curtisa

Pretty oddball looking cab, I've never seen such an arrangement before. You wouldn't be tempted to improvise your own plans based on how it looks in the photos? The boxy bit would be pretty straight forward. There must be dozens of rough plans floating around that show how a typical 4x12 guitar cab might be assembled. Looks like a simple square with equal length sides, top and bottom. The speaker baffle is the tricky bit, but the lower section just looks like an equilateral triangle with each edge the same length as the bottom of the box. Tipping it backwards by, I dunno, 10-15 degrees maybe? The two side baffles are then just cut to fill in the remaining voids created by the equilateral triangle on either side. Getting the three pieces to meet in the middle and coming up with some kind of bracket to hold them all together is probably the hardest part.

Stick to sanding paper if you can. If you use steel wool you're going to end up with little tiny 'hairs' of the stuff stuck under the fret ends, which you'll then spend the next couple of hours manually pulling out with tweezers.

I've not worked with ebony before, but I was under the impression that a finish is not explicitly required for fretboards made from it (other than perhaps some kind of fretboard conditioner like the various propietary fretboard oils/lemon oils etc). Ebony has natural oils already present within it. Perhaps the extra danish oil is not penetrating in those spots due to the high oil content already in the timber? Probably best not to continue adding more oil finish if there's a chance of over-saturating the wood. The CA glue dribbles may be removable using a single-sided razor blade or utility knife blade used as a scraper. Scrape along the grain from the fretwire where the CA has set towards the middle of the gap between the adjacent fret, followed by an overall buff with some high (1500+) grit sandpaper to make the whole board achieve a uniform sheen afterwards. The re-sanding may also hide those green-circled 'blemishes' you've highlighted too.

As big as the biggest part you want to machine in one go, plus some overhang, plus whatever 'dead' dimensions the machine itself can't use due to the moving parts having to fit within the maximum travel requirements of your machined part. Say the longest thing you want to machine is a Strat neck. The neck itself might be somewhere around 700mm long. You're also going to need some extra length of travel for the cutter to move around the longest parts of the neck (the tip of the headstock and the area around the highest fret), so maybe allow another 20mm at each end. You might also need to allow some extra to fit clamps, screws or whatever in order to hold the part down to the table as it's being machined, so maybe add another 20mm at each end, The total machine travel required to comfortably machine the neck is therefore 700mm + (2x 20mm) + (2x 20mm) = 780mm. The machine itself needs more physical size to allow all those moving parts to fit within the 780mm of travel which will depend a bit on how the machine is built, but maybe allow another 80-120mm at each end. Overall the machine will probably be over a metre long to fit that Strat neck in. Doing the same estimates for a Strat body you're going to want a machine capable of travelling about 400mm at its widest, plus the excess for the machine itself, so maybe something about 550-600mm wide? Generally the size of the machine itself is secondary unless you are really strapped for space. It's more about what the maximum machining area is available to you underneath the cutter. That's also ignoring all the new skills, knowledge and practicalities required to make the jump into CNC - at times the learning curve may well be brutally steep. And expensive. I found the The Guerilla Guide to CNC Machining handy when I first got started in CNC. It's more geared towards making resin casting moulds for hobby robotics, but the basic principles it detailed were fairly easy to understand and translatable to machining other stuff (ie, guitars made from wood). Edit: duh. Can't do math properly today

Yep. The circuit relies on the inherent resistance (and inductance) of the pickup itself to complete the low- or high-pass filtering effect

It's easiest if you imagine the two sections of the switch moving clockwise in sympathy from position 1 to 4 and then follow the trail it makes from pickup to volume pot, like following a train on railway tracks as the points move across (ignore the 'R-M' thing for the moment); The top section shorts out the 2nF cap and bypasses it completely, but the 22nF cap gets connected between the pickup and ground, effectively making it equivalent to a typical tone control set to zero (aka the 'T- Low pass' setting). Lots of highs are lost and the sound is warm/muddy/dull/bassy etc The 22nF cap is again connected to ground, but the 2nF cap bypass gets removed and is allowed to remain in circuit. The 22nF again acts as a low pass filter, but the 2nF acts as a high pass filter at the same time, resulting in a narrow band of frequencies to pass (you lose some lows through the high pass and lose some highs through the low pass, what's left is the 'untouched' stuff in the midrange, aka the 'T+ B- Band pass' setting). The 22nF cap gets disconnected and the 2nF cap gets bypassed again. The pickup is effectively connected directly to the volume pot with no filters applied (aka the 'T+ B+ Filters Bypassed' setting). Not dissimilar to a tone control on max. The 22nF cap remains disconnected but the 2nF cap gets inserted back into the pickup signal. It acts as a high-pass only, which cuts the bass out of the pickup signal (aka the 'B- High pass' setting). The sound becomes thin/weedy/shrill/bright etc It's not clear what the 'R-M' switch is for, but if you close the switch the extra circuitry gets bypassed and has no effect on the pickup signal. If the switch is open the extra 470k/1nF circuit is added in series with the pickup signal, which acts as a kind of additional high-shelf filter; high frequencies can pass freely through the cap, but lows are forced to travel through the resistor, which slugs some of their energy on the way to the output. You'd probably end up with a moderate bass cut/treble boost when you activate the circuit. I wonder if 'R' and 'M' stand for something like the German terms for 'bright' and 'normal' or 'rhythm' and 'lead'?

In that case I'd be guided by whatever the manufacturer says their product can be thinned with and the ratios to which they can be mixed, rather than try and guess. Check with them first - maybe printed on the tin, the product page on their website or send them an email. Deciphering the MSDS can be a bit hit and miss, and that's not what an MSDS is really meant for anyway.

Mineral spirits is a generic catch-all term to describe a broad range of petro-chemicals and solvents. It means different things to different people in different countries, so it's not necessarily safe to assume that a bottle of something labelled as 'mineral spirits' you can get from the hardware store is the same thing Berger, Minwax or Watco state can be used to thin their products, particularly if those products are imported from different places.

Understood. If it were me undertaking a first-time project I'd probably just choose a product based on the directions on the can, rather than try to blend my own mixture by combining different products. At a basic level that means if you want to try a wipe-on poly, buy a tin of pre-mixed wipe-on poly. If the directions indicate it can be thinned with a particular product, then only use that thinning agent. Keep things simple for starters.

I've used Minwax wipe-on poly before, both the satin and gloss varieties. They both work well and are easy to apply with a clean, soft lint-free rag. The trick to it is more about working out how best to apply the finish so that it doesn't leave behind streak marks or runs. Is there a reason why you're specifically interested in urethane?

Back of the clip might rub against the body during use, which could chafe through the finish above the hook.

If you have a preference as to which particular shot you'd like to use just drop me a PM. Has to be landscape orientation though.

And his guitar teacher was Joe Satriani. One of Joe's other students around the same time was a young Kirk Hammett. Small world.

I think a lot of players and builders probably prefer to see some contrast in the finished product. Paradoxically, that Toshiki Kadomatsu video you linked to, if it weren't for the white pearloid pickguard I'd personally find that guitar pretty visually uninteresting and bland. Almost toylike even. When the finish on the fretboard eventually wears through it might not be everyone's cup of tea either. I have a vague memory from the early 90s that Valley Arts guitars went through a period of tinting the backs of their necks to match the bursting on the bodies (blues, red, cherry, purple etc). And Gibson SGs are kinda synonymous with the whole Cherry-Red-on-everything stain. My PRS Cu22 has a gloss black neck, headstock and back of body on an ebony board, so there are some examples floating around of the everything-can-be-the-same-tone colour schemes. Maybe it just doesn't really resonate that well with the guitar buying public to become more mainstream?

And if the underside of the bridge plate is painted black remember to scuff off some of the paint where it will make contact with the grounding wire so you have a metal-on-metal connection, otherwise your grounding wire will not be effective for hum suppression..

I reckon you'll get a better and more satisfying result if you use a radius block. If you're going to go to the trouble of applying the radius to the fret board by hand using planes, sanding beams and radius templates, you might be better off putting that effort into making your own radius sanding block instead. A 44 gallon drum has an outside diameter of about 23 inches. You could stick some coarse sandpaper to the side of one and use it to sand a hollow into a block of wood that would yield a radius of 11.5", which is pretty close to your required radius of 12". Or just buy a premade 12" radius sanding block. They're pretty economical from places like Aliexpress these days.

Moved

I should also note that I've personally only done it with a maximum of 10mm thick aluminium sheet, and even then I was taking half a mm off per pass at the most. I wouldn't recommend doing it if you're looking at shaping anything thicker, taking more material off in one go or you're at all unsure about what you're doing. Technically it does work, but the risks of things going south are much greater than routing wood. A blowout in timber may just take a chunk out of the workpiece. A blowout in aluminium may send the whole workpiece and/or the router in very unpredictable directions very quickly. Approach with extreme caution.

Neat idea! I like the concept of using non-traditional materials, curious to see where you take it and how the end result pans out. FWIW aluminium will route with regular woodworking router bits, but remember to go super carefully (templates only, no freehand routing!), clamp everything securely and take tiny bites at a time - the closer you can get the workpiece to the final shape using other methods before attacking it with the router the better. Wear will be much faster on the cutting edges too, so expect to throw your bits away after you've built your instrument. You don't get 'dust' as such, more like tissuepaper-like slivers of metal, so wear safety goggles/glasses.

It's not necessary, but you might want to consider doing it for appearances sake. Some people find it looks a little more streamlined when the tangs aren't visible on the fretboard edges.

Friction. Tightening up the rod even just a little bit will bend it and force it to wedge itself against the walls of the channel, preventing it coming out. It'd be no different if you used a spoke wheel truss rod too.

There might be an error with the way you've calculated the height difference. I get a height difference of about 0.53mm from end to end when I use the values you propose. In any case, the height difference generally wouldn't be influential on the geometry of the guitar in practice. You either radius the board and aim for the apex of the radius to be at 6.5mm the full length of the board and live with the edges thinning down by 0.5mm from nut to last fret, or radius the board such that the edges remain a consistent thickness all they way along the board and accept that the board will be 0.5mm thinner at the nut-end. In both situations the end result is that the fret board playing surface has a consistent radius and constant angle relative to the strings (within a tiny fraction of a degree). Certainly similar enough that any difference could be adjusted out by tweaking the bridge action. In short, don't sweat it. It works.

Next time I stub my toe on the leg of a chair I'll remember to yell, 'TWANG!!!' at the top of my voice. Or maybe I should use the Finnish word instead..?

I believe the Finnish and English words uttered when accidentally stabbing yourself with the end of a string are pretty similar in both languages

Yes, Strat players are probably well aware of the natural harping that occurs on the open G string if their guitar doesn't have a string tree fitted on the D/G pair. The distance behind the nut to the tuning peg is pretty close to the 5th harmonic on that one string, which then rings like crazy on open staccato runs. I've seen some players exploit it going back the other way though, plucking the string behind the nut to excite the 5th harmonic back onto the open string and then bend the string behind the nut to get some interesting pedal steel-esque slide runs. Metal musicians are often aware of the problem of harping too. High gain and staccato runs on open strings don't sit well with certain styles of metal, and you'll often see their guitars fitted with foam stuffed under the strings behind the nut or fluffy hair ties wrapped around the neck. Personally I could hear the differences between the long and short lengths of string behind the nut, but only on the lower strings. It was most prominent on the low-E long-string-distance example where the resonance as the note started decaying had a descending filter effect, giving an 'eeeeoooowww' after it was plucked (perhaps akin to @Bizman62's 'twang' he described and @mistermikev's 'bloom' characteristic?). The short-string-distance examples didn't have this effect. Whether that was due to the length of string behind the nut causing harping or some other byproduct of the way the string's elasticity differed between the two extremes I don't know. I did the stainless steel/nickel silver trial as I'd seen mentioned that some people didn't like stainless steel on their guitars as they felt it gave the fretted notes an extra metallic 'zinginess' that disagreed with them. That might still be the case when an instrument is played in a real life situation, but on face value from these tests I'm not hearing it.