I’m not somebody who quits easily. Believe me that I have tried various methods within the constraints that I have: talent, knowhow and tools:
My girlfriend does not want me to get more tools and make everything dirty. I respect that.
I don’t have enough knowhow, and all methods that were discussed here and at zzze ZZeermann forum did not get me good results.
But most importantly: I don’t seem to have the talent to saw perfectly rounded and straight lines. To you that must seem strange, as it is your job. But it might be your job cause you got that talent?
Now I have to let somebody else do it. For me to have somebody else do something I want to do myself is not a great feeling. But in this case it makes sense.
I am open to suggestions how to resolve that though, really!
Find a CNC near you. Give the person/shop a vector file of your pickguard or, if you have a pickguard that fits, give them that (although a vector file is better, less work to use).
Other than that, go after-market. There are vendors out there. They can create many pickguards for usual suspect models, but maybe not for yours. In that case, it’s back to providing a vector file they can use with their CNC.
That’s exactly my plan.
Can’t find any STL files for my pickguard, so I would need to “reverse engineer”.
Hopefully I can just give the shop my pickguards and control plates and they do their thing!
I would try to use the stock pickguard as a routing template/guide with a copy router bit, with the ball bearing following the shape of the pickguard. That’s often how pickguards are made (with templates), and guitar/bass bodies too. Just go slow and with very little force, because your template will be thin and weak.
The thin tone of the JX worries me.
Compared another bass with the 35TWX in single coil mode the difference is significant. Though both basses are the same (except strings and pickups) - and the 35TWX in single coil mode should be comparable to a JX, I guess.
In combination with the P its’s great (but it just adds nuances).
Will post some sound files later to show the difference…
I think I have seen everything by now about making a pickguard.
True!
Even worse: the dust and the little particles that are all over the place. You cannot imagine how much dust you get from dremeling a plastic pickguard. Wood is different - I dremel wood all the time (Battery cavity, output jack - but NOT the pickup cavity)
My girlfriend was absolutely unhappy and I had to promise here that this will not happen again. We still find pieces of plastic in the house, on our clothes and on our body.
I have truly given up on this. Except when @barney has something constructive to add. I expect him to have some good ideas about something like this (within the constraints I mentioned before).
PS Any ideas about my JX pickup? I find this really strange. Maybe it’s cause the active EMG P is so powerful, compared to the JX?
I ask myself, if mixing X and non X is a good idea!?
For a plastic pickguard I wouldn’t dremel it, I would just cut with an art knife and/or razor saw and then sand it. And yes, the plastic dust gets all over when you sand.
But can you really cut 3-4mm plastic? With curves? And I have one pickguard with a very thin brushed aluminium layer…
Somebody proposed a heated knife … but that melts the material quickly, leading to ugly residues.
Again, I’m worried about the curves. Saws tend to be good at straight lines. Also dust!
Why are you making it so thick? 2-3mm seems more than adequate. And the saw would work fine there, followed by trimming with the knife and then sanding.
TBH the saw would probably work fine with 3-4mm too.
I just measured a 3-ply pickguard and it was just over 2mm.
Yeah - my worries about the coping saw is that my motoric disabilities will lead to a similar bad result.
The scroll saw looks promising. Intuitively I think it is “smoother”…
I can test that around the corner, as we have a local socialist community center that provides all kinds of tools for the people (scroll saws, CNC, laser cut) etc…
