Deadwood jack

Have to agree. A lot of Stew Mac's tools are laughabley priced, the fret bending pliers are just one example. I'm in Australia and have to agree with kiwigeo, their shipping, while expensive, is faster than Oz post and they do have some great stuff.

Well better late than never. The silicone method does work well but, if you want to remove the covers later you may be in EDITED . I have done this and one coil came out with the cover pulling out the start wire, a rewind was then called for. A good thing really, as it made me dicide to start winding my own pickups which I have been doing for a year now with great results. I'll never buy a pickup again, but I digress. The reason I decided to remove the cover was that as I have stated in another thread, metal covers seriously undermine your pickups tone, trust me. And yes, you do need to do more than just put it on as microphonic feedback will prevail. I would pot before ever using silly cone ever again. That stuff sets like glue and then after you get the cover off you will need to spend more time trying to remove all the mess you put on top off the pickup, thats if you can get it off in one piece. So, save yourself all that trouble and leave the covers to those who don't care about their tone, them that sell em. 1ST warning for language!!!

Oh don't worry about ol grumpy Possum, I'm new to this forum and I just saw your thread so let me tell ya, I wind my own pickups and the fact is, metal covers seriously undermine the tone of pickups. I would never use em. If you must cover them, try and use plastic ones. I'm not sure if you can get them with the holes but you can get them with no holes. They slip right on over the humbucker. Use a little epoxy to hold em on. They'll look like EMG's then. Don't go wreckin them pickups by putting the metal covers on em.

I myself am exceptionally offended by the sharpness of the major 3rd in the open A and E chords. www.fretwave.com have remidied this with two bent frets. This has totally fixed the problem. All other chords in the open position are fairly good on the ear, it WAS the E and A chords that caused all the trouble. Now with fretwave you can tune up and play in any key without the typical retune/compromise. It doesn't need to be perfect as long as it doesn't offend the ear.

Thanks Rich, yeah it was a real challenge for my first re board. The reason for the new board is that I bought a 24 3/4'' conversion strat neck and I didn't like the feel of it at all, so I thought I had nothing to lose as I'm a lefty and I had scallopped the neck as well and so getting a decent price for it was a long shot. So I got out the steam iron and the putty knife and the old board came off pretty easy. I also had to lengthen the neck by about 3/4'' which turned out really good as well. What I didn't factor into the equasion was the side dots. They will not be in the same position now with the 25 1/2'' scale. So I have had to fill the old half holes left from the old side markers. I'm still working on a way to cover them. All in all this was a learning experience and the neck now has the new frets in and has been scallopped. I'm just waiting for some Paua 3mm dots for the side and it's ready for decal and clear coating. Because the neck had to be lengthened, the front two mounting holes are now exposed. I dowelled them and then recessed 1/4'' paua dots into the holes. looks interesting now. The 3mm side dots are bigger than norm as well, I plan to inset them a little lower than the norm as well but the old side dot patch ups are plagueing me. I'm thinking of air brushing a thin line down the side of the neck, probably only need to go about 1mm lower than the board line, hence the new dots being put in a smidge lower. Thats the only part of the whole job that I'm not happy about but at least the thing will play good now. Thanks to everyone who offered advice on this thread, in the end, my instincts guided me through this challenging and very rewarding experience. Thanks again. Jack.

Hey Rich, thanks for the concern. I've been putting routers in vices upside down for 20 years and have not come close to an accident. I routed the overhang very slowly taking a smidge off at a time. As for the neck being straight? Well it was before I removed the original fingerboard and the neck is less than a year old. I didn't sight the neck after I had removed the f/b but I wish I had. I can't see why it would have bowed from removing the board. I had loosened the trus rod. It has some kind of yellow bog cementing it in and sure hadn't moved. As for the fret slots, there wasn't much of them left by the time I had refaced the board. Just reading your post again I get the impression you are thinking the bow is upward but it is downward. Anyway as I said, the new frets are in, the neck has not done anything since and is not going on the guitar for some time as other stuff needs to be done. So I don't see the neck moving in the future. Cheers, Jack.

Well my new radiused and slotted board arrived from Stew Mac. I laid the neck down onto the board and marked along the edges. Having said I would not go near the thing with the router I promptly realized I had no other option. I put the router in the vice upside down and very carefully and slowly removed most of the overhang. Looked very ordinary, all over the place but I couldn't see how else to do it, well I could have clamped a board to the thing but I basically couldn't be bothered. Just do it by hand. So I glued the thing on and then just sanded it down with a block and 60 grade paper and it went fine. The drama started when I had a look down the line of the neck and saw that the neck now had a fairly severe downward bow. How the f#*# did that happen. Did I clamp the board too tight? Probably but still, how did this happen. Oh well, I then had no option but to lay out and stick 60 grade paper on this glass table top in had in the shed and run the neck over the paper until the prick looked straight which I eventually did and now that the board is flat as well I now have to put a radius on it. Well I didn't have any radius blocks but I remembered, I think it was on this forum, someone showing how to make a radius block using a router in a home made jig. So I spent a couple of hours making the jig and then made myself a block with a 10'' radius. So now the mongrel's finished and all is well but boy, the downward bow put a real dampener on this job. Anyone out there know how the phantam bow happened. I'm guessing I clamped the board on too tight.

Sounds good guys, thanks for the help, my new board should be here soon so we'll see how we go. How hard can it be right?

Hi ya'll, I've just removed the fretboard on a strat neck as it is in need of a new one. I'm waiting on a Stew Mac board that comes already radiused and slotted. I am hoping someone can help me with the best way to trim the edges once the board is glued on. I can't find any info on this at all. Hope someone can help. Thanks.