pan_kara

I'm liking this idea and wood combinations. Do you have a plan for dealing with the tapering body chamfers?

congrats on the GOTM @Norris. fully deserved, she did turn out awesome, so many cool little details. I'm itching to try a tele build more and more ..

aaand the journey is now complete. Mirroring the GOTM entry, here's a collection of "finished" photographs. Well actually more, since I have no 8-photo limit here Front shot: The back, featuring the swirl to no-swirl seamless body-to-neck transition Back of the neck with the maple-purpleheart accent insert Some more closeups and assorted shots: I still have to learn the guitar, there's plenty of fantastic tones to be pulled from this switching system, plus I need to teach my fingers to play with an extra high A string, which messes with my muscle memory all the time. So it forces a more concious playing, which if good in the end. When I spend some more time with her and have a quiet moment I'll do a thorough walk-through video, meanwhile here's a quickie just for you guys:

Finally finished my strat build, so I'm adding it to this month's edition. Here is "Strat-Thru". Built at home for myself. I think counting various re-builds and parts-caster things this is my build #10 or thereabouts. The recipe: take a really cheap Strat copy saw off everything except the body perimeter take some scrap wood, get some hardware and build it back into something that looks like a Strat but only if you're far away The specs: some unidentified body wood (possibly pine) mostly ovangkol neck going "almost thru" the body (finishes somewhere behind the bridge), also pieces of merbau, purpleheart and some maple rosewood fingerboard with a 25.5-23.4 fan, MOP dot markers E standard tuning with a high A string added (7 strings) 3x custom Merlin Pickups single coils wired in series with individual on/off/phase switches (via 3x on/on/on dpdt), 1x volume, 1x tone ABM single string bridges, v-parts tuners, dunlop 6105 fretwire Magic marble swirl finish The pics: And here's a demo video that I quickly put together, sorry for the tuning and the playing, I literally only had a few minutes to film this quickly before leaving for the Christmas break. I'll post a more in-depth video on my channel early next year. Edit: almost forgot - the full build thread is here:

you could seal the sides with shellac before staining to make sure you don't touch them.. that's what I did when trying faux binding once

true, but is that really really necessary? I mean supporting (blocking) the nut from the tuners' side. I went and took a look at my guitars - I have a high end Mayones and there appears to be nothing on the headstock except paint (so there might be a tiny ledge created). On my Etna build I just cut a ledge in the fingerboard (it was so thick that resting the nut on the neck itself would have made it too low. Clearly there are ways around this

I think my preferred order is different from either of the two - I cut the fingerboard to shape first, then glue it to the neck that is rough-cut and then use the fingerboard as a template to trim the neck. But that works since I do the radiusing after that (and fret slots before). For a fingerboard that's already radiused that's more tricky since you lose the flat surface for the router (unless you go from the other side and that is still flat). There I'd probably do as Scott says - glue and then trim both. Or glue the fingerboard and trim it with the neck as a template. I'd never cut both and try to glue later, in my case that's asking for disaster. Or at least I'd need to be very precise with avoiding a slip during glue-up which is something I always have problems with, and here you pretty much have zero margin for error.

what about no headstock cap?

Have you thought about fixed rings Scott? For pickup cavities I typically use the stewmac bits, plus a normal template bit for bigger things. But I'm trying to transition to spiral bits with fixed template guides since I don't seem to find spiral bits with bearings, straight bits are much easier to come by. But that's mostly for things like body outline etc and requires a new set of templates. For cavities I might stick with what I'm using for now

nice, I'm liking the jig work. I somehow never thought of a double template setup for neck pockets, will have to remember this trick

yea, on cars people normally take scratches out with polishing alone, sanding is really something that people typically are reluctant to try

yea, on cars people normally take scratches out with polishing alone, sanding is really something that people typically are reluctant to try

no no, micromesh first, then buff. If you only have swirls in the clearcoat then you probably don't need to sand at all. Just buff with an automotive polishing compound. Sanding does produce scratches, but going from coarse to finer grits makes the scratches progressively finer - with the finer grits removing the scratches from the coarser ones - so just like sanding wood. In general I think the same principles apply to most clearcoats that people use, both on cars and on guitars. There is a large overlap. Buffing can be done by hand (at which point it will take longer), or by machine - depends what you have available.

There was supposed to be some kind of ergonomic benefit from the fan in the higher positions, but I have too little experience with multiscale to have an opinion on that. I only played one and the fan turned out a bit extreme, high positions are confusing to play for me at the moment. I guess one clear benefit of angling the bridge side is the fact that you can have a bigger scale difference before you get into ridiculous fret angles at the nut. Zero fret was my plan exactly. Combined with a standard locking mechanism. Aslo gets you out of having to do a compound scarf

I hear you. Any time I can get away with not having to spray is good for me yes, that is a bit different sure, from what I remember also less wood texture comes through. So yours has a different twist to it

Sure, in principle not - I asked because it looks to me like these are meant to have the bridge perpendicular, which is actually I'm thinking of doing for a guitar with a Floyd Rose

So you have a left- and right-handed multiscale in that neck collection.. where is the perpendicular fret for those - the bridge?

hah nice finish with that gold indeed, I wonder where you can take this. Mayones do something that they call "vintage gold" or "vintage silver", seems to be having a similar vibe. I also managed to almost rout through the control cavity like that once, realized early enough but also had to glue some wood in, as it was getting too thin.. but with an opaque finish you should be covered.

All right, this time the clearcoat polished up fine. I didn't fully level it with wetsanding except a few places, didn't want to push my luck (and I didn't put a whole lot on), instead I reduced orange peel a bit just by buffing, the end result is pretty good. I even managed to get the insides of the cutaways nearly perfect after a session with the micromesh sanding pads. I've put all the hardware on so now it's just the remaining bit of setup work. I think I'll need to file the bridge saddles down a little, my neck angle (and fb thickness) ended up a little on the low side and I can't get the action as low as it should be on the treble side. Actually everything is low profile, the pickups are sitting almost flush with the pickguard.. I need to watch this more carefully in the future.

I might try that at some stage, the white outline could save it a bit - but for now I think I'll just go back to the black pickguard. Hopefully soon. Wetsanding and buffing has started. For the record: I finished fixing photo references, this thread has all the pictures back, where possible.

thanks, gentlemen

Actually I'm taking this further now, the hannes thing was my first try and it didn't get anywhere (which was my fault as it appears). But now I want to be able to test pretty much anything (within reason) - fretwire type, nut material etc etc - ending with the wood choice if the method works fine. BTW Andrew, what you mention is exactly what I'm doing - taking the player out of the equation. Not with mechanical devices but by describing the situation in a way that cancels out the player (more precisely - is insensitive to the initial conditions for the vibrating string). So, shall we wrap up our thread hijack? We can discuss all of this in my thread and I'm waiting to see @Flamesong's oak body !

I wouldn't take it that far, I'd just say that how the guitar influences the player can have a bigger impact of that the listener gets to hear than things like the components/wood/etc That depends how much he'd be willing to trust you Of course we can take everything to the extreme and of course there are differences in sound between guitars. My point was just to mention another factor that could play a role. I do have a guitar that I brought to a rehearsal once and all the band complained about how crappy it sounds. (It wasn't the pickup, I put a pickup that I used in another guitar for many years before and nobody ever complained). One day I'll try to figure out what's wrong with that guitar exactly.

Mass is only one of the things that impact sustain. At minimum the string looses energy by flexing itself and moving air around it. Then the more other things it sets in motion the more energy it loses, decreasing sustain. Make a soft and heavy body it will lose energy to flex the body. If we make a stiff and light one it will make the body vibrate. If we have no body and stiff anchor points (Andrew's example) we pretty much maximize sustain (we can only get more by sucking all air out and playing in vacuum). The "mahogany sounding LP in a recording" is also something I always thought as a good argument in the whole debate on the subject, so let me offer a counter-argument that I came up with after giving it some thought. Well maybe not "counter", but another point of view: If (and I stress - if, because that's another discussion) you manage to impact tone with some features of the guitar like wood, high end caps, whatever voodoo you like - and if the player perceives it (or thinks they do) - maybe it impacts their playing? Not really the tone that much. In other words - for the listener the tone is indistinguishable from anything else (especially in the mix, after EQ, fx, mastering etc), but the actual playing is different because the instrumentalist is feeding off the instrument in a different way. I was thinking about this in relation to fancy tops, fingerboards and the like (let's say the visual side of the instrument) - they might have nothing to do with the sound, but - Hypothesis - when I'm playing and glance at my fingers moving around this super-cool fingerboard it just triggers this extra bit on inspiration. An old worn guitar will make you approach playing it in a certain way. A guitar with some history also will. The mojo is in the guitar-guitarplayer relation. Concerning knots - I wouldn't put a knot under the bridge, neck joint or in the neck. Anywhere else I don't see a problem.

Beautiful!! I adore the body finish which to me looks like some dark old furniture, with the super-modern specs - 7 strings, multiscale etc. Plus all the little touches like the unusual carve etc. Truly awesome!