Thread: First Guitar

Originally Posted by Andrew_B

^ daddy is smart, listen to him lol

Daddy?!?!

If I wasn't so old I'd track you down and beat you. Hang on ... I'll ask one of my kids to do it for me

Which means you're perfectly safe Andrew ... lazy good for nothing kids!!!!

thanks guys. i have a few cad drawings of the plan but i dont know how to get it to full size. and I was planning on ordering it over the net. good to know it will fit but. could I email them and ask them to run it through their jointer?

Originally Posted by floody_85

thanks guys. i have a few cad drawings of the plan but i dont know how to get it to full size. and I was planning on ordering it over the net. good to know it will fit but. could I email them and ask them to run it through their jointer?

The short answer would be yes ... but I'd ring them and ask just to be sure / polite.

Every time I've been to Gilet's they've been more than willing to assist with things like that. Accurate jointing (and you need to be accurate) is not something I have much experience in, so I let them run my body blanks over their HUGE jointer ... which they happily did at no cost. They actually did one bit with a hand plane.

I still have a huge chunk of mahogany that I bought from Gilet ages ago and I told them I'd be back one day for them to thickness it and joint the edges ... and we agreed I'd pay 5 or 10 bucks for that.

Andrew may be able to help on the CAD part ... but I downloaded good pictures from the net and enlarged them on a photocopier. Whatever the case, you're going to need a full size drawing or print-out so that you can make a template ... not essential, but very desirable. But IMHO ... a Rhoads doesn't have to be a precise size ... you can pretty well make it whatever dimensions you want as long as you get the right 'feel' to it and you allow sufficient room / distance for your bridge ... look at the various pics of Rhoads that Andrew posted.

So I don't think you can go too far wrong. Get your blank with both sides jointed ... sticky tape some paper together and draw up you want ... and then sit and stare at it for a while. Work out what you want and how you think you should glue your blank up ... and then come back here and we'll talk some more

thanks dad lol.
so it would be fine to print on a4 then take it to a photocopier and get it blown up? how do i know wat size to blow it up to? sorry for all the questions but i dont know much lol

Originally Posted by dadovfor

Daddy?!?!

If I wasn't so old I'd track you down and beat you. Hang on ... I'll ask one of my kids to do it for me

Which means you're perfectly safe Andrew ... lazy good for nothing kids!!!!

bwahahahaha ...
well man... im getting sick of typing out dadovfor each time ... so i shortened it

Originally Posted by floody_85

thanks guys. i have a few cad drawings of the plan but i dont know how to get it to full size. and I was planning on ordering it over the net. good to know it will fit but. could I email them and ask them to run it through their jointer?

yes sir, save it onto a flash card or disk and take it to a printing shop... should be able to get it spread over a few A3 sheets, then just stick them together....

to get it full size you just measure from nut to bridge Approx....
tell the printer dude how long you want it and he should be able to do that... if not then you just have to pay for the first one and get them to scale it up or down from there?

i was going to do this.... then i found the joys of drawing it all out myself.....

gilet seems like a good place....
if the price to do a course there was a little cheaper i would have jumped at it awile ago...

as said there is no right or wrong size for the rr V

as a matter of fact i think i saw a discussion a while back about the original and todays models being really different sizes....
and if i look for a picture..... or two.....
here they are

yea thats a big difference. it just so happens that my brother is a printer so he should be able to blow it up for me. just got work out the size i want now. i have no idea about scale or anything so ill just play around.

i reckon the 25.5 would do,
are you making your own fingerboard?

nah i found a store on ebay that do pretty cool lookin necks for $80
I think they were maple necks with rosewood fingerboards. prob just go with one of them. not sure with pick ups yet but was hoping some emg's. as for paint, i work next door to a poly kitchen painters shop and one of the guys there used to paint guitars for a living so hes gonna paint it for me

Originally Posted by floody_85

yea thats a big difference. it just so happens that my brother is a printer so he should be able to blow it up for me. just got work out the size i want now. i have no idea about scale or anything so ill just play around.

Jeez ... I was on the verge of offering to print it for you and post it ... and your brother's a printer!!!

If you have a nice, front-on picture (not one where the guitar is angled toward or away from the camera) print it as big as you can to start with ... use A3 if you have it. Then measure something on your photocopy that you know the real size for. For example, on mine I knew the size of the humbucker surrounds so I measured the humbuckers on my photocopy and set the % enlarger on my copier accordingly. As Andrew says, the distance from the nut to the bridge is another possible guide ... or from the last fret to the break on the bridge. I'll bet you now wished you paid attention in maths!!

So let's say you print your picture and the humbuckers are 60mm across on your version but you know that a real humbucker at the same point is 90mm ... you need your brother to blow it up by 150% (that is, 90 divided by 60 times 100 = 150).

But as we said, there's no correct size so there's a margin for error and you can muck around a bit with it if you want

Who are you looking at on e-bay for the necks?

yes which ebay store is this?

i did the humbucker mounting ring matched to the picture thing too..

so what do we have,
your making the body,
buying the neck,
2 humbuckers?
tone, volume and 3way?

i think you need to start this!!!!

oh oh oh oh!!!
i got some nice heavy maple slabs today
beautiful straight grain with no knots... had to grab them...

Originally Posted by Andrew_B

oh oh oh oh!!!
i got some nice heavy maple slabs today
beautiful straight grain with no knots... had to grab them...

Where from? Where are the pictures? And what do you have planned for them?

I haven't focussed too much on wood or grain yet ... I need to improve my skills before I start butchering quality pieces of wood. So far I've found that paint can cover a multitude of sins

Originally Posted by floody_85

i have no idea about scale or anything so ill just play around.

G'day Floody...Just a quick word on scale length. The longer the scale the higher the tension needs to be on the strings to bring them up to pitch. It may be helpfull if you play a Gibson scale and a Fender scale ( the Fender being longer and higher tension) to see which you prefer then make a decision based on what you feel best with.

Jim

Originally Posted by dadovfor

Where from? Where are the pictures? And what do you have planned for them?

I haven't focussed too much on wood or grain yet ... I need to improve my skills before I start butchering quality pieces of wood. So far I've found that paint can cover a multitude of sins

hehehe

pictures, well... i dont want to hijack the thread, floody might get angry, but ill risk it, this time.... lol
the pics are crappy... camera phone sucks

heres the smaller board, approx 1510mm long x 140mm wide x just over 40mm thick






and the bigger board, approx 1540mm long x 230mm wide x a bit over 40mm thick






plans...
hmmm.... well im wanting to do a bass as a surprise for a mate, but that depends if i can get my hands on some cheap or secondhand parts.....
so im not sure what i will do with these....

in the mean time, i need to get my hands on some templates
thinking of going to bunnings and grabbing a sheet of mdf, hopefully they will chop it up for me (save my lungs)
and i can attempt to make a few proper templates.... (to hell with free hand routing and cutting with the old jigsaw!!!)
if i fail at making said templates, then ill be back here to ask for help

any of you guys know if bunnings will chop up the mdf for me?

Well done with the wood!

I have aspirations of making a bass or two ... one for me (just for the fun of building it, not playing it). And I have a brother-in-law who does play bass and wants to make one ... plus a guitar for his kids.

My local Bunnings will chop up wood ... I'm assuming they'll do mdf?? I find them more accommodating during the quiet periods.

I've made most of my templates from masonite (about 6mm from memory) ... cheap, easy to work with, and a strong smooth edge. In a couple of cases I've used the masonite template to then make a template on some 15mm pine off-cuts ... (for humbuckers, floyd rose routes, monkey grips, etc).

Now that we've hijacked this thread ... where's Floody!?!?