1st Guitar build - father/son project

[Rob Ficalora]

Thanks Thomas.

[Rob Ficalora]

We are still at it - or more accurately, back at it.

All the pockets are finished and in general, the carve is too and it came out excellent. But assuming a line from the nut to the bridge should be equal distance from the fretboard & both pickups, I think we need to sand down the top a bit more to lower the pickup closest to the bridge. Do you agree? Note, since the bridge is a Tremelo sanding the top won't affect it's height. And, while the front pickup can go up, the rear one is about as low as it can go (without getting it flush with the cover which doesn't look right).

Appreciate the guidance of this group as I'm charting new territory for us!

[Mark Swanson]

Forget about the pickups, and just measure your neck angle with the fingerboard and bridge. Those two factors are the important ones, and the pickup adjustment should come after that gets right. So take the pickups out of the picture, get the neck angle right, and then make the pickups fit. If the bridge pickup is too high then thin the mounting frame.

[Rob Ficalora]

Mark - thanks for the quick reply -- didn't know it was ok to thin the mounting frame.

RE: "get the neck angle right"

How do I determine what the right neck angle is? The plans I have call for 85.6* between the fretboard & the body (the vertical edge of the body)... but the plans are for a regular Les Paul style bridge & we're using a Tremelo. The Tremelo does not stick up nearly as high -- it would look very odd if we adjusted it that high.

[Rob Ficalora]

Ok, I found a neck angle calculator at www.tundraman.com/guitars/neckangle. Anyone know if that calculator is accurate?

Plugging in the measurements from my neck & guitar body, I came up with a neck angle of 3.5* (which I'm assuming is down from parallel to the back so that would correlate to 86.5* between the neck and the vertical side of the body).

[John Catto]

3.5 degrees is roughly what you have on a Les Paul with a lowish sitting tune-o-matic. For a Trem I'd say you want about 2 degrees, maybe a bit less if you're recessing the pull-up. I generally work it out in Illustrator but you could just grab a big piece of paper and do it that way.

[Rob Ficalora]

I drew it out and 3.5* is what it measured out to, so I made a jig to route the top neck area and then trim the neck pocket to that angle. I think we just have a but more pronounced carve than an actual Les Paul.

I also started testing some dyes - black and red. I tried a Bordeaux Transtint, but it was too purple. I'll post some pics soon. I'm not happy with it yet, there's a bit too much black still showing in the red. Am thinking if we use black stain instead of black dye, the stain will still get down in the soft grain, but not in the hard grain. That way when we sand off the black, less will remain where the red should be.

[Eric Baack]

I'd maybe try and dilute the black dye and mix some red in instead. Essentially do a darker red and sand that back before applying a brighter red.

[John Catto]

... But assuming a line from the nut to the bridge should be equal distance from the fretboard & both pickups, I think we need to sand down the top a bit more to lower the pickup closest to the bridge. Do you agree?

Just noticed this, you may be right though I can't quite see in your photo. I just dug out this diagram that I posted in 2003 (!) since then it's made the rounds of the building sections of the various Les Paul forums and my expression "pickup plane" appears to have been added to the "vernacular". This is one of the things they got very right with the Les Paul in the 50's, not only did they disappear the neck angle into the carve but also they realised that if you combine a flat (to the body) pickup area with an appropriate neck angle the bridge pickup with sit high with an ugly angle. So they added one more angle into the equation the "pickup plane". This all assumes that you want the Tune-O-Matic (or wrap tail etc.) as low as it will go and a pretty tight setup along with high pickup rings that the pickups sit level in. In the 70s Gibson started to lose the plot a bit when they got lazy with the top carve. Guitars started to lose the second angle and they went to low rings with the pickups sitting proud so the poor setup wasn't emphasised. The bridges got really high so that indirectly lead to the switch to the "Nashville" bridge with inserts that don't mind so much the bridge floating high up in the air. Any way the blue line here is what you want to tweak, you'll be using lower rings with the trem but you still may want to tweak the bottom angle of the rings so the pickups sit parallel to the strings. Traditionally the pickup routes are done at the same angle as the neck (not the pickup plane) so the pickups naturally hang straight.

re. your finish, I'm not a fan of predying the figure but what are you aiming for? A solid red top? A burst?

[Rob Ficalora]

John, awesome info, thanks.

We did a little work this morning. Finished sanding and put the first coat of dye on. The dye is red and black mixed. When it dries, we'll sand off most of it leaving the darker red in the soft grain. Then it'll get a coat or two of red. Should make the grain really pop. Hope to get to that point this afternoon.

[Jason Rodgers]

I'm sure your next pic, of the stain sanded back with top coats, will look great, but that particular mix of the red and black by itself looks really nice, too.

[Art Davila]

I have to agree it already looks good so I can't wait to see further progress on the finish.
Did you mix the dye with water, oil, or something else?

[Rob Ficalora]

Thanks guys. It is water based dye. The red was already mixed up from a toy box I made years ago - powdered transfast brand if memory serves. For this 1st application we took some of the red and added black Transtint (just a different brand). We used the cutoffs to test the colors. We tried one where we dyed a piece black, sanded that back and then did the red, but the red/black mix was way better so that's what we're going with.

[Rob Carty]

Cool project. Cy-Woods? I'm a Westfield man myself.

[Art Davila]

We used the cutoffs to test the colors. We tried one where we dyed a piece black, sanded that back and then did the red, but the red/black mix was way better so that's what we're going with.

Cool I would not have thought of that (adding red and black together and sanding it back and the using the red alone) and after hearing how you did that, I would have not expected, that it would look as nice as it does. I guess you never know until you try it.

[Rob Ficalora]

Got back from Romania last evening (work trip) and today we sanded back the red/black mix and put the plain red over top. Letting the front dry before we dye the sides and back...

[Eric Baack]

Can't wait to see that with some clear on it! I bet it will be stunning

[Rob Ficalora]

Put a 2nd coat of dye to deepen the color and we dyed the sides & back too. Waiting for it to dry so we can put the clear on. Planning to use a coat of sanding sealer and then several coats of water based gloss poly.

[Eric Baack]

I've used spraymax 2k clear a few times and if you haven't sprayed much 2 part stuff it makes it super easy. But you do have to take the proper precautions for the fun airborne stuff

[Rob Ficalora]

Is that some sort of sprayable epoxy? What I got was just normal poly like would be used on furniture or cabinets... I got a very good brand, but I'm sure it doesn't cure as hard as an epoxy finish would. Anyway, we haven't started on the clear and temps dropped so it'll likely be a few more days before we do. Tell me more about what we should consider using and why (e.g. properties that make your recommendation desirable).