An interesting but fun project build

[MadAsAHatter]

I posted this over on TB about and realized I never did it over here. This is a crazy idea I had that turned out to be a fun project. I'd a hybrid super long scale baritone / piccolo bass VI thing. I still don't know what to call it. Since I'm copy-paste from the other thread you all get to see the finished product up front instead of having to wait for me to finish building it.

I've been playing it off and an for the last several months. It's very interesting and can be a bit of a challenge at times. It definitely takes altering your techniques and somewhat hybridizing guitar and bass techniques on the fretboard. Because of the long scale bar chords are very difficult on the first couple of frets. Basic major/minor chords are okay though. Overall it has a really cool sound and is super fun to play.

Following posts will be of the build process. I should warn that there are a good bit of pictures. I've put some pics behind a spoiler for those who want to see the completed build up front.

Spoiler: Completed build

 

[MadAsAHatter]

INTRO

This will be a pictorial chronical of my recent project. Everything is now complete, but I will be posting a little bit at a time as I get time to write more up. Hopefully you’ll be interested and stick around to see how it all turned out.

I ended up making something rather odd, but very interesting and fun as hell to play once you get the hang of it. I really don’t know exactly what to call it. It’s sort of a long scale baritone piccolo bass VI hybrid thing. Baritolo Bass VI??? I don’t know.

This started out as wanting to make a Bass VI but not exactly a Bass VI. I decided instead of approaching the concept as bass for guitarists, I’d go from the other side; a guitar for bassists. I wanted it to maintain more elements of a bass. Those parts were scale length and tuning. The guitar part worked in is number of strings and spacing. The last main element was pickups and electronics. I wanted something that could work for both.

SPECS & PARTS

At first, I was going to make the body and neck from scratch then came across an Ibanez Talman Bass for $50. It was missing the tuners and had a small chip in the paint, but everything else was there; a perfect platform to build on.

I went through a couple of bridge options trying to find the right one. I needed something with 2-1/4” string spread, which are few and far between. Warmoth has a fender vintage hardtail with the right spacing and I also tried individual string bridges. Both of those options sat too low and saddles didn’t raise high enough to clear the neck. I ended up with a Schaller 3D bridge. Since it has a shim and adjustable spacing it worked perfectly.

It also took me a bit to find the right pickups. I knew I wanted a 3 pickup layout. The first incarnation had an Alumitone Bassbar in the neck, DiMarzio will power P in the middle, & fast track II in the bridge. Once I laid that out it looked hideous. I was unsure about they would sound and work with each other. While doing more research I came across a number of posts here with people like Bill Lawrence L-90s in their basses. I email Mrs. Becky for her advice and she suggested the 2.8H for neck and bridge & 4.0H for the bridge. I was able to install the other pickups I bought in other basses/guitars so they didn’t go to waste.

In the end, these are the main specs/parts:
34” Scale Length
Talman TMB100 poplar body & maple neck
6 String Schaller 3D bridge w/ 2-1/4” string spread
3x3 Gotoh 707 tuners
3 Bill Lawrence L90 Pickups
3 Individual on/off toggle & 1 volume
Bass String; Tuning B1-E2-A2-D3-F#3-B3 (Baritone guitar tuning for chording but can easily be switched to 6 string piccolo bass tuning of B1-E2-A2-D3-G3-C4)

BODY WORK

Now that parts are acquired time to get to work. First up is to strip the paint off the body and do some woodwork. Enter challenge number one. It couldn’t be as easy as a bit of paint stripper and a little scraping. Underneath the paint was a nice layer of Bondo like stuff.

After several hours of sanding, finally down to bare wood. Next is to fill in the bridge pickup cavity and screw holes.

As mentioned I scrapped the first iteration of pickups. I was unsure of ho they'd sound together and once I laid them out it just didn't look right. You can be the judge though.

After deciding on and getting the L90s it was time to do the pickup cavities. Since I wasn't using a ring around the bridge pickup I had to be extra accurate for a good fit. All my templates are for using pickup rings. Double sided tape and some straight edge blocks it is. The routes came out just right. Because of the shape of the L90s I had to square up the corners of the route with a chisel.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

VENEERING

At this point all the holes were filled, routing done, and body was given a good sanding. Now I had to start thinking about how I wanted to finish it. If it weren’t for a few of the screw hole fill poking out by the bridge I could have done a natural or stained finish on the poplar. The two options left were paint or veneer. I really like natural wood finishes so I chose veneer. Searching around I found a nice long piece of walnut veneer that had really interesting grain pattern.

Taking the veneer path gave me an interesting challenge. Normally I’d do a veneer on a flat body with square edges. All that takes is a typical caul then flush trim the edge. This body had the forearm contour and rounded edges. To deal with that takes a vacuum press which I do not own. I don’t do enough veneer work to warrant buying one so I started looking at other options. Most of the stuff I came across where either trying to do a makeshift vacuum press with a space saver bag or trying to use sandbags or something similar to mold to contours. I’ve seen these done many times by others with less than stellar results. Then I came across this video… I don’t know if this guy is the first one to do this or not, but it was the first time I saw it.



He uses cauls like normal and high-density insulation foam to mold to the contours. In the video he did it on a carved top Les Paul. I thought this was a rather brilliant solution and had to try it for myself. I could use the cauls I had. All I needed was a piece of high-density foam which cost $5 at Home Depot. This is the setup of everything:

Bottom Caul – Flat Plywood – Foam – Wax Paper – Body – Flat Plywood – Top Caul
Then clamp it all together squishing the body into the foam.
Here are some pictures of my setup.

Here I filled the cavities with foam so the veneer didn't sink in and start splitting

This process worked great but there are some key things I would do differently. First, in the video he used oak floorboards for the caul. I figured some 1” oak boards would be fine. Once I started clamping down the boards started bending so much under the pressure, I had to clamp something down the center to keep it from bowing too much. This was even with a recurve built into the cause to compensate. Next time I will double up on the thickness of the caul. The other part I’d do differently is put a wedge of foam at the forearm contour. One of the reasons I had to clamp so hard was to get the foam pressed into the lowest part of the contour. I think the wedge that’s closer form fitting will work better. Overall though it came out great and everything was glued well with no air pockets.
For this go round I decided to use titebond veneer glue instead of regular titebond I would normally use. The titebond veneer glue is thicker and supposed to not seep through the veneer as much. It worked out just fine and had little seepage as advertised. I think I will continue to use it for any future veneer work.
Another thing to note is that I was using a piece of book-matched veneer so I had to take extra care in making sure everything stayed in place and on the centerline while clamping down. Once it had sufficient pressure to keep things from sliding I didn't have to worry anymore.

From there I had to trim and blend the edges. I used an Xacto knife to trim everything close enough. The big thing here was to go slow and keep enough tension on the overhanging part so the blade wouldn't pull. Using a sharp blade was key to this. I had to change it out several times, but a sharp blade would glide through the veneer easily. I was able to feel when it would start getting dull as it would drag as it cut. When I felt that it was time for a new blade.

After it was trimmed I had to blend and feather the edge of the veneer into the body. I went with 120 grit paper to flush the edge then went back and smoothed it with 220 grit. This part took a bit of finesse to keep a straight line. I found the best way was to go slow and used downstrokes only. Sanding upwards had too much potential to grab the veneer and rip a chunk off… Ask me how I know that.

With only one minor mishap where I had to superglue a small chip that pulled out the whole process wasn’t too difficult and came out very nice.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Faux Binding & Stain

I decided I wanted to stain the back and sides a walnut color to match the top & do some faux binding. My usual method is to stain the body while it still has square edges, then go back with a roundover bit to make the faux binding. I had to use a different method for this. I used some vinyl tape to mask the area for the binding then went back with an artist’s paint brush and painted a couple of layers of polyurethane. I removed the tape, let the poly dry overnight, then stained the back and sides. Simple Minwax walnut stain matched the veneer almost perfectly. The body being poplar has the potential to leave an uneven stain, but this was something I’ve done numerous times. I didn’t have much trouble getting an even stain. I did try staining a scrap piece of veneer thinking it may help the grain pop a little more. All it did was make a muddy looking mess. Hence all the advice people give to try on scrap pieces first. One thing I did need to do is go back and clean up a few spots of bleed on the faux binding with a razor blade, but ended up with a good crisp line.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Dowling & Veneering Head

Time to put the body aside and start some work on the neck. Overall the fret work on these basses are really good so there was no need to do any work there. I liked the back profile so I wasn’t going to do any reshaping on that either. The only work for the neck was fitting it for 3x3 tuners and making a new 6 string nut. For the head I had to fill in the tuner holes, veneer the front & back of the head, and drill new tuner holes for a 3x3 configuration. Filling the holes was straightforward. Open the holes up to 3/4” glue a dowel in and sand flush. I have pictures of it doweled but forgot to take some once it was sanded down.

I picked up some plain maple veneer to a wood pickguard and used a sheet of that to veneer the back of the headstock. The transition from the veneer to the neck could have been a little better, but this was fine. It also looked better once I did some final shaping and applied finish before assembly.

For the front I wanted it to match the body. There was a large enough piece of the walnut veneer from cutoff of the body so I used that. Since the headstock is straight fender-style I had to deal with veneering the curve. I used the same approach with a leftover piece of high density foam. This time I shaped the foam to match the curve in the head. That worked out beautifully.

I may have left too much overhang around some edges because it had some sizable splits in it. But nothing split past the overhang. Everything on the headstock was solid.

And here it is all trimmed and sanded.

Last pictures for this segment with the holes drilled and tuners dry fit.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

At this stage the bulk of the body and neck work had been done and next on the list was a pickguard. The original pickguard has the cutout for P pickups so I wouldn't be able to use that. I thought a good match would be a light colored wood to match the faux binding. I picked up some plain maple veneer and birdseye maple veneer pretty cheap. The pickguard is 5 layers adding up to just over 2mm thick. The 4 bottom layers are plain maple and the top is book-matched birdseye. I first glued up the plain maple veneer. For strength I alternated the grain on each layer. Once that was done I trimmed it to an appropriate sized square and laid out how the pickguard would fit. I drew my centerline and glued the book-matched birdseye maple making sure the joint matched the centerline. After that it was cut trim and bevel using my template. I had already made the template when I did a new pickguard for my other Talman bass.

Here it is after the layers had been glued up and getting it laid out.

And now rough cut to shape

After that I stuck it to my template with some double stick tape and trimmed it up on the router table. Then I laid it out on the body and started marking and drilling the holes for the mounting screws. As I was finishing up countersinking the last of the screw holes this happened *%$##@*#$ followed by a lot more of that to where my wife thought I cut my finger off or something.

After going through enough choice words I assessed the damage. I was able to splice a piece in that matched the grain and mostly hid any evidence that a piece had to be glued in.

Here is a quick mock up of the pickguard on the body

 

[MadAsAHatter]

OCD onboard pedal

Somewhere along the line I decide to do something I’ve been wanting to do on a project for a while. I’ve always wanted to convert a pedal to an onboard effect and this body already had a battery compartment. I figured this would be the perfect opportunity. I decided an OCD overdrive would be just the ticket. Given the space available and the cost, a full sized Fulltone OCD wasn’t going to work. But a Mosky Obsessive mini OCD clone pedal for $30 was just right. The circuit board was small enough to fit in the cavity and cheap enough where if I broke it I wasn’t out much money. It took me a bit to figure out layout and switching but we’ll get to that later.

Locating the bridge

Now it was time for one of the most crucial parts of the build, locating the bridge. This took all of 2 minutes to drill pilot holes for the bridge anchor screws, but several hours of lining up checking and rechecking and rechecking 20 more times to make sure all is lined up perfectly. I was too involved in lining everything up and forgot to take a few pictures. This is how I did everything. I installed the tuners for the 2 outer strings and bolted the neck to the body. At this point I hadn’t made the nut yet but have a pre-slotted one which had the correct outer string spacing. So I temporarily attached that. Then I put some masking tape on the general area where the bridge would be and marked the scale length. Then using some spare strings of the appropriate gauges it was a lot of back and forth measuring, positioning looking at everything from several angles to get it all just right. Once I had it all right where I needed it I bumped the table knocking it all out of place while reaching for my pencil, followed by a number of choice words. Then I had to start the process all over. In the end I got it all lined up and everything stayed in line with the centerline of the body.

Completing the Pickguard

Now that I had the neck and bridge situated I could go back to finishing off the pickguard. I had to do a little more fine sanding to get it to fit around the neck pocket a bit better. Now that the pickguard could be screwed to the body in place I can locate the pickup holes. Doing this part I realized I should have done the pickguard first before routing the pickup cavities. That would have made things easier. Doing it the way I did made for some extra measuring to make sure the holes lined up with the cavities. Once I got that done, I did need to go back and take about 1/32” off the back side of the neck pickup cavity.

The last part of the pickguard was making holes for the electronics. Between making sure everything would fit and figuring out positioning, I had been debating how I wanted it all to lay out. I finally decided on from back to front: volume pot (in jack plate) – pedal circuit board – battery on/off switch – pedal on/off switch – 3 on/off toggles for pickups. The easiest way for me to get it all in the right position was to make a roughing of the cavity & pickguard screw holes then lay it out and mark all the switches out on that. I was able to use the case of the pedal to locate the holes needed for the pots, led, and switch as they are all direct mount to the PCB. After it was all laid out on the paper I stuck it to the pickguard using the roughing of the screw holes to get it in the correct position. Now off to the drill press to make the holes. Dang it all if the drill bit didn’t wander as I made the hole for the last mini toggle switch. If you notice in the picture, the hole closest to the neck is a bit oblong. I had to enlarge it so the toggle wasn’t out of alignment from the rest. At least the washer covered that up. Pickguard completed.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Truss Rod Cover

Finally I was getting toward the last couple of steps before being able to start the clear coat. I decide I wanted to use some of the leftover maple veneer scraps to make a truss rod cover. Since the front face of the head is curved I needed to make the same curve in the cover. For that I used the same technique as when veneering the head. I glued up 3 layers of veneer and clamped it to the head with the high density foam piece I used previously and allowed it to dry like that. This way the veneer piece would hold its shape. I made sure to use a large enough piece of wax paper between the cover and head so I didn’t accidently glue the two together. All worked according to plan and the cover held its shape. Last thing was to cut and sand it to shape.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Finishing & Cavity Shielding

All the major work had been done and I could start the finishing process. On natural wood I don’t care for high gloss finishes, I prefer a semi-gloss to satin finish. This is best achieved by doing all the under layers with gloss then a few top coats of semi-gloss or satin. I prefer using polyurethane over other types of clear. I like the look of open grain so I didn’t do any pore filling or other sealers. It was several layers of poly directly to the wood. My process for this was to wipe 3-4 coats of poly with a soft cloth (old t-shirt), let it dry for a few days, then go back and level sand. I did thin layers so level sanding was mostly taking off the streaks left from wiping on the finish. I did this several times until I was satisfied that I had enough layers built up for protection. Once I did the final level sanding of the under layers all that was left was to do a few light spray coats of satin polyurethane. I’ve found doing 2 light mist coats of satin is just about right. The rattle cans have micro particles in it to make the satin finish. So any more than 2 thin coats and the top layer starts to look hazy. Well this process usually works out, but this go round the topcoats of satin came out all splotchy. Instead of buying a new can of poly I used one that was 90% full but had been sitting around for a good while. The last time I used it I guess I didn’t clean the nozzle off well enough. It didn’t spray how it should have. It wasn’t too big of an issue though. I completed my normal procedure and added a step. I hit the body with some 0000 steel wool using absolutely no pressure. This smoothed out any little bumps and got rid of any rough feeling overspray. After that I wiped on the thinnest layer possible of some semi-gloss poly. I dipped about a dime sized circle on the rag into the can of poly and stretched that over the entire body; back front and sides. That was enough to even out the splotches from the spray can and leave it glass smooth where I didn’t need to do any final work. I’m quite pleased with the way the clear came out. I did this same procedure on the pickguard, neck and truss rod cover.

After the finish was done I moved on to shielding the cavity. I decide to try something different than the stew-mac branded one and ordered a 150 mL bottle of MG Chemicals 841WB. I just painted it on with a regular artist brush. I like this one a lot. Goes on easily, doesn't leave a powdery residue when dry, and the 150 mL bottle is enough to do several guitars. And since it's water based it cleans up easily. I had good continuity after 1 coat but decided to do a second just for extra insurance. One other thing I will say about this stuff... It stinks pretty bad so make sure you are in a well ventilated area or outdoors when using it.

In the following pictures you'll notice a difference in the main cavity cutout. When test fitting the electronics there wasn't enough room so I had to make a couple of alterations. Since the finish was already on I covered the top with masking tape so I didn't scuff or damage it. There's not much to show in-progress so I didn't take any pictures, but here it is with finish and shielding paint applied.

I didn't catch any pictures of finish the head or pickguard, there wasn't much to see. And with a semi gloss finish it's hard to tell any difference in photos from what's already been posted.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Electronics & Wiring

As I mentioned earlier in the thread I was fairly indecisive with how I wanted to wire this thing up. The first thought was to use 2 pickups and the original active electronics. The harness was already wired, all I would have had to do is attach the pickup leads, but why make this simple on myself. I decided to go for 3 pickups instead and use toggle switches to select them. I’ll spare you the agony of my indecisiveness and say I ultimately went with 3 on/off toggles and 1 volume.

As I also mentioned earlier somewhere along the line I decide to add an onboard effect pedal into the mix. This was the harder part to wrap my head around. The first hurdle was making the pedal work right. It worked fine while in the housing, but as soon as something was loosened it made a horrible buzzing noise through the amp. It took me a bit but I finally figured out it was a grounding issue. I guess to save 5 cents the maker decide to use the metal case as common ground. A single wire solved connecting the grounds of the input & output jack solved that problem.

Now that it was working I had to figure out how to incorporate it. I knew where to put it in the signal path but wasn’t sure the best way to connect it. I ended up taking the end of a mono cable, connecting the wires to the volume pot (instead of going to an output jack) then plugging into the input jack of the pedal. I put heat shrink tubing around it to hold it in place and make sure it didn’t accidentally make contact with something else. From there I used the output jack of the pedal as the main out on the bass.

Next I didn’t want to use the button footswitch. It would probably be awkward to engage and I thought that pushing it in may eventually break the pickguard. So I opted to swap it for a toggle switch. That was a fairly easy swap.

The last part to figure out was how to power this. These mini pedals are not equipped with a 9V battery, its wall plug only. Obviously it would be impractical to be tethered to a wall outlet or run an extension cord. They have 9V battery adapters that plug straight into the DC input of the pedal so no problem I’d use one of those. Then I remembered that when a cable is plugged into the input jack of a pedal it usually continues to draw power even when the effect is not engaged. Having the battery drain in a couple of days wouldn’t be good so how to get around that? My easiest solution was to install a battery kill switch. I’m sure there’s a solution like rewiring the leads to the PCB so it doesn’t drain the battery, but I wasn’t prepared to take the time to figure it out. I was ready to finish this part up an move on.

Are there different and possibly better ways to have wired everything; I’m sure there are, but this works for me. I could have hard wired straight into the PCB from the volume pot, used different switching options, figured out a better way to disconnect the battery, etc. If I do something similar again I’ll work on figuring out better options. The way it’s set now there’s no ground loops, buzzing, humming or other noise, and it works perfectly.

The final layout from left to right are:
Volume - Effect controls (with hi/low toggle) - battery cut off - effect on/off - bridge pickup on/off - middle pickup on/off - neck pickup on/off

One thing I may eventually change out is the toggle for the battery cut-off switch. Since it's the same switch and right next to the effect on/off switch I sometimes hit the wrong one. I may change it out to a black one for better visual identification, or to a completely different type of switch like a slider.

The picture of the underside showing the wiring looks a bit messy, especially with the masking tape holding some things in place. That was all temporarily holding things in place. I ran the leads and mounted everything better & had it cleaned it all up before installing.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Making the nut

At this stage I was mostly waiting on the finish to cure for a few weeks before assembly. In the meantime I decided to start working on the nut. Of the nuts I’ve worked with (I’ve worked with a lot of nuts, just not guitar/bass ones lol) at worst I would need to deepen the slots slightly during a setup. This will be the first time I made a nut from scratch. I started with a bone blank. Surprisingly it was perfectly square and flat on all sides. I expected it to be a little off kilter. I used the original nut to trace on to the blank. From there I cut it to width, sanded it down to the proper thickness to fit in the slot and rough sanded it to shape. The key thing for me at this stage was to take my time and pay close attention. I only took a little off at a time making sure to keep the edges flat and square. The bulk of getting it to thickness was done on a benchtop belt sander then doing the last little bit with a file. I expected it, but didn’t learn how much bone truly stinks when you hit it with a belt sander. Good thing it was a nice breezy day and I had the shop doors open so the stench didn’t linger. I stopped here. I would do the slots and final shaping after the bass was put together.

Here you can see one of the nut blanks, the roughly shaped one where I stopped, and the original for comparison.

Feeler gauge saws

I don’t have a set of nut files and am not going to pay the inflated prices at stewmac for something that will be a rare occasion use. The cheaper ones on Amazon didn’t seem to be that great of quality to be worth buying either. I researched what other people have used as an alternative to nut files. 90% of the forum posts I read were mostly people saying suck it up and buy a proper set of nut files from stewmac. If I were a true luthier, yeah I’d get a proper set. As a hobbyist that may use this twice in a lifetime I’m not paying stewmac prices. Instrument makers were making nuts centuries before stewmac nut files were a concept so there had to be some alternatives out there. The top modern results were torch tip cleaners, old strings, sandpaper wrapped around something of appropriate size, and cutting notches in feeler gauges. I’ve used torch tip cleaners & old strings for slightly deepening a slot. They work fine for that but I doubt would work well cutting a blank; those two options are out. Sandpaper seemed viable, but seeing videos looked like too much work for less than average results. Better for slightly deepening and smoothing slots than cutting new ones.

Down to the last option cutting notches in feeler gauges then using it like a saw to cut the slots. I know there’s a mass of people who will balk at this saying its crap and you’ll never get good results. To an extent they are right, only because the people demonstrating how to make the “saws” are hacks at doing it. From what I’ve seen this is a sound idea, but the execution is complete garbage. All the videos I watched were randomly cutting into to the feeler gauges with a Dremel tool or aggressively hacking at them with a file. None had any thought put into it other than make groove in metal. I approached this more meticulously.

For my first attempt I approached it like you would be making and sharpening a hand saw. Instead of straight grooves I created saw teeth. As far as the creation went I made a nice little miniature saw blade. But in practice it didn’t work so well cutting into a bone nut. The teeth would catch too much on the bone trying to start the groove. I think my issue was the teeth being too large / not enough teeth per inch. Making it by hand I could only get the saw teeth so close together. It was akin to having a wood saw blade where I needed a metal saw bade. What I did end up with though is a small saw that could cut through a dowel like no one’s business. I ended up cutting straight channels in the feeler gauges but was more careful to space the equally apart unlike in the videos I watched

The other part of garbage execution in videos I watched was actually cutting the slots. The gauges are really thin and flex easily. The people were sawing at the nut with nothing to keep the slotted feeler gauge rigid of course it’s going to flex and go offline or cut the groove incorrectly. Easy solution… clamp the feeler gauge saw between, well anything that will keep it from flexing. I had some straight pieces of scrap wood and made up a top handle to hold the feeler gauge saws. It all worked out rather well.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Final Assembly & Setup

It was now time to put this thing together and make this thing look like an actual instrument. Finally, A part of the process that was actually straight forward and didn’t give me any grief. All the parts stayed lined up and nothing tried to fight me as I was installing it. Neck bolted to body – check. Tuners & truss cover installed – check. Pickups, pickguard, and other electronics installed – check. Bridge and miscellaneous hardware attached – check. Last thing to be done was put the strings on and finish work on the nut. One note on the bridge. This particular one strings though the back and the hole for the low b string was too small. I had to enlarge it slightly with a needle file. Nothing too hard, just time consuming going slow to not scratch up any of the bridge.

Finishing the Nut

Most pre-slotted nuts and ones on factory guitars/basses typically use equal string spacing. Since I’m using bass strings with guitar spacing I opted to do this with proportional string spacing. I came across this concept when researching how to make a nut from scratch and read good things. Basically it takes the size of the string into account. Larger string are father apart and smaller ones closer together. This way the bass string aren’t clustered too close together and you’re supposed to have a more natural feel. The next part was trying to figure out the spacing. Luckily the hard part has been done already; I came across a proportional string spacing calculator. All I had to do was put in the outer slot distance from the edges and the string gauges and presto. Measurements were calculated for me.

I measured everything out and started cutting the slots. Using an x-acto knife I cut an initial groove then stated cutting the slots with the saws I made. This was all pretty straight forward too. I made sure to take my time and stopped the slot just shy of final depth.

The last part was bringing the slot to final depth & rounding the bottoms of the fret slots. I put strings on, did a basic setup getting the neck adjusted to the tension, then went to finishing off the nut slots. The smaller string slots were easy enough, I used those torch tip cleaners for that. For the larger strings I got lucky… I inherited files from my great uncle that were from the 1950s. I hadn’t really looked through all of them until this point. I found a round edged one that was just the right size for the job. All I had to do was clean it up a bit before use.

The final product ended up almost perfect. I say almost because the low b string is about 1 mm off from where it should be. I think I didn’t mark the position correctly when initially measuring the spacing. It doesn’t affect being able to play, but it’s something I can feel when I do. At some point I’ll go back and make another one. Until then the one I made works just fine.

During all of the final assembly I got too involved and again forgot to take pictures along the way. I did get a picture before I put the strings on.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

TI hope you all enjoyed seeing the build process and found it entertaining as it all came together.

And if you held out long enough to wait and see the completed build after the progress pics..... Your patience is rewarded. Here is the final product.

 

[JackBootedThug]

holy shit....that was awesome dude....

 

[PatF]

awesome. totally awesome.

 

[Devin]

Dude this fucks!!