honza992

Christine, I've been inspired by your amazing amazing twins to try MOP blocks (and binding) on my next build. I'm trying to work out how blocks and binding will affect my normal workflow. One of my concerns was using a fretboard radius jig after having cut the holes for the blocks. Looking at the pictures it looks a really clean job, but did you have any problems with tearout? I'm using a rosewood board. Did you get any tearout as the router bit went over the channels for the blocks? Thanks!

Today I spent a bit of time looking at layout and making templates. The bass is going to be 33", so I've reduced the overal size of the body slightly, and because the bridge will be right up againt the edge of the body (to improve balance) I've also re-worked the lower horn a bit to allow access to the upper frets. For the pickups I'm going to stick with traditional positions for both the P and J pickups. For the P that's 84% of the scale length away from the nut, and for the J in the 60s position, 92%. I also prepared the neck blank. It came from David Dyke and it's fantastic. I cut out the neck and thicknessed it down to 20mm and it didn't move a milimetre. Look at this for symmetrical grain.... Tomorrow, neck pocket.......

I'm bit of a electronics ignoramus. Am I right in thinking while two jazz pickups at the same volume will hum cancel, a jazz and a precision pickup won't?

Thanks I'll take a look.

This thread is 10 seconds old, and already I need your help. I was going to try to use a small UK pickup maker but my god they are expensive. A set from Creamery or Barenuckle will cost more than the rest of the bass put together. Almost. Are they worth the money? Alternatively there's a spanish maker I've used before, Jess Loureiro, who can do a a P/J set for 100 euro. More in budget. Any other pickup recommendations? Any advice about what to look for in a P/J set? Should I think about a split/stacked jazz humbucking pickup in the bridge?

He he nice to be here😀

Hi All I thought I would do a thread for my next build. My last couple of builds have been those twangy six string things, so this one will be a bass. Specs as follows: 4 String Jazz, 33" Scale. Alder body, flatsawn maple neck, rosewood fretboard with MOP blocks and binding. Pickups - P/J FInish - some sort of polyurethane, white, either Olympic or Vintage - EDIT - I'm going to try as hard as a I can to brush rather than spray the finish. I'm really not enjoying spraying. Time to start experimenting. A quick look a the blanks before we start..... Nothing too complicated in comparison to the amazing and creative luthiery on display elsewhere on Basschat, but believe me this is enough!

Brilliant. Very very nice work. Thanks for showing us the technique. I shall steal it!

Thanks all for the replies. Plenty to think about. I may write to Fender and ask what they do with there's. I'll let you know....

Hi All Quick question about fretboards. When I've made guitars with rosewood or ebony fretboards I've always left them unfinished. ie they get sanded to something like a 1000 grit, then I put the frets in and that's it. I then very lightly wipe them with a guitar lemon oil every 6 months or so. I'm just finishing off a tele with a pau ferro fretboard and randomly came across a thread on another board that said in fact all manufacturers, large and small, apply a finish to rosewood/ebony (and presumably pau ferro) to seal it. This was news to me. If you do finish your fretboards what do you use, and how and when do you do it? PS I'm only talking about the darker fretboards here. Maple is a different matter. I think pretty much everyone, myself included, puts a hard finish on that. Thanks!

Take a look at that. Luvvverly....

I've got the Festool ETS 125, which is an eccentric sander. I'm not quite sure what the difference is between that range and the Rotex range that Christine has mentioned, but they are (a bit) cheaper and mine will very happily sand wood and polish finish up to 2000 grit (Andy my blue tele was finish-sanded with it). I don't think it's really designed for taking off lots of material, but for normal sanding and finishing it works great. Give it a go next time you are up?

I've been down this road before. I'd like to use some sort of program to do 2D drawings of guitars partly just to help with the design process, and potentially to cut out templates. If you already know how to use CAD, this seems to be pretty straightforward. That is a very big 'if' though. I even had a couple of lessons to see whether I could pick it up but it was just completely overwhelming. Vectors, and radius, and centre points and this and that etc etc etc. I think it would take me months to be able to create even very simple drawings in CAD. I compare that with building a website and the differences are amazing. Using something like Wix, I can create what to me looks like a professional and complex website in seconds. Wix takes away all the complicated stuff (vectors, radius, centre points, etc etc etc) and just lets me drag and drop. Is there really nothing that is as simple as Wix for CAD? Do I really need to spend £2.8k on a computer and hundreds on software and hours and hours of scratching my head trying to work out how to link up a straight line to a curve?

Andy is there a reason why you glue the tops on separately rather making a two-layered blank?

Wow, so much to like. Wood selection especially. I don't think I've ever seen an ash neck before. I would guess grain orientation is critical, much more so than with maple which has much straighter grain in the first place. The 3 pieces certainly look as though they've got lovely straight grain, and the direction of the 3 pieces have been oriented to complement each other. Lovely job!

As I understand it the normal tuneomatic bridge (like the one Christine posted above) has a curved bottom. Given I'm talking about a flat top guitar, would this sort of (flat-bottomed) thing be appropriate? https://schaller.info/en/bridges/328/stm?number=12080200&c=52

OK, neck jig looks simple enough. Thanks for posting pictures. Does a bridge like that contact the top of the guitar? Or is the connection only via the posts?

Wow these are great. Thanks so much for posting your process in detail. Could I ask you for a bit more detail about your neck joint routing method. It's something I've tried to do, but it was only when I tried it out on scrap that I realised the radius of the router bit was far too large - for the bit to cut flush with the body, the radius of the bit needs to be equal to (or less than) the depth of cut.... Am I right that you used a small radius bit (2mm?) with a bearing that runs along the body to cut a channel all the way along the neck part of the join, then used a flat cutter to bring the thickness of the neck down to that level? You don't have any pictures of you actually doing it by any chance? Your neck joins are the best I've seen. The trouble with inspirational threads like these is that they are...inspirational. Another technique to try and another guitar to build. So thanks for that🙄 😁

Andy, I'm coming to this very late, as usual. And as usual that is very very very nice. Hats off. I love the blocks. They actually make me go slightly weak. Bit pathetic really for a man of my age, but there you go. Can I ask how you actually did them? Radiused first, then routed the holes and did the corners with a chisel? Have you found the ebony dust getting onto the fretboard an issue? Did you cut the ebony blocks yourself? I'm sure you considered and rejected doing them before radiusing the fretboard, could I ask why?

Thanks Christine, spot on info. Yes, lacking woodworking skills I fear my router(s) get used for virtually everthing. I'll have a look online for jigs to do neck angles, but presumably just a box type thing with some shims at one end would work.....and a bit of trigonometry..... You don't happen to know what minimum string height a tuneomatic bridge would have? I think most fender style bridges (from memory) have a minimum of about 11mm. The tuneomatics look a bit more than that. Though if I'm doing a flat top rather than a carved top, that presumably in effect brings the bridge down in height a bit..... OK, that's interesting what you say about not making the top thinner. Seen and noted, I'll stick to a standard 5-6mm. When you say connecting strips between the bridge/neck block, do you mean something more like this? (which is the innards of a Gretsch) Is it your instinct that this type of fully chambered will be a bit louder than my Thinline? Doens't have to be a lot!

That's interesting. Being new to the (6 string) guitar game, I didn't even know such things existed. Having said that I think even that is going to be too loud (we already get regular letters from our neighbours via our letting agent complaining about the noise of our 2 year old) so I think that may be tempting fate. Also, real luthiery - sound boards, bracing etc etc, is far beyond my current skills.

Ah yeah, I've seen his Jazz build, but didn't know about his LP one. I'll definitely be looking that up. Thanks for the pointer. There's no doubt he is a veeery talented man, though I find it hard to reconcile some of his more esoteric beliefs (tone tapping wood, tuning forks to test for 'growl') with my (admitedly 30 year old) A Level physics. But he's a man obsessed, no doubt about that! And if the LP thread is half as useful as the Jazz one, then that's probably most of the build covered.

OK thanks Geek, that answers that one!

Hi All I’ve just finished a Thinline tele which came out pretty well…. However, I’ve found that the only time I have to practise is in the evening, when my two year old has finally exhausted herself from saying ‘no’ repeatedly and vehemently to everything. We live in a flat so to ensure I don’t disturb her I’ve also found that I play it unplugged. That works pretty well but I wish it had just a tiny bit more acoustic volume. So…… I’m wondering whether I should building something like this, that is fully chambered rather than only half chambered as the Thinline is. Me being me, though, I want to simplify things a bit. I’ve found that for me I really need to build in an incremental way - making each build only slightly more complex than the last. I know there are builders here who can seemingly conjure painfully beautiful guitars from clothes pegs using only spoons as theirs tools. That’s not me unfortunately. At the moment, I don’t want to do a set neck or a carved top or bent sides but I’m wondering whether a flat top, bolt-on neck, fully chambered (ie routed) Les Paul build might do the trick? If anyone wanted to offer up an opinion, I’d love to hear it. Specifically, I’m wondering about the following: Acoustic volume - do you think a fully chambered (routed) body like this would increase the volume a little bit in comparison to the above thinline? Should I also be thinking about making the top thinner than the standard 5mm or so which I would normally put on a chambered guitar? 4mm? 3mm? Is there any reason why a Les Paul can’t have a standard bolt on neck? I know the LPs have the neck at an angle. Is that because of the carved top? Or the bridge design? Or both? Does anyone know what the minimum height of that sort of bridge is? Lots of questions, I know. PS. Now clearly I realise if I want a bit more volume just a pair of headphones would take me about 100 less hours than building an entirely new guitar. But if I did that, how would I fill those 100 hours?

ooh very interested in this. Weight, or lack thereof, is right up my street.... Carry on😁