The shatocaster, all the bloopers in one package

Skodadad

Decided to build a guitar using all the failed attempts, badly aged body, tie dye scratch plate aged pickups and knobs. Unfortunately had to use a decent neck and bridge but its not actually that bad and plays ok "ish" after a quick basic setup.

Will have another play later.

jd0272

Looks fine !

joeyowen

Pickguard aside, it looks great

TTony

It's often handy to have a "scrap" guitar around the place - something that you can use to try stuff out on.

Skodadad

I shall name it "Beaker" the body has been sanded twice now so is a little on the thin side, I have an old Tele neck with a lower heel that is slightly off kilter so I may use that if I can get it flat. The loss of wood on the front means the bridge saddles are pretty high.

Andyjr1515

Skodadad said:

I shall name it "Beaker" the body has been sanded twice now so is a little on the thin side, I have an old Tele neck with a lower heel that is slightly off kilter so I may use that if I can get it flat. The loss of wood on the front means the bridge saddles are pretty high.

 I think it looks great   >-

Wouldn't a shim under the headstock side of the neck pocket sort the saddle height?  Usually, a small shim significantly thinner than a credit card is plenty to sort such things out...

BloodEagle

Looks awesome

axisus

I'm liking that. 

Skodadad

Andyjr1515 said:

 I think it looks great   >-

Wouldn't a shim under the headstock side of the neck pocket sort the saddle height?  Usually, a small shim significantly thinner than a credit card is plenty to sort such things out...

I have not done this yet, I found one in a telecaster and thought it was a problem. Would this mean that the string height in the middle of the neck would be higher or would I be looking to introduce a slight back bow to compensate? I struggle to explain how I got to that thinking but something in the void stirred briefly. Thanks for comments guys

Andyjr1515

First thing to check is the neck relief, to make sure it's there or there abouts (hold top or bottom E at 1st fret and 16th fret and there should be just perceptible movement at the 8th fret - credit card thickness is too much, hard against the fret is not enough).  

Then if the saddles have to be too high or too low, the neck angle needs a tweak.  If, after the neck relief (bow) has been confirmed as OK the saddles have to be set too high, the neck angle will need to be reduced slightly - the thin shim under the headstock end of the neck pocket does this.

Can't remember where, but there's a neat diagram somewhere that illustrates why this works.  I'll try to find it.

Andyjr1515

Halfway down the page of Tundraman's site here there are the diagrams

Skodadad

Cheers @Andyjr1515 will print it off

TheOtherDennis

I think that looks ace! The body looks fantastic, that's a lovely, deep colour, and all the differences actually add to it, imo. Funny how mistakes sometimes come out better than the original plan - this was supposed to be a midnight blue, but although I was really disappointed at first, it's definitely grown on me.



(Apologies if you think I'm trying to hijack your thread, btw.)

Skodadad

I quite like yours but I don't care for this, just waiting for a new bridge to arrive then its off to ebay as the redheaded stepchild it is