Southpa

I love the smell of freshcut mahogany in the morning. I also like sanding it and watching the grain move around as you work.

Consider a few extra points regarding neck angle / bridge placement. Exactly how high should bridge saddles (or TOM) be set as the static point for making your measurements? For bridge height I usually set it at the half way point so when I'm fine tuning the action I have ample room to travel in either direction. Its a real drag to have already cut your neck angle, set the fb, installed frets and then find that you either have to recess the bridge or run out of adjustment room. Same goes for setting your bridge to get proper intonation and reasonable adjustment room for all saddles. 1st string with saddle set about 1/4 forward of halfway should be where your scale length is measured at. This ensures that the 6th string saddle, which ends up being much farther back, has enough room. When I measured my first neck thru neck angle I actually dragged out my "Trigonometry and Analytical Geometry" text book from high school! Yes, still have it and I'm 47 years old, (damn 48 in one week). Just dig out all that info about sines, cosines and tangents and their "co" counterparts (hit a nerve?) and you can figure out exactly what you need with a calculator. Then draw it on paper. Its all common sense, if you don't understand it then you'll just have to try harder. Don't raise your hand right away when you hit your first obstacle. Look at it from different angles over a period of time and you can figure it out. If you can't then you'd best get someone to build the guitar with / for you.

I'm currently refurbishing my 67 Hagstrom III in black. Gloss or flat for the color coat doesn't really matter just so long as your clearcoat is a gloss. I'm using "Plasti-coat" super lacquer that I found at a local autobody supply store, very good stuff. The color coat is gloss black and, as its lacquer, there are no bonding issues between the clear and color. However, if you are not using lacquer then a gloss color coat should be scuff sanded and cleaned before shooting clear. One important factor, use the same type and brand of paint ie. Plasti-coat acrylic lacquer in my case, for everything. Regarding your primer, keep shooting / filling until those pits are filled, do some level sanding and fill again if needed. Gloss black is one of the most difficult finishes to get right. EVERY little flaw will show up so you better make sure your prep is near perfect.

More than one, . I've found you learn LOTS more through making mistakes than actually succeeding the first time (a rare occurrence). Some materials and methods may work for some folks but not for others. A little summary of reasons I've seen on this board (and personal experience ) for having to tear a finish down and start over. 1. Changing paint type, brand etc. midway causing compatibility issues. (guilty) 2. Rushing things - not allowing paint to cure properly before continuing to next step. (guilty) 3. Sand thru on dye job , poly clearcoat etc. - too aggressive technique(s), too coarse sandpaper, not enough paint / clearcoat buildup. (very guilty) 4. Spraying / curing during improper atmospheric conditions - too hot, too cold, too windy, too dusty. (guilty) 5. Just plain clumsiness - dropping a freshly painted guitar on the carpet and/or in the dirt (not guilty but seen both here) - laying guitar that hasn't totally cured on a textured surface for a length of time (guilty) Those are just a few and I'm sure there are many more that people could add. It all depends on how much of a perfectionist you are. There is lots of the 'ol "thats good enuf" attitude to go around. I've been to the point where I would just STOP a particular project until I was in a better mood to tackle it and resolve the issues 6 months later.

Thanks for that link Cherry, never saw it before. Found a good bit of info on prepping / painting wood surfaces. I do houses.

Here is my first "from scratch" guitar, very unique and exactly what you described. The entire guitar features Fender / Gibson traits, its a total hybrid. Gibson scale (24 5/8" or thereabouts), Gibson controls/hardware, strat neck profile (no headstock angle) with strings passing straight through the nut. Makes for a VERY easy bending / playing guitar. Strat plugin on the centerline. Dual action "Hotrod" truss rod. I prefer to play this guitar over all my others. Everything has been moved about 3" towards the headstock so neck to body proportion is not the same as a regular guitar. Its a neckthru with the truss rod adjustment at the butt of the neck, (little heart-shaped hole) and fully accessible frets. Pickups are squeezed together juuust a little bit but I still get a good range of sounds. Issues? The neck to body proportion makes for a longer neck than usual, so the body is weighted to balance the guitar as well as Grover mini-tuners to lighten the headstock. The 12th fret is farther away from where the neck joins the body. That may not sound significant but when you play the guitar you definitely notice it and can easily get lost on the fingerboard. I'm considering turning the guitar into a 24 fret by adding a removeable piece of rosewood to the fretboard held down by countersunk screws. It will cover the adjustment hole and the joint will be covered by a fret. I'll work something out. Anyway, you asked so here is what you get. The picture is a few years old and I have since made a new polished stainless pickguard with a few more curves that fit the body better. I also swapped the Golden Age overwound HB (broken windings) at the bridge for a Dimarzio Superdistortion. I drew up full CAD drawings (back, front and side, as well as whats inside) for this guitar which can be found in the Download section.

How about this? Get some nice swamp ash (the light stuff) and do a Voodoo finish in black and purple.

You want to relic a REAL Gibson Les Paul? or just a copy?

Did you read the printing? I can't believe someone would take the time and effort to cover a guitar like that with just a piece of plain old newspaper, must have some significance. Original New York Times announcing the sinking of the Titanic? First moonwalk?

I'm just wondering if I might have any issues if I do this. I bought a whole tube of medium/medium fretwire from Stewmac a few years ago and would like to use it up, still got LOTS left. I'm working out a shortscale bass (30") and am currently forming a fb from scratch.

I foresee potential tearout, chipping and splintering when you pass a router over those narrow bodies of wood. The knot will shatter. The method works well with a conventional, more compact body shape but I have my reservations with this one. It looks like a very delicate operation with a router. I would use a small hand plane and plane with the grain, then board sand with the grain.

Backbow is nasty stuff, especially with Ricks, but apparently somewhat common with Ricks because of the lighter gauge strings used and lower action than other bass guitars. There are a few ways to correct your problem, some are relatively simple some are more radical, and may be only temporary, depends how much memory your neck wood has. What you need to do it try to make your neck wood forget where it was. Hard to describe so I'll try to illustrate. Stewmac shows how to tighten stubborn truss rods by clamping here: http://www.stewmac.com/tradesecrets/ts0000.hzml Thoroughly heat the neck beforehand and reverse the clamping so the 2 contact points for the carpenter's level are on the back of the neck and your main clamp area is at the center of the fretboard. Tighten the clamp and check the fb with a straightedge, adjust as necessary and leave overnight. Hopefully the neck will "forget" where it was and assume the new shape ie. some relief when string tension is applied. A more radical approach is to remove the frets and plane the fretboard flat. I read up on a board member's progress at trying to relieve a back bow in a neck he was building. Instead he removed the fretboard and planed the face of the neck flat but went beyond the limits of proper neck thickness. End result was having to construct a new neck.

How did you assess the back bow? Did you totally back off both truss rods with the strings still in tension, (Ricks have 2 rods don't they?) and its still back bowed?

Theres a lesson to learn about lacquers and paint in general. NEVER change your paint in the middle of the finishing job. If you run out of what you are using then go out and buy some more. I've even had compatibility issues between brand names of lacquer although both are acrylic lacquers. Strip it down and start over.

There is also the option of using a higher value capacitor(s) which should cut out some of the high frequencies. I made a tele from a solid block of wrn. maple, not as dense as eastern maple and with a SD - Hotstack (single coil sized HB) in the neck position it sounds quite mellow. The SD Vintage 54 in the bridge position combined with .047 cap makes it sound like a tele should.

I think the niangon would be fine, the samples look very much like African mahogany. But can't forget the misnomers, there could be 4 or 5 species of brown streaked woods with similar properties from Africa that might be called (or sold as) "mahogany". Like someone said in the thread below, you'd have to be there when they take down the tree to be sure. Lots said about mahogany in this forum. Heres an example. http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...hogany&st=0

+1 on that paragraph, well said. There is nothing wrong with learning how to do it the hard way. I also tend to take things a little further and do them the unusual way! I cut a 3 deg. neck angle for an SG neckthru with my Skilsaw, then handplaned it flat. When I worked at a boat building shop for a few months I used their 6 ft. horizontal belt sander to angle a mahogany neck for my first guitar. I just drew the lines on the sides and sanded down to them, it only took a couple minutes and came out sharp and square. There is definitely more than one way.

I gotta admit I've built 3 guitars and have enough quality mahogany, wrn. maple, holly etc. for at least 4 more and I never paid a dime for any of that wood. I guess its a combination of luck, having a sharp eye and being an opportunist (no I don't steal it!). But $96 for 2"X15"X10' plank is a good deal, thats about seven 1-piece guitar bodies, ya can't beat that.

Yup, thats the one I got.

http://www.americanacrylics.com/cyroffgp.htm I acquired some scraps of Acrylite-AR (one side abrasion resistant) clear polymer from a blues player who ran a plastic fabricating shop right beside a friends woodworking shop. We got to talking about playing guitars and it led into materials etc. Just as I was leaving he gave me some of this "wonder" material and I've made an assortment of pickguards (for archtop & solidbody), pickup rings and covers since then. I found its VERY easy to work , I cut it with a jeweller's saw, stays clear, and you would have to be using a quarter for a pick to scratch it up. I made one for my friend's Monterey archtop in the space of one hour. Excellent looking guitar, almost has a pearlescent look. It would be a shame to destroy such symmetry by covering it over with something you can't see through.

You really need those tiny, thin fine-toothed blades for manoevering around when cutting inlay meterial. I bought my jeweller's saw at a place in town called "The Rockhound Shop". Basically a place that sells everything for the hobbyist rock collector to the hardcore prospector. They also sell abalone etc. dots and various shapes. If you look thru your local yellow pages you might find some similar place that can sell you a jeweller's saw. And in order to use those particular blades you NEED a jewellers saw where the blades mount with compression clamps. A regular coping etc. saw won't do the trick.

http://www.deaf-eddie.net/drawings/ I tried the "strat-series-2" and like what I got. Those push/pull pots are basically the same as your DPDT, just separate one from the other.

Yes, you are thick as a brick, j/k Push the bare end of the wire into the hole you drilled and pull it up along the side of the bridge mounting stud hole. Then push in your mounting stud and your grounding contact has been made. No soldering required, double check for continuity with an ohm meter.

No its not a book, but I could write one on this topic. I'm referring to people's , mostly friends of friends, guitars I have worked on and brought back into playable condition. I recently finished working on a person's classical guitar that was literally untuneable and unplayable. I had to reset the bridge which had slid forward at a cockeyed angle, made a new bone saddle, general cleanup and proper restringing / setup. I also had to reglue the back which was separating away from the sides in a few places. So I get a call this morning from the guy saying that the low E string buzzes. I take a lot of pride in my work and like to make sure everyone is happy. Sure its a cheap guitar and I don't charge much, especially for repairs that would usually cost more than what the entire instrument is worth. He figured the buzzing was coming from inside the guitar so I told him to loosen the strings and feel around inside for anything that might be loose, I dunno, bridge mount screws, bracing or whatever. I drive over to check out the guitar. I reach inside and feel around, nothing loose. I tune it up to standard pitch and play it for a bit, no buzzing! I hand the guitar to him and tell him to play it like he was when it was buzzing. So he tunes the low E string down to a D and starts WHALING away on it with a bigass plastic thumbpick. I can see the middle of the string oscillating a good 3/4" and yes, it certainly was buzzing. I'm thinking, "My GAWD! What an idiot!" I said, what do you expect to happen to a silver wound nylon string when you hit it like that? Sorry, but thats just the nature of the beast, its a cheap guitar and thats how they build them. You can't expect them to sound right when you play them like THAT! A while back I repaired a 12-string LYS guitar, total fret levelling, action setup etc. I got this thing into totally supreme condition. Brought it back to the owner and only charged him 50 bucks for my work. The next day he says he can't tune it right, tries to play it thru the phone saying "See what I mean?!!" "Sorry, I DON'T know what you mean. I'll be right over." So I make another house call and check out the guitar. I find both high e's and B strings are tuned roughly 3 whole STEPS higher than they should be! I'm thinking. "What gives here? Are you an idiot?" I'm really surprised that he didn't break any strings! Anyway, I tuned it properly and gave him a little lecture on how to tune a 12-string guitar. I don't know why I'm getting these winners (or should I say whiners) who don't know some basics. Both these guys have about 6 guitars each, you would think they would know better. Just for the giggles, anyone got similar experiences to tell?

Here is something quoted from Fender Vintage guitars its good reading. "Shell Pink Lacquer Source(s): DuPont 2371L. Low VOC Source(s): DuPont 2371K. Probably the rarest Fender custom color. Originally used only on 1956 DeSotos, this color was replaced by Candy Apple Red on the Fender custom color chart in 1963. Before the original Shell Pink again became available from DuPont, I went through all the paint catalogs from the 1950's and choose the 1958 Buick color "Reef Coral" as the closest lacquer replacement. Interestingly, this 1958 lacquer replacement color is also known today as "Mary Kay Pink", DuPont #2864L and Ppg #DDL70748. Adding a yellowed tint coat dramatically lessens the "pink" look of these colors, making a much more flesh toned color."