Prostheta

Fear of your power tools is a healthy thing, and if you lose it then you'll likely end up hurting yourself. Routers are very safe if you think before and during each pass. Just don't take too much wood or take it in the wrong direction, and make sure the router (and what you're running it on) is steady. Common sense really. Spokeshaves are a really visceral way of shaping necks. I love em! Getting used to working with a neck and shaping it is awesome. Do you have a vice or something to clamp te neck to so you don't have to manipulate it whilst you carve? You may find the grain goes different directions on your laminates and you don't want to scrub with the spokeshave against the grain. It should be like butter. Woody maple-smelling butter. Keep us updated!

It's still a scarf either way you do it. The way I do them is to roughly saw the scarf, flip the small piece onto the top of the larger piece, align the angles and clamp an angled fence jig either side, and run my router over the rough angles to true them up, planing them sweet and glueing them up. Lovely. It's probably my favourite job making guitars!

There's a great jig for scarf jointing....i'll have to run a pictorial on the neckst one I do (awful pun of the week).

Difficult - it's like taking a guitar in to an engineer to have it repaired and asking how much it will be without the engineer knowing what the problem is till he gets it onto the bench and starts repair time/money. Looking at what you said - ie. it's had a couple of fret dresses - you need to ask (as soapbarstrat rightly says) how hard the frets have been (ab)used and whether the dressing was to take up uneveness, or purely freshening. If the dresses were for freshening the slinkiness of the frets then probably very little (if the dress was good to start out with) but if it's turning a toured road dog hammer 'tar into a slinky straight-as-a-die studio instrument then possibly loads. 6100 wire is wide and tall - wider than 6105. Specifically, 2.85mm wide and 1.4mm high (0.112" by 0.055").

Thanks Cory - that's really appreciated. I never thought about using velcro....excellent idea! It's a lot easier than using black electrical tape when recording :-\

You gotcha. That's where I picked it up.

You can modify an easily available digital caliper set to acheive the same effect.

Sir, I tip my hat to you. Some of the crap I deal with on a day to day basis is ridiculous, yet it still doesn't quite come as close as to the stuff we take for granted as readily-available products on a day to day basis. (CAD tech at UK-based environmental consultancy)

Thanks! I'm going to be using that design a lot more in the near future, and this build is being picked up for completion very very soon.

I seriously doubt it. The spray is unlikely to be fine or even and will most likely make a fence-quality finish :-\

The absolutist answer would be "yes it does affect the sound" but not to the point you'd notice it easily. Somebody did a bit of a physics case on the assymetrical Explorer shape and theorised that it reacts to resonances differently. Whatever. Unless you're making a bass which is WAY out there in terms of size, shape or construction - it will sound like a solidbody bass. As Rick says about the resin construction - materials used will affect sound in a much more pronouced manner than shape on a solidbody.

Possibly, but more likely than as not you won't. The import tax cost includes the shipping cost for some obscure reason however. Fedex seems to be pretty good at slipping the net :-D

I've already got a No.4 and a No.5 :-D I wouldn't mind whether it were a 1930s No.7 or a 2008 vintage as long as it's well made, maintainable and does the job it was designed to do. I would love a set of Lie-Nielson planes, but it's not happening this week, and possibly not next week.

Fair call! I was very tempted to make a V just like that. I especially liked the idea of using a Tele jack cup to recess the toggle. Overall, it's one of the best concept-to-finished product i've seen to date.

Didn't you have a maple top on the V, and originally have a black/white striping scheme in mind? That looked awesome. It's not to say that the finished guitar isn't of course. Aha!

Awesome build, but i'm not a fan of the finish. That said, it's-not-my-guitar :-D I love the back! What happened to the maple striping?

Cool - i'm only over here in Lincoln. I'm originally from Hull though, so i'm nothing to do with these inbreds around here. Without reiterating that which other people have said before me so much better than me, you can never have enough clamps :-D You might want to get a catalogue (free) from www.axminster.co.uk for total tool geeking. They can be a bit expensive, but there are some great buys there too. The Axminster plane set is (no.4 and 5) are a bargain out of the box. More router bits than you can shake a winding stick at. Shame about the bass tuners. The guitar tuners have all been good. In fact, too good for the price. I bought a set of eight four-a-side tulip tuners from Chris and they're damn spanking awesome. He does sell some crap, but also some goodies.

Good call on the upper fret access.

It's just another thing to deal with. Wiping excess can be a chore when it's caged in by a dozen clamps. I have a cheap Stanley plane I picked up from B&Q which can have the blade attached at the very front of the body which is ideal for picking up excess dried glue from workpieces. Just set the blade high enough so it won't plane the wood itself. I presume that you're in the UK since you shop at Machine Mart? ;-) Your newspapers don't give me many clues.... Whereabouts are you based? There's a few of us on here. Shame your paper didn't stick to the glass. I think some papers work better than others. Good to hear you got results though - this is the slippery slope down into the outskirts of hand tool city....next you'll be buying a No.4 plane, a No.5 and drooling over the Lie-Nielsen planes out there....! Which reminds me. I need a jointing plane. Oh yes, if you need a longer board slotting and radiusing, then look Erikbojerik up as he is supplying boards custom cut/radiused. He's US-based however, but given the general lack of decent exotic fingerboard supply in the UK compared to overseas it's worth the shipping. Oh yes (II). Pop onto eBay and search around on Chguitars's shop - Chris will do split sets of tuners how you want them if you ask nicely. They're Wilkinson and not exactly setting the world on fire, but very very convenient and cost effective also. I'd rather use Sperzels because of headstock/weight/balance issues, but the cost can be prohibitive as i'm sure you know.

Email EMG tech support and tell them that the pickup has failed despite it yadda yadda, etc. However, the warranty is limited to two years: Sounds like you can ask, but don't expect. Unless you're wiring the pickup incorrectly, I don't think you'll recover this pickup if it has in fact failed. Oh yes - 85s are a LOT louder than 81s, but if you've noticed a dropoff over time then there's got to be something in that I guess. What wiring config is in your Explorer? Is it possible you have a dirty switch or pots? If it's a master volume then I would examine the toggle (presuming "standard" EXP config) as it would affect the 85s output otherwise. That could possibly affect things. It would be a good time to check, clean and double-check the electronics in case it's a simple fix somewhere along those lines. Maybe even try disconnecting the 81 from the circuit and wiring it direct to an amp to see what difference that makes if any. It's difficult to say, but best of luck.

Perhaps sealing the bench would be better than solvent if it's liable to cause problems. Have you checked how deeply the stain has penetrated? I myself wouldn't like to resurface a bench if more than a few millimetres needed removing! Hope it works out. What flooring epoxy did you use? That's pretty awesome looking stuff. Is it a smooth or textured finish? It looks pretty smooth from the light reflections....

You can actually email EMG's tech support via their website on this one, and they're generally quite good people to talk to. Since they're sealed units, as long as it's not been subject to abuse in some kind of way (heat/cold, over-voltage, shock, etc) they may actually replace it if you approach the subject nicely with them. A possibility. I'm not entirely sure how to check if the pickup is working as the internal buffer may give misleading or difficult to interpret results compared to a passive pickup, especially as the buffer circuit's build (although it's not a huge secret) isn't public knowledge. Perhaps the lack of power is down to a short in the coil? It hasn't been abused....has it?

Ah, that's Chris. The number 9 looks like the "standard" allen adjustment, whereas the number 7 is a "corncob pipe" style adjuster. Depends on how you want to make the adjustment access really. I prefer allen purely because you can pop a tool holder onto the back of your headstock and keep em handy. I don't like Stewmac's hot rods because they require a DEEP trench which makes it hairy if you're making thin flat necks. Good job you're not buying a nuber 6 eh? Sandpaper is cheap and easy to replace. A piece of glass isn't difficult to get ahold of either. http://vfish.net/sharp.htm Although instead of using spray adhesive, use wet and dry paper, wet it, wet the glass and "roll" it onto the glass. The paper should be stuck to the glass perfectly with no air/water bubbles. If you're pushing bubbles out, retry it. Flatten the "back" of the iron and then hone your bevel through the grits. Adding a marginal back bevel onto the iron helps keep it sharp apparently, although I have never tried this. This isn't to say oilstones don't have their place of course, I just have never really used one due to me getting the results I need on my plane irons through this method instead. By the way, those magnetic plane soles are awesome for those time when you might get forgetful and put your plane down sole-first. This can chip the blade. I hate grinding out chips and re-honing....

I presume that with thinner wood in a bend, the fibres tend to compress more as opposed to compressing on the inside of the bend and thinning/cracking out on the outside?

Good on you, Pete.