curtisa

Or if price is no issue, the Allied Lutherie ones. Cheaper but still reliable - Allparts or WD Music (practically the same thing) Even cheaper still, but use with caution - Ebay. I've had success with a few rods purchased from China, but I buy a few at a time and select the best from the bundle before installing it. In all likelihood the Allparts/WD Music variants probably come from the same source as the Ebay ones. All you're probably paying for is for Allparts/WD to do the sorting for you to pick out the better ones to sell on.

I can't see that it'd be treated any different to selecting a truss rod for a guitar neck. In other words, the rods' effectiveness in providing additional support lessens the closer you get to the neck joint, where the thickness of the neck in combination with the timber in the heel mean that there is practically no pliability to be had at that point in the neck. In the same way a guitar rod is typically shorter than the overall length of the neck, I'd select a rod that runs from the nut to junction of the neck and heel +/- 1 inch or so. Although if it ends up being longer it's not going to hurt anything (other than your wallet). I've not had experience with the Stewmac Hot Rods, but I am aware that they generate their fair share of polarising opinions - some people are happy with them as-is, some people aren't so keen on the extra deep truss rod channel required to install them, some people have had issues with the quality of the rods.

You could always change your name to Dougal's Crusader. Reminds me of the Father Ted episode where they enter the Eurovision Song Contest representing Ireland...

All sorted, all good. We have friends in Co Wexford, and judging by the photos they've sent they look like they're going nowhere in a hurry.

Moved to the In Progress Build Section for better housekeeping. Welcome aboard, Brian. Hope snowmageddon isn't causing too many headaches for you in your part of the world.

Timber remaining in neck joint is more than enough to withstand the normal string loading as you currently have it drawn. There are plenty of examples of builds floating around with less timber remaining than what you have with no structural issues.

I'd use the holesaw to make the template and forstner bits/router to do the actual cutting. Holesaw is fine if you want to drill all the way through something to an approximate diameter, but if you want to create a blind cavity you'd still need some way of getting the partially-drilled 'plug' out of the cavity that the holesaw leaves behind if you drill to less than the full depth. You could holesaw drill all the way through if you're going to glue a top wood onto the body later, creating the sealed cavity artificially, but chances are you'd still need to deepen the cavity afterwards so that the switch could protrude through the front by the right amount, in which case you'd be breaking out the router again. Consider also that a holesaw is primarily used as a quick way of putting holes in something where precision or appearance isn't super important. They're great if you're a plumber who needs to put a pipe through the back of a kitchen cabinet or an electrician installing cable glands in the bottom of a steel enclosure.

I assume your measurements were made straight up the middle of the fretboard (ie, perpendicular to the frets)? You've used measured 12th fret and doubled it for scale length, but your comparisons between measured spacings, Rule 18 spacings and 12th rt/2 spacings are all re-compensated to the 12th fret distance, which tends to lessen the apparent difference between Rule 18 and 12th rt/2. Your two scale length cells (C28 and E28) show the actual scale difference between the two methods when calculating from the fret spacings backwards, which is opposite to the way it would normally be worked out in practice. Interesting findings nonetheless.

Sounds like quite an adventure. Two humbuckers and two singles on a Tele would be pretty much wall-to-wall pickups from bridge to neck. I've not used that exact combination, but I can vouch for the Rolling Mill along with the Hot Slag as a pair. They're quite respectable pickups for the money. The specs also indicate that they're modeled on certain other big name brands (The Seymour Duncan JB/59 pairing are almost an exact match on paper). With difficulty. Four pickups is a lot of work by anyone's measure. Perhaps look into something like the Freeway Switch. I'm pretty sure they offer some 4-pickup options as schematic downloads. Or maybe the switching config used on the Steve Morse Ernie Ball guitar (if you can find it)?

Compare the critical dimensions of the two bridges - the overall length (excluding the saddle locking posts), the overall width of the baseplate, the width/length of the tail extension and the distance on the baseplate before it transitions to the narrower tail extension: Gotoh GE1996T dimensions OFR dimensions They're close enough to within 1 or 2mm in any dimension, with the exception of the tail extension which appears to be 4.5mm longer on the Gotoh. However the saddle locking posts in the OFR drawings appear to be longer than the Gotoh, so the length discrepancy between the two bridges may cancel out. Floyd Rose publish routing plans for the OFR on their website. If you compare this to the OFR bridge, they provide plenty of clearance on any dimension for the bridge. By extension, this should also cover the Gotoh bridge too. You may have to make the route for the tail extension slightly longer than the dimension specified in the OFR routing plan, but I'd personally treat that on an as-needs basis once I had the bridge in my hands to measure conclusively before committing the router to timber.

Wasn't me that sent fretwire, but I'll take the kind words nonetheless Although it's a shame I didn't jump on this conversation earlier, as I have a nearly full tube of stainless jumbo from Allparts that I'm unlikely to ever use again...

I think the simplified answer is that overall the market for new guitar sales, particularly of traditional models is declining and Gibson's situation is compounded due to some poor business decisions made in the last 10-15 years. The music business as a whole has moved on a lot from guitar-centric rock of the 50s-90s, and the guitar isn't the lynchpin of a band as much as it was. Gibson, like the other big 'traditional', Fender are victims of their customers' desires for as little to change as possible. Everyone wants their LP or Strat to be as magical as it was back in the 50s. Don't forget that LPs and Strats were once considered futuristic and state of the art when they were released, but today's traditional salesbase aren't interested when Gibson or Fender try to modernise and improve those models. And that market is shrinking too. There's only so many Les Pauls you can sell when the buyers already have their fill of Les Pauls from years gone by. It's difficult to evolve a model when everyone likes their old stuff better than their new stuff, and neither Gibson nor Fender have been particularly successful when they try to release something new or revolutionary. A simplified business-sided analysis of the situation:

Interesting topic though Yes, you're right. Looking more at the background into this it seems that Gibson may have used at some point in their operations the rule of 18 for fret placement, which positions the 12th fret slightly closer to the nut than scale length/2. Although there is a lot of conjecture floating around as to whether it was ever officially rule of 18 or just a sloppy implementation/approximation of 12th rt/2 (aka rule of 17.817) that just worked...or something else entirely... Calculating the fret placement in Excel illustrates what the difference is between the two methods. The octave fret on the Rule of 18 method is a 10th of an inch closer to the nut when the scale length is 25":

Even so, a scale length where the 12th fret does not fall at half the string length would mean that the most critical string division (the octave) would be out of tune. There are several fret calculations in use for a normal 12-tone guitar, 12th root of 2 being the most common, but I think they all rely on the octave falling at exactly the midway point on the string.

I would have thought polishing would be enough. Levelling should be used to correct significant height issues between adjacent frets that would otherwise cause buzzing or fretting out. Because you're not experiencing these problems my gut instinct is to treat it as if a levelling and crowning has just been performed and the frets require the surface scraches removed to complete the job. Working your way up through the wet and dry grits from 400/600/800/1200/2000+ and then polish with the mini buffing wheel would be the way I'd approach it.

Source? If the nominal scale length isn't twice the distance of nut-to-12th, then the guitar is what is known as 'broken' So about 12.63", or nominal scale length (before intonation compensation is applied) = just shy of 25.25"

The latter for me, but I'm only making bodies no thicker than 44mm, usually less.

Shouldn't matter. As long as everything that should be connected to ground, is connected to ground.

The shielding on Number 1 is just a different version of the same thing in Number 2. Number 1 has a woven copper braid underneath the black outer sheath which must be soldered to ground to complete the shielding connection.. Number 2 has an aluminium foil wrap. The foil cannot be soldered, but the cable will typically include a 5th conductor inside - a bare tinned wire (aka a 'drain wire') that maintains contact with the foil wrap inside the cable which is used to solder to ground to complete the shielding connection. The foil wrap cables are generally higher quality and may be favoured by some people due to the time saved in stripping and exposing the shield connection. Dealing with a woven shield usually involves 'unpicking' or 'de-braiding' the woven braid once the cable has been stripped, twisting it up and moving it off to one side before soldering. With foil wrap cables, the foil will usually tear away at the same time the cable is stripped, exposing all the conductors in one go. They both do the same thing, just a different way of achieving it. Connecting the shield at both ends of a cable to ground isn't entirely necessary inside a guitar, but if you can plan your wiring such that it does occur, it is easier to follow and looks neater.

Any reason why you think it's not suitable for use in a guitar? For nearly all situations I can think of I'd say it's probably the most suitable out of all of the wire you've shown in your picture, and pretty much identical to the types used by all the big manufacturers. Single core shielded is very common and easy to get. Unless you are winding your own four-conductor humbucking pickups, I can think of very few situations where you would use this in a guitar. Of course, there's nothing stopping you using it in place of single core shielded cable and just using 1 out of the 4 conductors, but the extra cost and physical bigger size compared to single core shielded makes it unecessary and wasteful. Unless you're building something that needs to be historically accurate, both inside and out (eg, some kind of period-accurate clone of a Les Paul), don't bother with the extra expense of this wire. There's nothing magical about it compared to any other wire of the same gauge, apart from how much faster it will make money vanish from your pockets. Are you sure you haven't switched the descriptions of Number 4 & 5? The red wire (unshielded) would work well for bridge grounds or 9V battery supplies if you use active pickups - anything that needs to hooked up that doesn't need to be shielded. The shielded/meshed wire is probably OK as a substitute for Number 1, but I'm guessing it's more expensive. It looks a bit like the 'push back' stuff that Stewmac sells, but again there's nothing special about it compared to most other stypes of single core shielded cable. I guess you could argue that some people might find it easier to use than regular single core shielded, because you don't have to separately strip back the outer and inner sections of insulation when soldering it up. Generally, to ensure low noise operation of the guitar use shielded wire wherever you can. If you can't use shielded wire for whatever reason, use another form of shielding to compensate (eg conductive paint or copper/aluminium foils). Remember that no matter what type of shielding you use, in order for it to be effective it must be connected to ground. That's about it, really. Pick your shielding method to suit the guitar you are building. If you build a twin humbucker guitar and use nothing but shielded wire, there is nothing to be gained by shielding the control cavity as well. If, however you are buiding a Strat and the pickups only come with two separate wires each, you are better off shielding the cavity with paint or foil. I personally wouldn't get too hung up on seeking a particular gauge of wire for use in a guitar. My only suggestion would be that it isn't so thin that it is mechanically weak and likely to break off inside the guitar under normal playing conditions. You only need to consider why the shielding may be required between two components. On a Strat the cable between volume pot and output jack passes through a drill hole from the control cavity to the jack cavity. The section between these two points is through unshielded wood. Electrically you need both a signal and ground wire to connect the guitar to the guitar lead, so to accomplish both requirements (two wires to the output jack, minimise noise pickup between two locations) you use shielded wire. If the connection between volume pot and jack were entirely contained within the boundary of a cavity that was fully shielded, (eg, this Yamaha RGX A2) then using two separate unshielded wires is permissible, as the extra shielding afforded by using shielded wire is unnecessary.

The back end of each of the thumbscrews used to be notched, so you could insert a plectrum or coin into the back of the screw to afford a bit more leverage when tuning. The tuners are stiff under string tension but not unbearably so, and I never needed to get assistance from the notches in practice. Maybe the new washer arrangement makes things a little more slippery to do away with the notched thumbwheels?

No doubt. RADs builds and his documentation of the process were what kickstarted my interest in this expensive hobby. I suspect without them I would've just made a few partscasters and be done with it.

Nice. Looks like Alberto has refined the design a little bit more since I bought from him last. The tuner thumbwheels are a slightly different shape and the washers between the thumbwheels and the saddle bodies look like they're aluminium instead of nylon.

Make sure it is the bridge ground that is causing the issue. Take a piece of scrap wire and strip both ends of it to expose the strands. Attach one end to the outer metal shell of your guitar lead and wrap the other end around one or more of the strings. If the buzz goes away when you plug in and touch the strings, your bridge ground is making poor contact. If the buzz remains, you'll need to look start looking elsewhere for the problem.

Many ways to skin a cat. My preference is to level after neck is shaped (any movement the neck may undergo due to removal of material required to shape the neck will have occurred by then, so levelling will be as per the final neck shape/material volume remaining). Re, pinning fretboard prioir to gluing - I do it prior to fretting. Line up the fretboard on the neck, drive a couple of skinny nails (1.25mm brads, maybe pre-drill the holes too to prevent splitting) through a fret slot at the far ends of the fretboard and into the neck but leave the heads proud a few mm, remove fretboard from neck, apply glue, re-align nails with divots created in neck and clamp. When the glue is dry, just withdraw the nails from the fretslots using some pliers. The installed frets will then cover up the minor holes left behind. I suspect I pinched the above method from RAD too (who hasn't pinched an idea from RAD around these parts? )