Marze take 2 - TLA-1 Rosewood/maple neck

[Marze]

Headstock looks great! Did you get the bridge position sorted? If you want to be in no doubt then Stewmac's fret position calculator is your friend.

cheers,
Gav.

Hi Gav,
Double Checked with Stewmac's Fret Calculator and now I am little more confused as I am not sure what he means with the measurement?

Bridge placement for 645.800mm scale length

Distance indicated is from the fretboard edge of the nut to center of forward-most mounting screw or pivot post.

Telecaster® style bridges = 652.131mm (± 0.5mm)

What is the centre of the forward-most mounting screw?? Is that half way up the middle screw of the three saddle screws? The measurement would make sense if this is the case.

[Gavin1393]

Hi Marze

Here is what you might do. Measure from the middle of the rounded peak (the crown) of the 12th fret to the edge of the fretboard at the nut. Usually a full telecaster scale length would be 648mm (647.77mm). At the 12th fret, you would have a distance half of the scale length, namely 324mm (323.885mm).

However you would need to allow compensation of 3-5 mm from high to low 'E' when the guitar is intonated correctly.

So, wind the saddles as far forward as they will go without falling off the screw, then measure from the 'crown' of the 12th fret 324mm to the high 'E' saddle. Also consider and be mindful that the low 'E' saddle would need to be capable of winding back 6mm from this point to be as far as 330mm from the saddle to the crown of the 12th fret. If it can do this then that is the best place to fix your bridge. If it cannot go that far back then consider moving the bridge back that 1 or 2 mm that will allow it to achieve the 330mm from the 12th fret crown.

The Stew Mac measurements are great but i use the above method everytime on my guitars and since I build a number of acoustics you dont have the forgiveness of movable saddles to fix up a misplaced bridge so you have to already allow for the exact compensation amounts before gluing!.

[peterh]

Gav,
I'm sure the Stewmac calculator is a very handy tool, especially if putting your own frets on a fingerboard, but you description is much clearer and more concise. You've given us newbies just the info we need without confusing us (me, at least) with extra bits that would only confuse us. Cheers!

[Gavin1393]

Gav,
I'm sure the Stewmac calculator is a very handy tool, especially if putting your own frets on a fingerboard, but you description is much clearer and more concise. You've given us newbies just the info we need without confusing us (me, at least) with extra bits that would only confuse us. Cheers!

You are most welcome peterh, getting the bridge in the right position can be a source of great stress for so many so I'm grateful to you for confirming it was easy to understand.

[Marze]

Not much progress. I have sanded the neck back to 400g and taped off the headstock to apply the first base coat of DT.


The blue didn't soak in much so I will have to do several layers of base stain to get the colour up to where I want it.

Rest of the time has been spent sourcing a way to drill the through body holes.

Also looking at the bridge the through string holes are not in line with the bottom of the bridge, so I may replace it with a modern bridge or get a different one. All other bridges I can find also have 4 mounting screws. Fender must be onto something with this as they have not changed theirs, so this is also quietly bugging me.

[Andy40]

Thats a cool headstock shape Marze.

You may need to sand the headstock face a bit with a bit of 320 (or 240) to get the stain to take a bit better on the maple, as you suggested a number of stain coats will be needed.

[stan]

Getting there Marze, another vote for a cool headstock

[Marze]

It's been a while since the last update on the build. I have had to figure out how to drill the through body holes. The drill press I had access to was not deep enough to reach the position for the holes, and the other equipment a friend had to drill mounting holes in cabinets would not be acurate enough. So I ended up solving the problem using a router. We purchases a 1/4" to 1/8" reducer for the router mount, which worked well since the through body holes are meant to be 1/8". I also bought a new bridge since the holes on the one that came with the kit were not straight.
So after finding the centre line of the guitar and marking up the holes ...

I lined up the router and gave myself a clamped down straight edge to ensure the holes would be drilled in a nice straight line ...



Block of wood clamped underneath to stop splintering and after several practice rounds on a spare piece of timber, off I went.

[FrankenWashie]

Good option Marze, and great idea to do a practice run first. How did it all turn out?

[Marze]

The result for the holes was good.
Front & Back


Next was to counter sink the holes at the rear for the ferrules. An 8 mm drill was proving to make the holes a little too big on the test run so, went with a 7.5 mm drill bit. Interesting point was that I could not find a wood drill bit at any of the hardware stores nearby (the big green shed was out too) so I went with a hybrid drill bit for steel, plastic and wood. Now this bit bit hard and tore out plugs very quickly so I ended up with a bit of splintering around the edges of the holes. The drill bit was sharp all the way up, recommend you don't buy one of these.


However the holes were sunk to the right depth thanks to masking tape on the drill bit and were still pretty much in line ...


So after counter sinking the edges to clean them up I got a pretty decent result. The ferrules will need a slight tap to get them into place once the sanding, grain filler, more sanding and DT has been applied, but then they will be nice and tightly in place.


Onto the sanding ...