Full fat Les Paul build

grappagreen

I feel your pain. Try and take some solace in the fact that once you've resolved it it's still a f'kin amazing piece of workmanship and a beautiful instrument. 

WezV

Yeah  just plug it... you will find the bridge covers most of it.  You may see it but no one else will 


Measure everything first though, whilst it's still together.  If the measurements add up, something else is wrong.

 If you have one, mount a trapeze tailpiece to the strap button hole and use it to test positioning before you drill.  If you don't have one, make a string holder out of wood

davros

Thanks,  Wez - that's what I did to set the intination originally, so don't know how I managed to cock it up!

Downloaded the peterson strobe tuner app this morning and it looks like I can get it to around 2 cents sharp with very light finger pressure, and it's mainly the low E that is out, the rest aren't so bad.

Before doing anything drastic, I'm going to do some more playing. I may be able to live with it. I'm also going to try fettling the action down a touch, that could help a bit.

WezV

Have you ruled out anything obvious like strings, or even the nut?

You can check for nut issues by putting a capo at the 1st, making sure open strings are in tune, and check intonation at the 13th. 

PeteC

Thats a great little gem @WezV ;

davros

I think the nut is fine, but will check. I noticed that it was at totally different angle to the (correctly intonated) same bridge on my last build but lack of experience made me think maybe that's normal. Obviously not, and I should have quadruple checked.

Bridge position was set before dressing the nut, so that may have caused the original issue.

WezV

Yeah, it probably will have.   I have one of mine to redrill because it's only just in range... think this is something most of us have probably had to deal with

davros

Decided to bite the bullet and plug, redrill and patch up the bridge post. I also realised I did a shite job of levelling the frets, so that needs doing properly.

Found a 1/2 inch plug cutter, so cut plugs from the same mahogany and maple blanks that the body was cut from. Glued with titebond. redrilled and now it intonates properly.

Haven't decided what to do with the finish yet, think it's beyond drop filling. May try and patch it and relic as originally planned or just refin the top when I spray the next build.

Lots of lessons were learnt in this build!!

Winny_Pooh

Commenting a bit late here, but on a solid wraparound bridge where the front part is cut away to provide the break edge, you could have just filed the front face further back on the low E? 

davros

That's true, didn't think of that, although I might as well stick with this bridge and put the post where it should have been, since its only for me.

WezV

A drop fill should work fine on that

davros

I've been playing this as my #1 guitar, and it's always been destined to get aged, but I had 2 problems - 1. Being brave enough to start dinging it up and 2. Not having a big enough freezer to get it checking.

Turns out, playing it a lot dings up the unplasticised nitro pretty rapidly. I had a band practice on Monday in a cold barn, it was about 3 degrees outside, then brought it in the warm house. It's now checked all over

...problem solved!

I think I'll now get the drop fill sorted on the bridge, give it a few more dings and some hot/cold cycles in the car boot on cold evenings. I also need to age the hardware, and it may finally be 'finished'.

longjaw

Will leaving the guitar in a cold environment for any period of time not lead to fret-end sprout?

WezV

longjaw said:

Will leaving the guitar in a cold environment for any period of time not lead to fret-end sprout?

that's usually down to  humidity + natural wood shrinkage.

overnights in the cold shouldn't be an issue for a solidbody electric, worse case is needing to re-do the set-up once checking has been achieved

davros

Agreed, fret sprout shouldn't be a problem. It's sometimes a problem when moving a guitar that was made in a humid country to one that is drier. This was built in the garage in the UK winter, so an evening in the car boot shouldn't cause any issues.

davros

Back to this old thing, I *think* I like it with the pickguard and poker chip added. Going to age the hardware a bit now to accelerate the natural process.

Before (and also new)


With Pickguard and poker chip


Ultimate target