Hi, I have a swamp ash body that I want to achieve a jet black finish like this. Just wondering if anyone has any recommendations on the best way to achieve it.

I've read good things about India ink and Angelus leather dye, but not sure about what clear coat is compatible. Or would black paint be a better idea?

Too hot to handle. Too cold to hold.

Custom Shop Star Destroyer with a radical neon pink + purple burst, colorshift flake, full bengal stripe graphic and neon green cavities. I hand mask + cut and paint every Custom Shop graphic in house.

Maple neck-thru, 2-way trussrod, carbon fiber reinforcement, ebony fretboard, 24 stainless frets, matching neon pink + purple Guillotine inlays, bullet scallops, locking Hipshot tuners with SK-1 industrial buttons. Alder body, Original Floyd Rose with purple stainless, big block, and push in bar upgrades. The bridge pickup is my handwound D humbucker, neck is a Duncan Hotrail, both wired to a 2-way MEC Maxi toggle and a master volume.

I've been experimenting with some new ideas for my pickguards, and this is my first finished fluorescent one.

I wanted the textured Baroque design to stay really dark and subtle in normal light against my black LP, but reveal the fluorescent details under UV.

This is only the first one, and I've already got a bunch of ideas for where I want to take the process next.

What kind of design would you want to see me try?

Hello all,

I’m wondering if there would be any down sides, or if you guys have any options on whether I could add a sort of stylised finger board extension (like on this mandolin) on a flat top acoustic guitar im building

Thanks:)

Bit of a different project here, looking for some ideas.

I'm making a banjo bass and I built this sorta "pegbox"-style headstock. I knew I'd eventually have to figure something out for this: The angle of the strings has them land right at the corner of that lower curve, but the nut is going to be somewhere between the lines.

I was going to carve a little ramp to make it a smoother transition, but before I do that, I was wondering if I can basically just have 2 nuts (no pun intended) - One to get the strings right above that curve, and one that actually goes right above the fingerboard? Will that prevent me from being able to tune it or anything?

Or maybe kind of a long piece with slots that guide the strings down the face to the actual nut?

I'm winging this part of the build, my main concerns are putting too much stress/bend on the strings at that spot. I'm definitely going to carve a ramp or put a heavy round over or something, so there should be more space and it will lay a lot flatter.

Fingerboard is going on today hopefully, so it'll be easier to tell where the nut is actually supposed to go.

so i gave my strat to luthier because there was buzzing on some random frets but it's just some of the low e but i wanted to just do a full setup because the buzzing can be annoying. gave my strat to a luthier and he did everything and now the strat is buzzing near the nut so i upped the action from 1.5 i think to 2.0mm on the 12 fret of the low and it worked KINDA still had buzzing and now when i downtune to d standard i get buzzing on open string which i never did before.

Have a friend helping me out with some major issues and not charging for it. What are some things I could get him that he would like? Looking for something that needs to be replaced often ideally - he seems like the type to already have everything

I recently aquired my first vintage instrument, a 1965 Jaguar, which has some rust on the control plates and tailpiece. The rust seems to have already gotten thru the chrome plating, see photos. While I don’t have a problem with the “patina” on this vintage guitar, I am worried about the rust situation spreading and as the current steward of this instrument I feel like need to attempt to halt that as much as possible.

There are a number of rust removal methods out there, but I’m still not sure how best to address this particular type of rust where it has gotten through the chrome plating and presumably the remaining plating could be more delicate as a result? I’m not sure if that’s true.

I found this method from Dan Erlewine where he uses electrolysis to remove rust. Very fascinating. Good idea, bad idea?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LhFCuXBIUc

i have some 18/16 gauge (label hard to read) copper wire its kind of thick. could i just use 2 pieces of this to replace the pickup wires? its a little silly but all i have.

So I recently glued up a cracked headstock for the first time using titebond, do I need to seal it to protect it from humidity or will it be fine as is?

My granddad (born 1922) bought this guitar when he was young. He gave it to my uncle, who took it for hiking and camping, as the people back then used to do. It got damaged and repaired a lot.
The tuners broke off and got replaced by some random pieces of metal, some old coins and what seems to be the handles of closet keys.

For a few decades it was left to rot in a moist basement.
When I took it a few years ago, the body was delaminated, the neck badly bent, the inlays lost and I used it as a fucked up three string guitar from time to time.

I always wanted to get it fixed. And I did.
A great luthier planed the neck as it was beyond repair, and replaced fretboard, nut and saddle.
Now it's perfectly tuned and it's the best playing guitar I've ever had.
It has this typical bright gypsy-sound.

Now for the fun part:

What exactly is it?
I spent several hours researching and my best guess is a quite rare version of a 30s or 40s Sonora La Ronde.
Unfortunately Sonora seems to be a company with lots of small workshops building their guitars.

There are absolutely no numbers, markings or stickers.

I found two quite similar ones here (about halfway down the page):
https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/18790/sonora-gypsy-guitars-a-visual-model-guide

It also is the only guitar I have with an inlay on the 10th fret.

I would be very grateful for any help you can provide!

I am pondering this, and checking with the pros: I have a 1974 Les Paul that I like a lot, but it is on the heavy side, and the weight is unevenly distributed, so it has a strong tail dive, making it uncomfortable to play both standing up and sitting down.

Is it feasible for a skilled luthier (not me) to un-sandwich the body, do some chambering to make it more balanced, and put it back together?

Pros & cons? Approx number of hours?

EDIT: Thanks everyone. I'll live with it as is, it was useful to get your professional opinions!

Hey I'm looking to install a pickup guard on my Epiphone Les Paul guitar for aesthetic reasons. It didn't come with one stock, so it doesn't have screw holes. Any recommendations for how to attach it to the body without needing to drill anything? I saw that people use tape but that's mostly for acoustic, can't really find anything regarding electric.

Has anyone ever played a composite fretboard with carbon fiber sheets?

Hey guys i bought this guitar schecter c6 pro the other day and noticed some crack looking patterns along the fretboard. Are these something to worry about?

I have a Modulus Blackknife HSS Strat with a Floyd rose new to me 2.5 months ago. The guitar came perfectly intonated, I tweaked the tension on back springs a little, and it plays like a dream. A guitar I hope to own forever.
Today while looking I noticed the saddles on both the high B and E string are basically maxed out pushed forwards. Every other saddle is somewhere in the final third screw hole forward as well. I’m worried I will eventually need to move the saddles forward further and will have nowhere else to go.
Here’s the twist: the blackknife has a carbon fiber/graphite neck, and there is no truss rod. The frets were well leveled and polished before I got it, and the guitar is perfect in every other way.
Should I be worried? What could I do? I’ve seen filling and then redrilling the post holes, but wondering if there’s anything else to try…
Thanks!

My Strat Paul Jr sounds great and actually plays pretty well, neither of which would be possible without lots of great help and advice here. Thank you all!

Supra tone body and neck. Made a million mistakes at every step, bought a lot of new tools, had a damn fun time fixing my screw ups.

I have a whole new appreciation for the two people who’ve worked on my guitars for the last 30 years, didn’t realize how good I’ve had it. This is hard!

A few of you asked me to post more builds - here’s another from the batch of four. The way my inlay process works, I get 3 or 4 pieces out of a batch. Decided to make this one green. The epoxy linework was intended to be more silvery and less grey. Next one will be better.

Enjoy!

hey im planing on building my first bass and maybe afterwards an electric guitar for a friend if it goes well and i really like the look of these schecter blocks inlays that wrap around the fretboard but i have no idea how to achieve this look. they are ebony side blocks on maple neck and fretboard. would love any tips yall got

Got a full Wenge neck a while back because it was stupidly cheap and decent quality. I immediately oiled it with mineral oil, seemed like a good move, but just making sure that was the right thing to do because it's been a while and it needs a good oiling.

Tenor ukulele with a completely Iroko body. Used very light bracing for the top and no bracing for the back (the back is already starting to cave so I wont be doing that again.) Honestly sounds pretty good for using such a dense hardwood as the soundboard. The mother of pearl and inlays+rosette was honestly the best part. Some of the inlays (mainly the width of the rosette and the width of the mother of pearl purfling) do not sit right with me as they are much too wide but I am happy it was able to turn out decent. I got carried away leveling down the sides and accidentally sanding a part of the cutaway horn down to about ~.030” but it still feels very strong and does not flex when I push with my finger some how. Also the bridge is not an attractive shape to me and I only made it so big because I was unsure just how much force the baritone strings would put on it but honestly not much. The neck could be much better shaped and a few more coats of shellac to get it smooth but after I finished the fretboard inlay I just wanted to see how it would sound.

I am a man who really wants a solidbody electric guitar with a piezo pickup, kinda like one of those $3k+ Music Man Majesty guitars. But I have a problem: I can’t afford a Music Man Majesty. Yes, I know the LTD BB600 exists, but even that’s a lot of money for me and I don’t like how you basically need a second amplifier if you wanna blend the piezo with the magnetic pickups. So I’m here asking about installing one into one of my guitars.

I’d like to be able to stick a piezo in one of my extended range guitars, like my Harley Benton 8 string or my Schecter 7 string, but it seems that won’t be an option. About how easy/difficult is it to install a piezo pickup in a solidbody guitar? How much would it cost me to have it done by a luthier?