songofthewind

Yes, the first one was the initial purchase. Then the Hipshot example came up on this forum, so I decided to go for it. It has a longer throw, which might prove useful given my proven repeated tendency to mis-measure things by 10mm or 100mm. I came upon the top by chance on eBay, so it's bit of a punt, but it certainly looks nice in the pic. Looking forward to getting on with it!

I saw that. It's quite difficult to see details in the images of what he has on offer. David Dyke has nice stuff on his Instagram feed, luthiers_supplies.

Not much to report, because i'm waiting for this 5A book bookmatch maple cap to arrive from Croatia. It's 8mm thick, and I'm looking forward to jointing it and gluing up. Hopefully this will give a bit of bling, and solve some of the cosmetic problems associated with routing errors. I now have two bridges to choose from. I need to plan the chambering and control routs next.

Aye, it's the scraping it clean and neat that would put me off. Props for having a go! I might visit Reid's next time I'm in Glasgow.

Good work! Love the binding. Got any close up shots of it?

Yeah, it wasn’t just a drop in, but it wasn’t too difficult. I just really dislike the big OEM slab bridge plate!

I got the bridge from Retrovibe, via eBay.i think I’ve seen them on AliExpress too. As it came the new bridge had narrow saddles, which meant the string spacing was too narrow. I installed the correct width (20mm string spacing) saddles from the bridge that came with the SUB Ray 4. so that was fine. However, this meant that the big anchor studs were too close together to permit the new saddles to fit comfortably between them, so I had to laterally enlarge their mounting holes in the baseplate, so that I could move them further out from the centreline. This was a bit rough looking, but is well hidden by the massive studs. I carefully located the bridge on the body, and drilled the holes for the stud bases. The top part of each stud passes through the baseplate and screws into the base. There are three additional mounting screws at the rear of the bridge. Doesn't look bad at all, eh?

You flatter me, sir! But you should see it now, after another couple of months of lockdown...

And frequently used in Scotland to mean “untidy”.

...and I broke down and bought it. Now I’ve got TWO 20mm spacing bridges to play around with.

Brutal.

Wow, I like that.

The eBay one is five hundred quid. Tempting.

Lovely. There’s an identical one on eBay right now.

A sparky shedding light? Stew, you are a card and no mistake!

Thanks for that, Andy!

I for one would be very interested in seeing this!

Bummer, man. I have had good luck filling deep scratches with superglue, building it up gradually and then fine sanding very carefully around the scratch. I thing Grangur is right about the wood fibrous being cut, though, so sweating probably wouldn't work.

Hopefully the 12mm round-over and (necessarily substantial) belly cut will hide some of the disaster. I was looking at David Dyke's Instagram feed, at Steve's suggestion, and saw a nice myrtle drop to for £35. I was going to order it, but now I'm not sure. I may regard this build as a proof of concept and make better job of the next one. I'm also wondering about using an Artec SE3P preamp on this one, because it comes with a pan pot, instead of the Ray 34 preamp. Anybody got a view on the Artec?

Well, a bit more progress, and a disaster. Makes me want to give up right now. All went well as I cut out the outline with my trusty new jigsaw. I decided to press on as my wife and daughter were, unusually, out of the house. Freedom! Noise! Wood shavings! I clamped the template very carefully to the blank, and commenced to rout the outline and neck pocket. The neck pocket went well, but with a wee bit of snipe.. I set the depth far too low for the outline, thus making a very ambitious deep initial cut. Mostly it went well, but I was beginning to tire, and soon chunks were flying. Bad enough they were out of the blank, but worst of all they were also out of Steve's precious template. I am so annoyed that I rushed and didn't think it through. I will repair the template with epoxy based wood filler, but I am very embarrassed, I can tell you. I will leave it for a couple of days until I've simmered down. A further annoyance is that I can't seem to find a reasonably priced bridge with a 20mm string spacing. Anyone got any ideas? Gratefully received. Pictures of the proceedings. You can see Frankie scrutinising my dodgy efforts:

Philistines.

Good work! That’s how I was going to do it, initially. I got onto YouTube for ideas, and found the guy on Popular Woodworking, and his video Planing with a Router immensely helpful. I can’t post a link from this iPad, but it’s easy to find. The rig I made is based on his, but more agricultural.

Oi Strat knobs NO!