curtisa

I actually quite like it with the white pickguard & pickups. Kind of a more modern, gritty-looking take on a 50s pale blue Strat.

Ouch. I bet that tickled. If the rest of the neck is as badly demolished as the fretboard and headstock, dig out the truss rod and check if it's also worth saving. From memory PRS use good quality units, similar to Allied Lutherie rods. Four tuners by themselves aren't going to be much use unless you're building a ukulele with a 3+1 headstock. Buying two replacements, even if they're the same make and style, will probably stand out as being replacements. Trem components could be handy. Looks like you have one (possibly two) speed knobs. Check if the switch is still good. Jack socket? The rest of it is entirely down to your willingness to sink a good deal more than $50 into getting it back up and running again. It'll never be a PRS, nor will it carry the resale value, but as a learning exercise (and possibly a tone voodoo buster) it could be an interesting challenge, and a good story to tell.

A bridge for $7 I would expect to be pretty awful - poor quality casting or machining, plating or paint easy to chip or tarnish, machine screws easy to strip or round the heads over. Unless I was try to prove a point in experimentation I would avoid using one on a build that mattered. 7 bucks for a set of P-bass pickups - who knows? If you didn't expect too much from them they could be OK. They could have skimped on shielding and potting the windings, making them prone to pick up noise and be microphonic in high gain situations. But then again, would you run your P-bass through a Boss MT2 Metal Zone pedal? The tonal characteristics of pickups are largely subjective, so they could sound amazing for the price, or like complete doodoo depending on who you ask or how lucky you get. Cheaper can also be a function of where you live. Here in Australia a lot of the big ticket items are notoriously high in price. 9 times out of 10 I can get the same thing on Ebay from the US for significantly less, even accounting for currency exchange rates, Paypal fees and shipping. The Hipshot stuff is a little bit cheaper on Ebay, but the prices you've quoted seem about what I'd expect to pay as a small-time hobby builder (from here, anyway). EMG prices you've got actually look pretty good. The dome knobs you've linked to are very similar, if not identical to ones available on Ebay from numerous Chinese sellers for a fraction of the cost. Most will offer discounts on larger quantity listings. I've used many and have yet to have an issue with them. The truss rod looks very similar to those sold by Allparts or WD Music, or indeed Chinese Ebay sellers. It's a very standard construction. Not to say the Chinese Ebay ones are the same quality as those sold by Allparts, but it's highly likely that the Allparts ones are also made in China and they simply pick out the visibly dud ones before selling the remainder to the public. It's possible that you could buy a batch of 5 from Ebay, test them all before installing them, and even if you had a failure rate of 40% you could have spent less than buying the same thing from a bigger supplier. I'd personally go with a reliable source first for such a critical component, but am willing to take a calculated risk occasionally. Fretwire I'd buy in bulk from a regular supplier (Stewmac, Allparts etc). Straplocks - check Ebay again. But again, I've bought regular over-sized strap buttons from China with no issues. Jackplate - I'd probably buy a sheet of blank material and make my own. Probably works out to the same price and I'm left with mountains of raw material afterwards to make more plates with. Graphtech nuts I personally haven't seen cheaper anywhere, so you've probably paid about the same as what any other non-commercial buyer is paying.

Funnily enough, not long after completing my first build I asked the very same question here on the forums. IME there are areas where price won't make that much difference provided you treat the product correctly, and others where the cost of a premium product is justified. Can afford to go cheaper: control knobs wood screws (provided you correctly size the pilot hole in the wood you're inserting it into) neck mounting ferrules plastic binding plastic pickguard/control cavity cover material wire string ferrules Pay the extra: pots, control switches and jack sockets fretwire tuners and bridges tools truss rod stuff that has moving parts under high loads (eg, double-locking trem, trem springs) Could go either way based on subjectivity...or luck: pickups inlay material nuts (prefab or blanks)

PVA won't hold the Graphtech Teflon/graphite-impregnated nuts, so sadly your only alternative is to use epoxy or CA. The teeniest little dot of glue is sufficient.

CTS here, although the last build I used a Dimarzio push-pull pot which I suspect is nothing more than a rebranded Alpha at double the price. Both work well.

Good to see some creative jig usage to achieve interesting results @Norris I can't claim originality for what I do with the position markers. I borrowed the technique from another (now inactive) member of Project Guitar. I use a special hole boring drill called a Rotabroach in combination with a couple of standard bradpoint drill bits. The various combinations of drills and broach sizes combine to make cylinders and tubes of timber that can be glued into each other to create the concentric circle inlays. The drawback is that it tends to be quite wasteful, as for each assembled inlay that looks good you end up with one or two that look crooked.

Only ever done it without the shim, with the flat back-bar flush to the neck/fretboard join, plus tape over the rod. Never had an issue with glue ingress into the channel binding the rod. When building thinner necks you need as low a profile channel as possible. Routing a channel deep enough to accept the rod plus a fillet on top removes too much meat from the neck to guarantee stability.

Glue in oversize blocks and re-route. You'll guarantee a better fit than if you try to glue in veneer to close the gap.

Sorry, you did mention that in the video. I misunderstood what you meant by shimming the nut (further away from the bridge). While it may be mathematically off, it's probable that your ears will struggle to hear the small errors you're measuring. Also bear in mind that a 1/64" error in the lower frets will result in significantly less pitch error than a 1/64" error in the higher frets. If you can compensate the nut position so that the error in the frets above the 12th is the lesser of the two evils, you'll probably have a guitar that still performs Thunderstruck as well as any other.

Good to see this kind of video documentation happening. By all means, please continue. The one and only Gotoh tune-o-matic bridge I ever used was very good value for money at the time. Just be sure that the unit you get will match the stud spacing and stud diameters of your existing bridge and tailpiece, otherwise you'll be making more work for yourself plugging the existing holes and re-drilling them for the new studs. Re, the scale length issues: is the nut correctly located relative to the frets? If you measure from 12th fret to, say the 1st fret is the measurement more acceptable for a given scale length?

To be fair, you're paying for the wood, not the woodworking Either way that's a stunning cut of timber.

Yes, although you may find it easier to glue it up in stages - glue the scarf laminations to the headstock extension first and let it set, and then glue the combined extension+lams to the neck for example. You must have a gentle bulge in one or more of your mating faces. Lay the edge of a steel ruler laterally across the gluing face of each piece to work out which ones are curved. After that it there's probably not much else other than careful use of a handplane or sandpaper on flat, solid surfaces to get it square. The hardest part will be ensuring you don't allow the workpiece or plane to wobble from side to side as you work the high spot down, as you'll only exacerbate the curve in the timber. Go slowly and check your progress frequently.

I was going to suggest that poplar is probably too weak to be used in necks, but a quick scout aroud the interwebs suggests that poplar is a similar stiffness to mahogany, with mahogany winning out in hardness. There are probably better woods to laminate with. Making a laminated neck with poplar would only be done for visual aesthetics, as on first glance it would appear that a laminated poplar/mahogany neck would be no stronger than a plain mahogany neck.

Have heard of it, but never used it myself. From what I understand it seems to be a more 'traditional' grain filling method employed by classical guitar builders,

Your people should call my people and we should do lunch, Just realised I missed a bit of crucial information to this pic. What I would do if I hadn't been holding the camera is pressing the string between the 2nd and 3rd frets and measuring the gap between the string and the 1st fret with the feeler gauge.

Measure in from the edges of the fretboard the position of the outer edges of the E/E strings, in this case about 1/8": Fit a couple of strings and trace the outside of them onto the nut top face: Mark the centres of each outline and measure/mark the gaps using a string spacing rule. Even with the angled nut the ruler still works perfectly well: I like to scribe some notches into the nut with the scalpel, just to give the files something to guide into. Makes it easier to start filing, as the pencil marks are hard to line up underneath the file visually: Rough-in the slots with a cheap and nasty nut slotting file, just to get things started: Then switch to the guaged nut files for the final slots. Note the angle of the file relative to the fretboard and headstock. This helps guarantee a good breakpoint at the leading edge of the nut face where the string takes off towards the bridge. The trailing (tuner end) of the nut slots can be feathered downwards further after the nut slot depth is cut to help alleviate strings binding in the slots: Check the depth as you go. It's easy to gradually go lower if you need to, but disaster is awaiting if you go too quickly. I'm shooting for about 0.007" with the feeler gauge. Also need to remember to do this with the string at pitch. as the string tension will squish the nut down into the nut shelf, which can make the slot slightly lower compared with no/low string tension: After all six slots are cut the nut comes out and gets polished through the grits to 1200g. The Top edge gets angled downwards, and the corners and edges can be softened a little to make it a little more comfortable to the playing hand: Time for one of these:

A fresh bone nut blank to get fitted: Mark the edges of the fret board. Have to remember to mark both back and front faces, as the nut sits at a an angle, so the amount to come off the sides also gets cut at an angle (I have botched this up in the past and trimmed the nut edges square): Use the old half-a-pencil trick and trace the curvature of the frets onto the leading face of the nut. The nut is then trimmed down to almost this line to get rid of the excess: Don't forget to mark the angled sides: Trim/file/sand off the excess:

Time to get the Evil Twin finished off. Finally feels like it's playing nicely for a change. If this looks a little more complicated than usual, it is. These Alumitones humbuckers have a coil split function which I've incorporated as a push-pull function on the volume pot: Neck finally on for good:

So far I've kept all nine of my builds with the exception of two, which were always built as giveaway gifts. When you have them all lined up on the wall it's interesting to see the evolution of your own work. The last two of my completed builds I've felt could probably be sold at a profit, despite the fact that I'm familiar with the minor flaws they contain. The previous two before that I could possibly sell to break even if I could find the right buyer (ie, pretty unlikely). The previous few before that are really only there to remind me of where I started, and of things I'm glad I tried so I know not to bother with them again. No idea what will happen to them really. I guess in a few more years if and when they cease being a required fixture on my wall I could break them up and reuse the hardware on something else. I guess when you feel confident that you have something that could be put out In the open market, and risk it being torn to pieces by critics, and you can prevent an instrument from going out that contains flaws that may reflect badly on your work is when you should consider your wares saleable. I'm only just willing to consider it myself at this stage. I highly doubt any professional luthier is 100% happy with everything they ever sell. But I would think they are sufficiently satisfied that their customer is happy with the result of their work, and that should give them the impetus to continue building guitars with a view to getting better at it every time.

Interesting. I had no idea padouk (padauk?) had such an open grain structure. You could practically drive a Sherman tank into some of those pores! What finish is this one getting?

I hadn't actually thought of using a 1/4" shank as a bearing, although like @Prostheta says friction burns may be an issue at cutting RPM. Pickup templates are pretty easy to make - they're really only a bunch of rectangles and squares. If you don't have a bushing guide for your router or can't be bothered to make the oversized templates to suit them, drilling 1/4" holes in the corners and 'joining the dots' with a 1/2" template bit will get you 95% the way there. A tiny bit of clean-up work with a chisel where the 1/2" cuts meet the 1/4" drill holes would finish the job. I have seen 1/4" template bits with bearings but I reckon they'd be pretty fragile. The smallest I have in my collection is 3/8".

In which case you'd back off the tuner to reduce pitch and you'd be back at the same tension (or very damn near) you started at.

Sounds like something that could be predicted using a string tension calculator and a bit of pythagoras. No idea about typical spacings and heights of the various TOM components but: Assume horizontal distance between a string breakpoint and the trailing edge of the tail bar is 30mm Assume max height adjustability of tail bar is 6mm Min distance of tail bar from saddle will be at max tail bar height - assume this to be 30mm Max distance of tail bar from saddle will be at min tail bar height, which will just be a case of working out the distance of the hypotenuse of an equilateral triangle with rise of 6mm and run of 30mm = sq.root (6^2 + 30^2) = 30.59mm Extra length of string at max tail bar depression = 0.6mm Most online string calculators seem to only allow for differening scale lengths with no allowance for string length behind the nut or behind the saddle, but assume the worst and say the extra scale length is simply added to the max tail bar depression: 24.75" Les Paul scale length (628.65mm) top E string strung with 0.01" Tension according to this page suggests 15.45lbs (7.01kg) Add extra 0.6mm to the scale length at max tail bar depression: Scale length = 24.77" (629.25mm) Same string on top E Tension = 15.48lbs (7.02kg) I dunno about you, but in a blind test I don't reckon I could differentiate between an extra 10 grammes of tension on the high E from one extreme to the other. In reality it's probably even less of a discernable difference, as the extra length gets added to the total string length rather than the scale length, which would amount to an even smaller percentage change to the overall string tension.

Wind the outer saddles as far forward as possible minus say, 1/4 of a turn on the intonation screws. The string breakpoint of the most-forward saddles should be positioned 25.5" from the nut along the string trajectory. You'll find that in order to intonate every string properly 99% of the time you'll only need to wind the saddle back from this position. That method should work with just about any bridge, rather than relying on some calculator that says the mounting holes should be 17/64" less than the scale length.