curtisa

That bridge plate seems a lot larger than others I've seen. You're not worried it will over-damp the top?

Generally you treat the installation and alignment of an unknown bridge by referencing off the scale length of the guitar. The mounting posts just sit where they have to sit in order to satisfy the scale length of the instrument. Dismantle your bridge to remove the trem block and re-fit the outer two saddles on to the baseplate. Position them so that they sit as far forward as practicable. Do not position the saddles such that they overhang the forward lip of the bridge plate (the 3rd string saddle on your first pic is about as far forward as you want to position them, whereas the 1st string saddle in the same pic is starting to overhanging too much). With the neck fitted to the body use a long straightedge and lay it along the treble-side of the neck over the body of the guitar. Mark a line extending from the end of the neck along the full length of the body. Repeat for the bass edge of the neck. Measure your scale length (nut to 12th fret and multiply by two) on the treble side of he neck. Mark this distance on the body on the two lines drawn in step 2 have been placed. Repeat this measurement/marking for the bass side and draw a straight line across the two marks. This should give you a perpendicular intonation line to work with. Position the partially-assembled bridge on to the body and align as best you can the saddle witness points on the two two outer saddles (the edge where the string takes off from the saddle) with the perpendicular intonation line you placed in step 3. Mark the centres of the trem post cutouts in the bridge plate on to the guitar body. Check these positions as accurately as you can for squareness and centre-alignment with respect to the assembled guitar neck. In your case this appears to be pretty much in line with the forward lip of the bridge: Any error here can mean that the bridge sits off-centre from the neck and risks the strings falling off the edge of the fretboard, or the bridge ends up sitting crooked on the face of the guitar. Drill as accurately and carefully as you can the two marked post holes using a drill press or other form of drill alignment guide. Use a brad point bit to aide in keeping the bit bang-on the marked positions. Do not use a regular twist drill as they can be difficult to align by eye and have a tendency to wander when first plunging into the wood. If you're unsure about the exact size/depth of the required hole to fit the post sockets, practice on some scrap first as you will only get one shot at it on the guitar itself. The stud should be a firm press-fit into the wood if the hole is sized correctly (ie, it shouldn't take whacking with a hammer to get them in).

If you've already tried changed collets and bits, it could be the router. When you say the bit spins slightly off-centre, do you mean the bit sits eccentrically compared to the shaft? If you look end-on into the shaft does it look a bit like this (exaggerated)?: Does the collet size match the shank size for the bits you're using (ie, you're using a 6mm collet on 6mm shank bits)? Is there something inside the shaft of the router that is stopping the collet sitting centrally inside when you tighten the collet nut up? The other possibility is that the bits are being held at a slight angle as they project downwards from the end of the collet (again, exaggerated): If the fault is bad enough it should be visible to the naked eye if you manually turn the shaft of the router with a long bit installed in the collet. It could indicate that the hollow shaft is not bored concentric to the outer surface of the shaft.

While you're making tools for this one, here's a brilliant bit of improvised engineering I reckon will come in handy when you come to glue the top/back to the sides: http://www.anzlf.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&p=92664&sid=e169e2de749bb5324024395f25b1df63#p92664

Extending the line passing through the position markers on to the body is an understated stroke of genius

New to me too. Red Gum - yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_camaldulensis Walnut - yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans Red Gum Walnut? Sounds like someone wasn't sure if it was Red Gum or Walnut when they put it up for sale Either way, doesn't matter. It's looking splendiferous at the moment. The Guitar Bouzouki is already a hybrid instrument; may as well use hybridised timbers to build it

The usual approach is to use a long, thin drill bit and angle it from the area where the bridge makes contact with the face of the guitar, such that it exits into the side walls of the control cavity. I use a 150mm long 1/8" drill bit for this purpose. The wire you poke through the resultant hole just gets a few cm of insulation stripped off and the pressure of the bridge being screwed to the body keeps the exposed copper strands in contact with the bridge plate, thus providing an electrical connection for your string ground. If you're using a bridge with a black coating don't forget to sand off any paint to expose bare metal underneath where the wire makes contact. The wire will not make an electrical connection through paint. Here's the rough idea I use. In this case it's for a multiscale bridge with individual saddles, but the principle is the same. You can skip the steps involving the use of conductive aluminium tape if you want. As long as the stripped wire makes contact with bare metal undeneath the bridge and isn't at risk of pulling back through the hole you should be good:

Assuming the wiring colours are the same as that shown on the Lone Star Strat and the Fender Mid Boost diagrams, this should get you out of trouble:

Not just any plywood. Guizouki plywood! Much richer tone. Fuller. More moreness. And unicorns.

There's a fundamental misunderstanding going on with the use of the diodes to avoid the three volume pots loading each other, and it's also somewhat at odds of the claim that the sound leaving the guitar is "as pure of a signal as possible". The diodes will clip each alternate cycle of the pickup's output signal. There's still cross-loading of the three volume pots and pickup outputs with each other. This simply cannot be avoided in a purely passive wiring scheme as shown. The note provided in the Part 1 text that "there is a minor overall volume reduction" further indicates that the cross-loading of the three pickups/volumes is inherent in this design. Ironically, if he were pursuing a goal of the purest tonal output, he would have been better off with the no-load pots he's advocating avoiding in his scheme. The "Varitone" circuit as drawn is connected to the middle pickup only. Maybe this was intentional, but every time you wind up the other volume pots on the adjacent pickups you're also going to apply the Varitone effect to the other pickups in varying degrees as well. Some people may not like the loss of being able to quickly change between different pickups, but that's a personal preference. It's an interesting wiring proposal, but I can't help think the author didn't have much of an understanding about what he was proposing, or the limitations and trade-offs of the scheme. FWIW, I'm sure the videos show it "working", but it won't be operating the way it's claimed to.

If it's a left handed part you're after your best bet is to unfortunately get the left handed part. As you've noted the string slots will be incorrectly sized for the opposite strings - the bass strings will probably bind in the narrow notches and will likely suffer from elevated action due to being unable to sit at the full depth in the slots. The treble strings might be ok sitting in wide slots, but you could have issues with the strings buzzing or shifting easily side-to-side in the overly-wide slots while playing. As far as I can tell both Schaller and Floyd Rose sell their nuts specifically for lefties or righties, and the slots are cast to match the decreasing string thickness from bass to treble in each.

The OP has listed the gaps between the first 7 frets and a straightedge placed on the neck. The gaps are increasing the further up the neck he measures. As far as I can see that's indicating the neck is gently curving forward as it should be under string tension. Ergo, there is some relief in his neck (at least in the first half dozen frets anyway).

It's clear from your measurements that the neck has some relief in the first half of its length, which is good, but I'd still be curious to see what the differences are like further up the neck. As mentioned earlier, your buzzing could be occurring much higher up.

I'm guessing you'll be doing this the manual way then. Circle cutting jigs ain't going to be much help here! You can teach us all as you go Isn't that what management might call "synergistic knowledge transfer"? Lots of newfangled terminologies going on with this build of yours. Irish bouzouki tuning appears to be G2/D3/A3/D4? So the lowest string appears to be the same as the fretted G on the 6th string/3rd fret on a standard guitar; voiced somewhere in the middle of a guitar but the tuning intervals spread much wider.

4/64ths is about 1.6mm. That seems unusually low to me. For reference if I measure the action the way you describe it, the guitar with the lowest action I have here is 2.3mm or about 6/64ths, and that's pretty low. Not saying a guitar can't be set lower than this, but 4/64ths could be pretty difficult to achieve reliably and be buzz free while playing power chords on the wound strings with a heavy picking hand. A fret rocker will only tell you if the adjacent fret is high. It wont tell you if the fret height is changing gradually over the length of the neck. Your buzzing may be occurring further up the neck rather than immediately in front of the fretted note. This can happen if the neck has a subtle twist/warp/deformation, or if the fret leveling job took off more on the lower frets than the higher, giving a ramped effect to the fret crowns. Try comparing neck straightness of your builds with one of your known-good factory made guitars. Using your long straightedge, take 5 or 6 measurements along the length of the necks with a set of feeler gauges and compare the values.

The proposed soundhole reminds me a little of the Selmer-Maccaferri D-shaped soundhole, only pointing in the opposite direction. I assume this will also have the same double-course stringing used on a traditional Bouzouki too? Looks like you might just about be due for a fresh set of drawings too. They're starting to look like the've been...ummm... "well loved"...like a comfortable pair of slippers?

My only caveat would be that whatever surface you mount it to probably needs to be (nearly) flat. That would preclude it working on any curved edges that are typical on most guitars on either side of the strap button.

They used to have one in their product range, but it doesn't look like they offer it any more. I can only see bolt-on necks for sale at Stewmac. Warmoth don't do neck-thru blanks either as far as I can tell; only bolt-ons. That's understandable, as they're in the business of selling pre-assembled components that are probably churned out on CNC. Any of their 'custom options' they offer will be from a library of well-proven CNC code blocks that they can just quickly pull together to match a customer's order. Keying themselves up for a whole batch of new necks based on a through-blank product is likely to be quite an expensive undertaking for them, especially since they will no longer be able to sell that neck in conjunction with one of their pre-routed body blanks as well. The chance of the follow-on sale of a body with one of their bolt-on necks is probably worth more than the sale of a single neck-thru blank. I'm sure Stewmac arrived at a similar conclusion when they dropped their neck-thru product. @the_junior - You may have better luck if you directly engage a builder in your area, but I would think that a one-off neck thru blank is likely to be a fairly expensive item.

I sense a Carry On quote coming up...

If the BC Rich Warlock series is particularly variable in terms of the types and sizes of bridges they used, you'll need to do some measurements of your own instrument to determine what will fit. I note that the hardtail version of the Warlock is/was available with a Tune-o-matic tailpiece with through-body stringing, a Tune-o-matic plus Les Paul-style stopbar, and a wraparound-style tailpiece. Dusenberg claim that the Les Trem requires a stud spacing of 81.5mm/3.2" to install correctly. If your Warlock has matching stopbar stud spacings you're halfway there. The other thing to determine is the thread pitch of the inserts. The easiest way to do that would be to visit your local hardware store and buy a couple of bolts of known thread pitch in metric and imperial sizes. Whichever bolt fits the insert will tell you whether you need the Dusenberg trem with the imperial or metric anchors, and what thread pitch they should be. Stetsbar is another company that makes retrofit tremolos for guitars with Nashville-style tailpieces. Helpfully their webpage includes basic dimensional drawings for their products to help you determine the required measurements.

I'd actually not heard of paper backed veneer until just now. Reading up on it it looks more like it is intended for cabinetry and countertops, and is usually adhered using epoxy or contact cement paper side down. Assuming it is natural wood veneer adhered to the paper backing, I would have assumed that using it paper side up makes it behave more like an all-timber veneer and could be adhered using more 'traditional' methods. The paper backing just becomes a sacrificial covering that can be removed after gluing. How the 'de-papered' side reacts when directly exposed to heat, sanding, subsequent coating with oil/varnish/dyes/stains etc is another matter. The adhesive used to attach the paper may contaminate the surface of the veneer enough to interfere with the application of various finishes. Trying to remove any of these surface contaminants (if any) by sanding may result in accidentally sanding through the veneer to the substrate below, ruining the veneer job altogether. The more usual method would be to use an all-timber veneer adhered using more forgiving glues such as PVA or hot hide glue, or using a veneer with some kind of pre-applied heat activated glue and adhering it to the surface using an iron. Probably. You would have done better to sand off the old finish back to bare wood and use a wood glue to marry up timber with timber. PVA-type glues have the advantage of being moderately reversible with the application of heat and/or steam, so if you had any bubbles in the veneer after application you'd have had the opportunity to try flattening them down again with the use of an iron, or syringing glue into the bubble and reapplying pressure. Araldite, not so much.

Kinda like some sort of fractal art?

It's not the quantity of updates, but the quality that counts Sorry, @M3521. The quantity of the thread derailments is what we're best known for around here.

Provided you're not also scaling down the body thickness to match the reduced overall size, I reckon that will be fine.

Wow, that's a blast from the past! Good to see you're still plugging away at it I think @Norris has a new challenger in the "slowly but surely" race