What's on your workbench right now?

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

Post by epizootics » Fri Aug 13, 2021 10:19 pm

ThePearDream wrote:
Thu Aug 12, 2021 4:55 pm

I made a few adjustments to the control route, sanded back again, filled the gouges, and started prepping for paint for the third time. I'm not the least bit superstitious, but I thought I'd choose a new color, that wasn't blue, from the collection of cans I have on hand.
I can totally relate to that. Kudos for keeping you cool and making three beautiful finishes in a row! It was well worth it and the result is great. I haven't given the green Molotow cans a try yet but that's a really sweet color.



Yesterday was supposed to be wrap up time for my brother's guitar but...nope. I spent the whole day making pickups (my brother's and a set of a modified version of the Firebird pickup for a friend, with bigger magnets & finer wire to accommodate his jazz & noise punk playing) and finishing up the bridge & neck plate.

The bridge is stainless steel & ebony from a piano key:

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The neck plate I made from thinner SS. Another silly little bit of etching:

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I still need to wet sand & polish the body and neck, and assemble the whole thing. Fingers crossed.

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

Post by epizootics » Fri Aug 13, 2021 10:38 pm

SuperAxe wrote:
Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:33 pm
Those look fun to make! If you haven't already, check out GuitarBuilder's build threads on TDPRI, he has made a few replicas of those and his posts are always detailed with a lot of pictures.
I am struggling to find it, any links please?
Hmmph. I can't actually find the threads in question - my recollection might have been faulty. All I could find was an H44 and an H46:

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/harmony-h ... ld.990335/

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/harmony-h ... e.1072119/

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Tumtrah » Sat Aug 14, 2021 10:58 am

Dr Tony Balls wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 6:08 am
Balls G-50. This one was commissioned to standard Marshall 2204 circuit specs.


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That looks super neat! Awesome work! I am sure your amps and pedals sound as great as they look! :-*

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

Post by epizootics » Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:37 pm

Done!

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

Post by antisymmetric » Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:16 pm

That is looking fine indeed!
Watching the corners turn corners

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by smjenkins » Sat Aug 14, 2021 9:38 pm

I love everything about that build. Such amazing work. The quantity of parts that you fabricated yourself makes it even more impressive. Your brother is a very lucky guitar player.

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by blimpage » Sat Aug 14, 2021 11:23 pm

epizootics wrote:
Fri Aug 13, 2021 10:19 pm
The bridge is stainless steel & ebony from a piano key:

Image
Repurposing a piano key as a bridge is especially cool! Nice one, it looks beautiful!

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Scout » Sun Aug 15, 2021 3:43 am

epizootics wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:37 pm
Done!

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Another beautiful hand build, you have such dedication.

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Tumtrah » Sun Aug 15, 2021 10:39 am

epizootics wrote:
Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:37 pm
Done!

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Wow, that looks fantastic and tasteful! How did you do the etching on SS?

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Tumtrah » Sun Aug 15, 2021 10:52 am

antisymmetric wrote:
Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:00 pm
Finally found some time to push this thing along. Lack of a trem was the main obstacle- I didn't like the one from the donor SS4/L, and there was nothing in my stash of old ones that would suit, so I ended up whipping something up based around the old familiar JM/Jag style guts. It's a mashup of homemade, '70s Ibanez and Aliexpress parts, and the collet is an experiment using a modded cable gland. That was triggered by my SG2- Yamaha were making a collet way back in the '60s that had tension adjustment/arm release accessible from the top. I don't have the gear or the ability to machine one up, but a cable gland with a few tweaks might just work:
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That hole for the collet in the top plate might mean making a replacement plate- the next hole saw down in size was just a bit too small, so I went up a size. Thinking now that I should have used the smaller one and then filed the hole out to suit. To be decided:
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That green piece in the bottom of the collet is the sleeve I added to support the end of the arm. It all seems good in theory, I'll have to see how it works in practice:
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Freaking awesome! The cable gland used as a collet is a great idea! Maybe I'll steal this for my Tremar build. :jacked:

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by antisymmetric » Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:19 am

^Cheers, it may need some refining but it seems to have some potential.
The guitar is coming together, it all has to come apart again for either reducing or removing the neck shim, and playing with pickup heights (they're surface mounted and not adjustable, so spacers will need to be whipped up). The plan now is to make a new neck- the old one is pretty horrible in lots of ways, I can't even be bothered fixing the flaws in my paint job, I'd rather make another neck with a truss rod, better frets and a bit of artistic license thrown in than spend any more time on the Teisco one.
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The concave back idea came out of nowhere mid-build, seems to have worked. Kind of a full width belly carve, quite comfy, and to me, adds to the Dali vibe of the body shape.
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The switches all used to work in the guitar they came from, but now they don't. Lots of misbehaving going on, and one contact has detached itself completely, so back on the bench... :fp:
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Watching the corners turn corners

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by CROSS_guitars » Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:27 am

I have a guitar with these switches in them. I just assumed they were busted. All the contacts are mashed.
I'll be interested to see how you restore these.

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

Post by epizootics » Wed Aug 25, 2021 10:09 pm

antisymmetric wrote:
Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:19 am

The concave back idea came out of nowhere mid-build, seems to have worked. Kind of a full width belly carve, quite comfy, and to me, adds to the Dali vibe of the body shape.
Image
This one keeps getting better and better :) How did you go about making the whole thing concave?

Tumtrah wrote:
Sun Aug 15, 2021 10:39 am

Wow, that looks fantastic and tasteful! How did you do the etching on SS?

I posted a few times about the technique - this video explains it well enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbUilq_gWpQ
You're basically apply a resist of sorts to your piece - I usually go for nail varnish, but some people use wax or vinyl tape - that you scrape or cut wherever you want to etch. You then proceed to dab the exposed area with a Q-tip dipped in a simple solution of table salt and white vinegar connected to the (-) side of your power supply (a 12-V wall wart here), with the (+) attached to your workpiece. This time, I swapped the polarities by mistake and realized that etching with the (+) connected to the Q-tip created a layer of black oxide on the etched area. More stuff to play with :)



I made a quick video of the guitar whilst I was down South. The only amp I had there was the old Fishman I used to use for solo acoustic gigs, but it has a nice enough clean sound to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IwTrHBAM6k

I ended up going for ceramic bar magnets instead of alnico, on a hunch. People are wary of ceramics in pickups for the reasons we know, but with the right design & winding they can sound really cool. They have a superb bass response and there are many ways to tame the excess treble that come with a stronger magnetic field. I used brass baseplates with a large soft steel plate soldered onto them, with one side of the bar magnet at the center of the bobbin making contact with the steel plate. I put about 11kOhm's worth of 44 AWG on the bobbins. The resulting output is quite high and the pickups are really silent, with the harsh highs tamed by the increase in inductance and eddy currents cause by all the metal in the vicinity of the coil.

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by Shadoweclipse13 » Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:32 am

How much, if any, would you guys scale-up a guitar body design for a bass-ziezed body and a bass VI-sized body?
Pickup Switching Mad Scientist
http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=104282&p=1438384#p1438384

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Re: What's on your workbench right now?

Post by HarlowTheFish » Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:44 am

Shadoweclipse13 wrote:
Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:32 am
How much, if any, would you guys scale-up a guitar body design for a bass-ziezed body and a bass VI-sized body?
IMO, enough to get the top horn around the 12th-14th fret for balance. If I want something to feel and play more like a bass, I set the bridge by the edge of the body and work from there to get that top horn position; if it's more guitar-like then I set the bridge a little (but not a ton) back from where it would normally be.

If it's more bass-like I'll want the horn closer to the 12th fret for balance and just for a more bass-like playing position, but I'm less picky if it's gonna be more of a baritone.

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