Hey guys, I've lurked here, and even have an old sign in that I don't remember, and since I need help desperatly with figuring out what fret distances I need I'll start off by intorducing the problem and my cure.
I Love the Washburn USA Dime 3 guitar, and since Dime's passing (RIP) it's gotten impossible to get them for a reasonable price, so when they come up on ebay broken, and they do break because of the poor case design, then I get a chance to get them cheap.
Well I bought this one
and this is the Damage OUCH!!!!
Broken Headstock
So I get the guitar and it looks as though it's repairable, the neck is the PERFECT V shape that I love, not too thick, not too thin, but I prefer a bit of a beefier neck. so I thought of ways to fix it, and the more I talked to pros and friends and guitar repair techs, and read in books, the more it looked as though it might be too weak to just reglue, so I thought of possibly gluing then routing some slots to put new mahogany then reshaping, but that seemed harder than I thought origionally, not to mention cosmetically it will look like crap.
So I met up with a local friend/luthier named Tony Karol, www.karol-guitars.com
and we talked, and I showed him the guitar, and he looked at it and said, "nah, that isn't repairable" so my heart sunk, but in the split second he said that and I looked down, he snapped the headstock off, and boldly exclaimed "WE will just make a new neck". then with that he decided to saw off the old neck!!!!!!!!
Removing the old neck
So with that he measured and thought and then just dove in and sawed off the neck.
then we built a template and routed out the remaining bit of "set neck".
We are going to build a new neck! and so I went and bought some hondouran mahogany and we built the neck blank to match the original, a three piece neck with a 15 degree scarf joint, the scarf joint is furhter up the neck than usual as we wanted to copy the washburn design and also put the original "diamond" volute on there, and make it bigger.
bits in case
The neck will be as close to the original as possible, except almost an inch thick with a killer V shape, and it will have an amazing feel to it. The neck will be set a little deeper into the body than the washburn had it before as it only extended halfway into the neck pickup cavity before, now it extends all the way in and will have more wood left in the body for tone! and STRENGTH!. We will be using an ebony fretboard this time with ebony binding but a piece of slime green dyed maple to offset the binding and the board. I'm getting www.custominlay.com to inlay the ebony board with the "biohazard" waste sign logo, to match the "dimeslime" finish. and I'll be adding a neon yellow and green dimarzio to the neck position to aid in the effect! We are also going to reuse the headstock maple plate and binding, by just sanding the back of the headstock off, and then gluing it to the face of the new headstock, all measurments have been taken into account and should work out perfectly! The new neck is glued up and the scarf cut, the new single piece headstock plate glued to the scarf and it will be ready to plane and get all setup. I am also using two pieces of carbon square rod to alleviate any dead spots. I want this neck to be the best playing neck I own, alot of detail will go into making this perfect! The finish will remain poly but the very back of the neck will be finished with a hand rubbed poly that will dry satin and will be smoother than normal poly. and the back of the headstock will be shiney poly, so it will be like an EB/MM style finish except without oil.
Another image
Here in lies the problem, I want to retain the Buzz feiten tuning system because the bridge is already placed and we cant change that and the guys at custom inlay.com don't know the proper fret distances and length of the fretboard for a 24.75 scale length fretboard with the feiten system. I wanted to know if anyone here has the proper chart/table for fret distances for the buzz feiten tuning system. I know that It "has" to be done by a certified buzz tech, but realisticly it seems as only a few MM difference in nut distance then subsequent fret placement from the nut. IF ANYONE can help I would greatly appreciate this!
I've already contacted Buzz anf there has been no help from him, let alone an email, so I'm out of options on that front, I do have more of these guitars so I could measure the fret distance and fretboard size off that, does anyone have any recomendations on how to do it as accuratly as possible?
Thansk for the time!!!
Chris
RIP Brother Dime!!!
1966-2004
Too many pics, and FAR TOO BIG!!! Please review the image posting rules before posting any more images
