More Fun with the Modelo Uno: Forward and Lateral Motion

[DDXdesign]

"Exotica pickup", eh? Sounds like..... *sunglasses* a freek magnet.

Yknow, if you happen to need something custom and lightweight while being sturdier than cardboard, for your bobbins, I might be able to design you something and 3d print it... HMU if you like!

 

[Freekmagnet]

OK, I have a general question for some of you awesome luthiers out there.

When you all cut a standard Fender neck pocket to a depth of 0.625”, how dead accurate do you cut your pocket? Be honest.

I'm only asking ‘cuz I just cut the pocket and the micrometer measures 0.607”. Is it crucial to go back and cut that 0.018”? Or is that something to just compensate with a bridge adjustment?

It’s not so much laziness on my part - it’s more a matter of risk. I have to re-mount the cutting template perfectly and get that small depth dead on with my not-incredibly-accurate Craftsman router.

 

[5tring]

Caveat: I’m not an awesome luthier.

I can’t imagine the thickness of the neck + fingerboard is accurate to that level, so this would get lost in the tolerances anyway.

If you do want to deepen it, if the front of the body has enough flat area to support the router you could use a follower bit in the existing pocket rather than refit the template.

 

[Jisch]

That should be within the adjustment range of the bridge, no problem. That's what is critical with the neck pocket depth - can you put the strings where you want them without running out of adjustment on the saddles. You can test it with pieces of string before finishing, just to be sure. You can shim the bridge if needed, but making the pocket deeper is probably a better idea (if things aren't working out).

 

[Beej]

Crap luthier here.

I usually go to 16mm, which works out to 0.6299 so it's a little deeper than 0.625. The only "problem" with keeping it under 5/8 is that you might have to have the saddles higher when it's all together, and depending on your preference and what you're used to, you might not like it.

 

[ctmullins]

Amateur hack here. I don't have standards. And if I did they wouldn't be Fender standards...

Everything I build is a bit different. One neck might have a thicker heel than the next. I route each neck pocket to fit its particular neck.

I'm not helpful at all!!

 

[Freekmagnet]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

Somebody posted this in another forum in regards to the question. Apparently, I am well within Fender spec...

https://www.electricherald.com/diagrams/stratocaster/Fender-Stratocaster-62.pdf

I’m not entirely sure if I should be reassured by this. I guess factories have to allow some amount of tolerance so that they can function as a business.

You can shim the bridge if needed, but making the pocket deeper is probably a better idea (if things aren't working out).

I’m glad you posted this - I’ve been building using the Brucified bridge - i.e. I’ve been embedding an aluminum mounting plate into the body. I usually allow the plate to protrude just slightly above the surface so that the finish doesn’t cover it. In my last build, my saddles seemed slightly lower than usual. It plays fine - great, in fact - but now I know why the saddles were low.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

OK, I have a general question for some of you awesome luthiers out there.

When you all cut a standard Fender neck pocket to a depth of 0.625”, how dead accurate do you cut your pocket? Be honest.

I'm only asking ‘cuz I just cut the pocket and the micrometer measures 0.607”. Is it crucial to go back and cut that 0.018”? Or is that something to just compensate with a bridge adjustment?

It’s not so much laziness on my part - it’s more a matter of risk. I have to re-mount the cutting template perfectly and get that small depth dead on with my not-incredibly-accurate Craftsman router.

You're fine. You should still be well within the range of adjustment of the bridge saddles.

You should always dry fit the instrument before painting. You don't necessarily have to put strings on it, but you fit the neck and bridge to the body. Put a long straightedge down the fingerboard and across the saddles. The saddles should be down low to meet the straightedge, and have enough travel to go 1/8" higher. While you have the straightedge on there, set the pickup in its cavity and make sure it has enough travel to come up and meet the straightedge. And, use the straightedge along both sides of the neck to verify that the neck is on the body straight in relation to the bridge and pickup. Now's the time to find any of these problems.

To answer your original question, most of my routing ends up within +/- 0.005". But that's using production-level hard tooling and setup gauges.

Your mistake was that you should have measured the pocket depth before pulling off the template. Then it would have been simple to do another quick pass to bring it right to dimension.

In this business, you need to constantly check dimensions, as you are doing the operations. The goal is to find mistakes as soon as they happen, when they are much easier to fix. Or, better yet, find mistakes just before they happen.

 

[Freekmagnet]

You're fine. You should still be well within the range of adjustment of the bridge saddles.

You should always dry fit the instrument before painting. You don't necessarily have to put strings on it, but you fit the neck and bridge to the body. Put a long straightedge down the fingerboard and across the saddles. The saddles should be down low to meet the straightedge, and have enough travel to go 1/8" higher. While you have the straightedge on there, set the pickup in its cavity and make sure it has enough travel to come up and meet the straightedge. And, use the straightedge along both sides of the neck to verify that the neck is on the body straight in relation to the bridge and pickup. Now's the time to find any of these problems.

To answer your original question, most of my routing ends up within +/- 0.005". But that's using production-level hard tooling and setup gauges.

Your mistake was that you should have measured the pocket depth before pulling off the template. Then it would have been simple to do another quick pass to bring it right to dimension.

In this business, you need to constantly check dimensions, as you are doing the operations. The goal is to find mistakes as soon as they happen, when they are much easier to fix. Or, better yet, find mistakes just before they happen.

Yeah, I’m planning on doing a dry assembly - that’s kind of why I’m trying to knock this body and neck out before I get too involved with prototyping the pickup. If the neck pocket is an issue - and it sounds like it probably won’t be - I can address it then.

Another factor in this depth confusion is I’m affixing my routing templates with tape. Tape is not going to help me too much if I’m looking to get accurate depth measurements. What I want to work toward is making one large template to cut all the cavities before I cut the shape. That way, I can use dowel pins for both consistent registration and mounting the template flush to the surface of the body. Now that I have a few of these basses built, I think I can some good measurements from which to base that template.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Hmm... fixing the mistakes just before they happen you say? Interesting concept. Sounds like it saves a lot of swearing! Then again, where would the creative, new profanities come from?

 

[Freekmagnet]

I got a bunch of stuff in the mail today:

I got a set of Gotoh tuners from StewMac. I get them there ‘cuz I have 3 tuners on one side and 1 on the other. StewMac has a pretty decent price for individual tuners.

Next is a a piece of holly that I was thinking of laminating to the front of the headstock. A friend of ours said she could laser-engrave the headstock badge on there for me pretty easily. I’m thinking that the headstock matching the binding on the body will look really badass. I was picturing maybe dyeing the the neck black, with the light headstock and the padauk FB. We’ll see - in order for the piece to fit on the headstock, I have to turn it diagonally.

I’ll sand it down to 220 before I bring it over to the engraver.

The bridge I got from a dealer on eBay. At first, it looks like a Gotoh 201, but when you look more closely, it’s not. The dealer said it was brass. I can’t tell without removing the finish. I also can’t tell if it’s cast or machined. It looks black in the picture, but it’s actually really shiny chrome. Anyway, I’m going for slightly more retro-modern than funky faux vintage on this bass.

Lastly, on the far right is a package of Jescar medium jumbo fret wire.

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I had kind of a weird week for luthiery. I had a lower back injury. This might sound strange, but I had never had a back injury before, so I couldn’t accurately judge how much pain I was in and how difficult it was to function and focus on what I was doing because of it. Thankfully I’m OK now.

I went to cut my truss rod channel and had a minor disaster. I’ve done this a few times, so by now it should be fairly routine. Measure > cut > change the depth > repeat. I use my table router. I also use this fence I built that doubles as a jointing fence. Basically, I forgot to remove one of the shims from a previous operation, and I cut a nicely curved channel in my blank! Whoops! Because of my back, I wasn’t really able to get out and fix it as soon as I would have liked. It took a long time. Eventually, I routed the channel a little wider, glued a piece of maple in there and re-cut the channel. Now there’s a 1/16” strip glued in there that no one will ever see. Here’s a picture of me gluing the filet over the truss channel.

It looks like a pregnant horse!

Today I glued the wings on for the headstock - I’ll have some more photos when I cut the shape this weekend.

Lastly, I have a little story. I had a brother who was plagued by demons. He was really smart, and if things had been different, he could have been a scientist or an engineer. But alas, his mind lost it’s battle with itself and now nobody knows what became of him.

Among his many obsessions were these pieces of thin spring steel you can find on the street:

They come from street sweepers and he collected hundreds of them. My brother claimed that they were the ultimate tool. He used them for things that I probably shouldn’t mention on TB. I saw one on the street on my bike ride home today, and it was the perfect thing to use to fish out this little piece of masking tape I had put over the Allen screw on the truss rod to keep epoxy from getting in the threads. Today, I have my brother to thank.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Good work on the bass. Take care of your back. I remember about 2 years ago, I went to sit down on the couch, got about half way down and couldn’t finish sitting down and couldn’t stand back up either. I’m ok and haven’t had another “attack,” for lack of a better term, but it was a fun couple of days.

 

[Freekmagnet]

Good work on the bass. Take care of your back. I remember about 2 years ago, I went to sit down on the couch, got about half way down and couldn’t finish sitting down and couldn’t stand back up either. I’m ok and haven’t had another “attack,” for lack of a better term, but it was a fun couple of days.

Yikes! That sounds scary! I’m glad you’re feeling better.

I’m not sure how I injured myself. It just really hurt to sit or stand. I had to leave work early a few times because I just couldn’t sit down at my desk comfortably. The band had 4 gigs over the space of two weeks. Hauling gear and standing up playing bass for 3-4 hours at a stretch didn’t help either. I’m about 97% now and we don’t have any gigs this weekend, so I think I’ll be back up to 100% soon.

 

[Freekmagnet]

Today was a somewhat big day. Or rather, I didn’t do a ton of work, but it was the work that roughly marks the sort-of halfway point. Basically I cut the neck shape today.

First, I roughed it out. By the way, I still don’t have a band saw...

It took about an hour to hand-cut the shape. We went out to the desert last night to hear a friend of ours play some Son Jarocho music. The singer played a jarana which are traditionally carved by hand from a single block of wood. Another friend of mine builds them. Anyway, I thought about these hand-carved instruments while I was cutting. I thinking about how much I long for both a band saw and the space to put a band saw.

After that, I routed the shape on the template and checked to see if it fit in the pocket.

I love this stage of the build. From this point on, the build starts looking like an actual guitar. Tomorrow, I’ll probably drill the neck mounting holes into the body and maybe even glue the FB down.

On a side note, I took a break to help the li’l Lady rearrange the house. She’s been asking me to do this forever, and I just got around to doing it.

It’s nice to know that she’s enthusiastic about my work. All I gotta do now is build that 212 bass cabinet I’ve been dreaming about and cover it with a aqua Tolex.

 

[Jisch]

I've been trying to convince my wife that our musical instruments are worthy of "art" status and should be hung on the walls in our living room. I'm going to show her this pic, hopefully that will swing her.

 

[5tring]

We are doing some renovations at the moment and my wife said she wants to put my basses in frames on the wall....

I was as surprised as you are

 

[Freekmagnet]

We are doing some renovations at the moment and my wife said she wants to put my basses in frames on the wall....

I was as surprised as you are

I've been trying to convince my wife that our musical instruments are worthy of "art" status and should be hung on the walls in our living room. I'm going to show her this pic, hopefully that will swing her.

Yeah, I didn’t get why she’d want to hang guitars on the wall. Instruments are functional, not decorative! Buy now that I see it, I can understand why she wanted to do it. Musical instruments bring peace to the home.

You make nice-looking instruments, @Jisch. I’m sure they would make your living room look fantastic!

 

[Freekmagnet]

I had a productive couple of days. First, I drilled the holes in the body for the neck bolts. I gave them a nice counter bore.

My original plan was to cut a plate out of aluminum, but making a shape that fit in that space wasn’t really working for me. Ferrules are OK. I hate sanding those holes when I go to the finishing stage. I guess I’ll just have to buck up and do it.

Then, I epoxied the FB to the neck:

And once that set up, I shaved down the overlap with a plane and finished them with the mill bastards.

I haven’t had the guts to just do it with a router. Maybe next time; this whole filing bit took well over an hour.

And here’s the neck so far:

That’s it for today. Stay tuned later this week for installing the fret markers and laser-engraving the holly headplate!

 

[Freekmagnet]

Today I installed the fret markers. I’ve been trying fewer and more substantive posts. While installing the fret markers is a relatively small job, it’s the last stage before the next big job; the neck carve. So, I started by carefully measuring and quadruple-verifying my measurements. Why? Well this is an easy job that’s really embarrassing and painfully obvious when you screw up. I should know; I’ve drilled a fret dot hole in the wrong place before. Anyway, once I marked my holes, I hit it with the drill press:

Then, I cut the fret dots from 3/8” aluminum bar stock. I cut them with a hacksaw.

By the way, it was cheapest to buy a 10’ length. VC Metals charges by the cut, so no cuts = less money. I cut my roughly 1/32” - 1/16” thick. That pretty much leaves me with lifetime supply of fret markers.

After that, I glued each marker in with a dab of CA glue and filed them down with a mill bastard. It’s important to vacuum the aluminum dust away.

Once I finished that, I lightly sanded the whole fretboard with 220.

Some thoughts:

I love the look of padauk. I know it will darken, but even then the color is fantastic. That being said, I have a little fantasy about using domestically produced materials, and African hardwoods are a long way from being domestically produced. We have some beautiful woods here in North America, but choices for fretboard materials is limited. Maple is great, walnut is rumored to work and we do have some nice synthetic materials available. I have yet to be impressed by the color of any roasted maple fretboard I have seen. And for me, synthetics and torrefied woods are still pretty expensive. I’m not complaining, but rather I’m hoping that some of these newer products become something I would like to use in the future. If anyone here has any good pictures of their roasted maple fretboards, by all means, please post them - I’m looking for inspiration!

I’m digging the look of these oversized aluminum markers! Once I polish them up, I think the contrast will be amazing. The funny part is, I first started using 3/8” markers when I botched the job of drilling a hole for a 3/16” marker. Now, the smaller markers look weird to me.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

The neck looks good. What about Osage Orange for the fretboard? From what I understand about it, should be plenty hard enough. It’s typically not as dark as Padauk but it is domestic and you can find some pieces with interesting colors.