideas on there perfect guitar into something that actually works and they are happy with. It also means you will keep getting new challenges so you can learn and develop as a builder. I also enjoy producing my own designs and have developed a few that i keep coming back to because they are popular and attract attention. I am just about jigged up for them and i can produce them relatively quickly. I think its important to be flexible and open to a challenge.

Thanks Ben, i gave up searching ages ago!! I am doing a couple of maple necks soon that i might use truoil on now you have found me a supplier. As far as i have been able to tell, you can get a much higher gloss from truoil. I tend to use the danish oil as the base for an oil and wax finish and as fretboard treatment.

Heres a diagram from stew-mac for Dimarzios with a volume and tone diagram at the bottom Dimarzio wiring

Who you calling a girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!