Jon's 335-style build

[JohnH]

Looks fantastic!

[fender3x]

Really amazing. You're right, I think. Always stop the finishing process when you get to "amazing" ;-)

[jonwhitear]

Thanks guys. The last six coats (or so) were 50:50 TO and turps, with a wet sand with 1200 grit and turps after every second coat. I've borrowed that method from wazkelly. The diluted oil really does go on shiny and seems to do a good job of flattening out minor uneveness. It also seems to attract dust and dog hair like a magnet ;-)

[jonwhitear]

I've just passed the terrifying milestone of drilling the bridge post holes, which seems to have gone OK. Here are some photos along the way. I've levelled and dressed the frets, which were actually pretty good, set the neck, and applied plenty more tru oil along the way.

I wasn't quite sure which angle to drill the post holes at - perpendicular the plane of the strings, perpendicular to the plane of the body (i.e. the edge binding), or what looks like perpendicular to the top on that particular spot. I went with the latter, and built a simple jig to keep the body at the right angle while it was on the drill press. I don't know about measure twice and cut once - I must have measured fifty times! Still, they appear to be in the right place - I guess I'll only find out when I bang them in. I ended up with a 12mm drill bit after tests with an 11mm bit on some scrap where I couldn't begin to get the post in the hole.

[Simon Barden]

Perpendicular to the strings is the ideal. Anything else and as you adjust the bridge height the bridge will move backwards or forwards relative to the strings so you'll then need to adjust the intonation (if it was set before). But as long as the resulting angle isn't too great, then it won't be an issue as you won't adjust the height much once you've done your basic set-up, and then by a couple of mm at most.

[jonwhitear]

Thanks Simon. I think it was pretty close to perpendicular to the strings in the end, as better seen here. The neck's looking pretty level.

[FrankenWashie]

I don't know about measure twice and cut once - I must have measured fifty times!

Infinitely preferable to measure a couple of times, have a bash, re-measure, swear furiously then dissolve in big salty tears.

Well done Sir.

[Simon Barden]

I think on any curved body, any post insert with a lip at the top is always going to be a bit of a compromise. Unless you drill a small rebate for the lip to sit in, any hole that isn't drilled at a tangent to the top will result in one edge of the lip hitting the body before the opposite edge and leaving a gap. Unless it's a really soft body wood, you aren't likely to be able to knock it in much further and remove the gap. So IMO it's generally better for the aesthetics to take precedence, unless the bridge will sit a long way from the body. Which is never a good idea if you can help it.

[jonwhitear]

I've made some more progress. I left the finish to harden for a week then polished and waxed it at the weekend. The results are OK, but there are still swirl marks, through they don't bother me. I've also made the wiring harness and installed it - getting it in there was a bit fiddly, and it tested OK before it went in, but now the bridge pickup doesn't work, so I've got some troubleshooting to do there. This pic is a work in progress host of the wiring - not finished at this point as the switch is wired up.



I've also assembled the whole guitar, and made an attempt at getting the nut height right, which I think is going to take a few attempts. Setting the intonation was good - I was using a chromatic tuner app on my phone, but will switch to garage band now that the electrics are working-ish. Overall it plays quite nicely, but I've realised that there's an art to guitar set-ups that I'm going to have to learn!



Setting the pickup height isn't working so well for me at the moment - I think I'm going to have to install some shims in the bottom of the pickup routes to give me some more height while still having some depth for the screws to bite into. Probably also some sort of padding to try and keep the pickups level.

Still more work to do, though I'm already getting a funny feeling that there may be a GSM-1 in my future ;-)

[Trevor Davies]

That maple top looks great.