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Not Your Momma's Strat......


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Cool.

While I always start a build with a solid plan for what the guitar is going to be, I always leave a little room for the guitart to tell me what it wants to be. Once they get to a certain place in the build, they start to develop a personality. I try to allow that personality to have a say in how they want to look.

I will admit to throwing up a couple of scary shots early in the build.........maybe that's what lead to this bad girl's temper tantrums. :blink:

SR

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Having had the unique opportunity to actually inspect and play every guitar that Scott has built, I can tell you that this one is by far the nicest. I haven't yet plugged this one in, but I expect it's pretty sweet. I'll have to talk him into letting me baby sit it one weekend.

The carve...very sexy and comfy. And that shelf for the controls...brilliant idea. Although I never quite "got it" when he went there with the build, I totally get it now....moves the volume knob and switch out of he way just a little bit, but not so far that getting there is a chore. Cool idea. And the neck...yep. THIS one is very familiar to me. Reminds me of the neck on my Nuno - which I've always loved. Wide and thin...very cool. The headstock...always unique, but this one has a little more finess in it...a little more artistic movement in the way it was carved.

Another fantastic instrument, Scott!

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Why thank you Nevin. I admit to loving it a little more each day myself.

I did a purely subjective side by side comparison on unplugged sound between this and the red F-hole guitar this morning. The scale length, string size and brand and tuning are the only thing they have in common.....well frets and ebony boards, but those didn't come into play. As expected this one sounded considerably brighter and crisper. This one has newer strings so much of the difference is likely no more than that. This one has a harder top and the strings are seated in the neck tenon. The other has a soft maple top and the string ferrules are seated in spanish cedar. This one has some sort of composite bridge saddles in the voodoo laden Hannes bridge, the other chrome plated brass saddles. Other than the bridge questions, there is no reason not to expect this one to sound brighter.

So what about that voodoo? The Hannes bridge marketing says it is intended to isolate the string vibration for greater clarity and less influence from neighboring vibrating strings. I'm not sure eliminating sympathetic vibrations is a good or bad thing, but there are probably cases that could be made for it. Like I said, unplugged strumming does show this one to have greater clarity, but I don't know how much of that can be attributed to the bridge. The one thing I have noticed that may point to that is during a barre chord. A less than perfect barre is more noticeable on this guitar than the other. It may be that the influenced vibrations of the non Hannes bridge may help cover a muted string in the barre, where as the isolated vibrations of the Hannes do allow each string to sound more individually, rewarding good technique and pointing out lesser technique. Could be a useful training tool.......

Who knows when it comes to voodoo.

SR

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I dunno Scott. I could never get on board with all that elimination of sympatethic vibration due to string isolation bull. Way I see it, the strings are all running accross the nut at their other end, Do they not vibrate there ? will they not have any effect on the string either side at the nut ?. & if you fret the strings in a chord, do you not need special fingers & a special neck to eliminate any influence from one string to another ?

But still, regardless of any of that. its still a rocking lookin guitar.

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I dunno Scott. I could never get on board with all that elimination of sympatethic vibration due to string isolation bull. Way I see it, the strings are all running accross the nut at their other end, Do they not vibrate there ? will they not have any effect on the string either side at the nut ?. & if you fret the strings in a chord, do you not need special fingers & a special neck to eliminate any influence from one string to another ?

But still, regardless of any of that. its still a rocking lookin guitar.

Good points Paulie and I totally agree. There may be some reduction of sympathetic vibration at best. I don't think it's possible to eliminate it even if each end were isolated completely. The sound waves from one vibrating string will cause some degree of vibration in others. Is that not essentially what feedback is, soundwaves and vibration feeding off of each other?

I'm not even sure eliminating sympathetic vibrations is a desireable thing, at least in terms of guitars. If you don't want the tones to influence each other, play a digital device instead of a guitar if you ask me.

The concept may sell some bridges though. But not to me. I bought one because it looks good and looked like it would feel good. It does.

And the guitars sounds great so it's not hurting anything......course I'll never know if it would have sounded better with a different bridge.

Anyway there's some voodoo surrounding this thing, or Schaller wants there to be, so I thought I'd throw some bait in the water and see what hit it.

You were first. :D

SR

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Despite some minor hiccups hat came out awesome Scott. Love the top. I'd love to get my hands on it to put it through some paces. Any chance of a short demo vid?

Not much chance of a vid.....but perhaps I can prevail upon Hook (Skullsessions) for another set of audio files.

She sounds a lot like a strat....... with some balls.

SR

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I was going over my pics to choose something for a GOTM entry and realized I didn't have any full frontals. So I hung it on the fence about an hour after sunrise and shot some more pics. These are totally gratuitous.......but I have to see what they look like in this format first don't I?

IMG_3070.JPG

IMG_3071.JPG

IMG_3074.JPG

IMG_3076.JPG

Seems to be a ghost in that last one......

SR

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Nice plan. I have a couple of guitar bodies for the fire, old manky pine teles I call King Mojo's.

made up 12 of them then tested the bodies to destruction. you know - put them in a vice & smack them with a mallet, Jump on them, use them as part of the floor for a few months. The timber they are made from is so weathered you have to do this stuff to be sure they are still structurally sound. 4 died, 3 are under way to becoming absolute-piece-of-crapocasters. or at least they will look like total junk.

Anyway - Im burning the remains of the rest, offcuts & dead bodies, gotta clear out the scrap pile.

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Nice to see you guys really fighting for this one.

Oh yea its fierce !! :angry:

But there is no real love lost, he is my love child after all.

which is all the more impressive considering he is a little older than me, :blink:

That must have been one hell of a night! There's going to be some goooooood stories around this campfire. :D Maybe you could introduce me to Mum?

SR

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I dunno Scott. I could never get on board with all that elimination of sympatethic vibration due to string isolation bull. Way I see it, the strings are all running accross the nut at their other end, Do they not vibrate there ? will they not have any effect on the string either side at the nut ?. & if you fret the strings in a chord, do you not need special fingers & a special neck to eliminate any influence from one string to another ?

But still, regardless of any of that. its still a rocking lookin guitar.

Good points Paulie and I totally agree. There may be some reduction of sympathetic vibration at best. I don't think it's possible to eliminate it even if each end were isolated completely. The sound waves from one vibrating string will cause some degree of vibration in others. Is that not essentially what feedback is, soundwaves and vibration feeding off of each other?

I'm not even sure eliminating sympathetic vibrations is a desireable thing, at least in terms of guitars. If you don't want the tones to influence each other, play a digital device instead of a guitar if you ask me.

The concept may sell some bridges though. But not to me. I bought one because it looks good and looked like it would feel good. It does.

And the guitars sounds great so it's not hurting anything......course I'll never know if it would have sounded better with a different bridge.

Anyway there's some voodoo surrounding this thing, or Schaller wants there to be, so I thought I'd throw some bait in the water and see what hit it.

You were first. :D

SR

I'm gonna be second. I have a test body, a hannes bridge and a cheapo bridge (or two). I'll be making a thread soon.

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Good guitars make some noise it contributes to the "alive" feeling.

Sympathetic vibration is part of that.

Isolating strings contributes to sterility.

I just refuse to buy into the Hannes. I guess I should order one and see.

Seems like it is a pain to adjust the string height.

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Good guitars make some noise it contributes to the "alive" feeling.

Sympathetic vibration is part of that.

Isolating strings contributes to sterility.

I just refuse to buy into the Hannes. I guess I should order one and see.

Seems like it is a pain to adjust the string height.

I agree with pretty much each line of that. The pain part of string height adjustment is the fact that you need to loosen them a fair amount to be able to get the allen wrench in without damaging the string. A good ball end allen wrench helps.

The other thing I noticed is the alignment template in relation to the scale. It has you locating the high E saddle to the scale line with it pretty much in the middle of it's adjustment. The bridge itself is pre-angled to an angle similar to the way you'd set up a TOM. This lengthens the scale for each lower string and I found I needed to shorten the scale for each of them for intonation. Setting up in the middle of the travel effective reduced the amount of useable travel by half, because of the angle. The adjustment screw is not all that long, so for my lowest three strings, the saddles only have a couple of threads of screw holding them to the bridge. The screws really need to be longer. They are small and very fine threaded. I have already found you cannot just walk into even a very good hardware store and expect to find a longer bolt with the same threads.

I'm looking forward to seeing pan_kara's numbers. This guitar sounds awesome to me, so the bridge certainly hasn't hurt it.....as far as I can tell.

SR

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