MartinP

Some humbuckers (at least those of Seymour Duncan) have three holes per "ear", with only the middle one being threaded for height adjustment screw. Once I direct-mounted a JB (Trembucker) like follows: bored the 2 outer holes a bit bigger, put woodscrews through them and a short metalscrew through the center one. Turning and tightening wood- and metalscrews counteract and let you set the pickup's position perfectly. If someone is concerned abt. possible microphonic problems, we never had any. If there's a difference in sound, I really don't know as we never tried to mount the pickup on a ring or foam etc.. It worked very well so it was left as it was.

Exactly what I was about to suggest! Heavy gauge aluminium wire makes sweet sidedots (esp. in an ebony fretboard).

Sry, I've posted it before somewhere, yet believe it might come handy this time http://www.provide.net/~cfh/fenderc.html

Just use 2 different products instead (if needed of course): a clear (glossy) laquer (from spraycan) for sealing and a spray adhesive for glueing the damn decal to headstock. Btw: Jehle's method works fine, but has it's own tricks . First: it was a bitch to get the colour nice and uniform. Second: you'll want to get the decal as thin as possible with no "sharp" edges. Jep, if you use a lot of laquer you'll get it all leveled, but the decal edges migth still be visible. So, for a start sand the decal down "as far as you dare" before glueing to the headstock. After it's done, you can carefully sand even more. I used a lot of slow-cureing superglue (yes, indeed:)) instead of the contact adhesive, pressed it out beneath the decal so that all the decal edges were nicely covered with s.glue (s.glue "melts" the decal material a bit). Beware! you can't just put the decal flat on the headstock, you have to "bend" it on and press all the air out by going. Let it dry overnight. Sanded the edges smooth / removed most of the pressed out glue. What was left formed quite a smooth transition from decal-to-headstock already before clearcoating. And Jimbo - if you have any specific questions abt. "where to get stuff if you're living on the dark side of the Moon", just check my profile

Warmoth Their (ebony) fingerboards are of very high quality, friendly and quick service + I've never missed even a single screw, everything is packed perfectly.

A bit OT, but still, here's a very indepth story about vintage Fender finishes / techniques: http://www.provide.net/~cfh/fenderc.html

What's the difference between front and back ones? Or am I just plain stupid...

Cheers! It's kinda interesting this topic popped up right now - I'm just planning to build a 8-stringer for one guy and was playing with the idea of using EMG's Extended Series bass pu's for that. Those EMG's all have blade polepieces, but different inner structures (some are J- some P-bass alikes, some have parallel coils and that's what I'll go with), so there shouldn't be any problems with the string spacing etc. What's interesting though is, that bass pickups seem to have a much higher resonant peak than guitar pu's. I'm aware it's not the single nor most critical measurement, but should give an overall indication of pu's nature, though. I mean, usually singlecoils have higher resonant peak than humbuckers, and we all know the sound difference between those two types. Would be highly interesting to hear some comments from people who have actually tried bass pu's on guitar.

Are there any (audible) sonic differencies between epoxy / aliphatic / hide glue joints, say, when glueing a fretboard or laminating a neck?

Might not be what you want exactly, but still: http://www5.ocn.ne.jp/~dgb/index_e.htm scroll the right menu down to "Electronics Circuit" http://www.albertkreuzer.com/start.htm "Electronics" + "Preamps"

This topic came just right! My boss decided our company needs a CNC-router! Guess who's going to play around with it on weekends...

No problemo! I'll try to explain. By "between the pickups" I meant indeed "the distance between the inner sides of the pickups" and not between the pickup mounting rings. I just thought I underline "not between pu routes" because that's something that may vary, ok. Dist. between the outer sides would be: 128 mm.

If the holes for bushings in your Dean are OK, I'd go with Schaller Mini Locking Tuners from www.warmoth.com So far I've got 2 sets of them, black and gold, and the quality is top notch!

My measurements for a Gibson scale SG are from a printed out CAD file - the result seemed ok for me with known measurements like distance between frets etc. falling in place. BUT, pls wait for a second opinion Distance between pickups (not between pu routes!) - 52,0 mm Distance between the centres of pickups - 90,0 mm Hope it helps.

Wouldn't it be easier to route all pickup and control cavities + neck pocket before cutting the body out? I mean, fixing the templates and stuff. That's the way I do it - so it MUST be right ?

One more good thing abt. laminating a neck - if building a neck with tilt back peghead, you gan make the peghead-neck connection (neck heel??) as a butt-joint. "A bit" more work, but you get a really strong construction in the weakest point of an neck. And, of course, flatsawn wood is a lot cheaper than qs and more readily available.

Morning! Ref: neck finish - it's got oil finish. Simple to apply, feels very natural, looks good. Killing wenge with coats of paint wasn't even considered to be an option. Ref: neck profile - actually it's a 24 3/4'' scale and profile is more or less of an LP. Why? Cause the guitarist wanted it to be this way. He doesn't like those "race" necks at all. At first I made the neck too thick, bulky, considering that I can always sand it down. We made a pre-assembly with all the parts mounted, strings on, then he played it a bit and gave his verdict what should be done to the neck. A sort of tailor made guitar, heh. Ref: bandsite - yes, of course: www.manatark.com Have a nice day!

my ego just rocketed... Ref peghead - it has variable thickness (like old Gibsons, I've heard). Thicker towards the nut, thinner on end (point?). The tuners of course have to be aligned perpendiculary to the peghead face, thus I routed a small cavity to the peghead back, so all tuners are at the same..eee...height, too. Also, you can see the peghead-neck connection is not perfect. It's very rough actually. The glue line itself is ok, I've just chiseled small grooves in it, according to the grain pattern of wenge. A sort of "extension" to the light-brown grain stripes. Then I mixed a matching (more or less ) putty to fill the grooves. As a result I had a very smooth, almost not disrupted transition of grain from neck to peg. Should make a pic of it.

Howdy! I've been lurking around here fore quite a while, and always I have a question I just do a quick search...and find the answer. Thank's folks for keeping this site up! I'll add hereby my first guitar project (have built 2 basses before). It was started something like spring last year and took quite a time to finish (couldn't find an airbrush artist here in Estonia for months...). Spec: Set in, 2-piece wenge laminate neck (happened to have enough from my last bass project), ebony fingerboard (Warmoth, pre-slotted), walnut body, Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck hb (directly mounted to body, fixed firmly with 6 screws), Schaller Floyd Rose, Gotoh tuners, Neutrik locking jack, 1x volume. There's a very good reason for such a straightforward design - the bloke I built it, as you can probably see from a pic, is a gigging musician in an extreme black metal band called Manatark. I even did a epoxy based (as thin as I could!) protective coating on the back 'cause I've seen what those bulletbelts do to the finish of a guitar :-(. Now it's almost indestructible. Unfortunately, I didn't have a digicam lying around all the time so the pics only show first stages and a more or less finished "product". Link: http://www.hot.ee/martinmg42/ Next one - 25,5'' scale "sort of" SG!

As much as I know Whitewood = Spruce (which is softwood)

Here's exactly such a project: http://www.ruokangas.com/ Go to Models -> Custom gallery -> the lowest row, 5th from left

I'm useing my small Proxxon mill for this - that's probably not what you wanted to hear, though. I suppose you have already made the following, but just in case not - measure very precisely your fingerboard's thickness and also how high the strings will be in locking nut when tightened - you know the string grooves are v-shaped so that the thicker strings will actually be a bit higher than groove's bottom. Then do some calculations... It may well be that you just have to cut off a piece from the fingerboard and screw the nut directly to the neck(wood) itself. Worked for me once. And, there shouldn't be anything wrong to put some shims beneath the nut if it has to be raised. Rgds

Real McTube - have built this, it works great on my bass! With the "gain" at 40-50% it adds just enough crunch. BTW - it doesn't suck the bass frequencies! Wouldn't recommend as an overdrive for guitar, though. Unless you're after some "tube feel" only. To work on guitar, "gain" has to be turned all the way up, but then it doesn't give you a nice overdriven signal, it just makes some sort of "buzz" and adds noise. Anyway, the article itself is worth reading as it covers basics of tube stuff in a simple language so even I understood it and also explains how to tweak the Real McTube schematic to suit your taste. And you can easily add a tonestack if needed. Free soft: http://www.duncanamps.com/tsc/ I highly recommend another project from Tone Pad instead - Sansamp GT-2. Built this too, and made some A/B listening with my friends original GT-2. Couldn't tell a difference in sound. There's some work to put it all together, and it might not be the best choice as a first project, but for abt. $ 45-50 you get one hell of a good and versatile unit.

@Brian - simply put, thanks for advise! Brought the baby home yesterday.

Hi, I'm buying my first spraygun (+compressor +building a dustfree space) and that means I have no real experience with these things. I think something smaller and conventional should be the right choice - like Asturomec's ES/RV line. Problem - they have 2 different models which only difference seems to be in spray patterns - one has a concentric (ES) and the other (ES/RV) this, you know, fan-like spray pattern. I'm not so worried about spraying colors and clear, but wonder which is better for shading? Thanks in advance. Martin BTW. last project, still needs final sanding and polishing. And assembly of course. And the guy on pic is not me but the airbrush artist "responsible" for artwork. http://www.hot.ee/turm/uued/kidra.htm http://www.hot.ee/ird/uued.html