Friday 2nd April 2010
Here’s where we left off the last diary.. next time instead of carving the end of the trem arm I’m going to heat it up and just hammer it into shape!! much easier!!!
Sulphuric acid in a tub…
Protection needed of course..
The hardware all sitting nicely in it’s vat of acid..
So, too late in the day for dusty stuff but here’s the basic idea for the new trem design.. Should be the final one too!
This one is left-handed but the basic shape is symetrical and can easily be either..
Half an hour in boiling water to seal it all and a final polish tomorrow..
The new trem’s reason for existence is the way we now can fully encapsulate the bearings…
The hardware is removed from the boiling water now and we’ll polish it all in the morning..
But I can’t resist polishing at least one bit..
And here it is, tunematic before polishing and the headless headpiece after.. Lovely beans!
The igor carries on with the new bearing trem.. The cavity is predrilled..
We have a visitor today, proffesor Mike has come to help with some electronics problems we have..
The igor goes into a trance as he concentrates on milling out the new bearing tremolo..
I’m halfway through buffing all the tiny bit’s of hardware we anodised yesterday.. Though Igor forgot to add the knurlded tuners to the bubbling vat of acid!
The joys of being a biker.. At least the igor is fairly practical and has a good go at fixing her!!
I’m getting nowhere fast today but we’ve managed to get the Ox on the bench to diagnose the problem..
pretty end to a work day.. it also means a small break in the near-constant rain..
Ok, as ever there are hundreds of small things to do but I just need to get stuck in and dusty! The twins!
In the interests of science I want to measure the pickup to bridge distances on this les paul custom plus..
The three humbucker cavities are marked out..
Before we move on this forstner drill bit has to be sharpened with a triangular file and a diamond file..
The igor is still in machining mode.. We have the technology
Each pickup cavity is predrilled on the big pillar drill..
Finally the pickup cavities in both twins are routed out.. And I’m very happy, dust is my natural state!
Marking out the saddle positions on the new tremolo.. She’ll be loaded with piezo wilkinson saddles..
And of course the twins have their pickup cavities routed and look rather sexy indeed…
And we tend to forget the stunning exotics that make up the multi-laminate necks and bodies of this pair.. Lovely!
From now Crimson custom Guitars will be living inside the best cases in the business.. hiscox..
The lightflight case weighs just 4kg and can withstand more than 500kg of crushing.. And it’s made in the UK!
Perfect.. I’m very happy with our new partnership with Hiscox!
The final piece of the green 45rpm puzzle, the truss rod cover is installed, a figured walnut one this time..
Ok, the main body of the tremolo.. Needs a bit of character..
Even when working with metal finding the end shape is an organic process..
She is ropugh carved and you start to see the basic idea.. We’re going custom car with loads of chrome here!
The height adjuster is a brand new way of doing things.. Fingers crossed!
No igor today, but Mike has come to help with wiring again..
Ok, to straighten out my head I spend some time organising my workspace..
The paf blackburst with the variax is ready for a proffessional wiring job, but I need to create an access point… A channel for the big pcb pin connectors is drilled then chiseled out..
And here’s one of the several issues, as well as a broken input section this capacitor has sheered off.. Needs a real electrickery shop and is going home with Mike..
I finish buffng up the hardware for steiner’s erb.. Just got to anodise the knobs yet and she’s done..
The graphtec piezo loaded saddles are loaded in the sexy eight string bridge for Steiner’s ERB…
Have a great one!!
Ben
