So many guitars, so little talent: mockingbird

Showing posts with label mockingbird. Show all posts

Doing a little jig

So, one of the problems with the Mockingbird was that the nut was much too high. I tried carefully sanding the nut shelf but it wasn't enough and I made shelf convex, which is obviously no good.

There was absolutely no way I could get this flat enough with hand tools, I just don't have the eye or skills.

So I made a jig. This was a bit of acrylic sheet cut up and stuck together so it's snug on the neck and resting on the outer edges of the fretboard. That way it should be parallel with the fretboard and pretty solid. I was thinking about making a clamp for this but just opted for some cable ties as it's not like I'll be using this very often. The jig isn't very pretty as it's been roughly cut, but I wasn't aiming for pretty.

A full size router is quite heavy so I used my Dremel with a basic plastic router attachment. I used another piece of perspex with a decent straight edge clamped to the jig to ensure I couldn't start chewing up the fretboard south of the nut.

Working carefully back and forth this did a great job of gently shaving the nut shelf as flat as I expect to see such things. In the penultimate photo it looks like I've missed a bit, but it's actually a 'tide mark' on the end of the fretboard where there's no finish.

Once I blew the dust off, the new gold nut I'd bought for this guitar fitted perfectly on, I had previously been very hesitant about this job but it's turned out perfectly. I ended up shimming the nut very slightly with some card but I deliberately cut the shelf quite a lot as it's easier to shim the nut than keep going back to take more material off.

With the new nut in place and the guitar restrung, the nut height seems spot on. It's a bit late to play it now but tomorrow I'll have a good play of it.

Of course all this will just show up the fret wear, but I've made progress and perhaps dressing the frets is the next thing I'll learn to do.

The return of an old adversary

As the RR2V project is nearing completion I want to get working on some of the others. This Mockinbird was my 'first project of the modern era' and has never been quite right despite a lot of time spent on it.

I wasn't happy with the pickups I originally fitted, so I replaced them with some Kent Armstrong 'Rockers' I bought ages ago. These work nicely and I'm happy with them.

I wasn't happy with the nasty monkey metal tremolo so I bought an adequate quality Korean made licensed low-profile one. This is much better, but now the tremolo route just isn't deep enough for any upwards use.

The neck relief was non-existent, perhaps even slightly negative. I added a little and now it plays much more nicely.

The nut height was excessive. I sanded it carefully and improved on this, but it wasn't enough and the nut shelf isn't 100% flat afterwards.

So I've a few things to attend to.

Cut the nut shelf some more and make sure it's flat
Fit a new gold nut to match the rest of the hardware
Route the tremolo inset in the top of the body out deeper

Tonight I've filled the original screw holes for the nut but cutting the shelf is going to be an interesting proposition. There seems to be little advice online other than 'cut it flat and parallel with the fretboard' and an assumption you have access to a milling machine. Which I don't.

I think I'm going to make a 'jig' which clamps to the neck and will allow me to use a Dremel with router attachment on the nut shelf. It'll need to stay parallel with the fretboard and have some guides so I stay within the bounds of the existing shelf. Using it freehand could result in disaster.

Routing the tremolo inset out should be OK, I already have a template for this and as accuracy is less important I can just use a full size router on that. I will need to acquire a 'guided' router bit though, I don't have one.

Sanding my nut pt. 1

Look away now if you're squeamish, today I sanded the nut shelf on the project Mockingbird.

To do this I made another makeshift tool. Using a rotary trimmer I cut a piece of sandpaper the same width as the nut then stuck it to a piece of wood with double sided tape. I slackened the strings off and held them out of the way while I carefully sanded the nut shelf, trying to keep it as flat as I could.

This seemed to work OK, I put the guitar back together and there were no disasters, but I really haven't taken anywhere near enough off yet. If I fret a note at the first fret you can see I'm bending the string down hard towards the fretboard as much as I am fretting it. This ruins the intonation at low frets and makes the guitar tiring to play and I've come to the conclusion this is why I've never really liked it.

So I'm going to have to repeat this process, perhaps actually measuring how much I'm taking off this time. There is probably some special jig a real luthier would have for doing this kind of thing, I'll just continue with the bodgery.

Less cheese please Louise

Given I'd decided the Mockingbird was salvageable without too much pain it was time for the nasty monkey metal tremolo to go. I ordered a reasonable quality low profile one from CH guitars, it's no Schaller or Gotoh, but it is the sort of perfectly adequate licensed copy found on loads of midrange Korean guitars.

Once fitted and with the usual joy of floating/intonating a Floyd Rose from scratch it's obviously much better than the previous one. It was supplied with two new studs & bushes with a nice fine pitch thread on them. However I opted to leave the original BC Rich bushes and studs in place. If I ever refinish the guitar I may pull the bushes and fit these instead.

I also got a new 43mm nut at the same time, I'll fit this and set the height at some point soon.

Some progress with the Mockingbird

So, flushed with the success of setting up the RS8V I attacked the iffy Mockingbird. I slackened off the truss rod to give some relief then lowered the nut height a little. This time I attacked the nut shelf as it was more substantial than the RS8V and made of wood rather than weird plasticky stuff.

This has really helped and made it much more playable. I'll have to take a bit more off the nut height but I've decided the monkey metal tremolo really has to go. I'll order up a new one and do both at the same time.

With it approaching playable I went for the electrics. I ditched the neck P90 and Epiphone bridge then fitted a matched pair of Kent Armstrong 'rockers' I bought ages ago cheaply. I had written off the idea of using them in this as the bridge wasn't bought as F-spaced but when I actually measured it's actually pretty close to it. In my usual fashion I stuck in some push/pull pots and wired it for coil tap. Given some 4-wire pickups it's almost rude not to.

With it all back together it's a lot closer to what I wanted from the Mockingbird when I started modding it, but there's still a way to go.

Your mission, should you accept it...

...is to try and make this Mockingbird play nicely.

One of my first noughties acquisitions, this has never played well. I got it in a scruffy state, changed the hardware, messed around with several flavours of pickups and so on but it has never been nice to play. In fact it's always been a bit nasty.

So today I ripped out the pickups that were in there. The bridge pot I used last time I swapped things around was iffy so I simply wired up the original BC Rich bridge pickup straight to the jack socket. This way I will not be at all distracted by dicking around with the electrics and can just concentrate on working out what it is that makes it nasty.

A very quick look shows the following.

Almost no (if any) relief in the neck
A quite high action at the nut

These could easily be conspiring to result in the current state of it. The cheap-ass tremolo (literally the cheapest I could buy so I could see what a gold one looked like on the guitar) is something to think about swapping but to be honest it works OK.

BC Rich #3 - 'NJ neck-thru Mockingbird'

This was the first of my makeover projects. I'd always liked the Mockingbird shape and fancied a neck-thru model so I bought this unseen on eBay. However when I got hold of it I found it was in worse condition than I'd expected.

The photos don't really show them very well, but it has a variety of finish chips, the electrics were a bit dodgy and the threads in the neck pickup were stripped. It was badly setup, filthy and played like total crap. I also decided it didn't look very nice with the black hardware.

So I waded in and made lots of changes to it. I've rewired it with a Kent Armstrong humbucker sized P90 at the neck and an Epiphone humbucker I had lurking at the bridge.

I also replaced all the black hardware with gold. As I wasn't sure what it would look like I bought very cheap tremolo and have never been very happy with it. It's one of those 'speedloader' ones currently widely sold where the string passes through a tube at the back and over the saddle. So it's not double locking. I had no idea it was one of these when I bought it and I really need to get a better one.

It doesn't matter how many times I've gone back and tweaked this guitar it never seems to sound great or play very nicely. It is just generally disappointing. Maybe one day I'll get it sorted out. The temptation to 'throw good money after bad' and buy a premium tremolo and bridge pickup is high.

Updates

Your mission, should you accept it...
Some progress with the Mockingbird