Leaderboard

Update time: The company I bought the neck and body from exchanged the 21 fret flame maple neck for a roasted flamed maple neck with 22 fret rosewood fingerboard. I don't yet own a guitar with a rosewood board so figured this might be a new experiment with the mahogany body. Tonally I don't expect too much of a difference to normal maple, perhaps the rosewood will mean slightly less obtrusive fret noise. Still haven't decided on finish for the HSH body but saw an interesting video on decorating a guitar with gold leaf...could get messy though. I also pulled the trigger on a second Kahler trem, this time an older 4300 X trem (US made version, not Chinese) in chrome. It has a locking function a bit like the Wilkinson. No screws or routing template so they're currently on order from Whammyparts.com and will be sent over with the bridge. This gives me an option of going with either a Wilkinson or Kahler depending on how much whammying I might feel like doing and how much faff there might be in getting the wilkinson to fit the routing provided. The sanding discs, MDF sheet and body filler have arrived so need to collect and maybe start work this afternoon on sanding and the neck pocket template. Speaking of the neck pocket, I've also found some 2mm thick sapele veneer which might work as a shim if glued in place. It's slightly harder than mahogany which is ideal and looks nearly the same. The tricky part will be trying to clamp it securely in place after gluing as the pocket is fairly confined. I also still have a laminated mahogany and maple neck left too. Although originally intended for an MSG shaped build with set in neck joint, it could be adapted for a bolt on build as well.

Update time: When I originally measured the neck I had, I was getting 321mm from nut to 12th fret. Double that and you get the scale length...roughly 25.3 inches. This was a total PITA to adapt as most strat necks are 25.5" so to get all the right sounds, I had to shift the pickup positions in CAD so that they stayed true to their position on the string. However the guy in Canada doing the templates did the same measurements and discovered the necks were actually 25.5"scale. This meant all I really needed to do was a straight copy and paste from the strat block I was using.| Palm meet face. I can only conclude that the tape measure I was using was inaccurate by a few mm but it was a salient lesson in the importance of having reliable measuring tools. Anyway, the templates are being made as I type. The dream of the clean machine is becoming real...