thaumgarrett Posted January 14, 2019 Report Share Posted January 14, 2019 Hi again! That CNC project I posted renderings of a few months back is still in the works. But in the meantime our office just got rid of several 63/64" MDF desks and on a whim I threw one of them onto the ShopBot... The shape was inspired by some of the exotic designs that came out of budget Japanese manufacturers in the 60's and true to those influences, I'm going to load it with a ton of extra dials and switches. Going to set the neck and mount the pickups and bridge tonight. Woohoo! Incidentally I know MDF has more disadvantages than advantages but I never realized how easy it was to work. Cuts like butter! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thaumgarrett Posted January 18, 2019 Author Report Share Posted January 18, 2019 Good news: Finished. Bad news: Sounds awful. Actually between the pickups and MDF construction it sounds excellent - those GFS "crunch" pickups have a very rich and flexible sound. BUT... it doesn't stay in tune (I'm guessing because of the very flimsy neck tenon I was forced to use due to the thickness of the material) and has a LOT of hum. I'd ordinarily attribute it to the lack of shielding, except my music-box guitar from the previous post is even less shielded and almost noiseless. Instead I'll just blame the pots.... first because I bought cheap Chinese ones on Amazon instead of the usual Korean ones from GFS and second because when I flip the blow switch and bypass the pots, 90% of the noise disappears. Lessons learned from this failure... 1" MDF is a great material sonically, less so structurally EZ-Lock tuners won't help you if the neck won't stay straight GFS pickups sound a LOT better than their price suggests Cheap pots can ruin your sound Poster frame plexiglass is a terrible thing to use for a pickguard. Sketchup can't do curves very well no matter how many segments you use Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mistermikev Posted January 18, 2019 Report Share Posted January 18, 2019 some interesting stuff there. I'm surprised mdf didn't snap in half under e tension. def see the nod to japanese 'eko' style guitars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thaumgarrett Posted January 18, 2019 Author Report Share Posted January 18, 2019 Thanks! It didn't bend so much as flex. If I'd put any kind of finish on it, it probably would have cracked at the neck almost immediately. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ADFinlayson Posted January 18, 2019 Report Share Posted January 18, 2019 Well at least you've now got an MDF template to help you build a proper one 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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