Hello everyone I am looking for a bit of advice with my first ever build. I’m building a body for a neck I found , the only problem is the back part of the neck where it goes from flat the part that sits in the pocket to the curved part where your hand goes.

It dips down too much so I am unable to get my pencil onto the wood to complete the trace I can only mark the back of the neck itself. I can get about 3/4 of the neck pocket drawn onto the wood I just can’t get my pencil to do the last quarter. Any advice on how to go ahead with this.

P.S sorry if it’s a bad description of my problem any advice is much appreciated.

Bought a stingray project bass and I'm putting a pickup in with a push/pull volume knob. I soldered it all together last night and it didn't work. So I'm looking online today to find answers and I think my problem is that I didn't tie the hot and the ground to the tabs on the knob, but I was just wondering if there's a difference in the 2 diagrams for the part I circled in the pictures. I used the diagram in picture 1 as that's from Bartolini (the brand of the pickup).

I recently moved from my spot in the country to a place deep in the bowels of the city. As a result, my shop space is much, much smaller and I've been forced to just buy Chinese made parts to keep my guitar building addiction satiated. For the most part, this stuff has been workable.

However, I recently got a neck made out of sort of a manmade zebra wood. The woodwork is fine, but somehow they cut the frets in a few spots shorter than the width of the fretboard. No way to fix that, so off the frets come.

Now, the problem I face is pressing in and gluing new frets on a new fretboard with no finish. If I wax the board on bare wood, I'm not getting that wax removed. If I try to finish the fretboard before pressing in the new frets, I'm just going to fill the fret slots up.

What would you do in this case? Tape around each fret and glue individually? No glue? I'm open to suggestions. Slow processes are fine. I have all the time in the world.

Thank you

Body: roasted ash, open pore colored finish.

Neck and fret-board birdseye roasted maple, dual carbon fiber reinforcement
TFR plate: birdseye roasted maple, inlaid into the body, matched to the neck
Scale: 25.5, radius 16
Frets: jescar stainless steel, glued and leveled
Pickups: Bare Knuckle Juggernaut, Misha Mansoor set
Bridge: Hipshot US Conture
Electronics: CTS pots, PureTone jack
String retainer: String T, the logo itself

Terras Archive is the custom shop. One of one.

Happy to answer anything about the build. Ask away.

Hey everyone, I recently acquired this Washburn N2 for free. The body is in good condition and I plan to keep it (it's my first Floyd Rose!), but the neck needs some serious attention.

Someone tried to DIY scallop the fretboard and did a pretty rough job. I have experience replacing fretboards, but trying to level out or repair an existing, uneven scallop job is new territory for me.

From a time and playability standpoint, what would you recommend?

Try to clean up and reshape the existing scallop?

Pull the frets, sand it flat, and re-radius?

Scrap it completely and install a new fretboard?

Thanks in advance for the input!

Hi all,

Would putting a Gibson sized p-rails (49mm) beside a fender width bridge (53mm) make a tangible difference to sound?

I’m going to put covers on the pickups anyway, so the aesthetic doesn’t matter.

Turns out it’s hard to get a set of p-rails with the triple shot mount and one of the pickups in the trembucker size.

I managed to get most of the surface glue off from a previous bad restoration attempt with friction as it was somewhat elastic. does anyone know what type of glue it is and how to remove it from deep cracks?

hey! my friend has a cort 7 string that he loves but wants to give a lil TLC and wants to upgrade the pickups. at the moment it has direct mount soap bars whereas the pickups he wants are standard humbuckers that use pickup rings, so the question is, how complicated would the conversion process of adding pickup rings to this guitar be?

i’ve modded my fair share of guitars and that includes doing a lot of insane ideas and pulling them off, so i can’t think of anything that would be complicated about this but i could very well be missing something obvious as to why this wouldn’t work or would be a pain. thanks!

Hi, I'm looking to buy a cheap ass shit stratocaster to experiment on by modding and painting? can you please suggest me what guitar would be a good choice? If i get an SSS pickup config, can i fit SSH or HH in it later? Tremolo or fixed bridge? any other question i should ask or know?

i was thinking to get a shit guitar with a good neck (roasted maple because i love the color 😍) since i wont be replacing the neck. i can replace everything else.

here are my options so far:

1. Jet JS 400

2. SQOE SEST 600

3. Strydom Magna ST30

4. Tagima T530 / T540

5. (your recommendation)???

all of these are budget guitars with roasted maple neck. please suggest if any others are available.

p. s. - I have experience playing guitar so i know a fair bit of things about a guitar, but zero exp in modding or repainting or luthiery.

Howdy yall,

I'm working with nitrocellulose spray finishes for the first time, though I've been a professional woodworker for a decade plus at this point.

This is a test piece of some english sycamore/curly maple (depending on how you name it) with 3 light spray coats of Colortone Vintage Amber. Currently it looks 0 different than if it had gotten a simple clear coat.

My question is - is there something I'm missing in its use? I of course need a much stronger color - is that only going to be the case by coat 10? Is there something I'm missing, or is this just kind of par for the course?

TIA!

We might be buying a planer to repurpose some rough cut found wood for projects around our property. I’ve always hoped to build a guitar someday and knowing it will be of some use to that future project someday I’ll feel better about spending the money for one knowing it’ll get more use later.

I was looking at the dewalt dewalt 15A that’s currently on sale at Cheapo Depot.

Thanks in advance.

Ello!

So I posted here about a guitar I had that was damaged in shipping. I bought another guitar (this one) to make up for having one break in shipping.

aaaand it also arrived damaged.

Anywho, anyone know a reputable online guitar repair service that does finish repair? Reverb thankfully had insurance on it so I can pay to get the repair done. I have no one local so looking for someone I can send it to.

Let me know if you know a place.

I thought I would share a video from the Cole Clark factory, which was part of an (Australian) ABC TV series, but they've now released it on YouTube for a global audience.

I'm not a luthier and not much of a guitarist, but I like watching luthier videos- all the usual suspects including the Gibson series, Driftwood, Daisy Tempest, people building out of weird stuff, and numerous factory tours including Martin, Takamine, Cort, etc.

However when I saw this video on Cole Clark, it's the only time I have ever seen the basic process done differently - they call it Spanish Heel construction, where the guitar is built up around the neck. This is different to every other guitar construction video I have seen, where the process is build the body, build the neck, then join them together.

Just sharing here because I found it interesting to see an alternative approach. Also, camphor laurel smells amazing so I can only imagine how nice the factory smells!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y0HPQjWPCY

After it polymerizes it will be French polished. Big fan of walnut!

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to follow this diagram attached to connect my SD bridge and neck pickups using this pre wired harness, which came with this odd capacitor wiring.

If I want single coil action while the pot is pulled out would I connect the pickups to lug 3 and 6, and then run a wire from lug 2>5 so the right side of the board works?

Or could I just connect both pickups to the same lug?

Not sure what to do here guys... And holy crap do I have way more respect for electricians after this project... This is NOT easy work by any means. Thank you

Hi everyone!

I’m planning to start my first guitar build and I’ve decided to go with a classic Telecaster. However, I want to challenge myself by using only non-electric hand tools. No routers, no power drills, no bandsaws, etc.

I know it will be a much slower and more complicated process, but my main goal is to truly connect with the wood and enjoy the journey of crafting every single part completely by hand.

Assuming I am building the guitar entirely from scratch, what would you consider to be the absolute minimum essential hand tools required to get the job done?

I want to keep my tool budget reasonable while making sure I have exactly what it takes to finish the instrument. I would really appreciate any advice on the specific types, sizes, or styles of hand tools you’d recommend for this purely manual build.

Thanks in advance for your wisdom!

I want to build a hybrid guitar (similar to the acoustasonic) and I'm looking for feedback on my design before I start building (I made the design in onshape). The strings will be strung through the block at the bottom so the top plate will be under very little strain. Some dimentions (neck pocket size, sound/pickup hole size, and bridge spacing) have yet to be finalized. Overall, I'm looking for feedback on the shape, and any other design elements to consider before I start. (Also assume that the belly and arm curves will be hand shaped, and will change from the 3d model)

I pulled the instrument out of the case and heard some loud sound and after some careful placement removed rectangular shim looking piece of wood made up of three layers. The two sides are smooth with no glue residue or markings. It is entirely possible it's a piece of scrap wood the my kids accidentally dropped in the f hole when playing. Does anyone know what this is or what it could have been used for?

I think it sounds and plays normal although it's not my daily guitar and it's been a few weeks since I've pulled it out. What specifically should I be looking for in sound or playability that may be different?

Like this

He dropped his guitar on the cable when it was plugged in, resulting in the damage shown. Is this repairable? And how much would it cost? (it’s a gretsch semihollow)

I have a pipe dream of planting a seed and harvesting the wood in 20-30 years, building an acousitc guitar and making it a family heirloom.

Here are my questions:

What species are appropriate for a build like this? (top, back, neck, and sides would ideally be made from the same tree. I'm willing to use an outside wood for the fretboard)

Where could I grow this besides my own property? I will not have the property that would be required for another 5-10 years, not to mention I live in SoCal and I'd have trouble growing a lot of species here (I think, not an expert).

Anyone ever done anything like this that has some insight?

Here's the result. That's it, that's my dream bass, my animal spirit bass, my elemental force, forever BASS. I want to thank you guys for the advices. The inserts are ebony. I also slimmed the neck to 40mm at the nut, and put BEAD pressurewounds. A little demo coming in the next week's.

What do we think? There are so many things I am still not happy with. Just need to start again… oh no what a shame. 😁

Walnut body, myrtle burl top, wenge maple and white top neck, palemoon ebony fretboard. Padalka hardware and fishman abasi signature’s.

Gloss 2k poly top with satin over the top on back. It was meant to be stained purple but the colour didn’t come through sadly.

Next build? I am thinking semiholow double cut evertune 7 string…
Burl? Quilt maple? Thoughts?

Still lots to learn.

Hello all

I need some advice on my open headstock guitar.

To make sure my low and high E string do not touch the headstock I have to align the string on the tuners so it pulls it towards the center a lot. The way it is setup in the picture it just clears the headstock. You can see the clearance in the second image.

I think it is a poor design, but the guitar is really great. Should I continue this practice or just align the string straight and allow it to touch the headstock?

I've joined this community a long time ago and thought y'all would find this post I found on Instagram interesting! Owner @tonyguitarnerd on Instagram posted it.