TripleFan

Up we go... After several tries backstrapping the headstock I wasn´t quite satisfied with the result and finally ditched the idea. Instead I started shaping the back of the neck. I really like it so far. The neck is a nearly perfect copy of Ibanez´ Wizard-7. Sorry for the partially shoddy pics... Just some more detail work with a scraper removing some scratches and I´m finally there! Just to be sure: next will be fretting. Is the radius of this fretwire OK or should the curve be tighter?

Care to share some specifics like type and manufaturer of paint, water/borax ratio and so on?

I really like how this turned out. What´s the fretboard wood? I haven´t seen if it was mentioned in any of your posts. The grain and color look amazing!

SolidWorks simply because I´m used to it. As the others already said it´s simple to learn and use. The weak part of Solid Works however is surface modelling. Means you might have problems modelling various arched tops or the transitions from neck profile to the heel or into the headstock.

Yeah, I´m still abit pissed about the dots. I thought about replacing/fixing them but would probably screw it even more! You live and learn, I guess, eh? Anyway, anybody any sugestions or answers regarding my veneering questions?

Meanwhile I´ve done the holes for the string through. It went fairly well and I´m quite satisfied. I drilled from the frontside to half the thickness of the body using the brige as template. Then I measured the hole positions flipped the body over and marked and drilled from the backside. This way the holes are inline on the backside and match up with the holes of the bridge. Holes frontside Holes backside with bigger diameter for ferrules On thursday I sanded the fretboard and inlayed the MOP dots. Sanding went well, also. The radius is nice and even over the length of the board. But I screwed up the dots completely. I didn´t mark the positions carefully enough and the drill bit wandered. At least I didn´t sand through. Overall imperssion Botch job 16" radius and a little bit of gloss (sanded with 800 grit. Maybe I´ll go over it with 1000 grit before fretting) At the moment I´m debating if I should backstrap the peghead. The center laminate runs through the volute and ends near the first tuner hole. If I would glue on a veneer I could make it look like the neck laminates end right at the crown of the volute. But I think veneering just one side of the peghead may cause problems down the road? Any suggestions? Should I try it or is it better to leave it alone? Back of peghead The penciled line represents the crown of the volute Next will be shaping the neck and fretting.

Thanks man. But No.2 will be painted bright white. I hope the black hardware, the jet blach fretboard and the white paint will make a eyecrushing contrast.

Minor progress on the two sevenstrings. The necks are in and I mounted the bridge of the hardtail one. The hardtail seventring with aligned bridge. Closeup of the bridge Bridge mounted Trem sevenstring with neck Back of neck with ferrules Sadly the neck pockets are a tad bigger than I wanted them because I reused the routing template of an earlier sample. It´s not so bad on No.3 (the one with the trem) and on No.2 (hardtail) painting the neck will take care of the play. All in all I´m fairly happy.

Thanks. How´s your eightstring build going? I´m following your thread at sevenstring.org carefully.

Thanks for your kind words. But I fear my skills as a photographer are even worse than my guitar building. There are many small failures that don´t show in the pictures and I hope to resolve in future builds. I´m not sure what you mean? Remember in this pic the fretboards are not glued yet. Anything else is probably only a bad camera angle. At least I tried to scarf the headstocks as even as I could get them... The bridge choice on No.1 kinda... evolved... Don´t want to go into the details. I´m not too much into wraparound bridges myself but the Schaller piece looks nice and sturdy. I think it will make a nice break from my usual trem bridges. I´ve heared many good things about the Blackouts and want to try actives for quite some time now. Well this isn´t a paintjob so much in the digital mockup. I just colored the body that way to get a feel for the different parts. That´s all.

The binding channel on the headstock. Even worse... But I managed to clean it up a little. The glued on binding. The edges and points came out nice but there are some gouges I have to clean up. I hope the pictures are OK when linked as thumbs?! Anyway, that´s where it stands right now. Next steps will be to clean up the bodies and route the neck pockets. After that I will radius the fretboards and shape the necks.

The neck blanks are thicknessed to 20mm. The trussrod slots are routed and the headstocks are thicknessed. When I routed the access for the trussrod wrench the router bit damaged the side of the slot. Nothing serious but in the future I have to figure out a better way. The fretboards glued on. The neck blanks got routed flush with the boards. I cut back the fingerboard for the binding on the sixstring neck. Not the nicest job in the world but I hope it will work. It was the first time I used StewMac´s Purfling Cutter and a chisel.

Hey! I want to show the progress on my first ventures in guitar building. I´m working on three guitars. No.1 alder body maple neck with bubinga stripe pao ferro fretboard 6 strings scale 670mm chrome hardware Schaller Wraparound bridge Kluson machine heads Seymour Duncan Blackout pickups stainless steel extra jumbo frets 6mm nickelsilver dots arched superstrat bodyshape with 3+3 headstock binding around body, neck and headstock body and headstock dyed blue or maroon No.2 mahogany body maple neck with bubinga stripe ebony fretboard 7 strings scale 25.5" black hardware Fenderstyle hardtail bridge Schallerstyle machine heads Dimarzio PAF7 pickups stainless steel extra jumbo frets 4mm offset MOP dots superstrat bodyshape with Ibanez headstock body and headstock color bright white No.3 mahogany body Ibanez RG7620 neck (maple with bubinga) rosewood fretboard 7 strings scale 25.5" chrome hardware Ibanez EDGE LoPro trem Gotoh machine heads Dimarzio DS7 and AN7 pickups extra jumbo frets superstrat bodyshape That´s the wood I started with. Two slabs of sipo mahogany, maple, bubinga and two pao ferro fretboards. The rough cut bodies and the joined and glued neck blanks. A very early mockup of a body with a scarfed neck blank. Closeup of the scarf. Another mockup of one of the bodies with a half finished neck I have done as a test. The neck blanks with cut, sanded and drilled headstocks. The fretboards are bought preslotted. The ebony one has it´s sidedots allready fitted.

Strange one... But OK, on the topic of guitar building the most recommended books would probably be "Make Your Own Electric Guitar" by Melvyn Hiscock and "Building Electric Guitars" by Martin Koch Most people around here seem to prefer Hiscock´s book (he also is a member here). Myself I like Koch´s book a little bit better.

His screenname on here is Blackknight (or something along those lines). The paint he used to use are Humbrol enamel paints. Try searching for Humbrol and you will find many posts by him and a wealth of useful information on the topic.

It seems to me linear would be the right way because the difference for example between 647,7mm and the corresponding 637mm lie in the distance from the saddle to the knife edge and this distance doesn´t vary with different scale lenghts.

Ibanez has all their spare parts listed on their homepage. You could grab the item number and any Ibanez dealer should be able to order it as a replacement. But I think it will cost you an arm and a leg...

Is the width of the eightstring locknut on the wammi page correct? 2,375" (60,4mm) seems a bit much. A sevenstring locknut has about 48mm - 7mm spacing from string to string = 42mm string spacing total plus 3mm extra width on each side = 48mm. Add another 7mm for one more string and you should get about 55mm in total (actually Ibanez uses 56mm nut width on the RG2228). Has anyone tried the Kahler eightstring locknut? Is it really that wide or are the dimensions on wammi´s page wrong?

Well, I have traced the body of my RG7, which is more or less the same as the JEM. The dimensions of the handle, the lions claw and the jack placement you could take from the tutorial section on the main site. There´s a very detailed blueprint of the JEM body (old style neck joint) somewhere over at Jemsite. I just have a (pretty accurate) drawing of the 7 string headstock Placement of the pickups, trem, controls and the neck should be determined depending on the scale and the situation of your build. If you are interested in the drawing of the body and the headstock you can PM me.

I have a pretty accurate tracing of my RG7 body on my CAD. It´s in SWX format. I fear it´s not the best for CNC routing because it´s mainly splines. But perhaps it gives you the general idea. If you´re interested PM me. Ingo

Just curious: what´s the trem in the pic of the Bomber you posted? Good luck with your project!

Here you go

Yep, that´s it. Never tried the ZR without the ZPS myself, but I think it´s worth a try.

Perhaps you find some info about the route here. Just one question. Did you try to disable the 'Zero Point System' of your trem. Maybe this could do the trick for you. Without the additional springs forcing the ZR into a given position it should behave more like a 'normal' FR. I´ve read many questions about how to implant a ZR into a FR equiped guitar. The consens usually was too much work, too complicated, don´t bother. I think the same would apply the other way round...

There´s a blueprint of a JEM with old style neck heel joint somewhere over at Jemsite. A cross section shows the depth of the neck pocket with it´s dimensions. Calculating the angle then is a breeze. In fact I checked the dimensions and the angle on a CAD system and it looked very good. I´m pretty confident that the dimensions work. For the information that newer RGs have 0 neck angle I just have to look at on of my Ibbys. Seriously I think I´ve read about that and that newer RGs/JEMs should be shimed somewhere on Ibanezrules` Tech section. Rich Harris is a well known guitar tech who knows quite a lot about Ibanez guitars and how they have to be set up.