Strat Step 01

Hello guitar-pickers,

I'm building a Strat-style from bits and pieces. Many of the bits were made by Schaller, in what was West Germany. Since my "Yamacaster" (Pacifica)has been reverted back to single-pole for the neck and middle pickups, I'm going to go Les Paul and use a pair of Schaller Golden 50's humbuckers combined with a Schaller 475 hard-tail bridge. The machines are also by Schaller so, now, I am formally introducing my xpatUSA Schallercaster!
I'll publish progress in a series of posts called "strat step 01" et. subs. I might put a news feed up on my website so that people can put it in their NewsReader if they so desire. So, here we go with the first post . . .

My new neck came without a nut, so it was off to Bellville meat market to get one of these . . .

After leaving it outside for a good while, I cut the middle piece out. Gross, the rotting marrow inside still stunk to high heaven, so my wife kindly boiled it clean.

Next, an 18-point tenon-saw was used to slice off a piece about 3/16". More stench!

After much fret-sawing and filing down to 1/8" thick, here it is

At first, slotting the nut looked like it would be a simple job. Ya know, just figure the required spread of the strings and divide by 5. However, a little Googling revealed that equal spacing between the slots slot is old hat and that the modern way is to have an equal gap between the string edges. Fortunately my math is still up to such complex subjects and the internet has some string-spacing calculators anyway. Also, Stewart-Macdonald has a nifty ruler which increases each spacing by 0.004" as you go from treble to bass. We'll see . . .


The next job is to fill in the pre-existing tremolo hole in the body. I will be fitting a Schaller hard-tail (non-tremolo) bridge for which (of course) the fixing screws go right where the big tremolo hole is.


Best Regards,

Ted

WebSite: http://kronometric.org