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Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 12:45 pm
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cvilleira wrote:
I thought Sepele was in the same species family as Mahogany just lower cost ? It is used a fair amount on acoustic guitars. I think it is also used for marire Ply as well.


Yes, I think that's right. I believe mostly these days when you see a wood called mahogany it is actually sapele - which is pretty much the same tree, but from a different continent.

We don't believe everything Wikipedia tells us, but this page suggests it is used by Taylor and Martin amongst others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapele

Is South American mahogany actually banned now, or is its use merely "discouraged"?

Cheers - C


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Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 1:37 pm
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You know it's almost funny. In 1990 when I was in Puerto Rico rebuilding after Hurricane Hugo, mahogany was cheaper than the vast majority of other hardwoods.
We put mahogany everywhere. Contractors were actually offering us credits to substitute mahogany for other specified woods....

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Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:31 pm
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I put some low powered ceramic pickups in that body one to see if they made any difference to the sound. They came from a ash bodied 80's charvel i own that sounded very different to the sapele bodied guitar. This was pre mid-boost installation. Aside from the inherant raspy sound of the magnets there was very little difference in tone. Same with the ceramic MIM pickups that came out of what the sapele bodied guitar initialy was. As a experiment i took a scn out of my customshop and put it in the neck position. slightly better bass, nothing to write home about though. Now i dont know why the guitar is so unbalanced in range. It could be poor wood it could be down to the finish. Which i was told is nitro but seems as bulletproof and thick as any polyester i've ever seen. Sustain is ok but accordingto this if you want a darker sound this isnt the way to go.

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Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:40 pm
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Ceri wrote:
belphedeus wrote:
Nice detailed pictures Ceri....the pickup routing looked much much better from the original which looked rough and sloppy.
Its unfortunate that you didn't get to document the re-build of the trem cavity maybe its the same process as the neck pocket but i would like to see how is the trem cavity from the back.Any changes need to be made to the spring/claw cavity?
Any pictures of it?

Once again you amaze me with the nice woodworking.....keep it up Ceri!


No, no: don't worry. The trem and spring cavities are coming shortly. Plenty to do there. It's only the front side of the trem cavity that I've done so far. Stay tuned!

And to you and everyone: once more, thanks so much for your friendly words. Makes the whole thing lots of fun!

Cheers - C
Excellent job. repairing this is a bigger job than starting from scratch on your own with a new slab of lumber.(Which is what i would have done, not as patient as you good sir!!

it kind of looks like if he had a template he didn't secure it properly to the body, and somehow didn't notice it was moving around.


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Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 4:46 pm
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Heya niki any idea how many pieces of wood is glued to make up that sapele body of yours?Could that be the factor the "inarticulate bass end"........i wonder with all the gluing and re-building of the neck pocket/pickup routing Ceri has accomplished will it compromise the tonal outcome of the body..../me thinks Hmmmm

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Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 5:57 pm
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mine is atleast 3 pieces Belph. Another gripe it was marketed as a 1 piece. Who knows whats going on inside. :cry:

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Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 6:06 pm
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The biggest worry I'd have about that body is whether or not the trem is routed correctly (positioned the correct distance from the neck and properly aligned?).

The pickup and control routing gets hidden under the pickguard (hopefully!).

I'm assuming that ceri can measure things properly based on "templates" he has there. Good luck. Please show us the next step.

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Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:37 am
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belphedeus wrote:
i wonder with all the gluing and re-building of the neck pocket/pickup routing Ceri has accomplished will it compromise the tonal outcome of the body..../me thinks Hmmmm


Hi Belphedeus: this is a good point for discussion. In theory the reason plywood bodies on very cheap guitars sound bad is because half the grain is running at right angles, which has a deadening effect on the tonal ring of the wood. That's the theory...

So in principle those little bits of veneer I've used on the edges of the cavities would be a bad thing, because they run counter to the rest of the grain.

I practice I don't believe for a second that the tiny amount of the total body mass they represent makes a drop-in-the-ocean difference to the instrument as a whole.

And yet... I felt superstitious enough about it to use grain oriented the right way for the lengthening of the end of the neck pocket. I somehow had an (utterly unproveable) instinct that the longitudinal vibration of the bod might be compromised by sticking on a bit of grain running at right angles.

Though in reality I'm sure that's horse doo-doo!

As to the glue - again, people cite the relative high amount of glue in plywood as another reason why that sounds bad. However, if you weighed the total amount of glue I'm using here and compared it to that used sticking a maple cap to any guitar with a flame body - well, again I don't believe it is going to make an ounce of difference to my guitar.

What is worrying me, and has been from the start, is how this mahogany (sapele?) will compare to traditional Strat timber. Nothing to be done about that: we'll find out at the end.

(Though secretly I'm not too bothered about it. One of my favorite Strats is made out of the body of my first Squier. It is cheap basswood covered in the thickest of thick polyesters - and it sounds absolutely fine...)

Cheers - C


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Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:47 am
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orvilleowner wrote:
The biggest worry I'd have about that body is whether or not the trem is routed correctly (positioned the correct distance from the neck and properly aligned?).

The pickup and control routing gets hidden under the pickguard (hopefully!).

I'm assuming that ceri can measure things properly based on "templates" he has there. Good luck. Please show us the next step.

Haha - that's one bit I think we don't need to worry about. That bridge will be in the right place. :wink:

As to the cavity routing, Mr BigJay honestly had it exactly right when he said:
BigJay wrote:
Of course, I might be overanalysing....maybe your are simply anal-retentive? Hah, hah....

That's the long and short of it! Though I did notice you commenting unenthusiastically on the quality of the cavity finishing on a gentleman's new rosewood Eric Johnson Strat recently... You'd have something to say about it if my cavities end up anything but perfect!

***
Twelvebar wrote:
...repairing this is a bigger job than starting from scratch on your own with a new slab of lumber...

Ain't that the truth? :D

Cheers - C


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Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 6:06 am
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Ceri wrote:
However, if you weighed the total amount of glue I'm using here and compared it to that used sticking a maple cap to any guitar with a flame body - well, again I don't believe it is going to make an ounce of difference to my guitar.


You got a point there Ceri.....and its something to ponder upon.

Ceri wrote:
What is worrying me, and has been from the start, is how this mahogany (sapele?) will compare to traditional Strat timber. Nothing to be done about that: we'll find out at the end.


Well we just to wait and see.....i'm hoping that after the coatings and bod paint its gonna turn out great.
:D

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Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 11:44 am
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Ceri wrote:
orvilleowner wrote:
The biggest worry I'd have about that body is whether or not the trem is routed correctly (positioned the correct distance from the neck and properly aligned?).


Haha - that's one bit I think we don't need to worry about. That bridge will be in the right place. :wink:


I trust you. I'm sure you have measured it at least two times before you built up the heel of that neck pocket instead of routing it a bit more.

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Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 5:46 am
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More progress - again, slower than expected.

Once the front of the trem cavity is straight and positioned correctly we can move round the back and work off it to re-make the trem and spring cavities, which in constructional terms derive from the front.

Reminder: here's what the rear cavities looked like at the beginning. Horrible, huh?:
Image

And here was the quality of the builder's workmanship with a router. Notice not only the unfinished parts, but also the tearout on the corner. Lots of that on this project!:
Image

Measuring from the centerline it turns out that the treble side of the spring cavity is going to be too wide if we just re-route it straight, so we need to build it back in a touch first. I took another little piece of my home-grown ash, planed it flat on one side, rounded the end to match that of the spring cavity and glued it in place:
Image

You can see a makeshift cork-lined, angled caul I built for the other end of the clamp to protect the edge of the body wood.

Once that strip of ash was in place and scraped flush with the surface of the body I filled the tearout on the corner with Standard grade Milliput - a sculptor's putty. It's the green filler you can glimpse in many of the pictures of this project.

Next, I put my rear cavity template in place, set the router head to the depth of the spring cavity, and then it should have been just a matter of re-routing the entire thing out straight. Should have been...

As soon as I started I discovered I'd broken through into one of those stupid circular router holes round the front in the pickup cavities. I'd already filled and capped those so in theory it didn't matter, but it prompted me to do some more checking and I discovered that the spring cavity was routed about an eighth of an inch / 3 mm too deep. Just like the neck pocket had been.

So work stopped while I built a new floor for the spring cavity to bring it to the correct depth. Once that was glued in place (with a little filling between it and my ash fillet, which I'd left rough on that side since I'd been expecting to take it all off with the router) I could have a second run at routing out the cavities. Here's the finished job - feel free to compare the quality of my routing with that of the originator:
Image

You can see that in addition to everything else the original builder had made the spring cavity too short: you can see the difference between the new end to the cavity and where my rebuilt floor to his route comes to. That would have lead to all kinds of problems when it came to doing setups on the finished guitar! Still, by the standards of this project - nutt'n.

By the way, in that picture you can also see my rear cavity template. All of my templates are self-built, based on an American Strat of mine. There is a major disadvantage with the commercial templates you can buy from Stew-Mac and other places - the transparent acrylic ones. They are far too thin, so when you start excavating a cavity you have to raise them up on spacers to get the ball baring collar of the router bit to follow them without the first pass going too deep. Then you have to stop and lower the template to the surface and reposition it absolutely spot on to the first cut: all very tiresome. The solution: templates made from nice thick ply.

One more piece of work to accomplish: back round the front the output jack cavity was badly shaped and wrongly aligned. I could almost live with that - except that it was also too small and a jack plate simply wouldn't fit onto it. How on earth did the guy manage that?

However, with all the other cavities on the front now correctly aligned it is a simple matter to just place my template over them in the right position and re-route the jack cavity. I stopped the job half way through to take this photo, which shows you how much the original cavity was off by. You can see the difference between my routing and the first fella's:
Image

And that's where we are up to! Next comes prepping the wood and grain filling, ready for finishing. A lot of that is dusty work I prefer to do outdoors. It's raining in stair-rods today, but tomorrow is supposed to be nice, so...

Cheers - C


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Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 6:12 am
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Ahhh...my daily dose of strat making drama series!

Nice to see that progress has been made.....you mentioned that you had to built the floor for the spring cavity?Is it done yet?This i got to see (please do document it) and how did you manage to know that its 3mm too deep?

Btw this maybe too early to be mentioned but what kinda trem is this bod gonna have?Vintage or 2-point trem?
If you say Vintage i have seen some builders who drill the 6 holes a bit too low which results in the spacing of the bass string to the outer neck and the treble string to the outer neck to be not in symmetry...i hope you get the point i'm trying to lay down here..

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Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 6:18 am
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Ceri you are such a trooper!!!

excellent progress.you have to give this girl a name to reflect all the work!!


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Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 6:31 am
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belphedeus wrote:
Btw this maybe too early to be mentioned but what kinda trem is this bod gonna have?Vintage or 2-point trem?
If you say Vintage i have seen some builders who drill the 6 holes a bit too low which results in the spacing of the bass string to the outer neck and the treble string to the outer neck to be not in symmetry...i hope you get the point i'm trying to lay down here..


Hi belphedeus: the new floor for the spring cavity is there in the pic of the finished cavity, if you look closely...

It's going to be a vintage style trem. I nearly messed up a six-screw to two-point trem conversion once upon a time - so I hope I learnt my "positional" lessons on that one. The six screw holes for the trem are measured and drilled: if at the end of all this it turns out it's in the wrong place you will be able to hear a grown man weeping and wailing - from whereever in the world you are!

Fingers crossed...

Twelvebar wrote:
excellent progress.you have to give this girl a name to reflect all the work!!


Well, for obvious reasons this guit ain't getting a transparent finish. More on lacquer shortly, but suffice to say it is going to get a sort of pale blue finish. So maybe it's the "Baby Blue Strat" - does that sound like a girl's name?

Oh, one other thing, Twelvebar. Regarding what you were saying on the other thread: by now Brad has had time to delete this one if Fender objected. So I'm guessing this sort of thread is OK...?

Cheers guys - C


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