curtisa

How about fitting a Gibson-style shelf nut and retaining the curve down to the surface of the headstock as per traditional Fender neck construction? I have an old Yamaha Pacifica that does exactly that and it looks/works fine. Does the workshop have a sanding thicknesser? Bear in mind that to sand the back flat to level it out you'll be reducing the overall thickness of the board until the edges are at the same level as the middle. And then to radius it you'll reduce it to the thickness of the narrowest point of the re-flattened fretboard, which in your case looks like it would be dead up the centreline. Make sure you plan it such that you leave yourself enough fretboard thickness to be practical. Also need to consider that if you do decide to correct the cup using any method, LMII may not accept a return/exchange if it doesn't work out.

Uh-huhuhuhuhh...Your chair says "bums"...

I'd actually recommend not using superglue to secure the neck screws. You want to make the screws firm, not seized up completely. A little drop of PVA would probably work better. It won't grip the screw completely, and the moisture content in the glue may make the wood swell slightly to tighten around the threads.

Headless tends to be one of the more esoteric choices for a build, so hardware options are quite restricted. Dedicated headless suppliers that I know of are Hipshot (USA), ABM (Germany), Technology For Musicians (Italy) and Mera Guitars (Ukraine). Strandberg used to sell their hardware to the public but suspended their sales last September. Maybe they'll resume sales in the near future? Either way, all the above options tend to be made-to-order and are subsequently quite pricey, as you've probably already found out. I've seen some guitars where the builder has simply taken regular tuning machines and fitted them to the body behind a Tune-o-matic tailpiece. The "nut" can then be a simple metal bracket secured to the top of the neck that retains the ball-ends of the strings. Not the prettiest solution, but certainly cheap. Chinese clones of the Steinberger headless system are easy to find on eBay, but quality would be highly questionable. Headless USA sell repro Steinberger bridges and headpieces under the name J-Custom. I have no experience with them, but I believe the parts are made in Korea, and are (were?) considered credible alternatives to the original Sterinberger parts. A 6 string fixed bridge and headpiece appears to cost about $200. They also have an eBay outlet under the user name "green-axe".

I would think an entirely self-built acoustic, including purchasing raw timber and all necessary hardware, and assuming you can get access to some of the tools for nothing, for less than $150 woud be quite a challenge. You'd probably use up your budget just buying the hardware - tuners, fretwire, trussrod, bridge pins, nut, saddle, strap buttons. There are a few companies I'm aware of that do acoustic guitar kits - Martin, Stewmac and LMII - but I reckon you'd struggle to do one for $150 or less. Most appear to be well over $400. For the super-cheap kit option there's eBay. The acosutic ones are a bit hard to find, but occasionally pop up from time to time. Usually they're offered in a partially-assembled form, where the body and neck are complete, and you need to glue the two together, fit the hardware and apply a finish. Electric kits are available all over the place for less than $150. Guitar Fetish seems to be a popular spot to buy low cost/moderate quality hardware and parts (and kits too).

Probably the only way to fix it is to either use screws with a slightly larger thread to "fill up" the existing stripped out holes, or re-drill new holes nearby and drill corresponding holes in the claw to match the new positions. Claw screws are usually quite long, about 2", and because they're being screwed into endgrain timber they need a good deal of their threads sunk into the wood to hold securely. Make sure you don't over-tighten the claw screws or fit too many springs to the trem. For 009 or 010 gauge strings you shouldn't need more than 3 springs, and still have enough adjustment on the trem to either stop it hard against the body or set it floating.

Sorry for the delay - only just saw your comment. The staircase effect is virtually undetectable on diagonal cuts. Each axis is geared down by virtue of the leadscrew and the small increments in rotation that each stepper motor makes. If the resolution of each step is increased by implementing motor micro-stepping in the software, resolutions of 0.001mm are commonly achievable.

The sound samples I've heard are promising, so I'm looking forward to trying them out, especially the switchable voicing option.

Still waiting for the bridge hardware to arrive, so I'll do what I can until they turn up. Neck pocket. A little bit of tape either side of the jig ensures the neck is a tight fit once routed out: Tightness check...pass: Without the bridge hardware at hand I can't accurately position the bridge pickup route, but the neck pickup can be done. A simple soapbar cavity is all that's required. The rectangle template is oversized by the radius of my template ring minus the radius of the router bit, so with a 1/4" diameter cutter fitted I get a rectangle with 1/8" radius corners - something that can't be achieved with the smallest bearing-follower bits I can get my hands on: The Fishmans need some clearance underneath to allow for the connectors to fit in without bottoming-out in the cavity, so an extra ledge is required to be routed out. Using the 1/4" bit with the template ring still fitted I can use the edges of the pickup cavity as a guide and inset the secondary ledge. By taping some scraps of timber to the top and bottom edges of the cavity I can make the inset slightly deeper at these points to give the pickup mounting screws a bit more meat to bite into: Wiring channel landed exactly where I hoped it would: And the battery compartment just behind the treble cutaway:

Nice one, centurion, nice one. FWIW, the missing dimension on my drawing, the distance between the red "scale line" and the leading edge of the cavity opening is 7.75mm (0.305"), Although as you've probably already discovered the size and position of this opening will be determined by where the sustain block sits. I don't think the Wilkinson is quite as bulky as the Hipshot.

I'll check tomorrow morning when I'm back in the workshop. Those diagrams were drawn up based on some templates I made for a Wilkinson trem I installed a couple of years back. From memory it's not much. Maybe 3 or 4mm.

Have a look at these and see how they compare with the Hipshot:

I've seen some claims floating around that the Wilkinson VS100 trem route will fit the Hipshot. I'm pretty sure I have a known-good template for the Wilkinson floating around here. I'll see if I can dig it out.

Definitely the messiest, dustiest method of carving. But certainly one of the quickest. Safety first, please.

Gap under the neck: Are the neck screws tight? Give them a few turns with a Phillips head screwdriver to try and close the gap. If they feel really stiff don't go any further - the last thing you want to do is round over the screw heads or shear off the tops. Tuning issues: Could be associated with the loose neck screws (above), but otherwise: Check the bridge. There may not be enough spring tension to counteract the pull of the strings as they are tuned up. Eventually they'll reach an equilibrium as the string tension matches the spring tension, but it can take a lot of fiddling with one to counteract the other. Take the cover off the back and check how many springs are fitted. Also check how much adjustment is left on the spring claw (may be possible to screw it tighter to increase the spring tension to pull the bridge closer to the body) Check the amount of curvature on the neck as the strings are tuned up. If the neck is curving a lot as string tension increases the truss rod may need adjusting (assuming it's working OK) Check the strings are secured properly at the tuning heads, Enough turns around each post? Slipping strings at the tuners are usually easy to hear as they'll typically tune up most the way and then all of a sudden release a little as you're turning the tuner. Pickups: Can't do much unless you take them out of the body. If you're lucky they may have a makers stamp or sticker on them. Otherwise they could be made by anyone.

Even so, don't discount that some buyers may already have a set of Alumitones/EMGs/Bareknuckles/Dimarzios/GFS etc in mind for their kit and may want to drop them straight in. Or may want the option later on to experiment with swapping other brands in and out.

Some more brain ideas: One area where builders may want to put their own mark on their kit is to upgrade the pickups. Consider limiting the pickup routes to accommodate off-the-shelf units rather than custom slanted, for which the choices are much more limited. Also consider whether you want to do the pickup routes square to the body or angled to match the angle of the multiscale frets/bridge. Will the control cavity be large enough to install a 9V battery if the builder wants to install actives? Left-handed kits too? I assume the kit is not going to be a reboot of a Strat or Les Paul as a multiscale incarnation, so the arrangement of the headstock no longer needs to follow those "traditional" shapes. Consider the pros and cons of offering a pre-drilled paddle headstock vs a plain paddle - If pre-drilled, what configuration will it be offered in (3x3, 6 inline, 6 inline reverse, 4x2, 2x4) Will you also include the tuners? What about including documentation with the kit? Maybe not a full blown set of assembly instructions like in an Airfix kit, but certainly something more akin to assembly tips. Stuff like how to check alignment between neck and body, recommended minimum tools required to put the kit together, wiring diagrams etc

I assume that's not some kind of merging of Gravox and Ravioli to create a dubious meal that you could find at a dodgy-looking Scottish Services alongside their deep-fried Mars Bars and Chips?

Well, they're all tasty. Or are they all Country and Western duos?

Which is a shame really. I'm hardly using the CNC to build a guitar like joining together a bunch of Lego blocks. It's really only another tool that I can use to help me do some smaller tasks to an accuracy that I can't achieve by hand. This machine isn't big or powerful enough to be anything more than a glorified engraver, and I have neither the funds nor the space to use a machine sized to do a whole instrument in one hit. I don't think there's any risk that I'll be removing all elements of hands-on building with this thing.

After some careful shaping of the trussrod access I'm able to get the end of an allen key into each hole in the spoke wheel to turn it one fifth of a revolution each time. It would've been nice if these trussrods came with more holes in the wheel, allowing me to make a narrower adjuster notch, but for an experiment in new materials I can forgive its weaknesses:

PlainJane is getting the negative version of the fretboard of PaleFace, so the inlays are being done in Cheesewood on a Mulga fretboard:

If the cut were being executed perfectly I'd expect nothing to fit together if the dimensions of the neck and pocket were exactly the same. There needs to be some give somewhere - either the neck needs to be a shade smaller or the pocket a shade bigger. How much difference will depend on what is achievable for your machine, how the material behaves when cut, the amount of flex in the cutter, the amount of backlash and slop in the axes, how true each axis' motion is etc...In all but the most expensive machines I would have thought that this would be something that could only be determined by trial and error. There's a video I saw on Youtube recently by the Fender Custom Shop. They were explaining the reasons why they use CNC for their bodies and necks. At one point the guy demonstrates the supposed exacting nature of fitting a CNC'ed neck into a CNC'ed pocket. The neck was such a poor fit that it would fall out in a stiff breeze. It's entirely possible that you'll get far better results if you CNC the neck and use more "traditional" methods to route the pocket by hand.

The extra black wire won't be helping untagle why the pickups aren't working as expected, so you can safely remove it as a first measure. It's unlikley to be the reason why the middle pickup isn't working though. If the middle pickup measures OK but has no output when the selector switch is moved to the appropriate position it's likley to be an error in the wiring of the pickup, an error in the wiring of the switch or a faulty switch. If it were me I'd eliminate the cheaper faults before plonking down cash on a new switch.

Only suggestions I can offer: The Seymour Duncan STK-S1 pickups are indeed stacked singles with a four-conductor cable. The usual wiring for these is black = hot, green goes to ground and red+white joined together under heatshrink. Note that these wiring colours will not directly match the diagram you posted and you'll need to do some translation between what is drawn and what gets physically wired. The switch (if indeed it is a Schaller E Megaswitch) is a relatively complex beast, and probably overkill for what is really just a standard Strat wiring scheme. As drawn in your diagram it should work, but the assumption is that the switch actually is the one specified in the drawing. Replacing the switch with a known working one and rewiring the guitar as a standard 5-way Strat (ignoring the 4-conductor STK-S1 cables) will at least remove one level of uncertainty. The extra black wire from lug 7 to the tone pot will have the effect of adding whatever pickup that tone pot is usually used for to the bridge pickup every time the switch is moved to a position that includes either the extra pickup or bridge positions, which if the switch is working correctly will be 4 out of 5 positions. There isn't enough fancypants switching going on to allow the tone pot to be applied to the bridge pickup without cross-connecting the adjacent pickup as well. This could account for the static resistance you're seeing when measuring back into the jack while moving the switch across each position. I assume you mean the extra black wire. I can't see this in your diagram. The only connection I see to lug 7 is a jumper from 6 to 7 and the hot lead from the bridge pickup.