al heeley

It is indeed from andy, aka wadkin1. The piece is really nice, perfectly jointed, well planed, and arrived 2 days after paypal sent, well packed too. I can highly recommend his ash but please let me buy a couple more bits from him before you all pounce, it's really nice stuff

Body's weighing in at a little under 6lb at the moment, thats about 2.8kg. There's a good 2 or 3mm to plane off yet plus routing and belly scoop so we should end up around 5 1/2 with a following wind.

Basic body shape cut out and a start made on sanding the edges.

I suppose there's always the option of scooping a belly cut in the back and making it thinner than the stock 44mm to reduce weight.

Wouldn't want to reduce the thickness by more than a few mm though.

Here's the start of a new project, first lead guitar build for me in a while. Scored a lovely piece of Ash (you really can't beat a nice piece of ash) off ebay, beautifully planed and jointed. This will be a custom 3 pickup tele for Mike, my fellow guitarist in our 2 bands. The plan is still forming: leaning towards Gibbo mini bucker in the neck, SD hotrails in the bridge, something nice in the middle that can be blended in/out with a third ctrl knob and phase switched. 5-way strat-type blade pup switch. Natural Satin tru-oil finish. Should be a very versatile guitar. There's been whispers of maybe fishman pieze bridge saddles too to blend in an acoustic-type sound for a super-tele, but we'll see how the budget goes. Might run out of knob space....

Higher, as in further away from the surface of the body? That's still going to block your access to the ctrl knobs. Looks like you drilled for the holes before figuring on fitting a bigsby. Good luck, hope it works out well for you.

Won't your bigsby trem arm get in the way of all your ctrl knobs?

That's great. I totally agree on Warmoth - great quality parts, but you pay. I'm a big tru-oil fan as well - marvellous stuff. Keep it up, look forward to seeing this come together.

Nice work. There's an ancient African tribal game played with beads on an board the same layout as your guiter semi.

That is a sexy fingerboard, really nice, but the ovshape of the horns is really not my cuppa tea. Digging the rest of the body and the stripes.

Very nice. Is that a Korina body?

Where did you get the neck?

Can we have a shot of the back too?

Most good quality guitars will always be shielded, but as Swede says there is some shielding paint that looks like thick dark textured paint applied to the inside of the ctrl cavity and the pickup wells. Do it, it takes 5 minutes. I use sticky copper tape from ebay luthier suppliers.

Wow wow wow, thats stunning! Both back and front, your work is always top notch.

Coming on nicely Wez, looking forward to seeing a bit of sandpaper applied to the maple, that's a really nice looking top.

I'd be surprised if you even heard the output difference with it removed. It really is likely to be very small.

Disconnecting it is depending on what wiring you already have. Typically there will be a hot wire going from pickup to vol pot to tone, thru tone then on to the jack.

If you cut the connection between jack and tone pot and resolded jack to vol instead of the vol to tone connection, then this will remove it from the circuit. But it does depend on what circuit you have.

Personally I would not remove it, you may want to make use of it some day when you want to tone down the treble a touch for a warmer sound.

Pots: what is the resistance of your tone and volume pots? Don't pots for active, driven pups have to be 50k or something? Passive HB's need 500k pots. Muddy bridge = question the value of the capacitor on the tone pot as well as the resistance of the tone pot.

Got the mini P-bass finished this weekend - apart from a bit of a setup and a fret level.

Here Billy is finishing the bridge installation.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v609/al_heeley/b1.jpg

I've just put a standard set of discarded 40 - 100 strings on. They do sound a bit 'tubby' but there's a nice deep P-bass punch to them too! This is his first bass lesson.

Does this only apply as volume is rolled off? A 250k pot turned up to 10 will have virtually zero resistance.

A 500k pot turned up to 10 will have virtually zero resistance. So how can one be brighter than the other when it's on max?

Some progress on the Billybass.

Frets done, neck pocket and ctrl cavity routed, just ordered some gold tuners and a black 3-ply scratchplate blank.

Oops - I think you posted in the wrong section.

http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...734&hl=case

Sadly none of the links to the pics work any more

I made a case for a strat build last year and lt cost me about £80 in all - wich I'd spent £30 and got one on ebay! Good practice I suppose...

A little progress, fingerboard radiussed, slotted and dotted and glued to the neck. Frets here just being cut to size.

Sorry we've run out of eggs, and at Easter too - how embarassing!

And thanks a lot for the maple, Chris, it's come up really nicely!

If I were you, I would first check guitarelectronics dot com and then the Guitar Nutz forum: http://guitarnuts2.proboards45.com/index.cgi?board=wiring

I just love all the design elements you have brought into this guitar. it is a very original and striking instrument. Great work - look forward to seeing more of your stuff in future.

I love walnut - a great clean build, coming along really nicely Chris.

Thanks guys

Here's the neck shape being roughed out, via sanding disk