Money

I updated my "Bullet Project" spreadsheet, and I found that the total I've spent on parts that are in the guitar now is $681, but that I've spent $1140 on the project so far.   This makes sense as I've been through two sets of pickups (GFS, then Lace Sensor), two necks, two bridges, ...

Obviously even $681 isn't a trivial sum, but looking at the $1140 is sobering. While this guitar may be finished when the new neck is on, I could see myself fiddling further, for example

• Replace body with another GFS Paulownia.  This could require a new bridge.
• Replace body with a chambered Warmoth body.  Would almost definitely lead me to buy a Wilkinson bridge from Warmoth so they could installed the ferrules
• Regardless of which body I buy, I might try the new Boogie Rail.
• Bill Lawrence pickups

Anyway, it's quite easy to see that I could get to $2K on this project, and for that price I could have had Ron Kirn build me a truly wonderful guitar.  I don't think anyone would give me $681 for this guitar, but it doesn't feel like too much of a stretch to say it's worth that much.  But the real point is that I've been working on this project for 8 months.  I've had  lot of fun, learned a lot, and I've basically been able to deal with everything fairly well (the trem installation is an exception, but not a total failure).  It's been very satisfying to work with something physical - to draw diagrams, measure things, cut things, make little adjustments, and to ask (and occasionally answer) questions on strat-talk.    So I really have no regrets at all.  In fact, once I decide to consider this one done, I may do another.  I am also toying with the idea of having one built too, depending on what my year-end bonus looks like.

What Next

If I do another, I might do one of Warmoth's 7/8 size strats, with a chambered body . This would be very light too.    I might do it with two humbuckers, volume, tone, and maybe use push/pull pots to do a coil tap. So I'd have two knobs plus a 3 position pickup selector, which would be a Les Paul type, not a Strat blade style (seems bulky for 3 positions).

It's been a while

A lot has happened since my last post. I completely finished the "wood block" project, and it turned into a gigantic hack, which is probably why I didn't write about it. Essentially, I never figured out how to use the router bit, I abandoned the poplar wood block, and instead used a small piece of wood (Mulberry, I think) left over from when we trimmed down my son's hockey stick. It seemed to work, but it is very ugly, and I probably could have gotten away with just epoxying in the ferrules for the bridge. I did learn a lot though, and it seems to be holding. However I woul be too embarrassed to let anyone actually see what I did. Maybe I'll post a picture of it some time.

As that story wound down, I found myself wanting to get a better neck, so I ordered a very nice Vintage something or other neck from Warmoth. It's quite gorgeous, and I just installed the Sperzel tuners from the Mighty Mite neck in it. I won't go into much detail on that. I tried to create a template by making a photocopy of the Mighty Mite neck, but it turned out that the copier doesn't exactly duplicate the size (or else the back of the neck isn't totally flat). In the end, I used the "put tape on the back of the neck, press tuner in to make hole, drill hole". This worked ok, though I had to do a little fiddling to make the tuners line up nicely.

Lining Up



The neck fits nicely in the pocket.  But the holes don't line up!   After asking on strat-talk, and  measuring a few million times, I decided to plug the holes in the body and re-drill.  I had a 3/16" dowel and I used it, despite the fact that I probably should have used something with the grain going the other way.  It was quite easy and not worth saying anything about.

To make a template, I first tried doing a pencil "rubbing" of the neck, but then switched to using a photocopy of the back of the MM neck.  This seemed to work well, without the size problem mentioned above.  It lined up will with the actual neck, so I know it's ok.  Here's a picture of the result

Screw Sizes


Now my problem is this.  The pre-drilled holes in the Warmoth neck look like they're around 3mm.  This is entirely consistent with the information on the Stewart-MacDonald site, which says to drill the body to 5mm, and the neck to 3mm.   I measured my neck screws, and they are 0.164 in diameter, which means they are a standard #8.  It turns out that screw numbers are related to diameters by this formula

diameter = 0.06 + number*0.013   (valid for 1 <= number <= 10)

I still haven't found out much about the origin of these two magic numbers.  Aside from the #10 coming out to almost exactly 3/16", none of these numbers are interesting when expressed in inches.  And none of them is interesting in millimeters.   0.0.13 * 3 * 100 is around 4, so 0.013 ~ (4/3)/100 - so what? There's some information in a wikipedia article that looks relevant, and I suppose I'll read it eventually :-).

I posted a question on strat-talk asking what size to drill the neck holes, and I'll give it a little time to get some responses.  So far, one guy said to use 1/8", which is 3.18mm.