That makes sense thanks. I was assuming that the hole in the tuning peg mattered, but it sounds like it is the angle with the nut that matters.
Back to the neck, my screws have too much thread in them, so they do indeed stop screwing when they are all the way into the body. Should they have sent me screws with a longer smooth section at the top?
This is a common issue on almost all bolt-on neck kits and a lot of assembled guitars as well.
The holes in the body need to be drilled out to the same diameter as the screw, so that the screw slides in firmly, but can still be easily rotated. The screws can then fully pull the neck down onto the body without the risk of any gaps due to the screws not being able to turn further in the body. This is standard good woodworking practice and this method should be used whenever you use screws to hold two pieces of wood together. In soft woods like pine, you can often get away with the same diameter pilot hole, especially if gluing and screwing, but only because the pine will compress and the screw head get pulled into the wood. You certainly don’t want that in this situation where the neck can be removed and refitted many times in its life, plus the metal plate stops the screws being pulled into the wood.
The final build is done, and I think it looks pretty good.
Drilling the neck holes a bit wider in the body seems to have pulled the neck in better. The height seems right now.
Now I just have to solve a few playability issues:
1. There is quite a buzz when I am not touching the strings. I'm not sure how to track down a bad earth, the multimeter says everything is connected when I touch various grounded points in the circuitry.
2. The intonation is still not great at the first 5 frets. The saddle position on the high E is back about 3mm which seems way too far from what I've read, so it sounds like something is still wrong. Maybe I didn't get the nut down far enough. I have a feeler gauge so I've been measuring everything, but maybe I got some numbers wrong.
I set the neck relief to 0.01mm at fret 7 when I hold down 1st and 21st frets.
The nut height gave me 0.02mm when holding down the 1st string at the 3rd fret. I think I read that 0.015 or even less is better.
3. The pickups seem too close to my fingers, what is the consensus on ideal pickup height?
Hi Jarro, I'm liking the look of your guitar, good work.
I'm no expert, but I'll share what I would look at first and hopefully it will help
1. The noise problem. I think you may have an issue with your shielding. Since it is quiet when you are touching it, I think you are picking up noise that is external to the guitar. Simon made a few comments that are worth checking a few posts back. Firstly, make sure you have connected your shielding to earth, and secondly, make sure it goes high enough to connect to the shielding on the back of the scratch plate. If the shielding is working, it might address the noise.
2. I don't think I am following you completely in intonation, but it sounds like you are having issues with tuning of the first 5 frets. There might not be much you can do here, and let me explain my thinking. Intonation is normally set by comparing the 12th fret tuning to open tuning. If you have done this, and are finding the first 5 frets are out of tune, it might be worth re-checking the scale length and expected fret positions. I use the stewmac fret calculator, and you can see if the nut seems to be correctly positioned. My nut was leaned forward slightly and I filed it backwards ever so slightly to correct the scale length. Keep in mind though, guitars on the whole are not perfectly timed instruments and this is part of their charm.
3. Pickup height it a bit subjective, but as a rule of thumb, it is safer to be further away than too close. The closer you get, the more effect the magnets have on the string vibrations, and they can reduce sustain and affect the tone. Further away can result in a somewhat thinner tone, but there is more leeway on the far side of the equation
4. Open string buzz normally comes from not enough neck relief. 0.01mm over 300mm is really, really small (it is essentially flat). Maybe try adding a little more neck relief by backing off the truss rod a little. it's a quick adjustment and can be undone if necessary.
I hope this helps, it's worth fine tuning and adjusting thing, it takes a little time but it is well worth it for making a guitar feel great to play.
Are all the pickups buzzy, or just the single coils? Even with poor shielding, the humbucker should be a lot quieter.
Fluorescent lights give off a lot of electrical noise, so not a good idea to be close to one when playing almost any electric guitar.
Have you run a ground wire to the trem claw?
If you plug a lead in (the kit leads are awful and have very poor shielding, so best to throw that away and always use a decent lead) and connect a multimeter between the sleeve of the jack and the metal parts, do you have almost zero-ohms continuity? It's easy enough to get the two connections the wrong way round (I've done it fairly recently).
Does your amp have in internal or external PSU? The smaller battery/PSU powered amps often lack a system ground connection to earth, so shielding is ineffective. If it's got a captive or an IEC ('kettle') mains lead then that should be fine.
The first five frets are sharp by 10-15 cents, and more on the higher three strings, so it makes me think it is the string height causing them to stretch too much when pushed down. I checked the fret positions and they seem legit.
The only amp I have is the cheap one that comes in a squier kit, but it has an earth. I've also gone straight into the line in on the computer. The squier doesn't buzz on either of those. The humbucker buzzes more so it seems like an earth problem rather than picking up noise.
Ah on second thoughts I just noticed that the nut is a tiny bit twisted, and leaning slightly back. I wonder if that makes enough of a difference to the scale length that the frets are out. I will try cleaning out the slot better to make sure there is no old glue in there and sand a bit more to see what I can do about that.
I think I solved the problem, the strings are actually touching at the back of the nut, increasing the scale length by about 2mm, meaning the top frets are too far down, therefore sharp, and that explains how far back I need to put the saddles.
So I need to get the nut to lean backwards a bit, but I'm not sure the best way to do it.
Glad to hear you have found the culprit, now to fix it could be tricky.
If you have a set of nut slot files, you can re-file the slot so the bridge end is the high point. This is normally done in two parts, a shallow angle for the front of the nut and a steeper angle at the back to help guide toward the posts.
If you cant correct this without lowering the string height too far, you will probably need to replace the nut and start again with the filing. This means carefully removing the nut, cleaning out the slot and shaping/installing a new nut.
I am hoping it can be fixed without having to go this far. :-)
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