# First 8 String Build (Now With Real Wood...)



## BlackMastodon (Oct 3, 2013)

So about 5 or 6 years ago, I bought a guitar body off ebay that I was going to use with a Warmoth neck to do my first guitar build. Unfortunately the scale lengths were off but I already had all the hardware for this body so that largely influenced my first 6 string build. About a year ago I figured I might as well do something with this body and decided I would fill in the Floyd route and pickup routes, make a set-in neck for it, and have me my first 8 string.

*Specs as follows:*
- 8 strings
- 27" scale, 24 frets
- Maple and Bondo, curved, super strat-ish body
- DiMarzio D-Activator 8 Pickups
- Single CTS 500k pot for Vol, 3-way toggle switch (Bridge, Both, Neck)
- Hipshot 8 string fixed bridge
- Sperzel Trim-Lock tuners (4x4)
- Figured maple neck with carbon fiber rods and 1 dual action truss rod, Agile Intrepid style headstock
- Ebony fretboard with medium/higher fretwire, 20" radius
- Graphtech Tusq nut

I'm going to apologize right now because updates will probably be a bit slow, and I am also going to be doing my Home Depot Contest guitar along side this one (that one has time constraints, though).

So here's the body after I went at it with probably 3/4's of a can of Bondo (the body is f**king heavy now ):






















Swoop because it's more metal that way.






It's gonna have to be a pretty deep set neck to make up for the thinner heel. There's also the worst battery box routing job of all time due to my free hand routing skillz back in high school. 






There were a few gaps from the Bondo shrinking so I needed to fill it using watered down wood glue.

Here's the boxes of goodies I got last year when I started getting materials for the build:


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## straymond (Oct 3, 2013)

awesome! got my attention!
*subbed!*


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 3, 2013)

So to get the neck started I made a scarf joint jig to cut at a 13 degree angle:






It works like it needs to on some scrap wood, unfortunately our table saw isn't the greatest and can't cut all the way through:
















After handsawing the rest of the piece off, I'm not a fan of the results as it would take more effort to get the pieces flat.

Decided to try using it with the miter saw instead:











Better, but still the same problem. I had to just cut off the minimum material and then take wood from the other end of the blank for the headstock.

First try on the neck blank:






Hmmmm, not quite as straight as I would like. 

Better make some coasters and figured paper 






And finally:






And now is when mistake number 1 happened.  I measured wrong for the headstock piece and cut off too little material, so that piece was useless for the headstock. There was also not enough material for another headstock piece from that same blank so I needed to buy another blank and use a piece from that for the headstock.

Luckily, I was able to find a nice figured piece that would be good for 2 neck blanks:






















And now we glue the headstock and wait for my bandsaw to be put together to cut the neck and headstock thickness:


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 3, 2013)

While waiting for the bandsaw situation, I finally made a router table and sled for the router that will work and be much more accurate than my previous attempt:






Had a lot of fun machining the plate for the router to sit in, as well as the iron bars for the sled.











Not as pretty as Scherzo's extruded aluminum set up but it's cheaper and should do the job. 











The process for getting these bolts in was pretty funny and involved a magnet on a telescopic pointer, and some hopes and dreams and swearing. 






The whole shebang in Position Alpha (sounds more badass with Greek names):






And if I want to plane something thinner, can put it in Position Beta:











That should be it for now, will update again when I get the neck blank routed for the trussrod and CF rods.


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## Daf57 (Oct 4, 2013)

Subbed for updates! Epic project!


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## skeels (Oct 4, 2013)

Sweet.


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## schwiz (Oct 4, 2013)

Totally diggin the Bondo! That stuff works wonders and sands so easy. I'll be curious how it holds up though. I take it this is going to be primed, painted and clear coated? Any idea what you're going to do for that? Keeping the wood tones on the neck?


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## XxJoshxX (Oct 4, 2013)

Looks cool. I would reccomend roughly filling the cavities with wood and fill the gaps with epoxy and sand it down. Even bondo will shrink a little bit over time.


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## pondman (Oct 4, 2013)

Brilliant stuff , totally subbed


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 4, 2013)

I did the Bondo work almost a year ago so I'm not terribly worried about it shrinking anymore. And I totally forgot about saying what the finish will be! It will be painted the purest of white, and yes the neck will be left natural as I hate painted necks and it would be a shame and a waste to cover the flamed maple.


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## Robby the Robot (Oct 4, 2013)

Subbed! Can't wait to see how this turns out man!


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## darren (Oct 4, 2013)

That is one sweet piece of ebony!

Did you fill those cavities ENTIRELY with Bondo?  I would have at least used some blocks of wood and used Bondo or wood filler just for the gaps. Be VERY careful routing that stuff, and make sure you wear a good particulate filter and goggles.


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 4, 2013)

darren said:


> That is one sweet piece of ebony!
> 
> Did you fill those cavities ENTIRELY with Bondo?  I would have at least used some blocks of wood and used Bondo or wood filler just for the gaps. Be VERY careful routing that stuff, and make sure you wear a good particulate filter and goggles.


I don't think the ebony is actually flamed like the picture may suggest but if it is then hot diggity. And I'm not gonna lie, this build is a half experiment to see how this Bondo works.  SCIENCE!!

(Definitely will have to wear a respirator when doing the routing, though)


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## ECGuitars (Oct 4, 2013)

BlackMastodon said:


> I don't think the ebony is actually flamed like the picture may suggest but if it is then hot diggity. And I'm not gonna lie, this build is a half experiment to see how this Bondo works.  SCIENCE!!
> 
> (Definitely will have to wear a respirator when doing the routing, though)



Yeah that stuff is absolutely going to mangle you're router bits. There is a good reason why its mostly used on metal


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Oct 4, 2013)

Very cool build so far, I've had that same type of trouble in the past with the scarf joint though. I'd like to suggest a method that's helped me tremendously... 

This:

Line up a couple scrap pieces, both with the exact angle cut in them, in this case 1x4's with an 11.5 degree angle. Slide your router along the angled part, shaving down about 1/8" per pass. Its super precise, cheap, fairly safe to operate and bumped up my build quality alot.

The two angled 1x4's are clamped up in alignment with each other with the Wenge neck blank in the middle. Note the alignment marks on the angled part of the 1x4's.


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 23, 2013)

^Definitely going to try that jig next time I do a build. The miter saw was a huge pain in the ass just to try and get it at an exactly perpendicular angle (even though it still wasn't... ).

Anyway, some updates!

Made a jig for the Hipshot bridge just to make sure that the holes I'm drilling are straight and I don't have any problems with the ferrules on the back looking like...those holes...on the jig. Shouldn't be a problem, though  Worst case I make another one out of scrap for those holes. Also tested the router sled as a planer on this piece to see how it handles and quite happy with the results:











After that I did some work on that excess wood around the scarf joint. First, attacking it with a chisel (this small one was the only one that was sharp):






And after planing with the router:











Yesterday I also routed the truss rod channel. It ain't pretty and I don't want to take any pictures of it as there was a small potentially disastrous screw up that hopefully doesn't surface later. But if it does then I have a back up plan. Hopefully cutting the fretboard to the proper size will go down soon and I can get it glued up and the frets slotted.

Also, the bandsaw can't really handle the hard maple, so that was sort of a bust.  Guess I'll have to stick to a jig saw.


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 30, 2013)

Since I did some work on the headless 6 yesterday, I figured I would give equal treatment for this one, too. So after I got home from work, I got to do some more work.

Side note: funny story about the carbon fibre rods. I glued up the fretboard last week about the same time I did for the headless 6 after routing the trussrod and filling in some screw ups. So Saturday night, I get home from downtown and am laying in bed, drunk and trying to fall asleep, when it dawns on me: I completely forgot to route for the carbon fibre rods and glued the fretboard on without them. Not exactly sure how I neglected that but, apparently I did so now I have to sleep in the bed I made. 

Anywho, on to some progress pics. Made a little jig that would help keep my side dots from being drunk. 





















*sigh...* Didn't work as well as I'd hoped.  I may just chisel out a small area there and put maple block inlays there, or bullet style ones that would be on the fretboard, too. Or I can leave the drunk side dot markers and try not to screw anything else up with this neck, who knows at this point. 

Test routed a scrap of ebony to make sure my router wasn't going to chew it when getting the neck routed up to proper width:






I might actually be able to use this piece for a couple of ebony nuts. Anyone ever use ebony for a nut before? 

After being satisfied with this, I routed everything up and rough cut the body and headstock shape so I can clean everything up tomorrow, as it started getting dark as I finished this up.






Also did some fretting. Happier with how this turned out over the Oak on the headless 6. Any of the slip ups should be gone when I radius the board and adding frets should cover any ugly slots.


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## Necromagnon (Oct 31, 2013)

I did the same mistake for the headstock twice... On the same guitar...

That looks good so far! 

One last thing: BM's not making a BM?


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 31, 2013)

Honestly, after seeing the BM shape hundreds of times on here I got really bored of it. I'd like to some day do a build with a Parker headstock but I always found the BM one a little ugly.


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## Necromagnon (Nov 1, 2013)

BlackMastodon said:


> Honestly, after seeing the BM shape hundreds of times on here I got really bored of it. I'd like to some day do a build with a Parker headstock but I always found the BM one a little ugly.


I think the same. It was more for the (bad) joke. BM are nice, but seeing 90% of the time BM copy tends to get boring. Specially because BM are so basic in terms of design and features that I found it a bit pity to not use all the possibilities.

Anyway, that's not the question.


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 4, 2013)

Welp, what I assumed would happen did. I went to go thickness the back of the neck today and routed into where I mangled the trussrod cavity and tried to fill it with glue and maple dust. I had the idea to route out a clean slot and put some mahogany there or something but I just said f*ck it and decided to build another neck.

Unfortunately that means that this thing is being put on hold until probably spring time since for now I want to finish my home depot build.

I'll try and route out this neck to salvage the fretboard and trussrod and we'll go from there in a few months.


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## Necromagnon (Nov 5, 2013)

Yeek, bad news... The TR is that high? I've always fear that problem, but even with very thin neck (19 mm) and 5.5 mm of fb, I never had the problem. Anyway, that s*cks...


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 5, 2013)

Not necessarily that the trussrod was that high, it's just that there was an accident when routing the channel that involved the router bit slipping down and routing significantly deeper than I wanted it to. I tried to fix it by filling in the extra gap with wood glue and maple dust but in the end I think this is for the best anyway since I was worried about the stability of the neck after that. And this way I can actually remember to use the carbon fibre rods.


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## Necromagnon (Nov 5, 2013)

Ah, ok.
You can also route all along the back of the neck a channel and insert a dark wood stripe, like fender does.


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 6, 2013)

That's what I considered doing but I honestly think that this way will be easier, plus I don't have a long enough piece of wood to put in the neck.


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## iRaiseTheDead (Nov 6, 2013)

diggin' the headstock


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 6, 2013)

Thanks but it's 100% a copy from the Agile Intrepids.  Definitely one of my favourite non-inline headstock shapes, though.


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## BlackMastodon (Jan 8, 2014)

Winter update while it's colder than a witch's tit outside and I can;t get anything done.

So the other night I woke up at like 5 AM and couldn't sleep so as usual I began thinking about guitars. I decided that if I'm gonna do this build, I'm gonna do it right and scrap the bondo-bastard-body and go for the real thing.

I'm probably going to end up using the quilted maple top that I bought a few months back, and I'm thinking black limba for the main body wood.

Here's a shot of the quilted maple top that will be used:







SO, since we're laid off for the week and I don't have a whole lot to do, I decided to bust out the paper, pencil, and tape and do a full scale mockup, which is right hyaw:






That damn headstock took a few hours to get right. 

As you can see there's a few variations for the horns, and here's some photoshop-level paint mockups of the various shapes.

Basic super-strat shape, traced from my Washburn WG587:






Something with some ViK like inspirations:






And my personal favourite of the 3 which I think will be the winner:






Might rework the horns a bit to better match the headstock end.

So far I'm digging the idea of the offset-strat butt on the last 2 designs, should help it be more comfortable as I plan to leave the top as flat as possible, probably foregoing a forearm contour. Reason for this is because I want to have natural binding around the quilted maple.

Thoughts? Comments? Also any suggestions for good dealers for black limba would be appreciated. I'm also all ears for suggestions on what to dye the top


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## JEngelking (Jan 8, 2014)

2nd or 3rd design for sure. I think the shape of the body itself in the 2nd design is the best of the three by itself, but the points on the horns in the 3rd design match the headstock better. I'm a fan of the Intrepid style headstocks though, so 3rd seems like the winner to me.  

For the binding, what about instead of doing a full-blown forearm contour, you just a slight bevel? A la Blackmachines flame: 






Where the binding trails/points off at the start of the contour and continues again down near the strap button. I've no clue how tedious a process that would be (could be worse than making the whole forearm contour for all I know ), but just an idea to make it a bit more comfy. 

Looking forward to seeing progress though!


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## XxJoshxX (Jan 8, 2014)

#1


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## Prophetable (Jan 8, 2014)

#3


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## BlackMastodon (Jan 8, 2014)

I thought about doing the BM bevel but honestly it's been done to death and I never liked it that much to begin with. I'm also not sure how it would look with natural binding. Thanks for the input so far, guys. Keep 'em coming.


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## JEngelking (Jan 8, 2014)

Fair dues, flat-top will still be cool!


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## jahosy (Jan 8, 2014)

#2

EDIT: #4


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## BlackMastodon (Jan 8, 2014)

The one thing I'm not too keen on with #2 is the upper horn and how it looks like a Bongo bass.

Enter #4:


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## JoshuaVonFlash (Jan 9, 2014)

#4


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## Necromagnon (Jan 9, 2014)

#4 is really nice, but I agree there's something about this upper horn... I think you should try to make something a bit more curvy than straight as it is now?
Also, the upper curve right after the fb end on the headstock is really weird. It's a Paul Walker like "straight, straight, straight, straight, turn!! TURN!!"


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## Orgalmer (Jan 9, 2014)

This is awesome, subbing this for sure.

#3 or #4 would be my pick. I can't wait to see this thing upon completion!


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## patata (Jan 9, 2014)

With the washburn bottom


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## BlackMastodon (Jan 9, 2014)

Necromagnon said:


> #4 is really nice, but I agree there's something about this upper horn... I think you should try to make something a bit more curvy than straight as it is now?
> Also, the upper curve right after the fb end on the headstock is really weird. It's a Paul Walker like "straight, straight, straight, straight, turn!! TURN!!"


 Yeah I can see what you mean with the headstock, I'll extend that curve and make it a little less sudden.

I'm definitely leaning towards 3 or 4, though.


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## lvsexgtr (Mar 6, 2014)

JEngelking said:


> 2nd or 3rd design for sure. I think the shape of the body itself in the 2nd design is the best of the three by itself, but the points on the horns in the 3rd design match the headstock better. I'm a fan of the Intrepid style headstocks though, so 3rd seems like the winner to me.
> 
> For the binding, what about instead of doing a full-blown forearm contour, you just a slight bevel? A la Blackmachines flame:
> 
> ...






What angle is that body route?


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## Purelojik (Mar 6, 2014)

dude i was just writing about this in my blog. im prepping a body for a flat top design and didnt wanna do the chamfer instead this is what im doing. 

its sorta a knaggs bevel, or a knarbens (check out his 7 string build on Luthier Talk, super clean work) its a sweeping kinda carve. 

here's the entry

and the pic.






EDIT: fantastic work dude. keep at it! if you need help lemme know if i can help in any way too!

i also suggest adding some more wood at the neck joing, kinda ala AANJ so you can have more mass there.


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## BlackMastodon (Mar 7, 2014)

lvsexgtr said:


> What angle is that body route?


My guess would be a 45 degree angle, though the picture does have a whacky optical illusion thing going on.




Purelojik said:


> dude i was just writing about this in my blog. im prepping a body for a flat top design and didnt wanna do the chamfer instead this is what im doing.
> 
> its sorta a knaggs bevel, or a knarbens (check out his 7 string build on Luthier Talk, super clean work) its a sweeping kinda carve.
> 
> ...



Thanks man, appreciate the offer! Will definitely PM you if I have any questions, and yeah I think I'll add some meat to the heel, I was worried about not having enough contact on the join.

You weren't kidding about that Knarben 7, it's really clean and looks great! The reason I'm gonna stick to a flat top, though, is to keep an even natural binding look all the way around, otherwise I would for sure go for some kind of forearm contour. 

I did do some planning for chambering, went a little crazy here and may not use all of the chambers, we'll see how it goes. Also, obviously the bridge and pickups are not going to be chambered.


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## Hollowway (Mar 7, 2014)

This is awesome. I REALLY appreciate all of the photos, too. Eventually I'll try my hand at a build from scratch, and I learn a lot from these.


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## Forrest_H (Mar 7, 2014)

Looks like a pretty sick build so far 

Not to hijack your thread, but does chambering the body of a guitar make the tone like that of a hollow body? Or does it only affect the weight?

Can't wait to see it finished!


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## Bassassasin (Mar 7, 2014)

BlackMastodon said:


>



Nice Build, i like the idea with the chambering, but with the Bondo in the captivities you´re ruin the routerbits and your nerves, cause the Bondocrap is breaking out every time (unless the bits are extreme sharp).
Scrap the bondo out of the body and replace it with some hard scrapwood and glue it with epoxi in


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## Riley (Mar 7, 2014)

Bassassasin said:


> Nice Build, i like the idea with the chambering, but with the Bondo in the captivities you´re ruin the routerbits and your nerves, cause the Bondocrap is breaking out every time (unless the bits are extreme sharp).
> Scrap the bondo out of the body and replace it with some hard scrapwood and glue it with epoxi in




He said he is going to scrap that body and use different wood.


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## BlackMastodon (Mar 7, 2014)

Hollowway said:


> This is awesome. I REALLY appreciate all of the photos, too. Eventually I'll try my hand at a build from scratch, and I learn a lot from these.



Thanks Hollowway! This is how I learned any of the stuff I know, awesome build threads on this forum. Also, you've been saying that for years; get some wood and some tools and get to it! 



Forrest_H said:


> Looks like a pretty sick build so far
> 
> Not to hijack your thread, but does chambering the body of a guitar make the tone like that of a hollow body? Or does it only affect the weight?
> 
> Can't wait to see it finished!



Ya know, that's a good question and I'm kinda curious about that myself.  I feel like it would make the tone slightly more like a hollow/semi-hollow body (though not quite since there wouldn't be a sound hole). The weight reduction of it also makes me consider not doing every one of the chambers because I don't want too much neck dive, but if anyone has more input on this (I'm looking at you purelojik ) then please let us know.



Riley said:


> He said he is going to scrap that body and use different wood.





I thought about that, Bassassasin, and realized that the Bondobody would just be a giant pain in the ass and I feel like the effort I would put into it wouldn't reflect in the final product.


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## BlackMastodon (Jul 17, 2015)

This is going incredibly slow and is on the back burner while I finish my other builds, but since I'm on the other side of the country (and in a different country for that matter...) from my builds, I figured I'd use some time being productive and doing some planning in SketchUp. This way I also get a little experience using the program, too, so it's a win-win!

Here is the mockup I did for the shape that I think I'm pretty satisfied with. I changed the headstock to something more my own design and made it follow the same shape as the lower horn. Yeah, I know, the body shape and headstock designs scream Vik, but they are different enough where they're still mine.  Also the headstock will most likely be a 3+5.

Anyway, mockups! Here is the general shape with harware (no control cavity yet, but it will be similar to the original paper mockup):






No hardware:






Wireframe over original paper mockup:






Here's where I did some experimenting for the nut:






The dimensions on the left are between the centre of the strings while the dimension closer to the nut is the distance between strings.

On the far left, I had more or less even string spacing from the center of each string, but obviously that leaves less room in between the lowest strings and more room in between the highest strings. I have pretty big ol' sausage fingers so I don't think this would be too comfortable for me.

That brings us to the middle setup, where I reversed the string spacings, so the spacing between the F# and B strings would be switched with the spacing for the high E and A strings, etc. This one seemed to be on the right track but would be a bit awkward to file the nut I think.

The one on the right is what I went with, which has even spacing between the strings, and looking at most other guitars this looks like it's generally the case. The only strange thing about this setup is that the centreline doesn't match up with the middle of the space between the 4th and 5th strings. This doesn't really mean much, other than the trussrod will be a little bit biased towards the bass side, even though it's still in the middle of the neck.

Here's a closer pic of what I mean:






Not sure if this will matter at all or if I should just stick to having the same string spacing from the centre of each string. I might just try this out for the sake of experimenting since this will be a personal build anyway.

If anyone knows what string spacing I should use and why feel free to chime in. Sorry if this post is a bit of a tease since nothing has really been done for this build but I swear I haven't forgotten about it. 
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Edit:
Changed the headstock a bit and checked the tuner placement using measurement of Sperzels (which is what this build is getting)


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## TamanShud (Jul 20, 2015)

I got sad seeing when this thread started and thought I'd missed out on all the juicy build shots. Well didn't my day just get a load better realising router hasn't hit wood yet! All kinds of subbed (well just the one kind really.......)


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## BlackMastodon (Jul 20, 2015)

It'll also be a while before a router touches wood for this on, unfortunately. But I have been messing around with more headstock designs. I made the one from the earlier posts a little shorter and I think it looks much better, but I also made a few more here:






The top one is based on the Agile Intrepid headstock that I was originally going with, but changed around a bit. Reminds me a little of an Oni, too. The second one that is attached to the neck is the original one, shortened up a bit. And the bottom 2 are the ones that I made for my Washburn 7 rework but they are too close to Rusti's design in my opinion and I kind of want to shy away from using them. I prefer the bottom-most one to the 3rd one as it more closely resembles the one I'm using for that 7.

Anyway, I'll probably keep messing around with designs on this one and probably start on some mockups for my headless shape. Still undecided on how I want to do string spacing for this one, so I'll have to do a little more research.


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