TriSonicBilindaCycloneStang

[Embenny]

As long as the frets are properly spaced, being 1mm too long shouldn't make the neck play with poor intonation - the bridge saddles should have enough travel to just move everything 1mm closer to the neck.

Nothing in the world can compensate if the frets are imperfectly spaced, though. That might be the issue.

Edit: I might have misinterpreted your statement. Are you saying the distance from nut to 1st fret is 1mm too long? Yeah...that's a problem.

[LVC]

I might have misinterpreted your statement. Are you saying the distance from nut to 1st fret is 1mm too long? Yeah...that's a problem.

Yes, that's exactly what the problem is. I could have worded that better... Sorry for the confusion.
I will try to fix the nut position if I can. That neck is too comfortable to let it go to waste. But the TriSonicBilindaCycloneStang needs a CBS headstock anyway









...or maybe the one headstock shape on which the full name would fit

[LVC]

The Squier CV Mustang neck arrived today.




My first impression is that Indian laurel looks Look at the size of the pores... Why couldn't they use pau ferro? I fucking love pau ferro!


Lemon oil didn't help that much. I'm going to have to live with it.

The Squier neck feels ok but the Turser is a little chunkier and all around nicer, with more vintage-autenthic tall & narrow frets. The Squier's 9.5" radius is much more to my liking than the Turser's 12" though.

The holes on the Squier neck don't line up so I'm going to have to plug & redrill. In the meantime it's time to choose the pickguard color.

Cream


Parchment


White pearl


Vintage pearl


Mint


Also trying a Cyclone shape modified to cover the top switch route


Cream is my favorite but parchment or white pearl would work for me too. What do you think?

[Rgand]

The cream is good, as is white pearl and mint. I also like your modified Cylone guard shape.

[Shadoweclipse13]

I'd say parchment or mint with the Cyclone shaped guard.

[niksureal]

i usually really dont like creamy coloured guards or pearl but the vintage pearl is really doing it for me. i vote for the cyclone shaped pickguard over the mustang pickguard.

[LVC]

No real progress to report I'm afraid... Got some unexpected and rather pressing home improvement stuff eating up all my evenings and weekends at the moment

Mint is always the popular choice for a pickguard on OSG it seems but unfortunately I've found it sort of weakens the already pale blue of the guitar too much.

In the end I guess my first choice would have been 1-ply parchment, but I couldn't seem to find a blank sheet in that color. So I went with 1-ply cream, conveniently and affordably available from Musicstore Köln. I've really got a thing going for 1-ply guards ― I had a LPB CV 50s Strat with a 1-ply white guard that seemed to have slightly yellowed in blotches, the effect was really cool-looking.

As for the shape, I really love the Cyclone-style one but I'm struggling to make it work with the rear cutout for the bridge in an aesthetically pleasing way. I'm going to go with the traditional Mustang shape, but since the blank is large enough for two pickguards I'll try and make a second one with the Cyclone shape... if I don't screw up the Mustang one and have to start again, that is. It's going to be my first time using a router, so this is a very real possibility.

Meanwhile, the parts I ordered have arrived

Cheap yellowish cream JB knobs from eBay
Mustang control plate, cream plastic button tuners and white DPDT slider switches from EYguitar
1-ply cream pickguard blank from Musicstore

And this is the stuff from my parts drawer

Tri-Sonic style pickups of unknown origin
Squier neck plate
Jag switch plate (still not sure I'll be using this)
Cream trem arm tip.

One thing that bothers me is the Mosrite-style roller bridge. It's actually pretty good but the saddles are really tall and I'm expecting problems as the Tri-Sonics aren't as tall as the stock Strat-style pickups and can't be raised as close to the strings. I'd like to replace it with one of the new CV Mustang bridges... Does anybody know where I can find one?

On the other hand the stock no-name trem turns out to work flawlessly ― it's very smooth, stays in tune perfectly, and the collet is tight enough for the arm to stay put. I was originally planning to upgrade it but there's no reason for me to.

[LVC]

An update at last!

Today I enlarged the pickup cavities into a swimming pool route to accommodate the middle pickup. I have a router that I've never used, but with the lockdown and with medical staff having much, much bigger fish to fry at the moment I figured it wasn't really the right moment to risk a trip to ER, so I used the good old drilling, chiseling & sanding method instead.
It took me quite a while as my Forstner bits turned out to be absolute crap so I ended up using a regular 10 mm wood bit to remove as much wood as possible. Except for a few holes caused by overenthusiastic drilling I think the result looks fairly decent.



I was planning to spraypaint the bare wood in the cavity to seal it but I'm confined at home with no paint whatsoever
Interestingly it looks like the Turser initially had a CAR paintjob before getting the Sonic blue factory finish.

Next I cut a pickguard mockup out of thick cardboard to check that the pickups fit. I like the look of this.



Next I'll be routing (well, drilling-chiseling-&-sanding) for the switch cavity, and I still need to dowel and redrill the screw holes in the neck heel.

[Rgand]

Nice work on that swimming pool rout. A few little holes won't make any difference. You could always line the cavity with copper tape and cover those up.

[LVC]

Nice work on that swimming pool rout. A few little holes won't make any difference. You could always line the cavity with copper tape and cover those up.

[hexes]

the most striking to me was cream mustang guard. glad to see cream made the cut. this thing looks hot!

that porous fretboard is a little unfortunate, but not awful. what about 9.5 do you prefer to 12? i ask because i've had two 12" radius necks (mosrites) and loved them dearly. most of my guitars have been 9.5"

[dinosaurkale->]

want

[Scout]

Looks like fun. You can make a new nut to compensate for the intonation or widen the slot, more common than you might think.

[LVC]

that porous fretboard is a little unfortunate, but not awful. what about 9.5 do you prefer to 12? i ask because i've had two 12" radius necks (mosrites) and loved them dearly. most of my guitars have been 9.5"

Yeah, the fretboard's not that bad really, especially from a distance. I don't really mind the lighter color as compared to rosewood but I've always had a soft spot for wood with a smooth texture, which is why I love pau ferro. It's only a cosmetic issue though, the neck feels comfortable and in the end that's what really matters.
As for the radius preference, I couldn't really say. My first guitars all had flatter fretboards as far as I can remember, and when I got my CIJ Jag (with a 7.25" radius) I went "aha!". Somehow it felt more natural to me. I've found 9.5" works fine for me too. That being said I've got a few guitars with 12" fretboards (and one that looks like it might be 14", never actually measured it) and it doesn't bother me too much. I guess I'm the exact opposite of a shredder and smaller radiuses (radii?) are better suited to my style of playing.

Looks like fun. You can make a new nut to compensate for the intonation or widen the slot, more common than you might think.

I've started looking into that. One thing I'm not quite sure about is how to fill the gap once I've widened the slot and relocated the nut.
I determined the nut was not where it should be by eyeballing the (original) neck against the one on my Jag, but I suspect the string grooves might be on the shallow side as well, which would accentuate intonation problems. I'll have to take precise measurements... but that's for another project.

[LVC]

Today my injured hand felt much better so I thought I'd go on with the switch cavity, using the same technique (drilling, chiselling, sanding). I took the time to sharpen my Forstner bits, so that went much faster this time.



The result is a little less clean than on the pickup route as the cramped cavity made using any tool more challenging. But what happens under the pickguard... stays under the pickguard

Trying the switches for fit with the pickguard mockup



I'm going for four slider switches mounted directly to the pickguard (individual on/off switches for each pickup plus a modified series/parallel as described earlier in this thread).