The original neck on this MIM Black Strat was made from wood that tended to twist when the string tension varied, either because of temperature changes or when employing different string gauges. It’s now time to take this guitar to the next level, and make it an iconic Blackout Strat
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The neck will be retired to another instrument.
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This instrument was built in 2006, which happened to be the 60th anniversary of the founding of Fender Corporation.
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The neck is off and headed to its new home.
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David Gilmour’s Blackout Strat has a maple fret board. This instrument will get a new maple neck, with a 59 ‘C’ contour and an almost 2 inch wide nut. With light strings, this guitar will feel like a nylon-stringed classical guitar.
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The aftermarket Fender tuners are lined up with the machinist’s rule and tightened into place one by one.
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These tuners are ‘locking’ tuners, which positively grip the end of each string in a clamp. This is necessary on this instrument because of the very light gauge strings we will be using.
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Head stock and nut are ready to go.
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The middle pickup appears to be not working. Let’s take a look inside.
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Sure enough, there is a broken wire inside the pickup cover.
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The break in the wire is literally in the very last turn! So one turn is un-spooled and threaded through the eyelet where it belongs.
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As was done at the factory, the wire end is pulled through the eyelet a few times and soldered in place.
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The middle pickup is tested and is right where it should be.
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The Classic(al) Blackout Strat is strung with 7 gauge strings; Yes, not 12s, not 10s, but with Billy Gibbon’s own Dunlop Reverend Willy Extra Light Electric Guitar Strings, .007-.038. With the proper setup, this instrument has the play-ability and feel of a nylon-strung classical guitar. Thus, we have the Classic(al) Blackout Strat.
A famous Houston Jazz Cat sought out the services of The Unbrokenstring Crew after hearing about us by word of mouth. This instrument was at home on the stage and in the studio, but just needed a little something more. Could The Unbrokenstring Crew supply that ‘little something more’ and get it done before this Friday’s gig?
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This instrument was a dead-stock, straight-ahead jazz bass, just a little funk added in for fun.
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We will reuse the strings, so they are just pushed back through the bridge to get them out of the way. The original bridge pickup is already loose from the body.
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A peek under the cover shows the smooth, unscrambled, automated winding used on these factory pickups.
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To access the neck pickup and get to the wiring more easily, the pick guard is removed.
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Black and white wires go to the neck pickup. So far, so good.
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And, black and white wires go to the bridge pickup. We need to keep all these wires straight. Or gently curved, as the case may be.
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The burned insulation and cold solder joint on the tone pot tells me that the factory wiring was done in a hurry. The Unbrokenstring Crew is in a hurry, but not this much of a hurry.
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The original neck pickup ohms out at 5.14k ohms.
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The original bridge pickup is not that different, measuring 5.51k ohms. The original pickups were labelled and returned to the owner.
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Our Jazz Cat chose these pickups for his instrument.
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Rio Grande pickups are built here in Houston, Texas. FYI, for the last five years, customers of The Unbrokenstring have asked to have Rio Grande pickups installed in their instruments more than any other brand.
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The Unbrokenstring Crew is curious about how these new pickups measure up. On the screen of the Fluke meter is the resistance reading of the new neck pickup. A lot of wire is used to make this pickup!
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This is the resistance of the new bridge pickup.
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Wiring for the bridge pickup is snaked through the bore in the body, along with the cavity ground wire. The pick guard does not cover this part of the instrument, so cavity wiring needs to be tunneled through the body.
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The bridge pickup settles into its new home.
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Wiring the neck pickup is a little easier as the control route extends to the neck pickup cavity route. With the wiring done and everything temporarily in place, a quick sonic check is performed with my Massive Marshall Full Stack.
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The J-Bass is reassembled and ready for re-stringing.
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If you look closely, the brand name on the pickup covers can be seen. Pickup height is approximately same value as was used to install the original pickups, but our Jazz Cat already has his #1 Phillips screw driver ready and will set the ‘just right’ height by ear.
In Part Three of this project, The Unbrokenstring Crew installed a unique cut-out switch in the pick guard of this guitar. One more thing… Now that the instrument is play-able, the original plastic Squire nut is cracked. Grrrr…
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The old Squire nut came out in pieces.
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Let’s make a new one from Vietnamese water buffalo bone. The blank we’ll use today is shown above the old Squire plastic nut.
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Not to brag or anything, but these bone nuts are truly a renewable resource that I am privileged to legally import from overseas. CITES can go bite it.
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The eighth inch chisel easily cleans whatever glue Squire used to install the original plastic nut.
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This slot is ready for the new nut.
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Sorry, that’s as clean as I can get it.
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The new blank nut is thickness-sanded to fit the slot. I’m doing this by hand because the blank is very close to the proper dimensions to begin with.
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The inside radius is established by using the actual neck as a radius block.
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The side contour is also established by hand, on the actual instrument.
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The actual height of the fret wires is measured in order to calculate the depth of the string slots. This dial indicator measures the installed height of the fret wire above the finger board.
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Here, we’re gluing the new nut right to the finger board using hide glue. A water-based adhesive could cause the wood to swell; shrinkage over the next few months as the wood dries out would throw off the accuracy of the nut slot depth. Can’t have that!
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The old nut is used as a template to establish string spacing. A couple of old strings are used to align everything.
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Now that we know the fret height, string gauge, and string spacing, we can begin establishing the string slots. At the nut, the string slot depth is constant across the radius of the finger board, regardless of the string diameter.
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With a set of old strings in place, the top of the nut can be quickly contoured so that the top of the nut will not protrude above the strings. The geometry of the top of the nut is established in part by the diameter of the strings, which is, of course, not constant across the radius of the finger board. This three-cornered triangular file belonged to my father.
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This old triangular file is just the thing to contour the nut further, smoothing out sharp corners and preparing the nut for polishing.
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Note that the string centers are just below the top of the nut, and that the top of the nut is no higher than any string.
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This is the instrument, as delivered. The Vietnamese water buffalo bone is a spectacular material for musical instruments: incredibly hard, uniform throughout its bulk, and capable of a fine polish without additional waxes or oils, making a visually attractive nut and providing a stable, polished string slot that allows for smooth and stable tuning without binding or sticking. What more could you ask?
I think we’re finally done with the Jagmaster Make-Over!
In part two of this series, The Unbrokenstring Crew converted this instrument to a Tune-O-Matic bridge with a Bigsby tremolo. Now The Unbrokenstring Crew will add a cut-out switch to this instrument.
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Matt has specified this exact spot where he wants the cut-out switch installed. The sharp point of an Exacto knife marks the exact center of the hole where the new switch will reside. Because that’s why they call it an Exacto knife.
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We need to remove the pick guard, so off come the strings. Again.
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This nylon washer is used in the Bigsby system to, among other things, set the working height of the lever. Keep track of this!
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A pilot hole is bored where the Exacto knife made the mark seen earlier.
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The copper foil around the new switch hole is cleaned. We are now ready to install the new switch.
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The resistor is installed across the contacts to limit the audible ‘pop’ that you sometimes hear when switching low-level circuits, like the circuits found in guitars.
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Step Three is complete. This switch is not a push button, but is a spring-loaded momentary, center-off switch. Matt can quickly flick it from side to side for a very cool effect.
But wait! There’s more! In the last installment of this project, the cheap Chinese plastic nut has cracked. Tune in to see how The Unbrokenstring Crew upgrades the nut. Like A Boss.
In our first installment of this project, The Unbrokenstring Crew installed some new pickups in this cool offset-waist Jagmaster. Now, The Unbrokenstring Crew takes a deep breath. The inserts for the Tune-O-Matic will fall right at the edge of the body route for the Fender tremolo block. Extensive modification of the body is necessary for the next steps.
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So The Unbrokenstring Crew takes an inspiration break. The first Fender-style guitar we’d seen with a Tune-O-Matic bridge was Larry Carlton’s Valley Arts ‘Strat’ copy, seen at about 9:10 in this video from 2012. WARNING: lots of funny Guitar Face to be seen throughout the video.
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To position the TOM (Tune-O-Matic) bridge, we need to verify the dimensions of the guitar.
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The twelfth fret is just to the right of the fret board marker. If you double that measurement, you get the ‘scale length’ of the guitar.
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This metal machinist scale is eighteen inches long, so to complete the measurement to the bridge, we moved the end of the scale to the twelfth fret.
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You will see that the existing bridge saddle blocks fall around the same place on the machinist scale. This looks good so far.
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It’s time to get serious. The patient is prepped for major surgery. The black wire seen in the picture is the spring claw ground and the ground wire for the pickups.
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The claw is coming loose and the springs will be removed.
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After the new bridge and tremolo are installed, we won’t be needing this claw anymore.
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With the spring tension gone, the original bridge just falls out. These inserts, though, should be tight, and they are not.
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Both of the inserts had broken out. This points to the main concern with this modification e.g. how to install new inserts for the TOM bridge, in the right place, with enough wood around them to assure mechanical stability and sustain. This was a significant question in the planning stages of this project.
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With the pick guard assembly temporarily in place, we can begin to establish the geometry of the new parts.
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The outline of the pick guard is lightly traced on the surface finish of the instrument. The starting (and ending) finish is matte black. This gives us considerable flexibility when doing the modifications and refinishing the instrument when modifications are finished.
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Some tape holds the machinist scale in place, leaving our hands free to do some marking down on the body.
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The TOM bridge will go about here. Guitar Cognoscenti advised that the TOM bridge should go about 8/64ths of an inch beyond the 1x Scale Length for the instrument, because of the increased string length which occurs when the string is deflected when fretted, and other effects. Thus, the mark for the center line of the TOM bridge is at the 12 and 56/64ths point under the machinist scale.
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The measurement made in the previous picture is expanded across the battle space so that the TOM inserts can be properly placed. Do you see the issue with the new TOM bridge placement?
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While we have the 24 inch artist’s scale out, let’s check to see what sort of clearance we have under the plane of the fret board to verify that the TOM bridge will fit. If it doesn’t fit, we can shim the neck up a bit and create more clearance.
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The exposed end of the ruler gives us an idea of where we are on bridge and neck geometry. This number goes into the notebook for later. Oh, and we have both English and metric systems well-represented here.
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Let’s move to the other axis, and establish the actual center line of the guitar. A string is fastened at the nut between the D and G slots.
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The position of the neck is the determining factor of where the bridge shall be, not necessarily the guitar body; There will be room for adjustment later if we need it, but let’s get it right while we’re here.
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The center of the bridge is marked on the tape.
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Before we go any farther, the original bridge is placed back on the body as a sanity check for the work done so far. As if sanity had any meaning at this point…
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Another number to go into the notebook is the original string width at the bridge. As we planned, the TOM bridge string spacing is really close to this measurement.
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The breakout from the original bridge inserts need to be addressed, because we really want as much solid material in this area as we can get.
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Both inserts broke the body out. Some instruments are best repaired by just router-ing out the entire top and substituting a slab of maple. However, with the routes on the back side, nothing would be left of this guitar body.
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These chips will be glued back where they belong, using hide glue. We avoided using a water-based adhesive such as Tite-Bond because the wood would swell from the water, then gradually shrink again over the next few months, rendering our efforts to fill all the cavities moot.
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This damage is repaired well enough to support the steps to follow.
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Birch is the less-beautiful cousin of maple. It has very little figure, and is very straight-grained. These birch dowels are perfect for filling the original holes where the inserts were installed.
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After adding some protective tape, the dowels are cut flush with this Japanese saw.
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I like this saw. So you are going to see lots of pictures of it today.
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I think you get the idea now. Yes, I like this saw!
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The blue strip that you see is the edge of the blue masking tape seen above. Note how close the edge of the routes are to the center line of the new bridge. All this needs to be filled-in so that the new inserts can be secure.
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We will work on this side for awhile. The neck is off and is out of the way.
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Much of the paint in the interior of this body is conductive shielding paint. Paint is not a good surface to glue anything to, so the Dremel tool and a sanding drum removes it all. This body is actually some very nice wood!
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Paint is removed all the way around the tremolo block route. No electronics will go down here, so I’m not worried about shielding.
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The tiny lip remains at the bottom of this route. This lip is actually on the front face of the body of the guitar. The Unbrokenstring Crew will leave it in place as a depth guide when installing the filler blocks.
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Since the neck was off, we took a moment to clean up the bottom of the neck pocket. A clean, hard neck pocket is essential for good guitar tone and sustain, as it forms the counter-spring for the strings themselves.
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Only the bottom was scraped, and then only enough to remove any soft, crumbly finish. The sides remain unmolested as they establish the geometry of the guitar, which we documented earlier.
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Two blocks will be fabricated to fill the trem block route. The paper patterns are on the left, and the block of spruce plywood is marked with the approximate shape to fit the route.
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These blocks are fitted to the original trem block route.
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The faces are cleaned up just enough to allow the glue to do its job when these are installed.
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These will stack into the body route. Do you see the little strip of glitter to the left of the spring route? That’s the original color of this guitar. Can you say “Glam”?
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We were able to source this NOS bridge from a company that purchases broken guitars from Big Box Retailers and separates the brand new parts from the firewood.
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This is the first meeting between the new bridge and the guitar body.
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This brad-point wood bit makes a good center-finder. This bit is exactly the same diameter as the inside diameter of the stud hole in the new bridge. Everything is arranged so that the point falls on the center line drawn on the blue tape.
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A shallow marking hole is then drilled to mark the spot.
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This picture clearly shows the issue with adding a TOM bridge to a Squire body. There is no substantial wood around the hole where the inserts will be installed. Yet, we press on!
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One last trial fit is performed for these filler blocks.
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These plugs are ready to go.
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These are a good, tight fit into the original trem route. Can you see the glitter?
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The top side should be flush. The lip inside the route was left behind to align the plugs already in the body. Another piece of birch will fill this shallow cavity.
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This little bit of solid birch is fitted to the opening.
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Hide glue is applied liberally and the stack of filler blocks are glued into place.
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With the glue dry, we are ready to keep moving on this project.
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The top is masked off again so that the top of this filler block can be completely level with the rest of the guitar.
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A cabinet scraper brings the top of the filler block down to the level of the top of the guitar, or at least to the same level as the masking tape.
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We cheated and used some wood filler to close up all the gaps. This will be finish sanded after one more coat of filler.
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For additional internal strength and rigidity, another block is fabricated to fill a bit more of the spring body route. The same birch plywood is pressed into service.
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The new filler block is a very tight fit. The paint around it will be sanded away so that the glue around the block can bond directly to the wood of the guitar body.
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This new filler block is now glued into place. You can see a layer of hide glue on the filler blocks already in place in the trem block route.
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The matte black finish was matched, leaving only the pilot holes for the new TOM inserts. All of the remaining body routes will be foiled and grounded at the output jack. We are covering some interesting shapes today!
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The pickup cavities are done.
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The control cavities are completed. The copper looks spectacular against the matte black of the body of the guitar. Here you can see how the matte black finish came out over the unfinished filler blocks installed previously.
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While we’re at it, let’s do the underside of the pick guard. Note that the seams of the tape are tack soldered. The seams inside the body are also tack soldered, to form a continuous shield.
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A small tab of foil extends from the body routes so that the foil under the pick guard can be bonded together using a pick guard screw for compression.
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Next, the holes for the inserts will be bored using this brad-point bit.
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The tape marks the correct depth. We don’t want to drill all the way through the guitar, do we?
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I couldn’t help myself. I had to place the new bridge where it goes just to gratify my curiosity.
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And while I’m gratifying myself, let’s check the position of the Bigsby.
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As we begin slowly boring the holes for the inserts, we can clearly see the boundary where the body ends (on the left) and the filler blocks begin (on the right.) This is one spot where we need the most strength and rigidity for best tone (and to keep the guitar from falling apart under string pressure.)
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This aircraft drill bit is boring a passage for the ground wire that will engage the bridge insert. To the left of the picture is another dowel rod.
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That distant dowel is in a hole on which the Bigsby is mounted. Using the eighteen inch long aircraft drill, we need to slant drill our way through the guitar body and hit that hole. Somehow.
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More blue tape indicates just how far I must drill through the body. If I don’t hit the dowel by the time the tape hits the copper, I missed.
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Inhale. Exhale. I hit it! Some wire left over from the spring claw is pushed through the holes drilled in the previous pictures. Yes, that wire made a ninety degree turn inside the body of the guitar. Kind of a big deal.
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Using the Exacto Knife, the insulation on the wire is nicked in the proper spot so that the insulation can be removed, allowing the wire to touch the bridge insert, thus grounding it.
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The insulation is removed so that the wire can form a compression joint with one of the bridge inserts, thus grounding the bridge.
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The big clamp can apply plenty of force to seat the bridge insert. The one on the far side has already been pressed into place.
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The ground wire is now joined with the wire from the pick guard shield and soldered to the foil in the control route.
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The free end of the ground wire is stripped and ready to be compressed against one of the Bigsby mounting screws.
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When the Bigsby is installed, the screw that goes here will compress the ground wire and make the electrical connection, thus grounding the Bigsby tremolo and strings. No wiring will be visible from the outside of the guitar.
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Here is the newly-installed bridge and trem. The pick guard is placed temporarily for this picture. This project is shaping up well!
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The Correct pick guard screws are now in hand and will replace the larger screws originally used on this guitar. The holes are partially filled with birch dowels and cut flush.
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The exact center of each pick guard screw hole is established with this pocket drill bit.
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Once the center is established, the hole can be bored using the Correct bit.
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This was a goof. The outside of one of the TOM bridge inserts interfered with this corner of the pick guard. The drum sander on the Dremel tool corrected the oversight.
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Here, we are finishing up with the pocket drill. I use the electric screw driver as a drill because it is slow and easy to control.
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This is a good shot that shows the modification of the pick guard to fit the TOM bridge insert.
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To assure that the studs fit snugly in the inserts, some copper foil is used as a shim over the threads of each stud to make electrical contact and to help lock the stud in place after adjustments are made.
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Copper foil is added or removed until the stud fits snugly regardless of how much of the stud is threaded into the insert.
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Little bits of copper foil are all it takes to get these studs shimmed up where they belong!
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It’s time to string it up!
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It’s a lot easier to get the strings on a guitar with a Bigsby if the ends are pre-formed to wrap around the roller.
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TOM bridges are versatile insofar as the saddles can be removed and turned around to extend their adjustability. Note: do not lose these little clips. Don’t ask me how I know this.
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Once the clip is off, the adjustment screw can be unthreaded from the saddle.
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The bevel on the top of the block can go either direction. We can use this to our advantage when setting intonation.
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This saddle has been turned around.
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The screw keeps the saddle in place.
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And the little clip keeps the screw in place. Again, don’t lose these.
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We took a detour to de-burr the hole in this tuning machine. This tuning machine was masquerading as a string cutter. The Unbrokenstring Crew will not tolerate broken strings!
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Step Two is complete. This guitar is a lot of fun!
In the third installment of this saga, The Unbrokenstring Crew will install a cut-out switch in this instrument, which silences the guitar whenever the switch is activated. However, this switch is not just a normal push button. Tune In next week for Episode Three!
Matt has many dreams. One of them was to have an offset-waist guitar with a Tune-O-Matic bridge and a Bigsby. And while we’re at it, a fresh set of pickups. And then, of course, a kill switch, because, why not? And there is Even More after that! This sounds crazy enough for The Unbrokenstring Crew to immediately roll up our sleeves!
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And, yes, Matt is a star!
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We have some added confidence that we can go crazy with this project because this is not the most expensive guitar in the world. But, as we shall see, it is a surprisingly good base for the modifications in mind.
Starting with the pickups, these factory humbuckers will be changed out.
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Each factory pickup measures almost the same resistance, but we labelled them separately for the benefit of future generations.
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A pair of P-94s grace the pickguard.
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The Gibson P-94s look dazzling on this guitar! Matt really hit a home run in the esthetics department. And they sound awesome, as we will later find out.
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A quick test of the wiring is performed by gently tapping each pickup with something metallic while the little Orange amp turns my taps into sound.
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While we’re here, the pickup selector switch is tightened with this serrated nut compression tool.
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Step One is complete. This guitar looks pretty snazzy!
In the next installment of this saga, The Unbrokenstring Crew will take a deep dive into serious Bod Mod and install a Tume-O-Matic bridge and Bigsby tremolo on this instrument. Tune In next week for Episode Two!
Lisa’s marvelous Fender P-Bass needed attention. Some of the open notes were dead, and the electronics needed some attention. Could the Unbrokenstring Crew sort it all out? I just love the pale yellow finish. Except for a string, everything is here.
Yes, it really is Made In Japan. Back in the day, ‘made in Japan’ was another word for cheap imported junk. Nowadays, this is some of the better stuff, particularly in guitars.
Name, rank, and serial number, please!
An electrical test shows that we have no output.
A quick look under the hood does not reveal an immediate problem. Hmmm…
Oh, this is it. The ground point for the whole unit is this potentiometer body. However, the ground wire to the output lead does not connect to the potentiometer body anywhere.
With that fixed, the remaining ground wires are cleaned up a bit.
The bridge ground wire made an intermittent connection to the bridge. We need to remove the green corrosion.
OK, the electronics are now all up to snuff, and actually look pretty nice.
While we’re here, we’ll tighten the output jack and potentiometers a bit.
The knobs go on now.
Final test is performed with a signal generator and another bass pickup. The signal generator excites the windings in a bass pickup from an Aria Pro II bass, which will be featured in a future blog post. The test pickup is brought near the instrument’s pickups, and the magnetic field carrying a test tone is coupled into the instrument’s electronics.
The dead open notes are traced to a cracked nut. Here, we’re cutting the finish around the old nut so that it can be removed cleanly. The Exacto knife gets a new blade for this operation.
The old nut comes out in two pieces. The crack expanded until the nut broke in two. That’s why we’re replacing it.
Here is the new nut that the customer wanted installed. Good stuff!
Oops. Houston, we have a problem This new nut does not fit the neck.
The new nut is just a tiny bit smaller than what is required for this neck. What gives?
We can clearly see the difference in the sizes between the old nut and the new one. This neck is the width of a five string bass, but it was delivered as a four string bass from the factory. So, we will make a custom nut for this instrument.
A Tusq blank is radiused to match the radius of the fretboard. I’m using an Exacto knife as a scraper.
The Tusq blank is cut to rough length with a fine saw.
It doesn’t take long to slice through the Tusq material with this blade.
This is a saw blade set that I use for sawing fret slots and general fine work on wood.
The blank is now shaped on the disk sander. A piece of birch plywood serves as a raised table that can be placed very close to the abrasive surface of the disk, necessary when shaping small parts.
The blank is now pretty close to the rough shape we need.
The first trial fit shows that we haven’t cut it too small, yet.
This is a little better. The ends are flush and smooth with the edges of the fret board.
In AutoCAD, a drawing is created showing the cross sections of the four strings and the width of the fret board in actual size. The distance between the edge of the outside strings and the edge of fret board, established by factory specs, is drawn, and the position of the outside strings fixed. We then subtract the diameters of the four strings from the width remaining. This result represents the space between strings, which shall be three equal spaces. This establishes the center lines of the inner strings. The spaces between the strings are the same, not the center-to-center distance.
But, to cut the string slots, we need to know where the edge of the fret board is, and where the center lines of the strings fall. These solid lines represent that information.
The lines which represent the centers of each string are transferred to the nut.
A shallow file cut is made at each string center. Here, we are checking these cuts against the template.
These shallow cuts represent the eventual center of each string.
These cuts were made with a triangular mill file. Nothing special, but accurate enough.
Here, we’re polishing up the sides and faces of the nut, in preparation for gluing the new nut in place on the neck.
The nut depth is established by the fret height plus a constant which is established by Fender (and can be adjusted a bit by a good luthier, like me, for best play-ability.) This is the Secret Sauce of making an instrument a great instrument.
The slot depth is now established by this stack of feeler gauge shims. They are held in place with rubber bands wrapped around the back of the neck. I’ve taped off the head stock so that I don’t scratch it up with the end of a file.
When the file touches the stack of feeler gauges, continuity will be detected by this multimeter, and it will beep. This is another check of slot depth, besides my eyeballs.
Here, the slots are cut. With a little cleanup and polish, this will be a good nut!
The nut is all done and polished. Looks good!
The action on this instrument at the twelfth fret is pretty high…
We have a metal neck shim between the neck and body, made from a piece of the machinist’s feeler gauge of the proper thickness to reestablish proper neck geometry. The metal shim is the hardest practical material for this purpose, with an accurate thickness, and better mechanical stability and hardness for greatest vibration transfer between the neck and body than a guitar pick or a piece of business card. This results in the best tone. And a set of feeler gauges are less than five bucks.
A quick adjustment gives us just the right amount of neck relief. (Sharp-eyed readers will spot the fact that the strings are off in this picture. This is the only pic I took of the truss rod adjustment, setting the neck flat while the neck shim was being sized. Who cares if my pics are out of chronological order?)
To set intonation, we needed to work on the bridge. Here is the underside of the bridge, probably not seen for decades.
The intonation screws were dinged. Here, we are chasing the threads with a die to clean them up. Yes, they are English/Imperial threads, not metric.
The bridge is tightened down and ready to go!
The moment we’ve all been waiting for! Add strings, tune up, intonate, and play!
Matt’s unicorn was to again own a Blackout Strat like the one from his youth. Could the Unbrokenstring Crew make an equal-or-better unicorn? The body is a Korean Fender Strat with genuine wear. The new neck is in superb shape. This will be the basis for a cool project, particularly since modern parts are available to upgrade this guitar.
The neck comes off and will be updated separately. Say ‘Goodbye’ to the Squire neck plate.
The dot inlays in this neck are really spectacular.
The pictures do not do justice to the spectacular mother of pearl in this fret board.
First, we’ll clean up a couple of handling skuffs that occurred while this project was coming together.
Tinted polyurethane, various grades of fine sandpaper, and a buff polish gets us back to where we belong.
A set of vintage tuners will be fitted to this head. Here, we establishing the center line of the tuners.
Screws for the tuners will go where the scratches cross.
The pin vise is pressed into service to bore the screw holes.
This drill bit will be used as a gauge to verify the diameter of the tuner holes in the neck.
Sure enough, this neck was pre-drilled for 3/8ths inch bushings.
The bushings are fitted tightly into the neck. This is essential for good tone, as the bushing supports the capstan, which is one end of the support structure that establishes string tension. If these are loose, your strings won’t work very well.
Turning our attention to the body, we find that the ground wire was not properly soldered to the string claw.
The interior routes of the body were painted with a conductive paint. This just won’t do for the Unbrokenstring crew. This screw ties the conductive paint to the rest of the ground circuit. We can do better.
The output jack is liberated from the stamped ‘football’ socket plate. We will rework the wiring with heat shrink support in order to support the wires and make it more durable. And the Unbrokenstring Crew will redo the soldering job, because We Own It if it fails.
The neck pocket must be square and clean. Any debris or finish will interfere with the transfer of mechanical vibrations from the neck. For maximum sustain, we need to take this pocket down to the bare wood.
This side view shows that the corners are square and clean.
Copper foil will be used to create the cavity shielding. We’re starting with the hard stuff, the output jack route.
Bottom and sides are done.
All of the interior routes are lined with copper. The seams are tacked together with solder.
This is the bottom side of the new pick guard, also made in Korea. The aluminum foil must go.
All of the holes will be de-burred with this tool.
We will have a nice flat surface to which the copper foil will adhere without voids.
Foiling the pick guard takes just a few minutes! Again, the seams are tacked together with solder to form a plane.
The foil is trimmed away from the edges with an Exacto knife.
This build will use these pickups.
This set will be a very cool foundation for this instrument.
The controls are mounted right to the copper. True to Fender specs, we are using surgical tubing for pickup springs.
The pick guard assembly is done, complete with Orange Drop tone cap.
Here is another view. All that is missing is the output jack wires and the bridge ground wire.
Here, the body is going together. The output jack wiring and bridge ground wire is routed through the body and soldered to the pick guard assembly.
This workmanship turned out pretty. New Old Stuff (NOS) push-back wire insulation is used to complete the vibe.
Everything fits!
The neck gets a little prep before the strings are installed.
Remember the Squire neck plate? This is the replacement.
Meet the strings!
This new neck has a new nut, which needs to be slotted and filed. String spacing is established here.
Here, the slots are taken to the proper depth, calculated beforehand. The stackup of feeler gauge blades establishes the bottom of all of the string slots. When each file touches the feeler gauge blades, we’re done.
The string slot depth is where we want it. Next is to file off the top of the nut and polish it, which has been shown in other blog posts. When this is finished, the strings will protrude just above the top of the nut.
Now this is beginning to look like a guitar. This is set up as a ‘hard tail’ so no tremolo bar is needed, but one is supplied.
We lost Matt somewhere in the bowels of Guitar Center.
This message came into the Unbrokenstring Global Command Center after this guitar made it back to the rehearsal room:
“BTW been meaning to tell you, OUTSTANDING job you did with the recreation of Crow’s Fender Blackout Strat!
“I think can say, without any hyperbole whatsoever, that just plugged straight into an amp with no tweaking whatsoever, that is the BEST SOUNDING GUITAR I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE.
“Completely outshines even the original Blackout he was trying to unbury.
“We’re still absolutely dumbstruck by clarity and full tonal range of it. Truly amazing work, sir!
Craig is a Ric Man. This beautiful blue bass in only one of his many Rics. This one has problems with getting both pickups to work. Could the Unbrokenstring Crew get all this sorted out?
This instrument plays beautifully and has no real discernable setup issues. However, the wiring seems to be amiss!
More than a few of you will have heart palpitations seeing this head stock.
Two output jacks allow a mono mix of both pickups as is usually found with most multi-pickup instruments, plus a special “Ric-O-Sound” jack that presents the signals from two pickups as two separated signals, accessible with a stereo cable (TRS.) This gives the player the ability to run two preamps, two effect loops, two separate amps, etc.
Immediately after looking under the pick guard, we find a loose wire. Poor soldering here.
This isn’t even tinned.
Here is another broken wire, another ground wire.
We have a stack of three inside-tooth lock-washers under each output connector. Not much spring action available from the teeth of these locking washers, so they don’t really lock.
A magnet is the quickest way to clear all this extra hardware out of the control route.
This is the stereo jack handling the “Ric-O-Sound” duties.
The mono jack handles the single-ended output from this instrument.
Soldering workmanship on the switch needs some attention as well.
Disconnecting each pickup allows us to do some cleanup in the wiring cavity. The neck pickup is ohmed-out. The neck pickup is sometimes called the ‘treble’ pickup.
And we do the same with the bridge pickup. This pickup is also called the ‘bass’ pickup, which seems redundant.
Perhaps this soldering was done with plumber’s solder. It is awfully dull.
Another look at the switch. Not much to brag about here.
The ground connection to the control is redone. Smooth and shiny is the name of the game when soldering.
I labelled the controls BV (Bass Volume,) TV (Treble Volume,) BT (Bass Tone,) and TT (Treble Tone.)
Now that the controls are identified, we can install the knobs in the Correct location. Yes, they were in the wrong place.
Earlier I pointed out the stack of three inside-tooth lock washers. Here’s why I mentioned it:
When stacked, the teeth have nothing to push against. The teeth are literally hanging out in space.
A flat washer in the middle will provide some ‘resistance’ for all the teeth to press against, thus restoring the action of the lock washers to that of being, er, well, lock washers.
The jacks are Imperial measurement and this washer must have been metric. A little gun-smithing is in order.
The output jacks are wired and tightened into their correct locations.
Testing shows no output. It has something to do with this volume pot. What the hey??
This is the hey. This bit of conductive solder debris was underneath the volume pot, shorting the ‘stapled’ contacts seen in the previous picture to each other, and thus, shorting the output to ground.
This offset-waist project guitar is playable and is actually very cool. The owner had ‘gotten in over his head’ and broken a few screws and buggered a few others. Could the Unbrokenstring Crew whip this instrument into shape again?
The easy part is to install gold Gibson speed knobs on the controls. There are a lot of good parts in this instrument.
Looking more closely, the neck pocket will need some serious attention. What’s going on here?
This is what’s going on. If you look at the high and low strings, you will see that they are not the same distance from the edge of the fret board. This neck is not lined up with the body of the guitar.
It is easy to remove the truss rod cover because these screw heads are already sheared off.
The heads of the screws around this pickup were mangled to the point that a regular Phillips screw driver would not engage them anymore. Here we’re using a pair of cutters to twist the screw out while a magnet serves as a sentinel to keep pieces of metal that will inevitably shave off the screw head away from the magnet in the neck pickup.
Wow these are long. These go most of the way through the body.
We are still working on this one. This is really tough.
Note that the head is chewed up pretty badly. New screws are already in stock.
No springs or tubing are underneath this pickup, bur rather a chunk of too-thick too-hard foam.
Now we know where this body came from!
And the neck is from Guitar Fetish. Here, I marked where the body ends with a dotted line. More on this later.
So what can we do about these broken screws?
No problems removing the tuners… these screws were busted off as well.
To remove the broken screws, we apply heat to the body of the screw. This dries out the surrounding wood so that it shrinks slightly.
I used the same technique with the wire cutters to grasp the body of the broken screw to twist it out easily.
Rinse and repeat for the remaining broken screws.
Now that everything is apart, I need to fix this neck pocket. First, we get the bottom flat.
Then we get the sides flat. This body was painted after it left the factory, so we have plenty of over-spray in the neck pocket that we need to clear out with this scraper.
I believe that we are down to real wood again.
Acoustic coupling occurs best when the neck and body fit tightly, ‘bone on bone,’ if possible. I really like this wood hardener, which is essentially solid Lexan dissolved in a light solvent.
This raw wood will take a few coats to seal and harden.
As the old cowboy on the cattle drive once said, “Be sure to look back to see if the herd is still behind you.” Periodic fit checks are always a good idea.
This neck is beautiful because of the thick layer(s) of polyurethane finish. However, the polyurethane layer may get in the way of acoustically coupling the neck to the body. Here, I’m hatching the area where I will scrape away finish.
Again, the luthiers’ scraper is the perfect tool for removing finish evenly and smoothly, leaving the surface exactly flat.
That is much better! Not shown: the finish on the end and sides of the neck where it meets the body is also removed.
A pin vise holds the proper-sized twist drill to resize these holes for the Correct pickup screws.
A little canned air clears out the cuttings from the holes.
Over-sized screws held the pick guard in place. The Correct screws are smaller. Here, a small dowel is glued into each hole, which will be re-drilled with the proper-sized hole. This is hide glue shown here; just fine for this duty.
Once the hide glue is cured, each dowel is trimmed flush.
I jumped ahead to show how the Correct screws are nearly flush with the top of the pick guard. Almost factory.
This single-coil pickup reads as an open circuit. That tiny wire is broken.
The tiny wire is broken because these black and white leads can twist around. Hot-glue now holds them stationary.
The pickup is working now. Here is some new, softer foam in place to hold the pickup in position. Leo Fender would have used short pieces of vinyl tubing on the screws to act as a spring, but these covers go all the way to the bottom of the cavity route, so the foam is the best option for this setup. Oh, and you can’t see it, but the copper pulled out when the original foam was replaced, so this guitar has copper in the pickup route and under the pick guard.
Here is the actual pickup.
And here is the separate cover.
The Correct screws are not nearly as hard to drive as the other screws.
More Guitar Fetish goodness! The metal parts of the guitar should be tied to a single point, not at various places along the signal path. This soldered wire ties the metal body of the pickup to one side of the audio path, and has got to go.
That connection is now cut open.
A separate layer of foil is wired to the single point ground. The connection to the bridge and strings is accomplished with another sheet of foil and this outside-star lock washer. Again, the mechanical ground is not part of the signal path.
Everything goes together as it should. See how the star washer makes the connection between the bridge and foil?
The Correct controls are marked T for tone and V for volume. The switch is ready to wire.
The new wiring is accomplished with solid wire in Teflon tubing. The pickup wiring is the vintage ‘push-back’ wire, which is actually really easy to use and can be very clean-looking as the insulation is cut without resorting to wire strippers.
When the control plate is in the correct position, new holes are bored for the screws.
The neck plate needs some attention. This metal polishing paste is also what I use to polish fret wire.
These holes are reamed to the proper size for the Correct screws.
The tuners are going on! A bit of red felt is glued to the face of the socket so that the finish is not marred.
These new screws going into the correctly-sized holes are very well-behaved now.
The truss rod cover screws will now live in properly-sized holes as well. The pin vise is getting a workout today!
The customer uses these strings. We need the guitar strung so that we can get the neck straight.
Note that the outside E strings are equidistant from the edge of the fret board. The screws attaching the neck to the body are tightened at this point.
Now that the neck is properly positioned, we can finish the setup. The truss rod is adjusted to make the neck perfectly straight. Do you see the slip of paper next to fret 9? It is used as a feeler to see that the ruler is in contact with the fret board all along the neck. A piece of paper is about 0.0015 inch thick or so. It is used to check for fit between every fret on the fret board. Yes, that makes a difference!
This neck is brand new, and so the frets had never been leveled. Just a tiny bit of sanding was all it took.
Here I am taking a measurement of fret wire height. I need this shortly to file the nut slots.
Frets are polished.
Fret board is cleaned and conditioned with oil.
Here we are cutting the nut slots to depth (about 0.006 inch plus the fret wire height measurement made earlier.)
Once the nut slots are at the right depth, the rest of the nut is sanded away to make the slots shallow. We need to sand a little bit more away near the high E and B strings, and maybe next to the D string. We’re getting there!
The instrument is back together and sounding good!
This is a closeup of the saddle barrels. These are factory intonated and are VERY close to correct. How do they do that?
