curtisa

That's a pretty generous control cavity you have in this one. Any special plans you're willing to share?

Damn Scott. Sit down and take a break already. You're making the rest of us look lazy

Truss rod should be a firm fit in the channel with the top flush against the fingerboard underside surface. That's usually all it takes to prevent the rod falling out. Once you add a couple of turns to the nut to get the correct amount of relief in the neck, tge curvature will make it even less likely that it will come adrift. Depends a bit on the rod construction. Where the rod threads or any moving parts of the rod are exposed it is possibly wise to avoid glue getting near it. The usual method was to install the rod in the channel, run a bit of clear sticky tape up the length of the rod/channel to prevent glue seeping in, and then just glue the fret board over the top of the sealed truss rod as per normal. Although I'm not sure if this is actually completely warranted when using PVA glues, as it's unlikely that the glue will stick to metal and cause issues. You might get a bit of a crunching noise on the first turn of the nut as any attached glue breaks off the threads, but that might be about it? I'd definitely protect the rod if I were gluing with epoxy though. In recent times I've switched to a rod where the entire thing is encased in heatshink and the nut is sealed inside a stainless steel cap. In this case there's nothing for the glue to foul with so I don't bother using the sticky tape sealing method anymore.

Moved to the Solid Body Guitar and Bass Chat for better housekeeping

Done.

You've done it again, Scott. (smileys aren't what they used to be) It almost looks too good to be played. 'Don't touch it! You'll wake the gloss pixies...'

You need a friend with a CNC...

You're not worried about the impact positioning the input jack there will have on playing the guitar in a seated position?

Bravo, sir! Once you get it working you'll start thinking of all sorts of other little additions to tack on. My latest one is adding a LED light ring under the spindle to illuminate the work area.

Make a couple of tests on some scrap. Paint a few coats and see if you can get it to measure anything. If you have a factory-made guitar that has the conductive paint applied in the cavity, use your multimeter to see if it shows up as conductive. The only things I can think of is user error with the multimeter, a faulty multimeter or the paint is bad.

It's a shame Guitar Fetish gave you that response. Unfortunately it makes them look like they don't understand the product they've sold you. If you can get current to flow from a 9V battery to a lamp via their shielding paint, of course you're going to measure resistance with your multimeter. The meter works on the same principle - apply a small voltage between the two probes, measure the current flowing between the two and do the math to display resistance. It's probably the resistance measured from one edge of a painted 1" square to another. From any opposite edge (or opposite corner) it should behave like an infinite number of resistors in parallel within the boundaries of the 1" square. The thickness of the film may have an impact. It's possible that the most conductive bit is just below the surface of the dried paint too, so pressing your probes hard into the paint to break through the surface may yield better measurements. The label on the tin of the Stewmac equivalent paint suggests applying a minimum of four coats.

Try setting your multimeter to the next highest resistance range (probably 2000 ohms). Put your probes a bit closer together when probing the painted surface. IME the conductive paint isn't so great when used for shielding, but it's better than nothing. More coats helps. A smoother surface helps.

Dunno. Just something I've noticed on my builds, something I've never felt I needed to go to the trouble of including.

Chasing perfection much? Make a guitar already!

I've personally not found there's any need for a fallaway on the end of the fretboard. Thinking about it logically for a minute, when you press the string to the frets in the upper registers the angle between the string and the fretboard is steeper than it would be if you pressed the string to the frets in the lower registers. Thus there is automatically more clearance between the string and any adjacent frets the higher up the neck you go. The string's maximum displacement when fretted up high is also nowhere near the fretboard, further minimising any chance that the string will buzz on the upper frets. Provided the frets are properly levelled and dressed, it seems to me that there shouldn't be a need to add fret fallaway

I reckon you have three options, depending on your skills and tools you have available at your disposal: Leave it as-is and accept that a few frets will play out of tune. As @Crusader has noted it looks like the last few frets are the worst, and while the error in placement will result in the most pronounced intonation error at this end of the fret board, it is up to you to decide if you can live with this shortcoming and carry on as normal. Fill the worst fret slots as @ScottR suggests and recut them. Depending on how close the filled slot is to the intended location it may be difficult to cut accurately without the saw wanting to wander back into the filled slot. 10mm fret board is plenty to reduce in thickness and have another go at the whole lot. 10mm is pretty chunky to begin with; it could afford to be closer to 7mm as a starting point. Although I'd suggest just using a orbital sander is unlikely to give you a sufficiently flat and uniform result. Handplanes and/or a flat surface with coarse grit sandpaper attached would give you better results. If it were me I'd be taking the 3rd option, although it looks as though you've already attached the fret board to the neck which will make it trickier to re-thickness and re-slot. I'd also suggest devising some way of using a mitre box or at the very least, some form of cutting guide for the say to follow to ensure the slots were as close to perpendicular as possible. Unless you are incredibly skilled at judging angles and positioning only by eye, just using your knuckle as a cutting guide is asking for accuracy issues. Even if you chose the second option to fix the problem you'd still want to use some form of rigid cutting fence to give you the best chance of ensuring the re-cut slots remain in their corrected location without deviating again.

I can see ways of doing each of the three on a 5-way megaswitch, but not easily changing between the three variants with only a push-pull. I reckon you'd struggle doing it even with a 4PDT mini toggle between any two modes.

Don't think it can be done with a 5-way and two push-pulls. There are too many different permutations with no commonality between the variants. The differences between the possible switching patterns between vol pot down and up, for example, are more than can be achieved on a single DPDT push-pull. It's also not completely clear what happens for each combination of vol and tone pot up and down: vol pot down = switching combo #1, but is tone pot up or down at the same time? tone pot up = switching combo #2, but is vol pot up or down at the same time? vol pot up = switching combo #3, but is tone pot up or down at the same time? There should be four possible switching options of the vol/tone pots.

What would've been really interesting is if you'd left the two halves as a vee profile front and back. Kinda like a geometric version of @Andyjr1515 's 'sucked lozenge' carved body profile. Would've been a right bugger to work with though

Maybe look into what other people have done? Putting the speaker between the bridge pickup and the neck, and dispensing with a neck pickup seems popular. Don't forget that a large part of the sound of a plugged-in guitar is the result of piping the sound through a limited range 10" or 12" speaker that doesn't reveal too much detail at the top end of the audio spectrum. Putting a full range speaker in will probably make for quite a harsh listening experience, especially with any overdrive added.

You're gluing Padauk and Wenge into a laminated neck? Information I can see with a five minute search is that Padauk may be the most troublesome of the two, but PVA should work provided the glue is fresh. Wiping the surface of the Padauk prior to gluing with acetone to remove any potential oily residue may also assist the adhesion. If in doubt, do a test on an offcut of each to see how well it holds together.

Have you tried sitting with the guitar and 'ghosting' some chord shapes on the fretboard to see how it feels? A few open position chords and maybe a F barre chord in the first position would give you a pretty quick indication how the volute sits against your hand.

Take it to an auto parts outlet and compare against what's available on the racks? The other critical measurements is the profile of the belt - the thickness, depth and cross-sectional profile.

If it's not sticking properly I'd pull it off completely and start again. Better to get the adhesion right to begin with. I've just done a neck that is bound with cream ABS. I've never had much luck using just acetone as the gluing agent. Have also tried CA and epoxy in the past, but on certain woods the binding would just peel off without any real effort. Tarzans Grip gave acceptable results. This time around I went with the tried and true Weld-on 16. Should've used it right from the beginning. Glues up perfectly, creates invisible seams where two pieces of binding meet, dries clear and hard. The only reason I used acetone was to give the timber a bit of a wipe-down to get rid of any oils that may have been present which may have affected adhesion.

Titebond won't have much holding power on frets, It's possible that the moisture content in the glue causes the fibres in the fretboard to expand, which closes the slots up slightly, gripping the frets tighter. But actual adhesion between wood and metal due to the glue itself will be minimal. Superglue seeped into the fret ends is all I usually do.