Tjensen

Im no expert but, the way the burst-edge-color is all the way to the center of the guitar, in the "soft wood" part of the grain, makes me think that it IS stained the dark blue, and sanded back.

In a picture it is hard to see what gets lost by the sand back. I person, I really dont prefer one over the other, they are just differant.

Though I will say in photos, the stain and sand back thing always looks better.

you'll need to ditch your usual stain black sand back to get this finish, but i guess you knew that.

Not a big jump to "stain blue, sand back"

I have no doubt you will nail it Drak.

I'm curious about the CNC for inlay. I can see where the CNC would cut very acurate slots for the inlay to fit in, but isn't that backwards? At least in old fashioned hand inlay you cut the inlay material and then scribe around it, right? So is the CNC cutting out the little pearl/abalone/stone pieces also? If so, can you post a picture of it doing that? I just can't imagine how you would keep such small pieces of shell imoblie and fixed to a work board as you have a machine rout out the edges.

Double sided tape.

That machine is so accurate it can cut right down to the tape and leave it on the table.

Its pretty dang cool.

I am a begginer at burnishing a scrapper myself but. I can get one to cut. The thing that I do differantly than you is use a burnisher. It really makes a differance. A screw driver isnt hard enough to draw an edge.

Thats cool...but I would suggest routing the neck pocket, and probably the pickups, with a jig instead. Just to make sure they come out perfect.

I fail to get what part of that is any good at all.

Oh well enjoy or suffer? I guess.

I dont think cutting up the original shape does a thing for it. I would just leave it as is. To each his own?

I like the idea of adding a single coil though.

Wow.

I dont usually like guitars that go to far form the norm. That thing is just sexy.

Nicely done!

Thanks for a couple of great replies, I really appreciate the advice. Let me clarify a couple things:

1. I screwed up with those pics -- I didn't even notice (old eyes) that the Cort I put up the pix of had a truss rod. Mine definitely doesn't, and I have a feeling it's not something that's easy to achieve, and would certainly require a new neck.

2. I'm a small-time (I mean SMALL-time!) retailer, and the only free time I really have is late at night and Sunday, which is why I was asking about "electronic" courses. I just don't have any other choice...

3. I love to tinker -- for me, that's at least half the joy... I've been considering building my own git-box. I'm an ex-experimental machinist, wood shop manager, and NASA-certified solderer, so I'm not without the necessary skills.

4. However, should I choose to give myself a break, I may either just string up this old trussless-neck box and start banging away on it (never had a problem with fret buzz or anything like that), or get something like a Squier '51, which I just love the look and sound of.

Thanks again!

Bart

It is pretty cool but, I wonder if it is acurate enough for fret slots ( assumming you can get a small enough bit)

Really tho, I was looking for the resolution of the steps but it never says. At least not that I could find. And a .023" cutter is very fragile. I've broken many 1/32 cutters which is .030" so I'd hate to see anything smaller. Also feed rates come into question. Is it adjustable?

One would probably be better served with a small cnc mill. But I'd like to see a review of this machine before totally tossing the idea.

Somewhere on the site itt says that it makes passes at .006 inch.

That is probably cool for frets? I havent really thought it out, but it sounds more accurate than me

I haven checked out the software, but if you cant control the feed rate, it aint gonna work for guitar building. At least not for me.

It is pretty cool but, I wonder if it is acurate enough for fret slots ( assumming you can get a small enough bit)

Oh my thats cleaver!

I going to build one of them tomorrow

I have 100 year old furniture with many crossed grains of differant angles. Sitting on some right now. I cant see a problem.

There is a Heatly built out of Rosewood out there. They just got a forum up, I bet the owner is there and you could get some feed back on tone. My guess is alot of clear high mid.

My Thorn has an IRW neck with an Ebony board. I love it, it resonates in your hand and has a very clear ringing high end. Not exactly what you would call warm. The bottom end is huge too. Its like putting a loudness bottun on your guitar.

I aint buying one.

Dimarzio VVblues.

Really nice.

I put th GFS dream 90 in my EPI les paul.

Try that first

No tone control is not going to sound the same as the tone control on 10. There is still some high frequency lost to the tone circut. This might be a good thing. You can alway put in a dummy circut with no actual pot though.

I have a Virtual Vintage blues (Duncan i think?)stacked hum in the neck of my Strat. It is more Strat like, than my other Strat with a single coil. Wierd but true.

I highly recomend it. It is by far my favorite strat tone.

Here's my idea....

A guitar with HSH wired the Steve Vai way...(1. Neck humbucker 2. split neck and mid 3. MIddle only 4. mid and split bridge).

Now think of how cool it would be to have 3 mini switchs. Two for spliting and one thats a three way for controlling the middle pickup to turn it on/ in the circuit with the other pickups/ the reactivation of the neck and bridge only)

The benifits of this set up is that you can turn your guitar mainly from HSH to HH to SSS wit a couple of flips on a switch without losing your 5 way. Or to any other combo for that matter. The only problem is... does any body have a good idea how to wire this? I've figured the basic splitting at the bridge and neck although the middle switch is driving me nuts. Any help would be much appreciated. And I think this set up would help the entire community.

You could use a Forstner bit in the drill. and clean up the area with a sharp chisel. Its slow and a good way to ruin your wood but if your careful it will work.

Oh yea......buy a router.

It looks like it's jsut going to be a whole bunch of guitars on my wall if I want to set each one up for a specific purpose. Hey wait, that sounds like a great idea. Now has anyone actually gotten their wife to believe this reasoning?

It takes years of explaining....but eventualy she will understand (or give up )

sign me up!

nice work

Does anybody know where I could find Telecaster outline? I just need the outline and dont want to shell out a whole bunch of cash on templates.

I searched and found a free cad drawing. Then a searched and found a free DFX reading program. It wouldnt print so I used a screen capture, then I used the measuring tool in the free program to triangulate the obviuos points on the tele shape. It worked really well and took about a half hour.

If you had a DFX or DWG program that would print to scale it would be alot eaiser. I know ther are some out there, if you know where to look.

thegarehanman has got it right...rout the perimeter of the actual top first. Then rout the cavity into the body blank next, leaving the body perimeter way oversized. Glue the top in, THEN perimeter the body.

Trying to rout the cavity and the perimeter will leave such a thin wall that the glue squeeze-out will probably blow out chunks when pressing in the top.

CNC is over-rated...just make some good templates

Thorn

Hey Ron,

Very cool for you to give out advice here. You rock as always.

Todd