thirdstone

I use Rustin wood bleach on mahogany with good success. Rustins

Could I simply buy some of that printer paper for making waterslide decals on my inkjet and do it that way?

Could I clear coat over a waterslide? Would that leave less of an "edge" around it than a vinyl??

Hmm....

just a thought!

DJ

That works I have done that a few times. One trick though is to first spray the water slide with a light coat of clear then let it dry. I found a rattle can or air brush the best as a spray gun is too strong.This stops to ink disolving in the water.Then put it in the water to slide it off. When its dry spray the decal with clear , lightly first then build it uo a little bit.

K

Just use a flat black to start with. There are a lot of options if you have spray equipment.

Yeah makes sense but I have alot of gloss and I wanted to use that. As it turns out I could,nt get the result I wanted so I have gone the matt black paint. Where i am in Australia I could`nt get the matt black for a gun so I have had to use a can.

Has anyone sprayed a satin or gloss black and then rubbed it back to Matt. If so how did it go? what grades of paper did you use and did you flatten out the finnish?

Cheers in advance.

I like this thread. thirdstone's attitude is "it was a piece of crap guitar, and I'm just gonna run some experiments on it and see if I can make it better." It's true that he's not following the "measure twice, cut once" philosophy, but in the context of this particular guitar, I think it's working out great.

Wonder how those "singles made into humbucker" pickups sound.

Well the fender single coils sound pretty good as far as I can tell at the moment. I only have them in a test guitar but so far my observations are this, The Ibanez coils in series are milder more mid biased they don't sound bad just a bit neutral.Compaired to a Les paul with fralins they are clearer with a bit more high end . The fralins definitely has more bottom end and are darker but less volume .I know from experiance that the Fralins sound a bit too dark at low volumes but cranked they open up into classic AC DC.

The strat single coils are, compaired to the others much brighter with lots of midrange growl. A bit like a tele on steroids.

Only down side is that they might be too bright as the bottom end is weak in comparison to the Fralins. They actualy sound quite good with lots of gain sort of like having a treble boster kicked in. I have a MI audio boost and buff stomp box which has a treble boost function boost and buff so the comparison is quite good.

Its worth continuing at this stage. I may, in the end get a SD Jeff Beck.

Thanks Greg you are pretty spot on, its never going to be guitar of the month. However it will play and sound great, I wont stop untill it does. The aim is to make a workhorse that does`nt matter if it gets scratched or dented , in fact I know it will get bashed around. Thats what happens when you give it to a 15 year old .

More mods ;

I reground the The Floyd rose pivot points, one end has had the knife edge flattened. This stops any binding that can happen with the standard setup. i think that latter floyds have this although Iam not sure as i havn'nt looked.

The floyd has no individual saddle hight adjustment so to account for this I fit a thin piece of feeler guage under the middle saddles.

feeler guage

The fret board has a 12" rad so its not as flat as some ie 16".

Now the bit thats the coolest is the brass block that I got from Monster Guitars . I fitted a steel block from Callaham guitars to my strat and it made a small but noticable differance. This should help more as the block is significantly heavier than the standard block. Its made from bell brass.

I find thats there is no one thing that makes a huge differance but every small improvement adds up.

I have been pondering the bridge pup for a while and I was getting confused with all the options, medium power ,high power ,scatter wound boutique ,cheep chineese ,Duncan ,dimarzio ect ect in the end if its well made it proberbly won`t make a huge amount of differance when the gain gets turned up SO looking around at what I have in the box of bits I came up with this.

The first is Two ibanez blazer pups with differing mag polarity , so I wired them up and now I have a 15K ohm pup

I hooked it up to a test guitar and it has promise.

So its got me thinking a bit more and I came up with this, The second ;Two fender mex(I think) pups also different mag polarity.

I put them on a brass base plate as I have has success putting base plates on single pups.

Rear view

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I'm not questioning the quality of the completed work, just the amount of man hours it took to accomplish it. In a working shop there would be no way to make money doing the job the way it was done here. However, for a first time project, chalk it up to a learning experience.

Agreed. I don't think that his hours are being paid tho.

... and I didn't realize he did the job twice (took the first cap off, to put a second one on).

If it were me, I would have left that body exactly the way is was and made a new one from scratch... but that's just me.

Relax guys , this is a hobby for me so the time is no drama. As far as cost go I have spent an extra $20 ($18US), the paint I have left over from the first time. As far as planing went it was an experiment that didn`t work but thats ok.As guitar 2005 said ,"run it through a thicknesser , glue a top on ,band saw the rough shape and then run a router around the body with a guide on it, last thing do the forarm contour and Done. Not including gluing time ,1 1/2hours .

I have changed the top config from scratch plate 3 pup guiter to no scratch plate 2 pup so the rear now has the control access. I have had it together playing and its great, much better. Its lighter , has more snap to the attack and because I improved the neck angle the action is as good as I have ever seen, in fact I will have to raise it a bit as super low action to me feels a bit weird,like you dont push the strings down.

As far as the locking floyd goes I was trying to find a way out of needing an allen key. This guitar gets played in standard tuning and drop D and drop A so its a hassel. But apart from fitting a kahler behind the nut cam lock or weilding a short allen key into the floyd nut it looks like I am stuck with it. From where I live the Dtuner is too expensive. The advantages of the floyd nut exceed the disadvantages so it goes back on. Making the ali nut and then modding it for the grapthech nut took more time than the recap.

Yeah Swiss Cheese didn`t do much. I took the cap off and did a better job routing it out, gota love free form routing.

cap glued on and routed.This was a strat but now its only got two pups and no pickguard. Floyd rose with modified pivots. A 3 pos switch for bridge, both and neck. 1 Meg Vol pot for humbucker and 250K pot for neck pup. Last switch is a kill sw for those RATM moments.

What do people recommend for a good high output bridge humbucker? I was thinking SD Jeff beck but I am curious about the dimarzio pups.Fred ,Tone zone ,Evo ect.

I know Kahler makes cam nuts.

http://www.wammiusa.com/kahler%20systems.html

2 things:

-They're after-the-nut locks

-No guarantees on string spacing/fb radius compatibilities

But they're the only company I've stumbled across that sells 'em.

Thanks everyone. I might look at the kahler locking nut or try to mod my floyd nut.

Hi Guys help need tracking down a keyless floyd rose nut. I have seen them many years ago and the one I am thinking of used cams to lock the strings.

Cheers

Its alive, I fitted some strings and did a very quick set up , no intonation adjusted yet. The first sound suggests that

this is going to be good dispite the substantial EMF hum. There is no shielding yet. I now can go and get some proper wood for the body even though the agathis I was slaging off sounds pretty good. Its still crap to work with though.

That looks like its seriously heavy!

Actually seriously light. The body wood is agethis which is like a bad poplar, its crap wood but like I said this is a prototype body. Bacause of the design with the forward strap button location the body needs to be Telacaster like weight. With all the routing alot of wood is removed. When I get it strung up I can check the balance. If its ok I`ll use alder , if its a bit neck heavy I`ll use mahogany.

The idea is to paint it black (cause I have lots left over) and have Carbon Fibre access panels on the front.

I like your idea!

Why don't you put a sustainer in there as well? It  doesn't take that long to build...

Heggis

I have, the fernandes fsk 101.

I love all the serious guitars with the massive flame and exotic woods but sometimes ya need to have a bit of fun. SO here is a prototype FUN guitar. Its got a Theremin and a tremolo circuit for one selection and on the other side of the switch is a Fernandes sustainer and bridge pickup. No tone only volume and a kill switch.

I have made the neck for it and when I am happy with the switching and layout I will make a real body out of either alder or mahogany.

A tip of the hat to RATM and Muse.

Body close

Very very COOL , Simple but great design. Just goes to show what can be done and that Fender have no original thinkers any more.

I have my first guitar that I made at 44mm and I thought that was wide ,although very playable. I thought 45.5 was pushing it a bit too much. What nut widths do 7 string guitars have?

The plus side of a wider neck is that you can vibrato the high E string with out fear of it falling off the neck. I wont have that problem with this one.The neck is also stiffer so that truss rod adjustments are minimal.

I have done the straighter fret end bevel myself on normal size necks, it does help .

Thanks every one for the comments, I have gone so far now that I`ll just keep going and see how it feels when its strung up, that may be some time. In the end because of the binding its just too far down the track to change.

JM The strings for the E A B E strings are straight and the middle D and G are slightly out of line. A bit of a compromise really as to get the middle two tuners I have inline they must be offset and that kind of ruins the look.

This guy does it good http://www.mcnaughtguitars.com/index696.htm.

hi Guys I am in progress with a guitar which will post later but I have made a neck which has turned out bigger than I planned. Dimentions are , Nut width 45.25mm , depth at 12th fret 53.75mm depth at first fret (not inc fret) 22mm.

the question , is the width at neck too much.?

I can make the neck thinner in thickness but the width at the nut is a worry.

Hi Mate check this out http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=33721

Realy great stuff. This is what I wish more people on this forum attempted. A word of caution on the wipe on stain burst, It can be done and look good but you cant get the same fine feathered transition that you get with a spray gun. I have done both and I tried everything to get a spray like transition, even spraying the stain on with an airbrush. This got the best result after letting it dry a bit but at some point you have to wipe it. Now I only use a spray gun. Believe me I would much prefer to NOT use a spray gun but the result is someway better. Any way you can give it a go and if you are not happy with it its very easy to remove.

it works now

still trying to get it to work

Try this

video

Okay I'm up for a bit of fun. this video wasn't done for this but it was the first tune played on the guitar. Its just played through a Fender Gdec and recorded with a shitty little camera but anyway its a bit of fun.

Video of first tune

yeah its a momentary open "kill switch. We have had some time now to play the guitar and its great. The switch works realy well. In fact I am thinking of swaping the pickup selector position with it. Idealy it should be located on the lower horn with the pup sw but thats a pretty big mod that I don't want to do as its a pretty permament thing. Now if it had a sustainer fitted that would be the ducks guts as we say around here.