Prostheta

It's a shame you can't have the best of both worlds really. I appreciate the monochrome qualities of the original finish, but the vintaged look gives it character. I would actually replace the hardware with gold myself, but that's just me. I presume that the lacquer has just yellowed naturally then. No going back from that unless you refinish, as I believe has already been suggested. That would be more hassle than it's worth really.

-1 on the stealing of tools. Begging or borrowing is cool though as it keeps everything within the family so to speak. I have knives for the thieves of guitars and tools. Well, thieves in general. Martin - what is Switzerland like for import duty when buying from abroad? It may be an idea to buy from David Dyke in the UK as inter-European import might be a lot more relaxed. I'm not sure if he ships, but it's worth asking the question anyway. Alternatively, Stewart MacDonald do some good things as long as you don't get sucked into the Million Dollar Man Dan Erlewine™'s tools that will make you into the worlds most out of pocket luthier. +1 on the bandsaw +2 on the router +1 on a good fore plane (12"+ sole) +1 on bribing local woodworkers (cabinet makers especially!) for usage on their thickness planers/sanders, jointers etc. (although I would recommend the beer as opposed to cigarettes). If you can get decent well-dried wood, and either make it into a blank yourself or get somebody else to do it at reasonable cost, the rest is open to however you want to take it.

I bought my last three complete blanks from Simo. The other guitar blanks I made out of raw dried lumber from North Heigham sawmills in Norfolk. The thicknesser, jointer and fore plane I bought are indispensible for this ;-) To be honest, if you choose good wood from the woodyard with little to no inclusion then you can make some great blanks. My Koa Tele is ash, my Iceman is walnut although I use a lot of African mahogany for "other" stuff.

Hey Al - I'm just down in Lincoln, and I've just invested a fair amount in tooling for building guitars. How many more are you planning on making? Nice headstock mod by the way - I didn't like it Strat-shaped :-)

Any chance of pictures? I'm kinda curious.

AFAIK, Ashdown have gone out of business so don't hold your breath. Ampegs are always pretty good although I'm not too sure about the "low end" so to speak. I had good results out of an SWR Workingman amp, although it had no onboard compressor. I run a Trace Elliott Series 6 AH300 which I bought for £450 second hand, and it was worth every penny and pound despite it also having no onboard compressor! My wife says Behringer are a mid-range market, whereas SWR are higher end and Crate are low low poop end. I guess you can put your money into the Ampeg reassurance pretty easily. Nina says Crate's QC suffered AWFULLY during the mid-nineties so as to whether they're much better might be moot. When you say distortion, it depends on what you mean. I presume you mean crunchy fuzz distortion. All amps distort in differing ways, whether it be tonal colouration, compression or harmonic. Ampeg is famed for the "Ampeg crunch" which is highly desirable (Thunderbird and Ampeg tube head!! GROWRRR!) although you may favour the SWR for solid clear throughput. I'd say the SWR - if you liked it then it's a winner. If you have a bit more coin or time to save it, i'd heartily recommend the SWR Workingmans 15. Makes the balls of your house shake :-)

Any update on those laminates yet Will?

Thanks :-) I've decided to build four "minor" projects to teach myself individual disciplines before jumping into the expensive stuff :-) Purpleheart set neck Les Paul - fretboard binding, top carving, neck angle calculation. Walnut Iceman - body binding on tight curves, neck angle calculation Koa Telecaster - veneering, body binding, maple necks and trad. truss rods. The other is a neck-through V for a laugh.

Just to let you know Mike, I have four projects in progress right now. I took a different slant on your method of binding the edges of the fretboard with wood, and I've made a laminated fingerboard with 1cm purpleheart and 2mm strips of flamed maple which I'm dyeing black/purple. Will most probably finish the edges of the board with more maple. This is the Les Paul I'm building for my wife (LR Baggs TOM, chambered to hell and back). I drafted this up in TurboCAD last week. This is where I am up to on my other Les Paul build....binding is becoming seriously addictive, and making it can be stressful but rewarding!!

19mm allows you to shape the hell out of it :-) It would probably be enough to rout a rod in the back and fix a fillet to make an all-maple neck!! I started a thread re: Stewmac rods and the amount of wood you can leave from the bottom of the rod rout to the outside world under the neck. I'm sticking to 3-4mm for harder woods, and 5mm for "softer" woods like mahogany although I'm sure they'll survive happily at 4mm.

I make my necks 15mm thick minus the fingerboard with a 11mm rout for the Hotrod. No problems encountered....!!

I'm with Drak, although I would LOVE to see somebody actually make one just to say "I MADE ONE". A bad idea can also be simultaneously AWESOME. Like a granite Strat.

Excellent. I have plenty of margin for error now then. I've sanded back the neck almost to profile and I reckon I have a good 3mm-4mm of leeway in the mahogany. Good job we're not making basswood necks here! This is what the neck looks like so far - I bound the fretboard with flamed maple and veneered the headstock with ebony (yet to be bound with shallower maple). Another picture

Heat lamps are applying direct heat using a controlled spectrum of light, whereas sunlight is broad spectrum and contains wayloads more energy which a black guitar will absorb readily. It may also have something to do with the distance you sprayed from as you were obviously not wanting the poly to dust coat the instrument. If you spray too close/too heavily, much more solvent gets trapped in the paint and gases out for longer.

Will do Jon. It's a tossup on whether to use it for the 5-string Thunderbird or a guitar board (considering the waste). That said, the waste would make an awesome fillet for a Tele's truss rod!

Am I right in thinking that it's pretty similar (if not the same) to solvent pop, where the solvents in the paint "gas out" too quickly because of the direct sunlight/temperature?

Bloodwood fretboard - SOLD!! eBay user ID: user_id_and_password Cheers muchly!! Do you also have any bloodwood for use in making thin laminates in bass necks? I'm building a five-string neck-through which has a tenon size of 46" length and require 2-1/2" to 3" depth, tapering the stripe thickness from 2/16" to 1/16" head to foot.

If somebody stole any of our guitars, I'd be hella frustrated if I didn't know the culprit. I have knives for these people.

Oops! A bit too much red wine confuzzled my head last night. The depth of the brass blocks is 10.5mm (~7/8"). I actually depthed a neck to 15mm last night which is why I woke up this morning with a shot, thinking I'd be routing a channel right through it!! Oopsy. TheGarehanMan: Thanks - that information reassures me that my first neck (the one pictured) should be recoverable :-) I actually wrapped the brass ends with greaseproof paper (fat-free, cookie paper etc.) to stop the glue from the ebony fingerboard seizing it. What would be the best way to check correct rod operation? I presume it would make more sense if the board was fretted and on the body? Ooten2: Thanks for the info. I'm sure I have that information somewhere, so I guess I've scored myself some idiot points on my permanent record there....duh!! I think I've confused the issue in my head with other people talking about curved channels (especially in Mr Hiscock's guitar bible!) and presumed it was the same for Hotrods. Vince D: I tend to design in small angles to my headstocks (4° for my Iceman set neck I'm working on for instance) whether it be scarfed or one-piece (both of these are one-piece for strength) so I don't think I want to jeopardise stability. Having double-checked my measurements, even if I was to rout a curve in the channels (which I don't seem to need with Hotrods) I could get away with a 14mm dip in the centre giving 3mm room play. It would still mean a 17mm deep neck, but that's no biggy. A thinner fingerboard would correct this. Given that the Hotrods don't seem to require a curved channel, the 11mm flat channel on a 15mm thick neck (minus fingerboard) leaves a comfortable 4mm before the rod bursts out from the rear of the neck a la Alien.# Thanks for all the info guys, I feel a lot more confident in my rod installs now. For the record though, what thickness of wood are people confident with leaving from the back of the neck through to the rod channel? I presume this varies from wood to wood....

Well, just curious about Stewmacs hotrod truss rods. I have six, so I guess I should be more curious about installing them than most people ;-) So, with the brass "blocks" at either end being near as damnit 15mm deep, and the rods 14-15mm from the top of the rout in "relaxed" state (thanks to that PVC wrap), what depth should I curve the truss rod rout to? My instinct tells me 15mm for the brass blocks with a curve dip of about 17mm in the centre of the rod. Now, how much wood should be left between the rout and the outside world here? 4mm would seem "stable" enough but that leaves a neck depth of 21mm plus the depth of the fretboard - one fecking fat nuck!! *cough* I suspect I've already screwed up one awesomely made (for a first neck) mahogany and purpleheart neck with a truss rod install which has insufficient recess curve, so advice would be gratefully received. BTW - what happens when you have NO recess curve for the truss rod? *cough* Sorry, I must be coming down with a "cold" or something. Your respects to the (potentially) deceased party please: FYI, that mark is sweat from hard consciencious work. Wooha!

Huge Ballooning in Finnish? Iso Ilmapallosuomalaiseksi!!! Sorry, but I really do get picky when people mis-spell "finish" with two n's. Especially on eGay when you're looking for Finnish "things".

Cool - keep us posted on your progress. Always good for reference!

If you want to stick with EMGs then the EMG 60 in the neck position is nice. Good pickup for solos - the 85 is better for thick rhythm.

I was pondering - the common automotive trick of using a dark colour as a dry marker when finishing sanding to highlight low spots or scratches might work using grain filler instead in the case of wood. Any opinion on this? Wood - being inconsistent in appearance - can hide scratches and voids easily, so I put to the vote that at least one grain fill pass (whether it all sands back or not) is a good acid test prior to paint?

Indeed. My amps consist of a Marshall JCM800, Peavey 5150 and a Trace Elliot Series 6 AH-300. My Ibanez Prestige S1540FM with a full swap to Seymour Duncans sounds a lot more dynamic and musical than my ESP Explorers with EMG81/85/60s. The EMGs just CRUSH and nothing else, especially when you reverse wrap the stop tail ;-) I had an Invader in my Washburn A10 and you could have sucked a turd to a point and stabbed yourself in the eye to get a better tone. The neck pickup (JB) was glorious for bluesy stuff though. I have to put my two-penneth in about the DiMarzio Tone Zone - really awesome pickup when in the right guitar! That right guitar being my old ESP Mirage which unfortunately is no longer with us. Man, how can anybody say high output is the be-all and end-all of crushing tones?! I guess it's good if you don't have other musicians who require fitting into the same audio spectrum as us lowly hoo-mans.