mistermikev

23 minutes ago, Myguit said:

Thanks all for the replies.

 

I do not want to damage the headstock. Instead I am thinking to put some very small nails into the back of the wood and make some holes in headstock and superglue the nails with the bit under the wood . What do you think?

pretty sure epoxying a piece of wood to the top is going to damage it in one way... but I think I get yer point.  I'd say super glue.  It will hold binding down great, some mando builders use it all over the place for inlays, and it's fairly available easy.  That said... I think the experts have spoken above.  epoxy will hold it such that it would take the finish right off to remove it... so it will hold very well.  superglue - maybe a little finish would come off.  Still sg will hold it good 'nuff for most purposes.  Either way you go... it'd probably be good to at least scuff up the finish where it's going to attach.  No glue holds all that well on a mirror smooth surface.  Anywho, I'll shut up now.

30 minutes ago, ScottR said:

The highlight areas do jump up and dance in the bright lights.

SR

that they do.  reminds me of the inside of my bugatti (jk - does look like it belongs in one tho)

man, pics of that in the sunlight... really special.   nice recovery on the blem.

oh, right on - the freeway.  just looked it up on stew mac.  def some variety there for sure.

when you play it... every pretend yer driving a stick shift (I know I would!).

13 minutes ago, ZekeB said:

I'm thinking of using Pete Townshend's idea. He used two three way switches. One for the minibuckers and one for the humbucker to do one side or the other or full.  I probably won't use two three way switches but those combinations seem pretty appealing from what I've seen and heard.  

I actually got a 10 position switch on my Mako that does exactly what your talking about.  Really fun setup.  Not fun to wire up lol.    

How do you like your 4 pickup guitar?  Any cool combinations with that stand out.

 

right on... that's certainly an interesting choice.  should be cool. 

love my 4 pickup setup.  I use the 6 position a lot when playing heavy stuff (just std two humbuckers in series) and the 3 position a lot for cleans (inside vs outside in parallel) the most.  Think I will use that sm wiring in upcoming tele build.  Good trick to have in the bag anyway.

10 position... so a 1p10t then?  i must have missed the details on that in your thread.  sounds like a fun variation.  Will have to go look that up. 

2 minutes ago, ZekeB said:

Thinking I'm going to go all black hardware on this one.  Going to follow some advice from my last build and let the wood do the talking.  Also adds an opportunity to maybe do an inlay on the fretboard.  Still pondering on that.  If so maybe monochromatic in gold.

as always, nice design.  looking fwd to seeing this come alive.

so three humbuckers... interested in what you plans for electronics are.  lots of coils there... lots of possibilities.  One that immediately comes to mind is the newer strat 6 way lever and simply sending the series link to ground for parallel combos on pos 2/4/6 with six being the optimal 'tele' mode with neck combined with bridge.  just a thought... what are your plans?

congrats on another win and a lovely build.  well deserved.

procrastination... jeez - hold my beer.  I've been doing a lot of that lately.  Dream all day about guitars and what I'm gonna do when I get home... then promptly not do it!

checked out yer website... if you clear your cache and go there there is quite a delay till that first pic loads.  might want to preload those or consider smaller rez.  I've got a 5mbps connection and was thinking your first page was empty for a sec.  (firefox and chrome: just telling you what I'd want to know with a new website build).  makes up for it with some beauty pics tho.  Odd that none of the other pages had that issue.

did a nice job on pic scaling... or is that canned?  either way should work great on a phone.

love that fretboard there... some really nice grain.  have I said that before... well I really like it so.

right on... it's all good.

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Hmm... Today our Master was working on a guitar with a three piece neck. You could only see that at the bottom of the headstock! It was some pale wood with a strong, straight(ish), tight grain pattern, maybe ash.

guess it sort of depends on the build.  lots of basses wouldn't look right w 1 piece... but imo a les paul doesn't look right with more than one.  it's all good...

1 hour ago, ADFinlayson said:

The thing I like most about a 1-peice neck, other than looks as you say, it's a lot less work  

tru dat.  sure is!

multilam sure does add stability... but imo a 1 piece just looks so much nicer... but it takes all kinds I spose.  not opposed to either myself. 

did want to mention to op( @Lespaul521) ... you may check your local lumber suppliers too.  I have a bunch of 3" x 7" mahog that I got at $3/board ft.  It's not nearly as pretty as some mentioned above... but it's pretty 'nuff fer the likes of me!

I imagine it's unlikely due to the fact that very few guitars would require it.  you should be able to get two les paul necks out of a 3" piece. 

why not buy two 1.5" neck blanks and do a glue up?

afa recommendations:

www.etsy.com/shop/ELwoodMusicWoods  has some beauty honduran mahog right now... they are helpful and would likely cut you the exact stock you need.  Shoot them a msg.

woodtoworks seems to have a lot of good reasonable blanks... maybe shoot them a holler.  also guitarwoodexperts... the gentleman over there is super nice.

given it's an ibanez(generally thin - love em), and you just had the neck off for a bit... my guess is your neck has adjusted and your guitar is fretting out a bit.  given time it will likely return to normal.  (for the win!)

Just now, ZekeB said:

You might try to merge your layers together.  If your rasterize (think thats theword) it will make it smaller typical image versus whatever else the other layers are.  I typically will group things together like screws, etc.  Just an idea!

right on.  I do try to rasterize as much as possible (is the right word) but unfortunately I need to keep many things as sep layers because later I might want to copy 'just the humbucker route' or move it.  I have a group of 'materials' that is all pics of wood/pearloid/abalone that is often the biggest... but then I don't want to delete it because I might decide to see how rosewood looks here or pearloid looks there.  i guess it just is what it is!  thanks for the thoughts.

2 minutes ago, ZekeB said:

I generally use Inkscape for the conceptual designs.  I actually like it better than illustrator just because the vector nodes are easier to control.  After I have the concept I'll start making layers in photoshop and take picture of timber I actually have to play around with it.  Its a lot of busy work but once you have the foundations set you have a lot of flexibility.  Here's an example where I'm at right now:

So I've uploaded the Ziricote picture I took and started to flesh it out with different hardware and binding etc.  From there you can just turn layers on and off to see the different looks.  Its all about the layers!

Gold:

White theme in the making

I do almost the sm in photoshop.  It's a dangerous game because I now have some 50+ designs that are all time soaks and I'll never build half of them... but boy is it fun! 

Also, at full scale... using hi-rez photos and hundreds of layers... a project can get very big very fast.  If you have an insight as to how to keep them smaller (other than deletings groups of layers!) I'm all ears.

your design here is really coming together.  looking fwd to seing it realized.

if you go look at "led light base" for pedals... sm concept will work.  I've done this a number of time (for pedals).  Take an led and sand the top of it flat and right up to the contacts.  Then use a clear pickguard, put some design/sticker on the back side of it... everywhere but where the led will be glued to it.  This will make the light only go out the sides. 

Leds go thru batteries fast... so you'll want to use the biggest resistor possible - just test it out.  with a water clear led you could probably go 12k.  also, might want to put in a push/pull switch so you can turn it off. 

(probably place the led right under the knobs so it doesn't shine right where the led is)

build is looking great. 

21 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

Looking at the photos I very much doubt it, you can see from this pic there is some neck/neckthrough wood exposed under the fretboard, after the neck/body join, so  few mm has been cut off the neckthrough where it joins the body so the bridge sits lower. Pretty much what I'm doing on the billy bongo, but I'm also removing the thickness of the top in addition to the few mm of clearance.

well, I suspect you are right..  if you look at the bridge, it looks like they actually counter sink them a hair too.  think it's fair to say they don't at this point.  thanks for the reply! 

I suspect not given the bridge... but I've seen some pics that make it look like the body might tilt away from the neck... hard to tell if that is just carve or not.  Anyone happen to know?

seems like you are in good hands with curtisa so forgive if I'm stealing thunder/butting in...

based on your readings sounds like you figured out the wire order.  I'd wire in series - it's more typical for a humbucker and you'll get parallel with your singles in pos 4.

1 white(bridge-as it was in orig pic), 2 blue(middle), 3 red(neck).

that's a nice detail there on the jack.  cudos.

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

Aaand crack!

@mistermikev, the nut was just extended by scrap pieces of the fretboard as shown in post http://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/49637-semi-hollow-lp-profile-neck-thru/?do=findComment&comment=581280

duh, didn't think of that... you did do a nice job of matching it.  good trick.

hadn't noticed... a nice detail with the fretboard overlapping the nut.  might have to steal that one but seems like it'd be a lot of work.  nice job.

splits... that's one I'd have to walk away for a moment on.  I think you could likely rub glue into it before removing the studs and be ok.  sux tho... confident you'll recover well.

fantastic build.  thanks for sharing here as this thread will be a great resource for folks traveling this route.  nice work.  looks like it will be a beauty build.

5 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

If you're worried about contamination don't use sandpaper. Use a scraper instead! And if/when you need to sand, go along the grain/stripe. My Maple-Cherry-Walnut-Cherry-Maple with 0.5 mm birch in between looks just fine, as does my Maple-Walnut-Maple neck - also where they go through the roasted Alder body.

will have to experiment with that next time i do that but in the case I had issues with it it was an ebony fretboard with maple dots... and it required finish sanding.  what I ended up doing is just using compressed air freq.  still... that ebony dust penetrates quite well.

2 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

It's not the end of the world if the lams aren't completely flat, if you had a maple neck blank and you slice it down the middle to make 2 bookmatched outer laminates, if there is any bowing, just align them so the hump is in the middle. When you're glueing up lots of pieces, be mindful of the laminates slipping under the clamps, it's really easy for that to happen, especially if you've got veneers between the lams, so it's worth making everything oversized, just in case. 

The most awkward thing I found with lams was getting the neck blank perfectly flat and square again after glue up, easier if you've got a joiner, but it's wise to knock off the high spots with a hand plane before jointing/thicknessing, because while you will end up with a square piece of wood, it's easy for the strips in the middle to go off square with the sides/top of the neck blank.

As for alternating grain. If you've bookmatched a piece of maple and put in a wenge centre strip, you shouldn't really need to do any flipping, the wenge piece should counter any movement from the maple. 

Laminates make the most stable necks IMO, I just prefer using one piece 1. it's much less work, 2, the people that will be ordering them have it in their heads that one piece is better.

some good points there.  something I hadn't considered (strips going out of square when planed).  I will use my router sled to plane it and will take care to ensure I setup the blank with the strips parallel when I do that.  thanks for that.

I hear ya on the stability.  Not something I'd want to do on every neck just because I love the look of a single piece and it's a lot more work... but for bass/baritone neck... def worth it.