Bizman62

Umm... Aren't the bridge pieces individually height adjustable? If the actual base has a radius too tight, raising the outer pieces should straighten it.

Also, you said you 'think' that the bridge radius is similar to the nut. But have you actually measured it? Eyeballing can be surprisingly accurate but sometimes our brains do tricks to what we see.

Oh, and welcome to the forum!

You "can". The biggest issue would be that oil wears out much faster than lacquer and when that happens some dye will come off and stain your hands. That may be a problem or then again not. I've got at least one guitar with a stained fingerboard and I can't remember having darkened fingertips after playing. Then again a sweaty palm has much more diluting power than fingertips.

There's other ways to darken wood, the walnut stuff described here might be of interest: https://mamaneedsaproject.com/how-to-darken-wood-without-stain/. Not saying that it won't stain your hands but at least it would be a natural food safe ingredient used in cosmetics as well.

The above also compares tung oil to linseed oil, it seems that linseed oil builds up faster and might be a bit darker. But tung oil gets harder. Maybe mixing them, linseed as a darkening base and tung for surface?

Congrats for GOTM. As said, simply beautiful.

Is the neck fixed or bolt-on? If the latter, loosening the bolts for 1/4 turn with strings on might shorten the scale length a bit. Not to mention that if there's a gap between the neck end and the end of the neck pocket in which case filing the screw holes oval in the body would allow for even more adjusting.

5 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Oh it's brittle alright, the fretboard is pale ebony though, just the neck is roasted maple.

And now you've sort of roasted the ebony with your clothes iron. That's what I tried to say.

Targeted sanding sounds like having worked.

40 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

That does things to the fretboard wood IMO, it just made it feel a bit more brittle after heating it up

Knowing that roasted wood is more brittle than regular dried that doesn't surprise me. Roasting is done in moderate heat to maintain the strength but fretboards are thin so they may get thoroughly roasted pretty quickly. Roasting wood is delicate, it's easy to overdo but if you leave the wood "undercooked" it won't get all the desired properties. For guitar building or furniture making you don't need all the good stuff (like weather resistance) so a light tan may well be good enough in terms of less weight and harder surface. Or just nice looks.

Actually now that I remember it better it was just heat involved.

And it's not about poor contact, it's about stretching one wood and bending the other  like on a curved laminate.

I wonder what would happen if you steamed the nut end of the fretboard off and glued it back in place making sure it's at least flat or even with a tiny relief. That would require some creative clamping but shouldn't be beyond your skill level.

The trick of steaming and regluing to fix an undesired bow is from Jerry Rosa's bag of tricks.

1 hour ago, Akula said:

show the world my most insane creation.

That insanity will be hard to beat...

I know nothing about electronics but since it's volume related it might be something resonating i.e. something being loose that should be tightly glued or screwed.

Sometimes it's possible to find the problem spot by tapping and knocking. There's also some more or less obvious spots to check:

• corners, handles
• the actual amp against the case
• the speaker against the case
• wires hanging loose
• dust or other particles between the speaker cone and the front cloth
• debris between the speaker cone and the basket
• a failing glue joint inside the cabinet, especially if there's pieces of wood supporting the inner corners.
• a failing speaker, mainly the suspension ring or dust cup starting to fall off.
• a hole/tear in the speaker cone - that and the above can be fixed with flexible glue like contact adhesive

It might also be the voice coil scraping the magnet but that should be present at any volume and cause more trouble than just buzz when too loud. That can be diagnosed by gently pushing the cone down to feel any abrasion like sand between two metal objects.

As you see the list of mechanical checkpoints is quite long but easy to fix with either a screwdriver and/or a wrench, a drop of suitable glue or just by cleaning.

1 hour ago, jowilmei said:

What is the percentage of full size that starts making the guitar look mini, rather than full size? 

If you can slim down the headstock as well, you can go quite far. Another thing to consider is to look into your mirror, anything will look small on a 150 kg 2 m tall guy!

Reducing some 10% might not look strange but that's just a guess.

A horizontal pot would also work but they come in very small diameters, 10 or even 15 mm is way too small to be used as a blender. Plus the movement range would be too large for a visual marker.

2 minutes ago, curtisa said:

Anything over 100k will be quite specialised.

That's true. Back when I spent more time I could find just what I wanted, with center notch and all, and the tapers were at full height at both ends - a basic stereo pot for panning between left and right speaker. The issue was that the sites I found the right models and values were those of manufacturers and I certainly don't need a sea container full of them!

Yepp. It's obvious...

First, it might have helped if you could have matched the grain direction. Even more if you could have found a piece matching the grain pattern - which by the way can be faked using a pencil crayon.

Second, @ScottR recently showed how he patched a flaw using a more oval shaped piece but that method requires gouging beyond at least my skill set. YMMV

But seeing that it's that large I suppose the edges would be more or less visible no matter what. Which is why I suggest you to think about making that a feature. A round piece of contrasting wood, maybe with your logo, or even a coin inlaid would give that round patch a purpose. Further, depending whether that's the bottom side or the top of a lefty, or just a mirrored phone photo, you might use that as part of the control cavity.

11 hours ago, curtisa said:

Further, I don't think a true blending fader (like the pot @henrim linked to) is something that can be bought off the shelf.

Oh, they do exist. "Dual gang slider" seems to be the key phrase, and surprisingly enough there's many that would fit closely to the screw holes of a blade switch but as said the ohm values are rather low, 10 k is more common than 100k. And the shafts are mainly plastic. I just found one from a Finnish international site, 10k made by Bourns, temporarily out of stock and delivery after September 2024! The price was tolerable for a single item. But the ohmage...

Oh, and now that I've been a bit more educated about various blender options: I've been toying with the idea of having a sliding pot instead of a blade switch. As has been said a real blender/fader pot would work just as imagined, keeping the output stable and mixing the two pickups logically.

The big question is, would impedance matter? There's tons of pots available at 100k but trying to find just one or two at 250k or 500k with a sturdy metal slider and of compatible length seems to be a mission impossible. I once found some but they never arrived despite the vendor saying so. Most likely they were stuck at the Customs until they were considered as "delivered but rejected".

7 hours ago, curtisa said:

The Breja scheme only acts as a [neck-at-100%-plus-variable-other-pickup] function. And it does it with the afore-mentioned issue of never being able to completely isolate or properly control the volume of the blended pickup.

Oh? This made me do some testing and you're right, it does exactly that. Plus some more: The dominant pickup changes depending on the switch. So basically if I wanted the Breja scheme to work with two pickups similarly to the Strat I'd need a two way switch, or a three-way for a full "both" sound?

4 hours ago, curtisa said:

It's not that they 'leak' - the way the pot is configured means it either cannot fully 'shut off' or 'open up' the pickup.

That's what I meant, I just can't speak Electronish that well.

As the other pickup will always have some effect, will there also be a humbucking effect in every position of the pot?

And if I choose a 500k pot for the blender, would I still need the 22k resistors? There's none in the Breja drawing for Strat.

This will be an experimentation, easy enough to change to a 3 way switch or a real blender pot if I'm not happy.

Thanks.

I know about the dual gang pots and when searching for information the separate volumes idea was also frequently brought up.

But I really just want to use what I have at home, this is for the guitar made of scrap pieces and donationware. And since the Strat works fine with a regular pot I'd like to test that idea with just two pickups.

56 minutes ago, Akula said:

The annoying part was trying to keep Barbie's hair out of the glue join!

That's the issue with long haired women, be they wives or dolls. Yesterday I had a strand of female floss in my salad. And pulling a hair from under your foreskin has to be done delicately...

Had to check out if that was going to be a headless guitar but by no means no.

6 hours ago, curtisa said:

Assyming you want proper nulling of each pickup at the extremes of the pot rotation

No, I'm aware that regular pots leak a bit and I'm fine with that thought. My Strat does just that and it sounds great. Here's how that's wired, the image is grabbed from a Breja ToneWorks video which doesn't seem to be available any longer:

Looking at the Strat drawing and omitting the mid pickup it looks like the green wire goes straight to the left lug and the red wire to the middle lug. So the main issue is the purple wire connected to the Volume pot: Where should the other end go? To the right lug of the Blender?

4 hours ago, Akula said:

Order of procedure really depends on the builder, people like to do things in different order.

So true! And it's not only about liking, it's also about either forgetting to do something at a convenient stage or fixing a bugging flaw.

That said, a checklist in a somewhat chronological order could help at least myself. A week between workshop hours and everything packed for storage and transport doesn't help remembering the next phase. For some tasks multiple locations in the list might make sense, in the style of "If you have bypassed this, how about now?"

Ooh, secret objects! Can't wait!

For my current build I was going to put a standard 3 way switch for the two single coils. The pickups are originally the mid and bridge of a Strat so played together they should sound something like the in between humbucking version.

Suddenly I remembered that I was planning to use a regular pot instead of a switch. I have an SSS Strat featuring a standard pot as a blender but I can't figure out how to do the same without a switch and a third pickup. I assume that would be very simple, though, for you guys who know your wires.

Here's the basic idea with ground wires. The rest is greek to me.

1 hour ago, Akula said:

Nope, no acrylic against the jointed face of the body, I'm relying entirely on a routed groove to hold the wings into the body. 

Oh yes, I found the drawing that explains. Seems solid,