Bizman62

If the frets are in the ballpark it should play just fine. After all the location of frets is a compromise. There's 'tempered' frets that are curved even a couple of millimetres off the 'normal' for accuracy.

Do you clamp the fretboard to the miter or just holding it by hand? If there's any play between the mitre box and the notched template your slots can get slanted. Also, if the notches of the scale length ruler are wider than the pin, pushing the notch against the pin always in the same direction can help, assuming the slots are equal and correctly positioned. Dead center should be the most accurate way, though.

For several years back I stumbled upon a hint for changing an old armchair to a rocker. There was a nice idea for saving wood when making the rockers: Plane the plank on both sides, cut the arch that will touch the floor. Then joint the flat sides, potentially even splitting them for extra length.

To me the middle one appeals the most. The figuration on the lower bout fills the entire area nicely. Then again, there's an idea on the top one as well as the longitudinal stripe matches with the neck and string lines. The royal blue with gold hardware has echoes from uniforms from the past, forceful, controlled and arrogant like the Royal Naval Officers from the sailship era! The turquoise doesn't seem to match with the gold hardware but it may be my monitor as well.

You can do it all the ways you described and a couple more no matter what the radius is. What's the best way depends also on the tools. A common way is to cut the slots on a square flat board as the straight edge can easily be aligned with the jig, making the slots perfectly traverse to the center line. A square radiused blank would be equally easy to align. Cutting the slots on a radiused board might be a bit easier but radiusing a wider board more laborious. And you'd still have to recheck the depth after tapering A tapered board would be a bit more difficult to align with the jig but should be doable by matching the centerline with that of the jig plate If you measure, draw and cut the slots freehand without a jig you can even glue the fretboard on the neck and do all the cutting and radiusing after the glue has dried I've had my fretboards slotted before gluing and radiused them after they've been glued on the neck. That has been the easiest way for me as I don't have access to the hand tools needed and our Master has a circular saw with all the jigs and templates in his home workshop. Not to mention that's a polite way to financially support a poor luthier!

Matte black??? Isn't that one of the most difficult surfaces to master? Looks good though with the shiny gold! And the inlaid jack, such a delicious detail... Don't they make matte pickups to match?

Yay! The guitar actually looks more stylish now! Should you ever want to reinstall the original switch, plugging and redrilling the ½" hole should be doable and pretty much invisible especially if you add a washer. Seeing the location I understand why you kept hitting it.

The Master Luthier Veijo Rautia tutoring our course is a pickup maker as well. I once asked how important it is to get the pole pieces match with the strings. He supposed that the magnetic field is so large that a single mm or two either way shouldn't be audible. When slanted one end of the pickup would be closer to the bridge than the other. The closer to the bridge the pickup is the thinner and snappier the sound which is why the Strat and Tele bridge pickup is slanted towards the neck on the bass side to give some beef, but as you know the humbuckers in the same position are straight. The closer to the neck you are the subtler any slight differences in positioning are. That said I don't believe putting the neck pickup at the same angle as the fanned frets would be a tonal issue.

Easier said than done. Building a shed in the garden wouldn't require any licenses as long as it's below 6 m². Sheds like that aren't too expensive, about €1500. BUT: A shed with proper insulation and heating to be usable at this time a year would require much more. It's -22° at the moment and the forecast says -35° for the night. Getting it electrified for both heating and power tools couldnt be safely done with a 30 m long extension cord running across the yard! I also have a "garage" between the sauna and the firewood storage (in the same building) but there's no electricity in that space. There's electric light at both ends of the building but I doubt the fuse and underground cable would be sufficient for both heating and power tools. And the garage is uninsulated as well, the large doors serving only for hiding purposes. So in any case building a warm workshop would cost about €5000 which is something I can't afford for just building experimental guitars. I'd like to have that workshop, though.

Oh yes, that David!

I wish the threads you started only a few years ago at the Crimson forum were still available. Your progress has been exponential!

I just watched a Jerry Rosa video about a buzzing octave mandolin. It buzzed when certain notes were played but it also rattled when the headstock was tapped. After having checked most everything mentioned here he finally noticed that the tuner buttons were more or less loose. Simple as that. Most likely not what causes your issue but worth knowing.

Even my limited knowledge tells that for just swapping between two options a push button should work. I also know that there's at least two types of push buttons, one that switches between two options and another that works for just the moment you push it. Of course the latter could be made to work as well but that would require some sort of magic. The master electrickerians here can sure tell you more about the wiring and the type of button you'd need.

Although relicing isn't my thing I must say you did well! What I like most is that you made it look like much played instead of abused - I've seen videos where they violently beat the body with chains and bars and whatnot. You ended up being true to the original. - Didn't you find it somewhat challenging to blend the paint to bare wood, making it look like the paint has naturally worn out before chipping off?

Thanks for your encouraging words @Andyjr1515! Unfortunately it's not about tools, it's about space. Actually I have quite a good variety of power tools but no dust extraction. And it's cold outside! Unfortunately most of my hand tools are pure Poundshop quality, creating a burr to a freshly sharpened blade at first stroke on wood! But there's light at the end of the tunnel and it's not a train! A fellow builder just sent an email, telling that the public pay-by-hour workshop is still open. The same mail was sent to some regulars and the tutor so maybe we'll see some progress during the winter!

I don't know how it should be translated. There's several versions, none of which seem to perfectly fit: Community College, Adult Education Centre etc. Anyhow, in most towns here they organize spare time courses around various subjects from languages to dancing to woodworking. The skill level of the teachers can vary from advanced hobbyists or native speakers to trained professionals. We're lucky as our tutor is a trained and qualified Master Luthier who has been in the business since 1984. For many of us the course is some sort of counterbalancing therapy after a week at work. So no, it's not an 'official' luthiery school, we don't get diplomas nor do we qualify as luthiers.

If we take the bottom of the LP body as the 'level' surface, the pocket has to be at an angle. There's several ways to do that. You can plane the rear of the top to the desired angle and use that surface as a routing guide you can make an angled external template ramp system you can slant the template to the right angle by using studs or wedges for adjusting or you can mix the above to suit your needs most likely those aren't the only ways to do it And of course you can do the angle to the heel of the neck as well. The reason for to carve the neck pocket is that it's easier to get right as there's much more surface area to support the router and templates. Also, carving a full width pocket similarly to PRS and Fender is much easier than the mortise and tenon way Gibson does it. Getting the 'shoulders' of the Gibson heel right can be a PITA. I feel the urge of drawing the above, the angles are highly exaggerated.

There's going to be somewhat of a hiatus. The community college sent an SMS saying that due to Covid-19 there won't be a spring season. I've got some tools but the only place I have is the kitchen table and power tool generated wood dust isn't my favourite spice. Let's see...

Good find @10pizza! I've seen the trick of putting a few small rolls of masking tape glue side out on the truss rod before gluing the fretboard but obviously that's not an option after the fingerboard is in place. Also, the silicone will address sideways movement as well.

I remember that as well. Am I right to suggest, though, that you wouldn't recommend that path as the Highway to Success?

It won't work that way. Pigments are ground solid stuff similar to sand. Many pigments actually are ground stone. There's coarse sand and fine sand and dust. No matter how much water or alcohol you add the coarse sand won't turn to dust. Think it like corn: There's a big difference in wholegrain and sieved flour. Mixed with water one makes a mess and the other one dough. Adding more water to wholegrain doesn't make the mess bakeable. If you thin paint so much that you can see the fancy figuration of the wood, you'd be seeing tiny coloured dots all over the surface. It would look dirty.

There's two reasons to use oil paint on a guitar. Either you want it to look like your granny's house in which case you'll avoid sanding as well. Or you're a budding Rembrandt in which case you'd need some more colours than just brown and black. I remember the experimentations of @ADFinlayson, they were hair raising scary!

Definitely! A bonfire to smell the wood! But yes, scorching or rather roasting some invisible part like the trem cavity with a lighter should give you the scent without sacrificing the structural integrity. Or you could even carve a minuscule bevel to the edge of the trem cavity and burn the shavings separately. That said, burning just one part may not reveal the whole truth! The tight striping at the edge looks like figured maple but the large flames in the center blocks look like the flamed birch I've seen. So if that's a mix of the two you'd have to chop along the seams carve a chip off the control cavity as well and compare the smell of the burned shavings.

It's possible. The bridge pickup may be a tad wider than the two others, following the wedge shape of the string line. As we're only talking about 2 mm between the neck and the bridge that should not be a tonal issue. The pickup rings may not fit as such but they can be replaced. And of course if you can find pickups of the same ilk for the neck and middle positions there'd be no fitting issue. Electronics is not within my super skills so I'll let someone else answer on the 6 way switch part. What I do know is that as you'll be replacing humbuckers to humbuckers the old pots should do just fine. Generally, 250K pots are used with single-coil pickups, and 500K pots are used with humbuckers.

Looking at them I must have voted most of them for GOTM - not all since January was tied! It's like asking which of your children you love the most!