Bizman62

Wow! I found a review video and at least on that one it seemed that they were boutique items rather than widely available ones. That said I guess you'd better start crafting! As for thickness I'd choose thin ones as they're often better for strumming. You don't pick a 12 string, do you? Something like 0.5 mm with a 1.0 mm spacer in between would provide the grip of a 2 mm pick and a sufficient spacing to simulate the double stringing of a 12 stringed guitar. [Edit] I had some spare time so I had to give it a try. Unfortunately I didn't have any thin picks at hand so I used what I had. I simply pinched three picks between my fingers with the middle one facing the opposite direction. There was a significant difference between 0.7 mm nylon picks and 1.0 mm abs ones. Also what I noticed was that 1 mm in between may not be enough, the sound was fuller with a 2 mm gap.

You're right, they're a bit on the skinny side. There's not too much play in case you have to plane them straight if they're warped. And the fretboard has to be left thick enough, about 6 mm. Depending on the width and direction of the growth rings you may also want to add a couple of carbon fibre rods on the sides of the truss rod, otherwise you may end up with too flexible necks. Slowly grown hard maple can be strong enough by itself. At 60 cm they're also a bit short but your plan of sacrificing one bit for scarf joints and heels it might be doable. Gluing several pieces for the heel is common practice and if you feel uncertain about the joint you can always plug in a couple of dowels for extra support. The price... Maderas Barber in Spain sells Sycamore blanks 700x85x25 mm for £7.71 so your £30 sounds like the price by the weight is similar.

There's quite a lot of room in the control cavity and with a solid wood contact you'd be able to use all the rhythmic tapping and banging typical for acoustic playing. I guess this guy has done it pretty nicely, knowing what he wants: If you feel like needing a preamp, here's how he made it:

Hi Don, welcome to the forum! First, what kind of a bridge are you using and where exactly have you put the pickup? My imagination tells that you're talking about a fixed bridge (no tremolo) and the pickup (the type used under the bridge bone) is tucked under the separate bridge blocks. If so, a better location might be under the entire bridge where you could even carve a shallow groove for it. Not too deep, though, as you'd need pressure against it to transfer the vibrations. A picture of the guitar with explanations might help! A piezo disk works similarly to the bridge pickup. They can work very well and if not there's no fortune involved. Plus they're easy to mount! A magnetic acoustic pickup designed to be put across the sound hole is similar to any magnetic pickup so installing one won't give the acoustic sound you're after.

Ouch! What makes you think so? If the frets are properly seated so there's no gaps under them, leveling the frets should be sufficient. Minor humps and dips don't matter that much as it's the frets that determine the note - think about scalloped frets, they can be very uneven and still playable! A straightedge placed on the frets will tell if the overall line is straight. Adjust that with the truss rod with strings off. Level with a sanding beam or similar, marking the frets with a Sharpie so you can see where you've sanded. After that a fret rocker will tell if a single fret is still high compared to the adjacent ones. Note that the straightedge and fret rocker must be used all over the width of the fretboard, on both edges, centerline and in between. When the frets are leveled, string the guitar and use the long straightedge to see if the string pull has made a gap around the 5th fret. If not, loosen the truss rod by 1/8 of a turn, repeat if necessary. If you REALLY have to pull super glued frets out, heat them with a solder gun to break the glue bond. Pincers with the top bevel sanded flush are a nice tool.

I must admit that my previous comment wasn't quite right as the harmonic is always exactly an octave higher than the open string. The location of the harmonic can tell if you're way off (the harmonic not being on the 12t) but a ruler would tell that too. The way you did it is good and right. There's a point, though, in comparing the notes on the 12th fret to the harmonics because sometimes the open string is too rich on harmonics and can be difficult to tune to pitch. Or maybe it's just an issue with an old analog tuner... But I find it easier to get to the right direction by ear when the notes are similar than when there's an octave between. To clarify, the harmonic can be used instead of the open string as they're always the same. Anyhow, they all should be the same note, the open string being an octave lower.

That will only tell that you're in the ballpark. You could do that with a ruler as well by measuring the distance from the leaving edge of the nut to the center of the 12th fret and duplicating that to the bridge. Instead of fretting you should compare the open note to the harmonic on the 12st fret to find out the right location. You can also compare the harmonic and the fretted note on the 12th fret, they should be the same note.

Often when I'm not sure about the exact term in English I search for the Finnish Wikipedia and see if there's an English article about the subject. Like Reaktiopuu->https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_wood

Lyly indeed! Gotta love how you drop Finnish terms amidst perfect English. That's hilarious!

That's a very good point, something that especially we non-native English speakers easily can mix. Stiff may indeed want to stabilize into unwanted shapes!

She looks nice! Talking about tweaking, it's always better to have too much material than too little. It's often good to leave the nut a tad too high until the neck has settled to the string tension. The baby steps from here on will and should take as long as the entire build so far!

Unlike you may think, a dead straight neck isn't ideal for the lowest action possible! Some relief is usually needed. To understand this we'll have to figure out how the strings move. You know about harmonics, don't you? Now if you strum a string the basic sound vibrates in a shape like a rugby ball or a skipping rope - an ellipsoid between the nut and the bridge. BUT: It also spins in a similar pattern between every harmonic node! So as the 12th fret is right in the middle, the string has the waist of a sideways 8 pattern right there and the largest points of rotation are on the 5th and 24th fret (which often is actually the neck pickup set a tad lower). We're talking about open strings here, fretting moves the nodes accordingly. Quarter and sixtht of string length rarely vibrate strongly enough to cause buzz but the first harmonic very well can do so. Some luthiers even carve a bow onto the fingerboard for the first harmonic. So after having made sure that your frets are perfectly leveled on a dead straight neck and set the nut to have the very small gap, lower the bridge until you get the buzz. Then release the truss rod just a tad, a 1/8 of a turn at a time until the buzz goes away. You may need to raise the bridge just a fraction as well as the height of the action is a combination of the two. But basically if the bridge is at the right height and there's buzz around the 5th to 7th fret a slight release is the cure.

Well... some logical pondering here again without any real experience: A laminated neck is more rigid than a single piece neck, right? And why is that? Obviously there's something else than wood involved. The glue between the veneers/slats is a solid uniform mass unlike wood. Now aren't square carbon fibre rods just that, solid uniform mass unlike wood? If ultra thin layers of glue can make wood stiffer, carbon fibre sticks can make it even stiffer. Will it be too stiff is about proportions. If a multi-lam neck is almost stiff enough, the thinnest carbon fibre slabs you can get are most likely enough. If not, keep adding them until you've reached your goal.

That's a good question! It depends on your whereabouts, it depends on the insurance company and it depends on their current insurance deals. Back in the day one local company had a dedicated instrument insurance with a nominal excess. I knew a drummer who got new cymbals every year for zilch since his old ones had mysteriously cracked under normal use. At some point my current insurance company asked if I had anything special as their home insurance normally would cover standard furniture and other household necessities such as tableware, linen and clothing. Evaluating your own builds is an ungrateful task. You should pretty easily be able to insure the parts and materials as they have an unambiguous price tag. As I understand you don't build guitars professionally which means your man-hours will likely be counted as a hobby. Shop around, there's differences in insurances.

That's as good as you can get it with stain only. The toothpicks are end grain so they shift light in a different manner no matter how close you get the colour. The only way to hide them better is to apply semi-transparent paint after staining - tinted clearcoat or something like that. Or even solid black paint to match the top side. Especially the latter would require using some sort of filler to solidify the end grain of the sticks, otherwise you'd see small sunk rings when the paint has properly dried. As you can see even the manufacturer wasn't too critical in making the headstock uniform, the wings are pretty visible as well especially when the light comes from a certain angle. Most likely the wing blocks don't share the same grain direction as the neck. That's a common "feature" even among high priced brands. A simple thing to try is to use translucent nail varnish on the tooth picks, they're available even in mahogany red or some similar looking shades. Let the history show but solidify the patches.

So the tuners are designed to replace both the corner screw and the Fender type two pin (at least one size of them) tuners without having to drill extra holes? That's a neat feature! Speaking of holes and cracks, I'd recommend you to fill the old holes with sticks and glue for structural integrity. For hiding the patches you can then stain the plugs and restore the finish on the back of the headstock as well. Judging by the orange peel it looks like some relacquering has already been done so why not make it look good.

CA is a good option. For a crack the thinnest version might be best. Nail varnish is good for fixing lacquer.

After yesterday's Scotch tasting I wasn't at my perkiest this morning. Not only did I appear late in the class, I also spent quite some time helping other builders. But I'm happy with what I could do: I rerouted the neck and pickup cavities a couple of mm deeper and the fretboard now seems to be at the right height compared to the bridge. I also finished radiusing the fretboard and went through some grits up to 6000 to give it a nice sheen. The buttons are semi-transparent again. I also applied some Crimson penetrating Guitar Finishing Oil over the dusty board to fill the pores. Guess I should have made a proper slurry and spread it generously and let dry, then again the previous fretboards I've made of that very same blank have their pores unfilled without issues in playability. I'm more concerned about the buttons. Now that they're polished they have a friction similar to a lacquered neck. Most likely that won't be an issue either.

Can you wiggle the crack either by pushing from underneath or from the top for a pumping effect? If you can, squeeze some water into the crack with a small brush, followed by Titebond, possibly thinned with water. The water will spread into the dry wood and cause a sucking effect for the Titebond to follow. If you can see squeezeout on the inside you're golden. Use a mirror or a (phone) camera to view the inside.

It is starting to look like your youth companion is going to be a really nice instrument again!

It's about the threaded part, not the shaft. That's what I've been trying to tell. 6 mm thickness is usually enough, I went down to 4 mm on my T-type. Then again, the Tele control cavity is much narrower which adds to stiffness across the grain. On my Semi-Hollow Neck Thru build the Ovangkol top is about 6 mm and the pots are near the f-hole. The inner curve of the f-hole doesn't give in.

That's a great fix! Actually I didn't notice it before @ScottR mentioned it. Then, while waiting for your answer, I thought about your art and wondered if the dice face of 5 would have a meaning in the Rebel Cowboys mythology... You'd better come up with a fancy story other than confessing you've made a mistake.

To be nitpicky, it's stiffer compared to the mass and size than most any wood. To be even nitpickier, does my comment above bring anything new to the discussion?

Heat or no heat? I guess we're starting to talk about fine tuning. Would stainless steel and ancient Roman concrete be better than rebar and modern concrete? (yes it would, just because Roman concrete is still strong after 2000 years and modern concrete only lasts about 50 years. Very poor comparison...)

I've heard about them, too. But even with those you'll have to have the threaded part come through the top for about 3 mm. My current build has a radiused top and the control cavity is lined along the flat bottom so the top is of unequal thickness. I'm planning to partially recess the knobs, there's a pillar drill or three in the workshop. You're right about forstner bits, they'd most likely slip and slide on a slope! A handheld router with a cove bit might work with the bearing stuck into the pot hole, especially if you attach a rail on the lower side to keep the router horizontal.