Building a guitar

Pau Ferro feels almost identical to rosewood. They are genetic cousins after all. It tends to be a bit drier (less natural oil) and so some say it feels a bit "faster" to the touch. I almost always add a fretboard oil to protect the wood and so the difference is essentially lost on me. Pau Ferro does tend to be lighter in color (often a sort of dusty dark mustard color so it might not look as good as you want with that body. A little fretboard oil will darken it some, but not to a real rosewood color.

Ebony, on the other hand, really does have quite a different feel. It is harder, denser and smoother than rosewood and so it does feel faster to the touch. A lot of the old Jackson, Ibanez and Kramer "Shred Machines of the 80's had ebony boards. If you're into that you'll probably like ebony. It is tougher than rosewood or maple so you won't wear the playing grooves into it anytime soon either. You should expect to pay about 20%- 30% more for a re-fret though. Ebony likes to chip and split so fret removal must be done more slowly and carefully and little repairs using superglue and/or epoxy are common making the job take longer. I wouldn't let a fact like that over-ride playability, but it is nice to know in advance.

I have an ebony board on one of my strats and to me it feels similar to a lacquered maple board.

a friend of a friend has just built this rather sexy bass:

Edited by Dean - October 01 2008 at 05:43

Make sure you've got enough clearance between the scratchplate and the underside of the 22nd fret overhang. I took the Warmoth neck off my strat to put it on a thinline tele body but didn't check first. When I tightened the neck screws here was a loud crack! The dusty end of the fretboard has now separated itself from the neck. It's fixable but there was a great deal of swearing at the time.

I have found Gotoh hardware to be good quality. It's likely that the problem you had was due to the pilot holes being too small, or not deep enough. The hole has to be big enough for the shank to clear. It does take a little pracice to get right - try on some scrap pieces first. It is imperative to use a good quality screwdriver of the correct size. It's not necessary to apply a large force to these screws. Years of tinkering with cheap guitars gave me some experience, and it's not so bad when you make a mistake ! 

These poor quality screws are interesting, is there any links you can post as I'd like to learn more.

^ Ha! is there such a thing as a standard pick-up switch layout?

Hey man I would totally throw some humbuckers on that if i were you!

Edited by glasshouse27 - November 07 2008 at 05:14

glasshouse27 wrote: Hey man I would totally throw some humbuckers on that if i were you!

No need for humbuckers on this particular guitar, particularly since I've got a Steinberger with an HSH set up and an Epi SG with the usual 2 humbuckers.

I got the neck back from the tech today and he did a really good job, all I now need to do is attach the neck to the body, string it up and set it up. 



Sorry about the low quality of the pic the light available to take this was terrible.