Gogzs

22 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

The tinfoil trick is clever! Getting the tape in right can be a nightmare especially in tight spots if you can't be sure that the glue is conductive. And you can't beat the price!

Yeah, when I saw the prices of conductive copper tape I remember high school (graduated as radio communications technician). Some of the field equipment we used for testing needs to be calibrated without any outside EM noise, so we would use tinfoil and plastic lunch boxes to make a faraday cage. If it's good enough for the sensitive electronics, it should be more than enough for this

19 hours ago, mistermikev said:

those inlays... very fetching.  alvarez dana scoop inspired?

Had to look it up haha, yeah looks pretty similar. I actually built and fretted a fretboard other than this one. At first I wanted to go with normal dot inlays, but once I put the fretboard on the neck I felt like it's a pity to cover the pear stripes that go through the neck. So I made a new fretboard with the pear wood inlays, to make it look like the stripes are going through the rosewood. You'll notice they are on the fretboard exactly above the stripes. 

But now I'm actually bummed I didn't do it inverted... I should have put two pear stripes along the whole fretboard and just intterupt them on 3-5-7-9... etc. would have looked much better, but oh well, I'm not gonna tear this down and build a third fretboard  

Thanks everyone for the kind words, I'll try to get a few clips of it playing these days, super happy with the sound. 

Oh, some tech info:

The mini switch is an on/on/on kind, I use it to pick between bridge/both/neck pickup, and the volume knob (closer to the pickups) is also a pull push, when pulled it splits the coils (on the bridge it selects the closer to the bridge, on the neck it selects closer to the neck). So all in all, 6 configurations are possible. 

Last few days were fun, setting everything up was a breeze, it turned out beyond my wildest expectations. So here's what was missing:

I pressed in tin foil to get the shape, removed it while preserving the shape, put on a thin layer of glue onto the cavity and pressed the tin foil back in. This was the simples way to do the shielding without having to wait for conductive paint to be shipped here. No weird humms or noises, so it's doing its job correctly.

I like the way this "sating" finish on the back side turned out, I can imagine one day waking up, stripping the guitar down and sanding the front to such a finish as well. It's just so nice to touch. 

I noticed the furthest parts of the jack hole didn't get the last layer of the wipe on poly... you really have to look directly inside from this angle to notice it... but since everyone (not just you guys here) is obsessing over the jack hole, I might have to get back at it and fix it... otherwise super satisfied with the front finish. The lines seen around the knob are reflections from the closet drawers, not scratches in the finish... 

Action turned out awesome, nice and low with no fret buzz... I did put on two sets of cheap strings while dialing everything in, but was totally worth it, the playability is amazing. Had to screw the pickups a bit lower than normally, they are really screaming haha.

String trees installed, headstock nice and shiny, frets polished...

Body turned out nice and thin, really like how it feels.

And here it is in all its glory. Huge thanks to everyone for their input, be it in this thread or other threads where I read some tips and tricks, without those, this wouldn't have been possible! Cheers guys! Now off to enjoy the long weekend, and sketch up some plans for the next build. Damn it, this was so satisfying

I would do either what @komodo said, or I would narrow it down all the way to the nut so it misses equally much (3-4mm) along the whole length on each side. Then I'd glue 3-4 mm thick maple veneers on the sides. You'll get a nice binding along the whole length and when you carve the neck it won't look like you messed up.

Whatever method you think you can pull off, pull it off. It will eat you alive when it's all done and playableish instead fully playable

10 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

I have to say I'm pleased with the heel - it is the great, great advantage of through-necks, particularly with slim bodies

This was the main motivation I had for building mine, the neck joint on the Ibanez S series is rather bulky and a huge compromise in my opinion. Thanks for the tips about the neck finish, will consider Danish oil definitely for the next build

I see you left it full glossy on the back side/neck as well. I felt like the Minwax wipe-on poly gets stickyish if my hand gets sweaty, so I used fine sanding paper and brought the back side and neck to a satin finish instead leaving it full glossy, feels much nicer now... just curious how truoil is in that regard?

The demarcation line is such a nice detail, but the top is hypnotizing... just, wow.

I finally got the wipe-on poly delivered on thursday. So far I only did 2 layers, sanded lightly with 1000 grit inbetween layers letting them sit for 24 hours. 

Here's a little comparison. I really love how the grain pops and the contrast, way better than I expected. 

Can't believe how nice it looks after 2 coats... I'll sand this one lightly as well, put one more coat and then polish it. 

I don't wanna add too many coats, I want these pores to stay visible. I like this shiny but raw wood look... feels great to touch, and the hands glide nicely on the neck, so I'll keep it this way... hope I can put it all together by the end of the week

Thanks everyone for the kind words, tips and tricks that brought me this far  But well, the credits for the jack position doesn't belong to me, Ibanez does it that way on the S series. I looked at a few other thin bodied projects, and the compromises some make to fit the jack in a more traditional place on the side made me uncomfortable... so it was either make it or go down in a blaze of glory haha.

I'm waiting for the wipe-on poly to arrive, in the mean time I was drawing up the wiring diagram and realized I didn't drill the hole for the toggle, so did that today and fit everything to see how little/much space I'll have in the cavity when it's all in. It's not much haha...

Now waiting for the postman and looking for wood for a second build

41 minutes ago, Akula said:

Time for a show of hands - should I paint this thing solid black, or should I leave it completely natural and show off it's peasant origins? 

Yeah, I like the peasant origins, and think it would be charming to leave it like that, but damn this build is amazing considering all the challenges you're facing, and for that... paint it black, polish it up, make it look like as aristocrat as possible  

On 4/19/2020 at 10:11 AM, Bizman62 said:

the slot and the angled hidden jack are very nice details as well.

The jack was pretty tricky to pull off. The wall inside the cavity where the jack pokes out has to be angled, 90 degrees to the audio jack (so I couldn't just route it out). And drilling/sanding the hole was another challenge (built a small wooden rig so I can start trilling with the bigger drill from the top, after drilling from the cavity outwards first with a smaller bit).

All in all, took a good 4-5 hours to get it right, but insanely happy with the result:

Here's what I've been up to the last 10ish days.

The friday before Easter I managed to get the bridge pick up in, wired it to the audio jack and set everything up. I played it for 5 days to get a feel for everything that's still wrong, so I can get it done before varnishing it. Here's a little clip, some fun with the looper pedal, really pleasently surprised by the DiMarzio X2N.

Sound check: 

Was mostly happy how it turned out, but in the end I thinned the neck down a little more, and the bottom half of the guitar went for another round of dieting and lost a few mm while still thick enough to fit everything into the cavity. And I noticed where was buzz on two frets so I checked that out as well, two of them were a bit higher than the rest (12 and 20, don't know how they avoided getting leveled). 

After stripping it down and fixing everything I didn't like, I caved out the neck pickup cavity and realized I made a quite big mistake. I didn't route a channel for the cables from one pickup cavity to the other before gluing all the neck/body parts together (to be honest, I did think about it when I started, but I was like "if I get to the point I'm putting pickups in it, I'll figure it out" haha... so I figured it out).

I carved the panga-panga bit between the twopear stripes, and made a fitting piece that has a channel on the bottom for the cables. Glued the piece into the hole, and it looks like nothing happened. I sanded it so far with up to 400 grit sand paper, wiped with damp cloth to raise the grain, and sanded again, this is how it looks when wiped with a damp cloth:

I really love how it turned out, still a bit unreal I came this far haha. There are some spots on the fretboard where the wooden inlays are, that I have to fill with ca glue + rosewood sanding dust, and I have to polish and round the fret ends (so far I only filed them down to not injure myself while I was playing it, but still not as nice as I'd like it). 

Could be completely done by the end of the month

30 minutes ago, TParker2 said:

But, that guitar does have a strange sound when I switch to both p90. Is that an out of phase thing? Got one flipped wrong?

I'm pretty sure P90s can't be flipped wrong so it'll be something else. 

I love this build, I usually go like "this is what I wanna be able to do" and then use the minimum amount of parts possible to achieve that (be it home automation projects, software projects or now, guitar building). And you went the complete opposite way, threw in a handful of pots and switches on it and went like "let's see what I'll use these for" haha, mad scientist, godspeed!

Wow, they turned out nicely. And yeah, the way I suggested, routing the radius after making the crown recesses without the crowns actually inside would have chipped the recesses for sure, wasn't thinking about that.

Glad you figured it out, can't wait to see it all wrapped up.

How about procedure nr. one, but you first radius it with a router, then fit the crowns, then radius the crowns with a radius block. Would still be a bit tricky to get the crown recesses depth correctly, you'd have a flat bottom but you wouldn't be routing mother of pearl... well, juts a wild thought.
Btw, the top looks amazing, can't wait to see it finished up

A month ago I wouldn't be able to imagine even attempting something like this... but with the time I got now on my hands due to the pandemic, this seems like the proper way of spending it haha... can't wait to see it done, insane.

21 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

This one of mine is less than 30mm thick at the pickup fixing areas - and these aren't slim pickups.  I did have to cut the fixing screws to length, though :

I was hoping you'd show up and give some insight  glad you're still replying to this thread even tho it's a chubby bodied build compared to your average project haha 

They will be sticking out a little, but not that much (cca 2-2.5mm) and they are 25mm from top to bottom. gives me 15ish mm of wiggle room, should be more than enough. I'll slim the body on the backside for 3-4 more mm if everything goes right, to get it to 34ish mm on the thickest parts  

Off to the hardware store now, to get some woodscrews so I can experiment around to see what and how it'll get done. Thanks man, appreciate the response very much!

Here's a small update of what I've been up to the last week:

Started work on the controls cavity. Roughly done by hand with the router + chizzle. Started before the hardware arrived, just to get a feel how much more I can shave off of the body, but still have enough wood for everything to fit in nicely.

Hardware arrived. Dmarzio D Activator X - Neck, X2N for bridge, mini 3 way toggle for selecting between them, 500k tone pot, 500k pull push pot for volume + coil splitting. Audio jack and the knobs with the Celticish knot.

Details. Love how it's coming together. 

At the thickest parts (around the pickups) it's 38mm. I'm aiming for directly mounted pickups, we will see how that goes, I ordered black pickup rings just in case it fails, cause the DiMarzios are kinda thick. I'm worried I won't have enough wood left to properly secure them after routing out the pickup holes. 

Hard to bring across the body shape in pictures, but it goes down to 15mm on the wing edges. Everything flows nicely (belly cutout on one side, forearm cutout on the other. Really happy how it turned out. Just minor adjustments needed, but that'll be done when I start sanding with 240 and higher grit. 

I have to get 12 and 16 mm wood drill bits to finish the jack hole, finalize the top side shape of the bottom wing, add more depth to the control cavity, place everything inside and then thin down the bottom wing as much as possible. 

Should be all done and playable by saturday, after testing everything I'll strip it naked, sand/clean up and apply wipe on poly

10 minutes ago, n8caster said:

Great tips!

Yeah, can't remember where on this forum exactly I read them, but I was in the same boat as you few weeks ago (first build) and it turned out beyond my expectations.

Here's a visual explanation of using the reflections in the blade as a guide. Obviously I didn't cut the ruler, just used it to demonstrate the thought behind... you'll be looking at the center line and its reflection. 

Or build a rig, I was too lazy to build one...

I also skipped getting a jig for my first build, and I'll probably skip getting one, period... I read on here a few tips for cutting fret slots that I followed and they turned out marvelous:

Draw a center line across the fretboard (will be usefull later when cutting, also, easier to make the frets 90 degrees angle to the centerline)

Use a long ruler with mm markings and mark every fret position with it from the nut. Don't use a caliper measuring fret to fret, errors will accumulate and you'll end up with a bigger mess than just marking them with the long ruler.

I hand cut the slots with a japanese style saw. Use the center line in the reflection of the saw blade to make sure you're holding the saw correctly (you need to be sure you're 90 degrees to the fretboard, and that the cut is 90 degrees to the center line... so if you hold your saw correct, the center line will appear to continue through the blade in the reflection, that's when you know you're holding the saw correct). 

Take your time and enjoy, not much can go wrong if you measure twice and cut carefully

Thanks for the encouraging words, hope it turns out like you said. 

I finally got around to carve the neck, one of the steps I was afraid of even tho I read a ton of posts on these forums stating that it's super fun/satisfying. And I can only agree with those statements haha, it's the most fun I had since we're in lockdown mode due to corona. 

I am beyond satisfied how it turned out. 2.5mm thicker than my Ibanez, will remove an additional mm from it, a bit too much for my liking, but that should be easy now that it's pretty much done. 

I also set in all the frets and just roughly filed them down, all tuners are in and the nut is where and how it should be pretty much. 

Next stop, cavities and body diet. 

I spent the last 4 days building a second fretboard, I had an idea for the fret markers that was kinda hard to pull off with the frets already solid in place. The idea was to use the same pear wood that the two stripes are made from to make it look like the stripes are showing through the fretboard. 

Turned out better than I expected so it's now glued onto the neck. I also set one fret in, the rest are just resting lightly in the slot, just to get a better feeling how everything aligns and if the fret markers look right (they do irl).

At some point I had the bridge screwed on and one string put on. Everything lines up perfectly, I can't believe I came this far actually haha. Ordering the electronics tomorrow, so it comes by the time I finish the fretboard and gather the courage to route out the pickup and pot/switch cavities. 

Still left to do: carve the neck and remove a lot of wood from the body, specially the mahogany wings, they will lose 40ish % of their mass.

The partially scalloped fretboard seems rather interesting, would love to try and play on that. Amazing end result, just wow.

On 3/18/2020 at 6:45 PM, Bizman62 said:

How do you set your browser width? Just by windowing it narrow enough? I always have full screen width, 2560 px. No issues.

 

Yeah, either narrowing it down or F12 and then with the dev tools  

Anyway, as my country has been put into lockdown mode due to corona virus, and most of the fun outdoor places have restricted movement, I spent the whole saturday working on the guitar, and here is what got done:

Managed to get the headstock into final dimensions, now I need to drill the tuner holes. Made some really sketchy angled rails for the router, to get the neck to proper thickness and it worked out nice. Cleaned up the body contours, it's the final shape now. No odd surfaces can be felt on the sides if you drag your fingers along, it's all smooth and curvy. Got some preparation work done on the transition from neck to body. I will keep that area simple and smooth. Here are some pics, enjoy!

Some odd reflections on the ibanez, and the top of the work in progress headstock looks a bit odd due to shadows...

17mm at the 1st fret, 19mm at the 12th. Add a 5mm thick fretboard, and it'll be up to my likings (2-2.5mm thicker than the ibanez).

Some chipped and bumped corners, most of those places will disappear when the body goes on diet.

Placed a nut I had just to see how it'll look. Wrong nut tho, too low for my fretboard. Either put a shim under or order a taller. 

Also, does anyone know if the panga panga will stay as colorful once I put on wipe on poly? I really love how the grain looks and wanna keep the finish to a minimum. 

Have a nice weekend folks!

56 minutes ago, JayT said:

I can only see the first half, 2nd half is just blank .... Using mac/chrome

But from what I can see great job!

I was looking into it a bit from a web-dev perspective, if you get your browser width below 979px, everything will render fine. I think the length of the post might have messed it up, I'll make sure to keep the further updated shorter

14 minutes ago, komodo said:

Welcome! You are building a bass? Is there any angle on the neck?

Building a 6 string guitar, but there are only 4 bridge saddles on the bridge cause I had to take 2 out so I can mark the holes. I don't think there will be an angle on the headstock, it'll stay flat, I have to remove 6-7mm more from the top, and a lot from the bottom. I didn't feel like angled would go good with this one.