What's on your workbench right now?

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
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Rgand
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Rgand » Wed Mar 29, 2017 7:23 pm

Kinghat wrote:
Rgand wrote:
Kinghat wrote:Making some progress on Sgt. Rock. Using some old WWII bakelite radio knobs and a Faber wraparound. I have nickel posts coming.

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Looks great! You going to put a canvas rifle sling on it for the strap?

I have a military web belt that I modified into a strap
Nice. What a cool build.

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countertext
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by countertext » Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:04 pm

countertext wrote:Image

New project: StewMac+JHS "All American Classic" kit; claims to be a RAT with extra EQ adjustment. I've been really happy with almost everything I've ever bought from StewMac, so I suspect this will be good... if I don't mess it up. I've never soldered a board before, just pots 'n' jacks 'n' pickups, you know? The real problem with this kit is that it pushes the five other unfinished projects I have to the back burner(s).
I finished this thing (sorry, no pics), and I'm not sure I did it right.

With four pots and a three-way switch, there's a lot of sonic territory, and a lot of that is good old fuzzy distortion that's right up my alley. However, it's kinda noisy (no biggie) but gets quieter when I touch it. What sort of grounding screwup leads to that? Also, there's LED, silicon, and "open" clipping - I can't hear the difference between the LED and silicon, and the open is a much lower level. Not sure if it's supposed to be that way.

I reckon I thought it would work 100% or 0%, but now I'm wondering if somehow I got it 70% right.

It was fairly cheap, and the good sounds are really good, so it's no big loss... but if anyone reads this and thinks "oh yeah, it does that because you forgot to X the Y and you should resolder Z", please advise.

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Shadoweclipse13
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Shadoweclipse13 » Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:34 am

Are the jacks plastic? Pedal enclosures are grounded by the ground wire connected to the jack sleeve, and it's metal to metal from the sleeve to the enclosure.
Pickup Switching Mad Scientist
http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=104282&p=1438384#p1438384

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countertext
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by countertext » Tue Apr 04, 2017 6:36 pm

Shadoweclipse13 wrote:Are the jacks plastic? Pedal enclosures are grounded by the ground wire connected to the jack sleeve, and it's metal to metal from the sleeve to the enclosure.
Nah, it's good components. I didn't see anything cheap but the LED bezel, and I don't need a fancy bezel. The board is really tightly spaced and the damn eyelets and components are tiny! There's so many solder connections, I wouldn't be surprised if I botched something. It's just that I figured if I messed something up it wouldn't work at all. Like I said, I like most of the settings, but I think I'm missing a little bit of the intended functionality. I doubt I'll be able to figure it out, and I'll just use it as is.

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pjsim
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by pjsim » Thu Apr 13, 2017 11:56 pm

Crappy Rattlecan finish and wiring done
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Kinghat
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Kinghat » Fri Apr 14, 2017 5:04 am

"Sgt. Rock" is made with an alder body. I topped it with a 37 mm WWII ammo crate that I disassembled, glued up and planed down to .25". The neck is made from American Sycamore, and the fretboard is reclaimed Indian Rosewood. It has a Motorcity humbucking pickup, Faber bridge, RS Guitarworks 500K Superpot volume, CTS 500k tone pot and WWII radio knobs. The rear cavity cover is made from the same ammo box, and veneered onto a piece of maple. The finish is a very thin coat of nitrocellulose lacquer.

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Stratelejazzuar
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Stratelejazzuar » Fri Apr 14, 2017 5:40 am

That looks great. The radio knobs are a nice touch too. 8)

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Rgand
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Rgand » Fri Apr 14, 2017 7:05 am

Sgt. Rock is outstanding. Thumbs up to this one.

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verhoevenc
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by verhoevenc » Mon Apr 17, 2017 1:24 pm

In preparation for the next batch that I'll start later in the summer, I recently put together this body blank:
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If you found yourself asking, "WTF is that...?" You are correct.
Chris
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vale
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by vale » Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:10 pm

Kinghat wrote:"Sgt. Rock" is made with an alder body. I topped it with a 37 mm WWII ammo crate that I disassembled, glued up and planed down to .25". The neck is made from American Sycamore, and the fretboard is reclaimed Indian Rosewood. It has a Motorcity humbucking pickup, Faber bridge, RS Guitarworks 500K Superpot volume, CTS 500k tone pot and WWII radio knobs. The rear cavity cover is made from the same ammo box, and veneered onto a piece of maple. The finish is a very thin coat of nitrocellulose lacquer.

Image
"if you like war, you'll love...".

that turned out superbly, kinghat. immacualte finish & attention to detail. is that a gretsch shape template?
btw do you get weird feelings when you play it? i think i would. part of me feels it is a great reworking of bad things (war paraph) for positive things (art).
but some part of me feels as if i would get vibes from it. like when you try on a jacket in a charity shop & you just get the feeling that it belonged to someone who died. sadness in it. does it have a joy feeling or a sad feeling?

actually you should only answer that in the affirnative if you are planning to sell it. & sad not always bad.
i am an animal.

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Mad-Mike
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Mad-Mike » Mon May 08, 2017 11:04 am

Been a very busy guy this past month......

Mad-Rite nearing completion, still have neck slot/routing/small alignment issues to fix, and then wiring and finishing....so far pretty good. It sounds and plays amazing as/is currently.

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Replaced the neck on my Memphis 302HB with a much nicer one that has 22 frets, is not twisted, and sets up perfectly (strangely off a Behringer), also replaced the tuners with Kluson Revolutions (my fav)

Before
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After
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1983 Hondo Paul Dean II got the "$60 Upgrade Package" they were available with new something 34 years later....
DiMarzio Full Cover Super IIs (bought one in 05' at Tommy's Guitar Shop in Everett, and the other 2 weeks ago at Trading Musician in U-District)
BEFORE
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AFTER
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Also brought out the Harmony/Rogue H-804 body I bought in 05' and it's undergoing some plans I call the HArmony H-806, or Harmony H-802 "done right" project - basically, I'm correcting all the issues with the H-802 design to make it into a proper gig-level guitar, complete with the crazy "Anti-Foil" pickups (or so I call them as they are basically Goldfoils by design without the "goldfoil" aspect).
MOCKUP - not the actual color it will be though most likely
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Birdman14
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Birdman14 » Wed Jun 07, 2017 6:49 am

Blitzwit wrote:Image
Finally getting around to finishing my double f-hole jazzmaster, Just waiting on some WRHB that were rewound by Brandonwound pickups (I'm curious to see how these are going to sound, I have some original 70's Seth Lover WRHB's, so I'll be able to give a pretty accurate A to B comparison.) And the one on the right is a Mustang Bass I'm building for one of my wife's best friends as a memorial to her sister who died unexpectedly recently. The neck on the left I bought half completed from another OSG member and I'm nearly done shaping, and the Mustang Bass neck I built completely from scratch. It's a maple neck with Cocobolo dots, binding and skunk stripe. I hope it turns out, because it's too pretty to throw away.
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And this is the start of a full scale mustang with jazzmaster p90's and tremolo. Juliana seems to like it. I'll start a build thread whenever it's a little further along.
Cheers!
Can we get more photos of the bass?! I love that color on it, and have a soft spot for Mustang basses.

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Squirrel
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Squirrel » Tue Jun 13, 2017 11:11 am

A 1962/63 Broadway Plectric. These were made by Guyatone but sold in the UK by Rose Morris, and were basically marketed towards people who couldn't afford a Hofner. Not normally my thing at all but it came up on ebay a few miles from where I live for £25 (the seller thought it was home-made :fp: ). It obviously hadn't been used in decades as two of the strings were flatwound, and almost certainly original. Anyhow, it needed:

1) a good cleaning and the fretboard oiling
2) a new tone capacitor and ground wire to the bridge
3) the pots, switches and jack cleaning out
4) a cheapo Rickenbacker style bridge to replace the missing original
5) some strings and a decent setup
6) a sort-of-matching knob I found in my parts box.

The end result is a guitar that sounds far better than it has any right to. My original plan was to sell it but I may keep it as a beater guitar-I'm too scared to play any of my other guitars, which are mostly fragile vintage hollowbodies.

Before (no, I have no idea what was going on with the previous owner's garden either):
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After (sorry for the crappy phone pic):
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kifla
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by kifla » Wed Jun 14, 2017 5:36 am

Fresh off the workbench:
Shell pink strat for my teenage son!

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verhoevenc
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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by verhoevenc » Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:35 am

Wow, photobucket made an infuriating decision... look at all those broken pics! Argh.

On a good note, I delivered a new guitar to it's owner this week. Gotta say I'm pretty happy about it! The curly ash body blank is to die for!
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Best,
Chris
Luthier are Raygun Guitars

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