Ben

I drew them all next to each other to help me decide: #4, with no pickguard at all is probably my least favourite... Problem is I like all the others pretty much equally! I cant decide!

I might seriously do that! It would solve the problem of fixing the hole on the back where I slipped with the router whist cutting the chambers! I have some clear perspex the right thickness that I could use, but while exposing the wood grain may look good, exposing a rats nest of wires may not! Thanks!

Wow! that finish looks great! I like those two colours together and the stripe.

Done the whole board and its all accurate! The slots arent quite deep enough yet, but they are in the right place. I filled the slots on the back with veneer too. Problem solved!

Could he mean overwound? A pickup with lots of windings could be described as a 'hot' pickup, thats what I would guess he meant. Even if you had the same pickups, there are many factors that affect tone; just having the same pickups is no guarantee that it would sound the same as his setup.

I have started again, and so far it going well! It really helps to have the pinted template glued down securely, and printed so that the lines cover the entire fretboard width. I think that is what wen wrong last time, it moved or something.

Buy "Make your own electric guitar" by Melvin Hiscock. Its a really good book and is full of info. It has advice for designing a guitar and some step by step tutorials with photos.# Good luck!

Ok, I have plenty of spare time now, (easter holidays) so I am going to turn it over and try again on the back. If that works, I'll then fill all the slots on the underside with veneer and epoxy (I have some veneer the exact same thickness). If it doesnt work, I'll kick myself for screwing up again, and buy a preslotted board from somewhere. The preslotted board is a bit of a compromise though. I want a 25 1/4" scale length, if I get a premade board I'll have to settle to 25.5 or 25". Must have 24 frets too. I live in the UK and the preslotted boards arent so cheap here. Especially with the specific requirements I have. This is hard to explain without a diagram; When I printed the template, the lines it printed didn't span the entire width of the fretboard, I have now found a way to make the lines longer so that they do, so that should help improve the accuracy a little. I'll make sure I glue the template down securely so it stays put. I'll use non-waterbased glue so the paper template wont expand or anything. My work is far from perfection, but when its on such a crucial part of the guitar, I want it perfect. It would be awful if I put so much time into the guitar, then string it up and find out that it played out of tune. Thanks all!

No, I thought about that! I actually nearly did it that way, then realised how daft it was. I used a fret calculating program and printed a template. I dont know what happened to be honest. I should probably point out that the inacuracies of 0.5mm and 1mm I mentioned above are at the very ends of the fretslots on the board. The board is currently quite a bit wider than it will be when glued to the neck, so once trimmed down, the distances will be less than 0.5mm / 1mm.

Thats what I was thinking, its the 3rd and 7th frets, (3rd is worst) so its not that close to the bridge. When looking at the board you cant notice it, its only when you measure it that its apparent.

I just rechecked the fret slots I have cut, and 2 of them are slightly misplaced! I dont know how it happened, I thought I was being really careful. One is about 0.5mm too close to the bridge at one end, and 0.5mm to close to the nut at the other, and the other slot is fine on one end then nearly 1mm out at the other. How much of an effect would this have on the pitch of the fretted note? I dont know what to do... If it wont effect the pitch noticably (which I sort of doubt) I could leave it as it is. I could fill in the slots with veneer or epoxy then re-cut I could fill the slots, turn the board over, and start again (not my favourite option, but if its going to be a big problem I'd be prepared to do it) I could buy a new unslotted board and start again I could buy a preslotted board (which would leave me pennyless untill the end of the month, but at least I'd know it was accurate) What do you think?

Now that is excess! Here are some 5-neck guitars too: 5 neck 1 5 neck 2 I really cant see much point, other that for some novelty, spinal tap type joke.

I should never have tested the dye on the body wings before I took that photo, Its giving the wrong representation to everyone of what it will look like when finished There will be no pale centre block or clearly visible lines becauce of the neck laminates, because the colour differeces in the photo are due to the dye I put on the body wings to test it. When glued/sanded and re-dyed it should all be the same flat colour. Didnt think of that.. (well, I had no reason to, I had no idea that it could be a problem!) Roughly what sort of distance do the wires need to have between them? I could make sure that they are at opposite sides of the cavity, or I could probably run it through the tremolo spring cavity like you did. I know I am doing a lot and being quite ambitious on this guitar, but I am prepared for the fact that it may not all work at first and it may need modifying. I am trying to get some experience at doing all sorts of new things for myself, like pickup winding and complex electronics, so I will have more experience for future projects. I'll have a look at the sustainer thread for your wiring diagram. Thanks!

I'll finish drawing up a new version of my wiring diagram soon and then post it. I linked to the older oner that I drew on paint earlier in the thread if you want to get the basic idea. I drew a couple of slightly smaller pickguards that are still big enough to be useful The second one looks a bit like the P-bass idea someone mentioned. I think I prefer the bigger version of the two above ones though... Congrats on winning Guitar of the month, Russ! You can get rid of the "rightfully underappreciated" under your name now!

Regarding the transformer idea, since it wasn't my idea and I cant really explain it well, here is a link to the original discussion on the MIMForum where it was suggested: Thread I may be completely barking up the wrong tree, but is there a chance that it could help with the 'pop' on turn off that you mentioned? "The sustainer's wiring is a little different...it runs in parrallel to the guitars signal chain and a little apart from it. In this case, we are turning off all the guitars wiring just before the controls, we are turning on the sustainer's amplifier circuit (power) and connecting the bridge pickup back to the controls from the input of the circuit (it goes from the pickup to the circuit and to the controls). So, the bridge pickup along with all the other wiring up to the controls is disconnected, and the bridge pickup re-connected when the sustainer is turned on. It needs to be this way so that no matter what selection of pickups or other wiring you may have, it will always switch to a single pickup guitar during sustainer operation." With my current wiring set up for the sustainer using the rotary switch the pickup selector has to be in pos 4 (bridge pickup only)... which is a bit of a limitation. Currently the sustainer rotary is wired as: Position 1- power off, sustainer disconnected Position 2-power on, sustainer connected, normal sustain Position 3- power on, sustainer connected, harmonic sustain If I could only get a 3 way rotary with more that 4 poles I could probably get it to turn the neck pup off and bridge on too, which would be ideal Actually looking at my diagram, isnt the bit on the sustainer rotary with the blue wires from the 'in' on the fetzer ruby thing and a red 'hot wire' actually completely pointless... Might have some more scope for modifying the wiring there... I dunno, its late and I'm tired and I'll think clearer if I look at it tomorrow. I'll have a better look at the way your switch is wired too. Many thanks, Ben I'll mess around with those programs and try to refine my drawings too!

I dunno, filler was just a guess, I'm not really qualified to give any definate advice. Hopefully someone who isnt a newbie will be able to help you, Good luck!

I'm liking those two pickguards aestheticaly.. but the main reason for the mega pickguard is to make the wiring a lot easier. The smaller pickguards look good, but do little to make the wiring any simpler. With the big one I can wire it all up before I fit it to the guitar, and it eliminates the issue of getting the controls onto the horns (which I think I could manage... more complex though) The wiring on this is pretty complex... well very actually, and if I'm feeding the wires through channels i'm going to need some very good colour coding system so I dont screw up! (were talking 10 individual wires going to/from the lower horn and 5 to the upper one, I'll need big channels too! ) Overall I there are things I like/dislike about all the ideas, and its making the decision really hard! When you say the horns look unrefined, do you mean the horns on the pickguard, or the actual body design? I think the top horn could look better, the back-side of it is more smoothly carved, and if the pickguard didnt cover it I could do the same on the front. At least I have a fair while to make my mind up about the pickguard Thanks for all the opinions!

Its most likely all going to be one colour once glued up and sanded as all the wood used is oak, the only reason for the colour variation is cos I messed around with some wood dye That is more like I would expect it to look. The body colour is more likely to be flatter, in which case I think it may actually look a little plain if pickguard-less. It is one hell of a mega pickguard though I might modify it on paint to try out the P-bass pickguard idea...

Thanks fookgub! you answered all my questions. I am downloading expresspcb right now. The transformer thing is probably confusing because of the way I phrased it, its hard to convey something I dont fully understand. As you said, it works fine without it so I wont use it and will save myself the added complications. They didnt provide a drawing, and I don't really want to ask them for one unless you are very interested, because since I'm not using the transformer it would be a bit of a waste of their time.

I watched the video, doesn't really do much for me. No real 'musical' element to it, just a constant drone of what pretty much sounds like white noise and some annoying shouting. No distinguishable lyrics either... In fact its been about 30 secs since I finished listening to it and I've already pretty much forgotton what it sounded like... Emo will fade away into history in a few years, and just be remembered as some sort of slightly amusing fad, just like all those 80s bands with huge mullets, except instead of mullets we have 'that hairstyle' that seems to be the emo trademark. UK Emo and US Emo seem to be very different though as far as I can tell... I dont really get the whole 'emo' craze to be honest, it seems to be bigger with people around my brothers age (hes a 3 years younger than me, I'm 17) I voted no if you hadn't guessed!

Just one thing I am a little hazy on... Diagram Look at the bit with the "?" Is that all you have to do to split the signal between the output and sustainer stuff? I'd have thought that it would divide the current, making the output signal to the amplifier (big external one) weaker... or that one of the routes to ground through either amplifier (internal or external) could be a significantly lower resistance that the other, meaning that the current was unevenly divided and one amp got all the current from the signal while the other got very little... Or is that irrelevant, since the amp inside the guitar only needs a small current (since its an amplifier, ie turns a small current into a larger one) and its really just the frequency of the voltage oscillation that matters? I'm just kind of guessing, I'm not 100% clear on all this as this is mainly stuff I have been learning myself ahead of my current education. Somebody else on another forum was very kind and checked over the rest of the schematic for me (So I know where the flaws are, like pos. 5 of the pickup selector, I'll get round to sorting that) They sugested that if the signal spiltting was a problem I could use a 1:1 transformer to duplicate the signal, and keep a fixed resistance on the bypass, so it won't matter if the amp is on or not- the circuit'll behave as if it's "on" all the time. (I dont fully understand that, I get the basic idea though) I'm guessing though that since I have never heard anyone else who has made a working sustainer mention 1:1 transformers or anything, that it works fine without one? Has anyone noticed any output drop when the sustainer is on?

Filler? just a guess. I have seen red automotive filler before. Good luck with the project!

I have no idea, the speaker is just a gimmick really, I might not bother permenently fitting it. I probably wouldnt use it much, I just stuck it in there since all the circuitry to power it is already there. If I get all this to work I might look into this remote power idea.

Thanks, Pete and skibum5545! Pickguard: Pros +makes electronics much easier to wire and fit into guitar +Looks kinda cool in its own way +avoids excessive rear routing +If I mess up the routing of the pickup holes in the pickguard I can make a new one easier than I can make a new guitar +need to find another way to get the switches to the horns if I dont use it Cons -Covers the wood -without it I could improve the carving on the front sg style horn (the rear one is more 'smoothly' carved, looks better in my opinion) Still cant decide I know theres more +s than -s there, but their not all equally important to me. BTW, the neck laminates and body wood are all the same (oak). Once glued and sanded, the wood dye I put on the body wings (to test it) will probably sand off and leave it all a more flat, uniform colour. If I wanted the same effect back I'd have to mask it and dye the wings again For the battery I was going to buy one of those flip-out battery pack things. I have one on my 1st guitar and its easy and convenient. I drafted a wiring diagram for it last night.. Yikes! Diagram

People always say tightbond original is better than 2 and 3, which apparantly can creep. Yours sounds like it may be doing just that