Les Paul Florentine: Installing a Tune-o-matic Bridge

For my Les Paul Florentine project, the Pit bull ES-2T kit came with the option of a fixed or floating bridge. Since I am after a fixed tune-o-matic bridge, it was up to me to install the bugger - including finding its proper location and drilling the holes for the bridge posts. For anyone who is interested in how to do this, here are the steps I take to do a tune-o-matic bridge installation.

Step 1. Mask off the body and Extend Neck Line: To make sure your measuements and line marking doesn't impact the body of your guitar, first mask it off with painters tape. Then, using your ruler, mark lines on the tape extending the line of your neck down past the bridge pickup cavity.

 

Step 2. Measure the Scale Length & Calculate Bridge Post Position: As we all know, the bridge must be positioned correctly (witin 1-2mm) so that correct intonation can be achieved in each of the 6 strings. The correct position of the bridge posts, on both the treble and bass sides, is determined by the scale-length of the neck +- some compensation for each string that takes into account string gauge and so on.

The scale length of a guitar neck is equal to twice the distance from the fret side of the nut to the very middle of the 12th  fret. On my guitar, as on many Les Paul style kits, the distance to the 12th fret is 313mm, giving a total scale length of 626mm. Once the scale length is known, to find the position of the bridge posts it is a simple matter of consulting the Stewmac Fret Position Calculator. For a 22 fret neck with scale length 626mm and tune-o-matic bridge, Stewmac tells us that:

"From the nut to Treble Side Post should be 627.534mm, and that we should allow another 1.5mm to 3mm further on the Bass side post".


Step 3. Measure Bridge Post Position and String It Up: Once the bridge post positions are known, it is a relatively simple task to measure the distance from the nut and mark each position off on the tape (across the neck line we drew). For the bass-side post, I tend to measure into the middle of the suggested range (adding in this case 2mm to the treble side distance).

Once the posiiton is known length-wise, we need to locate the bridge posts across the body - ie. with respect to the neck and the tailpiece so that the E strings are positioned correctly up the neck. The easiest way to do this is to string the guitar up with the two E strings and pass them over the bridge (that is sitting flat on the body). If the strings are touching the frets, then washers can be used to raise the bridge off the body until the strings sit off.

The bridge is then moved side to side until the correct string placement up the neck is achieved.

Step 4. Mark the Post Holes: Once you have the position of the bridge just the way you want it, you need to mark the position of each hole ready for drilling. It is important that the correct location of the posts is maintained through this process, and the best way to ensure this is to use a set of transfer punches to mark each position.

Select a punch which is the largest possible that still fits through the hole in the bridge, and then tap lightly with a hammer to mark the center of the hole. Make sure the bridge doesn't move when you tap that first hole!

Step 5. Measure Depth and Drill Test Hole: With the locations for each post marked with the punch, you can move on to drilling the post holes. To minimise gauge-out around the edges of the holes, I recommend using a brad-point drill bit. I bought an imperial set from Stewmac and they have been my best tool investment yet. However, before you reach for the drill, you should measure the required depth of the post holes, mark this distance on the drill bit using some tape, and drill a test hole to make sure you have the correct drill bit size.

 

Step 6. Drill..!: Once you are satisfied that everything is correct, you can go ahead and drill your holes in the guitar top. Try to hold the drill as straight as possible in both directions (or better still use a drill press). Drill down to the indicated depth only and make sure all the crap has been cleaned out of the holes.

 If you use a brad-point drill bit as suggested, you should end up with nice clean post holes like mine!

Step 7. Tap in the Posts: After you've successfully drilled the post holes, all that remains is to test-fit the posts and the bridge. To do this you simply tap them in using some wood to even out the force and protect the bridge's finish.

I usually do this step on both posts simultaneously, with the bridge fitted to make sure the posts go in straight and still allow the bridge to sit astride them once fully seated. But that's just me - paranoid about everything!

And viola! There you have it - a tune-o-matic bridge fitted to your guitar with the correct placement, taking into account correct comensation and the like. Of course we have made use of expertise from those nice folks at Stewmac, but hey - no point re-inventing the wheel!

ES175 Hollowbody - It's a Psychobilly Freakout!

Well, I finally finished the orange ES175 Psychobilly beast today. It came out pretty damn nice all told. I made a couple of schoolboy errors right at the end there - scoring the headstock with the nut file - but nothing the truss rod cover won't hide. The flame maple has popped very nicely and the orange colour looks great.

The GFS Retrotron Nashville pickups are clear and twangy (remarkably so) giving the guitar a real rockabilly sound. Wailing on the B70 also sounds awesome, and with the overdrive cranked these pickups really are the business, especially in single-coil mode. The headstock is also nice, with the faux inlay flowers working quite well with the overall look of the guitar.

The freeway switch works well, and both humbucker and single coil options sound great. When you hit the overdrive those single coils sound especially sweet! Another great kit from RM Olson that has turned out better than I ever expected. Anyway, enough from me - I'm going off to play the mother.

ES175 Hollowbody - Wiring Harness Complete!

After procrastinating for several weeks over which way to approach it, today I finally completed the wiring harness for the ES175. It was a mammoth undertaking, spread over 3 days. The reason for the complexity was my choice to try a 6-way freeway switch, instead of the normal 3-way. It's pretty neat - allowing the following pickup combinations:

Lots of cool single-coil goodness is on offer, but what a sow this thing is to wire up! See what I mean?

I wired it up using a nice set of 500KOhm CTS pots, as well as orange-caps for the tone circuits. This baby should purr! I dithered a little while, wondering whether to use multi-strand shielded wire or just my plain old single-core shielded wire from Stewmac. In the end I went with the single core as it's what I have always used. I also toyed with the idea of not soldering the pickup wires directly to the switch to give me the option of swapping the pickups out in the future. In the end I decided that this wasn't a very likely scenario (given how awesome these GFS Nashville Retrotron pickups are said to be) and therefore there was no point tying myself up in knots over it. The damn circuit was complicated enough without adding more wires to the mix!

In the end the wiring harness came out OK. The harness is, well, kinda neat and hopefully wont be seen through the f-holes. I did a quick tap-test on the pickups to make sure things were working as planned (this tests pickup signals but not tone pots). Everything passes muster at the moment.

The wiring in and around the freeway switch is pretty complicated, however. Let's hope I don't break anything during installation and have to troubleshoot it. Now that would be a bitch.

Fortunately, the hollow-body promises to be a much easier installation than with the 335. I can take all the pots down through the pickup holes and there's plenty of depth to make sure the wires don't get in each others way. Here's hoping anyway. See you at the finish line!

ES175 Hollowbody - Tru-Oil, Tru-Oil, Wet-sand, Repeat..

The ES175 is coming along nicely. During the last few weeks I have been applying successive thin coats of Tru-Oil to all surfaces. After 12 initial coats of Tru-Oil, it was time for wet sanding. During the dying process I managed to get all surfaces of the body sanded to 600 grit, so my wet sanding couls start at 800 grit. I always wet-sand the Tru-Oil with boiled linseed oil. I find that wet-sanding with Tru-Oil itself can lead to problems when it dries too fast, leaving messy marks on the surface if you dont get the excess cleaned off in time. Typically I apply 5 or so coats of Tru-Oil between each wet-sanding grit, moving from 800 to 1200, 1500 and 2000.

If you don't want to sand with oil as a lubricant, I have found another technique on this build that works equally well 'dry' if you are careful - especially for the coarser grades. Take your sandpaper and sand very lightly with the grain in small strokes over the entire surface. When you are satisfied with the smoothness of the finish, wipe the surface with a rag soaked in methylated spirits to make sure all the fine grains are removed from the new scratches you've made. Remember that wet-sanding is a technique that reduces the chance of creating deep scratches in the finish. If you are working 'dry', like this, then you run a much higher risk of marring your final finish!

After sanding to 1500 grit, this baby is really staring to look awesome. The flame maple figure is really popping, and although I would have liked a deeper orange colour on the front of the guitar, the whole look is really coming together.

Sweet huh? I have hardware ordered, including GFS Retrotron pickups and a B70 bigsby. I just can't wait to get this bad boy assembled - it's going to be a rockabilly beast!!

12 String 335 - Wiring It Up

Finally got to installing the wiring harness on my 12 string 335 today, and let me tell you it was a mammoth effort. Anyone who has tried to do this will tell you that it's a bugger of a job to get a set of connected pots through the F-hole and into place with anything less than a childish tantrum or two.

 

In the end I sucessfully used the "fish-tank 5mm pipe" method to complete the task. This involves threading pipe through the holes and onto the tops of the pots (and output jack) and then drawing them carefully through the body until they are seated and can be affixed. It takes alot of fiddling as the wires can easily become tangled or trapped between pots and the guitar body, and the pipe can be easily detached from the pots, but finally after 5 attepts and re-starts the components were seated and finger-tightened - job done!

 

All that was left to do was to add the glorious gold top-hat knobs from Stewmac and then it was off to the ball Cinderella.

ES175 Hollowbody - New kit started from RM Olson

With the 335 12 string all but completed, I now feel justified in starting the other kit that I ordered from RM Olson Guitars (www.rmolsonguitars.com) in the USA. The kit is a full hollow body ES175 kit in flamed maple. Out of the box the kit looks well made and sports the flamed maple veneer top and bottom - a detail often overlooked by other kit makers. Like the 335, the fixed neck also came pre-assembled - something that I am very thankful of Robert (Olson) for. All in all, a great kit and I couldn't wait to get started.

I'm planning to go with an orange dye job with this one, in the hope of emulating the classic  look of the Gretsch orange hollowbody guitars. Initially, I hit the kit with the 240 and 360 grit sand paper to remove any glue and machnn marks. With these initial sandings were complete, I decided to do a trace dye - a step I was not able to complete with the 335. The aim of the trace dye is twofold. Firstly it enables you to detect any patches of glue that were missed by the initial sanding, and it also allows colour to soak deep into the figured parts of the maple veneer.

 

Using Colortone orange from Stewmac, the initial trace dying did indeed highlighted a couple of regions where glue had squeezed out around the bindings, and in particular where the fixed neck was attached.  I was able to concentrate on a couple of these glue spots (mainly at the top and bottom of the veneer-join) as I took the majority of the dyeoff again with 360 grit.

The trace dye seems to have done its job and the figure is standing out nicely. Now for more sanding, from 400 to 600 grit, to smooth the surfaces before the final dye job is done.