If it's that much of a concern, you can always use a sheet of maple veneer.
cheers, Mark.
If it's that much of a concern, you can always use a sheet of maple veneer.
cheers, Mark.
**I do keep my guitars hanging on the wall, so I'm a little uncertain about the "flat" treble side, but the Hercules hangers I've got do swivel, and the Internet tells me that should make it all fine. And who am I to doubt the wisdom of the Internet**
It is always good to have some healthy scepticism when someone tries to sell you on their idea's, but if it swivels I'd say you'd be fine, although I would be mindful of the guitar not being able to turn sideways as you don't have a lot of meat on the headstock
In addition to the maple veneer, I bought a couple of headstock veneer sheets from ebay for +/-13$.
re: tuner screw holes - I think you'd have great difficulty making plugs out of the maple off-cut unless you have 3mm plug cutter. I'm sure such a tool exists. Making evenly round plugs by hand, I wouldn't even want to contemplate.
However, round toothpicks should work fine. Cut the tapered part of the toothpick off; A tiny bit of wood glue into the hole;tap the "plug" in and snip it off 1mm proud of the maple; sand the plug ends flat with the back of the headstock.
Round toothpicks are commonly made from birch, which is somewhat close in colour to maple.
They won't perfectly invisible, but it present a neat tidy job. If you're going to stain the neck at all, the end grain of the plugs will take the colour differently.
To me you're options are:
- Plugging as above
- Using the mounting plate
- Veneer as Mark suggested
Personally, I'm not that fussed about the plugs not being perfectly disguised, but that's you're call.
added:
another variation to the plug method would be to plug the hole part way with the wooden toothpick, leaving a couple of mm from the top, then filling the remainder of the hole with an appropriately coloured timber filler "crayon". You may be able to colour-match pretty closely. Then clear coating.
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
I just use wood filler for those sort of holes where they'll be on display and won't need to take a screw. Then I try and get the filler the same colour as the maple. There are products like this. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003OBX6...dDbGljaz10cnVl, though I normally use a spirit-based marker.
The holes will be smaller than 3mm diameter as that's the full screw diameter, so probably around 1.5mm-2mm.
The veneer idea works, but you then get a line along the edge of the headstock. A bit swings and roundabouts.
It's probably too late to suggest getting replacement tuners that use the same mounting holes.
Thanks, everyone -- that's a lot of great advice!
3mm plug cutters seem hard to come by, but I do have some flame maple veneer from a previous project.
Seems like the best option will be to cut the headstock first; then there will be some offcuts where I can drill some small holes and then try both Simon's suggestion of filler and McCreed's toothpick trick on it, then try a coat or two of the planned finish to see which is least visible. If both wind up being too obvious, then there's always the veneer or the mounting plate options to consider -- in my last veneer project I was able to disguise the line at the edge by using a nail file to bevel it, and it's pretty much invisible unless you look very close -- hat tip to Jeffrey Stephenson (who does amazing wooden computer cases) for that trick.
I had less time than planned this weekend, but was able to take the measurements after a dry fit of the neck and the body. These kits have the holes for the bridge screws pre-drilled:
Basically, the same as christodav's Purple Monster -- even down to what looks like a ding from tooling above and to the right of the centre bridge screw hole.
Nut to the crown of the 12th fret is bang on 324mm, like you'd expect.
However, in order to get 12th to the bride saddles OK, they need to be all of the way forward:
...that is the tips of the adjustment screws are basically flush with the saddles. Set like that, the middle and top saddles are within half a mil or so, measuring to the top of the saddle where the string will "leave" it:
The bass saddle has a shorter adjustment screw, though, so it's about 5mm off:
From what Simon has said elsewhere on the forum, it sounds like that *may* be OK. All intonation adjustments, if I understand correctly, are pretty much certainly going to be moving the bridge saddles away from the nut. My only concern is whether having a starting point of 5mm back is going to be too far for the two bass strings.
That's not a ding, that's the penetration (hole) for the bridge ground wire.even down to what looks like a ding from tooling above and to the right of the centre bridge screw hole.
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
Doh! McCreed beats me to it hehe.Originally Posted by gpjt
cheers, Mark
Last edited by king casey; 03-02-2020 at 09:24 AM.
I'll suggest a simple, non-invasive solution might be trying a longer screw on the E/A saddle.
I'm seeing your break point on the E/A at about 652mm, so it may be ok. The rest of the saddles look to be about the 643mm mark, which should be good. 646-649mm is where I usually find the sweet spot on those strings.
FWIW, I find the low E generally intonates between 648 and 651, but I've seen cases where it was way more, and the saddle is backed up as far as it will go. (I've even seen (on a strat) where the back end of the saddle had to be filed shorter and the spring removed just to get the E6 to intonate!)
The next, and probably most definitive solution, is to shift the bridge and route p/up cavity accordingly. IMO, I'd try a longer screw first.
I'm not sure the shorter screw wasn't a mistake. I've not seen a tele bridge (especially an import) that didn't have 3 equal length screws. May be it's just what was at hand during assembly.
EDIT: I just looked the pics in the PBG listing, and the E/A saddle screw is indeed shorter, I still think a longer one will get you where you need to be though if you're worried about it.
Last edited by McCreed; 03-02-2020 at 12:38 PM.
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
And it's always far more reliable to measure direct from the nut to the saddle, not from the 12th fret to the saddle.
D'oh indeed! I should have realised that the chances of two identical dings like that are pretty much zero
That does make me wonder, though -- why do Tele-style bridges need a separate hole for grounding? Couldn't the ground wire to the bridge just be connected inside the pickup route? After all, it's all the same bit of metal.
(Makes perfect sense for a Tune-o-matic bridge or similar, of course.)
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