I started what I thought was a simple bit of maintenance on a Washburn EA16TS for a friend. The guitar has been stored in a case in the loft for a number of years and the brief was to check out the electrics, give everything a clean, do a setup and get it back in a playable state.

First problem, the guitar seems to be receiving a signal from the pickup, the tuner works and is pretty accurate measured against a clip on tuner. The output through the jack socket is mostly noise and I haven’t got a suitable XLR out connector to test that output. I’ve had the control/preamp and the output/battery box units out and sprayed contact cleaner on the PCBs and connectors and still mostly noise.

The second problem is that on removing the strings, the end of the E6 string appears to have permanently attached itself to the bridge pin!! I can pull the pin out about 4mm but it wants to pull the string and ball end out with it, jamming everything. The string won’t push back in to the body cavity and I can’t get a grip on the ball end inside the body to pull it free. I’ve never seen this happen before, usually a wiggle of the pin or the string frees everything. I don’t want to use the age old adage of brute force and ignorance in case I cause irreparable damage!😂😂

I’d really appreciate any advice anyone cares to offer on how best to deal with these problems🤔🤔😃

Thanks,

Brian😃🎸🤔

I am having trouble understanding a wiring diagram due to conflicting information I am getting from ChatGPT. all the info is in the zip file. I am going to use new humbuckers 58/15 LT TCI (2025) from PRS (no information inside the box), a Schaller 5-position megaswitch, and a volume/tone pot. In the PDF 'prs wire diagram info pickups' I tried to create the circuit. Can someone tell me if this is right or wrong?

@somethingnicer or anyone else maybe you can help me. a lot of information in the zip file.

Thanks in advance, Benjamin

Ps. ask me if you need more info.

All in all, I'm rather glad I ended up doing this "affordable" guitar for my first solo project (simple woods, decent made in China hardware). It's amazing how many things can go wrong without Mark looking over my shoulder.

I am working on a very weird size bass guitar. 

the fretboard and the top were the reason I started building this. 

My problem is: 5 string bases have 70mm+ string spread. I need mine to have 60mm because of the size of the fretboard

I cannot find anything that fits these sizes in the standard bridge producers. Any ideas?   

The problem arises when it’s time to start the finish. After raising the grain and sanding I’ll then put whatever stain I’m using (black mostly) first to help bring out the figure. All of my stain is water-based and I’ll end up with spots where the veneer has bubbled up, basically swelling from the liquid it soaked up I’m assuming. But it bubbles up and is clearly not glued to the body.

My question is, is that due to bad clamping or bad glue spreading? And should glue be spread on both the body and the veneer or is one surface enough?

So now I'm at the point where I'm making sure all my switches and pickups fit and all and I'm running into a new issue... First off this is a LPJ style and I'm going to hook up 2 P90s with a 3 way toggle, 2 volume and 1 tone pot. I've got no issue with the circuitry here. But now I need to widen the base of my toggle switch hole so the actual bulk of the switch fits. Earlier Mark had us drill the initial hole where the threads stick out.

But now my hole seems much too close to the edge to widen it the way I need to. In the picture you see the forstner bit I would use to get the correct diameter. It seems far too close to the edge to do it this way. I thought about maybe routing a small rectangle to fit the contacts but that seems dicey because it would have to go down pretty far. I'd love it if they made a thinner toggle, but looking around I haven't found anything like that.....

Does anyone have any ideas to get my toggle switch in without compromising the integrity?

Thanks!

So I could move the neck further into the body, but then that puts the heel below the top of the guitar body. Is there a way that could work? That doesn't seem right to me.

I could keep the neck where it is and trim off a bit more of the tail of the neck (the few inches of exposed wood below the fretboard) but that would put the bridge really close to the bottom pickup route. This seems worse to me.

If I chose to move the neck lower which puts my bridge where I originally calculated, how can it work if the heel is below the body? CAN the heel be below the body?

Is there another move here?

See pics below

Edit: I think I know where I went wrong. I kept all 24 frets and didn't compensate for the longer neck when I was drawing out my bridge and pickup placements..... oops

1. I stupidly lifted up before the router spun down and I dug into the face of the neck..... It will go under the fretboard, so my thought is wood glue and sawdust. Is that the solution here? This one doesn't seem too bad.

2. During profiling, the template slipped (I know, I need better tape). I caught it almost immediately, but it dug into the side too far, by very little. This will result in the fretboard being slightly wider than the neck (in this 1 inch section), I mean less than a mm. It's not very big....

do I fill the side somehow and sand? I wouldn't be able to thin the fretboard because the nut needs to be flush with it right? Is there a solution on this one other than just chalking it up to first time mistakes?

Thanks in advance!