Andyjr1515

I personally had difficulties when I tried that. With a block, it's very difficult to hammer square on and often I found that the fret had sometimes twisted out of position slightly, damaging the slot.

Wow.

I like your methodology. Looks a neat, functional result, too...

Everyone has their own method. Mine is a combination of hammer and clamp. I pop a tiny bead of titebond along the tangs, I then hammer the pre bent wire one side, then the other side, then the middle. Next, I clamp a radius block over the hammered fret while I' m preparing the next one. I repeat and move the radius block up one fret. By the time the radius block no longer is clamping the earlier fixed frets, they will have been clamped for 15 -20 minutes, usually plenty of time for the glue to be holding them in place.

I have, but a little bit under duress - that is, only when the future owner specifically requested them. I did them on this single cut bass commission : While they are magnetically transparent, they restrict the height the pickups can be raised and, to avoid fingers clicking on them, add a bigger distance than would normally be used - especially on the bridge pickups. These are made from camphor (as with the top) and ebony, with a thickness of sub 1mm on the top.

Gosh - those are 2nd grade????? I think you did well - a good investment

My personal view, after quite a bit of experimentation, is that the thickness makes pretty much imperceptible difference to the tone. On the other hand, it certainly adds to the weight. Personally, I wouldn't be too restricted in my designs to a nominal thickness based on the two big US players in the market and instead concentrate more on the functionality - depth for neck attachment, hardware and electrics installation. If that ends up at 1 3/4" then fair enough, but I would have that as the answer not the target. And I'm not suggesting at all that this is suitable for your build, but my last two builds have been 1" thick (including the Guitar of the Month still there at the moment on the opening page)

@ScottR is one of the master carvers round here, I reckon. But even at my level I fully agree with you - the carving is one of the most satisfying parts of guitat and bass building in my view. I like the look of your design and look forward to seeing it progress

I like the way you visually compared the different makes with the key dimensions. Quite revealing for a number of features when you see them scaled and side by side.

That top looks the business! Lovely piece of timber. I'm glad I'm not the only one who learns by mistakes, writes them down, forgets them, repeats the mistakes, writes them down again - during which process the original notes are rediscovered....

From that photo, looks a pretty good save...

Look the business. Interesting seeing in the thread of the iterative process often encountered in unconventional builds, certainly in my own, where the final solution to a task is often quite different to the original thoughts.

I was wondering how this one was getting on. With apols for the thread hijack, looks good

Clearly the process getting there was a royal PITA - but the result is magnificent!

That is so, so good on so many levels. Absolute triumph....

Looking good from over here Welcome!

Very impressive stuff. Producing an etched circuit board of any circuit puts you both in the category of wizardry in my book, but for you and @Prostheta to also be able to talk about the make up of the circuit and understand what each other is talking about takes it to a whole new mystical plane.

Wow... ...just...Wow

You could always install some luminescent side dots like Luminlay (there's also stuff on the forum how to make your own)

I agree with @komodo There is nothing wrong from a trigonometrical point of view with Tundraman's calculator, but there are a lot of areas where, in practice, things can be a little bit different and the cumulative effect is dramatic. Almost all of my builds are through-necks and I always - as @komodo says - make sure I have the bridge and fretboard blank in my possesion and the planned fretwire dimensions first. I'm sure there are better ways than I do it, but basically I draw the critical points full size. It only needs a few lines drawn with a decent length steel rule. The critical thing is knowing how much practical saddle adjustment is available to start with. Probably more drawing than actually needed (but it helped me also envisage how deep the pickups needed to sit) but here is one of my drawings: In the above photo: Trust me - it's quicker to draw it than to explain it! the hatched fretboard represents the total height of the fretboard and frets combined. The pivot point - as Tundraman says, this is the point at which the neck joins the body - can be seen as the dot a few inches to the right of the fretboard end The line broken by dots at the very top is the string, giving me the required action height target at the fretboard end and originating at fret height only at the nut the short line on the left hand side with the writing next to it is where the top of the saddle needs to be at its lowest adjustment position (sitting below the string line a touch to give me a 1mm or so wiggle room) The full line immediately below it is the 'zero angle' line, parallel with the tops of the frets The ^ at the left hand side is at the scale length and, vertically, is where the bottom of the bridge (ie the top of the body) needs to be Joining a line from the ^ to the pivot point, gives me the required neck angle

Sounds like a good sequence of steps for your build. I know what you mean about workspace - until last year mine was a workmate on the back patio. And, as you well know, the UK weather is hardly helpful in that respect! Spacewise, I'm still very limited - just enough room for a workbench against the cellar wall and for a small table to keep the power tools on. I still have to move the tools onto the workbench each time I use them (and some of them are HEAVY) but it's still so much more productive than before. I understand your frustration...

There are some interesting design features built into this. How does it play?

That's coming on nicely. I also generally use scrapers for these kind of carves - I prefer the controllability over speed

It will be nice to see an update on this :)

That body has come out really well As @ScottR says, it'll be nice seeing the grain pop out when you get to the finishing.