A tale of two STs

[Brendan]

Scott - hooly dooley... that's a whole lotta wiring. Here I was thinking I did OK with my A/B switch and some P / J Bass wiring. I think you've got more going on that all of those combined! Sounds like it'll take some getting used to, but once you do - you may never need another guitar!

[WeirdBits]

With all the extra wiring and the addition of the superswitches things were a little tight in the control cavity on both these guitars, but only by 2-3 mm's. I didn't want to use my large router, but the cavity was too deep for any of my Dremel's routing attachments… so, I took the mount from my StewMac precision routing attachment, bolted it to a straight piece of 7mm ply and then just adjusted the bit to cut the depth I wanted. It actually worked pretty well. The cavities on both guitars are now slightly deeper and the pickguards seat nicely even with all the wiring.

[WeirdBits]

I'm not sure if it's been the recent hot weather, a bit of drying shrinkage, or a factory issue, but I noticed a small crack in Brownie the other day. It's not a big issue as it is on a seam on the small strip of wood between the neck pocket and the neck pickup rout, and the rest of that join along the body looks fine.



The area will be covered by the pick guard so I just wicked in some superglue as best I could and I'll probably glue a small strip of maple as a brace along the inside of the pup rout just to be safe, so it shouldn't be an issue. What does concern me a bit though is that same seam runs straight through the centre of the two bass side neck mount screw holes, so with some tension on the screws it could possibly start to open the join (upper two holes in pic below). Unlikely, but you never know. The neck plate won't help with the issue as the holes themselves straddle the seam, so I decided to try something a little more radical.



I don't really like the feel of full-sized neck plates, so I've been wanting to try using neck ferrules on a build. However, the ST-1's are Basswood and it's such a soft and compressible wood that I was worried if I used ferrules they would either compress the wood and sink too far or distort the surrounding area. So, I came up with an idea that should allow me to use ferrules and solve the potential seam issue… but it may just be lunacy, hard to tell. Basically, if I glue fat hardwood dowels in where the ferrules will sit they should reinforce the seam and give a solid non-compressible base for the ferrules to sit on. Well, that's the plan.

First step, trim off some of the treble corner of the neck pocket and use the basswood offcuts to make a plug for the hole on that corner. I'll be moving both of the forward most neck mount holes but only the treble hole plug will be visible, so it needs to match the surrounding wood.

[WeirdBits]

Basswood plug carved for the treble side plug, and a hardwood dowel (because I had one that fit) for the bass side, ready to be glued in place.




The plan is to angle and shape the treble corner of the neck pocket, and I want a reasonable amount of wood between the ferrule and the edge, so the bass side hole with be moved back a bit and the treble side will be in further and offset. The other two holes will remain where they were. The ferrules themselves are 15mm in diameter, so I used a 15mm forstner bit to drill through to the neck pocket and trimmed some dowel to match.

[WeirdBits]

Dowels glued in place, recess depths tweaked for the ferrule thickness, and screw holes re-drilled.

[WeirdBits]

And, finally, I've roughed out the shape of the treble corner of the pocket. I originally planned to take more off the corner and make it more angled, but I quite like the look and feel of it the way it is now. It sits nicely in my palm so I may just leave it at that or maybe tweak it during the final body sanding. Opinions?







(the ferrules haven't been seated fully in the pic, they actually sit slightly recessed)

[Gavin1393]

Loving your work Scott. Attention to detail and determination to make it all 100% perfect.

[stan]

Scott this is a legendary build - these will be great guitars simply because you cared to make them the way you did - awesome work

[wokkaboy]

agreed, Scott, nice mods, what colour you got in mind ?
You should patent your 1 string pickup test setup rig (or sell it to Seasick Steve !) and also the dremel routing mod is very cool too.
Look forward to seeing this build progress

[Brendan]

Scott - looking great! Love the extra attention to detail.