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L.E.D. fretlines?

#61
Personally, I think that the easiest route is going to be running individual fiber optic strands to pieces of acrylic sheet that have been sanded so as to be opaque. We shall see soon enough. I am pulling the fretboard off of my donor neck as we speak and with any luck, my fiber optics, GlowInc V10 paint, and acrylic sheet should be here tomorrow or the next day.
 
#62
Reticle...> TY, I'd love to hear and see how it comes out. Yeah your right, the main thing about such is the eye candy aspect. Lol. Before you put clear sealer over the glow paint, real lightly buff it with ultra-superfine sandpaper. For whatever reason, it makes it glow a bit brighter and longer after that last treatment to it. Visually in daytime it makes it look a little more white though. So isnt as incospicious as would be without light sanding of surface. Once you notice it looks sharper or whiter, stop buffing and wipe off whatever little bit of glowdust powder. Also 2 to max of 3 light layers of the paint itself seems to work best for me. Then light sand after last layer dries completely.

Would enjoy seeing pics all lit up and all when your done.
 
#66
Ruckus_Instrmts said:
Interesting technique, but in my world AE's are a no-no.
Click to expand...
All it took for me was a 9v battery, a 220ohm resistor, an Led with a narrow viewing angle, and some properly placed cuts in blind rods I got when they were cleaning my school :p
I dont mind them that much but im definitely going to fit a square pair when I get my delorean
EDIT:
Photo42.jpg

I just cut 4 lines in a spare piece of rod I had and pieced together an LED
 
#72
You might want to ping Sheldon Dingwall. When he was building my Rastaburst Voodoo/Zebra, the idea of using LED light underneath the fretboard came up. It was his brainstorm and it was a very cool idea that didn't quite pan out. The idea was to layer a substrait beneath the fretboard so that there was a pinstripe of light that ran the length of the neck. The 'dot' side markers would then be set in the lit pinstripe, making them dark spots in the line. It was a great idea and I told him to go for it if it could be done without compromising the neck. I also wanted a lit Dingwall logo in the bargain...
 
#78
I will post up some pics tonight, but it looks like the plex/fiberoptic route isn't going to happen. The problems I've run into.....

1) Plexi get EXTREMELY fragile when cut into fret-slot sized strips. I could go for larger slots but that would defeat the clean/precise look I'm going for.

2) Fret-slot sized strips do not diffuse the light enough to evenly illuminate the entire strip. I have tried running the cable from the side as well as the center of the slot and have tried with clear and sanded opaque pieces of Plexi. My last hope for this method is that a different color will do the trick, but I don't have very high hopes.

I should add that I am using 1.5mm fiber optic strands, which are about twice as large as I would be able to use in a working neck, so I am getting more than enough light to the slot.

Next up..... GlowInc V10 paint.
 

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