Melody Maker build

Oh, I'm generous to a fault!

 

i never find any thing like that in the trash around here.. you must live near a music s tore? also that other rout. you could use that too add a nanomag for a acoustic tones ( i want to try this pickup my self made by shadow. you see i have some other pickups made in the usa by this german company.. epi had them make a small run of them in the early 90s from what little info i can find on them.. the price was right free as the music store was going out of business.. so i think it will be fitting to get a nanomag to g with them).. and you would not have to alter anything.. that rout for the wires and what not is there. i agree with the plug. it will be under a pick guard anyhow if you use what it had originally from the out line. what a cool fine.. i see no reason why the neck wont work you may have to do a fret level and what not ( which i need to learn to do so i can fix my old yamaha se 200 sigh my first love i mean my first guitar (
congrats on the find and thanks for trying to save her.. im so tired of our throw away society. mom raised me to be a hippie. im not a radical one but i do try to treat things with respect and know we do not have endless resources like they use to think back in the day 1700;s? please post pictures of when you finish her. thank you so much. you rock dude.
chris.

 

Once when I was taking out the trash I found a pretty nice Washburn acoustic in the dumpster. Headstock broken at the joint. Some maintenance guy from the apartment complex caught me just as I had digged it out and tried to make me put it back. I told him those breaks were common and easy to fix and he started cussing. I let it go at that point because it wasn't worth the trouble.

When the college kids move out in May they leave all their unwanted stuff behind. The apartment complex will just put out a dumpster and they'll toss their perfectly good stuff into it and it'll all go to a landfill. I once got a golf bag full of balls, tees, and a full set of clubs out of a dumpster. All that cheap "dorm room" furniture is MDF and great for making templates.

 

I bought the stew mac kit years ago. It looks like a large socket ( socket wrench socket) like shape that fits over the stud and a bolt with washer passes through a hole in the top, into the stud. There is a cushioning washer at the bottom of the socket to avoid finish damage. When you tighten the bolt, the stud get pulled up assuming the bolt doesn't bottom out. So basically you need to rig up a puller. I've stacked large steel washers on top of each other to do it occasionally.

Tuner bushings.... get a dowel that is the size of the hole or a hair under and tap it from the opposite side. They usually go flying so make sure you don't lose them.... How do I know this?.......I've used a drill bit shank too for odd sizes.

 

The bushing is closed on the bottom? Drill a hole in it and remove as you normally would. Same on the tuner bushings. Drill out the back of the headstock to match the front and push the bushings out. The bushings won't harm a drill bit and a slight chamfer on the bushing end won't be an issue. With careful setup in a drill press, both operations should be a snap.

The Stew Mac jig is costly for what it does. You can make one pretty easily. Theirs uses all-thread with machined tips for various thread sizes. Using a bolt with matching threads works just as well. You may have to stack washers under the bolt head to get a tight fit...depending on pvc pipe and bolt length.

 

Glenn, I looked back thru the thread and didn't see any direct specs for the TR or it's slot. Yours looks like the smaller of the dual actions rods out there which I believe need a 3/8" deep channel. Since you had depth for a filler strip, I'm going to assume at least a 7/16" channel was cut. Backing out the 7/16" channel and 1/4"" for the fretboard at it's thickest, that leaves less than 1/8" of the .770" behind the truss rod. .082" to be exact. Maybe the fretboard isn't the full 1/4" but it would worry me being this thin. If you could live with .8125" total thickness, that would give you a full .125" under the TR nut. Guessing the .94" on the drawing is the current thickness, you'd be dropping over 1/8" in thickness in the new carve.

 

I think either would work but unless you just want to have the jig on hand for future use, I would drill out the bottom of the bushing. Then just drop in a PU slug, thread in a bridge stud and you're done.

 

I forgot to mention...great to see you back on this one. It almost has me inspired to brave the high temps in the shop today.

 

Cool! Glad to see it worked out.


On the tuner bushings, since you're uncomfortable with drilling them out and you want to keep the smaller holes on back, take a dowel and taper it so it's a snug fit in the bushing. Cut a slit into the end and tap it into the bushing from the front. Then tap a thin bladed screwdriver into the slit from behind. This will wedge the dowel and you should have a good enough grip to work the bushing free.

 

You might want to put a small shoulder on the dowel so it doesn't extend past the bushing. It it did, it might grab onto the headstock instead of the bushing.

 

In the 70's, the "books by Irving Sloane, David Russell Young, Arthur Overholtzer and Joseph Wallo were the only sources of information commonly available" to quote Steven Dembroski. The facet idea is from one of the first two (prob David Russell Young). These books (when available) are goldmines of info. With the exception of a few eccentricities, it all still applies. Anything I ever learned about making a fine instrument, I learned from them


Good luck on the burst Glenn, that is one fine looking guitar. Your challenge reminded me a lot of it, brothers from another mother, so to speak. Well done on both

Dave