Steve Holt

As a few of you may have seen me mention in the guitar wood thread, I'm planning to make an electric for my year 12 major work, including neck and fretboard. I've made a body before but this will be my first time doing a neck and fretboard. Ahhh new experiences!

I was going to do a Les Paul style body but have since decided I'd rather do a superstrat resembling the Ibanez S, but with a thicker body. Neck will be 24 frets and 25.5" scale length.

Here are pics of my timber and my scale drawing on MDF:





For the body I'm using Tasmanian Blackwood, Queensland Maple for the neck, and New Guinea Rosewood for the fretboard. I'll probably make the neck 3 piece with a strip of left over Makore down the middle.

I should be starting the build in the coming week, which will probably be spent making some practice necks out of pine.

A couple of questions I'd like to ask here though:

As I'm planning to make it string through body, where can I get some ferrules? I've looked through StewMac and some australian luthier sites and haven't been able to find any. Unless I've missed them?

Also, what pickups would you UG users recommend? I'd like to get a heavier sound for metal, but similar to Adam Jones from Tool, though I know he gets most of his tone from his 3 heads.

GravyFish

You can find ferrules on Stew-Mac here. Good luck with the build

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Steve Holt

Oh wow! How on earth did I miss that?

Thankyou!

And in terms of pickups, another sound I'd like to come close to would be Mikael Akerfeldt from Opeth's

Jazzalenko

Sounds awesome man, post pics when done

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GravyFish

You would not believe the amount of time I've spent on StewMac (and other parts sites) familiarizing myself with available parts. Glad I could help

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Warwick Corvette Fretless MIJ '89 P-Bass Lyte
Fender Geddy Lee Sig Bass, Ibanez DTT700 Destroyer

Steve Holt

Haha thanks. Might be a bit of a wait, I have three terms to do it until the end of HSC

The_Kelaninator

luthiersupplies.com.au
thats where i get all my stuff
they have ferrules

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xgregoryx

who's lucy?

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Guitar-KID125

looks sweet man but I'm pretty sure the s series is a little smaller than what you have drawn there. Ether way this looks good I'm gonna watch this

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Steve Holt

Yeah I just used my strat copy as a guide and tried to change it to be more of an S style, it's not perfect though, but I like the body to be larger. It's gonna be a carved top as well, which should be an interesting thing for me to try.

I'm fairly sure I'll have a double period in the woodwork rooms tomorrow so I'll have some time to start on a practice neck. Should be fun



Hahaha, a girl in my year who took to my pencil case with white out during a study period

Dopey_Trout

For Mikael Akerfeldt's tone, best pickups I've found for it are either the PRS Tremonti set, or a set of Bareknuckle Nailbombs. Personally I'd go for the latter though. This build looks like it could be very good

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Steve Holt

Hmm. I'm thinking that if I have time left over after I finish, which is likely, I'll probably make a guitar case and pedalboard/case out of spare wood in the storerooms as side projects, could be some additional fun .

Thanks for the displays of interest everyone!

Sadly I was supposed to have double industrial tech for my first two periods today, but since it was the first day back times got screwed around and we didn't get to start anything. Going to cut my template and start on a practice neck on monday though, so I'm pretty keen for the weekend to pass


Don't worry about pictures, I have to document pretty much every process I do in photographs for my folio, so all my progress photos will also go up on here

Steve Holt

So I'm drawing up my neck template and I've come up with a question. Does the size of headstock and positioning of pegs matter at all? Or am I good to freehand the headstock?

Edit: Here's the template with headstock

Dopey_Trout

An ideal headstock shape has the strings staying relatively straight from the nut to the peg, aside from that it just has to be strong enough to take the string pressure. Which that one surely will be

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Copaman

That headstock is fine; assuming 3x3 tuners arranged in a traditional Gibson pattern.

Doesn't really fit the body IMO but oh well. Whatever floats your boat

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Guitar-KID125

I'd probably go with a 6-inline blade headstock but there's nothing wrong with the one you've got there.

Are you looking to paint this or leave it natural?

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Steve Holt

Yeah the tuners are gonna be 3x3, I might decide to change the headstock yet, not sure.

And I'm definitely staining this badboy, probably a red burst, though since it'll be my first burst it may be a bit tricky

If the grain of the blackwood isn't all that nice then I'll just thin it and throw a nicely figured cap on there.

I'm so keen to start this tomorrow

Edit: Another question on pickups. I'm very interested in these nailbombs, but I'm under the impression that they're absolutely brutal. So I'm guessing if I wanted to do cleans then I'd have to have another pickup with less output? Or would I still be able to do nice cleans with a pair of nailbombs?

And would nailbombs cover a Mastodon-esque tone?

Steve Holt

Small update

Finally got to do some practical work in class, so here's the always enthralling cutting of the templates!



My serious face:






Yeahboi:


Neck template:


Sanding down the neck profile:


More to come over the next week!

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Shinozoku

The Nailbombs have enough output to blow an old Crate practice amp They ARE absolutely brutal, but if your amp is biased and EQed properly, you can coax some cleans out of it, or just wire a parallel switch for it, or even just simply use a neck pickup for cleans.

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