Whats on your work bench?

[jtcnj]

I put a speaker out switching jack in my Danalectro Honeytone amp. It sounds pretty good through a 1x12 cab.

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Been meaning to do that too.

[jtcnj]

My 5e3 called out sick the other night.
Corona? I wondered aloud....
It started making a swirly crackle once it got warmed up.

Wiggling V1 crackly on both channels and would completely stop if I held the tube a little this way or that, seems a socket issue.
tensioned the pins and flowed the solder joints.

Yeah, we happy.

[nomadh]

Go (if allowed in your area) to a decent hardware/fastener store and get longer versions of the same screws? Less permanent than gluing in wood.

Thanks for the reply. I thought about that. I haven't been successful when trying to find P-90 mounting screws, which I think are the same, in the past but I'll swing by Lowe's later today and take a look.

If not that a surplus store. Lots of crazy oddball hardware out there.

[JimyTheAssassin]

I spent some time stripping the finish off a neck with 10 year old Citristrip and it still worked. It helped remove gold paint from a pick guard too.

Fast forward selector!
In the end my SJM was reborn



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[Rollin Hand]

No pics, but popped the old, ridiculously binding nut off my EC256 last night and did a test fit of my Tusq XL replacement. The old nut looks like it may have been reglued at some point, so there is some clean up to do in the slot (that's what she said). Otherwise,the Tusq looks like a total drop in, with no filing or sanding needed.

It'll be nice to tune the guitar and have the strings actually move when I turn the keys!

[nomadh]

Lately, I've been building gaming PC's.
Just kinda getting railroaded into it for free (except for 1 out of the last 4 who actually insisted on paying me) because I know how and that's just how people act when you're "the tech guy", I'm not a professional so I don't feel comfortable asking to get paid, but some of these builds have been a solid 5+ hours including cable management and OS setup and everything, and my friends/family acting entitled to my time and skill is getting real old.

Wish I could get around to popping some of the fiddles on the bench, I still gotta do setups all around, it's been 3 or more years since my last good full service of any of my guitars.

Oh you can do it. When you feel like it. When you have time. When everything else YOU want and need to get done. Your life. Your todo list in your order.

[nomadh]

Well, I had this project started on the old site. I think I got the kit in 2018.

I painted the body white last summer. Hey, I work slow.

I think you may be my good twin. I also got a single-humbucker body that I painted white last summer that is still waiting to be completed...

Well, the raping is done, and, as expected life (and humidity) are preventing further paintwork.

My vacation ends on Monday, and I am hoping to have it done by then, black paint and all, so I kind of need to paint tomorrow.

Do you have the special shoes for that or just go barefoot?

[nomadh]

Decided to throw this together. The body was a test for a certain kind of paint. The paint is terrible, I'll never use it again. I found out it doesn't work for my needs, so does that make it a successful test or a failure?

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Working on another batch of bodies...

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...and waiting for the primer to dry on the arcade cabinet so I can sand it down and get it ready for paint.

What don't you like about the paint? Because it looks badass.

Thanks for the compliment!

The base color is fine, same stuff I always use for color. It holds up, is easy to apply, and is colorfast. No issues, I love the stuff.

The interior logo, again fine. I wanted to see how granular I could go for small detail with acrylic pens. I did the Super Bee logo (the bee, and the "Super Bee" lettering) with the pens on front and back, the backside logo looks much better. The pens will work, but I've devised a better plan for super fine detail.

The above methods are holding up under the stress I've placed the body under. It's been hanging in my non-climate-controlled shop for almost two years. That's prolonged 90+ degree exposure in summertime, and even longer freezing temperatures during winter. Plus, there were a couple scratch and ding tests done, because I've had questions posed.

The stripes, however, were painted via brush in a medium I hadn't used before. They are now uneven, patchy, and cracked. They are wearing off and taking the clearcoat with it. I did this in Feb of '18, so it's not very old. It looks like shit, but not in that cool, relic'd way. It's not a good look, and I wouldn't feel comfortable selling a body like this for what I'd want to get out of it considering the time and work involved. I took it on as a loss when I started it.

Which presents a problem: I could sell it for full price immediately. I've posted it on IG a few times - stating that it's a test bed, it's cracking and peeling, it's not my best work, etc. - But I still get offers for it, and at price I'd consider selling it for if it were what I'd call sellable condition - including the time and effort spent considered. But, like a moron, I went and decided to have a conscience (thanks, dad). I just don't feel good letting it out of the shop - so I built it out from spare parts instead.

Someone again offered me stupid money for it, this time for the whole guitar. I'm going to offer him a commissioned work instead, so I can do it right. For the money he offered, it's only fair. We'll see if he accepts the terms, which is a whole other thing.

Get the commission and give him the current one as a loaner while you work on the "good" one.

[nomadh]

I brought this Squier Standard Strat home Saturday night. It got a little makeover Sunday morning.

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Hey look at that. I have the exact same guitar.

Ok, except that someone reliced it with a screwdriver. Then I oversanded it a bit to smooth out the relicing. Oh, and then swapped the neck out with a black sparkle std so I could have the only over reliced, maple necked, cherryburst squier std. Otherwise exactly

[LancerTheGreat]

[mention]nomadh[/mention]
I've been making a good use of time lately, more playing, still haven't fixed any of the fiddles, but I seem to have misplaced literally all of my spare parts
I go barefoot and stand on a rubber mat, or a yoga mat, or the linoleum/hardwood, anywhere but carpet if I can help it lol.

Just did another build the other day, only took 2.5-3hrs to finish

Porn for those interested lol.
Specs are:
Fractal Focus G case
ASRock z390 Phantom SLI/AC motherboard
Intel i3-9100F CPU
Team Group Elite Plus 2400mhz 16GB RAM
EVGA 2060 KO GPU
EVGA Supernova 550 PSU
Seagate BarraCuda 2TB HDD
Win 10

[Rollin Hand]

No pics, but popped the old, ridiculously binding nut off my EC256 last night and did a test fit of my Tusq XL replacement. The old nut looks like it may have been reglued at some point, so there is some clean up to do in the slot (that's what she said). Otherwise,the Tusq looks like a total drop in, with no filing or sanding needed.

It'll be nice to tune the guitar and have the strings actually move when I turn the keys!

...aaaand yes, some sanding is needed. There is a ridge of poly clearcoat right behind the nut, and the Tusq XL is a hair too deep. So, I sanded that last night, and I need to clean up the slot, as it is not sitting flush, especially under string tension. Have to go and buy a razor blade to scrape that glue.

Even with that, the guitar already sounds better, and the strings stay in better tune.

While I am at it, I might as well get the new nut for the Spad sanded and fitted. With the strings off, the old nut fell off and went missing. I found it, then lost it again. Luckily I have a spare. Ince that is done, I will be able to truly test those cheap active Donlis pickups.

[rrobbone]

I finish sanded, prepped, and primed nine bodies last night. Those will get sanded and prepped for paint today. They will all get some sort of graphics based paintjobs this time around.

About half of these are B-stocks with little imperfections that don't affect anything but the looks. These imperfect bodies have been piling up as I go along. They include little mistakes - like the router wandered a tad, they have a few repairable cracks (it's alder), or the jack opening is slighly out of center. Stuff like that. I usually finish and build out any B-stocks I have and keep them, experiment on them, or use them as promo - or all three - but I just don't need this many guitars. So, I'll finish them like normal and sell on with full disclosure.

I also put a coat of paint on my arcade cabinet. It'll need a couple more, by the looks of things. It's not going to turn out like I was hoping as far as the finish is concerned, so I'll finish it up with the color coats and go from there. It's not ugly, but it won't be what I was hoping for. I'll have to think of some way to incorporate the look it'll have into the final completed finish.

I'll build it, enjoy it, upgrade it, then get the itch to build another. The next one will be made from wood, not MDF - prob birch sheets. That's going to be a bit costly, but I'll fund the second build with the sale of the first.

I guess the theme of this post is: sometimes, it's all about how well you can recover from a small boo-boo.

[Rollin Hand]

Christmas at stately Hand Manor!

800 grit automotive sandpaper took the roughness right down and even made some nice relic marks.

Once I paint the black, a little compound, and I should be golden.

[glasshand]

I finally got a round tuit, and finished replacing the pickups on my Fender Jazz Bass Special. These are the Epic Custom Shop PJ1 set, which are a stupidly good deal. I made kind of a hash out of the wiring, so I will have to redo it at some point, but everything works and sounds good. Unsurprisingly, the pickup covers were too big for the routs on the JBS, which I know I've mentioned before, so I had to shave the P covers down to where they were paper-thin on the sides, and reduce the size of the "ears", and the corners of the J cover had to be re-radiused a bit. But the "restoration" is now complete! This JBS looks and sounds as close to stock as I'm likely to be able to get it without actually getting stock parts.

[zisme]

did a little hardware shuffling/replacing with two of my strats. the primary goal was to restore my 2014 fender hot rod strat to its stock look (or close to it). the secondary benefit was to end up with a matching set of black hardware on my beater gilmomo frankenstrat. had two hiccups 1) the tuners in my spare parts box that i thought were the stock fender ones were not - so i coughed up for a set of drop in fender locking tuners 2) the black gfs tremolo did not quite fit my partscaster - so i ended rolling the dice on a cheap chinese amazon find. fortunately it fit like a glove and seems to be doing the job fine.

while i was at it, i stripped a bunch of shielding tape i had put in the fender and replaced it with paint.

pretty happy with the results

[andrewsrea]

Today, working on this Les Paul kit guitar. The guy who built it does so for his son and has me set them up. This particular one had no holes drilled for the stop & bridge, hence me buying a drill press. It did a great job.

However, the neck is not on straight and placement of the bridge and stop is a little wonky. He also installed the pickups with no clue of the center-line, so everything is a tad off. Complicating it, the seam for the top is not centered either. It is joined biased to the bass side.

I will also be installing the electronics, since the owner cited something confusing to him and he wanted me to do it for him.

[mozz]

New pickup winder, cnc-laptop based. Spent my second stimulus check before it even got here.

[mikesr1963]

Friday: Stormed and rained. I've had this hanging in my shop for 3 or 4 years and decided today was the day to getting playing and turn it into Tiny Freak 63. Had a set of Stew Mac Tuners in my tool box, that didn't fit another project, and put them on it. Humbucker was missing an adjustment screw. Have a ton of them for single coils but not one for a HB. What does one do? One superglues 5 pennies together, puts double sided tape on the bottom of them and then sticks them to the guitar body. Then one installs the HB, tapes down both ends, for symmetry, and moves on. Interesting wiring; has a 3 way switch with a 4 wire HB which gives it 3 different tones. Gave the pots and switch a couple shots of Deoxit and buttoned it up. Did a fret polish and put a set of EB 8's on it. The nut slots are cut way wide and it should be making some weird noises when played but it doesn't. This little shit stays in tune and I was able to set the intonation. I put on the white stripes (see what I did there) and Tiny Freak 63 was a go. Bought a box of guitar parts a while back and during negotiations I said throw the little guitar in and I'll take it.

[mikesr1963]

Was looking at some American strats and saw this one and really liked the look:


I ordered a single ply pickguard and back plate and returned my 20th Anniversary Squier Affinity Strat back to stock:

[JimyTheAssassin]

A friend of mine asked me to service this lovely amp (an amp his grandma owned and played in her band decades ago).

It’s a Kalamazoo Model Two. I haven’t dated it by it’s components yet but the serial number is on the early side for an amp made between 65-67 (according to info I found). She’s all original minus a fuse cap. The good news is I found the correct cap style in my parts bin, but chord termination to the fuse has become disconnected. I need to run through some routine cleaning, maintenance and testing anyways, so this solder joint can be corrected along the way.

The cabinet is a very thick mdf. In photos it makes the appearance seem as though it would be smaller than it really is. The speaker is 10”. Tubes are 12ax7 6x4 6bq5 12ax7






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[Tiga]

Put the final coat of wipe on poly on my barncaster body (at least I think it will be the last coat). I need to decide what I'm doing about a pickguard.

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[nomadh]

New pickup winder, cnc-laptop based. Spent my second stimulus check before it even got here.

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I'm still waiting on my first. And my 2018 refund. I guess I'm not getting this next one either

[nomadh]

Was looking at some American strats and saw this one and really liked the look:


I ordered a single ply pickguard and back plate and returned my 20th Anniversary Squier Affinity Strat back to stock:

Never saw that model. Maybe there were 3 or 4 good looking wood grained squiers models. I thought there were only 2 and i had them.

[nomadh]

A friend of mine asked me to service this lovely amp (an amp his grandma owned and played in her band decades ago).

It’s a Kalamazoo Model Two. I haven’t dated it by it’s components yet but the serial number is on the early side for an amp made between 65-67 (according to info I found). She’s all original minus a fuse cap. The good news is I found the correct cap style in my parts bin, but chord termination to the fuse has become disconnected. I need to run through some routine cleaning, maintenance and testing anyways, so this solder joint can be corrected along the way.

The cabinet is a very thick mdf. In photos it makes the appearance seem as though it would be smaller than it really is. The speaker is 10”. Tubes are 12ax7 6x4 6bq5 12ax7






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Great little amp. I have the model 1 without trem
Great tone with a strat. Everyone who heard it loved the tone when pushed. Grandma must of really Rocked!

[Spike]

It’s a Kalamazoo Model Two. I haven’t dated it by it’s components yet but the serial number is on the early side for an amp made between 65-67 (according to info I found)

I had this same amp with the matching red Kalamazoo guitar back when I was a kid. I wish I still had them!