I'm far from perfect and learning all the time. I don't know exactly how many basic mistakes I've made since I started doing this almost 5 years ago but it's a lot. Hopefully I learn as I go and can pass on my experience, but I still do a lot of really dumb things!
I like the pandemic logo and agree the headstock looks great. Curious about the main logo...why 22?
Thatīs funny, at some point, that number decided to apear really often, my son was born at 22:22, an anniversary, address number and stuff like that. So its like an adopted number for me.
Im not really serious about it, I just think im giving the guitar a bit of good vibes
Hi everyone!!
Im really happy to post this update!
After 3 months of watching clear coat dry, I decided to wetsand and polish... results, better than expected.
As the results where pretty decent for my skill level (this is my first build), I moved on to make a second assembly test, this time including electronics and it worked ok, there's some noise on the circuit so I need to check my work here, but there's signal coming out of the guitar and that's a big step for me. I used a Tone Zone T pick up that had removed from my telecaster.
Really don't know what to expect about the circuit components, maybe better components are needed. I use high gain sounds a lot so it must be pretty quiet.
Decided to keep it minimalistic so im going to use just a bridge pickup in this build.
My next steps are:
Custom cut a small pickguard, just to cover the neck pickup cavity.
Fretwork
Adjusting bridge saddles screws length, there's a lot of them coming out and it feels pretty rough on my hand.
Adjusting nut height
The nut feels pretty high, is it safe to sand it from the bottom? Ive read mixed opinions. I don't have nut files and im not sure if they worth the investment. I know its not a big investment but still...
I do have feeler gauges, I've seen people wrapping them with sand paper as "files" but don't know if its better this way.
Massive respect to every one in here, this thing is complex and requires a lot of patience and dedication to get things right.
Pictures doesn't do justice, you can see more detail on the actual guitar finish
Cheers to everyone!
Last edited by Christian_cgs; 12-08-2021 at 11:40 PM.
Lovely finish Christian. Looks like glass!
re: the nut, yes, you can adjust it from the bottom. You need to be careful to not sand an angle in the "front to back" direction.
You may wish to put a slight angle on the E to E direction so that the bass E is higher than the treble E.
When you sand, don't do it freehand. Use a block that you know to be flat, placed on a bench/table and put the sandpaper on that working the nut across the sandpaper. A plate of glass makes a good flat surface for doing this, and you can sticky tape the sandpaper so it doesn't slide around too.
When you measure the nut action, you want to depress the string at the 3rd fret and measure the clearance from the bottom of the string and the 1st fret. Since you won't be adjusting each individual string height, just measure the two E strings presuming the nut slots are radiused from the factory. The best way to measure this is with feeler gauges.
As a rough guide, you want the bass E to be .010" - .008" and the treble E .006" - .004" (at 1st fret, string depressed at 3rd).
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
I agree with this but with a caveat based on my own personal experience. Not all glass is created equal. I have a nice big sheet that I thought might be perfect for flattening my fret leveling beam, but to the naked eye the glass had an obvious bend in it. I ended up using a smaller piece of thicker "float glass" that I checked and double checked with straightedges as best I could.
That's a good point Ross. The size of the glass is probably a consideration, and maybe I should have been more specific.
The larger the sheet, I suppose the chance of having deviations in it are increased. Given the size of a nut and the small of amount area required to achieve full strokes to sand it, it doesn't need to be very large. I reckon a small piece of garden variety window glass is probably close enough to achieve a very flat bottom of a nut. Whilst I'm not discouraging the effort for accuracy, we're not building Swiss watches either .
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
Hi everyone,
thanks a lot for all the help.
I ended up using a piece of granite that it was pretty flat, it was the flattest material I could find around. I think the nut came out nice.
Noise on the circuit was a bad earth connection, fixed it and now itīs really quiet. im impressed jaja.
just did the tuners upgrade (d'addario auto trim), grate improvement here... So iīm considering this guitar done!!!
It was a long journey and im really happy with the results, perfectly usable guitar, nothing wrong with it (it weighs a lot tho) I think itīs going to see some stage and crowd in the near future.
Really want to thanks everyone who took the time to participate in this build up