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The P90 covers are the same as they always were/are at 11mm, I go for 3 degrees because 2 degrees is just too shallow an angle over the pickup for the bridge I’m using. At 2 degrees, the strings pass over the polepieces, with only about 2mm to spare and playing with your palm rested at the front of the bridge (the only way you can with a wraparound), any additional pressure on the strings causes the classic ‘THUNK’ as the string hits the polepiece so at 3 degrees it just gives that extra bit of clearance to stop this happening
(formerly miserneil)
(formerly miserneil)
www.rexterguitars.co.uk
(formerly customkits)
Will do man, I fear this was a really nice bundle to miss. Should have gone for it even though I was broke! Old guy clearing out garage, large and smaller boards, most of them 50mm+ thick all looked build worthy, dry stored for 20+ years All for £140.
I look on gumtree everyday for guitars, timber and tools at the moment and barely anything decent ever comes up for timber especially. Railway sleepers, pressure treated 2x4s and people in North Norfolk trying to flog tables made out of dirty old wood they're labelling "reclaimed" for £800 to the richer holiday home owners up there!
www.rexterguitars.co.uk
I find that it pays to let people know you are looking, even if they are not interested in guitars. That has led to 3 or 4 large stashes of mahogany coming my way, usually from old fellas that have been hanging onto a few bits.
Although it does sometimes mean I have to gratefully accept some free wood I don't actually want, hence the large slabs if iroko I have ended up with. I just keep saying yes to it all and eventually some good stuff turns up
edit: its not worked for braz rosewood yet
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Anyway, onto the next.
I start with an African Mahogany, quartersawn neck blank and mark out my neck(s) - The blanks I use, depending on size, I can usually get either 2 DC necks or 3 necks, (2 DC and an SC - Double Cut Necks are longer than Single Cut necks by the way) with some careful cutting:
The necks are rough cut out on the band saw, I then tidy up the headstock faces with a hand plane:
I also check my headstock angle is the vintage correct 17 degrees here:
Next up is the russ rod slot. I use the traditional one way rod (of course!). Now there is lots of conjecture about the truss rod slot in a vintage Gibson neck (.....well, there is on the Gibson anorak forums I read!! ) about it being a curved channel. It's not, it's a straight channel but it is angled over the length of the neck, 13mm at the headstock to 15mm at the heel end.
I secure the blank into the truss rod jig I made especially for the job and route a straight, flat bottomed 5mm channel:
I then offer up the rod in the channel, measure and drill out for the anchor bolt and also measure how far the access route needs to recess into the headstock.
I used to do this next bit in all manner of ways, clamp the blank in the vice and use a forstner bit in the pillar drill, tried it with a router and a rounded cutter and even gouges but it was never clean enough for my liking so I stumped up the cash to StewMac and bought the proper tool for the job...expensive as it only performs one task...but it does it neatly and it's quite important to the whole build really!
So the truss rod access gets cut with a handheld drill like so:
A little tip I picked up from another forum is to score the horizontal line of the stop mark with a razor blade and you get a lovely clean face with no fuzz or tear out:
Once i'm happy that the rod fits nicely and the nut doesn't foul on the cover - on vintage Juniors, the nut often protruded past the headstock face and made the truss rod cover bulge out! - it's time to cut and plane down some Hard Rock Maple filler strips to hold the truss rod in place in the channel.
Modern Gibson guitars use a plastic 'condom' around the rod (well, as far as i'm aware they still do?) to stop the glue sticking to it but, in the 50's they didn't so neither do I. Just takes a little more care when gluing the sides of the channel not to get glue all over the rod - hence no pic of this bit!
But here's the filler strip clamped in snugly against the rod:
I then clean up any glue squeeze out (hopefully minimal) and leave this to dry overnight.
More in a couple of days!
(formerly miserneil)
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(formerly customkits)
(formerly miserneil)
Next up is the fretboard. I use Indian Rosewood. One thing I really love to see is a rough billet of Rosewood planed down and, with a bit of oil, revealing a lovely grain pattern!
So I start with some rough sawn blanks:
These are then trued up and thicknessed to about 6mm.
I then mark out the frets, I use the vintage scale length of 24.625 and start cutting the fret slots. I don't have a mitre box, I use a Japanese fret saw and a set square and after some careful sawing we have a nicely slotted fretboard:
Once the slots are completed, I line up the centre lines and glue the full width of the board to the neck blank (i'll explain why in a minute) and leave it overnight:
(And treat myself to a cup of tea....)
Next day the clamps come off and I draw around the '59 DC Neck template with a white pencil, ready to rough cut it on the band saw:
The neck is then taken to the band saw and I cut as close to the line as my nerves will allow!
Which gives me this:
I re-attach the neck template with double sided tape and clean up the edges on the router. This is always a nerve-wracking part cause one false move and 2 days work is down the drain. Carefully does it and we have a nice, clean neck shape, about .5mm oversize so I can bring it down to proper width when sanding:
The reason I like to glue the whole width fingerboard to the neck blank and then cut it out is so that I get no gaps. Some people like to cut, shape & radius the neck and fingerboard separately before gluing to two together, which works great but it wasn't clean enough for me and my OCD(!), I got a couple of tiny gaps. The pictures of the dot inlays below are from when I tried this way but I returned to glueing the whole thing. This way is perhaps slightly more 'dangerous' in that one slip in the final routing stage could ruin the whole neck but I love the tight, clean glue line between neck and fingerboard it gives me:
Next, I radius the board. Now I know of a lot of guys who have built a jig for this and use a belt sander or router to do it but I always thought "Na, bit of elbow grease is all it needs, a jig is just lazy".......I am now perfectly happy to admit I was totally wrong and and moron and these guys have it down...what a PITA!!! ;-)
So the neck goes in the vice, I load up the 12" radius beam with 80 grit sandpaper and sand....and sand...and sand...and check....and sand...and check....and sand....and brew up....and check....and look up radius jig plans on google...and sand....
FWIW, since this pic was taken, I have invested in a much longer, aluminium radius block which takes some of the work out of it but i'm DEFINITELY looking into a radius jig....
Once I have the board radiused, I go up through the grits to remove any scratches and we are left with this:
Perfect 12" radius:
Next up are the dots. I use 1/4" NOS celluloid dots as per the originals and I get them from Dave Johnson (previously of Historic Makeovers).
I mark out the positions.....then check I haven't lost any!
The 1/4" holes are then drilled, dots seated and sanded flat with 240grit paper on the radius beam:
And cleaned up:
Next, the side dots are marked out, drilled, inserted, and flattened off:
And then we are ready for carving.....
More soon!
(formerly miserneil)
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