Closest So Far to Being Done With This Guitar Part IV!

Okay, control cavity covers.  Working with acrylic is a pain, but not as bad as the hardware store guy made it sound.  I used a rabitting router bit to make the inset or whatever you call it, then I laid the acrylic on the cavity and drew the pattern, then I cut it with a hacksaw, then I sanded it until it fit as good as it's going to.  The downside: doing these three cavities probably took me 5 hours.

You can see where the two cavities join.  The cavities connect this way because my guitar-designing skills are not so powerful.  And that shitty battery is fabulous-looking, no?

I made the front jack cover the same way but with aluminum.  It's gnarly because I didn't want to buy a flat of aluminum wide enough, so I pounded a piece of angle flat.  Yeah!  Also note the switch mount.  The dominant artistic theme that I'm trying to evoke here is "crudely-formed pieces of aluminum screwed randomly to a brown block of wood." I think I achieved that look perfectly.

The knobs are certainly not final.  See the master volume to the side of the bridge?  It's different because the other kind wouldn't fit there.  Genius! Also those speed knobs look shitty on this guitar.  I'll be searching for something a bit nicer.  Or making them, more like.  Another adventure.

Playing Impressions and To Do List

To get the neck pickup working I had to flip a connector that I had wrong on the EMG pickup buss.  Then everything was well.  This guitar sounds good - the neck and body don't resonate much, so it has acres of sustain.  Also because of the lack of resonance, it lacks a certain amount of "tone".  It's a little too clean and plain.  But you know what?  I mean to do that.  That's why I picked a composite neck, thinking that the two materials (wood and fiberglass/epoxy) would fight each other an resonate with nothing.  It's why I picked a solid bridge.  It's why I picked EMG pickups - for their low string pull.  It's why the body is a large, very thick slab of what passes for mahogany these days.

I wanted a guitar primarily for high gain chord work, with massive sustain, that could do some nice cleans, and I think I got it.  I've decided to concentrate all the controls in the main mahogany slab.  That will give me the freedom to do whatever I want with the body shape, or even leave it the way it is (though I would like an leg rest and one for my arm as well).  Why shouldn't my guitar be a block with little sticks hanging off it holding up wood bits like a Tinker Toy atom?  Let everyone else build more Telecasters and SGs and LPS and Strats and whatnot.  Make mine different.

Now I have to do a bunch of things, and in order not to waste strings, I have to remember to do them all at once:

1. Cut the humbucker springs by 1/3 or so, particularly the neck
2. Mount the pickup selector mini-switch (a DPDP on-on-on strapped into SPDT center-on) on a piece of aluminum near the master volume
3. Mount the output jack.  It can't go on the end of the guitar because I want this thing to stand up when I lean it against something.
4. Route reliefs around the rear cavity edges to receive cover plates - at the same time I ought to clean up the cavities and make them even
5. Fix up a dead note up near 16 or 17 on the high E, where the edge of that fret is way too low.  I missed this in leveling and I'm not sure how I want to fix it:  I can re-level the frets (then re-crown them and re-polish them) or I can level just the upper half, sloping down gently, like some instructions say.  The problem with that second one is that if I do that, and it doesn't get enough material, I'm in trouble.
6. Thin the back of the neck?  I've got about 10/64s back of the truss rod, and the neck is thick.  If I had had to force relief into the neck with the rod, it would be pushing on that material, but I think it's pushing on the other side instead (because the strings are acting on the neck well).  Still, I think I'd rather be safe than sorry.  The neck plays well.
7. Figure out what to do about rests for leg and arm

All Together Now! A Guitar is Born...

I drilled a 3/8" hole with a spade bit from the neck pickup to the bridge pickup for the neck pickup wires.  Like a true genius I allowed the drill bit extender to gouge the surface of my neck pocket.  It looks crappy but no harm done I guess.  Dang.

I drilled 5/16" holes for the control pots.  The top one will be the master volume, and it will have a switch next to it.  The others, behind the bridge, are individual volume/tone pairs for the pickups.

I routed like a fiend, using the same template I used for the pickups.  I cleaned up some messes with a good sharp chisel (my new best friend in the shop).  The bottom cavity is for the master volume.  Are you wondering what that semi-circular relief is for?  Thinking maybe it's clearance for a potentiometer?  Think again - it's damage from an angry router bit that I prettied up somewhat.  Wonderful!

Here's my genius pickup mounting technique.  I made aluminum bits to span the pickup routes and function like a pickup ring does.

EMG solderless wiring is pretty cool.  Again, the uninhabited cavity on the left is for the master volume when I receive it in the mail.  And the pickup selector switch when I figure out how to mount one.

The guitar body assembled:

I played it.  The bridge pickup is working and the neck pickup is not...time for troubleshooting.  It sounds very nice, I believe.  I'll reserve judgement until I hear the neck pickup.

Pickup Routes and Bridge Hole Fix

I screwed up the location of the bridge.  I had it about 2 mm too close to the bass side.  This was forcing the roller adjusters on the treble saddle all the way to the edge, putting a sideways bend in the strings over the saddles, and pissing me off.  So I got myself a 1/4" tapered plug cutter and made 6 plugs - because the plug cutter doesn't make them deep enough go all the way down the 1/4" holes I redrilled through the existing screw holes.  Then I put Titebond in each hole, put one plug all the way down (forcing it with the end of a 5mm allen key and a hammer), and repeated with half off another plug (the thicker half - remember, it's a tapered plug cutter).  About a 1/16 of an inch remained above the face of the guitar body as the glue dried.

The it was time to make the pickup routes.  I found this very difficult.  First I attempted to make a template from a piece of scrap drawer-front oak I had around:

The plan was to draw the pickup outline and, because I only have a 1/2" diameter flush-cut router bit, drill 1/4" holes in the corners first to more correctly match the pickup corner radius.  Well, all that was doable, but when I routed the center of the oak, things went sour.  I gouged it up, it tore chunks from the grain - it broke my template.  So I set my sights on something a little more tractable: 1/4" luan plywood.  Easy to work, I figured, and strong enough to run the flush-cut router bit against.

I didn't cut the pickup ears into the template.  That I'd do later.  I stuck the template to the guitar body with double-sided carpet tape (wonderful stuff, wish I'd discovered it sooner!) and pre-drilled the 1/4" corner holes.  Then I went to town with the router:

Then I put the pickup into the hole upside-down and marked the ears.  I used a 3/16" brad-point bit to rough out 3 small holes inline in the outline.  Then I whacked it with the chisel, which I had to sharpen; the long piece of glass with sandpaper glued to it proved excellent for this, in fact that's what I'll probably use that glass for in the future - 3 or 4 sections with different grits.

I'm tired.

Fret Leveling

My pickup-expectation paralysis broke finally, today, and I decided to make myself useful.

I used a cheap 24" foot aluminum level for this job.  It has a nice straight edge, and it's just a bit longer than the fretboard.  I got some fabric carpet tape, which is advertised as being easily removable.  I already had some 320 grit sandpaper.

I put the carpet tape on the level 1" strips of the sandpaper onto the carpet tape.  I adjusted the neck as flat as possible.  I began to take run the level across the frets, making every (poor, I'm sure) attempt at preserving the conical fretboard radius.  I got it to where nearly every fret had a flattened top except for the bass side of the second, and a couple up around 17/18.  Those weren't getting touched.  To go faster, I used the same course file I used for fret end trimming.

Finally, they were all flattened to some degree.  Then I marked them with black marker and used my fret crowning file to make the fret tops round again.  I'm glad I bought that one file.  I couldn't have done the crowning without it.

Next is to dress the fret ends and polish the frets.

Here are a couple of sites that do a far better job of describing this than I can:

http://www.skguitar.com/SKGS/sk/fretcrowning.htm
http://www.fretnotguitarrepair.com/repair/acoustic-guitar/fret-leveling.php
http://www.stevesguitarsite.com/FRETLEVEL&CROWN.HTML

Attaching the Neck, Stabilizing the Basswood, and....Guitar?

I took the day off today because I've got a couple days to burn before the end of the year.  Also I was hoping the USPS would deliver the EMG pickups.  Alas - they did not.  My postage consultant drove right on by without even providing me with any junk mail.  I swore out loud, loudly.

Saturday and Sunday I attached the neck using 10-24 steel threaded inserts from McFeely's.  The reasoning here is that the basswood is soft and shreds easily:  the last thing I need is for the neck screws to tear right out, despite the structure provided by the composite layers.  I would use 6 inserts to spread the load even more.  The thought of this operation had me sweating and twitching, because I would be drilling 6 large holes in the heel of my neck, the neck that has taken me 9 months to make, and there would be very little chance of going back if I goofed it up.

I drilled through the body  into the neck, then widened the holes for the inserts.  Driving the inserts in was an imprecise process and it pushed some of the upper-layer basswood around, but nothing fatal.  I countersunk the body for the screws, which I alluded to in a previous out-of-order post.

Then I put some of that thin Zap CA around the threaded inserts and into the tuner holes to stabilize the soft basswood - worked fine, though I did have to run a solvent-wet neck bolt into the inserts to clear out some CA/sawdust crust.  I also hit the screw holes for the LSR nut, but I tested that process on 1/16" holes drilled in a piece of junk laminate - I didn't want to find out that the CA completely plugged them.  I needn't have worried.  Thin doesn't even begin to describe that stuff.

So here we are, Monday.  After I didn't get the pickups, I sulked for quite a while.  My whole day - ruined!  Waaaaah!

Then I got to work.  Time to string this thing.  I had a set of D'Addario 10s around for my S-500.  I reinstalled the saddles that I removed from the bridge in order to screw the bridge to the body.  I installed the LSR nut with all 8 provided shims, after reaming out the 1/16" screw holes to clear any wayward CA.  I installed the tuners after reaming out the holes again with a 3/8" bit to clear out the CA crust. The tuners took me a while to figure out but ended up performing perfectly.

Then I tuned the guitar by ear to my S-500.  I tightened up the truss rod to take out the relief put in by the strings (I'm grateful the strings are able to work the neck).  Bridge:

Nut and headstock:

Truss rod spoke nut:

Neck bolts:

And...guitar?

How does it sound, without the pickups?  Well, it sounds thin.  I'm not impressed.  But when I push on the body (into the carpet or the top of the work bench) to damp it down, it deepens up nicely.  Clearly I gotta put some more heavy wood on this thing.  I was toying with the idea of making a Steinberger inspired body, but that clearly is not happening, and not just because of the resonance.  I'm not comfortable with how it rested in my hands.  So it's going to get more guitarlike.  But I do like the face that it's square on bottom, so it doesn't fall over - that's what I've always liked about the Vs.

Body Shaping and Headstock Thickness

First I had to make the headstock thicker for the tuners.  1/2" wasn't going to give the tuner nuts enough to grab onto.  I epoxied a layer of 1/16" basswood onto the face of the headstock in an interesting fashion:

I figured I'd add to the front face of the headstock because I already had some extra string break angle over the standard Fender headstock.  This addition is raised and might look interesting.  Why not?  We'll see how it goes.

Then I set about to fix up the mahogany body.  First I sanded the glue drippings off the join lines.  Then I opened up the neck pocket for high-fret access.  Then I evened up the end of the body.  Then, because the body is 2" thick, quite a bit thicker than your average, I graded down to the neck pocket.  I did this with the bandsaw and a 1/2" skip-tooth blade.  For the first time I felt I really understand what a band saw is all about - this was like doing geometry, like sculpting with a laser.  The combination of easily-sawable wood with a blade perfectly suited to the task is a dream.

The end of the body is about 1" thick, which is the thickness of my S-500 under the neck pocket.  I re-cut the countersinks for the neck bolts.

Doesn't that look cool?