Thread: Cliff's CBG build.

OK, a few progress shots, one of them is actually finished but I can't find my camera to download the last few shots.
I decided that my shaped neck was going to bend with 4 strings so I came up with an idea for truss rods.
I went to the steel merchant & bought a couple of lengths of flat steel.
It comes in 4M lengths.

I got one 10mm & one 13mm wide & 2mm thick.

All up the 2 lengths cost $15 & I'll get more than 10 truss rods out of them.
I used a 2mm router bit in my home made router table & a couple of bits of off cut chopping board for guides.

The rod/bar was cut to size & glued in & will be covered by the fretboard.

The cut outs in the top for the pickup & the control plate were routed with my dremel.

I put tape on the good side & did all the marking out & cutting from the back. (inside face)

The top was glued on & trimmed to size... that was a mistake.
I worked out later that it was better & faster to trim it to fit before it was glued on.
here are a couple of shots of the inside from the back after the top was glued down & one of the back with the struts glued in place ready to be fitted to the back of the frame.

I managed to get one finished far enough to play Friday night & found that the pickup had a fault. I didn't have another black pick up & I didn't even have one that shape.
All I had to use in a hurry was a silver one that was a totally different shape so I had to hack a bigger hole in the top of the guitar to fit it.
I got it all together & going by Saturday night so I could take it to "Get Rooted at The Mail" today.
I'll get a black pickup ordered to go in that hole & cover up the hack job with a pick guard.
More pics when I find my camera.

I found my camera.
Trial lay out.
Trial Layout.jpg

Frets in.
Frets in.JPG

Frets before trimming.
Frets to be trimmed.JPG

Finished one, notice the different pick up in these pics compared to the last lot.

Finished 1.jpg

Finished 2.jpg

Finished 3.jpg

This one will have the hardware removed again in a couple of weeks for a sand & another couple of coats.
I'll do that once I have a new black pick up for it & I'll cut some black pick guard to cover the hacked hole for the pick up.

I have another one in a longer scale with all gold fittings to finish, I'll get some photos of it later this week.

Top job mate Great pics too but no mention of how it sounds

Originally Posted by TTIT

Top job mate Great pics too but no mention of how it sounds

First one finished is not as loud unplugged as I would have liked, it sounds good but very quiet.
The neck through with the bridge bolted down to it kills most of the acoustic properties.

When it is plugged in it sounds good, I can get a good warm hollow body jazz sound.

The pickup is switchable so it can be one or the other of the single coils or both in series as a humbucker.
Unfortunately, the pickup in it is a bass guitar pickup so to get the strings under the poles, I have to twist it at an angle.
That means that the treble E string misses one of the pickups so it is a bit weak, the 2 centre strings are the loudest & tend to bounce right out of the box on some chords... bit of a surprise at times.

I have another black hot rail humbucker on order to go in it & that should even out the voicing a bit when it arrives.

I'm learning as I go.

Ya lost me at the first 'humbucker' - thought you were speaking some ancient foreign language or something!!!

A pickup is just a coil of wire around a magnetic former.... when the steel string vibrates in the magnetic field, it create a 'signal' in the coil that is then fed to the amplifier.

There is a small problem in that the coil of wire often works like an antenna picking up stray magnetic fields, mostly our 50Hz AC mains power, from stuff like fluros etc.
This is also amplified as a hum.

A humbucker has 2 coils wound in opposite directions with 2 different polarity magnetic formers through them, one is a south pole, the other is a north pole.
The vibrating strings are still picked up because the opposite polarity magnetic fields induce opposite signals into oppositely wound coils so they add together.
Any stray magnetic field is picked up as the same polarity in both coils so it is canceled out by the opposite winding of the coils.
The result is, a higher output from the guitar & less hum from the stray magnetic fields.

There are still some advantages in the perceived tone of the signal from a single coil over a humbucker so often there is a switch incorporated on the guitar to cut one or the other of the 2 coils in a humbucker to make it work like a single coil.

Still with me?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyQAYQ1-IJ8[/youtube]

Instruments are great fun arent they Cliff

More progress on the second one.
Trimming the edges of the soundboard to fit the frame.