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badger6

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Everything posted by badger6

  1. I shot rattlecan poly over the tru oil on the headstock to level out the vinyl decal and they seem to be compatible. But you're probably correct, time to move on to something new, lol. I do have some 25+ year old NOS Kramer American necks with undrilled heels that I bought from Victor Litz Kramer firesale back in 91-92 range. Not sure if I want to source some parts and do a build or just sell them. The headstock color combo kind of limits the options. One is white with black and one is off white with gold. The white/black has started to yellow a bit. Anyone have any ideas what they may be worth?
  2. Hey guys, sorry for the long absence and delay finishing this project. Had some personal things going on in my life. I did finally assembly of the RG last weekend. Under earlier advise of Curtisa I covered the neck screws with PVA (school glue, no I didn't eat any, lol). However, I haven't touched it since. Probably gonna use the PVA on the output jack screws too since they don't seem to tighten well in the wood putty. It's put together and waiting for me to wire it up. Since I suck at soldering, I'll practice on some old pots until it get around to ordering some new ones. Everyone here has helped me so much and I promise that I'll get it up and playing as soon as possible. One concern that I have is that the basswood and tru oil is not a good combo. Is tru oil always this soft? Or is it just the combination or tru oil with basswood? Been thinking of doing a few coats of poly over the tru oil for protection. If not this will probably not get much use and be a wall hanger. But then again, maybe a few dents and scratches will lend to the theme of the finish. Opinions? I want to add a special thanks to Prostheta and Curtisa for all the advice
  3. The problem I am having, aside from my lack of soldering skills, is that there is so much wire coming off the pickups. Between the extra wire and trying to get all the wires onto the pot it is just a spaghetti mess and the pickguard isn't fitting right. My ideas is to zip tie the wires and put them in the unused middle single coil route and then pigtail all the pickup ground wires together in the middle cavity and make one main ground wire going to the control cavity. Then extend the 2 hot pickup wires to the control cavity. That way I won't have all that extra cable going into the control cavity, just 3 small wires. Then just 2 hot wires to the switch and then i can run the output jack, volume lug, tone cap, and trem claw ground to the single ground wire from the pickups. If that makes any sense whatsoever, hahaha. Still researching small quick connect type connectors for easy pickguard and pickup removal.
  4. After looking up star grounding, I think that's what I'm talking about from the diagram I found. It looks like all grounds go to the same point. All pickup grounds, volume and tone grounds, trem ground, output ground all go to same point. Which I guess would be the star location. So in theory you should be able to pigtail all the pickup grounds and and wires from the pot lugs. Then attach the output and trem claw ground on the other side of the pigtail and shrink wrap the whole lot. I only have 2 pots and one switch so it should be easier than the diagram. Also, I'm trying to find a DIY way to use some sort of quick connectors for the pickups and output jack for quick easy pickguard removal and/or pickup swaps. Any ideas on connectors?
  5. Thanks, Prostheta. Say you have 2 pickups. You'll have a black ground and a braided wire going to ground from each pickup. So that's 4 wires. Then you have the output jack ground wire and the volume lug going to ground. So you have the pot connecting 6 wires and then the pot is grounded to the bridge/trem claw. So basically, is the pot just tying them all together or does it serve some other function? What would happen if you just connect all 6 ground wires somehow and then just run a wire to the bridge/trem as the main ground? Would that even work?
  6. Got a question about pickup ground wiring. Is the actual ground wire the wire that goes to the bridge or trem claw? If so, is the back of the pot is just used for convenient merge point for all of the ground and finish wires. So technically, you could pigtail all of the ground wires into one wire, then go straight to the bridge or trem. If that's the case, then the pot really has nothing to do with it. Or am I getting this whole thing wrong.
  7. I'm thinking the cheap soldering iron that I bought isn't getting hot enough. It melts the solder and works on the lugs of the switch and pots. But it's not working on the back of the pots for the ground wires and capacitor. Got a big glob of solder on the tone pot and it won't melt it for some reason. I might have fried that pot trying to get the solder flowing, hahaha.
  8. Jesus Christ, I can't solder for shit. Soldering to the switch lugs and pot lugs is easy. WTF is the trick soldering all the wires to the back of the pots? Solder doesn't stick to the back of the pots. I used some sandpaper to scuff them up. And when the solder did stick to the pot, the damn wires popped out. Now I have a big glob of solder and I can't get it to melt off. I would have never thought that soldering would be so frustrating. I'm done for the day, maybe I'll try again tomorrow.
  9. Well that wasn't very fun. Took the whole roll of tape. I think that I'll go with the cavity paint next time and save the copper tape for the pick guards and cavity covers, lol. Anyhow, from what I've been reading I'm supposed to solder a ground wire from the copper in the cavity to the back of the volume pot to ground this whole thing. But wouldn't it already be grounded due to the fact that the volume pot is already in contact with the foil on the pickguard which in turn is in contact with the copper overlapping the edges of the cavities. Wouldn't a separate wire be redundant and unnecessary?
  10. When I ordered it I had never done a fret job and the seller recommended the 400 grit for beginners in the ad. I think that's why it might not last more than 4-5 fret jobs. I think the 150 grit would have been better and lasted longer. But hey, it was only like $16-17 if I remember correctly. It does it's job for the price but I'm sure that a nice file would work much better. On another note, I'm not sure that the tru oil was a good idea with basswood. I lightly bumped the edge on a wooden stool and dented the edge. Doesn't matter much because the jack plate will cover it but there's not much protection with the tru oil and basswood combo. A wipe on poly might have been better choice. This might be a wall hanger or case queen. Anyhow, live and learn!!!
  11. Crowned with this thing they call the "little bone". Seems to work OK. I used it a couple years ago with pretty good results. Probably only good for 4-5 fret jobs at most. I only used what I had on hand. So I went with 400, 600, 1500, 2000 wet sand paper. Then polished the frets with steel wool, scratch x, and cleaner wax. Then cleaned the fretboard with alcohol and buffed with a little lemon oil. I left the slightest amount of chatter in the tops of the crowns. Not sure how true it is, but I read somewhere a few years ago that if you left a little chatter in the crowns when polishing that you don't risk removing too much from the fret tops and ruining your level job. And that the strings would polish them in short order when you play it a couple times. Anyhow, seems reasonable and makes sense to me.
  12. Been sitting detached from it's body for many years without any strings on it. Had a little bit of a back bow but I got the neck straight, taped off, and leveled. Then did a fall off from the 12th and since the 21 and 22 frets were a little low I did another fall off at the 18th.
  13. The screw holes aren't really stripped, they're still holding pretty good. The screws are just a little looser than I would like. So I think this would work pretty good. Or either just put some PVA on the threads and let dry. I think either way will be fine for my purposes.
  14. I googled "glue loose bolt on neck" and the first thing that came up was THIS Basically, it says to apply a coat or two of superglue to the inside circumference of the bolt hole and let dry. Which I guess would effectively make the hole smaller.
  15. Scott, I was thinking about how the 3 filled in screw holes looked. Then you made me think of something. I don't even keep the covers on my other guitars. I think this one looks more tidy than the crusty old factory job below. So what's the point? I can always add it later it I want to. I had already decided that I'm not putting on the trem cavity plate. None of my guitars ever have them on anyways.
  16. PVA? So like regular Elmer's glue or Elmer's wood glue? Got bored while waiting on some orders in the mail. So I found all the old parts and did some test fitting. Wondering if I should just leave the truss rod cover off since I sprayed the truss rod route?
  17. After reading online, I've seen meguires Cleaner wax recommended as a final type finish after the scratch X. Picked up some of that and buffed out the body and headstock. Still has a little haze, but I don't think that I'll be able to get that out without some kind of machine buffer or hours of buffing by hand. You can only see it if you hold it up to the light and know what to look for, therefore It's good enough for me at this point. I can always polish on it more later if I feel like it. So it's on to assembly. Time to cover up the stamp dates. Neck March 1998 and body is Feb 1998. I'll also assume that the little strip of kind of thick sandpaper pictured below is Korean Ibanez version of a neck pocket shim. There's still and indention of where it was when I originally took the neck off. It's not sand paper. It's thick, kind of like belt sander material with a woven back. I guess I'll put it back where it originally was, Putting the neck on I noticed two things. First, the ferrules stick out a bit since I had a tough time getting the primer off of the heal area. Would you guys try to counter sink them a little more or just leave them. It's purely aesthetic at this point I think. I would probably have to grind the neck screws down a bit also. Also, this neck has only been off once and sat for 10 years under my bed in a case. But putting the neck back on, it seemed like the screws went in very easy. There was a little resistance at the very last turn but it almost seems like they could loosen over time. Would you guys maybe put a couple drops of loctite or super glue on the threads? How is a situation like this handled?
  18. So back to the ultra slow progress. I got the headstock decal leveled out and buried with the poly. It only took 12 medium/thick coats, lol. Did 3 coats at a time with 3 days in between. I wet sanded and polished it out after 9 coats but i still had some dimples/low spots inside the lettering and around the truss rod route. So I taped it back up and put on 3 more heavy coats. It's not perfect but close enough for me. I'm glad that I did the vinyl even though it was kind of a pain in the ass, because at least I learned something. Waterslides should be much easier next time I do this. Next up when I get time will be assembly and fret level/dress. Also, I guess I need to order a soldering iron and everything else I need to wire it up including pickups. I'll finish this thing one day, hahaha.
  19. Just gotta be lazy, inexperienced, and patient with basswood. Like me, hahahaha.
  20. Well today I wet sanded some orange peel off the headstock and lightly knocked the vinyl decal down with some 1500 grit and got another 3 coats of poly sprayed. I also sprayed the trem cavities flat black. Since this thing is 18 years old, I'm probably gonna have to donate a weekend for a fret level and dress too. On an off note. Since I'm going with 2 humbuckers, do I really need to shield the control cavities? It still has what looks like the factory conductive paint where the pickups and controls go. Plus I've never really noticed much buzz on any factory guitars that I have bought. Is the shielding tape or paint more for single coils? There's lots of conflicting info on the net.
  21. Thanks guys, I think my patience (i.e. laziness) kind of helped out. When I got to around 12-15 coats on it I started taking 3-4 days before I would do another one. It definitely gets old and tedious after a while. I think next time I'll know to do a little better prep work and to minimize the grain lines. On an off note, I've never really soldered before and will probably need some tips when I get to that stage. But first I need to get the poly on the headstock sorted out, flat black paint on the front and back trem cavities, and shield the electronic cavities and pickguard. What is better and eaiser to use? The copper tape or the conductive paint? EDIT - Also, although the finish came out pretty glossy. The scratch X left a little haze or swirl marks. Would something like turtle wax or some type of auto wax help with that? Or do I need to polish more?
  22. Thanks SIMpleONe89. It's a vinyl decal so it's thicker than a waterslide. I put 5-6 coats of tru oil over the decal and I just didn't like how it looked and it would have taken forever to add enough tru oil coats. So I read in a few different places online that poly was safe over tru oil and safe over vinyl decals. So I lightly hit the tru oiled headstock with some 0000 steel wool and lightly wiped it down with some alcohol and let dry. I've got 3 coats on it right now and I'm done for the day. The can says to spray subsequent coats within 2 hours of each other, otherwise wait 72 hours and lightly sand and continue to spray. Since the decal sticks up so much more than a waterslide, I need to be sure to have plenty of buildup on it before sanding. I'm thinking to give it 72 hours and hit it with the 0000 steel wool again, clean it, and put 3 more coats on. Then hit it with 1500 grit to knock down the logo. Then rinse and repeat until level. That's my thoughts, but I've never done this before. So yes, let's see what others have to say, haha
  23. Been busy with work and my daughters HS graduation for the past couple weeks. But got up early today and went to get some 1500 & 2000 grit wet sand paper, Meguiars Scratch X, and a can of polyurethane for the headstock logo bury. My arms feel like I've been jerking off for 72 hours straight, haha. But I guess my weight training this morning before wet sanding and polishing didn't help. Anyhow, Total time to wet sand 1500, 2000, and polish with the Meguiars only took a couple hours. Probably still need to do a few little polishing touch ups with the scratch x but the body is pretty much done. The Meguiars Scratch X 2.0 is a little finer than I was expecting, so I got a good bit more gloss than I expected. But that's cool, I can always go back with a more abrasive compound if I want to. I still have some grain lines but I have to admit, it's as smooth as a baby's ass. I've got a few coats of poly on the headstock. But I think I went too thick because I have some good orange peel going on. How many coats would you guys do before trying to wet sand to level out the decal? And what grit would you use?
  24. Ha ha, actually this is taking me longer than I wanted. What's it been like almost 2 months. Hell Prostheta, some weeks I only got 3 coats on the body, lol. But I guess it's better to go slow than to rush it since I'm not really experienced doing this stuff. Anyhow, I got the decal and one thin coat of tru oil on. It looks lined up pretty close to the original. I'm wondering if I should just seal the decal with 3-4 coats of tru oil and then spray it with some type of rattlecan clear. Or just do a lot of coats of tru oil and try and make it level? Before Pic. After Pics. Probably take 100 coats to level out, hahaha.
  25. Ok, I think that I'm done with the body. It's not perfect, but good enough. I'll let it sit for a week and figure out how do a final sand and polish on the finish. In the meantime, I'll start on the headstock decal and tru oil over it. I have a feeling the it's gonna take a lot of coats, haha
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