NGD: Tesl-ish 8 Build

[kriff]

That is incredible. I would love to see the electronics and wiring if you took any photos of that.

 

[Randy]

That is incredible. I would love to see the electronics and wiring if you took any photos of that.

Thank you.

I'm going to have to open it back up to swap pickup selectors soon, so I'll get a shot when I get to that.

It was a challenge with no rear routing and how the cavities are all laid out.

Cliff Notes:

-The volume/tone/selector cavities are all connected with a 3/8" channel I drilled from the output jack opening.

-Pickups run to the selector cavity through the bridge pickup route.

-I drilled a 1/4" channel between the pickup routes from inside the bridge recess. The neck pickup wires run under the bridge pickup and into the selector cavity.

-The toggles and volume pots are all supported with 3D printed fixtures. The selector is sandwiched between the wood fascia and the 3d printed fixtures. The pots are bolted to 3D printed discs that are screws to the 3D printed fixtures underneath.

-The knobs have a 1/2" recess on the bottom of them, and I 3D printed little bits to mate with the shaft on the pots.

It was a lot of fuckin work for a fairly subtle detail of not having a rear cavity

 

[kriff]

Thank you.

I'm going to have to open it back up to swap pickup selectors soon, so I'll get a shot when I get to that.

It was a challenge with no rear routing and how the cavities are all laid out.

Cliff Notes:

-The volume/tone/selector cavities are all connected with a 3/8" channel I drilled from the output jack opening.

-Pickups run to the selector cavity through the bridge pickup route.

-I drilled a 1/4" channel between the pickup routes from inside the bridge recess. The neck pickup wires run under the bridge pickup and into the selector cavity.

-The toggles and volume pots are all supported with 3D printed fixtures. The selector is sandwiched between the wood fascia and the 3d printed fixtures. The pots are bolted to 3D printed discs that are screws to the 3D printed fixtures underneath.

-The knobs have a 1/2" recess on the bottom of them, and I 3D printed little bits to mate with the shaft on the pots.

It was a lot of fuckin work for a fairly subtle detail of not having a rear cavity

Amazing work. I would say it has paid off because that's fucking cool. Looking forward to seeing some more shots!

 

[narad]

Dude, out of left field! That looks incredible!

I actually owned one of these for a spell (a 7 string). Very interesting guitar. I found that the matte paint, a novelty at the time and part of the vibe, was a bit of a problem because my fingers would wind up resting on it on the backside, and I'm sure it would wear away over time - fixed here. Plus the way the neck was carved into the body, there was very little leverage for bends, and I didn't like that - maybe you set it up better for yourself. And of course the main thing Teuffel pitched were those 3 noise buttons -- killswitch, 60 cycle hum, and I think some noise thing. All pretty much gimmicks. Fixed here. All and all, looks like an improvement

Though still kind of gets me thinking about them again. I thought it'd be cool to have one in a gloss finish so I wouldn't have to worry about the wear so much.

 

[Hollowway]

Holy crap, that’s cool. You never see these sorts of unobtanium guitars in 8 strings, so bravo for that!

 

[Hollowway]

Wait, so you ran the pickup wires into the bridge route and then to the selector cavity? Or did you drill a hole between the bridge pup and the selector cavity? Cuz I cannot see how you could. I’m fascinated by how you’ve eliminated the control cavity, so I’m trying to understand it all.

2nd question: what CNC do you have and what 3D modeling software do you use?

Last question: did you ever finish the skull and bones build from the pandemic?

 

[Randy]

Wait, so you ran the pickup wires into the bridge route and then to the selector cavity? Or did you drill a hole between the bridge pup and the selector cavity? Cuz I cannot see how you could. I’m fascinated by how you’ve eliminated the control cavity, so I’m trying to understand it all.

2nd question: what CNC do you have and what 3D modeling software do you use?

Last question: did you ever finish the skull and bones build from the pandemic?

Markup diagram, initiate!



Green - connects the two pickup cavities and is drilled in from the corner of the bridge recess. It's 1/4" diameter and leaves a small trench under the bridge pickup for the wires to lay.

Yellow - 3/8" diameter hole that connects the bridge pickup to the selector cavity. The neck pickup wires leads back to the bridge pickup cavity, turns the corner and out to the selector.

Red - 3/8" diameter hole from the output jack connecting all the electrical component cavities.

Blue - 3/16" diameter hole from the bride to the pickup selector cavity for the ground wire.

Question 2:

Current CNC machine is an Ultimate Bee 1500 x 1500. They're essentially the same machines as what OpenBuilds sells but at the time OB didn't sell one with these specific dimensions, ball screws, etc. The controller they sent me was DOA so I ended up buying one from OpenBuilds since it was probably the closest thing to being compatible without a ton of reprogramming. I also opted for the 2.5kw water cooled spindle.

They advertise some silly $2000ish price but with freight and upgrades etc it arrived at my house > $4k for the bare machine+spindle, so still significant things it needed like a bench to sit on, the workholding, spoilboard, etc. I think the machine assembled and ready to cut was around $5.5k after the controller upgrade.

Prior to this I was using a Shapeoko 3 XXL which I upgraded to a lead screw Z and kevlar belts, and the controller I honestly had no complaints about that machine or that company, I just needed a bigger cut size and they didnt offer that. It was great for all bolt on and set neck stuff, but undersized for neckthru.

I'm using Fusion 360 for modeling and toolpaths. I'm old school so I still use AutoCAD to draw everything in 2D to scale first and then dump the DXFs into Fusion to make them 3D. I've got a few thousand guitars and parts I've drawn in AutoCAD over the years, and it's nice because the scaling carries over from project to project, so it makes my old sketches interchangeable with new ones. This Tesla for example, I used the RG5328 neck profile I designed for Thesius' RG8 build so it saved me some work, and I was able to match a neck profile I'd already held in the real world that I knew I'd like.

I do have Vectric Aspire but that feels more designed for 3D carving art work. That's what I used for the Skull n Bones, for example. Some guys use Vectric for standard guitar builds, it works good but it's a totally different workflow when toolpathing, it gets REALLY confusing going back and forth to Autodesk software.

Question 3:

Skeleton guitar is done-ish. I had strung it up and to test and everything was fine. Needed some fine tuning like dressing the fret ends and cleaning out some of the polish from the nooks and crannies but other than that it's been good to go. It was completed enough that it felt like something I didn't need to crack back open unless I was planning on bringing it out of the house for a jam or something.

One of those things, after you get so many guitars or projects stuff fades into the background after you move onto the next one. I've got prolly 2 dozen projects or more I started for myself that are 3/4 finished in the shop but the GAS wore off before I finished them. I might dust one or two off once I get my queue cleared out.

 

[Musiscience]

HNGD!

This is a crazy nice build. You have skills for sure.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

Thanks, you definitely read the vibe I was going after. Kind of the Rick Toone thing like the guitar bits were grafted onto a log found out in the wild.

I'm even more impressed now that I know this thing cost $1.5M.

Dude, out of left field! That looks incredible!

I actually owned one of these for a spell (a 7 string). Very interesting guitar. I found that the matte paint, a novelty at the time and part of the vibe, was a bit of a problem because my fingers would wind up resting on it on the backside, and I'm sure it would wear away over time - fixed here. Plus the way the neck was carved into the body, there was very little leverage for bends, and I didn't like that - maybe you set it up better for yourself. And of course the main thing Teuffel pitched were those 3 noise buttons -- killswitch, 60 cycle hum, and I think some noise thing. All pretty much gimmicks. Fixed here. All and all, looks like an improvement

Though still kind of gets me thinking about them again. I thought it'd be cool to have one in a gloss finish so I wouldn't have to worry about the wear so much.

Do you remember tweaking the trussrod at all? I'm curious how it functioned with the body attaching at the 7th fret.

 

[cardinal]

Magnificent! Very talented.

 

[Randy]

Do you remember tweaking the trussrod at all? I'm curious how it functioned with the body attaching at the 7th fret.

Hmm you know now that you say that, I never really considered it.

My best guess would be that it'd have minimal effect just since the truss rod causes more lift in the fretboard than it does bending in the neck itself. Even though the neck has that huge wing attached to it, the glue surface area of the fretboard stays the same as a regular neck.

That's just a guess. I'd say this goes double for a dual action rod, since the lower rod stays straight and the flat bar facing the fretboard does all the bending. I think if you were to look at it under the microscope, the bulk of the movement when you tighten the truss rod would be more lifting down the center of the board rather than evenly along the full width. But that's an interesting thought.

There is no relief in this one currently. I usually install the truss rod, then glue on the board and just tighten the rod until it feels like there's no gap. I usually hit it with the leveling beam again before the frets go in, so for all intents and purposes the fretboard flat with no real tension in the rod.

I'll see how it responds to adjustment after it's had a few weeks to settle in under string tension. You've got me curious about this one.

 

[narad]

Do you remember tweaking the trussrod at all? I'm curious how it functioned with the body attaching at the 7th fret.

Nah, never did.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

Hmm you know now that you say that, I never really considered it.

My best guess would be that it'd have minimal effect just since the truss rod causes more lift in the fretboard than it does bending in the neck itself. Even though the neck has that huge wing attached to it, the glue surface area of the fretboard stays the same as a regular neck.

That's just a guess. I'd say this goes double for a dual action rod, since the lower rod stays straight and the flat bar facing the fretboard does all the bending. I think if you were to look at it under the microscope, the bulk of the movement when you tighten the truss rod would be more lifting down the center of the board rather than evenly along the full width. But that's an interesting thought.

There is no relief in this one currently. I usually install the truss rod, then glue on the board and just tighten the rod until it feels like there's no gap. I usually hit it with the leveling beam again before the frets go in, so for all intents and purposes the fretboard flat with no real tension in the rod.

I'll see how it responds to adjustment after it's had a few weeks to settle in under string tension. You've got me curious about this one.

A trussrod shouldn't flex the glue joint, though, it'll flex the neck as one piece. Not necessarily uniformly, depending on where the rod is located and the geometry of the neck itself.

On the Tesla, I'd guess that the neck is stiffened by the body attachment somewhat; how much, and whether it affects the neck enough to matter when we're talking about only a few thousandth's relief, is what I'd be curious about. Similarly, would it flex more on the treble side? More from frets 1-7 than 7-24? Is the body wood of the 'arm' thin enough to yield and flex relative to the forces the trussrod can exert? And so on.

It isn't uncommon for basses to have neck attachment designs like this, so it clearly works somehow. I was just curious--beautiful work, by the way!

 

[BigViolin]

Let’s see here. Klein, DeLap, Teuffel...yup you’ve punched my whole guitar gas bingo card.

That thing is so awesome!

 

[sezna]

That little horn is a very dean-gordon-esque! Beautiful build! This is truly a stunner, congrats on completing such a great build

 

[Whoman Bean]

First impression - wtf is that.
Now I want it badly, looks super cool.

 

[Hollowway]

Markup diagram, initiate!

View attachment 139833

Green - connects the two pickup cavities and is drilled in from the corner of the bridge recess. It's 1/4" diameter and leaves a small trench under the bridge pickup for the wires to lay.

Yellow - 3/8" diameter hole that connects the bridge pickup to the selector cavity. The neck pickup wires leads back to the bridge pickup cavity, turns the corner and out to the selector.

Red - 3/8" diameter hole from the output jack connecting all the electrical component cavities.

Blue - 3/16" diameter hole from the bride to the pickup selector cavity for the ground wire.

Question 2:

Current CNC machine is an Ultimate Bee 1500 x 1500. They're essentially the same machines as what OpenBuilds sells but at the time OB didn't sell one with these specific dimensions, ball screws, etc. The controller they sent me was DOA so I ended up buying one from OpenBuilds since it was probably the closest thing to being compatible without a ton of reprogramming. I also opted for the 2.5kw water cooled spindle.

They advertise some silly $2000ish price but with freight and upgrades etc it arrived at my house > $4k for the bare machine+spindle, so still significant things it needed like a bench to sit on, the workholding, spoilboard, etc. I think the machine assembled and ready to cut was around $5.5k after the controller upgrade.

Prior to this I was using a Shapeoko 3 XXL which I upgraded to a lead screw Z and kevlar belts, and the controller I honestly had no complaints about that machine or that company, I just needed a bigger cut size and they didnt offer that. It was great for all bolt on and set neck stuff, but undersized for neckthru.

I'm using Fusion 360 for modeling and toolpaths. I'm old school so I still use AutoCAD to draw everything in 2D to scale first and then dump the DXFs into Fusion to make them 3D. I've got a few thousand guitars and parts I've drawn in AutoCAD over the years, and it's nice because the scaling carries over from project to project, so it makes my old sketches interchangeable with new ones. This Tesla for example, I used the RG5328 neck profile I designed for Thesius' RG8 build so it saved me some work, and I was able to match a neck profile I'd already held in the real world that I knew I'd like.

I do have Vectric Aspire but that feels more designed for 3D carving art work. That's what I used for the Skull n Bones, for example. Some guys use Vectric for standard guitar builds, it works good but it's a totally different workflow when toolpathing, it gets REALLY confusing going back and forth to Autodesk software.

Question 3:

Skeleton guitar is done-ish. I had strung it up and to test and everything was fine. Needed some fine tuning like dressing the fret ends and cleaning out some of the polish from the nooks and crannies but other than that it's been good to go. It was completed enough that it felt like something I didn't need to crack back open unless I was planning on bringing it out of the house for a jam or something.

One of those things, after you get so many guitars or projects stuff fades into the background after you move onto the next one. I've got prolly 2 dozen projects or more I started for myself that are 3/4 finished in the shop but the GAS wore off before I finished them. I might dust one or two off once I get my queue cleared out.

Ah, ok. I didn’t thing you’d be able to get a drill at an acute enough of an angle to get the yellow line drilled, but it looks like you did!

And 5.5k for all of that sounds expensive at first, but if you make a few instruments that are unique, it’s already paid for itself. That’s something I would LOVE to do when I have more time.

 

[narad]

That little horn is a very dean-gordon-esque!

That's the wrong direction.

 

[Shawn]

That is very nice.

 

[SalsaWood]

Is there a canoe this goes with? Just kidding, looks pretty neat. I do like canoes, though.