Guitar Nerds Anonymous

This is excellent... I like the 'theme' of it, but also the guitar just looks really good in those bright colours!

Love pointy guitars. I really want to make an Explorer, but I don't think my workbench is big enough to accomodate one...

Honestly I've been so shocked by how great it feels on a strap. It's a blast to play and I haven't even got it wired up yet!

I'm very tempted to build one from scratch as my first proper build, I reckon it could look great with a massive haircut headstock kind of like a Hagstrom one maybe?

Something along this style perhaps?

That's a handsome headstock. I reckon you're right to change it, the Dean one is pretty big.

You got plans for when you're going to start? It'd be an interesting one to follow, I've not seen (m)any builds.

No idea at all, I've never built from scratch before so I'll need to do some homework.
It would be rude not to make it neckthrough though so I'll have my work cut out for me! Maybe maple neckthrough with mahogany wings and some (3no.) mini-humbuckers?

Having another one here to use as a template should make it fairly manageable though for the body end of things so I suppose the tricky bit will be the neck!

A Mastery bridge would be supreme craic also...

It would be rude not to make it neckthrough though so I'll have my work cut out for me!

The first one I built at home was a neck through.

It is slightly harder than a bolt on, but I don't think it's a silly idea - especially with a bridge like that that doesn't (I think) need a neck angle.

The good thing is that you can make the interesting bits of the guitar (heel, stringline, scale length, bridge mounting etc) from one long bit of wood, so you don't necessarily have to spring for everything at once and until you're relatively sure it'll work.

You're making this sound like a far more sensible idea than I expected haha!

Any recommendations for where to find neckthrough blanks?

This website's amazing. I never knew I needed to know so much about mandolin construction!

I get all my wood from David Dyke:

http://www.luthierssupplies.co.uk/

You can probably get it cheaper elsewhere (and I don't know how Brexit will work sending wood between uk and Ireland...). I've never worried about cost to be honest, as I only build one every 18 months so it's never worth trying to save £20 here or there. If you do go here, ask them to radius your fretboard for a tenner - it's a horrible job!

Guitars and Wood in Portugal are great for tools and templates, and there's at least one luthier I've chatted to on Instagram that that uses them for wood:

https://guitarsandwoods.com/

I’ve used G’n’W for the odd bit of wood as well and it was great (same as with everything else they do). I love them, they’re fast becoming the European StewMac.

I actually used them recently (post-Br*xit) to buy a fretboard radiusing jig. Thinking I’d just take the hit on duties and VAT... it arrived within 2 days as usual, and I wasn’t charged anything.

Ooh, I've been really tempted to get those radius jigs with all the inserts. In a classic case of escalation, I then came very close to buying a 3d printer to try to make an accurate enough jig instead.

Anything to avoid ever having to sand another ebony fretboard by hand, it's amongst the least productive things I think I've ever done.

Cannot recommend hard enough. Turns a frustrating, dusty, time-consuming job into an easy 5 minute one. Much, much more accurate. I found it nearly impossible to get the correct radius with sanding blocks.

We were taught to make guides with straight edges so you can't go wrong. But it doesn't make the task any less tedious. You can hand plane the bulk off if you're good enough.

I did think about that (building a guide jig for the sanding blocks) but I’d have been resigning myself to continuing with the sanding blocks and the countless hours of tedium (and I’m not good enough with planes yet).

Don’t get me wrong, I can manage to get a decent result, it’s just a complete pain in the hole.

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I presume you've all seen the episode of Father Ted where Dougal gets a scratch on the car and proceeds to "fix" it...

So I drilled my string thru for the bridge but stupidly drilled the string holes first and then when I drilled the ferrule holes the bit bit and made an awful mess...

"No problem", or so I thought, so I chiselled out a rout and made a block of mahogany to replace. "Good" I convinced myself, at least this way it'll be stronger than the miserable poplar so it's a bit of a win...

Glued it all up nicely and pressed in the block whenceforth the CA glue sploshes out onto the paint and the body proceeds to crack as evidenced in the photo below (the crack is running along from pickup ring to the two new bridge holes and down, the other scratches were my exasperated carelessness) 😐

Cue me driving home from the office in a tempest of rage and disappoint and ordering a black nitro respray kit from Rothko and Frost.

Now however, in the cold light of day, I'm wondering if it might not be salvageable with some black nail polish touch up around the mahogany block, leave the block as is and give the rest a good polish to fix those scratches/ blobs from the glue? I'd happily keep the black nitro to refinish my Jazz bass anyway...

Thoughts? Opinions? Sympathies?

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Dougal / car / drive home / respray kit....

I swear until I got to the pictures I honestly read this whole post forgetting what thread I was in and thinking you were talking about your car. I previously read a bit of your mini thread re drilling bonnet holes or something...

(Looks fine, can barely notice it)

Haha I can see how it caused confusion!

I think I'll touch in around the mahogany block with some black nail varnish and give it a coat of lacquer and a polish and see how it looks before I strip it!

If I were you I might have used the same type of wood, and ran the grain in the same direction as the body, and not used CA glue. At least it's on the back!

Sadly the only piece of wood I had available was an offcut of a bannister so I didn't have a choice in grain direction but the more I look at it the less upset I am about it... I'll cut and polish and see how it turns out!

I wouldn't worry too much with the nitro on the back - I don't think you'll get it unobtrusive without a lot of work. Got anything you can screw over the top to cover it up?! (maybe some plastics - you could route a cover cavity in and have a screw on plastic cover, pretend that it's meant to be there?)

If not a cavity cover, I'd be tempted to sand a high grit until it's at some level of finish that's acceptable and leave it.

I've touched in around it with a little glue, razored it off and sanded with 800grit and it looks a lot better already, I don't really mind leaving the mahogany visible so I might just give it a shot of lacquer and wet sand/ polish and call it mojo 😅

At least every idiotic mistake is presenting a new opportunity to learn a skill!

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Ah, that'll buff out... Etc... Looks fine to me, it's on the back!

Wait, is it on the front? 😬

Fear not it's on the back 😂 I've just whacked a bit of lacquer on it so I'll buff it out once it's set but I think it actually looks OK. Sort of adds a bit of mojo reminiscent of the inlay on SRV's Lenny... at least that's what I can tell myself.

It's a tone block 😎🤌

Reverb tanks. I think I want to upgrade the one in my combo amp. Currently a 9" 2-spring medium decay thing, but I want MORE.
Looks like they're all plug and play with RCA leads, but do I need to consider things like impedance?