Stratocaster Build - From Scratch

[John Coloccia]

I would order 1/4". 1/4" is tight up high, but I've used it down to a 25" scale length and it will work nicely. Your supplier probably won't have a problem doing a simple exchange. You can also order just 6 1/4" and do the dots from the 12th to the end, leaving the rest large. I don't like that look, personally.

[Julie Moriarty]

I would order 1/4". 1/4" is tight up high, but I've used it down to a 25" scale length and it will work nicely. Your supplier probably won't have a problem doing a simple exchange. You can also order just 6 1/4" and do the dots from the 12th to the end, leaving the rest large. I don't like that look, personally.

I agree, 1/4" all the way. After looking at my son's Tele, I realized once the frets are in those 5/16" dots will look all wrong, so 1/4" is the only choice. And I'm going Murphy hunting too. That guy has to go!

[Julie Moriarty]

The pickguard and pickups arrived today. Trying to see where I'm going with this, I "assembled" the guitar. It's not screaming, "PLAY ME!" yet.

I'm trying to figure out if I go with the jatoba fretboard (the bottom one has a few coats of lacquer) or BE maple. The piece under the fretboards is a cutoff from the body. It's been dyed with bright red Trans Tint and has a few coats of lacquer on it. It should be a fairly close representation to the final color of the body, but I'm not sold on that yet.

The tuners are Schaller in a brushed finish. Seeing it all together now, I'm wondering if I should have gone chrome. Here's a better shot of the pickguard:

It's just not making my heart skip a beat. When my SO and son get home tonight, I'll see what they say. That slab of sapele looked so gorgeous but I'm just not seeing it here. I'm thinking a black boarder spray might work better than natural wood throughout. Maybe if I used the maple fretboard and made sapele dots for it, that would tie things together better.

What do you guys think?

[Julie Moriarty]

I think I know why there haven't been any replies - I've gone so far out of the box it's become tragic.

Last night my SO said the red pickguard will never work with the sapele body. I hated hearing that but I had to agree. That pickguard looked so cool in the pictures! After some discussion we both felt a cream pearloid pickguard would be the way to go. But I'm thinking you'd have to change the hardware to gold. I had initially planned for gold hardware and bought a few pieces but when the trem for my son's guitar didn't work with the Tele, I ended up with that so I switched gears. I think the hardware is part of the problem too.

Consensus at home was that contrasting wood fretboard dots would look nice. With the sapele body, use a maple fretboard with sapele dots, lose the cherry neck and replace it with a curly maple neck. Then add a cream pearloid pickguard and gold hardware.

I still have some 8/4 curly maple. I could make another body from that and use black and red dyes to compliment the red pickguard. But that's for another time.

[John Coloccia]

I thought it would look nice no matter what, Julie. I thought the brushed hardware was nice too. I think you didn't get any responses because there was really nothing to say other than pick whichever on you like more

BTW, I'm on the fence if I would finish the Jatoba fingerboard or leave it bare. I've never used Jatoba.

[Larry Fox]

Julie - firstly I am amazed (and jealous) of your progress. Given that this is your first from scratch build it might be worth just plowing through with what you have and getting it done so you have one to completion and apply what you learn / mistakes you make on the next build and make that "the one". Sometimes those Franken-guitars with seemingly mismatched parts end up looking really cool.

Another thought, while I don't have a ton of experience with jatoba, I do have some and what I have observed is that it is: HEAVY, splinters easily, and has a tendency to warp or twist more than other species I have worked with so you might be inviting unnecessary problems using it as a fingerboard. I have had seemingly straight and stable boards twist as they are being ripped on the saw. I have also had freshly face-jointed boards come out of the planer very twisted. Just a thought though - ymmv.

[george wilson]

Julie,keep your CA glue in the fridge and it will last for months. Looks like a high class set of pickups. What make are they? I am not a Fender style builder,so haven't kept up on parts and things.

[Julie Moriarty]

John, I've been taking what I have in stock and thought I'd give the jatoba a try as a fretboard. I've got some fingerboard finishing oil from StewMac I was going to try on the jatoba but close up it looks too porous. The wood is heavy and I thought it would translate into a good fretboard wood but after sanding it to 400, I have my doubts.

Larry, I agree that I need to finish the first guitar and test it out. I was thinking I'd just put this one together, without finishing it, and check it out. I'm not good enough to really know how good it plays (but I could tell how bad it plays ) but my son could give it a good test run. And I agree with your thoughts on jatoba. As I was saying to John, close inspection of the wood told me it was suspect for a fretboard wood. Tomorrow I plan on getting out to the hardwood store and see if I can find some rosewood or ebony for the dark fretboard woods.

George, thanks for the CA tip! The pickups are Seymour Duncan Everything Axe. With a name like that, how can you go wrong! I read a number of reviews and they rated them pretty high and described them as a great all around Strat-style pickup. I think you got into my head with the lacquer. Every time I think about going another route and every sampling I've made with non-lacquer products, they just don't seem right. I may lay down garnet shellac on the fretboard to bring out the grain, but I'll finish it with lacquer, but I'll also see how the finishing oil works. I'm seeing a lot of necks that are finished in satin while the headstock is gloss. If my talents permit, I'll look into going that route.

Thanks guys for the replies and all the help. If it weren't for the members here, I'd too often feel like I was lost on an island.

[John Coloccia]

John, I've been taking what I have in stock and thought I'd give the jatoba a try as a fretboard. I've got some fingerboard finishing oil from StewMac I was going to try on the jatoba but close up it looks too porous. The wood is heavy and I thought it would translate into a good fretboard wood but after sanding it to 400, I have my doubts.

The vast majority of fingerboard material is open grained wood. All of the generally used rosewoods, and fake rosewoods, are. The only ones that come to mind that aren't are Maple, ebony and Pau Ferro, and the only wood that is commonly finished is Maple. Everything else is left bare. I'm on the fence about jatoba because I've never used it for fingerboard before, but I would be most inclined to leave it bare.

If you use StewMacs fingerboard oil (which is mostly just BLO, I think, or maybe even raw linseed) GO SPARINGLY. You're not trying to build up any sort of finish with it. It just makes non-finished (i.e. non maple) fingerboards look nice and helps condition it. Useful after a new build. Generally, if the guitar is played, you don't need ANY oil at all, ever. It's only when it hasn't been played in a long time that I ever apply just the tiniest amount. I just put a tiny dab on a paper towel, spread it around, let it sit for a minute, and then buff it out with a soft cloth. Also, do it AFTER you fret. Keep that oil out of the fret slots!

[george wilson]

Gibson used "coffee wood" fingerboards in the old days. They were rather porous. I never thought anything about them. Gretsch originally used Brazilian rosewood. It has long pores in it. My 6120 I made has an ebony fingerboard,though. A dense fingerboard is supposed to help sustain. I believe in a heavy peg head,too. It keeps vibrations from leaking away up the neck,and directs them to the bridge on an acoustic guitar. Not much choice for your Fender style peg head.

For what it's worth,hard as it might seem to be,Brazilian rosewood has poor wear resistance when used to patch the worn mouth of a wooden plane. Gets grooves in it,too,when used for a fingerboard.

[John Coloccia]

Every older guitar I get in my shop with brazillian is horribly worn. I wonder if east indian will fair better. Not a real rosewood, but very nice.

[george wilson]

I'm pretty sure it will wear better.

[Julie Moriarty]

I was reading a guitar building book last night and the author mentioned that rosewood is an open grain wood. The only rosewood I've ever seen is on a guitar and I never bothered to look that closely. The jatoba I have has long open grains in it. But it is certainly dense. I haven't given up on jatoba but I'm not at the point I'm ready to glue it to a neck yet.

I tried some of StewMac's fretboard oil and it sure smells like BLO. If it is, they have diluted it. In his video, Dan E. claims it cleans the fretboard. I've never thought of BLO as a wood cleaner.

I was doing a test run on tuner drilling with a step bit that is designed for Schaller, Gotoh and Grover tuners. The ones I have are Fender brand but made by Schaller. I drilled a few holes with the step bit in a piece of 1/2" maple. I then marked the pins that keep the tuner from spinning and drilled holes for them. When I went to insert the tuner, it stopped short of seating fully. The bit left a little to be tapered. Problem is, the smaller diameter hole on the top of the head prevents the reamer from going deep enough to ream the taper needed to seat the tuner fully.

I took the reamer and inserted it to the point where it hit the smaller hole and then used it to scrape in the taper. Not a very precision method. In the top picture you can see I got the third tuner to seat fully but the other two need more work. What I really need it something shaped exactly like the tapered part of the tuner. I don't want the tuners racking in the holes. Of course, they don't make a tool designed to ream a stepped hole.

These parts come without instructions or diagrams. Sometimes you can't even find them on the Internet and even if you find them, they may not be reliable. (The diagrams I downloaded from Schaller's website doesn't show the taper that is on their tuners.) The parts are made in such a way as to often require special tools to properly install them. Most of those tools are available, but some are not.

They don't make this easy...

[Julie Moriarty]

Every older guitar I get in my shop with brazillian is horribly worn. I wonder if east indian will fair better. Not a real rosewood, but very nice.

Your comment got me to wonder if using hide glue to glue the fretboard to the neck would be the better method when using woods that will need replacing down the road.

[John Coloccia]

Your comment got me to wonder if using hide glue to glue the fretboard to the neck would be the better method when using woods that will need replacing down the road.

Nah. We never replace them. We remove them rarely to fix trussrods. When they get worn, we just sand them down at the next full fret job.

Guitars really don't last more than 75 to 100 years or so, if you take care of it and you're lucky. Things like violins are built so stoutly that they can last hundreds of years and then you might worry about the service life of the fingerboard material.