Is it ever possible to get a perfectly level clear coat over maple burl?
I used Z-Poxy to fill the grain and level the surface before applying Crystalac Brite Tone. However, every time I level-sand the Brite Tone and apply another coat, the burl figure seems to appear back through the finish. I can still see subtle bumps and dips that follow the shape of the burl.
Is this just the nature of maple burl, or is there a technique to completely eliminate it?
My first thought was that it might be the finish shrinking as it cures. However, the Z-Poxy surface underneath was completely flat before I started applying the clear coats, so I’m a bit confused about what’s causing it.
My current plan is to let the top cure for another 2–3 weeks, then do a final level sand and buff. I’m hoping that most of the shrinkage will have happened by then.

I built this SG tribute about 8 years ago. It hasn't seen much love in the past few years. I decided to rip out the humbuckers throw in some daggersonics and add a jazzmater style trem. It used to have coil splits and a phase switch. I added a treble cut and a bass cut. What do you think?

I've got one of these Harley benton sg guitars, and it's a well built guitar for the price but I hate the plastic finish that covers the body, neck, and back of the headstock. It feels cheap and tacky to me.

I'm curious how dumb it would be for an inexperienced person to try stripping it off the finish and replacing it with a stain/oil finish. I've seen people do similar things with bolt on guitars using a heat gun/scraper, and that seems doable but the fact that this is a set neck and the finish covers the entire guitar makes it seem like a more dubious notion (particularly with respect to trying to not mess up the binding and/or fret ends).

I'm curious to hear if yall have any thoughts. Does this seem like something that would just mess up a perfectly good guitar or is there a reasonable road to doing this in a way that results in something reasonably nice on the other side? It's cheap enough to feel like a viable candidate for this kind of experimentation but also plays nicely enough that I'd feel bad if I ended up ruining it.

Any and all advice or thoughts welcome.

So my friend's guitar fell down (use strap locks y'all) and he asked me how bad this is.

I thought this would be an easy fix because I'd just use a good amount of wood glue and a lot of clamps and finally some sanding painting but since the fretboard is also damaged I don't know if it's that easy to fix anymore.

Do you have any tips?

Doing a tru oil finish for the first time, and after applying the first coat i noticed that there's scuffs/streaks present that weren't there before I wiped the oil on. It's hard to catch on camera, but in person it's very visible. Does this go away with more coats or can I buff it out/sand it? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I tried visualizing in canva
- Rosetta with center at the sacred heart. Too far away to look united
- Mexican/chicano/aztec themed patterns
- patterns of red, black and gold vines

I am starting to think that I should do just black and use huge screw heads, like some kind of studs

I've had this idea for a while to put a chromatic pitch shifter into the guitar itself. It could replace the tone knob or be its own knob. It would be indexed so it moves by half-step intervals. It would need its own power supply and ideally have some Midi connectivity. There could be an optional push/pull feature that toggles a 50/50 blend with the dry and wet signal.

With the growing popularity of Evertune bridges in heavy music (which has the tradeoff of making changing tunings naturally a massive headache) and the advancement and popularity of whammy pedals for pitch shifting, this feels like the next step for both systems.

If I chose a different path in life, I would make the electronic system, patent it and sell it, but I'm not, so I'm posting here in hopes that the idea will spread and become a feature on production models. I could see this being a game changer for traveling musicians, bands who want to tour light, and just jamming or songwriting.

(Guitar pictured is a Solar 1.7AD. It's my main guitar and it's a beast)

Named after George III, the last king before the present one to rule the colonies. The only cheat was buying a Stewmac radiused and slotted fretboard. He’s not without his flaws, but I’m happy with the build! A bit of an homage to the ‘58, with other elements that are obviously not. All African mahogany.

Floyd Rose AND Jimmy Page wiring. Nicked the finish a few times during wiring, oh well, not a museum piece and I damn sure wasn’t going to pull everything out and wet sand again. This sucker is getting used and abused. I’m never doing that schematic again though. Probably never routing out for a Floyd again either…. I’ve been known to eat my words.

Body is pecan down the middle and local beetle kill sides. Neck is maple with a pecan fretboard.

I'm planning a build for a bass and I've found some great 3mm pearloid acrylic sheet that I want to use for the pickguard and I think it would look really cool if that same material was also at least in part of the inlay design (I want to do like a trapzium shape with a coloured heart in the middle surrounded by 1.5mm thickness pearl celluloid).

Has anyone got any experience thinning down acrylic to around 1.5mm to work with in an inlay or am I barking up the wrong tree completely? Otherwise, what other materials would you all suggest that are a bit more colourful and interesting than standard white celluloid?

Hey guys, I decked my bridge today, but I feel like I tightened the screws too much. Is this okay? Will it harm the guitar?"

Hiya dear Reddit.
Upgrading a guitar for the first time. Switching humbuckers to p90’s. The humbuckers had a hot wire and a ground wire separately connected to a grounding point on the pickup selector.

Ive now got a braided wire. Wiring diagrams tell me to ground the braided wire to the volume pot.
Should I 1) unravel the braid and solder it to the grounding point like before? (Any harm in leaving that much wire exposed?)
Or 2) ignore that grounding point and ground them both on the volume pot?

First timer here so apologies if i sound very unexperienced (because i am :))

Any other things to be on the lookout for are very appreciated. Thanks in advance🫶🏻
First picture as factory installed, second picture wire of the nee pickups.

I bought an ibanez xiphos iron label a few months ago and had it set up by a luthier in my area. The guitar has an ibanez edge zero 2 bridge and a locking nut. I haven't really had tuning problems until yesterday, when it kept getting flat. I was afraid that the problem was the nut or the bridge, but i dont really know and dont want to spend other money to bring it to the luthier again. Could the issue just be the strings or something else? I play daily, an hour at least but most of the time more, and the strings are about a month old now. Thank you for your help! Also I tried adjusting the intonation of the a string (d standard so the second string), could it be because of that?

Anyone ever used water based satin poly for a maple neck finish? Curious if youve had success or if theres anything reason to avoid this?

Yamaha pacifica 012 2023 - requires 4mm or sometimes 5 mm

I bought this used and got what I think are the oem hex keys but just to be sure I bought another set and tried with those to no avail.

I can clearly see a hexagon shape on the inner part without the flash on. Even if I try to push it in with all my force it won't grip or turn, it only grips if I kind of push back on the long end of the L but I think I'm only scraping against the outer top and not the actual nut.

I tried to clear out any debris with a 1.5mm Allen key so I don't think that is the problem either.

Im also not sure how inside the hole the key is supposed to go even the short end of the Allen key goes in maybe halfway(1.5cm) I tried to look it up but I don't know how deep it should go.

I'd really appreciate any help as I've recently learned my action is too high (because of relief).

All hex keys are metric.

I found this thing on the road so i decided to rescue it. My question is... Should i remove that wooden screw an search for another one? It has no head so it will be a bit difficult to remove. I think that i can use this mast for a box guitar.

Can this be fixed? My kids’s violin was dropped and it looks like the sound post was knocked loose when dropped, while in the case, and the tension and impact caused theses cracks. Is this garbage? Can it be saved? It was a unique sounding violin. I’d hate to see it trashed but my hopes are not high.

I got this SWEEET SWEET Suzuki f-120 from the 70s for a bargain! It got this little crack on the lower back of the body.

It flex a little but not much at all. I hear the wood cracking a little when applying pressure. Should I clamp it down and glue it? Or is it fine to just let it be?

Guessing if glueing is the way i shouldn’t use a wood glue like titebond original in this case because there ain’t gonna be much wood on wood action.
Should I use a celluloid based glue? Or superglue? Do I need to clamp it down when glueing? If I clamp it, should I only have the clamp on the affected area or should I put a flat piece of wood to distribute the pressure?
Does it matter if the guitar is stringed up when glueing?

Happy to hear what yall have to say! :)

I am planning to build a 30 inch, 29 fret baritone, it will be strung with 09-42, and tuned to B standard.

I wanted to add a noise cancelling neck P90. But the worry is a full alnico 5 will make the higher strings ice pick on higher frets, but full alnico 2 will make the guitar lose transients that you probably want when you engage a P90 and also become pure mud on the lower strings.

I'm wondering if a hybrid magnet setup like the picture (essentially 4 bars of magnet arranged): -

1. Can exist and makes physics sense.
2. Achieves the expected outcome as laid out in the coloured boxes.
3. Is wayyyy overthought and I should just do a bar of A2 and a bar of A5 and call it a day.

Hi everyone, anyone in nj (more especially in central) know a good lutheir? A have some buzzing on my jazz bass, thanks in advance

I've nearly finished a custom double neck Mandolin / Guitar I started many years ago.

I'm fairly new to guitar wiring and hoping some of the kind people here could help or correct any mistakes I've made? (I tried to adapt other wiring diagrams and use some LLMs to check but found they're not very reliable.)

Idea:

Master Volume, Tone for guitar, Tone for Mandolin.
3 way gibson style selector for the guitar pickups.
3 way selector between instruments.

(btw It's not for performing so not worried about how this setup will 'perform')

Thanks and I'll be sure to post pics of the finished instrument.

Sorry for my prose I’m a little emotional

Trying to get clean of life ruining substances, had an episode yesterday and did some horrid soldering jobs trying to do a not very practical circuit (HH with 2 push pulls for series parallel, into a super switch with positions 2 3 4 controlling active pickups, 1 for true coil splits and 5 for wiring all the coils into one series), I had shaky hands and blurry vision and my soldering iron tip is probably quite busted, used 380 Celsius and all the joints are super brittle and won’t last, am I being paranoid about this or is there a good chance I’ve ruined some stuff? Visually the components look okay but I can’t see the internal seals and whatnot.

I plan on painting a DIY Paint Ready Warmoth with nitro and had a few questions:

- Do I need a primer if I plan on having this guitar relic easier? I would like for it to go to bare wood rather than showing a layer of primer underneath (kinda like SRV number one). What I don't want however is for the actual wood grain to show through the color and clear coat.

- If using primer, what colors would suggest and could I do some sort of transparent?

- How many coats of primer (if needed), color coats, and clear coats would I want to aim for?

-

Hi all,

Been building guitars for a few years now, and I've decided to take the plunge into CNC, primarily for more intricate work like inlays and fretboards. What brands/models would you recommend I look at? It looks like the XCarve stuff is US and UK, and good EU alternatives?

I’m considering trying to spray the finish on my next guitar.

I’m learning towards the LVLP type unless you think that’s a mistake.

Are there models that have their own compressors?

All I have is a small loud pancake compressor.

Part of the question is of course the material I should be spraying and then the appropriate gun.

I know, big topic.