Prostheta

Fookgub, can you do me a favour and convince my wife of that one? My power of lure and persuasion seem to have no effect :-D

Ugh. Guitars made by Vintage are the pits. Yeuch. You made it a hundred times better, man.

Exact location, no - not really. As long as the tuners can rotate without fouling each other or the headstock itself (I bet it's been done!) and as Marzocchi says - with as straight a string pull as is practical. Here's how I placed the tuners on my bass headstock. You can see the string paths drawn onto the wood, allowing for the tuner posts having a width also. I allowed a little more for the lower strings :-D Also, when doing this - make sure the tuners won't overlap on the back of the headstock for when you mount them! I staggered mine which works nicely. How about this as an example of how Jackson lay out their tuners on headstocks? Not exactly straight string pulls, but the tension looks fairly even both ways from the two low to the four high strings. A small dab of Titebond would keep that but in there nice and sweet.

Wow. Thanks ever so much for the analysis Drak. I'm tempted to try it on my bass when it comes to the finishing stage to maintain the figure, but I'm unsure as to where (if at all) dye can sit in this mix. I suspect it can't as it would "flatten" the figuring hugely, correct? Anyway - back to Godin's new instrument....sorry to hijack!

I hate quoting myself: That's my suspicion anyway! Oh yes, Titebond is also used to glue other things than hardwood, such as leather, softwoods, particle board and other porous materials. A lot of materials people are adhering won't always develop a seamless join and a glue line will be evident. This is where a darker glue is useful. We - on the other hand - go out of our way to calibrate, mask, scale, flatten, plumb, align, stabilise, match, grade, regularise, measure, surface, gauge, scrape, flush, smooth, plane, sand, scuff and true our edges to make sure the join is foremost mechanically stable, and hopefully by design cosmetically perfect. I can understand why you'd want to achieve what you want Chris, but unfortunately this product won't produce the goods in that way. Blame the faulty universe, not me or Franklin. I have - however - some choice wenge veneer you'd be interested in, but shipping from the UK would be a killer!

Don't get me wrong Chris :-D I used some of the dark Titebond on a mahogany neck with purpleheart laminations and that turned out nicely. I can't say that the choice of glue really made a difference however! I guess it would be useful when glueing up open pored woods like wenge and padauk as it wouldn't be as obvious in the pores breaking across glue lines, but I don't think I'll be buying any more myself. I would definitely go down the lines of veneers though - they're much more predictable that accent lines from glue, which I presume will be variable depending on clamping pressures and mating surface evenness. I love veneers and the way they break out over contours! I suspect that the dark Titebond was created for non-perfectionist woodwork where mating surfaces aren't always going to be planed tight parallel and glue will be apparent if it is a contrasting colour (say, kitchen units or general home carpentry). Just my two cents Chris - I wouldn't want you to spunk out some money on a bottle only to find it doesn't do what you are hoping it does!

Surely you *don't* want visible glue lines?

She's a beauty alright. Love that wild-looking top.

I think I might invest in an Xacto kit now you've shown that the results are worth it Matt! I'm going to inlay a board with ES335 style inlays, and straight lines would be easier to achieve with a rule and a knife!

Not according to my wife :-D My beer belly is testament to that effect!

For the feelgood factor, I Forstner'd the tuning peg nut/washer recesses, drilled the tuner holes and test-fitted some spare tuners I have sitting for a four-string bass. I have five lightweight open-gear tuners on the way.... CLICK FOR LARGER VERSION

I guess it would have been with the two flat ended blades like a chisel - is that right, Matt?

Easy. I presume you have a jointer? Cut it along the centreline (or make one!) with a fine kerf bandsaw unless you can afford to write off 1/16" with a table saw, and individually thickness each half with a "common width" thicknesser. Rejoint and reglue. Much more painless than using the phone or worrying about what to do next. Rip that sucker up and give it hell man!

If you want security and not perfection then a couple of winds of masking tape will stop it rattling, despite it probably not doing so in the first place. If you want perfection then you can dowel it, then redrill. Get yer tape out and get on with yer new year celebrations kid. </han solo> Oh yes, 5/16" = 10/32". Therefore 1/32" difference. Spitting distance!

UPDATE!! Today I rounded over the back and used a rasp to shape in the back of the neck to body joint, and to improve access to the 26th fret. Without further deepening the cutaway, access to the high A is easily manageable with my second finger although full hand access to the second octave is comfortable through to my pinky. I'll leave it there methinks. :-D The general shaping of the horns is round on the inside curves and I have brought down the maple to the black poplar pinstripe at the tips. This will allow me to finish the faux bind and bring the dyed top down into the cutaways. I am considering routing off the laminated ebony fingerboard binding and replacing it with flame maple binding to continue the theme and further tie the instrument together. Anyway. To the Batcave! OTHER SIDE OF NECK JOIN THE BACK The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that I have routed the control cavity on the top side of the body. This is because I am planning on having the pots only accessible from the back so as not to cover up that awesome maple with knobs and doohickeys. I like the cleaner symmetrical look this will give the instrument. Given that I ditched the idea of an EQ system, I thought that a pair of volume controls and a kill switch are all I would require. I used a Dinky cavity template for the routing which is more than capacious enough for two batteries and pot bodies, although I am tempted to bring the cavity shape out somewhat to match the outline of the instrument.

Ah. Indeed. Well knowledge shared is always good if you want to look at this positively :-D

Can pine be strengthened a little by wicking CA into the grain where the post bushings are installed? Surely even one extra mm of hardened material around the posts being pushed into the softer surrounding wood will be better?

Thanks! As you can see, I don't clean up just to take build-porn shots :-D The neck is a little thick but since bringing that down is in my mind part of final prep and sculpting, I'm happy to leave it a little dirty! CLICK FOR LARGER VERSION

UPDATE! Routed the back for the neck tenon which has had two additional pieces of bloodwood and four black veneer pinstripes added either side (because I love it, and they'll add further interest to the neck-meets-body sculpting) and glued the whole thing together! I might even consider a control cavity at some point. CLICK FOR LARGER VERSION Another shot...

I've never tried MECs, and I'm in no hurry as I've always gotten along with EMGs. I'm about as likely to consider something else instead of EMGs as much as I'd like a pink bass. Unless they were Bartolini's in which case I'd sneak the pink bass in under a blanket before stripping it silly and checking those Barts out.

Use the search function as this has been covered many times before.

Awesome. I'll have to give that a try on some scrap mahogany to get practice in before epoxying a real instrument to the bench :-D Thanks Russ/Wes/Setch!

That's exactly what I thought also. Just not sure whether it's available economically outside of trade. Woohoo!! Araldite in larger quantities!! http://www.resins-online.com/resin-online-...tegory=araldite http://www.resins-online.com/resin-online-...tail.php?id=102 - 200ml Araldite for just under £20. Still a little pricey. http://www.resins-online.com/resin-online-...etail.php?id=97 - 250gm for just over a tenner. Sound better. Can epoxy be thinned down with a solvent such as alcohol, thinners, acetone etc. to extend it's workability and help it soak into pores better?

Sorry! Don't think people are ignoring you man :-D Not everyone has something to contribute to the threads they read. The nut should be pretty high, so you can cut it back during the final setup! I'd hazard thickness of fingerboard (if mounted at the end instead of in a slot Fender style) plus the height of the fretwire plus half the thickness of your heaviest string gauge plus a couple of mm to spare. Then cut it back. Since you're going fretless, you need the nut slots to be just marginally higher than the fretboard - enough so open notes don't buzz and you can comfortably slide notes back down past first and into the nut without the note deadening itself too much. Again, this should be in your final setup. Calculate your neck width when you can provide the specs of your nut string spacing (depending on what you want of course) and spacing at the nut. When it comes down to it - if you can specify those values then you can quite easily figure out the rest! It's a common sense train of thought and design. A 30" scale will work as you don't have to intonate I guess. You'd get better results with a 32" scale as you will have more string mass to sustain notes. Read more into other people's builds and the tutorials on the site and you'll find yourself forming a better idea of what you think you want and more specific questions to ask. Don't put router to wood yet till you've done the design!!! Hell, I brainstorm ideas myself so don't think you're the only one man. I find the best thing to do is to write down what I want from an instrument and then go back through it, editing it. You'll be surprised how much just vocalising ideas can do for your thought processes! Errm, anyway. I'd recommend deciding on one tuning too, else you'll end up setting the instrument back up every time the instrument readjusts to the new tension forces when you switch. Best of luck - you have a great resource of information on here!

http://www.mec-pickups.de/ ...although the German distributor is Warwick...throw 'em an email...