Hello World! My first guitar project

[ross.pearson]

Couple of videos here, just random garbage noodling since I'm not the best guitarist, but a good example of clean and overdriven tones I'm getting out of it. Pretty impressed with the random "Homeland" branded electronics to be honest.

I'll follow up with some final picture a bit later and then this thread is officially done! Never thought I'd see the day =)

[ross.pearson]

Some weird artifacting going on with this one, like a high pitched echo. It's on the video, not the raw footage. Meh.

Also it was a bit of a pain getting audio/video to match up, I should use a clapper next time.

[DarkMark]

Don’t put down your guitar playing, I’ve seen a lot at a level below this standard.

[ross.pearson]

Don’t put down your guitar playing, I’ve seen a lot at a level below this standard.

Cheers Mark. I hang out with some pretty heavy hitters from the guitar playing world online so I'm pretty hard on myself as a player. I can play a bit, but I wouldn't consider myself anything approaching professional.

I didn't have an amp when I recorded that, so had to DI into my PC and use a Neural DSP plugin VST in Sonar to record, then try and sync that with the video.

I went out and bought a little Blackstar practise amp the other day that actually sounds really decent, so I might record something else through that instead of DI.

Here's the last lot of photos showing the steps I took to complete this guitar.

I masked off the fretboard completely, including the sides and the pickups. The frets are stainless ^{not stainless} , but ^so I still didn't want to risk anything magnetising to the pickups and causing issues.



Then I used the masking tape and superglue trick to stick some 400 grit paper backed sandpaper to my home made 400mm leveling beam. I started with 400 because it's all I could get in a long roll, and finished with 600 before moving onto polishing.

[ross.pearson]

Check out the crazy amount of uneven wear. I was reaaally worried that some of these would be unrecoverable. The fret in the center of this pic is worn almost completely down whilst left and right are barely touched. Next time I do this, I'll be hitting it up with a fret rocker and brass hammer to knock down high frets before I start.


Then it was onto the files to crown the frets. I'd converted two files into "traditional" crowning files (images way back in this thread), but found I only really needed the small double cut file. I didn't go aggressive enough and there's still a fairly flat bevel, but when I was working it felt like I'd removed mountains of material. The small black sharpie lines left behind are the tops of the crowns. I really should have spent another hour or two on this, but the guitar plays great so, mission accomplished?



I need to improve my polishing game, but a dremel with a mop wheel attachment and green ssx compound seemed to do the trick. I had to re-mask and fix up a couple, plus try and round some ends, and I hit a couple with fret rubbers too but they didn't seem to do much. I really need some jewelers rouge and a mop for my bench grinder or drill. But I made do.

[ross.pearson]

Then I removed those absolutely garbage Guyker locking tuners. I'd completely forgotten that they needed registration holes, so I had to do something about those.



I taped up and punched out the holes, and cleaned the tape edges up as best I could.



Then I mixed some 5 minute epoxy with black acrylic craft paint and smeared it into the holes.

[ross.pearson]

This is the end result, and the front and back with the Gotoh 510's installed. It doesn't look great, but it's better than awful holes in the back of the headstock. And I got the tuners on straighter this time than I did with the Guykers. The guykers were awful to install and really made a mess of the finish.

[ross.pearson]

Final shot of the guitar going into its case. I'm planning to keep the case I restored for my bass (since it's a bass case) and get a new case for this. In the meantime it can live here temporarily. I'll try and take a better "glamour" shot or two tomorrow as a semi-final update before I hand her off to her new owner on the 19th of Feb.



And some more shop dog for good luck.

[McCreed]

First...

The frets are stainless, but I still didn't want to risk anything magnetising to the pickups and causing issues.

When did that happen??? I don't remember you re-fretting with SS.

Second... is that case an SKB? I have a bunch of SKB's. I think there great value. Nothing you'd fly around the world with, but perfect for gigging and jamming. Besides, ​my World Tour got cancelled .

Lastly... love the mascot! He looks like happy old fella.

[ross.pearson]

First...



When did that happen??? I don't remember you re-fretting with SS.

Second... is that case an SKB? I have a bunch of SKB's. I think there great value. Nothing you'd fly around the world with, but perfect for gigging and jamming. Besides, ​my World Tour got cancelled .

Lastly... love the mascot! He looks like happy old fella.

Wait, shit, I thought the PB frets were stainless? Not that it matters but that's embarassing..

Looking at the product online now and it just says 21 Medium Jumbo Frets, I must have mentally inserted "stainless" at some point.

That explains why they were way easier to file than I thought they would be!

God dammit.

And yes, the case is an SKB! I'm not giving it away with the guitar, I bought it for my Jackson dinky 7 string. I'll likely get a cheaper ~$100 case for this tele.