curtisa

This headstocklet needs a cover plate, so after rifling through the scraps bin I found an offcut from the body top. Always pays to keep even the smallest fragment of your fancy woods for builds like these. A quick trip to the bandsaw and a few passes under the drum sander yields a 2mm thin sliver of eucalyptus that can be overlaid onto the headstock of the neck: The tricky thing about working with such small pieces is devising a method to clamp it while it glues. There's a chunky bit of clear plexiglass acting as a clamping caul over the biggest flat area of the headplate, and under the rear two clamps I have a couple of brass PCB standoffs perched perilously on the edges adjacent to the nut slot. I guess if I were doing this on a production level I'd make up some kind of custom-shaped clamping caul out of HDPE that fits around the end of the fretboard: The finished article. Oh, and frets already in, sorry. I've decided to take the bull by the horns on this build and install stainless steel jumbos after swearing blind I'd never work with stainless again. Wasn't actually as bad as I remember it being the last time, so either I've remebered it wrong or I'm more tolerant of the experience. Zero fret yet to be installed: Side markers (yes, they are there. They're just a bit smaller than usual - 1.5mm diameter this time): First coats of oil. The redheart sapwood of the leatherwood is finally starting to stand out a bit better at the edges of the body:

The easier option would be to buy a panning pedal. Electro Harmonix make one that claims to be able to "... blend two inputs to one output..." which sounds exactly like what you're after. I'm sure there are other options out there.

Linky from Stewmac: https://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Online_Resources/Learn_About_Guitar_Pickups_and_Electronics_and_Wiring/Blend_Pot_Wiring.html

Both FR Original and the Schaller equivalent get good reps. I've used a German-made FR Original in one build and been very happy with the build and quality of the unit. By all accounts Gotoh make a good quality trem too, though I've not tried one myself. I can guarantee you that for $58 new it won't be a real Floyd Rose.

As noted by @Bizman62, the above scheme will suffer from cross-bleeding of each pickup at either extreme of the pot's position. You will not get 100% of one pickup/0% of the other at each end. The correct way to do it is with a dual-gang pot with one element controling each pickup independently, each pickup wired for contra-rotation so that as one pickup raises in volume the other decreases. Stewmac sells (or used to sell as far as I know) a pot dedicated expressly for this purpose. It even came with a custom taper for each element so you wouldn't get the both-pickups-blended-50/50-signal-weakening effect at mid rotation.

All good. I knew what you meant. I still reckon a Boss-style changeover is over-engineering the solution, particularly if you're not savvy with the finer knowledge of building up electronic circuits, which many builders here may not be. The requirement to plug in a remote footswitch exclusively to allow the pickups to be selected, plus install a small PCB and battery inside a guitar may also be less attractive than simply running a stereo guitar cable through what, for all intents and purposes is just another stompbox.

When you say switching from neck to bridge, do you mean in a continuously variable kind of way or a hard 'one-or-the-other' operation? Hard on/off switching is pretty straight forward, although you will likely want some kind of visual feedback of which pickup is selected on the footswitch. A toggle switch on a guitar is easy, as the position the lever is in is the visual key as to what pickup is selected. A footswitch on the floor is harder, as by itself it doesn't give any clue as to whether it is selected one way or the other before you start playing. At the very least you're probably looking at adding a battery to power an LED to give some feedback as to what position the footswitch is in. A single footswitch would give you 'bridge pickup' or 'neck pickup' selectivity quite easily. However if you want to add a 'both pickups' option then you're going to have to add at least one more footswitch (plus indication). Quick changes between pickups might then involve a bit of forward thinking and toe-tapping as to how to get between the pickup options if speed is important while making pickup selection changes on the fly. A neat idea, but probably akin to using a bulldozer to plant daisies , and building it into the guitar...well, you might as well just use a toggle switch in the first place.

I was going to add the right one looks like a mini clog, and would have chosen it just because it looked like a mini clog. But that's just me

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. Keep up your development on the software. You've got me thinking of ways I can create fret wire that conforms to the shapes required to fit into the compensated slots

I was going to say that other "T" word. Me teef!

I'd be more looking into the possibility that your output jack on the guitar is miswired, or there's a wiring error on the input at your switching device. Cross-bleeding of the two pickups over the cable is possible, but unlikely to be audible to the point of standing out as a problem.

Nice! Guess I missed that then So when I enable the True Temperament variables within the SIL file, is the SiGen program displaying a calculated fretboard upon loading, or is the displayed fretboard just a graphical approximation of what the TT system should look like?

Had a quick poke around your program. Overall I like it a lot and can see it having a place on my PC as a handy alternative to that certain other online program you mention. The addition of having better control over some of the other parameters is nice - adjustable fretboard overhang beyond the 24th fret is handy, as is the string spacing and fretboard edge overhang functions. Direct typing of inches or metric is a nice feature too, without having to switch between the two measurement systems globally. I couldn't see an easy way to generate your compensated fret placement graphs as you show in your screenshots, but I'm assuming that that's a feature due for implementation at a later date. I haven't tried the DXF export function yet to see how it behaves. One thing that I'd be keen to see is in the DXF is an adjustable length of fret slot. This would allow the user to specify the cutting of blind fret slots on a CNC, where the fret slot doesn't cut the full width of the fretboard. Admittedly this is a minor tweak, as the trimming of the fret slot geometry on the exported DXF within CAD is a pretty minor operation, but is one less step that would have to be undertaken when making a 3D model of a fretboard for later machining operations on a CNC.

Interesting work you've started here. So the fret compensation (TT) layout component is only based off a visual representation of the real deal, ie it's not a measured/calculated intonation correction at this stage? My understanding of the TT system is that it makes the fretted notes more aligned with 12-tone equal temperament (12TET), and accounts for particular string gauges and specific actions to correct the inherent inaccuracies of fretted notes in a more predictable way. That's why the recommendation from the makers of TT is that drop tuning and string gauges can only be changed so much before the benefits of a TT fretboard are lost - the compensation they've designed into the fretting system will have been based upon a limited range of tunings and string gauges. Theoretically the math behind TT should be easy to replicate - take a well made neck of known scale length, string it with a nominal set of strings and tune to pitch. Take measurements of the pitch of each string at every fretted position and record the pitch deviation. Each fretting 'node' should then be moved to correct for that pitch deviation, which should yield the 'squiggly frets' that TT is known for. The bigger problem will be manufacturing the frets to go in the slots.

It's pretty thin brass stock, so you'd probably be OK. Minimising the amount to route away as much as possible beforehand would be a good idea. I've routered (routed? rooted? routerereded?) aluminium in the past and it's actually not too difficult to work with. The shavings are a nightmare though. Can you attach some kind of big hand-hold block to the back of your control cavity cover with double sided tape? That way at least your hands would be away from the firing line while you're doing the cut. Maybe also set up some kind of temporary fence/shield on your side of the router table so that if it does zing away it doesn't zing into you first.

Sounds pretty typical for a one-off build for personal usage. Thanks for taking the time to tally up and share your expenses. Note that (as I'm sure you're aware) the cost of your materials (wood, pickups, frets, bridges etc) and consummables (sandpaper, glue, paint etc) will go down if you can source them in bulk and/or at wholesale prices. This translates to a lower expense per completed guitar when spread out over more builds. But you obviously need to have more guitars in the pipeline to take advantage of it, otherwise you're just buying a box of 100 neck screws with only plans to use 12. Another thing you can do is to save money is by purchasing guitar parts from cheaper sources where a premium part doesn't matter. You could pay $5 for a pack of four neck screws from Allparts, or you could go to your local specialist fasteners outlet and buy something that looks and works just as well for $0.75 each. Do you need mahogany sold specifically as a guitar body blank, or could you get a plank of the same thing from a local timber wholesaler for half the price? Does it even need to be an expensive timber like mahogany in the first place? As a hobbyist, cost of hours expended to create your guitar is a moot point. Unless you're building it to sell it, you can only measure the instrument's financial cost in the materials used to create it. @Bizman62's point is that you're using your free time to create your guitar, so there is no metric available to you to evaluate its worth other than the time taken to complete it, which to you has nil monetary value. Measuring the number of hours expended is useful however, as if you do intend to sell your creations you can factor in how much you should charge for it. As you say, this should also include things like electricity for the workshop, insurance, wear and tear on tools, purchasing consumables etc, plus some kind of profit margin so you can actually make a living from doing what you do - buy food, pay for the home loan, fill the car up with fuel, go for a holiday once in a blue moon... Once you start looking into what your hourly rate should actually be for building a guitar for a paying customer, it can be a bit of an eye-opener as to what you should be charging for a completed build. $3-$4K for a professionally-built, high-quality instrument probably doesn't go very far at all if you spent 80-100 hours creating it

I was watching a Youtube vid the other day of Steve Vai unveiling his new iteration on the venerable Ibanez Jem, the Pia, and he was getting all excited about this new technology he'd had Ibanez implement for securing the rear trem cavity cover - these new fangled, wacky things called "magnets". I can't help having a bit of a chuckle at his slight over-enthusiasm with what people here at Project Guitar have known about for years.. Maybe we're more pioneers than we realise... Keep us up to date with your progress @Prostheta. Enjoying your processes here in the wings with a beer in my hands.

Look and sounds like a bought one. Nice work!

Now there's a name I haven't heard of in a while. Looking pretty tidy, Mike

Just a brief update today. Finally had a chance to release the clamps and trim the excess off the inlay: Little by little...:

These pseudo-mandolin solid bodies of yours seem to be becoming your signature builds at the moment I wonder if you burn the same number of calories doing two hours resawing a top by hand as you would doing two hours of jogging? I know which one I'd find more rewarding...

A few minutes in the router table cleans up the remainder of the body outline. If I were to do this again I'd let the CNC do the full profile on both halves of the body and then glue them together as prefabricated pieces. Now that I know that the machined alignment pin method for the top and back gives me good results, I feel pretty comfortable that I wouldn't need to stress about the two halves lining up badly if they're pre-shaped before gluing. The top is only 15mm thick and the blank is 35mm, which makes the machining of them as two separate entities quite achievable with the longest endmill I have in my collection: Shaping the heel is something that could easily have been done on the CNC, but I was struggling with a way of modeling it in the software. So to keep the ball rolling and just get the job done it's back to the handtools. 5 minutes with the saw rasp vs several hours of faffing around with a 3D model, there's obviously no contest. Maybe next time, however...: By necessity the output jack is a job for the drill press, as there's no way this would fit on the machine given the body has to be held upright pointing up at a 45degree angle: Then it's back on to the machine to recreate the earlier inlay test on the real deal. The pencilled rectangle marks the nominal bounding box of the logo: The first pass of the vee bit leaves the surface somewhat scruffy looking, but there are more cleanup passes required to get rid of all the excess material between each of the prismatic inlay pieces. Note also that the inlay is the negative of the inlay channels cut into the body: The tip of the vee bit is used to clean up the super-fine corners, which reveals a little bit more detail in the lettering: And a 0.8mm flat endmill is used to get rid of the remainder of the excess and leave behind nothing more than the embossed inlay sitting in a 'tray': Once the embossed inlay is cut free from the surrounding timber it can be 'plugged' into the inlay channels and glued up. This is actually the second attempt at the prismatic inlay piece, as the first one wasn't machined deep enough. With the 'peaks' of the inlay too shallow for the cuts the whole inlay could slop around in the inlay pockets, which would have left a dark glue shadow around the edges of the letters:

Any grammatical faux pas, quirks and foibles I blame solely on my convict heritage.

Cheers Andy. I take it your double-negative/single positive was confirmation that you had in fact hadn't not unseen that method before again, and are unlikely to not ever see it again before you didn't see it the last time?