curtisa

Might save the luminescent epoxy fill for a different build. I reckon the top on this will be loud enough by itself. Sod it - added a weeny chamber above the neck pickup anyway. A little more weight relief can't hurt, and the burl top just about doubles the weight of the body as it is: For RAD (if he's watching): Binding channel:

Postman brought me some goodies yesterday. Will save this one for a future build (for the second neck blank, possibly?):

Stone the flamin' crows, mate! She's a right bobby dazzler!

+2 I really like that body shape. Reminds me of something similar that escapes me at the moment. Something by Line6 maybe? For some reason I want to see it in some kind of 50s autobody colour like seafoam green.

Very puuuurty. That's a pretty skinny body on the 5-string. There must be only just enough room inside for the electronics?

Cheers Scott. There was a couple of weeks where I didn't get a chance to do anything with this one, but last weekend I had a clear run to finish off the second neck blank and get the body underway. We have a 3-day weekend coming up, so I should be able to plough on a bit further.

Planning chambers: Routing chambers. There's actually a bit of room behind the upper cutaway for a tiny chamber. I'm probably being a bit pedantic putting it in though. It would be smaller in area than the battery compartment at the bottom of the body: Fresh off the bandsaw:

Hmmm. Now you've got me a-thinkin'...

Two neck blanks on the go: Top is glued and getting a bit of planing to remove the fuzzies from the saw blade. Still need to fill those two large knots with epoxy before going too much further, as they're quite flaky inside at the moment:

Been a bit too busy to spend much time on this, but have pressed on with some work where I managed to find time. Have had to spend a bit of time flooding areas of the top blanks with CA to shore up some of the weak burl before being able to joint the edges for glueing. Blackwood body blank glued up: Started on the myrtle neck:

I suspect trying to build a neck that has the correct relief with no need for adjustability has several drawbacks: Any relief you build into the neck on purpose will only be suitable for a narrow number of scenarios - string guage, tuning, playing style, personal preference. As soon as you change one of those factors the neck will likley need adjusting to provide the ideal playability for the application. Building a neck with a specific pre-curve would be extremely tricky without access to very precise measuring and cutting tools, and/or custom moulds and templates, putting it a long way out of reach from nearly all DIY builders. Any imperfections in the manufacturing process or in the materials used would change the amount of curve the neck exhibits under string tension, making designing the initial amount of pre-curve unpredictable. Maximum string displacement at the 12th fret is only true if the string is plucked while not fretted. If you play the string at the 7th fret the maximum displacement is midway between the 7th fret and the bridge - somewhere around the 19th fret. The "shape" of the neck relief is probably more important than the amount. A gentle curve along the length of the unsupported section of the neck is required to allow the vibrating string to clear the frets, rather than a straight line. The curve shape approximates the shape of the string once it vibrates. Usually the curve is initially caused by the string tension itself and then partially nulled-out and fine tuned by the trussrod. In most cases the trussrod ends before it reaches the body because the neck/body join makes the neck stiff enough to not require extra reinforcement, and so any flexing under string tension will not require adjusting against. In some situations you will find that the fretboard/frets have been levelled with a gradual fall-off after the neck/body join to allow a bit more clearance under the highest frets where adjusting the trussrod has no effect, to prevent fret buzz in the higher regisisters. I've always imagined extra neck reinforcement to be used to provide resilience against unwanted movement after the trussrod has been set. The neck should be stiff enough to hold its shape after being flexed against string tension, but not so stiff that it cannot be moved at all by the trussrod if required.

Use a forstener bit to countersink the pots a little deeper inside the control cavity, or as a slightly more fancy option, countersink the top so that the knobs sit in a "crater" just below the surface of the top (kinda what PRS does with their control knobs).

Cheers guys. I can't claim to be the original owner of that idea. It's already been stolen from someone else by me.

Other option is to take a regular pickup and twist it around, which is exactly what I did with the first Wonky Frets. Perpendicular pickups on a multiscale can result in a warmer tone on the bass strings, especially at the bridge position as the sensing part of the pickup on the bass side is further from the saddles than the treble. I'm not going for a too extreme fan, so the gap behind the bridge pickup won't be too severe, and I've heard enough sound examples of perp-mounted EMG 57/66s on multiscale guitars to be reasonably satisfied that I'll be happy with the sound.

Not going to be angling the EMGs, they'll be perpendicular to the centre line. Also experimenting with carbon fibre neck reinforcement. Two 6mm x 4mm bars either side of the trussrod.

Back aboard the bandwagon then for my yearly build. Targets: Neck - 5 piece blackwood/celery top pine with jarrah accents Fretboard - gidgee Frets - 24 jumbo Scale length - 25" - 26", perpendicular at 9th fret Tuners - Hipshot Griplock in chrome, 3 per side Body - blackwood with eucalyptus burl cap Pickups - EMG 57/66 set in brushed chrome Bridge - ABM independent saddles in chrome Electronics - 1x vol, 3-way switch In keeping with my "try something new every build" approach I'm going to have a go at binding the body, neck and headstock and chambering the blackwood body. I also have a second piece of gidgee, a big plank of myrtle, leftover celery top pine and lots of jarrah veneer, so I may make two necks to similar specs concurrently to see what effect it has on the instrument...and as an incentive to build yet another guitar, I'll have a leftover neck! For now though here's the blackwood neck undergoing its gestation:

The top reminds me a lot of Tas Myrtle. I assume you will be donning the leather pants, permed hair and numerous body piercings when busting this one out at the local bars?

I use scrapers and rasps for the bulk of the work, and various grades of sandpaper to even out the final texture and curve. Angle grinder+flap disk is extremely aggressive and needs to be used with care as it's easy to end up going too far. Super messy too, so if you're going to try it make sure you do it outside with plenty of ventilation and a dust mask.

As Scott says, there's lots of different arguments for doing the neck build in different orders. They all work OK. You'll probably settle into your own running order as you build more guitars. I started off with radiusing the fretboard after carving the neck and then fretting/levelling, but now I've moved to radiusing the fretboard before gluing to the neck, followed by fretting, carving the neck and levelling the frets last. Makes it easy to do the hammering/pressing/clamping/measuring operations while everything still has flat surfaces to reference against. Many acoustic builders do the same. Chances are I'll change my running order again given enough time. Minimum thickness of your neck is probably dependent on your timber choice and the depth of your trussrod route. With maple I reckon you'd be safe to go to depth of trussrod + 8-10mm + thickness of your fingerboard. Nut slot depth isn't super critical, as long as it's deep enough to secure it from wobbling in the direction of the strings. Scott's suggestions are good. The eventual action of the nut is usually accomplished by fine tuning the nut slots (or by shaving off the bottom of the nut itself) rather than taking more wood out of the slot.

The font stamped on the baseplate isn't quite right either. The engaving looks much shallower/thinner than the genuine article, and the "d" in "Floyd" doesn't curl around enough to meet the vertical stroke. See here. That old adage about being too good to be true...

Sounds like you need the assistance of a good accountant. Dunno about where you live, but down here I believe there are all sorts of tax breaks and government grants/incentives to small business owner-operators to allow them to make a living out of what they do. Maybe there are particular tax rates that apply to small (registered? hobby?) businesses that make it possible to run at a profit where you live that you need to find out about?

Know what you mean. Years ago I heavily modded one of my guitars with all manner of switching and tricks, and only ever ended up using a coil tap on the neck humbucker. I just found the rest of the options completely superfluous to my requirements. I've also never used the tone control on any of my guitars I've ever owned so I omit it on my builds, either by leaving out the tone pot altogether or, if the sound is a bit too edgy, by substituting the equivalent fixed resistor/capacitor combination as if the tone control was fitted but permanently wound to 10. I've usually just used skinny screws to direct mount, so long as they're small enough to pass through the existing pickup ears without chewing up the threads. Never had any issue with loose mounting of the pickups as a result. Dense foam under the pickup minimises the worst of the wobble. Needs to be really heavy duty stuff, automotive weather stripping or door sealing foam. The offcuts you can get out of some pickup pacakging isn't dense enough and will either be too soft to start with, or will start to "memorise" it's compressed shape too much over time and gradually offer less support as it remains compressed. I've even used hollow metal tubing between the pickup ears and the wood to rigidly fix the pickup in place and do away with the foam altogether, but it's a lot more fiddly to install and height adjustment is fixed to the height of the tubes.

Is this your second build with the Hannes bridge? They do look pretty schmick. Needs more holes drilled for all the mini toggle switches that SS's need for the coil splitting, phase flipping, kill switching and kitchen sinking Did I miss what pickup are going into this?

I'm about to try and build a neck with carbon fibre reinforcement myself, so I'm also keen to hear what others' experiences are. My gut feel is that reinforcement by itself probably doesn't offer much in the way of support to specific areas of the neck (eg, scarf transistion), but rather supports the neck as a whole and minimises the tendency for thin or weak necks to twist or bow excessively, or gradually shift over time due to seasonal changes. I imagine with enough of a blow you could still split a scarf joint with a neck fitted with reinforcement. The head may not shear off as easily, but the glue line would probably still fracture. I think you can probably get better value from a dedicated supplier of carbon fibre rather than forking out a premium from Stewmac. I just bought 6x 1 metre rods from a CF stockist at $10AU per length. Each rod can then be cut in half and will do one neck, one rod either side of the trussrod. Much better value than the $17US Stewmac charges for one 18" piece. As expected it's pretty rigid stuff for its weight. Can't comment on titanium, but I do wonder what exactly it offers over CF? Is it perhaps just the marketing flavour of the month?

If replacing the pots with long shaft equivalents, or carving/routing/countersinking the interior of the cavity enough to make the existing pots fit properly is out of the question, I'm not sure how much luck you're going to have finding an exact matching deep nut without resorting to fabricating a custom nut (probably more trouble than it's worth). Threads on pots are notoriously difficult to find an exact mate for. Different manufacturer's use all sorts of different thread pitches - there is no standard. One idea that may work is if you make up a small sub-frame out of sheet metal for the pots to attach to and then fix the loaded frame to the underside of the cavity with small screws. Something like this.