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Stavromulabeta

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Everything posted by Stavromulabeta

  1. @mistermikev, quick one for you now I'm speccing out the cavities for batteries etc. I just about have space for 2 PP3's, but I'm not sure if there's all that much benefit to going 18V or not. Most preamps seem to be either 9V or switchable. If there's not much to choose I might stick to a single one for space reasons.
  2. Hi all, it's been a bit of a hectic time lately with going back to work (from home). I've also been much more careful with wood storage! Some small progress though. I now have a complete neck-through blank, and I'm really pleased with how it's looking! The nerve racking job of making that scarf joint is coming up fast! I also made a start on the body wings - going for a thick maple top over mahogany. I had to do a bit of maths to work out the thicknesses. I wanted the 10mm carves to leave a nice ratio of 1/3 to 2/3 at the thinner edge. For those of you who are interested, it's a neat little result to take the guesswork out of how a top will look at the edge. I suppose you can also set a thickness instead if you wanted it to appear like a 1/4" binding or something.. Plugging in some numbers I came out with a 38mm body made up of 22mm mahogany to 16mm maple which I could make from what I had available. Not too thick, but slim profiled. With some negative templates I've been selecting which bits to take from the maple I have. There's some nice figure on that plank, it's quite open and even looks a little swamp-ashy in the right light. The top will likely be a deep red on the wings which I think will match the padauk stripe and a slightly darker oil finish on the mahogany - but that's for another day. I've also got some black dyed veneer to give a neat 0.6mm pinstripe at the join (and also to prevent bleeding of the dyes...). More news on that neck coming soon I hope! I'm a bit worried about aligning the stripes across the scarf joint.. I'm not convinced about adding a strip in-between and it would look cool without if I can make it work.. Maybe just a layer of veneer?
  3. I know I'm coming to this late, but I'm completely in awe of your router setup.. That looks like it could be a worthy addition to the man-cave! ..and I do have some plywood lying around... Also love the fretboard. I'm toying with a similar idea for a "binding" line between the woods of my body lams.. interested to know how it stabilises(?). Given your troubles I don't know if epoxy rather than wenge dust/resin mix is a better idea..
  4. Hi all, It's been a slow week on the guitar front with going back to work. I also had a bit of a set back as I found that I'd had some bowing in both the maple neck sections and the laminated parts. After consulting the oracle (my dad), best bet is that it's just one side drying out faster - the fresh planed sides are all the ones which are long (convex). I've clamped them all up straight with room to breathe, away from the shed. So let's see in a few days. I suspect that it was more humid in there over winter than I thought for.. Turns out my bed is about the only place with a long enough straight edge, but needs-must in search of bass! @Bizman62, thanks for the clarification, I see the point now. It does make handling the stock a little easier and avoids joints on the body (although means some addition for the headstock..). I will possibly re-evaluate which way to go once I've straightened and cleaned up the bits.. Still not sure if the more open grain of the "wide" face would look better on the neck. @djobson101, thanks! I'll give it a follow! I've loved the idea of padauk/wenge for ages. I have some lovely cocobolo for the fretboard as well, (I believe it's cocobolo, it was long ago and can't find the reciept!). My dad taught me everything, he used to make sailboats with his dad so it runs in the family I guess! It's mainly patience and practice I think though! Looks like I'll be moving onto the body wings sooner than anticipated!
  5. Thanks everyone! Great (and crazy) to hear that there's people anticipating this as much as me! @mistermikev, haha yes it's all down to clever framing.. That bin is steadily developing its own fossil record (and likely, ecosystem) but I can't get rid due to lockdown or burn it due to lack of firepit/brazier... I'd not actually considered building my own pre-amp but that sounds like a cool little project - I studied amplifiers and electronics in my degree so could be time to dust some of that off! I suppose they are op-amp based? I'd looked at Bartolini pickups and the Darkglass pre-amps but £240 for a set of p'ups and £140 for the amp is pretty steep! was considering an Artec stand-in for an updgrade later.. The drawings are just done in mac powerpoint - the arrangement and bezier functions are pretty powerful and you can print to pdf in real scale which is really handy. Like I say, I've had a lot of time on my hands... Sounds good for the neck then, I'll get on with flipping it (better safe than sorry). @Bizman62, that would be my preferred option, but this is too thin to bookmatch that way. I'll do that for the body though. Would be interesting if there is a difference.. maybe it's just down to taste on how the grain looks?
  6. Cheers! I really love getting things precise, it makes all the difference! Whereabouts are you from in Derby by the way? I'm originally from Draycott (near Long Eaton)! I've gone back to work now, so progress has slowed a bit. I've just been tidying up my maple neck blank. Hoping to get the full neck stock together by the weekend. Unfortunately the only blank I had was a 25mm x 105mm plank which will need a bit of creativity to get a through-neck out of.. I couldn't really justify an extra £50 for a 2" one with this lying around... My plan is to halve it lengthways, flip one side to get opposing grains for stability and then build it up into two blanks and bond them to the core. The idea being that if it warps laterally then at least the warp counters itself.. I'm not totally sure if it's necessary to flip as it's a dried blank. It does mean that the visual grain doesn't match so well. Any thoughts/advice appreciated! So tonight, progress stands at two cleaned up slabs of maple. Tomorrow I'd like to get the body sections bonded on but we'll see!
  7. Thanks guys! Looking forward to keeping this updated. @Workingman, I hope I can live up to expectations - very jealous of double-bass players, it's just an achingly cool instrument! So today marks the end of week one and finishing the core of the neck! I feel like all I've done is keep planes sharp and clamp bits of wood together but it's all worth it! The padauk was a bulk buy a while ago, so took quite a lot of work to get it down to the 15mm needed. Good planing (and sharpening) practice though! That big no. 6 plane gives a crazy good finish when it's sharp! (It used to be my grandad's too so it's great to be using that). The robot overlord says yes! Pretty cool what you can get out of an old hand plane and a straight-edge! It took a couple of scarf joints to get the maple and wenge long enough... And a lot of clamps... Clamps off tonight though, and what a result! Really pleased with how the pinstripes have turned out! Getting that maple down to 1.5mm was so tricky! I think it's about as complicated as I'd want to go on the neck construction but this should be a cool feature. The caliper says it's at width to 0.1-0.2mm or so. I'm going to leave that space to tidy up before gluing and move onto the maple for the bulk of the neck!
  8. So after a long hiatus, I'm back building again! My last was the explorer in about 2015, so it's been a while. I've been loving playing that in my band, easily the best sounding guitar I own! I've wanted to get back to it for ages, but life got in the way with moving countries and house buying etc.. Lockdown and furlough has given me a prime opportunity to finally get the shed set up and back to it though! Anyway, this time around it's going to be a bass - my first one! I've been spending more time with my Thunderbird lately but am really craving that extra string for some djenty/metally/proggy goodness. In particular I'm after that Darkglass-infused modern tone (ala Karnivool/Plini etc). I'm struggling a bit with finding pickups at a reasonable price at the moment, but the plan is for a set of passive soapbars going through a 3 channel pre-amp. Any recommendations would be appreciated as I'm much more on top of guitar p'ups than bass ones! I've taken an Ibanez SR as the start-point, mixed in a little Warwick Corvette and made my own headstock design. I'm also going with a proper logo for the first time! Scale length is 34.5", I wanted to keep a little of that de-tuned percussiveness in the low-B as well as not losing the playability of a "normal" scale-length with moving to a 35". Seemed a decent compromise. I'm also keeping the narrow nut spacing of my Thunderbird (classic pro) as I love how that neck feels. Woods-wise it's going to be a 7-piece neck-through made up of Maple, Wenge and Padauk. The body is mahogany topped with a generous bit of maple for some carving. The generosity is primarily down to the mahogany I have warping after I cut it from the blank a year or two ago.. hopefully what was salvageable is stable now! I've already made a start on the neck, but here are the plans so far - there's a bit more work to do to tie down details, but it gives the idea. Good to be back!!
  9. If it's a dynamic equilibrium then you can still do work and be "moving forward"... ...ahem... errm, I'll show myself out...
  10. ... didn't somebody once say something about bringing balance to The Force...?
  11. Thanks! I'm really pleased with them. I totally get what you mean (although I'm struggling to find the dog..), since it's going to be a 7'er I thought something a bit dark would fit the bill. D
  12. Right. It's been a while since this one progressed! So, I've moved back to the UK after my 2 years in Spain, I found a flat with a garage and it's on. I've spent the day getting the man-cave up to scratch, but still some way to go on that front.. I thought I would update though as whilst visiting my folks in Derby I managed to head up to Exotic Hardwoods and bag some great stuff. For the top (and after much deliberation) I chose this stunning Camphor Burl piece. The plan is to bind this with the same ivoroid/black pinstripe combination as I used on my explorer. It's 15mm, so thick enough for a bit of carving on the top too. I also grabbed some padauk and wenge to put together some lams for the through-neck. I just used some spare maple that I had at home, but I'm thinking of going for something a bit different.. perhaps sycamore or even ambrosia maple to get a little more interest to keep up with the front! I only had some thin maple bit to hand, but you get the idea. Fretboard-wise I'm a little undecided still. I found a great piece of cocobolo which will certainly find a home sooner rather than later, but I wonder if it might be a bit "busy" to match with the top.. It seems a shame to go back to rosewood, but it might be a bit more fitting. For the body, I got some dark-ish mahogany. Again, I think it's probably better to keep the focus on the top peice to avoid it clashing too much with several heavy figures. Anyway, needless to say I am totally psyched for this build. There's been some incredible stuff on the forum which has got me well and truly inspired! Hopefully I can get started soon! Cheers! D
  13. @curtisa, sorry to back track a page - thanks for the link to the articles, they are a much appreciated (and excellently produced) resource! I will be following your CNC guide quite closely once I get the new toy! I was assuming that I would need to come up with a method for two passes in any case. I suppose you could code in a marker to each pattern (which cuts off the work piece) to line up each set-up. Good to know that the 3020 is sufficient for most things. It certainly makes more sense in terms of bench real estate and cash up front!
  14. That's a great deal, credit to Dassault for that! Best of luck learning it. I found the way that you can preserve dimensions between entities in each sketch very useful. It allows you to start drawing when you aren't completely sure of the final dimension - e.g. if you wanted to align a few things but weren't sure if they should be 5 or 7 mm from an edge. @2.5itim, I will have to try eMachineShop - I've heard the name bandied about a bit. @Prostheta, thanks very much for the advice! That node edit function is precisely what I was looking for! Unfortunately I haven't had the time this week to have a go. I think I might give it a go tonight - I'm still working on becoming human again after some Spanish partying on Saturday at the moment... At this point I'm working in 2D just to produce some accurate plans which I can print at scale to get a feel for how it will look in real life. I'm not sure i can face learning a new package in 3D as well!! (useful as it would be for experimenting with top-carve ideas)
  15. Thanks Knightro! It's something I've had swimming around in my head for ages, and now I finally have an appropriate axe to put them on! Also as this guitar is all about the sevens (7th project, 7 strings, even 7th fret straight) I thought "The One:One:One" might be a good moniker too! The three dots also makes a nice little motif to carry through the design. Where did you find SolidWorks?? I tried to buy a personal use copy direct and they basically told me to get packing or buy a full comercial package! If I could get hold of that I'd be flying! @Prostheta, I'm starting from scratch in TC but I learned "CAD" as it were on SW in uni. So far I made up a 2D drawing of the fretboard to CNC but the body/headstock is more tricky, At the minute I just have the design sketched out in Apple Keynote as it has a really nice little bezier tool for playing with the shape. I have imported and scaled the image in TC and was hoping to trace the outline but the curve tools are proving tricky to get right in one hit! Once I place each segment, it becomes locked and I have to start again....
  16. Good to see that slanted scarf in practice. I did align the grain on my explorer's headstock, but from a separate piece on a straight angled scarf. Well, it's been a while away but I now have a pretty much final design to pick over. I'm really pleased with the look which is clean but incorporates some touches that I have fancied for a while now. I think the multi-scale really makes the shapes "pop" as something more special! 7 strings 27"-25.5" multi-scale with 7 as my "straight" fret 1xSingle-coil and 1xhumbucker (Tone Zone 7 or Illuminator) 3-way selector (HB / Split-coil+SC / SC) 1 Volume / 1 Tone Hipshot GNOC single saddle bridges 5 piece through-neck with stringers for contrast 4x3 headstock with Hipshot open tuners Likely a flamed maple and bubinga neck with a dark fretboard Cream binding The fret markers are an idea that I've had for some time. Each is the binary representation of it's fret number (filled = 1, empty = 0). I'm an engine software engineer by trade and so it seemed a nice - if very geeky - touch to bring that in! It's particularly pleasing that apart from 19 (10011), all the numbers are symmetrical other than the octaves! I'll fill the "ones" in a contrast to the fret board, possibly with body offcuts and outline in cream to match the binding. I will put it all into TurboCAD in due course as I am really seriously considering a 300x400mm CNC to play with for inlays and templates. TurboCAD has been a bit of a learning curve as it really doesn't seem as intuitive as the SolidWorks that I learned at uni.. Does anyone know a good method for transferring in and scaling the body shape? The lack of a curve tool which I can come back to edit after placing points is making this part very tricky! Any TurboCAD gurus in the house?! D
  17. You're on an absolute roll here Curtisa! This is really making it hard for me to put off buying a mini CNC!!!! I'm leaning towards a 3040 but that means doing a fretboard in two passes... not sure if that is to be advised! I really like the looks of the ergonomics of that *Strandberg shaped lower wing, and that fretboard is going to be ace! I have some funky ideas for fret markers myself - unfortunately my next build is stuck in mothballs until I can get some workshop space!
  18. Ahhhh, it's all so clear now. One of those things where you immediately think; "oh sure, of course it's that simple!" Only to try and visualise it and come un-stuck! That's a neat trick with the second line in the perspex. I could see how setting up fences to run a saw down before planing would work but the routing like that seems an easier option for removing the bulk. On the explorer's straight scarf, I marked it, cut by hand and then hand-planed back to the precise line - that wasn't actually too bad and came out nicely. My dad has passed on his old-school mantra of shunning power-tools and jigs to pointless levels. That said, I do like the fine control you can have with hand tools for this kind of thing. I find it saves me a lot of worry (if not time!). Some great ideas building up now. I can't wait to get started! ... but for now I'm consigned to drawings and templates until I get back home to the garage and my tools!
  19. Seems like a slam dunk for the 27"-25.5" with an angled nut then! Good point about the slotting, I can envisage a nifty little jig to sort that out when the time comes though. Running out of parallel lines is my main concern! I suppose it means that your order of operations is a bit more critical than for a standard neck. That idea of a slanted headstock/scarf is something I was pondering, but struggling to visualise exactly! I don't suppose you have any pictures which show it side-on do you? (p.s. that is a mean bit of carving there! very organic) Thanks for all the input guys, it's nice to discuss things after having it just rattling around in my head! I'm excited to see what I come up with too, at this point it could really be almost anything!
  20. Thanks so much for the comprehensive reply! Good to know that I wasn't too far off with what I had found so far, I think the neck is likely to be maple-based, with bubinga/padauk or similar stringers. So I don't think inherent stability will be a problem, Possibly a 27"-25.5 would be the way to go then. I made my explorer with a 25" and that is really comfy with a more relaxed rock/blues playing position. I don't think going back to 25.5" will make a difference for the heavier style music I will play on this one. Yeah, the black nickel is I think a floyd-rose term, but I managed to find matching hardware on AxesRUs. It looks a similar idea to the Gotoh, perhaps a little lighter. I just like having the edge taken off the chrome a little! http://www.beyondeleven.com/Floyd-Rose-FRTPS5000-p/FRTPS5000.htm http://www.beyondeleven.com/Floyd-Rose-FRTPS1000-p/frtps1000.htm Thanks for the heads-up on those suppliers, There is some interesting stuff there - particularly for headless constructions. The ABM or cylinder styles look much better than the more start-style saddles! Strandberg seem to have some great ideas in that department, but the hardware isn't available separately (also their variable trapezoid neck shape is intriguing! Maybe something to play with on another build). I thought it would probably come down to pure aesthetics on the zero fret. There was some talk of lower actions and it seems a bit easier to construct, but i agree I'm not 100% convinced by the look either..
  21. Hello again everyone! It's been a year since I finished my explorer and I'm getting the itch again! This is one which has been in the pipeline for ages, but I wanted it to be right and it has slipped down the order a bit. As it happens, it works out quite well - This will be my seventh guitar build/renovation project, and to celebrate I'm biting the bullet and making it a seven string! At the moment, I'm sourcing parts/measurements/info/ideas but here are the current specs (subject to change through revealed ignorance!). * Through-neck (with contrasting lams) * "Black nickel" hardware all-round (if possible) with a medium-dark, figured top and contrast binding over a darker body * Probably two passive humbuckers (although not ruling out actives totally) * Ibanez RG/S/JS inspired body, but subtly more asymmetric - generally aiming for a clean super-strat look but not a flat-top * Asymmetric 4-3 headstock (matching body top) Right now, I can't decide between a multi-scale or a floating trem. I have long wanted to try out a multi-scale and with the benefits much greater for extended range instruments it seems a good time to do it! (I know that you can get hold of floating multi scale bridges, but to my eyes they are quite bulky (and horrifically expensive!).) It will be a while before I can start all this due to being on secondment with work in Spain, but I thought I would get a page up to collect some ideas. I have a couple of questions to start.. any help offered would be greatly appreciated! 1) Do I need to consider strengthening the neck beyond a normal DA truss-rod and the laminates for the sake of string 7 / long scale length? 2) I was thinking along the lines of a 26.5" - 25" fan with the perpendicular between 7 and 12. A 27" bottom would be nice, but I imagine that makes the fan quite tight(?). I'm not sure what the rules are here in terms of permissible scale differences. Any pointers regarding multiscales? 3) What are the best options for single-saddle bridge parts? So far I'm aware of ABM and Hipshot, but neither come in the black nickel finish I'm after (everything has chrome or black and I'm not bling enough for gold!) 4) Do people prefer a slanted nut, or a zero-fret and straight nut for multi scales? or is it another case of "bone vs plastic etc" where the jury is out?! Below are the current sketches for the floyd-based design - I found an "Imbuya" top online which looks a promising candidate! I have some cool ideas for fret markers, but I'm keeping them under wraps for now.. I'll upload plans/ target woods as they materialise to keep the ball rolling. Again, any help would be much appreciated! Cheers, D
  22. Just wow. That is absolutely gorgeous! Congratulations! One day I want to try a fanned-fret myself as well, this just adds to the inspiration!
  23. These look incredible, the blue finish really suits the slightly unusual lighter fretboard colour. I hope your friend is a very happy owner! Do you mind me asking how you make the very fine stringer in your neck lams? Is it a thin piece of maple (or similar) laminated on and then planed back to get the pinstripe thickness? Or do you use a different material entirely? I really like the additional contrast it gives. D
  24. Will definitely be following this with interest! I'm in the market for inspiration for another build (already!). Thinking along pointy, SS, seven-string lines.. (does that make it an SSSS?) I love the look of that macassar for a fretboard - I'd never heard of it before. Can't wait to see this emerge from the veil of mystery...
  25. Wow, thanks so much guys! I really appreciate that! I was initially hesitant to go down the through-neck route, but I love the way the neck stripes accent the body and tie the whole piece together (physically as well!). The high fret access also feels much more natural than my bolt on JS100. Very glad I took the time to learn the art of hand planing off my Dad properly, the laminations came out really clean (Some friends thought they were painted on until they looked at the back! haha). Plans are already afoot (in my head at least) for the next.. trouble brewing!
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