A Little Like the Holidays

I made some choices.  I summoned my courage and ordered them.  It was expensive.  I had to keep reminding myself of two things:

1. This is a lifetime dream project of mine.  I don't do this often at all.  The last time I made a large non-essential purchase was about 3 years ago.
2. This gets me around half-way through the equipment purchases.  After this I just need body wood, finishing supplies, and electronics.

Here we go:  Fender-scale compound radius fingerboard from Steward MacDonald.  The slot nearest the camera is the wider nut slot (1/8" I believe).  I will have to widen that for...

Fender LSR Roller nut:

Steinberger Gearless Tuners will allow me to have a flat headstock and pull the strings right down to the headstock face (like a set of staggered-height Sperzels will do), increasing the break angle over the nut to prevent any strings from popping out:

Schaller 475, flat-mount, top-loading bridge.  I've had one of these for years on an old Yamaha, screwed to a plate over the old tremolo cavity.  It works well.  Shown with included spacer!

StewMac Hot Rod double-action truss rod, with spoke nut adjuster.  At some point I may analyze how these things work in a separate post.  There are two brass blocks on either end, and the threaded rods go into them.  They must be counter-threaded in mystical ways, because when you turn the spoke nut, the rods tension into a curve and the blocks follow.  The spoke nut will be about flush with the heel of the neck.  There will be a slot at the heel of the neck to allow adjusting the truss rod at any time through the strings.

Six feet of StewMac's widest, largest fret wire (in 2 foot lengths) and a medium/wide fret file to crown them.  I got the biggest fret wire because I want this guitar to have a "light touch", and because after I get done "leveling" the frets I'll probably have to take them to a luthier to unscrew my screwups...these won't ever run out of material.  The fret file is smooth on the flat sides and active on the edges, where you put them over the fret after you've ground it down and use it to restore the fret's round contour.

I also received two band saw blades, the first of which I talked about (and tallied up) in a previous post:

• 80" x 3/8" 14TPI NeoType Lenox from toolcenter.com.  The make these from rolls of raw blade to length.
• 80" x 1/4" 14TPI metal cutting blade from a friend who works at Zona Tool Company.  I may be checking this company out for one of their "razor saws" which look like inexpensive fine blades that I could use to help widen the nut slot for the LSR nut.  They seem to have quite a lot of neat stuff.

So you see, I've chosen:

• Flat Fender-style headstock
• 10"-14" compound radius fretboard
• Super jumbo nickel steel frets
• Fixed bridge

Now I really have to make this thing, no?  Let's talk about cost:

• Nut from amazon.com Guitar and Gear site (yes, seriously):  $30
• Fingerboard, bridge, tuners, fret wire, fret file, truss rod from StewMac: $300 (gulp)

TOTAL COST SO FAR:

$330 (this step) + $262 (previous steps) = $592

Wow.  Well this fits in roughly with my estimate of about $1000 to do this thing.  If wood for the body is about $100, and finishing supplies are about $50, that leaves me about $300 for electronics.  Of course I could've purchased a better guitar for less, which was never the point.  But still, it hurts.  I feel like I'm blowing the yearly incomes of several developing-world citizens on a whim.  There may be a special place in hell for that.