Andyjr1515

With @Sibob 's neck sorted and, with the remaining bits now arrived, just before the final TLC bits of @wwcringe 's Squier recon, there was a gap wide enough to do the neck two important bits of the dreadnought. First the installation of the pickups. It's interesting - just after coming to the conclusion that the most flexible solution for Matt's studio and live work was to have two outputs, I found out that his present Faith guitar has just that. In my case, it whittled down to the L R Baggs Anthem mic/piezo and the K&K Pure Mini. Now you can probably see why I opted to leave the back off at this stage! The two jacks will be unscrewed and taped to the inside while I do the back binding the finishing, but those are pretty easy to fix in place with arm through the soundhole. With the other stuff, it's difficult to get everything in exactly the right place and securely glued when you can't reach and can't see! The battery fits in a pouch velcro'd to the back. Also not forgetting the all important label! And so, finally, after many dry-fit checks, the glue's on and it's too late to change my mind

Sounds like my post was a tad too late!

Clearly the best way of finding out is to find one and try one (maybe GuitarGuitar would get their Edinburgh one shipped to your nearest branch?) But, design-wise, it should balance fine - and there's a couple of reviews I've found that say that it does. As @ahpook says, there is a sweetspot on bass guitars and electric of where the front strap button sits that is a bit of a 'goldilocks' zone - ie, level with the 12th / 13th fret. It is unlikely, with anything like orthodox designs, that a bass with the strap button here isn't at least going to balance on the strap. This is the 34" Lakland that MusicRadar reviewed: As you can see, the strap button is in that goldilocks zone. The next thing I generally look for is the size of the headstock. Because of the leverage effect, small weight changes at the headstock make BIG differences to the balance. This one is comfortingly small. Another thing I would look for is where the lower waist sits and how wide it is. This affects the balance over the knee. This also looks pretty good to me. And actually, I'm not sure that the Lakland is particularly light-bodied. I can't get the numbers, but comments from various forums seem to indicate that it is not a super-lightweight. This one I designed and built for @Len_derby is less than 6 1/2 lbs and this one - following the same principles above - balances just fine : By the way, the MusicRadar review that the Lakland photo came from was comparing 4 semi-basses. They said that the Lakland was in a complete different league to the other 3 ...

When's bin day your part of the world? Wednesday?

And finally ready to return: Machine heads refitted and nut lowered ( @Sibob may want to tweak them when he resets it but it is at a level where those tweaks should be pretty minor). Because the nut / nut slot is lower, I've chiselled a dropaway angle behind it to ensure the strings have a clear run to the machine heads: It'll be in Monday's post back to @Sibob . No doubt we'll all find out if it's done the trick or not soon

Indeed! It's got half a chance. The fretboard is now completely flat with the trussrod loose so the full movement is now available to counteract the string tension. But fingers crossed anyway

Thanks. It might be...but only if it sorts the problem Fingers crossed!

Frets all done. Just have to reset the nut, pop back the tuners and this can be shipped back to @Sibob

And trimmed. Next job is levelling, recrowning and polishing the frets and resetting the nut. And then...well then I think it's done

Great save! Excellent job

Couldn't find one. The flattest radius from the people who seem to have the widest range (G&W) only go up to 20" and this is 23.5". So I've taken my 20" blocks (I have an extra wide one, perfect for sanding the wider 5 and 6 string fretboards) and flattened the radius a touch on both of them with a few strips of masking tape, progressively overlaid towards the centre. According to my calipers it's as close as makes no difference. As I said earlier, it seems an odd radius for Yamaha to pick - 500mm /20" would have been perfectly fine to play. I would defy any player to notice the difference.

Like a lot of these kinds of thing, it takes a lot of trial and error until you find out what works for you. For me, the trick of clamping a radius block on after hammering in made all the difference to the ease and quality of the seating. Once you've gone through the learning curve, and got the one or two tools or jigs that make the difference, it isn't difficult - just a bit tedious in that you have to do it 21 times or so!

And onto the fretting of @Sibob 's neck. One of the wiser investments in recent years has been a pair of proper fret tang-cutting pliers: There are many ways of fretting, but what works for me is: Cut the tangs and length Check the slot clearance and depth Lightly triangular file the top of the slot Run a small bead of titebond along the tang Hammer one side, then the other side, then the middle Wipe off the squeezeout Clamp a radius block over the newly hammered fret Move to next fret You get into a routine, but it's still a bit of a tedious job, so time for a coffee with 12 done and 9 to go: What was nice about the way the frets came out is that the tang-slot filling, done when the neck was made, survived on all frets, so one less job Once the frets are all in, they will be left overnight for the glue to fully harden and then the ends clipped and the bevels filed. Then it is just a case of levelling, re-crowning where necessary and polishing up. Finally, the fretboard will be polished back up, the nut lowered and refitted (remember, the nut fretboard end is now 0.7mm lower than it used to be) and then it should be able to go back to Si.

Looks good from over here

Bridge glued and holes taper-reamered. I double checked that it hadn't moved at all and, happily, it's still where it's supposed to be Next job fitting the pickups and then the back can go on (I know - you're supposed to do it the other way round...)

As @Christine says, for any own design, it is pretty essential to draw it out - preferably full-size - to check the geometry, work out the cable runs, etc and make sure, for example, that top chambers and cutaways don't clash with back chambers and cutaways ;) Hand sketch is often all it needs. Ref the blank thickness - as always, there are a few ways of tackling this. In broad terms, then yes, @owen - the more dramatic the curve, then the more the overall depth of the body becomes. So if you were carving out of solid, for a given thickness of body, then it would need to be deeper by the difference in these two distances: There are some disadvantages in carving from solid - mainly relating to the difficulty in getting the control wire and pickup wire channels in the right place and also the cost of thicker pieces of timber - but it is entirely feasible. If you are carving this kind of depth, by the way, then you probably will need to hog out the concave with something other than micro-planes ;) If multi-piece blanks are OK for you, then one option is to have two blanks - either of the same timber or of differing timbers: Or, to reduce the amount of hogging out and resulting waste of wood, you could use a depth equivalent of through-neck wings at the back (and clearly, triangular section wings would be even more efficient): In my lightweight builds, I use a variation of this and go for a through neck and take that concept one stage further by using more standard through-neck wings, but deeper than the neck (which is shown in blue here): So to conclude, there are many ways of skinning the cat (although they all feel much the same to the cat...)

By the way, I once did run into the radius issue with inlays. This SG-ish electric 6-string I built for our band's bassist (yes, I know) had that problem...which is why at the upper frets, the trapezoid frets become square frets - the spiky curved bits simply sanded away!:

Not at all a stupid question. It was one of those calculated risks. I could see that the inlays were Mother of Pearl which usually starts off as blanks of between 1.5 to 2 mm. I was going to take off maximum 0.7mm either end so it was then about how much had already been sanded away when the neck was originally finished. And whether the original blank had been closer to 1.5mm or 2mm! Where you can get caught out is that for a wide inlay, a fretboard radius can quickly lose you that thickness. But this has a very flat radius (quoted as 23 5/8" which is a very un-Far East measurement). So as I was sanding, I just kept my eye on the 1st fret inlay and the upper fret ones. You can generally see if they are getting thin because they start going bluish quite a way before you break through. These were fine

It's been a while! One of the great things about doing threads is that, when family stuff gets in the way of building, you can look back and see where you'd got to And so, of the bridge-at-an-angle issue, I went for the easy option and just squared up the outer lines of the bridge, leaving the correct saddle slant as per my little jig. I triple-checked the measurements, re-fitted the saddle angle jig and then drilled two 4.5mm holes through the top E and bottom E pegholes to position the bridge: Those who follow my builds know that I tend to go off-piste from time to time against the 'conventional' methods. This is one of those times. Generally, you would put the back on and apply the finish before attaching the bridge, but I want to leave the back off for the moment. To attach it, first thing I did was put the 4.5mm drills in from the back, to use the shanks as my locators: Then put some masking tape on and scored round the bridge and removed the tape from area that was going to be glued. Then scraped and sanded back to fresh wood for that area: Then applied the titebond glue and used my long-reach clamp and a small home-made jig designed to be able to apply clamping pressure to the two wings of the bridge: Finally, while the glue was still wet but with the bridge firmly clamped in position, removed the two locating peg drill bits with a pair of pliers: And that means that tomorrow, the electrics should be able to be fitted and the back glued on!

You know me - I LOVE challenging the conventional way of doing things. And I LOVE the idea of a huge piece of wood belting round on a large wood lathe being crafted by a skilled carver. And I AM intrigued with what could be done with that concept. But I don't think it's the right option for a first bass build. And I think @Christine is right, I'm pretty sure the geometry would be completely wrong for a bass. And I don't fancy shaking hands with a prosthetic arm next time we meet at the Midlands Bass Bash (however good prosthetic arms are nowadays)

When taking frets out, a bit of heat helps And then an essential item - proper fret removal pincers. They are flat ground and the edges are sharp so go under the fret and lift without damaging the fretboard: You basically nibble down the length of the fret and let the pincers do the lifting. Doesn't take long before they are all out: Then is the turn of the long levelling beam: I use a 2m piece of aluminium box section with emery cloth stuck with two-sided tape. My GP would be delighted...Andyjr1515 is at last getting off his fat a*s and doing some hard physical exercise! Hand sanding even a 1mm bow is bloody hard work! I use the old school chalk trick to see how it's progressing and making sure I am sanding the nut end and the heel end at a similar rate (because the heel is twice as wide as the nut, it is VERY easy to end up under sanding the heel end and over sanding the nut end): After a couple of hours (yes - really. If this was ebony, it would be a couple of days!), we have it flat and re-radiused: Here is the 'before' against the straight-edge, laid from nut to heel. The gap you can see is from the nut at the right to around the 7th fret at the left: And this is the 'after' - which is what it should be like, ie, no gap: Next job will be re-fretting. Probably tomorrow if I've got enough fretwire in my bits box...

Ref @Sibob 's woes on his trussrod maxing out, after a few PM discussions, he's sent it my way. I've just added it to this thread if anyone is interested

While I'm waiting for the knobs to arrive for Tom's Squier, I've kicked off the initial work for another small job - this time for @Sibob Those of you who follow the Yamaha BB thread will know that he's had a problem with the neck on his BB415. Some kind soul suggested that I might be able to do something with it and so he sent the neck to me a week or so ago. Basically, @Sibob couldn't get enough adjustment on the trussrod to achieve a decent flatness of neck. I love Yamahas, but I'm not keen on the trussrods they tend to use. The love comes from the fact that ALL of their instruments are just, well, right. I play a Yamaha sax - and that is as good as every Yamaha guitar and bass I've ever played. Just look at the carve on this neck: It is as smooth as silk and it feels great! But - the trussrods are single acting and have a relatively small adjustment range. So they rely on the neck being flat with the trussrod loosened and no strings, then the adjustment is enough to counteract the bow resulting from the string tension. So - full loosened, it should be flat This is the centre section against my flat beam of Sibob's - fully loosened and no strings: I checked with some feeler gauges: It's bowed to a gap of 0.7mm. So, yes - the trussrod can be tightened to make it flat...just. But then add the strings and it bows some more and there is no adjustment left in the rod to counteract it. In cases where there is a relatively small amount of extra movement you can sometimes sort it by adding a washer under the trussrod adjuster, or by levelling the frets. But with frets at 1.3mm high and a gap of 0.7mm to flatten, there wouldn't be any fret to speak of left either end once it had been sanded flat. So the action is: Remove the frets Flatten the fretboard itself Refret Level and recrown So that's what I'll be doing over the coming week or so

OK My take on it, then. There are other tools that could be used to speed the process up or reduce the effort a bit, but - for 'reasonable' timbers such as mahogany, Sapele, poplar, walnut, etc - you could comfortably carve this type of shape in a body blank in an afternoon: ...using nothing more than these: The 4 steel things are Micro-plane blades. I have a flat one and a curved one in Coarse and in Fine. You can buy them at Axminster. The gloves are because, for this kind of carve, I find that it is MUCH easier NOT to use the handle that these micro-planes are supposed to fit into. Instead I hold them each end with stout gloves (because each of those teeth are razor sharp) and draw them, following the grain, down the length of the blank. The black thing is simply a former (cut out of an old exercise book cover - cardboard would be just as good) with the outer and inner radii so I know whether I am getting close and even. You will find the convex curve p**s easy with most medium woods. The concave takes a bit more effort if you are using these tools only. Then, to remove lumps, bumps and micro-plane marks, I would use cabinet scrapers (also wearing stout gloves!): Again, Axminster sell them but you should be able to get a set of 4 for less than a tenner in B&Q / Homebase / etc. Don't worry about sharpening them - they will come with the vital edge burr from new and that will last sharp enough for at least one body. Just recycle when you're done You would generally use the rectangular ones for the convex and the 'gooseneck' one for the concave. Again, you hold each side and draw it across the wood at a slight angle, down the length of the body (we can guide you when you get to that bit). The tiny burr at the edges acts like a mini plane and scrapes away the lumps and bumps. The good thing about using the basics above is that it all happens a teeny bit at a time. Treat it as a work-out. The trouble with the myriad of other ways of removing bulk quickly is that it is very, very easy to take - at best - chunks out you may not want to take out or - at worst - chunks out of yourself you definitely won't want to take out So that's my recommendation. However - don't start hacking wood until we've all had a chance to point out some of the geometry stuff and practicality stuff (like the depth of the electrical components!). There are some particular things to consider with double carves that are not covered in most (any?) YouTube tutorials, etc. This is exciting!!!!!

I'm pretty sure it was just a handy humbucker from Tom's bits box Sounds great!