IWishICouldShred

I haven't been on PG in a couple of months, but I checked the site on a whim tonight. My first build is nearing completion and I started on my 2nd build this week. Guess what it is?

Camphor burl and mahogany, with a doublecut violin shape.

So naturally this is the first thread I clicked on. If mine turns out half this nice, I'll be stoked! Maybe I'll start a thread soon to show it off, but all I've got done right now is the neck-thru segment.

But seriously, what a coincidence!

What's the scale length going to be? That bridge looks really far back.

I really like that electronics setup... the blend pot and passive bass cut are wild! You don't happen to have a diagram for any of that do you?

Next major design change--

The the bloodwood fretboard looks sexy on its own, but awful with the purple heart. Bright red and purple? What was I thinking?

So after spending a couple of weekends learning to slot, lay out, taper, radius, and put position markers on that board, I got a new Purpleheart blank from Woodcraft for about $9.

Here is is slotted. I tapered it 3 weeks ago but had a little "oops" with the bandsaw

I had a meeting at work last weekend so I couldn't get anything done, but I spent this past saturday re-laying out my center line and all that and hand sanding it to size. Another hour or so of sanding and it'll be about ready to go on to radiusing.

There was just enough wood left on there to get the dimensions I wanted. We had a large blade on there for cutting the neck blanks down a while back, and it ate this thinner sock right up.

So that needs sanding on the sides to fix the taper, radiusing to 15", and brass dots on the side. The board is going to be 1 3/4" at the nut, which is about 1/16 wider than a board that most people would consider "wide", but I've got pretty big hands and love the space I get with a big Jackson style fretboard.

Anyway, back to the neck. When we left off, it was still a solid block of wood that I described as a "brick sh!thouse of tone". I took that block and cut it in half with the table saw, and gave half to the other student I'm working with so that he could use it on his project. Returning to my half, I routed the truss rod slot and a wider slot for allen-key access.

Above shows the truss rod slot, the access hole, and the peghead face. I cut the peghead angle into the neck blank with the bandsaw and sanded it flat with a block. This pic shows after the sanding and all that, and shows the outline of the template that I made for the neck. Note the volute for strength!

Now, speaking of the volute, those curves are tough to cut through 3" of hardwood, so I put some big holes in it with a reamer to make the cutting easier.

Which is good, cause I need all the help I can get when it comes to this damn bandsaw. Can't blame the tool-- I'm just not good at it yet.

There we have the relief holes. There's a 3rd one back by the heel. Apologies for the horrendous contrast.

There's a halide light in the workshop that goes on sometimes, and it has that sort of effect.

And here's my bandsaw expertise in action

Better to leave more wood on there than take it off! I might suck with the saw but I'm handy enough with the rasp.

So after cutting the rest of the neck out (much more smoothly thankfully), I added some big ol peghead wings to the sides. Like I said, I can always cut more wood off, and I'd rather do that than add it.

So the neck itself needs to be tapered and have the tenon and headstock cut out, then it's ready for gluing. I guess I'm to attach the neck before I shape it, apparently that makes it easier to give it a natural shape.

Another design consideration that we've made-- the neck will be "pulled out" on this guitar in the interest of upper fret access and balance. Thus, the neck will hit the body right about where the 22nd fret sits. I can get a very natural contour on the heel this way. Plus the body is very heavy, so moving the neck back moves the center of balance toward the headstock a bit more. Hopefully this guitar will not "dive" in either direction.

Ah... what else?

I settled on EMGs and pulled them out of the other guitar I mentioned.

Been doing a little bit of wood carving and guitar setup work in the interim. I can't wait to get more of my own tools so I can do this 5 or 6 days a week instead of 1.

Thanks for being patient everybody! I promise I'm not an unfinisher-- this guitar must be done by May because I've secured an independent study. I'm getting 2 (possibly 4... gotta meet with some Profs this week and hammer out the details) credits for building this guitar and writing a paper on the design and construction methods I used, which I'm really excited about.

As for the commision--

We've still got to hammer out the details but it looks like what I have to do is:

Take a 24 fret Showmaster neck and cut it down to 22 frets so the rhythm pickup will sit in the "sweet spot"

Get the Squier decals off the headstock. Put the dude's name on there

Rout my surplus body to accomodate this neck and a pair of P-90's, plus a control cavity for 3 pots and a 3 way toggle.

Hook the whole thing up with mint hardware (Black locking schallers, black Badass bridge, black knurled knobs, etc)

Hand it off to a couple of friends who do auto-body stuff for clearcoating and buffing

Assemble!

The guy said he wants some top notch P90's in it so I believe we're ordering from Fralin, but does anyone else have any favorites? I think we're looking on the hot wound side cause this body will be very bright to begin with.

Alright! Here's the first update of many more to come

First I need some "Thinking Music"! Benny Goodman ought to do.

This project has turned into a tremendous learning experience for me. Another student and me have been working with a luthier every Saturday afternoon for a few hours, learning each process used in making these axes... first the hard way, then any shortcuts...

So when we left off, I had the body parts cut out and the necks glued up.

First I'll go over some design changes I made...

The bodies weren't quite thick enough... just under 1.5", so we found a nice piece of maple and cut it to size to use as a center piece. On the outside, the theory was that it would just look like decorative binding and it would expand the depth of the body by about 1/4".

Well, then I realized the body was starting to get ridiculously heavy. What to do?

The center piece became a router template--

There it is with some blocks attached for height.

I cut holes in the laminate and dropped the router through with a follower bit. Then, using some dial calipers, a steady hand, and a healthy respect for any power tools with more horsepower than my lawnmower, I routed both the top and the back about 3/8" each. All together, there's a 3/8" cavity in each side plus the 1/4" center laminate, so there are a pair of 1" hollow chambers in the body now. Check out the assembly--

^ The ash back piece being routed

^ Close up of the same. You might notice the strip down the center section of the center laminate. This is for wiring to pass through. It's great because if I pull the pickups out once the guitar is done, it should look like a square hole.

"How'd you drill that square hole?"

"Square drill bit."

What a conversation piece, right?

^ Here's the purple heart being routed.

^ The first half of the gluing process. Think I've got enough clamps on there? The cam clamps in the center worked pretty well but that's one tool I never want to use again.

Here's the whole thing glued up and ready for the huge amount of sanding I've been doing. Next step is to take a rounded-off follower bit around the edge and then sand it some more.

That's basically where the body stands right now. It needs to get routed and have some shaping done but from there it's mostly pretty simple... I'll be making the router templates soon.

I'm going with a pretty straight-forward long tenon design. The neck angle is going to be cut right into the neck tenon rather than routed into the body, cause, as bad as I am with the bandsaw, it's easier to err on the side of caution with the bandsaw than the router.

Next post - the neck!

So anyway I was building this guitar, right...?

I totally forgot about you, PG Forum! No offense I didn't mean to.

So here's the deal-- Work has continued on a weekly basis for the last 6 months. Being at school for most of that time has kind of cramped my style, but I worked my study of luthierie into an independent study class for this semester so now I can justify spending more time with it. In addition, the music department wants to send me to Kalamazoo to check out the Heritage factory. And they say there are no field trips in college

Also, I'm trying to get pics of progress into my photobucket account but I can't remember the password. I've got quite a bit of progress to show but you'll probably be disappointed anyway-- after 6 months this thing should be done. The important thing is that after routing the body, all of the operations I'll be doing are things I've already learned on other instruments so they should go much faster.

Now the really good news-

Remember how I said at the top of the thread that I wanted to make 2 of these and sell one? I took everyone's advice and decided to do one at a time. I'm glad I did. BUT! A friend of the luthier who has been teaching me came by the shop, saw my project and the extra wood I had laying around for the second build I never did, and commissioned me to build a body for a neck he's already got!

Expect further delays as I juggle the pair of projects, but this one should be done by May or thereabouts. I'll put up pictures whenever I get back into my photobucket account!

The only thing I don't like is the name- when I read "Kaye SD", i think "Kay Speed Demon"...

Fortunately yours looks much better.

Woods do strange things. I'm starting to think that the oxidizing properties of bloodwood, purpleheart, paduak, etc. are individual to each piece.

True story- I was in the shop working with a luthier in my area who's been around for quite some time. We were looking for a specific veneer piece and ended up going through an ancient stock of wood in his workshop, which hadn't been touched in quite a while. He said that almost everything in there was from 1990 or earlier... I found a purpleheart board near the bottom of the stack that is still BRIGHT purple. It was under a chunk of paduak dated 1974.

I have, however, noticed a lot of color changes (brown to purple and fading back) in the purple heart I'm currently working with. I'm going to try a UV protective clearcoat and see if that helps the color stay better. However, I've noticed no fading or color changes whatsoever in the bloodwood I have for the fretboards, which has been in my posession for almost a month.

Go figure

Why are you recessing the bridge area? Wouldn't it be easier to angle the neck pocket?

I like the design though. It reminds me of some Neil Moser's stuff.

kp, were you suggesting carbon fiber pickup covers earlier? Cause that would be awesome.

Great thread by the way. I was kind of wondering about this myself... everyone knows the DiMarzio zebra bobbin story, but the part about why people started taking the covers off is always kind of ambiguous

No tone knob on the jazz box?

A cautionary word, I've definitely seen a bass headstock split because it was reamed too small before the bushing were set. Test fit it on a few holes in a test piece and see what you think! Try 21/64 and 5/16 and see what feels best. If it's too small, I'm sure you'll find out.

Very hard, too. I just finished slotting a fretboard made out of it and it took forever. I checked the depth of the miter box with an equally thick piece of rosewood, and the bloodwood was SO much harder than the rosewood to cut.

It's a great looking wood, just make sure your tools are sharp. It's almost as hard as ipe.

Wow! I never thought of that. I'll keep that in mind.

A painted maple neck will look painted. That part is easy. If you like the natural wood look, you might not want to paint it.

It won't feel different from any other clearcoated neck... clearcoat is clearcoat. What it WILL feel different from is an unfinished neck. If you like the unfinished feel, don't paint your neck.

Vs. an unfinished neck, a painted neck will be easier to keep clean.

As far as your fretboard issue, I'd suggest binding rather than painting the side. Look around for some tutorials on binding and see if it looks like something you could do.

I thought it might be kind of cool to do gold pickup covers to match the hardware, but what about a pair of purple bobbin toppers on the emgs? It would look really fake but it might be awesome.

EDIT: Oh yeah. I'm building a guitar.

I slotted the first fretboard, and I practiced shaping another neck for someone's stalled project before I cut these out. Some minor workshop flooding due to a big storm impeded bandsaw usage, so I couldn't cut the necks out yet

Look into some of the info on doing a scarf joint for an angled headstock! It's not too difficult and you won't need a string tree, plus it looks classy.

For the record, even Guitar Center isn't making that much money at it. They were "acquired" by Bain Capital (Mitt Romney's company!) about a year ago, and at the time, they were over 200 million dollars in debt.

I think what he's asking is if he were to have the bridge high enough to set up an idea action with too much neck angle, what problems might arise

My answer would be that comfort would probably be the biggest concern-- I don't think it would hurt the acoustic properties too much, considering that many other stringed instruments have a very high bridge setup with an even steeper neck angle. It might be hard to find a case to accomodate the extra bridge height, too, depending on how much it is.

My guess would be that it's directly related to what Wes said.

If you don't keep up with an unfinished neck, it can start to look crappy.

It follows that...

People who pay a lot of money for an unfinished Warmoth neck and don't keep up with it might compain when it gets dirty and stained and try to get it "repaired" under warrantee. Rather than including some instructions and telling people that not treating their neck right would void their warrantee, they basically just said "you're on your own!"

Just a guess though.

I'd suggest an oil finish, but does the Warmoth warranty even apply, since someone else actually bought the neck?

The only way I can think of that the neck would warp as a result of being unfinished would be if you left it underwater for a while or something . A few coats of oil will add a great looking finish, as well as protection from dirt and moisture, while retaining the feel of an unfinished neck.

I never did, I dont finish any thing until the guitar is completely glued up, not including hardware. With some finishes you can even fret the guitar before finishing.

Makes a lot more sense to me, more so on a set neck where you can shape the heel post-gluing and once the clearcoat is on, sometimes you can't even feel the joint

I don't see much harm in clearcoating the heel on a bolt-on, though. I've done it before, and I think it makes the joint fit tighter, even if you're losing wood-to-wood contact.

No real opinion here since I haven't tried it yet... but thought I could at least chime in to say that I did my share of research and asking questions before arriving at the '89 as the choice for both neck and bridge pickup of a recent purchase. I'm not going to "recommend" it since I have not heard it in action (other than recordings in which the guitarist is known to have used them), but if research is all you end up having to go by, let me just add that I've done my own several hours of research and still concluded that they'd be a safe purchase.

The question that always applies, though is: bridge bucker replacement for what kind of style? Do you have preferences for sound? What sort of territory do you want to be in? I assume by your handle that you're into Metal, but that might be an unfair assumption. If so, though, ask yourself if you need the single-coil mode. If you're only going to use humbucker mode, apparently it's not quite a true '85 if that mode. I'm just saying, know your goal, share it with us, and THEN you can probably get some better advice. Metal people tend to be split over the 85/81 anyhow. Most seem to favour the 81 in bridge, but I'm sure there are advocates for the 85 in bridge.

Greg

I like the 85 in the bridge, myself. The 81 in the neck is so smooth!

But either way, like Greg said, the question is really how much are you going to use the coil tap? If this is a metal Tele, or you play a lot of Dick Dale, I'd say go with the 89, but otherwise, I don't see you using the bridge single coil incredibly often.

And also, you probably know this, but wiring passives and actives together is a pain... you're planning on going with EMG's for the other pickups (if you have them), right?

Looks like book tape to me, but that's probably because I work in a library.

What if you were to do some acrylic pieces?

Like... do a neck thru with semihollow acrylic wings, and load them up with PCB and LEDs and whatever else you want....

That's one hell of an idea!

You should try it!