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March 2025: Fine weather in Marsanne (Drôme - France) meaning it's at last warm enough to get in my shop again and start a new project!
I have built two necks last year and one of them has been mounted/used on my Lyon-engraved CityCaster-003... I can use the other neck on a new build.
I'll spare you with the different steps in CNC carving the body... All details are in the CityCaster-003 build. Same files and pretty much same process. Of course as this is not and far from "mass production", there are always a few things that go off-script and require small changes.
I had for example to enlarge the back-plate seating area as the bit I used to carve the electronics cavity was slightly too short (1mm) and the last step of cavity carving resulted in burn traces left on the back of the body. The best way to remove them was to enlarge the seating area for the cover plate, which will also provide a better ground contact and easier support for the embedded magnets in the cover plate itself.
Talking of the cover plate, I noticed on CityCaster-003 that the plate -made of a 4mm thick walnut wood piece- has a tendency to warping. I'll have to fix this on #003 and will use a different approach for this build: Instead of a 4mm thick plate, I'll use 5mm which will result in something around 4.5mm after sanding, and I'll split the plate in two slices I'll glue together with their grain directions crossed. This will create a more stable plate. The added thickness will help in better allocating a depth for the 3.5mm needed for the magnets.
Fixed!
Dry-fitting the neck to calculate the position of the saddle plate
Another change I implemented was to not cut the body from its blank immediately after carving. I was able to -1- take my time in ensuring everything was correct/final before sawing the carved body from the blank, helping me with better aligning the selected saddle plate for strings with the neck scale-length. All saddle plates are slightly different and therefore it is necessary (unless you mass produce) to adjust the distance of the saddles from the neck. And when doing so, you have to re-adjust the engraving design, tedious but necessary if you want to have and engrave a perfectly aligned picture. In order to help in this process, keeping the full blank offers better alignment capabilities using the reference pins available with the body blanks, as these were also used as reference for the CNC carving. That way, both CNC carve and laser engraving are spot on.
Using the body and blank ref pins for spot on alignment for the laser engraving process
London it is!
I used the Lond map I already worked with for CityCaster-002, and try to best fit the river Thames curves to the body top of the guitar... Maybe Leo Fender was inspired by the river Thames curves for his Telecaster shape... It's almost a perfect match! :-)
As the full blank with its ref pins have been available all along, the laser-engraving is perfectly aligned with the body, saddle plate, neck pickup and neck heel cavities.
After a final inspection, it's finally time to saw the body off from its blank.
The engraving process went a lot smoother than it was for CityCaster-003. No EDF/power fail this time!, and I was able to 'cut' the laser engraving processing time from the 20+ hours it took on CityCaster-003 to slightly more than 6 hours by better adjusting laser travel speed and power parameters, and rotating the body blank to reduce the overall number of tracing lines needed for the laser fill process.
The body (front and back) after being cut off its blank piece and a slight sanding with #80 grain applied. There's a lot more sanding required!
Tie for the serious (an tedious) phase of sanding. The goal is two fold: Remove all traces of tooling, and prvide a smooth and enjoyable body to the user. This is done by progressing with 100, 120, 160, 180, 240, 320 grit sandpaper... and it does take time. There are lots of areas wher an electric sander cannot be used. I have done most of the work by hand, using firm foam pads to hold the sandpaper and work on all corners of the body. Once at 320 grit and happy with the surface, I thoroughly cleaned the body and applied a coat of sand-sealer, let it cure, ... and sand again with 320 before a second coat (touch ups really) of sand-sealer, curing, and sending... this time with 400 grit. Then come the oiling process: 4 coats of semi-satin, clear OSMO PolyX oil that nurishes and protect the wood, and hardens in 24 to 48 hours depending on the weather. In-between each coat of oil, a quick sanding with 400 grit to ensure there are no asperities on the body surface. Oli coats (after the first one) have to be very thin. 4 coats is a good value, 2 a strict minimum.
Right after sand-sealer applied
First coat of oil (not yet cured)
Second coat of oil (not yet cured)
Second coat of oil
I also worked on the electronics cover plate, made out of walnut, and fitted it to the shape on the back of the body. It holds in place with 10 small neodymium magnets (5 body side, and 5 on the plate side)
Below: Body and neck at oil coat #2
Osmo PolyX oil coats 3 to 7 or 8 are basically the same, with a light sanding with 400 grit paper for coats up to 6 and a thin coat of oil carefully wiped as the oil starts to thicken. This way the oil builds a strong/hard coat on the guitar body, providing the required protection.
I received a decent 400mm long/8mm ø drill bit and used it to drive the holes needed to pass wires between the pickup cavities and the electronics cavity at the back of the guitar.. The ø8mm is plenty for the few wires I need to layout.
Assembly time!
Assembly time!
Starting to put things together: Neck with body; Working on the nut, cleaning and polishing frets, soldering the pots and selector, etc. etc.
Controls are a volume pot with treble bleed, and a tone pot. The volume pot doubles as a out-of-phase switch for the single-coil neck pickup. The tone pot doubles as a split coil switch for the humbucker at the bridge position.
Strings On!
Strings On!
Final adjustments, with the guitar strung. Intonation, finalizing the guitar nut, adjusting strings height. No buzz, the neck is straight. The guitar plays great too!
Specs -CityCaster-London- 650mm scale length, Silver hardware. 9.2k double rail bridge humbucker pickup, 8.5k single coil neck pickup. 500k pots (volume and tone), 1nF treble bleed, 47nF tone cap, 3-way switch. Phase switch on neck pickup, coil tap switch on bridge pickup. 2-piece Basswood body with belly recess, arm-rest rounding and 3mm deep laser-engraved London city-map. C-shape Walnut/Chestnut/Walnut neck,16" radius Iroko fretboard with Boxwood side/top inlays and epoxy inlay markings on the fretboard top. Double-action truss rod. 2.2mm Stainless steel frets, Natural bone nut, 1/18 ratio locking tuners, 10-46 strings, Semi-mat clear Poly-X oil finish. Engraved "PM" back plate. Weight: 3.085kg. Quick audio test at https://youtu.be/0M7YtldFMPc
Specs -CityCaster-London- 650mm scale length, Silver hardware. 9.2k double rail bridge humbucker pickup, 8.5k single coil neck pickup. 500k pots (volume and tone), 1nF treble bleed, 47nF tone cap, 3-way switch. Phase switch on neck pickup, coil tap switch on bridge pickup. 2-piece Basswood body with belly recess, arm-rest rounding and 3mm deep laser-engraved London city-map. C-shape Walnut/Chestnut/Walnut neck,16" radius Iroko fretboard with Boxwood side/top inlays and epoxy inlay markings on the fretboard top. Double-action truss rod. 2.2mm Stainless steel frets, Natural bone nut, 1/18 ratio locking tuners, 10-46 strings, Semi-mat clear Poly-X oil finish. Engraved "PM" back plate. Weight: 3.085kg. Quick audio test at https://youtu.be/0M7YtldFMPc
UPDATE!!! A New Body!
UPDATE!!! A New Body!
The happy user of the guitar is from Lyon, and would have prefered a Lyon map instead of London engraved onto the body: I didn't have that type of body available at the time the guitar was ordered and could not have it ready by the time of delivery... But this is not a problem... In a few weeks, I'll transfer all its equipment to a personalized, Lyon engraved body... Pictures to come...
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