curtisa

Pretty sure I just broke the internet.

Damn, I think I've just entered a space-time continuum infinite vortex. I'm viewing your thread on Project Guitar using my Dell Latitude, where you are looking at your thread on Project Guitar using your Dell Latitude....

The gearing ratio on most guitar tuners makes fine tuners on the bridge somewhat redundant. There's plenty of fine tuning ability on a standard worm-driven guitar tuner with a 14:1 to 18:1 reduction ratio. The only exception I can think of is the fine tuners fitted to Floyd Rose double locking bridges. In that instance the fine tuner is provided because the nut has to lock the strings down, and once done the standard tuners at the headstock will no longer have any effect. Perhaps ukulele's may have a need for fine tuners at the bridge?

I have bought from them before, but only some of their off-the-shelf products. Good quality stuff.

Here's hoping my self-taught "skillz" can extend to refretting work

DePaule Luthier Supply perhaps?

Cheers Rob. I'm pretty much decided I'll let this one go and I have more than enough examples of 7 stringers to replace it with, so I don't reckon there's much chance I'll suddenly get attached to it.

Thanks Scott. I suspect the biggest challenge won't be doing the fixes and repairs, but finding buyers for them when they're finished.

Next task is to remove the old inlays and cut new pockets for replacements. The CNC will be used for the heavy lifting, and to ensure I can get watertight inlay edges - really important on a pale fret board like maple, as hiding edges with filler stands out like crazy (as evidenced by my earlier attempts). Unlike the edges of pale inlay on a dark board, which is much easier to hide with a dark filler. Obviously the whole neck needs to go under the cutter in one piece, so a cradle needs to be made up to hold things steady - just a plywood plate to screw the neck onto at the heel, and a bracket at the other end to keep the nut end level and prevent side-to-side racking. The baseplate can then be screwed to the CNC bed: A good excuse to upgrade the so-so plastic inlays to something a bit more schmancy - some scraps of Tiger Myrtle (keep your scraps, you never know when you'll need them): And cut the matching block inlays to fit the pockets: Also a good excuse to slightly redesign the 12th and 24th inlays with a few more art-deco shapes and patterns: Test fit each one before gluing. Some minor fettling required to get each one to sit snugly, but nothing that can't be sorted with a bit of patience, sandpaper and an Xacto knife. Wood on wood means I can use regular PVA. I was also a bit hesitant to use CA or epoxy in case it wicked into the end grain of each block inlay and caused visible staining: At the end of day one we're left with: More later.

The nut will need to come out when the frets get leveled and re-crowned, so may as well get it over with. Just a gentle tap with a block of wood is enough to pop it out (good thing I followed everyone's advice and just secured it with a tiny dot of glue): Probably worth checking the radius and flatness of the board while the frets are out, so with the trussrod slackened off we check the board at the 1st, 12th and 24th (or thereabouts) with a 16" radius caul from the fret press: Not too bad, although a bit of a dip on the bass side at the 24th. The real issue is when we check the board with the straightedge: Big gap through the middle. I could tighten the trussrod to get more backbow, but on checking the thickness of the fretboard it actually looks thicker at the nut than at the 12th, so it's obviously been radiused with a dirty big bow in the middle. At the time I think I made my own radius block that was only 6" long, so it's quite likely that the block was an odd shape and/or I got a bit frisky while sanding. And leveling the frets will be easier if the fretboard is straighter to begin with, so after 30 minutes on the big 16" aluminium radius beam we end up with this: Much better.

So my shopping list now stands at: Refret the board. I won't go to the hassle of stainless steel again and stick with jumbo nickel silver. While the frets are out, re-inlay the board. As the plastic block inlays are all over the place, my only recourse is to cut the old out and replace with oversize blocks to hide the dud edges. With some of the inlays being so far off-centre that they are butted up against one fret edge, for consistency all the new blocks will have to extend to underneath each fret. Re-carve the neck profile to make it a bit more player friendly. Add the Afterimage logo to the headstock to give it a final dressing up and fill in the obvious gap. around the tuners. Time to get busy. Use of a soldering iron to warm up the frets and make removal a bit more gentle on the board and minimise chipping. The end nippers are only lifting the fret up by the pinching action of the jaws coming together only. No levering or pulling: By walking the soldering iron and nippers along the length of each one, the frets can be gently eased out with minimal fuss and damage: The worst of the damage was at the 12th. With the new inlays extending to nearly all the way to the slot, the damage will be easily hidden by the crown of the fret: After about 30 minutes of work the frets are all out and we're ready to move to the next step:

The other issue with the neck is that the profile is all over the place. The thickness at the 1st and 12th isn't actually too bad for a 7 string - 21mm and 22.5mm respectively. Not too dissimilar to the neck on my Ibanez RG7620, on which I probably based the dimensions when I built it: But the taper towards the heel is far too gradual to be comfortable when playing up high. It just gets too chunky over a long distance and could easily do with some more aggressive contouring: The profiles at the 1st and 12th also illustrate the slightly overweight tendency that the neck has. The first fret actually isn't too bad, but the 12th has a very flat back and slightly asymmetric lean to one side that feels quite odd:

While waiting for some parts to come in for my next madcap idea, I've come to the realisation that I'm getting to the point where I need to thin out my guitar collection a bit. I have now reached the point where I have more builds than wall hooks and stands, and some of my early projects aren't really getting played anymore, so it's time to let a few go to free up some space and, with any luck, some cash to fund the next project. The trouble is that, as I was learning as I went along, my first few instruments aren't really so crash hot in terms of quality. They sound fine and play reasonably OK, but I'd hate to just give them away for nothing or, worse, trash them after all the work that went into them. If possible I'd like to be able to at least recoup the cost of the expensive components - the tuners, bridges and pickups. So to make them a little more sale-able, I've decided to fix up some of the really naff mistakes and oversights on a few of the builds to at least make them a bit more presentable. Along the way perhaps I can also add a few extra strings to my bow. So, rebuild project numero uno is the following: This was the first instrument I made from scratch, with the exception of the pre-slotted birdseye maple fret board. At this distance it doesn't look that bad. Up close the faults are a bit more obvious though. Poorly dressed fret ends, tangs poking out from the edge of the board with bits of metal swarf still attached. The maple board has shrunk slightly making it look and feel worse: Poorly seated frets, a product of my over-adventurous desire to install stainless steel jumbo fretwire on my first fretting attempt without sufficiently pre-radiusing the wire enough to match the board before hammering in: Shoddy inlay work, inlays off-centre, obvious use of filler around edges. The big block inlays were by necessity, as the pre-slotted board also came with black dots installed. The problem was that the original fret markers were not inline with the centre of the board, the dots gradually creeping towards the treble side as they went up. So to hide this imperfection I replaced the dots with big blocks of tortoiseshell plastic...badly: Because the plastic inlays are slightly transparent, the original dots sometimes showed through where the cavity wasn't cut quite deep enough to erase what was there before. The circle outline of the 12th fret treble side dot is clearly visible through this one: This one's a doozy. The shadow of the original dot marker is visible as two half-moons of filler around the middle of the block where the replacement inlay wasn't wide enough to hide the evidence:

Assuming the split-EMG diagram you originally provided is correct, I can't see anything wrong with your wiring diagram. Only suggestion is to consider grounding the two cases of the volume pots, otherwise you may find you get buzz if you reach for a volume pot knob and you aren't simultaneously touching the strings. Also not shown on your diagram is a ground wire to the bridge, although I note that EMG suggest that it isn't necessary for their pickups. Yes, although a bridge ground may be necessary for the piezo for buzz reduction (as per above). Also bear in mind that the 18V mod may not be compatible with whatever piezo you end up using.

That's pretty much the only way you can do it, and you've done it correctly. You can use the scaling factor you've established (20.68) to scale up the image and start tracing around the edge of the guitar body, plus adding in any useful information (a centre line, a mark for the intonation point at the bridge etc). When you're ready to print you'll need to ensure that you print at 1 drawing unit = 1 inch on paper to maintain correct scaling on paper.

Yes. You can consider the first drawing (with the push-pull) as the equivalent "block" of what you should substitute for each volume pot and pickup white wire. Yep. Absolutely. Positively. Completely That would necessitate splitting one EMG on a push-pull volume and splitting the other EMG on a push-pull tone, but could still be done if you don't mind using the two "unrelated" pots to do so. However, splitting both EMGs simultaneously on the same push-pull probably won'twork. You need one switching element per EMG.

Great to see some left-of field builds for this month's GOTM. @KnightroExpress - It's always fascinating to see a re-imagining and modernising of a classic shape, and the Evil Twin is a great example of what is possible by bending the rules enough to make something new and unusual, while still giving a nod to its 1950s heritage. A perfect synergy of vintage and modern in the one package. @Andyjr1515 - I have to keep on reminding myself that Pequeña is still only 3/4" size instrument, but it still fills its size 14 clodhoppers admirably. You may have finally given me the impetus to try something new for my next project. As a bass built to fit a very specific purpose, it's a winner on many levels, and your recent nom for BOTW on NoTreble.com is the perfect cherry (porter ) on top of the build process. Well done to all.

Feel free to start without me. You can order my first pint and I'll pick it up when I get there

If all you want is a vectorised version of the wings and don't mind waiting a couple of days, I could do that for you.

Good job, Andy. You must be doing something right to get BOTW twice. Your round again?

Kitkat's make the world go around. An engraved circular washer is probably about 3 minutes work on the mill. The only real challenge will be trying to locate some blank material to start with. PM me if you want to explore this further.

What you need is someone with a CNC

Maybe the saddle is notched and has a flat spot where the string breaks over the saddle? I had a double-locking trem years ago that had an annoying sitar-like buzz on the high-E on every fret plus the open position that was eventually traced back to the saddle with a notched break point. Could also be something not associated with the bridge. Loose tuners, strap button screws, slack truss rod, trem arm etc can also buzz and rattle in sympathy with certain notes and/or strings

I'm using "thickening" as a relative term. "Thickened" as in full cream milk, as opposed to "thickened" as in gelatin. Thick enough to support the weight of the paint on the surface of the water and allow it to be transferred to a piece of paper or fabric, while still allowing a degree of "move-ability". Japanese Suminagashi is similar in principle, but inks are used floating on the surface of plain water. I guess the relative thickness and weight of the ink allows it to float without having to alter the consistency of water to support it.

I suspect you'll struggle to find one pre-slotted. The usual practice is to string up the finished instrument with some cheap and nasty strings and give each string a light tap with a hammer where it passes over the saddle to notch (by denting) the saddle. Once each saddle is done, unstring the guitar and refit with your preferred real strings. Or gently and carefully file a notch by hand with a needle file.