Brainy Memorial Build – A Long, Slow, Comfortable Fumble Around In The Dark

So, minor update.

Chris from CH Guitars sent through the correct replacement tuner. Top bloke. Go buy his stuff.

The Beer Lever is now attached at the rear of the body with 1" screws into the ash end block. That shouldn't move.

The brass rod arrived in this morning's post so she now has side dots.

I cleaned up and waxed the bed of a little toggle press I rescued some years ago and used it to put the frets in last night, using my new fret pressing caul (I already had the inserts, meant to build a caul, then never got around to it, finally just bought one. Dur.). This part of the operation was good, however...

The neck is 44mm at the nut and I bought a set of 24 pre-cut and radiused frets from 44mm - 60mm. I lined them all up by size and messed around with the first one for a while, then conceded that it was probably a fraction too short. No worries, I'll use the next one and go from there. And so I progressed merrily along until about the 16th fret when I realised that I wasn't going to have enough frets to get to the end. Yes, folks, I'd bought a set of 22 frets, not 24, so I am 1 short. So I've ordered some more.

If I had a brain, I'd be dangerous.

I did get the frets ends all trimmed flush and rounded over, though, but I’m going to have to wait to finish that last one (and build a 21-fret neck at some point).

 

Dots, Rick? I'd struggle to make dots look interesting. It's fair to say that they're there and dot-shaped.

The fret thing really ticked me off, because the end - or at least, major progress - is in sight, and now I'm going to be waiting on the postie again. Oh well. Once I get this last fret in and tamed, I can glue the neck in and then it's a real, tangible guitar.

I am wondering again about pickups for this thing. Originally, the idea was for a single neck pickup ("The Rhythm Box"), but I'm starting to wonder if I should do more.

 

I think the separate store is relatively new. He was originally on Ebay (and still is) and I think he has since opened a web store and a small physical shop in Newcastle.

I have a small set of sellers on Ebay/the web that I tend to use by preference - this guy, Vanson, and of course Northhwest Guitars are probably the main ones, but I notice that I tend to buy the same sorts of things from the same sellers. If they sell nice stuff, I try to remember and use them again (See also the Tonewood Man on page 7 for fretboards).

StewMac would be nice, but the postage & import from the US is getting expensive these days. Or I'm just cheap

 

I can confirm that the dotified dotiliciousness of the dots remains undimmed, although the dot definer remains somewhat... dotty.

The pickup thing has been largely defined by the total lack of a plan. There was a loose intention to have a single p90 at the neck depending on clearances, and that's still a little unclear. I would prefer to surface-mount and not have to route (and can't after I glue the neck in), and there isn't anything under the bridge area to mount a pickup to anyway. Again, vague thoughts of maybe a piezo built into the bridge, possibly, depending. I have a little neck-mounted humbucker that I could use, or Wilkinson do something very similar in a p90 sized mount that could be a bit more flexible. Possibly.

In short, this... is uncertain. Life's like that. To sum up, in the sagacious words of Mr. R. Atkinson: "My life certainly has a certain uncertainty about it. And I'm certain yours does too. So with my uncertainty and your uncertainty there's certainly a certain degree of uncertainty about, of that we can be... quite sure."

 

If only there was a bloke who had done a series of roll-your-own gold foils and derivatives who could give advice.

If only, eh?

(This is assuming I can find the parts, which seems a little unlikely)

 

Wait for it, wait for it...

 

He was helping. He's very good at helping, but he tends to lose interest when its photo time.

Because this is the internet and the internet is for cat pictures, here's one of the junior feline helping earlier in the build

This really is 'the big one'. My first glue-in neck and it's now absolutely irreversible, i.e. I'm stuck with the angles, etc.. I did set up the nut and bridge with some thread and concluded that everything was straight and I had about 3mm between the threads and the top of the 21st fret. I've still got a little to take off the bottom of the bridge, so I'm hoping it will be all right - just about - probably - I hope. Then I can put some strings on it and ding-a-ding-dang on my dang-a-long-ling-long