TripleFan

It´s funny you mention the Ouija. I like this one very much and if I ever come across a decal set for a white one I might possibly snag it for a future project. But for this one i want to keep the neckthrough construction with its wenge stringers visible. At the same time I don´t want it to jump out at you. Therefore I´ll try to dye it black and clear it matte. A very understated and toned down metal machine. I won´t replicate the stickers of the original KH-2. My girlfriend has access to a lot of warning decals as she works in a chemistry lab. This way I hope to catch the vibe of the KH-2´s decals but somehow make it my own. Likewise I´ll try a different take on the fretboard inlays. I simply cant´t stand the skulls and crossbones. I´ll use simple dot markers (haven´t decided if I´ll use 2mm side dots or 4mm MOP dots) and cover them up with small warning decals. This way it will blend in with the "artwork" on the body. If the stickers won´t stay on the fretboard I still have the dot markers underneath to maintain orientation. OK, back to the work at hand. I taped some scrap pieces to the back of the neck and planed them level with the body portion of the neck. This way I created a support of the freestanding part of the neck for the next construction steps. Then I used a router jig to scarf the neck and headstock to 14 degrees. Because the headstock piece isn´t wide enough for the intended shape I had to glue two small pieces to it. Luckily I had some scraps left I could use for this. I also recessed the longer side to avoid hitting the volute area. After the glue had dried and the joints were sanded I made a dry run and aligned neck and headstock and located them with screws. Then I took it all apart once again slapped on some glue, reassembled the whole lot and set it with clamps and cauls. To finish it off I slightly releveled the neck face by approx. 0,2mm. Unfortunately the guide bushings of my router are pretty worn. Surface trimming like that leaves a pronounced stairstep pattern. The height of the workpiece is OK and front and back are parallel to each other but the router bit seems slightly angled to the work area which produces said stairstep pattern. Additionally it seems the sides are not completely true to the face / the back because while at the moment the neck has a height of 53mm the sides get out of trueness by as much as ±0,3mm. Right now I don´t know what to make out of this. I´m not sure if this poses a problem and if so what to do. Anyway, this is what it looks like for now.

I then tried to true up the front and back of the neck blank. I used straight pieces of MDF and various spacers for this. In the end the result was everything but satisfactory. The faces were far from being true to the sides. I decided that it wasn´t worth to try it again and waste any more material. So I went to a carpenter once again. Within five minutes the faces and sides were straight and true. As an additional bonus I also got the alder wings planed and trued. A few days later I visited a friend and used his bandsaw to roughly cut out the neck. Presumably the offcuts are big enough for another neck blank and the headstock for this one.

OK, this is what I started with - some maple, alder and wenge waiting to become a guitar. To get started with the neck I had a carpenter ripping the maple neck blank in three pieces. I put the center stripe on a fixture. Nothing elaborate - just some pieces of MDF. However since those were made on a big saw in a home improvement center they´re reasonably straight and have tight enough tolerances to be used as base for the fixture. With a face-milling bit I planed the center stripe. After the first pass I realized that the blank gave in in the middle because it wasn´t shimed enough. This was corrected before the second pass. Further I used a collet extension which produced that much vibrations that the depth stop of the router came loose. This resulted in a bad gouge. I briefly sanded the maple center stripe and the wenge stringer with 120 grit and glued them up. While these were drying I planed and thicknessed the two outer maple pieces. I thicknessed them both in one setting to achieve identical thickness of both pieces. This time I also used more shims to get rid of the darn collet extension. I then added one piece of maple and wenge after another every two hours. After 24 hours drying I finally got this:

A few weeks ago I started my latest build. Because I´m mainly playing in a Metallica tribute band at the moment I wanted to build an appropriate guitar - namely the ESP KH-2. However, the idea was to replicate the essential design features of the ESP but not so much to do a true copy. Specs: shape: Ibanez RG body: alder scale: 25,5" neckthrough neck: maple/wenge fretboard: wenge headstock: 6 inline reversed with Volute frets: 24 stainless steel extra jumbo trem: LoPro Edge with Toplok III tuners: Boston Schaller style pickups: undecided electronics: Schaller SF103, 1Vol, 2Tone finish: seethrough black with matte clear coat My take The ESP KH-2 As said it´s not meant to be true to the original but very much along the lines of my Ibanez RG570 and RG520. I simply like the Ibby body shape and the ultra thin necks. At the moment I´m a bit undecided regarding the pickups. I have a pair of EMG 60/81 lying here which would be a good place to start when aiming for ´tallicas sound. I fear however that a 81 in the bridge in combination with a alder/maple neckthru could get overly harsh and shrill. On the other hand I have a set of SD Blackouts ready. But I think those would also work better in a darker sounding wood. Alternatively I could always choose passive pickups which could be pushed by an onboard preamp if neccesary (I´ll route and wire the guitar for actives anyway). This time I´ll take care to show the individual steps of what I do and how I do it. Hopefully this makes the thread more interesting and entertaining than my last ones.

Döeringer sells Dual Action 20" trussrods. Maybe these are long enough?

I finally finished the hardtail sevenstring. A brief rundown of the revised features of the guitar Body shape: Ibanez RG7 Body: sipo mahogany Scale: 25,5" Bolt-On Neck: maple with bubinga center stripe Fretboard: ebony Headstock: maple (scarfed from a second blank) 7 inline with volute Fretwire: stainless steel extra jumbo Bridge: Warmoth hardtail Fender style (w. Graphtech Ghost piezo saddles) Tuners: noname Schaller style (probably made by Boston) Pickups: Dimarzio PAF7 bridge and neck Electric: Megaswitch-P, Vol, Tone, Piezo-Vol, Piezo/Mag/Both, active Midboost for piezo Finish: body Clou Hartöl; neck Danish Oil, sealed with Clou Hartöl I purchased the fretboard readily tapered and sloted. I finished the guitar over half a year ago and actually already played several shows with it. I just never came around to make some covers for it to finally call it done. I made them from 2mm aluminium and had them anodized. All in all I´m quite satisfied. It´s the first guitar I built from scratch and it shows but it´s completely playable and that´s all that counts. I yet have to level the frets. Unplugged it buzzes too much for my taste but played through an amp it´s OK. The PAF7s sound very clear and defined without pushing the amp too much. The guitar can do everything from oldschool Metallica to modern highgain Fear Factory. The ghost system is a nice addition for stage use; playing Metallica´s Sanitorium with piezo blows me away every time. The installation of the preamp was a pain however. Two defective wiring harnesses and a switchjack jack socket not certified by Graphtech did cost me about two months I think. Hats off to Graphtech´s support, who went out of their way to supply me with replacement parts and additional wiring schematics until everything worked! Alright, enough of my babbling... PICS Back Front different angle Down the neck front Down the neck back Body back closeup Body front closeup Bridge with piezo closeup Pickups closeup Trussrodcover closeup Headstock/scarf closeup Covers front Covers back Additionally I also finished my second sevenstring. Soon after my last post I disassembled the guitar and started to prep sand and finish the body. This time I had major problems with dust trapped in the finish. I even had to sand back with 400 grit halfway through to get rid of the dust. It just got better when I started to use tack cloths before apllying a new oil coat. Also misting the drying room (a guest restroom) with water before hanging the body seemed to help. I let the body dry for a week and started to shield the pickup cavities with conductive shielding paint. Three coats, one per day. Cavity shielding Next was assembling the whole lot one more time. First I dressed up the trem cavity follwing this tutorial. Before After Then I started to shield the control cavity. To determine the outline of the foil I used the my routing templates (pay attention that they´re not the wrong way around when marking - ask how I know... ) Part of the shielding is to connect the pickup cavities to a common ground. I use small eyelets and tuner screws for this. While I drilled for the bridge pickup cavity eyelet I broke into the spring cavity! Oh well, nothing a little sharpie couldn´t fix... Shielding 1 Shielding 2 Shielding 3 Shielding 4 Shielding 5 Shielding 6 Finally I was ready to start wiring the guitar. At least for me the most obnoxiuos job in guitar building. Front Back The last thing I needed to do were the cavity covers. I scribbled the shape from the guitar to paper and transfered the outline to a sheet of 2mm aluminium. A special feature of the trem cavity cover is the hole for the Schaller Sure Claw which allows easy adjustment of the spring tension with an allen wrench. Unfortunatelly I moved the router in the wrong direction so the bit wandered. However I also set the router´s depth stop wrong so I was able to flip the cover over and give it a second try. I prep sanded the covers to 800 grit and spray painted them in matte black. Of course not without the occasional run... Last but not least they got shielded with copper foil as well. Covers 1 Covers 2 Covers 3 Covers 4 Well, after all this here it is Back Down the neck front Down the neck back Body front closeup Down the neck back different angle LoPro7 closeup Body back different angle Headstock closeup Upper cutaway closeup Lower cutaway closeup Trem cavity closeup

As far as I know there are no Tele style bridges for sevenstrings on the market right now. A guy on sevenstring.org had made a batch some time ago but I think he has already sold them all and has no intentions to make more of them. Your best bet would be to either join sevenstring.org and ask around if someone is willing to part with his bridge or make one yourself. This might not be too hard as it´s basically an steel angle which could be rigged with aftermarket saddles. However the problem would be to get the thing plated. As far as neck templates go it´s not so easy to answer. A nut width of 48mm is pretty common with sevenstrings. This would give you a string spacing of 42mm (B to e). Take this, your scale length and the string spacing of your bridge and go from there.

juze, thanks for your kind words. Do you have already started building? ae3, yes that´s the Schaller bridge. It´s an extremly high quality part. Very nice. The sixer is not as bad as it may seem from all the posts. At the moment it´s the D string that still buzzes a bit and action isn´t "über-low" but I could care less. I think it´s all about experience and experience is what I gathered during the build. I´ll just level the frets some more and may even replace the fretboard down the road. And there´s still the high gloss finish ahead of me (my first one). Just many more occasions to learn something new. Back to the task at hand. At the moment I´m still debating if I should go for the "weathered" finish or if I should go for the "normal" black stain.

My second sevenstring is nearly completed. A month ago I assembled it for the first time. I purchased the neck two years ago on eBay and now it gets used for the first time since then. Despite this fact it works absolute flawless with extremly low action and next to no buzzing. The neck pocket is slightly too big - talk about reusing old routing templates - and I will have to shim the locking nut. Nevertheless this is one of my best playing guitars and by far the best I have built so far. However I´m not so sure about the DSonic7 in the bridge spot. It somehow misses some bite and doesn´t cut through properly. Until now I had it in my "Scrapcaster" test built (MDF body with pine neck) and it slayed in there. Will see... http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...04/P1030995.jpg http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...04/P1030997.jpg http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...04/P1030998.jpg http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...04/P1030999.jpg The only problem i ran into when doing the body was a misaligned hole for the treble side stud bushing. I had to plug and redrill two times before the hole was spot on. Initially it was misalligned by nothing more than 0,5mm but I didn´t want to take any chances. Hence I widened the hole from 11mm to 12mm pluged with a dowel and redrilled. All the rest of the body turned out pretty good and I´m really pleased. No screw-ups and all the cavities and routings are pretty much spot on. Because most of the stud bushings you can get have an open bottom I had to close them with M8 set screws. This allows me to lock the studs into place after I have dialed in the action during the set up (a genuine feature of Ibanez´ older trems and their respective studs). Meanwhile I´ve done some finish tests. The body will get an oil finish with black stain beneath. I prepped the sample piece the same way like I did my first sevenstring - sanding through various grits from 100 to 240, repeatedly damping and resanding with 320 grit. Then I applied the undiluted stain and four coats of oil. I brushed the "lower" cutaway with a brush with brass bristles. This pronounces the pores of the wood and gives it an appearance some manufacturers call "worn" or "weathered". While I stained one side of the test piece two times with a few hours to dry in between I did the other side only once. While this side still is black its not completely opaque and lets the original hue of the wood shine through. I´ll probably disassemble the guitar at the end of the week and will then start to finish the body next week.

To be honest it left it that way and fretted the thing. I know that these normally are severe faults. But as I already wrote so many things went wrong on this one that I simply decided that I´ll use this as a test mule. And while it looks severe on those pictures it works surprisingly well. It surely isn´t my best playing axe but it´s far from being a dog. On a lighter note at least I learned one or two things about fret leveling this way. I´m debating if I should order my fretboards readily slotted, tapered and radiused in future. I´m completely with you and Daniel that this (along with the fretwork) is the integral part which makes or brakes an instrument. For me it seems hard to match the necessary tolances so this might be a good iway to take some of the unsecurities out off the equation.

It´s been a while but I´ve made some progress on the sixstring. Since the last time I bit the bullet and fretted the neck. During the process some of the dots popped out of the face of the board. This left me with a fretted neck with holes in the fretboard... So I simply decided that I would just look where this takes me. I replaced all the dot´s with MOP and sanded them flush between the frets. I know this is NOT how it´s done but at this point I thought it wouldn´t matter anymore anyway. Given the circumstances it actually turned out far better than I thought. Next was the body. I was slowed down considerably when I made the routing templates for the electronic and jack cavity and their coresponding rebates. I wanted them so that I (in regard to future projects) can optionally use covers by Ibanez and in turn it was a little bit of fuss until I got the shapes just right. I like how the arched top with its partly sunken knobs and switch turned out. Finally I assembled the whole shebang for the first time. But not without the occasional screwup. Amongst others one of the little srews that hold the tuners broke. I like the look of it even though most of it could be crafted nicer. For example the binding around the fretboard is just bad. The problems concerning the neck I mentioned already. A lot of first times on this one. Anyway, the scale is 670mm (26,4") which should make for easy downtuning. As expected the guitar was unplayable right away. It buzzed and choked like crazy. Especially the D and A strings produced only horrible noises between the fourth and thirteenth fret. Yesterday I leveled and recrowned the frets. Given that it was the first time I attempted a fretjob I´m quite satisfied. It still buzzes slightly in places but it´s not that bad and to me it sounds tolerable (at least that´s what I keep telling myself ). The guitar is now undergoing a thorough testing for the next few weeks. If no serious problems show up I will then bind, prep and finish the body.

I purchased on at Thomann last year.

Hello Jim, I´m interested in the #7 bubinga board. Do you ship to Germany? Would it be feasible to do international shipping with such a huge item?

I should´ve made it clearer: it´s a guitar. How would you go about the binding issues when resanding the board?

Today I need advice. Recently, when I wanted to resume work on my sixstring neck I noticed that the radius over the last few frets on the bass side is uneven. On the bass side the side of the fretboard falls approx. 0,5 - 1mm compared to the treble side. I see three possible solutions: 1. Ignore! Probably the worst solution. On the other hand the problem consists only on the topmost frets of the bass strings. And since I like my action fairly high I might get away with it. 2. Resand the fretboard. Critical because I might sand through the position markers. Even worse is that I would take height from the fret slots. Because of the binding I wouldn´t be able to resaw them. Which means I would have to rebind the fretboard. After all the sides of the binding would then probably be pretty shallow which would probably look like utter s..t. 3. Replace the whole fretboard. Worst case scenario but the most professional solution (?). Now I could need some recommendations.

Actually I considered scraping the fretboard myself but shyed away from it because I didn´t want to screw up the radius. I already steel wooled the board however and will try to polish it up a bit with a foam buffing pad when it gets oiled. Yeah you simply don´t find any bar type string retainers for seven strings! Actually I already made one myself from a piece of 5mm stainless steel rod. Simple enough. I would only spray paint it to match the color of the (black) hardware. Surely the color would rub away immediatly where it touches the strings but since it´s on the underside I wouldn´t care. In the end I decided that I would only use it on a project with a locking nut because I think the added friction of the retainer wouldn´t do this particular guitar any good.

Last week I finished neck and body. The neck is tinted with three coats of Danish Oil and sealed off with two coats of "Hartöl". The body has four coats of "Hartöl". I had to sand back the first coat though because it looked blotchy. I think this was mainly because the sipo kept to spill the oil back out. On the other hand it simply might have been runs which started to dry before I wiped them off. The result is pretty good but a little bit darker than I aimed for. ATM I´m contemplating if I should rub it down with steel wool to a more matte look or leave it alone. In the meanwhile I shielded the electronic cavity with copper foil and started to paint the pickup cavities with shielding paint. Hopefully I can start to assemble the guitar at the weekend.

Thank you. These are various samples I´ve done over the last two weeks. All of them were sanded with 100/150/240 grit. After that I wetted them five or six times and sanded them back with 320 grit in between. I liberally applied "Hartöl" by Clou with a brush and wiped off the excess with a cloth after about ten minutes. This one is a piece of sipo which had its grain filled with black wood putty. The grain really starts to pop out which is very obvious on the side. I like how the grain shows on this one but the color of the wood gets too dark for my liking. The more shallow camera angle shows how the putty filled the grain. This one was stained black. I wiped/rubbed back the stain immediatelly. After the stain dryed I continued to oil as usual. The result once again shows the grain very nice but leaves the pores natural and open. Unfortunatelly the natural color of the sipo also gets darkend. This one I like the most: just oil. The grain doesn´t stand out as well but I really like the color of the wood. On the backside I wetsanded the freshly oiled wood resulting in a slurry which fills the pores. The excess is wiped off across the grain after ten minutes. This results in a very flat and even surface which keeps its natural color compared to the one filled with black putty. Finally a scrap piece of the neck blank. It was finished with two layers of danish oil and two additional coats of "Hartöl". The reason is that danish oil colors the wood somewhat while Hartöl is nearly clear. I like this on very much. I always thought oild surfaces would retain their natural "woody" feel? All the samples I did feel more like "satin cleared". Not exactly sticky but definatelly not like wood anymore. Did I do something wrong? Furthermore I wonder how much coats do I need? Are there any indications when there´s enough? Right now each piece is coated three or four times. Is this enough? Too much? Too less? Finally I would like to know if someone has experience with StewMac´s conductive shielding paint and an oil finish. Is it possible to apply the paint over oil? Should I apply it to raw wood? I´m doing tests anyway but if someone has tried this already I would like to hear about it.

Thanks man! It looks rather good from half a metre away but up close there are many small flaws. It´s nothing major it just means that there is still room to improve on further builds. Having said that I still love that friggin´ thing! OK, the electronics consist of two Dimarzio PAF7 pickups a Schaller Megaswitch "P" a Graphtech Ghost Piezo system potentiometres for mag Vol/mag Tone/piezo Vol toggle switches for mag/piezo/mix and piezo mid boost (not wired yet) Stuffed in the cavity are also the the piezo preamp and the piezo wire summing board.

Finally some progress. All the bodywork is done. I´ve drilled the holes for the jack, pots and switches and routed for the battery box. Finally I routed the electronic cavity and the recess. At last I shaped the back of the guitar and the heel section of the body. Most of it went pretty well but as always I experienced some minor screw-ups. I counterbored to deep and the battery cavity isn´t centered properly. Nothing major and everything can be fixed but it´s annoying to say the least. Additionally I veneered the headstock. Over the weekend I assembled the guitar. After I solved some minor electrical quirks it finally worked. This is how it stands at the moment (the string ferrules aren´t mounted yet): The bridge drilled for the piezo wires and for laughs the shoddy (and yet to be improved) wiring. Everything works, it sounds fine and it feels pretty solid. I´m quite relieved! Meanwhile I have started to do samples to test various finishes. The guitar will be oiled and I´m experimenting with different oils, stains and pore fillers.

Thanks man. I think I will try to do a neckthrough later after I have finished the ones I´m working on at the moment. Finally I was able to assemble the guitar for the first time. After clamping the neck for a week and a half it had about 2mm relief which was easily adjusted with its trussrod. The guitar with the neck, pickups and strings and a "family shot" of my current projects... This is the "jig" I used to correct the backbow of the neck. I clamped the neck solidly to the beam and heated and wetted it twice a day. In between it was stored in a warm and dry compartment. On the pictures the shims looks to be a little bit on the thick side. The nut nearly drove me crazy! I screwed the first nut blank immediately filing it shorter than the fretboard. This was rectified on the second blank. Instead I screwed the string alignment and the strings were far above the fretboard. I decided to file the nut even more and start the string alignment all over. This finally worked out. The alignment is still far from perfect but it does the job and the misalignment isn´t noticable while playing. Because the nut was too low after all the filing I had to glue a veneer which I later dyed black to blend it in. After the initial setup at first I was a little bit dissapointed. The guitar didn´t stay in tune very well especially the low B string. Further the headstock needs a string retainer. Does anyone know a place where I can get the bar type for a sevenstring? After I stretched the strings and the neck stabilized it slowly got better. The pickups also didn´t sound like I expected. The PAF7s are very tame compared to other pickups I usually play. After playing with them for a few days now I have to admit that they start to grow on me. Perhaps I just have to give them a little bit more time. The playability is rather good. It buzzes and rattles on all frets because the they are not leveled yet. Further I have to knock down the shoulders of the neck profile because they feel a hair too bulky. But all in all I can say it´s easily the best I have built so far and there´s potential. I can only imagine how well it will play and sound once it´s leveled and set up.

You made up your mind already but I still wanted to chime in. +1 on Setch´s advise. Tried that on a build for the last few days and it worked like a charm. I clamped the neck fingerboard down to a aluminium beam and wetted/heated it twice a day. Additionally I shimed the middle of the neck with twice the thickness of the backbow. A week later I had a gentle relief which I could level out with the trussrod. So if the string pull doesn´t straighten your neck I definately recommend clamping it down.

After 2 weeks my third attempt to make a pickup routing template was succesfull and I finally routed the body. Nothing special but I´m happy with the result. There´s minor tearout where I got a little over eager. On the other hand I think the router bit starts wearing and should be replaced. I really would like to do a test assembly now. Unfortunatelly I noticed a backbow of approx. 1 - 2mm of the neck which I have to get rid of first. I will work along the lines of this thread; particularly post #5 by "LGM Guitars". I hope the problem will be solved in one or two weeks and I can finally assemble this beast for the first time. There is no electronic cavity yet because I maybe will install a Ghost piezo system. This decision depends on my first impression, playability and sound however.

I have finished fretting a neck with SS wire last week. I´m not the most experienced regarding fretting as this was my second fret job at all and the first one with SS wire at that, Anyway, I think I can give some answers. I prebent the wire like I would do every other wire. I found SS to be a little bit tougher which meant I needed a little bit more force to drive it into the fretboard (I hammer my frets in). But that was nothing serious. I can´t tell you much about the crimping. I fill the fret slots with wood glue to get rid of the voids under the frets and "lock" them into place. Anyhow, my frets stayed down one way or the other. I also nipped the tangs with StewMac´s Tang Nipper. No problem at all. I use the tutorial´s 2x4 bastard file to grind the frets flush as well. Worked like a charm. In the end I believe SS wire is not so hard to work with like many make it out to be. I somewhere read it´s not that much harder than german silver but tougher which accounts for it´s wear resistance. Finally I can´t imagine that your Fre-Cut sandpaper wouldn´t handle the wire. Take this with a grain of salt however as I haven´t leveled SS frets yet.

Over the last few days I fretted the neck. First I deepened the fret slots and bevelled them. http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000791.jpg Then I cut the frets to size und nipped the tangs. I then hammered in the 24th fret to get used to it. http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000795.jpg I proceeded with the remaining frets for the next two evenings. http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000800.jpg The frets were cut flush to the fretboard and bevelled to aprox. 35°. I sealed the fretslots with ebony dust and superglue. Then I polished the fret ends with sanding sponges. The burrs are removed in the process. Finally I polished the fretboard and the frets. http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000802.jpg http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000804.jpg http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000805.jpg http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...03/p6000808.jpg Some things I want to do differently in the future. I didn´t like that I lost the gloss of the fretboard. I fill the fretslots with titebond to get rid of any voids under the frets. This usually leaves me with glue spilled over the fretboard. Any attempt to wipe it away with a damp cloth doesn´t make it any better...! Next time i will try to cut titebond with water. I then can use a syringe to inject it directly in the fret slot. That should reduce the mess significantly. I´m under the impression that the stainless steel fretwire took a little more force than nickel-silver to get seated. Besides that I had no problems preparing and using the wire. Only problem I could think of it doesn´t take a polish as well as nickel-silver. But I´m pretty sure there´s a solution when I finally level the frets.