Prostheta

Exactly that sort of jig, yes. Given the right design, it shouldn't be too difficult to tune in the shoulders to tenths of a degree. How did yours turn out, Andy? I know I shouldn't think about acoustics for more than a hot minute otherwise I lose focus on all the other silly things in my head and find a new one to roll over and over....

No worries. I'm sure you've got a plan in hand. I was thinking of a jig to rout in the shoulders of the neck around the tenon at tenths of a degree. I've actually got mortise/tenon tasks in my head right now for basic CNC workholding and machining, so it made more sense with me already having pictures in my head!

In this instance a lot, because it's for a very specific porpoise.

Absolutely! Acoustics are very much dialled in at the time of build. I always feel that if I cannot bring these factors under my command at every stage, it becomes a guessing game....which I refuse to do any more. I would say that angles in the neck are the best way to locate these string loft changes, however by the same coin I think one needs a real command over dialling in angles on a very small footprint that yield changes of tenths of a degree. The place where a porpoise-made jig is required. I can't recall off the top of my head, but isn't that the sort of adjustments that Taylor build into their adjustable shim system? Not that it applies here, but that sort of ability to work in fractions where it matters?

Agreed, it can make the difference. I see it as a large and somewhat unorthodox way of achieving that end, especially since it is fundamentally baked in from that point. It sounds (and looks) like these other factor are making a bigger difference than this one. This is a bit of a world away from what I do, as acoustics have so many other different factors to work with than a - simple by comparison - solidbody.

Not really, aside from a minor value change in one position. In the 80s circuit, the varitone is active all of the time and the switch controls active to the backup passive mode. In the 70s bass, the varitone can brought out of circuit using the switch, in which case a small value capacitor and resistor are left in circuit to keep the filter bleeding off RF frequencies. Just look at how redundant that varitone is! Unfortunately there's not much simplification that I can do with the retrofit preamps. 22MOhm resistors aren't a common value, so it laying eight of them around there is silly talk.

In principle that sounds fine, however it seems like a very large operation to create a small amount of angle. Off the top of my head, you could calculate this angle using right angle triangle trig by the opposite being 1mm and the adjacent the length of the fingerboard. So that's what, tan(angle)=opposite/adjacent? It won't be a lot, as it's roughly 1/4 of the height loft of that mm loss over the length of the board. Drop the fingerboard at the nut 1mm and you gain 0,25mm at the bridge assuming that the fingerboard is 3/4 the length of the scale. The trig gets you closer to the real answer, but this approximation shows it won't produce the results you need. edit: 1/3rd of the height loft, hence 0,33mm and not 0,25mm....oops

The Taylor approach is not a full-width neck pocket, but a recess that exists solely to accommodate the first couple of mm of the neck. That solves the external shoulder-to-body seam problem with neck angles. Having a full-width tenon would require additional mass on the internal neck block to maintain stability. There's a lot of tradeoffs and bad paths to follow, which is exactly why I admire the smart industrialists like Bob Taylor and Paul Reed Smith. They aren't afraid to introduce strong new concepts and manufacturing ideas directly into the market that is dominated by traditional thought. I digress.

The shims under the fingerboard extension are pretty much a given. My thought was how the neck join is going to be configured. Tilting the neck back requires material to be cut from the shoulder and the plane copied to the tenon if it meets the back of the mortise. I'm sure it's going to be simple work that requires patience more than anything. Oh, and an ultra sharp chisel. Nobody expects an ultra sharp chisel. And fanatical devotion to the pope. Fasteners are a relatively modern invention, at least in terms of metal with threads. If these engineering products were available during the period that defined most of the techniques and configurations that are revered today, they would have been utilised or experimented with. That quickly goes down the path of the circular modern/traditional argument though. I prefer a palette that draws from everything as a reasoned selection of personal choices, with at least a good understanding of both extremes. I wish I had time this morning to dig out that Taylor vid on how their necks work in terms of shims, recessing and bolts. I doubt that @ADFinlayson needs that polluting his thread though. Back to work....

Looking good. All by the numbers and showing attention to exactly where it's required. I suppose that there a number of ways to reconfiguring this to create sufficient loft over the body for the correct action. My mind always goes to the industrialists like Taylor rather than the traditional methods. I like the idea of a neck that retains the look of a traditional instrument but incorporates the ability to adjust and refine geometry. I don't know if you want to go this route, or even can by this stage, but that's where my thoughts lead. Without me going back through the last eight pages, is this intended to be a glued-in or bolted-on neck? Both are valid, however I think the former would feel less satisfying to most should shims in the mortise become necessary (likely I would think). I have grown to like bolted constructions for the tension within the joint, as sonically they do seem to "add" more detail, or at least result in a construction that is characterful in sound as opposed to not. At the very least, there will need to be a shim under the fingerboard to backfill the gap created by introducing this elevation.

The varitone is a stack of RC values that are used by the preamp to form an active LPF with a reasonable mid bump before the cutoff, hence why it changes the "character" of the sound differently to a passive LPF like the tone knob. I've played around with the idea of making an alternative varitone that is continuously variable as opposed to a selection of six RC values, partly because of the control but mostly because the rotary and fourteen components fabricobbled around it was just another example of Aria Pro II being slightly mad in the head. I didn't go too far down that rabbithole. The "tonal pocket" you mention is why the SB-1000 is a recognised and desirable instrument....the weird neck taper, comparatively-larged cross section of the neck profile, Jacaranda fingerboard and neck laminations of quality wood that doesn't really come around any more combine to make it what it is. The 5th-7th positions have a very distinctive midrange which was common to the sister models such as the SB-700, etc. They were the same dimensionally, but different in terms of electronics and hardware configuration. That "honk" is what makes them stand out in pop recordings of the time....they sit differently in the mix to say, a Thunderbird or a P-bass. Maybe a bit more into J territory? The polepieces in the MB-1E were all steel slugs of slightly differing lengths to match the string radius. They were built using two rotation mating ABS bobbins that look similar to a J pickup, but with evenly-spaced pole positions so generally a great big ceramic humbucker. Later pickups like the MB-II and MB-III used the same configuration, but half-loaded the bobbins with poles or rod magnets in a P-bass pattern. Fret clatter is definitely underrated. I don't think Entwistle, Lee or Harris would have the same punch without it.

Here's how I measured out and modelled the current production OFR/Lockmeister anyway.

I found discrepancies, however the important engineering dimensions were valid. This was one with the newer CNC-cut string blocks with the radiused corners.

Looking forward to some CNC time in the near future. In the meantime, I went full-on and adapted the 24-fret Invaders model back to the original 22-fret SSH. Aside from a few differences here and there, plus a couple of fixes and omissions....this is on the money. I modelled the tremolo using measurements taken from a modern production Schaller Lockmeister which is an OFR without the name or the price tag. Drawn up provisionally for Fishman.

I'm specialising in desktop product design for manufacturing via CNC, so a guitar is familiar ground for me and is applicable to my degree work in that respect. Rendering is a valid form of product visualisation, whether for testing the aesthetics of materials and colourways, examining surfacing in how it reflects light as gradual or aggressive contours, etc. Similarly, I used a €15k structured light 3D scanner to examine a few tops as a way to discuss appropriate derivation of geometric data. Of course, I do want a guitar. We all want many many more guitars....I hope? I didn't mention this at any point, however the entire model is valid internally also. Not quite to the soldering and wiring loom level, but in terms of graduated surfaces inside the cavity to place pots and switches the appropriate distance from the external surface. I don't aim low.

@henrim that's probably a better profile update for you

Differences in the carved top model are obviously the pickups and fretwire, plus the binding is tall stuff which was originally masked off and overpainted in the original.

The two Mirages are still needing to be painted, which is all dependent on catching a booth at the right time. Otherwise, I did all the design work on the carved top Mirage, which I learnt last week was a production model and maybe not so much of a prototype. Nonetheless, I've never found another one like it ever beyond mine and the one that was photographed for the catalogue, which isn't mine.

Try this. I had a few surfacing issues with the laminates, but that's been resolved.

I'll leave this here then.

Measure the height of the strings over the body at the pickup (A), measure the height of your pickup (B). Select a distance of how close you want the strings to be to your pickup (C). A-B-C If the string height is 20mm, your pickup height is 40mm and you want a 2mm gap, that's -20mm.

I'd never discourage re-use of things that still have usable lifetimes! Burrs are better for shell and stone than for wood since they abrade and chip rather than shear and cut, however down at the sizes of 0,5mm - 1,0mm (1/64" - 1/32") this is far less of an issue. 1/16" (3,175mm) is getting to the point where burrs burn and cause ruts rather than evacuate material efficiently, but if it works it works. Those smaller sizes never work in Dremels anyway as they tend to have silly amounts of runout that make a 1,0mm bit increase in cut by something like 50%. Even if the bit survives, it's cutting using far less than its actual cutting surface. I wanted to upgrade my pantograph's Dremel with a spindle, but by this point I might as well be making an inlaying CNC

"Notes to self" are a fundamentally important trick if anything! The problem I always have is that ideas live in my mind, but the biggest challenge isn't about coming up with them or refining them, it's about realising them....being able to write down your thoughts and ideas, or vocalise them to another person even if they don't need to collaborate is a productive step. That might be me, not sure. I don't know how other people's minds work

I've seen that myself in "B" grade boards. Ebony with what look like water marks from drips. It doesn't come out and is a "feature" of the wood. I dislike the throwaround term "B" grade since that means something very specific in wood grading, much like how AA/AAAAA etc. are meaningless compared to proper grades within the wood industry. They're perhaps accepted as a shorthand of sort, but cut directly across the sense of grading terms. I digress. Veijo is actually very much missed by the Aria Pro II community as he became (more accurately, fell into being) the primary source for repro MB-type pickups. Much the same as myself and the preamp circuit upgrades I make for these basses and guitars. We sent each other a fair amount of business either by direct reference or by virtue of co-existing in the same tight market. It can often get to the point where these market demands run away with themselves beyond capacity to provide, which I believe happened with Veijo. Probably not even the most profitable business to be working in either, given the expensive of tooling and labour! Veijo made the pickup for my 5-string Aria Pro II-based bass: ....also in the post immediately above that one, you can see flecking as I was discussing in Ebony. That polishes up nicely though.