Because I’m still waiting on most of the parts (especially the wood!), I am going to bore you guys some more with my template stuff…

Still working on the pickguard template, sanding and filling the edges every now and then to get to the perfect shape as close as possible.

I sanded the inner sides of the neck pocket master template so that the neck template fits better. It now goes in and out well, still being tight, but not too tight anymore..

Then, onto the pickup cavity template. I screwed the first one up, but the second came out pretty okay. This is how I did it:

I made a CAD drawing of the cavities, being 1 mm wider than the pickups (equals 0.5 mm spacing around the pickups), with the centers marked of all circular shapes. Printed the drawing (and I had to scale it a few times to get it to the absolute correct size, due to the fact that my home printer has some deviation) and stuck it to some MDF.

I drilled the holes with my drill press, after marking the centers of the circles with a sharp pin, to act as a pilot hole:

Which resulted in this:

And then I used some straight piece of wood to screw to the template on all straight edges and routed the template flush with that on my router table:

Which, after some sanding, resulted in:

(What might appear to be a sloppy result at the two bottom circles, actually is some paper that tore out during drilling)

I hope I can show you some real wood dust shortly…

Today I received some very cool hardware!

An aluminum Hipshot A-style 3D bridge with .750 spacing, 5 lightweight Gotoh GB350 tuners (only about 38.5g per tuner), string ferrules and mother of pearl pickguard material.

Today I received pictures from the wood supplier, these are the pieces he picked before planing them to the size I ordered.

The swamp ash body core:

And this is the macassar ebony fingerboard blank on the hard rock maple neck blank:

That’s gonna be a very good looking fingerboard!!!

Then I proceeded with the neck pocket. I added pieces of tape where it was too wide, until I got a tight fit:

I’ve glued a body and neck print to a piece of MDF. This will become the neck pocket and pickup cavities (master) template. I aligned the neck on it so it’s perfectly in line with the bridge, clamped it to the table and fitted my neck pocket template around it. It then screwed the two boards together:

Removed the neck, this is going to be the final neck pocket route:

After sawing out the majority of the neck pocket and then routing it flush with my adjusted template I ended up with this *ridiculously* tight fitting neck pocket template:

So this is very nice, but it still needs some rework, because I guess there’s no room for a finish anymore… but as far as I consider, I’m on a roll !

First of all, I did some more template stuff, finished the headstock template which came out very nice and still working on the master template for the pickguard:

Then, I got this idea today when driving back home from work…

Trace the neck template with a copy bit to create an oversized neck pocket template:

Clean up the dust.. and you’ll end up with this:

Make a plug exactly 3 times the router bit’s thickness:

Attach it to a board of MDF, drill a hole through it and clamp it around the router bit on the router table:

Attach a new piece of MDF to the oversized neck pocket template and do some routing again:

And I’ve made an inverse copy of the neck, being the neck pocket:

So… well.. I think it came out quite nice for a first try, but it’s not good enough for me. Maybe I’ll try again, or maybe I’ll try to adjust the neck pocket template to make it fit better.

What happened? The blue tape around the plug was actually meant for adjusting possibility: at the first route the pocket was too tight, I peeled of a layer of tape and did another pass with the router. Still not large enough but almost there, so peeled another layer of tape of the plug… but there was only one layer left at that time and I thought: oh well, let’s take it of completely. And now it’s just a tad too large…

Time for an update on design and specs.

I renamed it to Paradox J5 due to dropping the multi-scale part of the design / build.

Specs are:

• Swamp ash body with flamed maple top, separated by a thin wenge accent layer
• Macassar ebony fingerboard
• Hard rock maple neck, probably with U-channel truss rod and two graphite rods
• Angled back headstock, same veneers as body
• White pearl pickguard
• All chrome hardware and knobs
• Aluminum Hipshot A-style bridge
• Extra light Gotoh GB350 tuners
• Delano JMVC FE pickups, wired passive

That’s about it for now, I’ve ordered most parts about a week ago and the wood is ordered as well. I cannot wait to start and I am very excited about this build!

Small steps, but I don’t have a lot of time and since I’ll have to wait for the wood for another three weeks and the parts aren’t in yet either, I can take my time on these important steps.

Cutting the master neck template:

Almost finished master templates – still have to make the pickguard template and the cavity templates (pickups, neck pocket and control cavity):

Ready for routing the final neck template from plywood with my very basic router table:

Works like a charm! Here’s the (unsanded) neck template:

I know it’s not much, but I’m doing all I can… next up some more templates and jig stuff I guess.

I made an alternative drawing of the neck pocket, so it runs under the pickguard but not entirely to the pickup (which produces a stronger joint), but that would only give me a square inch or so extra neck pocket surface, so I decided to take the bet.. I’ll stick with the original design.

Today I’ve routed the final body template out of 3/8" good quality plywood and it came out very nice, much better than my previous templates that I made directly out of plywood.

Here’s the body template:

And here you can see the sides are straight, smooth and the curves very fluent. I think it comes close to a CNC routed template :

Furthermore, I’m in doubt about the neck pocket: not sure the neck pocket is large enough to support the neck and make a solid bolt-on join.

Here’s a close up:

The bass side of the neck pocket is 4" long, the center comes close to 4 3/8" and the treble side ends up being not much more than an inch.

Thinking to extend the neck under the pickguard untill it reaches the neck pickup.

Well, I have to wait for the wood three more weeks (delivery), in the meantime I can work on templates and jigs. Last week was spent on making decisions and finalizing the design. So you’ll have to be patient, just like me.

Quick text-only update:

• Decided to go for the JMVC pu’s in passive mode, maybe I’ll add a preamp later on but initially the bass will be passive.
• I used the router table to copy the shape of the master template to the final body shape template, turns out to be great!! The table works like a charm.
• The body template came out unbelievably smooth and straight! Only one void in the plywood I have to deal with. I’ll share some pictures soon.
• I orderd the wood, pickups, pickguard material, bridge and tuners.