# Another new build... only 6 strings though.



## DistinguishedPapyrus (May 26, 2013)

Started yesterday on a six string build that's inspired by Blackmachine guitars. The body is gonna be similar to that shape and the headstock will have the "hockey stick" sort of look also, but with some major differences, I dont want to try to just build a shameless copy of a Blackmachine line for line. Heres the specs:

bolt on
6 Strings
25" scale length
16" radius
thin neck similar to a wizzard
Red leaf Maple body
Lightly quilted Claro Walnut top and headstock veneer
Maple/Wenge 5 piece laminate neck (M/W/M/W/M)
Wenge fretboard
home made bone nut
stewmac jumbo fretwire
black hipshot bridge
black tuners (probably Gotoh)
2 way LMI truss rod
2 humbuckers (to be picked out later)


I just ordered this top and whipped up an idea of the layout of the design on MS Paint:


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## muffinbutton (May 26, 2013)

Looks cool. Is that the actual wood to be used?


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (May 26, 2013)

yep, thats a cropped photo of the piece I ordered earlier


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (May 28, 2013)

Little bit of progress today... planed the neck and cut the 11.5 degree angle for the scarf joint, cut the body template and working on gluing a little sliver onto the edge where I accidentally routed a bit too deep.

Yes I know the maple is asymmetrical on the sides, not to worry, it'll be even when its cut to the final width.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (May 30, 2013)

Piece of Wenge for the fretboard, this is about 0.3" thick and has been sitting around my place for about 20 months, hopefully its stable enough to not bend when I trim it to size. Wenge is not my favorite material to work with, but it looks cool.


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## muffinbutton (May 30, 2013)

That wenge does indeed look awesome.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jun 4, 2013)

Just got these pieces in the mail today, the maple plank for the body and the bookmatched walnut for the top and possibly I can cut out a headstock veneer from part of the walnut. 










Just a couple weeks settling in to the climate and it'll be straight to the garage for the body work...


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## mcrdsd911 (Jun 4, 2013)

I like the specs ! guna follow this one


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jun 14, 2013)

Today's progress update, Headstock veneered and glued to the neck, face of the neck flattened, truss rod slot cut, started gluing up the body halves...








A little rough around the edges but it'll clean up real nice when its cut to the final shape.




Sooo... I cut the truss rod slot free hand with a circular saw and followed up with a router, its a little sloppy but it'll work just fine.





One problem I had with the neck from the start is that the tolerances are real tight because I used cut-off pieces from a previous neck to build this one. Its straight as a laser but its only 0.85" thick, so I had the front face of the neck already flat before gluing the scarf joint, and so when I glued the headstock it left about .25" from the headstock sticking up above the plane of the front of the neck about where the 1st and 2nd frets will eventually be. I wanted to cut it back to be exactly straight in line with the neck face without taking any off the neck at all if possible. I tried a little trick with a router that turned out great, I'm sure its been done thousands of times before by other people but heres my take on it:

Set a router table up with a piece of 1/2" MDF clamped to the top and line the bit up to the exact same height as the MDF, like with real tight tolerance, less than 0.002" if you can, and that'll cut the excess off and leave it straight in line with the rest of the neck.








The result was excelent, with just a few passes on the sanding block to clean it up.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jun 18, 2013)

Todays progress: Routed the body. It came out real good, except for a little bit of router tear out. 











Close up on the body glue joint, I'm deff happy with this:






There's several small tear outs in the edge of the body, mainly in the maple,but the worst of the tear out is on the inside of the lower horn, where the router bit was turning against the grain, so whats the best method for smoothing this over? I'm guessing a combination of maple colored filler and sanding. Anyone got better ideas or experiences?


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## BlackMastodon (Jun 19, 2013)

Since it's on the bottom horn you could always Cooley scoop that mother. If you're against cutting away any more meat on it, then I imagine CA glue and maple dust will work just fine.


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## Pikka Bird (Jun 19, 2013)

^Such a scoop would have to be very massive for it to completely do away with the frizz, but I guess it could work. I'd personally go for the other thing you mentioned, but isn't there something about CA glue turning lighter woods a few shades darker?


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jun 19, 2013)

^ that does sound like a good idea, I was thinking of ordering up a jar of the StewMac Colortone filler, or some timbermate but I'm deff up for trying the CA and dust method. My biggest question about this though is how well could that kind of fill take a tru oil finish? Does it absorb in and build up like the surrounding wood will?


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## BlackMastodon (Jun 19, 2013)

No matter what you use, CA and maple dust or maple filler, it's going to look different once it's dyed and oiled. It only looks like it's a couple mm deep, maybe route away the entire inner horn a bit going with the grain? Shouldn't change how it looks too much if you just take off a little bit.


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## crazygtr (Jun 19, 2013)

I think I would go for my spindle sander and re-shape.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jun 28, 2013)

More progress today, got some stuff done to the fretboard:

This is after cutting the sides. It does look awfully skinny but keep in mind it'll have binding and its only six strings. 





Cut the slots. It is a GREAT idea to use a scrap block of wood to guide the saw. That bumped my accuracy up considerably in this, my 5th build.





Except when it came to this: 
The saw jumped out of the 18th slot, but luckily it'll be covered mostly by the edge of the fret. Barely noticeable.


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## crazygtr (Jun 28, 2013)

Looks like you haven't radiused that board yet so I wouldn't worry about that, it will go away almost completely. If it's already radiused just sand some more, looks like you got plenty of stock there.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jun 29, 2013)

I actually decided to go with a flat fretboard, it seems cool to try out, and really simplifies the build process. I did have plenty of stock in the wenge, 0.28", so I cut it down to 0.23" and re-cut the slots to the right depth to clear up the defect and relieve some of the thickness of the neck.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 15, 2013)

Its been a while since my last progress update, been working on a few non-guitar related projects around the house... anyway, heres the latest pic: 




still gotta shape the headstock, route the body, do the fretwork, shape the back of the neck, and install all the hardware, electronics and of course the finish.

[EDIT]: The neck does look a bit crooked but its just sitting on top of the flat body for the sake of a quick pic, theres no neck pocket yet.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 15, 2013)

FRETS!!!

The whole fretting process took about 2 hours. I ground off all the fret tang ends with a dremel tool and "pressed" them in with a scrap piece of maple and a regular bar clamp on top of my workbench. This worked really well cause I'm making a completely flat fretboard (also known as an infinite radius). They still need to be leveled but it should be very little if any leveling, the frets sit real close to correct height already because of the flat fretboard construction. It's been a joy to build this neck so far, I just hope it plays as good as it is to build.










And the end result... BOOYAH!!!


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## The Spanish Inquisition (Jul 15, 2013)

DistinguishedPapyrus said:


> And the end result... BOOYAH!!!



That's one heck of a neck warp 

Just kidding, looks very nice!


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 15, 2013)

YJGB said:


> That's one heck of a neck warp
> 
> Just kidding, looks very nice!



huh??? Thats with the truss rod cranked all the way down, I dont know what you're talkin bout.


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## The Spanish Inquisition (Jul 15, 2013)

DistinguishedPapyrus said:


> huh??? Thats with the truss rod cranked all the way down, I dont know what you're talkin bout.



So you like your action low


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 16, 2013)

more progress today, started shaping the back of the neck and rough cut the headstock. 











Its still in rough shape and will need some sanding of the edges. Its not the original shape I thought I'd use, I changed it because I've only got 4 left side tuners and I'm too cheap to buy 2 more. So now its a 4-2 design... that and I started disliking the look of the original mock up at the beginning of the thread. The headstock just looked a little goofy.


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## DrJazz (Jul 16, 2013)

SS.org is probably the only message board where you have to specify "only six-strings" 

In all seriousness though, this looks great. I'm eager to see how it finishes up.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 18, 2013)

Just finished doing a really cool fix that I thought came out quite well. The problem was this:

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/luthiery-modifications-customizations/243694-how-thin-can-ya-go.html

I had accidentally cut the neck too thin behind the first fret. The area shaded in pencil actually dips down in a slight concavity, so Heres how I fixed it:

Basically, I sanded out the rough area shaded in pencil so it would be smooth and create a clean joint space, cut a small fillet of maple off another block and glued it into place on the back of the neck to build the area back up to be level with the rest of the neck. The total thickness of the small fillet after sanding smooth came out to just 0.021", pretty thin, but just enough to make it blend in and be non noticeable to the touch. Check it out...









Taped off the area to avoid getting glue onto the surrounding wood in preparation for the patch





One of the great things about working with a flat fretboard (infinite radius) is that it can be clamped against a flat piece of MDF securely with very little risk of damaging the fretboard.








It still needs a bit of sanding and shaping to the final stage, but I'm quite happy with the result. I tried to cut the fillet from a section of scrap that has similar looking grain lines, and that aspect turned out ok but the color is obviously different. It doesn't bother me that the repair patch is a shade off color, it'll make for an interesting story to tell if anyone ever asks about it.


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## skeels (Jul 20, 2013)

skeels likes this..

Wait. Five... three... carry the one... subtract to zero. ...

Ok. Yes. Yes, skeels likes this.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 20, 2013)

skeels said:


> skeels likes this..
> 
> Wait. Five... three... carry the one... subtract to zero. ...
> 
> Ok. Yes. Yes, skeels likes this.




lol thanks


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## muffinbutton (Jul 20, 2013)

DistinguishedPapyrus said:


>



dat fretboard... if this goes missing don't look here for it.


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## Suitable (Jul 20, 2013)

If its only half a mm, judging by pics you still have to sand the neck back that much by the scratches on the side so that fillet will disappear when you do so yeah? How close are you to the truss rod/cf rods etc if you take that 0.021" off the back with finer grit paper? That is a sweet looking neck! I'm sure it'll work either way


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 20, 2013)

muffinbutton said:


> dat fretboard... if this goes missing don't look here for it.



Yea man, I love the look of wenge for a fretboard, funny cause I hate working with the stuff. The past couple pieces I've worked with have bent and warped alot after making large cuts/rips to the blank lumber.


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## muffinbutton (Jul 20, 2013)

DistinguishedPapyrus said:


> Yea man, I love the look of wenge for a fretboard, funny cause I hate working with the stuff. The past couple pieces I've worked with have bent and warped alot after making large cuts/rips to the blank lumber.



I meant the guitar, not just the board.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 20, 2013)

Suitable said:


> If its only half a mm, judging by pics you still have to sand the neck back that much by the scratches on the side so that fillet will disappear when you do so yeah? How close are you to the truss rod/cf rods etc if you take that 0.021" off the back with finer grit paper? That is a sweet looking neck! I'm sure it'll work either way



Yea it might sand all the way off, the patch is what it is if needed, it may just end up as saw dust though.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 21, 2013)

I can do wood work all day long but I gotta confess, electronics are way over my head and so this is whats going into this guitar: stock humbuckers and electronics scavenged out of an Epiphone Les Paul that I bought from a co-worker for $40... I know. Pretty lame. But this is just to get the thing playable, I'll eventually put some high end stuff into it but for now I'm keeping the cost down. After all this'll be my first completed build if I can get it to that point.







Also a nice Hipshot fixed bridge and matching Gotoh tuners, all in chrome.


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## Navid (Jul 21, 2013)

Thumbs up for infinite radius.
Flat fretboards are the shit!


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## AwDeOh (Jul 21, 2013)

I love wenge.. the piece I have stashed downstairs is looking more and more like fretboard material after seeing this. It's just a shame that some of the cavities become more apparent/less desirable on the edge of the fretboard. Not a problem if you're binding it though..

Mitch rates this 9/10. A 10/10 would have had a lot more wenge-porn pics.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 21, 2013)

AwDeOh said:


> I love wenge.. the piece I have stashed downstairs is looking more and more like fretboard material after seeing this. It's just a shame that some of the cavities become more apparent/less desirable on the edge of the fretboard. Not a problem if you're binding it though..




After seeing several nice builds with wenge fretboards and then this build I took on, I think I'm gonna be using wenge primarily in my future fretboards. At least for a few builds until I find another beautiful material

This >>> Wenge fingerboards - Telecaster Guitar Forum

was one of my favorite inspirations as well for this fretboard


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## the_heretic_divine (Jul 21, 2013)

The fretboard on that thing is tits!


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jul 22, 2013)

Got a bit more stuff done today, mainly the neck pocket. 

First I drilled and chiseled out the bulk of the material to make the job easier on the router:





Then positioned the neck on the body exactly where it should be located, then butted three pieces of MDF against the heel, took away the neck and was left with a perfectly squared up template to route against:








Routed to the correct depth, remove the template pieces and was left with a real nice neck pocket:





The pocket is just a wee bit lose, like it has 0.002" gap on one side. The finish should tighten that up real snug though... also I'm gonna sand the heel down a bit to seat the neck all the way down til the maple is not visible on the side. The neck is completly flat to the body (0 degree neck angle), if the bridge sits too high to get the right action, I'm gonna route the bridge down into the body a bit. That'll be fun 





Almost looking like a guitar now. Still got the do the tuner holes, final shaping of the neck contour, pickup cavities, neck bolt and ferrule holes, bridge placement and string-thru holes, electronics cavity, output jack, the finish in tru oil and wire everything up. 





BTW: I NEED OPINIONS PLEASE!!!??!?!?! 

Cant decide weather to use a pickguard or not. The biggest thing weighing on this is how the pickps would be mounted. either screwed to the wood in the bottom of the pickup cavities, leaving it as an all wood and exposed finish, or suspended from the plactic pick guard, the way stratocaster humbuckers are mounted. 

Any ideas?


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## AwDeOh (Jul 22, 2013)

1 vote for direct mounted with no ring, but I must admit that I'm not a fan of pickguards at all. So bias beware.


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## TDR (Jul 22, 2013)

2nd'd on direct mount with no rings, it's starting to look really good!


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Aug 19, 2013)

Yet again its been a while since my last post, been working on a few other things in addition to this project, and besides I figured I'd let the wood settle a bit before the final stages of the build. So heres whats happened so far, punched a few holes in the body... pickup cavities, electronics cavity, bridge mounting holes... etc.










The controls from top to bottom are Buckethead style killswitch, selector switch, tone, volume. (the screws in the bridge are just temporarily poked into the holes to prevent the bridge plate from sliding down for the pic, nothing permanent)



All that's left really is the final sanding of the body, output jack hole, a bit of slight shaping of the back of the neck, tuner holes in the headstock, and the tru oil finish over the whole thing, then shape the nut, assembly, stringing and setup... and that'll be my first complete build.


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## Suitable (Aug 20, 2013)

Very nice!


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## pondman (Aug 20, 2013)

Very very nice


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Oct 6, 2013)

Its been a while since my last post to this thread, I took a bit of a hiatus from building for a while... well anyway, I finally pulled this thing out and got back in the garage. 

I glued in the neck a while back, I figured why waste the money for screws and ferrules and the added few ounces of weight?... that and I'm just too inpatient to wait for the ferrules to ship. (I like buying as much as I can locally for just that reason), so here it is as of 15 mins ago:











(^sorry bout that blurry pic, I didnt realise it til I viewed the published post)
This thing is weeks away from being my first complete, strung up and playable, scratch built guitar. 

Still need the tru oil, wood filler (for some small dings in the edge of the body) strap buttons, and the electronics cavity cover. thats it.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Oct 6, 2013)

Side dots. Red Oak dowel drilled about 0.2" into the side of the neck. Cost less than a dollar... I like it


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## pondman (Oct 8, 2013)

Very likey and great Wenge goodness . Loving this one


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## chrisxrome (Oct 8, 2013)

Love this!


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Oct 11, 2013)

Ahhh... It's just another one of those days. Things went real smooth and I'm almost done with this guitar, but just hit another snag. I went to try widening up the tuner holes, using a hand held drill, and messed up the back side of the headstock. I hope its salvagable... What can I do with this??!?!?!


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## muffinbutton (Oct 11, 2013)

glue it, clamp it, re drill to clean the hole, dowel, re drill or put the tuner somewhere else.


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## Prophetable (Oct 12, 2013)

Veneer cap on the back?


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## Suitable (Oct 13, 2013)

^ would make it awesome! And get one of these hand reamers...





Best $10 Ive spent in a while... Apart from the titty girls on Friday that is


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Oct 14, 2013)

I wound up fixing that tuner hole by smothering the little "flakes" with Titebond original and clamping them back flat with a block of wood, since all the wood was still there, it was just torn a little. It almost looks like nothing ever happened, and what little damage is noticeable is mostly covered up by the tuner gear housing. 

But anyway, I FINALLY got started on the finish. This is real exciting for me because in a few weeks this'll be my first complete scratch built guitar, 3 years and 5 attempts in the making. This is after the first coat of Tru Oil, and left it to hang from the shower rod over night.







Nice looking quilt/flame in the walnut









Last thing left to do after the finish is shape a bone nut, then assembly.


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## Krigsmjod (Oct 15, 2013)

Digging the 4 over 2 headstock shape. Its a good looking Wengemachine.


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## Neilzord (Oct 15, 2013)

As said that 4/2 Headstock looks great! Awesome work on this guitar and well recovered from snags along the way. Look forward to seeing it finished!


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Oct 29, 2013)

Time for another update... NUT!

Shaping a bone nut is a bit of an art all in itself, apart from the whole luthiery thing, as I have come to find out. I managed to do it without any fancy tools, just a hand saw, sand paper and a regular metal file. I just cut the string slots with the edge of the file, it works really well for my first time shaping a nut, but on my next build I'll probably get a proper set of slotting files. 






Strings going on for the first time!!!





Turned out working very well. Still needs some shaping and rounding to the edges.




Last thing left is soldering together the electronics. 






I hit another snag yet again... I used a set of Fender saddles instead of the Hipshot ones that came with the bridge, so the height adjustment screws stick up way too tall. I gotta grind the bottom off each one of the screws to keep from cutting my hand up. 





I know you'd think just swap back to the Hipshot saddles right? I was actually a bit disappointed in those saddles. I don't mean to talk crap about Hipshot but two of the intonation adjustment screws jammed and cross threaded due to excess metal filings left over from cutting the threads where those screws go into the back of the saddles. I just swapped for some old saddles off a stratocaster, they fit perfectly, and I think the square ends look better than the round ones anyway.


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## Pikka Bird (Oct 29, 2013)

^Swap the height adjusters for the Hipshot ones? Those often use the same threads from my experience.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Oct 29, 2013)

Pikka Bird said:


> ^Swap the height adjusters for the Hipshot ones? Those often use the same threads from my experience.



Tried it, they don't fit.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Nov 3, 2013)

DONE!










I wound up just leaving the electronics cavity open... just makes things interesting.

If you get up close and look at this guitar in person its covered with little flaws and blemishes all over, its obviously a n00b build. It took 3 years and 5 attempts to get to this point. I learned a lot about it during the whole process, developed some techniques and acquired a few nice tools. I already have another build started, so hopefully the build quality will be better for this next one.


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## pettymusic (Nov 30, 2014)

Looks nice from here man. How does it play, sound? Do you like the flat FB?


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## Deegatron (Nov 30, 2014)

might want to think about a Plexiglas cavity cover... it would be a shame to snag a wire on something while playing a big show....


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Dec 4, 2014)

pettymusic said:


> Looks nice from here man. How does it play, sound? Do you like the flat FB?



It plays suprisingly quite well. It took me a little while to get used to the flat FB but now I gotta say I'm comfortable with flat or radiused. When holding/playing the guitar theres deff a difference in this one vs. one thats been bought retail. When you get up close and examine it it's got a few blemishes and feels a bit rougher to play than a store bought guitar, but after all this was my first ever completed scratch build and I'm used to its charicteristics by now and I quite enjoy using this guitar. With this particular wood combination its got one of the brightest tones I've ever heard in the bridge pickup. The neck pickup is a little warmer. 

I do plan to smooth the fret ends out a little better than I originally set it up to be. Right now they are basically just beveled inward about 35 degrees at the edge of the fretboard, so thats the biggest factor to it being a little rough to play. That and adjusting the action at the nut some. 

I currently have it set up with some heavy gauge strings and tuned to B E A D F# b, it works well with 25.5" length.


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## Renkenstein (Dec 4, 2014)

I'll bet that bright bridge pickup is due to the distance between it and the bridge. The closer to the bridge, the less movement you have on the string for the pickup to...well...pick up. I thought about that a lot on this build when my scale length ended up putting my bridge 1/4" closer to the pickup than I had intended. I had already routed the cavities, so I had no choice but to proceed. It's now 3/4" from the back edge of the pickup to the high E saddle. I measured my Ibanez and Schecter, and they're all right at 1". 

Anyway...I had that subject on my mind quite a bit and wanted to share.


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