willliam_q

Thanks, I was thinking of it mostly for neck laminates. I have become accustomed to hand planes and can do seamless joints but to do it on all the individual pieces involved in neck laminations takes quite a bit of time, particularly when also trying to thickness 2-3 pieces of wood. ill stick to the hand planes, I’m not likely to be making money at guitars or have much other use for it so can’t justify spending more for a better quality planer.

Welcome...build looks great. Super Strat - man after my own heart. I look forward to seeing this one develop.

Hi has anyone any experience of this Titan planer thicknesser? Reviews seem decent and it’s looks like great value. https://www.screwfix.com/p/titan-ttb579pln-204mm-electric-planer-thicknesser-230v/15774

I’ve been down with flu and bedridden the last few days so no progress made on a brighter note, these bad boys arrived today I’ve bought them new but need to get them tested ASAP. A while back I installed a brand new Seymour Duncan custom custom in my 5150 guitar but the pickup had been sitting for 2 years in its box. Only one coil was working and of course neither the supplier nor the manufacturer were willing to help me by that stage. Lesson learned!!

I’ll take the advice on board. It’s good to have someone reply who has experience with crimsons stains so thanks. I’m not really after northern lights but more the effect that BigD got when he was trying for it. I don’t really like the northern lights on prs, I find it a bit bright and garish. I prefer BigDs colour. so I might need to order up some royal blue and maybe even crimson red and experiment a. It to see which I like best.

What type of guitar are you building as a first? Most fit into the Les Paul style or a Strat style. As the others have already said, each guy has their own way of working. Whilst you’ve already said you didn’t want to look at videos, As a beginner I would say a good place to look is at the Fletcher Handcrafted Guitar Stratocaster build series on YouTube. It covers order of work pretty well in my opinion. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYoHfJxRJ1TgNPY5d3g1dlbtTQkhff24Z Order of work may differ depending on your options e.g one piece neck or separate fretboard. Whether you use a top, carved or flat etc. All of your choices at the design stage will affect your decision making on the order of work. I tend to do the following: 1. Start with neck, make up the neck blank woods, plane and glue scarf joints if using. 2. rout truss rod 3. cut outline of neck 4. attach and rout outline of fretboard 5. Install inlays 6. carve neck shape 7. Cut fretboard slots 8. create fretboard radius 9. install frets 10. Final sand neck and apply finish 11. Glue up body wood to make a blank 12. routing wiring channels if using a top 13. Shape arm contour and glue on top 14. Rout the body shape 15. rout neck pocket, drill holes for attaching neck 16. Rout all other cavities 17. Shape the remaining body contours 18. final sand and finish 19. Final assembly which also includes final setup of fretwork etc.

I’ve just bought a couple of different Crimson Guitars Stunning Stains Shots which they’ve described as a pigment so will await delivery. I got the denim blue and the purple, I’m aiming to do a similar finish to BigDGuitars Northern Lights finish. I know it’s nothing like the PRS northern lights but I really like the colour. BigDGuitars Northern Lights YouTube I’ll need to mix with water for the staining part but was just wondering if anyone had experience of mixing these with lacquer to create a tinted lacquer? I think these are water based but as this is a pigment maybe it’s different? The reason I ask is the veneer I used on the headstock is covered in glue from it seeping through, ill sand back the glue but I’m not sure there will be much wood figure left so think a lacquer pigment might work better than stain. Thoughts?

Every clamp I possess hopefully the glue up goes to plan, looking good so far if you look closely I have an mdf clamping caul with cross slats on it to form to the contour of the arm carve. This is because the contour is not a sharp flat carve but a gradual rounding over to aid clamping of the top. I got the idea from a motorcycle back protector that uses a similar concept.

Aye, customs can be hit or miss. I got a Yoshimura motorbike exhaust for about £300 new from US. Customs must have missed it as I didn’t get charged but here they were around £600 so lucked out. I don’t think I got charged for the Floyd Rose I ordered off their own site a few years back. I think the smaller items can slip through a bit easier.

Looks great. How do you find the Crimson stains? I’m thinking of getting their purple stain for my project. i reckon, once stained, I’m just going to coat mine with danish oil. Just because I happen to have some fro a previous project.

I was bidding on an EMG Het Set on eBay. I was prepared to go about £110 but the winner paid £119. Considering an new set is £175 I thought £120 was a bit steep for them. I had messaged the seller and he revealed some more detail on their condition. i find sometimes used guitar equipment doesn’t really drop its value from new. Great when trying to sell something...not as good when trying to buy cheap. Unless I can get a bargain I won’t buy used, in this case I’m just going to buy new. I’ll wait now until after Christmas, although they are unlikely to be in any sales, I’d kick myself in the off chance. when I’m building a new project I want new items where it’s reasonable to do so as the guitar, at least in my eyes, should be up to the standard of a new guitar off the shelf. anyone else have the same attitude? having said that I bought a Floyd rose original used for £85. At that price I couldn’t pass on it even though used bridges can be a risk.

Thanks for the tip(s), I had the masking tape on the body over the wiring routs just before this happened. do you remove the masking tape after spreading the glue, or do you keep the masking tape there and glue the top down over it? yep, took all of 2 minutes to make the arm contour with the hand plane. It’s a very satisfying job to do. I’m targeting myself for mid February finish date. Hopefully it will be sooner but want to be realistic.

Sooo, inhave now routed out a little bit for wiring channels prior to putting on the maple cap. I also did the arm contour carve with a hand plane and finished off with random orbital. I deliberately made a shallow carve to make it easier to apply the top. i made rough templates and made a pliable corner piece from MDF with slats to help me press the maple top down. I also made relief carves on the back of the maple top to allow it to bend over the arm contour. Unfortunately I decided to test the flexibility of the relief carves by hand without supporting the top and it split down the glue seam!!!! so I’m now waiting for the glue to set on that before gluing the top down...I am getting impatient now. Speaking of impatience, I know rule of thumb is to let the glue dry 24hrs before doing anything. My experience with titebond is that it can at least become fairly solid within a few hours. It’s now 4:45pm, would any of you chance cleaning up the top, releasing the clamps and gluing it to the body wood at around 9pm? I have tomorrow all to myself and would love to get the neck pocket routed out. Christmas day and Boxing Day are out for me and then I’m back to work on Friday so want to get as much done as possible.

Thanks, that’s what I was afraid of but anything that’s powered by a battery can fail in my book. Will reflow the solder and if that doesn’t fix it I’ll likely replace them.

I think that looks pretty class, the dark body against the bright colours really suits it. I agree the collar needs to match the cuff...ahermmm If you wanted to get a bit closer to pink Floyd style sound maybe some P90’s? They’re closer to the single coil sound aren’t they? I’ve never played them myself so can’t be sure.

I was as frustrated with hand planes as well until I looked up a load of YouTube videos to learn how to tune them. Mines only cost me £20 but I have it very well set up that I don’t need a thicknesser or jointer. Having said that my local Screwfix has a Titan jointer/thicknesser for £160 that has got great reviews. If I find I’m building enough guitars I’ll buy it. One of the reviews is from a fellow guitar builder. my biggest luxury was probably my floor standing drill press that I bought about 13 years ago, it was new @ £150. my latest luxury was the Titan bobbin sander which I love, makes finish sanding a guitar body so much more pleasurable. Congrats on the poker win. It’s been a few years since I played. We used to put £5 in the pot each and make the game last all night. I’d usually get frustrated at the slow pace of play and go all in on a weak hand so never got my money back . Never played for big enough money to win a couple of hundred though...I might have been more focused if it was!

Looks good, definitely doing the right think buying as you go. you don’t need as many tools as you might think, especially when watching YouTube videos etc. Most of the guys on there have thickness planers, jointers, large belt sanders, router tables, circular saws etc. All expensive kit but you don’t need any of it. It just takes a hell of a lot longer without. with the right preparation you can get away with a jig saw (or ideally a small cheap bandsaw) a hand plane, hand saw, router with a selection of bits, drill and bits, and some fretting tools like a fret levelling file, fret slotting saw etc. Nut slotting filed unless you get a Floyd locking nut. look for second hand power tools, I got myself a 8” band saw for £60 and haven’t had the need to upgrade. my router is a Bosch router that I picked up on eBay.

finished off the body shape template, roughed out the body and top and finally thicknessed the body. I done this with my router planer sled and got a bit of chip out on one of the horns but recovered the piece and glued it back in seamless. Am a bit nervous now of finish routing the body now as it seems it would chip out quite easy. not sure whether to put the arm contour on before I finish rout the body and then add the top, or finish rout the body now and then put in the contour. Are there any disadvantages of either way? i PS that’s a centre line in both body and top...not the glue line (although it’s on the glue line). The glue line is seamless.

I have got the nut shelf routed and locking nut installed. As with everything else in this build so far it’s been fighting me. I eyeballed the screw holes and got it completely wrong...don’t know how that happened. Had to fill with scrap hardwood chippings and superglue. That’s what I get for working when tired. thankfully it’s a top mount nut (I went for Gotoh to get the 16” radius) so it won’t be seen! To redrill the holes I looked at the data sheet and took the measurements from that instead. Worked out perfect. The next issue was when the top mount screw head wore due to the pilot hole not being deep enough. The neck is quite thin at that end and I was very afraid of busting through but as a result put a little too much pressure on the tiny screw and rung it. Again I got lucky in that I was able to back it out. I can’t find a replacement screw online so I found a small wood screw of similar length and sanded the head down to a diameter that would fit. Worked perfectly. It is silver so I’ll have to touch it up with a spot of black paint. All in all this step took way more time than was necessary. I’ve also got the body template cut out to shape...does anybody else hate making templates???? I get impatient and want to start cutting and shaping wood instead of working with MDF...which is horrible stuff.

I’ll look forward to seeing this develop, I really like the drawing and the wood combinations.

I have had a set of ZAKK Wylde EMG 81/85s bought new in a PRS SE Tremonti for the last roughly 13-15 years. Only recently they’ve started to have a strong hiss from them. It’s particularly noticeable in high gain but Is in the background on relatively clean as well. I changed the guitar cable, plugged straight to amp and changed the battery. Can be a little intermittent and sometimes I think moving the guitar about can get it to change but it never truly goes away, I can’t see any lose wires. My passive guitars don’t have any issues, it’s only this one. Has any of you experienced this before or have experience of EMGs failing? can EMGs fail I.e. the preamp over time? Any other ideas? thanks

Looks great, given me an idea for later down the road.

I had a similar idea to do a frankenstrat but didn’t really want a relic so I made this instead, not sure if it appeals to you? Ignore the Kramer logo, if I was to do over i wouldn’t add that again. I used a Kramer scale drawing I found online for free, printed out tiled on A4 paper and joined up the lines. This got my outline templates but I positioned the Neck and bridge By following something similar to what mike has suggested. whther you do as I’ve done or go Frankenstrat, the wiring is the same. Very basic as only one pickup to wire up and a jack. As great as the guitar is, I am considering adding a second pickup as I find the guitar very one dimensional with only 1 in it

Ah ok, I could try that then. Will test it first as I’m very afraid of tear out on figured maple.

Thanks all, I should have elaborated a bit more. This is for a super strat project so it will be straight metal knobs, not the prs/Gibson style speed knobs. I wasn’t really thinking of a soft recess and more a hard shallow recess that the control knob sits in. I will test on off cuts when I produce them, I have a couple of forstner style bits but by the sounds of things that would be a disaster! Glad I asked first.