Re-use

So, I used the jig I made ages ago for the Mockingbird and ground down the nut shelf on the RS10V. Nothing very exciting to look at but it's made the guitar much nicer to play.

I may need to go back later and shave it a little more but it'll do for now.

It's still very 'tinny' sounding though.

A little wobble

So I made myself a deep, oversize routing template for the RS10V by moving the acrylic one I had around. Annoyingly, the router chattered and put a little wobble in the front edge but I figured I could just manually skip it.

With this fixed to the front of the guitar using double sided tape I worked at getting it done. Sadly I failed to keep the router out of the wobble and ended up with a little wobble in the guitar body.

It's been done to two different levels, lower at the back so that the tremolo has a serious upwards and downwards range.

With it all back together it looks OK and the wobble isn't too obvious. Maybe I won't start on that custom guitar project just yet though.

It's now properly playable although the nut is still high and the nut shelf needs routing. As expected the combo of carbolite fretboard, Floyd Rose and odd EMG Selects means it has a very 'thin' sound. I may stick some Duncan Blackouts in it to compensate, although I've also got a JB/Jazz combo lurking in a box.

I'm still not sure what to do about the finish. It looks great in the photos with flash but is very dark and muddy in real life. It's scratched but not broken through and could probably be polished up OK. This would save me a refinish of the body but when I cut the end of the neck off I simply can't help but have to reshape the end. Which may lead to taking the finish off at least the neck.

Still avoiding sanding

I've been tackling the RS10V today instead of the sanding.

First up I had to see what size hole I needed to drill for the bushes, they seemed a bit big for a 9.5mm but might be loose in a 10mm one. So I did a couple of test holes in a piece of scrap wood.

It turned out the 10mm hole was a fairly snug fit, so I drilled out the holes I'd marked previously.

With this done I loosely assembled it, using a clamp to hold the nut on so I could check that the studs were in the right place and the strings looked right. They're both rather close to the edge of the fretboard as the RS10V probably has a narrower neck than the donor BC Rich, but it looks OK to me.

So I went ahead and screwed the nut to the neck, roughly fitted a pickup so I could test the guitar and stuck the strings on.

Starting from an unknown position the Speedloader is a bit of a pain to set up. Mostly because the little grub hex screws in the saddles that are used for gross tuning are really fiddly to use.

Balancing these, the spring tension and the tremolo rest position took a fair old while, but in the end it's nicely sorted and close to intonated without having to move the saddles. Which shows I must have got the bridge in the right position.

I had to adjust the truss rod a couple of times as it had zero relief and buzzed badly at the lower frets, which is part of the reason this took so long.

Now I've done this I'm going to have to strip it down again to deepen and shift back the tremolo route. There's almost no upward movement on the tremolo as it hits the body. I'll leave this until another day as I'll give the neck a few days to 'settle'.

I also want to route a little off the nut shelf, the nut is currently excessively high. Thankfully I've already made myself a jig for this.

Slow progress on the RS10V

So I've had a busy weekend but decided to have a little go at the RS10V this evening.

I carefully drilled the pilot holes for the tremolo studs then waved the tremolo and routing templates at the body. I'm going to have to route the body a fair bit deeper for the tremolo to be any use as the Speedloader has quite a lot of gubbins at the back.

Despite this the guided router bit I have is quite deep so I'll probably still have to raise the router template up on blocks. I think I need to get another shorter bit. I also need some more varied drill bits as the tremolo studs look to fit an approximately 9.8mm hole rather than a 10mm one.

This conspired to make me give up on this for tonight, but I may have another look next weekend.

Marking up the RS10V

I spent a bit of time marking up the RS10V this evening.

I don't have a particularly good way to do this on a made up guitar, especially one with a carved top, most instructions seem to revolve around building a guitar from scratch and working from a centre line.

The way I've done this so far is to take a long straight edge and extend lines out from the edge of the neck across the body then measure an equal distance from the nut on both sides.

I did this on the RS10V and carefully checked it twice. It looks right by eye but then that doesn't mean much.

Next thing is to drill some small pilot holes and check it all again before drilling the holes out to their final size.

Plugging away

As the tremolo studs in the RS10V are in the wrong place for a Speedloader I need to plug and redrill them.

This is not the first time I've done this so I'm getting a lot more confident at it. The current holes were roughly 8mm but slightly 'serrated' from the bushes just as they should be. So I drilled them out to 9mm, being careful not to eat into the top surrounding the tremolo route.

Then it was just a matter of cutting some 9mm dowel, using a toothpick to spread some glue in the holes and tapping the dowels in. The dowels are slightly proud but I'll carefully route them flat when I route the top deeper, which will probably be necessary.

I've managed to source a cheap Speedloader guitar and I'm now waiting for it to arrive, so this project is moving slowly forward.

The photos make the blue quilt finish look really nice but the finish is so thick and dark it's hard to see. If the project to convert this to headless works out OK I'll try to thin the finish down with wet and dry in order to get rid of the nasty scratches then put a single clear coat back over the top. I'm hoping this will also improve the look.

The not so cunning plan

So, the plan isn't that cunning really. My friend JayGee said, on seeing a Speedloader equipped guitar, that it would make far more sense to use them to make headless guitars than what BC Rich did with them.

Here is the RS10V alongside my Speedloader Mockingbird and I've had a go at swapping the tremolo across to see how it goes together.

The nut fits quite nicely, but I kind of always expected it to.

The bridge isn't quite there though. At first glance it looks like it should work and the studs have a standard 74mm spacing. Before buying the guitar I also checked that the scale length of the RS10V is 25.5" (by measuring the RS8V) so I knew my stash of Speedloader strings should work.

Unfortunately in another bit of non-standard madness, Washburn placed the bridge studs 25" from the nut when common fitment is about 25.1"-25.2". This is opposite to the issue I had with the RR2V.

The Speedloader only works by being in a very very specific place relative to the nut, so as you can see the strings are all flapping around, not under tension at all. A quick measure up shows the bridge needs to be roughly 25.25" from the nut.

Despite this problem, having mocked up how this fits together I reckon this can be resolved and a Speedloader fitted. There's a fair bit of wood in the area of the bridge studs so moving them back should be practical. I'll need to route the top more deeply for the tremolo too, which will be interesting because of the carved top, but it's all grist to the learning mill.

Now I need to haunt eBay to pick up a Speedloader as I don't particularly want to strip down the Mockingbird. Whole BC Rich guitars fitted with one come up occasionally and often change hands for a pittance as they were really unpopular. Although it's a little random and sometimes you get a couple of people who fancy one bidding against each other so the price goes right up.

Washburn #13 - 'RS10V' blue quilt

The RS10V is a Washburn cut from the same cloth as my RS8V but is the fancier model with a quilted top and there are abalone inlays in the composite fretboard.

Electrics and so on are identical but this has a different tremolo. Instead of the double locking 600T setup, this has one that doesn't lock at the bridge. It looks like a standard Floyd Rose style bridge but the strings pass though the saddles from the back with the ball ends intact.

I've watched a few of these come and go on eBay and this is the first cheap one. I really like the RS8V which is why I've been keeping an eye on these.

There is a reason for it being dirt cheap, which should be pretty obvious.

I have a cunning plan.