fyb

Thanks! I would strip it back if the wood was worth seeing. The finish is reeeeeally thick and the body is probaby 5 pieces, so I'm betting that'll be more effort than it's worth

Hey all! I want to refinish my MIM Strat body and it's got a polyester finish I believe. I want to repaint it a soild color, so I'm not going to bother stripping down to wood. How much finish do I need to remove before I spray primer? Should I take off the clear coat or can I just scuff sand? Thanks for the info!

Say you need to route a 5/8" neck pocket, what to you think is a good number of passes/depth of cut to do? I know you can easily get a bit that will have a 5/8" cutting length, but I don't think trying to do it in one pas would be a good idea at all I'd be too worried about screwing something up or having the bit jump or something. What do you think?

I'm building a body for a cheap bass I have. I want to swap out some of the hardware and probably the pickups, but I don't want to pay an arm and a leg (my building projects have been pretty hard on the wallet! ). I know places like guitar fetish have cheap guitar parts (and they're really not that bad for the price), so I was wondering if there are any good places to find inexpensive bass parts?? Thanks for the help!

There's a hardwood outlet nearby and they sell stuff pretty rough, but hey . . . the prices are pretty good . I can do the surfacing and stuff myself, but I was wondering if there's a good way to tell what kind of figure you can expect from the rough boards? I'm thinking particularly of mahogany and sapele . . . I really love the look of ribbon striping that you can find in these woods, but in the rough they often look pretty non-descript. Also, can you find decent figure in flatsawn sapele/mahogany or do you need quartersawn? Thanks for the info

Sorry if the title sounds convoluted, I always seem to type them too long so they get clipped off I was thinking of making a semihollow sort of in the vein of a 335, but I'm a noob and nervous about carving the top and the back Do you think you can get a good 335 style tone from a guitar of similar size and materials, but with a flat top and back?

That's pretty sweet

I meant adding one fret at the nut end, so the distance from the nut to the 1st fret on the 25.5" board are the same distance apart as the 1st and 2nd on the longer board. The idea was to have a longer scale, but one where the frets are spaced similarly to a preslotted 25.5" board so I can use it as a template

Hey all . . . I just did some trial and error stuff with the fret calculator on Stewmac's site. Here's what I found: 27.02" fret scale fret from nut fret to fret 1 1.517" 1.517" (nut-1) 2 2.948" 1.431" (1-2) 3 4.299" 1.351" (2-3) 4 5.574" 1.275" (3-4) 5 6.778" 1.204" (4-5) 6 7.914" 1.136" (5-6) 7 8.986" 1.072" (6-7) 8 9.998" 1.012" (7-8) 9 10.954" 0.955" (8-9) 10 11.856" 0.902" (9-10) 11 12.707" 0.851" (10-11) 12 13.510" 0.803" (11-12) 13 14.268" 0.758" (12-13) 14 14.984" 0.716" (13-14) 15 15.659" 0.676" (14-15) 16 16.297" 0.638" (15-16) 17 16.899" 0.602" (16-17) 18 17.467" 0.568" (17-18) 19 18.003" 0.536" (18-19) 20 18.509" 0.506" (19-20) 21 18.987" 0.478" (20-21) 22 19.438" 0.451" (21-22) 23 19.863" 0.426" (22-23) 24 20.265" 0.402" (23-24) 25.5" fret scale fret from nut fret to fret 1 1.431" 1.431" (nut-1) 2 2.782" 1.351" (1-2) 3 4.057" 1.275" (2-3) 4 5.261" 1.203" (3-4) 5 6.397" 1.136" (4-5) 6 7.469" 1.072" (5-6) 7 8.481" 1.012" (6-7) 8 9.436" 0.955" (7-8) 9 10.338" 0.902" (8-9) 10 11.189" 0.851" (9-10) 11 11.992" 0.803" (10-11) 12 12.750" 0.758" (11-12) 13 13.466" 0.716" (12-13) 14 14.141" 0.675" (13-14) 15 14.779" 0.638" (14-15) 16 15.380" 0.602" (15-16) 17 15.948" 0.568" (16-17) 18 16.484" 0.536" (17-18) 19 16.990" 0.506" (18-19) 20 17.468" 0.478" (19-20) 21 17.919" 0.451" (20-21) 22 18.344" 0.425" (21-22) 23 18.746" 0.402" (22-23) 24 19.125" 0.379" (23-24) I have one more question now . . . how do you measure ou distances like these that require alot of precision? I don't exactly have a 1.517" mark on my tape measure

I'm a big guy so I thought it'd be cool to make a guitar that's a bit bigger than normal, like a strat but 10% bigger I'd probably want to do a slightly longer scale too. My idea was that I could use a preslotted 25.5" board as a guide because I'm nervous about cutting and measuring from scratch . . . I was thinking that I'd use the 25.5" scale board as a template but shift it down a fret, so the distance from the nut to the 1st fret on the preslotted board would be the 1st to 2nd frets on the longer board. I know there are fret calculators out there that will give you fret positions for all sorts of scales, but I have no idea how to calculate the spacing I'd need for my idea here. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!!

I concur with T M, find a local joiner with a large planer/thicknesser machine and ask him to do it. I took a few pieces to a joiner that I considered needed to be planed flat and thickened to the correct size ( i.e. fretboard planed to 6mm ) and it cost a few pints, small price to pay and a lot less hassle How did you go about doing this? Did you just look someone up in the yellow pages and call the number? Or do you show up with beer just in case? I'm pretty new to the area I'm in now, and I don't know anyone that could do this kind of stuff without checking the yellow pages.

It's easy enough to joint and plane 7" wide pieces for 2 piece bodies, but how can you ensure that a piece wide enough for a 1 piece body is planed perfectly flat and uniformly thick? As I understand it, a planer won't solve cupping/warping problems, though I suppose it'd at least be uniformly thick. I may have a really good deal for a huge mahogany board lined up ($25 for 16" x 2"x 12' ) , and I'd love to do some 1 piece guitar bodies. The board is rough though, so I'd have to plane it and everything and I'm not quite sure how to go about it. Thanks for the help!!

Hi! I was thinking about making some flamey maple pickguards for a few guitars. I think standard pickguards are .090" thick, so I was thinking about getting some 1/8" (.125") maple for the project. I figure I'd lose a bit in sanding and stuff, but it'll still probably be close to 1/8" when done, I think. My questions for you then . . . will this work OK? Is 1/8" maple going to be strong enough? If it's a little thicker than standard pickguards, will the pots and stuff still fit OK? Thanks for the info!

How can on go about building a $20 bending machine? Is there a tutorial around maybe?? Thanks!!!!

Thanks for the info!

What do you think? *edit* Sorry, it looks like some of the questions was cut off in the original title. I was wondering if you need to prebend fretwire is you are going to press the frets in rather than hammer them. I'm going to be using my drill press for the fretting with a caul from StewMac. Thanks for the info!

Thanks alot for the info folks! I don't really know if you can beat a preslotted board for ~$18, and it's really good to hear that it'l change a bit with oil and some aging. I'll try to keep you guys posted on the progress and I'll get some pics up when the guitar is closer to finished. It'll be interesting to see the board as it came from Stewmac vs. how it looks finished

I just got this indian rosewood fretboard from Stewart McDonald and it was somewhat 'bland' looking colorwise. Granted, this is my first build and as such my first purchased fretboard, but it wasn't really the color I expected. Even the rosewood on cheaper guitars I've seen are a bit richer in color. Is it a matter of prepping the board, or sanding or oiling or something, or it this the color I am to expect when done? The color in the pic is pretty representative of the board (at least on my laptop screen) Thanks for the info folks! http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/4732/fybguitarrn4.jpg Images 640x480 max!Scale 'em or lose 'em.

I'm working through my first guitar project right now, and one of the things I wanted to do on a custom guitar is make the neck pretty wide at the nut (I'm presently playing strat type guitars with 1 5/8" and I'm a pretty big dude with big hands so these necks seem tiny). I was thinking of making it 2" at the nut, but that would require cutting my own nut and more investment in files (I'm already going broke on this project ) . . . and cutting the nut seems a bit more daunting than most other tasks. I found a preslotted nut on graphtech's site at 1 13/16" wide so I'm thinkin of using that . . . I was wondering if any of you made the jump to a bigger nut when making your own guitars and what you thought of it. What you use for a width? Did you make the neck thinner to compensate for the extra width? The problem is that I can't find any electrics to play with a nice, wide nut so I'm kind of playing a guessing game . . . On an aside, how daunting did you find it to make your first nut? Did you have to get a whole set of 6 files, or can you do it with fewer?? Any info would be helpful. Thanks!

Thanks for the info, folks! Here's the fret press caul I'm going to use ... StewMac explicitly states you can use it in your drill press. I'll keep you posted about how it works out but it may be a few weeks

I'm going to be using the fret press caul from StewMac in my drill press to do the fretting, and it seems like keeping the back of the neck square would make it easier to do this ... What do you think?

Well, the string doesn't go through the body, I think I'd want to do that if I were building one anyway.

Wow . . . that was exactly what I was looking for (and the link was great too!) Thanks guys!

Yes. But judging from this and your earlier post, you need to read a whole lot more, and learn to use the search option on these forums. Fender Jazz Basses and P basses come in 5 string form, and they're 34". Well, I searched for 'tap tone' earlier and only found one decent thread and 2/3 of that seemed like insults and mudslinging. I'm still looking for a bit more info, so I asked the question. Since I didn't have much luck with that, I just wrote this question out. I just did a seach and found some useful stuff though. Oh, and there's always more to read. My guitar projects are coming out pretty well, so I thought I'd find some info on basses.

Hello all . . . I'm working my way though a few guitar builds and I was toying with the idea of doing a bass too. I'm a guitar player primarily so I really don't know much about basses ... I got a cheapy Rogue bass from Musician's Friend ~5 years ago just for something to mess around on and record simple basslines on my song ideas. The bass had a 34" scale and the B string is virtually unusable ... it's not as loud as the other 4 strings and the tone of that string has been likened by some to the sound of flatulence :o This could all very well be due to the fact that it's a crappy $100 chinese bass, but I was wondering if the scale had much to do with it?? If I make a bass, I'd like to do a 5 string but I'd (obviously) need to have the 5th string usable. Could I make a 34" scale one with a decent B or should I go to 35"? What else should I know to make a bass with a solid B string?? Thanks!!!!