ADFinlayson

Caught up with Snuffy and figured out what we're doing with the layout of the pots, he wants something like this but I think I shall move them all down a bit so the volume isn't quite so close to the strings. I also need to be able to fit the battery and preamp in the control cavity. I've also finalised the neck carve as it was a bit chunky at 23mm at the first fret, it's now down to 25.5mm and gradually ramping up to 23mm just before the heel, sorry no photo. I also spent quite some time on filling all the tiny pinhole voids with dust and superglue, then finally brush some sealer into the top after getting the whole thing sanded to 320. Now I need to get the back and the neck fine sanded and grain filled next, Also got a final coat of sealer on the LP so that's ready for lacquer too.

Finally some bass progress - Made a couple of MDF templates from measurements taken from the pickups. As above, I had to use a 1/4" straight bit to get the correct radius on the corners, so once I had made the templates, I sealed all the edges with wood glue to make sure the were hard enough to withstand the high speed bit with no bearing and I did most of the routing with a larger bearing bit, then just used the straight bit to get in the very corners. Did a test route first on a walnut offcut to get out the template. it was all good except not deep enough. Marked out locations and hogged out waste with the pillar drill Then routed, managed to get them perfectly square on the centre line and square with each other fortunately, because I need to make a ramp out of some pheobe wood offcuts to go between the two pickups. Also did a test first, starting to look fairly basslike now. In fact it's not really that far away. I just need to drill holes for the 5 pots, bridge and an earth wire, sand the hell out of it and spray some lacquer. Hopefully all that won't take another 6 months.

I guess you can forgive a gibson for fading after 60 years I'd like to see more pics of a real '59. quick google finds you loads of stuff about faded prs. Here's a guy complaining about the fade on his 2016 private stock northern lights https://forums.prsguitars.com/threads/private-stock-is-fading.32484/

I was going by the older PRS factory tours I've seen where they've said they always use alcohol dyes and some of the colour fades I've seen on even some of their more recent guitars. PRS fading with UV is horrendous. I would have though that in those days Gibson would have painted the back in tinted lacquer the same as the coloured the tops. One thing I do like about Gibsons coloured lacquer finishes is that the finish and the colour ages as one and it looks consistent as the guitar gets older. But a PRS that's been bleached by UV yet still has an immaculate polyester topcoat just looks wrong to me. Just my opinion but it's my rationale for favouring nitrocellulose as a finish, it will yellow and fade and crack over time as the colour fades rather than just become bleached.

I was under the impression Gibson didn't dye but used coloured grain filler, brushed on and wiped off which stained the wood, I've seen that done a few times in the factory tours anyway. Pretty sure alcohol stains will fade just as much as water based too.

Search youtube for Freddy's Frets and watch his series Building les pauls, that bloke knows all there is to know about spraying bursts. I was surprised to see that a lot of it is done in the sun fading, the colours he sprays are a lot bright than the final result.

perhaps the course one can be demoted to the kitchen to grate something over your Bolognese

Looking gorgeous, is that a half round microplane you've got there? I got a couple of flat microplanes for xmas the medium and the fine, they're pretty much my favourite neck carving tools now and I want to get hold of a couple of round ones too. At this rate you're going to have this one finished before lockdown ends, I hope you've got another build planned

Forgot to update this one, I got the neck rough carved a week or so ago before the lurgy set in. It's currently 20.5mm at the first fret and 21.5 just before the heal which is generally right for me but this one is going to be stained and lacquered so I'm contemplating going down a little bit more to account from the build from the lacquer. Then night before last I reamed out the tuner holes and test fitted. These are Vanson locking tuners, very cheap for locking tuners at £30. So far quite impressed with them, they feel nice and sturdy and have smooth motion. Sorry that wasn't my best photography I'll probably leave the neck for now and finalise the carve on the body, I need to finish the pot recesses, and do all the cavity routes too. I've also got most of the parts for Matt's tele now, just waiting on pickups so I might crack on with the tele body.

Spent a bit of time on this one this evening. Found some scratches on the headstock so I sanded it all off and started again, then sanded in the faux binding. I also spent a bit more time getting the f-hole binding right. The top has had 5 mist coats of sealer now too which I've smoothed off with 0000 wire wool. I'm going to have to reseal the headstock too. I made pickup templates for the bass this evening too, which was a bit of a pita, the nordstrand pickups have quite a tight radius and none of my bearing bits will cut the corners to be tight enough to I had to get it as close as I could then use a 1/4" straight bit. So I've painted the inside of the templates with watered down wood glue to firm up the template edges so that hopefully the shaft of the router bit doesn't turn the template to smoosh when I've routing the cavities. So all being well I will get the routing finished on the bass tomorrow.

the people that have asked me that generally aren't players and would never buy one either, weird.

Crikey Jeff, lucky you haven't got plans to go out any time soon some seriously awkward work there, especially in those wispy ends. kudos

I was scraping the faux binding on the purple one the other day - the razor blade slipped and I put a whopping scratch in the top and had to sand back a 3" area and restain. I know all about that too.

Yeah the point I was trying to make ( probably not very clearly) was that if it's a natural finish you're going for and you sand through, going over it again with nitro will make it look completely invisible. Sanding through dye, restaining, resealing and more topcoat is likely to result in a slightly different looking patch, as I found out when I sanded through the red one I did last year.

The last one I finished, I sanded through the back. I carried on sanding the rest of the back to get it as level as I could, then did another couple of coats on what was now a fairly even surface that didn't need much work after. Sanding through is not such a big deal if there is no stain/paint IMO.

Welcome to the forum, you don't need any jig to cut fret slots. I find it's easiest to glue on and radius your fretboard, then cut the slots. That way you don't have to saw very much at all and it's much harder to go wrong. If you slot a fretboard blank first, there is a lot more work to do in sawing through waste wood and you have to worry about glueing the board on perfectly straight. This is how I do it

My thinking was that the toggle would only affect position 3 and not the others, maybe a jumper to go from the switch out to the toggle and back again so that position 3 is switchable? I was going to use a mega blade switch anyway. I was also planning to have a couple of toggles to split the humbuckers separately to the blade switch so position 2. Would potentially be bridge sc + middle sc

I am going to be building a HSH build with 5-way blade switch with the following options. 1. bridge hum 2. bridge hum + middle sc 3. middle sc 4. neck hum + middle sc 5. neck hum I want to use a push pull pot or toggle switch to change the middle position from middle sc to both neck and bridge hum. how do I do that? anyone got a diagram that describes what I want to do? Googling hasn’t returned what I’m after Cheers Ash

Looking good Andy. I’ve had a delivery from Maderas Barber recently and I’ve got a parcel on the way from G&W (apparently coming on Monday) so you shouldn’t have too much trouble Getting hold of a fretboard. You might want to order some more wood while you’re at it as you’re clearly flying through this one

search for hard maple, there is plenty on ebay quite cheap, even cheaper if you're happy to join multiple pieces which I guess is fine if it's a painted gold top?

Any wood can be used as a body IMO but sycamore can be quite heavy worth roughing it out and weighing it before deciding whether not it needs to be hollowed out with a top on it

You’re not wrong Andy, a preliminary scratch finding stain seams to be the norm for me, intentional or not because I’m shut at finding scratches. It’s all stained anyway, good weather over the last couple of days meant I could get the top sealed too as I’m using cellulose sealer. We are due cold spell now so hopefully after then I’ll be able to get some clearcoat over it

Is there a build thread for the red one? It's a bloody nice looking axe There seems to be a lot of deliveries getting through, my titebond arrived today, thank heavens.

I've been cracking on with this one. Got some stain on, well I got purple on it about 3 time sand kept finding scratches. I went over it with the orbital sander from 60 grit up to 220, found loads of scratches, repeated about 3 times. This bit of work just seams to be really awkward to sand, just couldn't see these prior to staining. More missed scratches so lots of hand sanding too. Then finally I decided I was happy. God another load of purple on, sanded it back (again) with 320 just to know it back for another colour, then added rose Once that was dry, I started working on the faux binding. Still a fair bit of tidying up to do there, the f-hole is particularly tricky to sand. The weather seams to be on my side, it was 15º this evening and 40º humidity so I might at least be able to get this done and get it sealed tomorrow. Then it's on with the bass.

As long as you get the right readings when you test the pots with a multimeter, they are probably fine. But you won't find the problem until you isolate the problem, so start really simple - bridge pickup to volume, to jack. If that works then add a switch into the equation, repeat adding stuff until you have figured it out.