Andyjr1515

No probs - here it is: You wind the knob at the back until the spindle rises to the top, exposing the string hole at its base: You thread the string through the hole and pull tight while clamping it by rotating the 'T' bar at the top (the T is a simple screwed clamp): You then rotate the knob at the back in the opposite direction, which pulls the spindle down into the housing and takes the string with it, tightening it as it goes. This is the 4th string now at full pitch: Clearly, the far end of the string can be clipped at the other side of the spindle but, while I am fitting am removing the strings regularly, it is easier to leave them long. It is a very clever design and they are well made: They are as smooth as silk. No backlash and very accurate and controllable tuning. They can be placed anywhere, unlike conventional tuners that have to be close enough to the headstock side for the adjuster clearance. And so, the headstock can be any shape you like. The string is always 'at the bottom of the peg', maximising break angle over the nut

Even simpler than that, but same principle. I'll take a few photos when I have a moment

Yes - @jrixn1 is right. The concept only really works for thin strings and hence the max gauge. The strings are passed through the clamp spindle at the top, pulled taut and clamped, and then the spindle is drawn down into the body of the tuner, bringing the string with it and increasing the tension as it goes. This becomes more challenging, the bigger the string.

If the fret slots are being cut before fitting to the neck, then yes. And if the frets themselves are going to be fitted before gluing to the neck, then especially yes Just to explain: Fretboard glued before slotting - structurally, the board can be as thin as you like because the neck provides the structural integrity Fretboard glued after slotting but before frets are fitted - then the extra thickness below the bottom of the slot is only needed to hold it all together while you handle and clamp it. It depends on the wood, but down to 1mm remaining after the fret slots have been cut would normally suffice. If the frets are fitted before the fretboard is glued to the neck, then it needs a bit more remaining thickness...but the exact amount is a bit of a judgement call. Here, the remaining thickness needs to withstand the side forces (and if hammering, percussive shock) that hammering or pressing in the frets makes. I would personally tend towards 2mm remaining at the bottom of the slot. So, and this is only my own view - for a flat board - given a tang slot depth of, say, 2.5mm, then I would be considering 3.5mm as the absolute minimum if I was fretting after gluing to the neck, and 4.5mm as the absolute minimum if I was fretting before gluing to the neck. In terms of radiused necks, I personally aim for 6mm-7mm at the thickest point, depending on the radius. Other folks may have different and valid views and experiences, of course

The Steinberger tuners are pretty easy to fit, although this little pin hole does have to be in the right place! And tuners temporarily fitted for me to be able to set up a couple of strings to position and line up the tune-o-matic bridge before the scary insert marking and drilling! Still some more curve carving to do, but I was pleased how this is beginning to look:

For the tuners, I am using the wonderful Steinberger gearless 'banjo' tuners. Remarkably, the Epiphone Firebirds - for a short period of time - had these fitted as standard! I reckon, if you could find one on ebay, you could take the tuners off and sell the tuners at a hefty profit! One of the splendid things about them is that they are cylindrical and strings are clamped dead centre and so they can be grouped very much closer together than standard tuners - to the point that I won't have to add 'wings' to the headstock. Keeping all the string runs straight, this is what I came up with: And, to keep the body vibe, I wondered if I could do a cutaway plate, something like this. BTW, you can see here I had already popped a couple of ebony sides on in the expectation of needing small maple extensions...which I now realise I don't need : So, with a piece of the offcut from the body ebony, I gave it a try. Before gluing the plate on, in addition to backing it with a maple and black veneer, I cut the trussrod access out of the plate. It will be magnetically held as a flush cover and thus be pretty unobtrusive. Here it is out: ...and here it is in place: Next jobs include, a little more body carving, temp-fitting the tuners, fitting the T-o-M and stoptail, stringing up, 'live' shaping of the neck next time Alex is free.

Like a Saville Row suit, the final neck shape will be arrived at after a number of 'fittings'. What I will do is carve the broad shape and then string it up so that Alex can play it between me scraping whispers of timber away with a cabinet scraper and repeating that until the shape is just right for him. But for that first rough cut I use a combination of spokeshave, razor plane and card scrapers. It doesn't take long to get the rough shape : And then, to be able to fit the strings, I'm going to have to fit the bridge, but to fit the bridge, I'm going to need to fit the tuners...and to fit the tuners I'm going to have to work out what I'm going to do with the headstock!

Bin there...done that...

Ah...milk stout! I wish. It's actually MrsAndyjr1515's ceramics glazes that she has the audacity to put onto her my shelves!

Cutting the pickup chambers meant that I could do a mockup to talk to Alex what his preference for the position of the controls is before I cut the control chamber: And then the control chamber could be cut and the carve continued at the back - this time switching to the trusty gooseneck card scraper: Next was fitting the trussrod, cap and gluing the fretboard after laminating it with a maple and a black veneer to give me a demarcation line: Time to start the neck carve and then blend that in with the continuing body carve.

As mentioned above, it is because the whole scale has been moved back and inch or so that the upper frets are not reachable. This is one of the advantages of it being a custom build for a particular player. To get better access with the better balance could have been achieved by a deeper cutaway...but then the 'Essence of Firebird' starts evaporating rapidly - and Alex doesn't, and tells me he doesn't ever intend to, play up at the dusty end but, instead, prefers retaining a passing nod to the lower horn of his Epiphone. Once I've finished the carve, my guess is that he will be able to do top string bends up to around 19th fret but no further. And so a few jobs I can do in between continuing morphing towards the final shape. One of those is the Humbucker pickup chambers. As with the weight relief, chambers, I prefer to use a router only to deepen a chamber with a fully captive flush bearing bit. So I start off drilling the corners using a drill 1mm dia larger than the radii of the pickup and leg corners: Then I hog out with a forstner right to the very edge of the pencil marks: Then I remove the forstner 'waves' with sharp chisel and mallet and get the finished dimension to around 10mm depth to act as a guide for the router bearing: And then, and only then, I get the router out with fully captive top-bearing bit to clean up the sides and achieve full final depth: To my admitted surprise, the rout slot I cut for the cables before adding the ebony top did line up in the right places. Phew!

Yes to curved but no to thinnest. This one is going to be quite chunky and quite heavy. I've got some more carving to do on the back trying to take a bit of weight out forward of the C of G but probably won't be able to lose 1/2lb that I would like to.

So why are the body wings so deep? Well - because the body cross section is going to have some curves. Mind you, that will mean a LOT of carving - and I will creep up on the final shape and let the guitar show where it wants to go... Here comes in play one of my favourite hand-tools - the Veritas Pull-shave. I think it's designed for scooping out wooden chair seats, but it's ideal for this kind of job: But I also use the block plane, razor planes and cabinet scrapers. Off and on over a few days, it's starting to take shape. Carve here is probably 50% done for the body. In between carving sessions, I also added frets to the (still unglued) fretboard:

I cut the top ebony around the pencilled line of the fretboard end which allowed me to lay the fretboard on the angled neck and position the top. I drilled a couple of positioning holes in the middle of the pickup positions which, with the addition a couple of kebab sticks will stop the top from floating around as it's being clamped when the glue is applied: That meant I could check that the neck angle is going to be correct for the height of a standard tune-o-matic roller bridge: And so what about the end of the fretboard that is hanging in mid air? Well, of course the offcut from the neck blank when I cut the neck angle in the first place is going to be the correct angle. So I will be able to cut a short ramp from this I will also be adding a demarcation stripe of maple between the alder and ebony: And so, with the kebab sticks positioning everything until the clamps were all on and then removed before the glue set, the clamps can now go on! :

Thanks, Rob I was in the same camp for a long time - and the things that transformed my life were: - learning how to sharpen a chisel blade - learning how to sharpen a plane blade - finding a worksurface that wasn't going to move around (ie an alternative to a Black and Decker Workmate), especially when trying to cut timber with a hand plane. It was like a whole new universe opening up in front of me

Before fitting the top, I have to cut the slot for the fretboard, and before I can do that I have to cut the taper, and before I can do that, I have to slot the fretboard as, in my jig, that is a LOT easier if you are starting with parallel sides. So slotting the fretboard was next job. I use another G&W tool - their fretting mitre jig: In ebony, it is pretty hard work, but over the day all were done. Then I could both taper the board and also add a couple of mother of pearl swifts at the 12th before I fret it. I tapered the board and marked in pencil where I would eventually need to 'intercept' the ebony top. The swifts are pencilled freehand onto the sliver of mother of pearl and cut out using a jewellers saw. I then pencil round the inlays onto the ebony and carefully route out to the inlays depth using the precision base for my Dremel with a 1mm bit. I double check that they fit and then I will fill the chambers with epoxy mixed with ebony sanding dust and firmly press the inlays in. And finish with a final sand with the radius block As always, thanks for looking!

I want as much of the body weight to be towards the rear, but don't want it to be overall too heavy, so a couple of weight-relieving chambers in the front horns will be helpful. I like any use of router to be fully captive, so use the same approach that I use for pickup chambers... I start with a Forstner bit to hog out the bulk: Then use chisels and carpenters mallet to accurately cut the outline to around 10 mm deep: And then, and only then, use a top-bearing router bit to smooth the sides and cut to final depth: And, as I have the router out, I cut the channel that will be between the two pickups and through to the controls chamber for the cable runs:

With the neck blank done, I could start trial-fitting the wings and top. I joined the book-matched ebony top and cut out the broad shape. I also cut the alder back wings slightly oversize and a couple more strips of ebony between them and the neck and dry fitted them to make sure everything was going to end up in the right place: The ebony will have a sheet of constructional maple veneer (1.5mm) as a demarcation: All good so out came the sash-clamps: The neck is the top face of the original billet and the length between the top wing front join to the tail is angled the 3 degrees to give me the required neck angle. Double check that I've got it right before the next stage:

I have found that radiusing an ebony fretboard by hand is a sure and certain journey towards insanity. Why do think I've ended up as such a weird word-not-allowed-ker?

This is going to be a through-neck and so the first thing to do is, generally, to sort the neck. 'Sort' means choose the timbers, assemble the laminates, incorporate the neck angle into the blank, calculate the headstock angle, calculate the body depth and the neck depth... ...but you can't calculate the neck depth until you know exactly what the fretboard thickness is. So, actually, that's where I started - by radiusing the ebony fretboard blank using the excellent G&W router jig: Then fifteen minutes sanding with a sanding block removes the router marks: So now I can do all the neck calcs and cut the maple/ebony/maple blank: The neck angle is around 3 degrees, starting from where the top body 'horn' meets the neck, and I generally opt for a 10 degree headstock angle.

All of the Wals I've worked on have had an integrated shim (ie an angled shim integrated with (glued onto) the end of a square-cut heel). I suspect that it is part of the routine final-finishing/set up process. A much more sound solution than angling the solid heel itself or having a loose shim that can get misplaced.

It looks stunning, @funkle Great, great job on that body.

I should say that this build is very specifically for Alex's (s-i-l) playing style - it wouldn't suit many players, and especially players who need decent access to the dusty end...because this one will have almost none In order to get a better balancing guitar, I am bringing the whole scale rearward - quite a lot! And, so that Alex can at least reach some of the upper frets, I'm also moving the lower horn back. Yes - I know... that is one of the primary design features of the original...I told you it was only going to be 'essence of'!!! Finally, it is going to have some curves - and a slab of the figured ebony on top. This was an early sketch: I've opted for Alder for the back and this is broadly how the two sections are planned to look. As the saying goes, 'What could possibly go wrong?'

You'll be pleased to hear that, with the latest forum update having finally satisfied Norton not to block the site for me on my system, that I've already started posting progress on this build on Guitarchat. And, as it's a 6-string electric, do feel free to ignore it here - I will fully understand My building has slowed down quite a bit - partly the pesky arthritis in my hands and partly the usual life's distractions - but there are one or two projects that have been on my list for years that I simply have never had the time to get round to. And this is one of them. It is a variation on the theme of the iconic Gibson Firebird electric guitar. 'Essence of' is probably a closer description as it aims to tackle some of the compromises of the original and is being built for a specific player and the specific way he plays. And that player is my son-in-law who plays the excellent Epiphone Firebird. And can I make something better than an Epiphone Firebird? Of course not...but I can make it different - lighter (maybe) - easier to fret in the specific fretboard zones he plays - better on the strap and over the knee - less (hopefully no) neckdive - less flat-bodied It's also a chance to use this type of ebony again for those of you who saw the build thread a year or so back where I used it last: So off we go!

Generally, there is a nut and - without changing or re-cutting the nut - the thicker strings aren't going to fit properly in the nut slots if you lose the G and move them all up one (it would work fine if you lost the B and moved them down one!). With a headless, it might be the same - you may have a spacer or you may have different size holes which means that you can't move them all across one. So - if you have restrictions and don't want to mess with the nut/spacer/clamp, then your only option is to leave the remaining 4 where they were And - if you have no restrictions, then just try it both ways and go with what feels best for you