Prostheta

After almost completing the four-string set neck "practice" version, I've gotten to the stage where I'm ready to tackle the big daddy-o. First of all, the CAD design:

I'd take the smallest pin or needle you can find and prick out anything which might sit proud of your binding :-) Aim for a consistency like firm butter and you should be okay. It worked on my Koa Telecaster (which I better finish the back binding on come to think of it!) when some of the tighter curves decided to fight back against the forces that be. Keep the tool you use for filling super clean!! You don't want to contaminate your work. Again, been there and regretted the cheesy t-shirt.

Acetone is also great for cleaning down freshly sanded wood, but beware - it tends to strip the oils from the wood leaving it a bit dry and parched! That said, it does help woods like ebony glue up better if you wipe the glueing face down with acetone first....

Did I mention not to smoke near acetone?

Do you use acetone to clean sawdust out of wood? Grab a little jar, pour a third of acetone into it and keep offcuts of your binding in it. It'll soon melt into a sludgy mush. I have a jar (which smells of chillis!) of cream binding gunge which I use as filler for gaps. Works a treat. Just make sure you're not getting dirt into the hole you're filling else it won't look seamless.

If you don't want a load of homemade binding filler on hand, dip an offcut into acetone and "push" the melted surface off with a scalpel blade onto the area you want to fill and press it into the gap. Leave the fill proud of the existing binding and you can scrape it back a few hours later.

I love to headbang. I don't do it playing guitar, but being a bassist and ergo 1/2 of the rhythm section it just comes naturally. I wouldn't sacrifice the quality of my playing just for the visual aspect.

That's what rock move #47 is about - pulling out of a handbang by flicking your hair back so you can then eyeball your left hand for a complex bit.

Enter rock move 48.

Oh no!! You reopened the can of worms again Nitefly...

I'm not going to dwell either side of the fence (or sit on it) for this age old argument, so I'll kick the fence over and say that you're all wrong, deluded and spending too much time talking about them rather than playing or making them.

If you like having a plate on the back of the heel, cool. If you like sculpted heels, cool. If you like the look of laminates going through the entire neck and body, cool cool. Kick off yer yackin' shoes, put yer boots on go make some metal!!

I just realised that my RBX-775 bass is a bolt-on, but it minces hell out of most "other neck build" basses!!

Not unless you reduce the string spacing, and besides it's comparable to an EMG-85 in an EMG-35 sized housing and has seven-string spaced polepieces as opposed to blades. The EMG DCs have blades AFAIK.

As for 8-string pickups, try Lundgren.

http://www.lundgren.se/index.asp?folid=22&micid=93

I prefer set necks as opposed to thru's or bolt-ons. There are always arguments either side of my fence, so get off my lawn and stop peering through next door's bushes. Bugger off!

Anyway. I've heard a lot of people say that bolt-ons can be more difficult to make then sets or thrus, but again - everyone will have different mileage. I'll sure make my own opinion up for people to disagree on when I do the bolt-on Tele, set neck and a thru bass.

It's worth it for the time and materials you'd spend making a similar contrapumalation, plus you know it'll work out of the bag :-) Have you ever compared the price of primo Dremel accessories to third party ones? It make Stewmac seem cheap in comparison!

I'm coming from the angle of "I get so much useful time out of my SM base it pays for itself".

Well its pretty dense and low porosity but tru-oil will give it a slightly darker honey-yellow hue, like when you wet figured maple with white spirit or teak oil. I think it will look good.

Sounds good to me. I would severely love to go for a deep red figured finish like Mikhail's PRS, but the choice of woods in the neck laminate kind of mean I should stick with a lighter finish or else the bloodwood and ebony highlights would be lost in the morass. The rock maple won't dye as consistently as the figured maple, so I think a brown/yellow wash to pop the flame, sanded back and then a thorough oiling all over should highlight the neck laminates and still keep the flame nice and prominent. That said, I could always hang it as Mikhail says and get on with my wife's guitar :-)

I can always make another bass with the same construction but different neck laminations and go for a deep red (slow curing....) finish. I think I'll see what the bass says to me mid-construction!

I've ordered a Thunderbird template from Ronny and I'm just getting around to planning the materials etc. I'll start by detailing the standard Gibson specs:

- Mahogany wings joined to neck tenon using a "convex" V joint

- Neck through body 9-ply laminate of mahogany and walnut

- 20 fret 34" scale with rosewood board

The laminates appear to be 4x 1mm-2mm walnut strips with 2x 8mm and 1x 15mm in between, and about 6cm of mahogany either side. The wings are thinner than the tenon, leaving the centre tenon section proud of the rest of the body.

Now, the Thunderbird is characterised by it's deep dark growly sound. Looking at the construction, we can discount the wings for now as it's a big-ass neck tenon (12-14cm wide?). I presume the walnut is purely for strength and cosmetic purposes as 1mm-2mm isn't a huge amount! I prefer wider stripes on necks, so I'm proposing two 8mm walnut lams in place of the 8mm mahogany lams and pinstriping the walnut with some 0.7mm dyed black poplar veneer.

Will this drastically change the tone of the instrument? The strength will be greatly improved (I would have thought) but hopefully not to the detriment of the sound.

Also, what would be the best way to cut a 40mm V groove into the neck tenon either side to accept a V on the body wings, and also how to accurately cut the Vs onto the wings? I haven't seen any router bits large enough to carve a big 40mm wide 20mm deep V vertically, or horizontally guided in two passes. At worst, I'll go for the common or garden straight joint but curiosity has me on this one as you'd be increasing the tenon to wing contact area by say, 25-33%? Surely that contributes more to the overall mass and coupling of the instrument, and therefore tone....?

Just brainstorming.

Yeah, I found a stockist in the UK but wasn't sure how much it would flatter the grain. I think I'll buy some anyway and see how happy my test scrap makes me :-)

Oiling would be nice purely because it would flatter the bloodwood and ebony laminations, and if I can get ahold of it, the bloodwood back wings! The maple is "front of house" so to speak, so I'd like that to pop out a fair bit. I might wash dye it with thinned out Behlen wheat colour alcohol base dye and sand back before oiling. That should work nicely.

How does rock maple (one of the inner laminates) take oil?

It's not a no-no, but they're not necessary. That and you don't want power tools like routers anywhere near pins and screws!

I'm a bit concerned over the cure time of finishes as well Desopolis. I can't seem to find any luthier suppliers that sell patience either :-)

I'd like to get the bass out by the end of the year so I can tackle my wife's Les Paul. Having a beastie hung up to dry does nothing for my patience!

I would be tempted to destring the guitar, clean the fretboard with a little extra fine steel wool dipped in napthalene (lighter fluid) and then condition it with a little lemon oil or refined linseed oil. Be sparing with the oil though! A little goes a long way.

Hahaha...nobody points out that guitars heat up microscopically the harder you play!!

Suffice it to say that the body is a subtractive frequency absorber in solidbodies, which transmits energy and has a tendency - depending on the materials - to convert a proportion of the movement (vibration) energy into heat in miniscule amounts through molecular friction. This is turn affects the way the strings vibrate as they're held between at two major nodal points (fret/saddle) and several very minor ones (fret>nut, saddle>ferrule, fret>nut, nut>tuner) and the body vibrating will....oh sorry, I meant "yes". I agree with UncleJ.

Holy hell!! It's a Westfield....you got a good one there if it IS figured Rosewood!!

Is that sandthrough I can see on the inlay there?

HOLY HELL!!

The dragon lyre and egyptian acoustic are wonderful.

The site seems very old though...I wonder if he's still building...

I was considering posting "a year" but somebody might have thought I was taking the pee....

I think I'll sanding seal the body and use rattlecan clearcoat. I'm sure I can knock up a temporary painting booth using polythene and a brushless fan (flash fire cured finish anyone?) to evacuate the dangerously large huffing bag of solvents it would create! I doubt I'd get as beautiful a finish as yours Mikhail, but hey - there's plenty more wood in the sea as they say!

Mikhail, I really don't think I have the patience you have! How long did finishing that PRS take? Four months?

I love the reversed headstock Matt - you're inspiring me to build weapons as opposed to items of subtle beauty :-)

I am indeed! I'd prefer an oil finish on my bass project, but I'd also like the figure to pop out....

Thanks Mike - that's really useful. I think I'll bear a lot of this in mind for the test dyeing this weekend (too much band practice this week to build) and post some results. I gather the dye takeup varies hugely between different pieces of wood, so experience and experimenting with prior knowledge seems the order of the day!

Thanks Al - i'm trying to avoid clearcoats as I don't have enough clean non-dusty space to let them cure at present! On the test pieces, rattlecan lacquer popped the finish out a treat but I do prefer the feel and *lighter weight* of an oil finish, but the matt/satin areas kind of put me off it a little. I guess I could always practice French polishing!

I'll try and take a set of "in-process" photos on my test scrap to see what we can learn from that....

Hey all - I've been practicing on various bits of scrap with varied results, but has anyone got tips on how far to sand back the initial black dye coat on things like flame maple before colour coating? If anyone has a picture of this stage it would be cool, as I'm not 100% on what ratio of black figuring to "clean" maple should be left for best popping of the figure.

Also, when I colour coat the black dyed areas appear much more matte than the newly coloured areas. Obviously this comes out with clearcoating, but I'm considering an oil finish. Has anyone got experience in using alcohol dyes on maple and finishing with tung/danish oil?

Sorry, but search didn't specifically reveal all the answers I needed!