Mr Alex

May sound strange, but my go to tool for scraping bubinga is a cheap steel ruler, you flex it to match the contours of a carved top. I could never make "real" scrapers work, but between a ruler and a knife, I'm set.

Don't forget you can sharpen the blades too, makes a huge difference. I used the same blade that came with my cheap ryobi for at least 4 years, just sharpened it when it didn't cut as well as I wanted. Finally it snapped so I ordered some nice blades for it, bloody things wouldn't cut into inch thick bubinga, just rubbed against it like it was stone. Quick wipe with a file across each tooth, cut like butter!! Just watch your fingers when installing and removing them. I wouldn't recommend using the pendulum settings for anything but pine, but thats just me, and I'm stuck in my ways. I've got a newish bosch jigsaw lying around somewhere that I inherited, but I don't use because the ryobi does the job fine. I'm all for buying quality, but as long as it's not B&D you can't go too wrong. Seriously, why can't they make a motor that doesn't burn out?

My old man built one of these from scratch, I think he did 8 loops. You can basically have as many as you want, but until that 10 looper I'd never seen more than 8 as an off the shelf product. When we were researching it about 2 years ago, there was basically nothing available off the shelf. Do you have a floorboard in mind, there seems to be a bigger range of them. I know even behringer makes one, a mate had one, they were pretty flimsy though, plenty of plastic.

Just to stop anyone wasting time trying. It is possible to build this yourself, and what you want is at the easier end of the spectrum, but DO NOT try, there are schematics available online, but most of them require an indepth knowledge in the technology of midi(not what it does, but how it does it) to build, and even more knowledge to make work for your particular equipment. My old man wanted a challenge so built an 8 channel rack mount midi patch bay for switching effects, and a footswitch to control it. It's doable, but pretty hardcore. I'd hate to count the number of hours he spent on that, I think the patch bay has 4 full sheets of interconnected veroboard or something crazy like that in it. If you only wanted a one channel on/off switch, which I think is what you are after, it can be done, but requires cmos chips and all that jive, I doubt you'd get it down to pedal board appropriate sizes. Hmm, I just ran out and had a look at the guts of his footswitch, its 8 buttons, each switching 8 channels. I think, you could get it down to 4" x 4" plus powersupply for one switch, but its still even out of my league, and I build electronics for a living. Building it is one thing, making it work on the right channel is a whole other can of worms. This digital stuff is complamicated. Every device has its own way to process the info the pedal sends, even if you find something available, it may be that it wont have the capabilities to work with your device.

I've used it twice, works fine, not the easiest thing to refret(chipping wise), but that was probably more because it was flatsawn. Honestly though, I doubt I'd use it again, I just think there are better options. It was a tad on the soft side, I used it on a mandolin once, and I was pounding those tiny frets right into the board, even with a plastic hammer. "regular" fretwire was fine though. Have seen it on some commercial instruments too. I think an ovation was one of them. BTW, I'm talking about "American black walnut", I know nothing about english walnut.

My initial question I was refering to the unplugged acoustic volume of it. But the more I think about it, the large acoustic cavities will resonate with the centre block, and effect both amplified and unplugged tone. I would assume that this method will give a far more "acoustic" sound from the piezo that a solidbody with piezo. On your recommendation I had Pickup The World make a large under saddle pickup for the fanned fret archtop semihollow I built last year. Whilst it had the most "airy" sound from the archtop, I found myself sticking it on every instrument I had. Surprisingly, it was my pedal steel that had the most natural "acoustic" sound with the pickup. Perhaps the massive resonant body simulates an acoustic guitars resonance. It will be interesting to hear how this instrument behaves, I'm beginning to think that large centre block will prehaps react in the same way, with some additional simpathetic vibration from the acoustic top and back.

Wow, I know it's only january, but that's the coolest thing I've seen all year. Do you expect much acoustic volume out of it? I dont know enough about flattops, nor have I ever seen one with a centre block. That's still a sizeable chamber on the bass side though.

The compensated nut does nothing to open notes, they are what you tuned the string to. If you compensate at the bridge, it doesn't effect the open notes either. You are only changing the string length relative to the frets. The nut compensates the fretted strings, relative to the open notes. If you use high nut action, you need to shift the nut closer to the first fret, or it will play sharp, especially at the frets closest to the nut. The point of compensating each string individually at the nut, is to get is as perfect as possible. There is no way it will be totally perfect though, and yes they can be more trouble than they are worth, but for some people they are a necessity.

This is a common misconception. What you are doing is shortening the length to all frets under the string that is compensated. Even if you capo the first fret, its still flattened the compensated amount for each string. The whole point is to better intonate the frets towards the nut. Open, you can tune the string anyway you like. Compensation doesn't effect that.

I've only seen this done 600V caps. I've had long discussions with my father about it, and we came to the conclusion that it may help, but probably not, so don't rely on it. But when talking about mains, you can never be too safe. As said above, when you feel safe, you may stop bothering to test grounds.

I've never used actual tonepros studs, but I had some from a wilkinson wraparound, which I think work the same way. I think they can be used with thicker "wings" on the bridge, as long as there is enough thread on the top half of the post. I would take the thickness up a little, but a good hard wood should be able to take the tension at standard tailpiece thickness. I think most people use 9's or 10's, so for them, I don't see any troubles, the strings I use have pretty hefty cores, and I think that adds even more tension than most. Also I think that the thorn bridge used that acrylic impregnated stuff too. Don't know a whole lot about it, but I imagine its stronger for the softer timbers. The most important thing I found was getting a good tight fit on the posts, if the wings are too thin, the bridge leans forward/up from a loose fit, it places the force over a much smaller area as only the edges of the posts will contact the wood, I broke one bridge that way. For now I've put the idea on the back burner. I use pretty heavy strings, and I'm not sure how long a wooden bridge will last with them. I have better things to do than carve out more bridges at about 3 hours a pop just for an experimental guitar that's already proved a theory. I also upgraded one cracked bridge with squares of sheet brass on the top and bottom of the wings. That greatly strengthened it in a very weak point. But just wasn't the look I was going for. In regards to string mounting, I was counter sinking holes on the under side, and slotting through the back edge so they could wrap around. To prevent the string balls biting in I then flooded the holes with CA.

I made a couple of wooden wraparounds, both were good experiments, but eventually failed. The first one, the grain suddenly split along the length of it as I tuned the last string from d to e, if i used a standard string set, it probably would have lasted a while. But I think I had .012-.050's on that guitar, which aren't exactly 9's . Was fine till that last string, I even stressed it to check, which in hindsight wasn't the best idea. That was made from an un identified australian timber. I believe a eucalypt of some sort. The second was sapele, it was okay, actually sounded good on the guitar, better than the aluminium one I had. It proved a theory I had. But after a series of impossible events, that guitar fell from quite a height, face down into a pool of dog urine, and well, nothing fares too well from that treatment. As far as strength goes, you'd be best doing it with tonepros studs, and having a hole for the stud, instead of the U shaped cutouts the bridges normally have. I think I saw a Thorn guitar with one like that. With the u shaped cut out there's ALOT of endgrain in vital places.

I haven't built a Hi-octane either, but I built a 26watt p1 extreme. And that thing has some serious grunt. I was really surprised at how good it sounds, I will have that amp till the day I die. And if my amp is anything to go by, the ax84 stuff is probably all pretty good. I've also run a tube preamp I built(single 12ax7) into it, and that gives the most insane sound I've ever heard, it's HUGE!! I never liked the preamp distortion sound, but that changed my opinion a great deal. The ax84 stuff is pretty easy to build. The Hi-octane will be a little more diffucult to build than the p1 variants. But they are a cheap and fun way to get started.

Is it just me, or do those necks look like something a 3 year old on crack would draw? I think some people need to take a step back, and look at the crap they come up with. You can't tell me that looking like a knob is worth having "perfect" thirds. I didn't realise my thirds were so wrong anyway. The beating sounds can be irritating, but there are work arounds that don't involve spending lots of money on wonky frets. I can certainly understand a 12 year old being impressed by this, but real musicians seem to prefer playing their guitar. And there are alot out there that sound pretty good with nice straight frets.

Measure along the taper, connect the dots is the easiest. I've seen alot of people questioning that method on several forums. Usually they don't have a grasp of the concept of scale length to start with. In my opinion measuring along the taper if more accurate than some other methods I've seen used or described. But that's just my opinion. And I've made mistakes with maths in the past. Also, you don't have to align the 12th frets of each scale length, you can have any fret you want aligned, or none at all. Just keep in mind the angle of the nut and bridge accordingly. I don't think you'd want to get one of them on too extreme of an angle. The bridge is not so bad to angle back, but if you angle the nut back too far, and play bar chords especially, you'll be playing it like a warr guitar in no time. Take that from experience. But that possibly had more to do with the large nut width of the instrument I build. Haven't had time to experiment further. Did you have any particular scale lengths in mind, I've seen some shockers for the difference in bass to treble side. And after playing one with a 2 inch difference a bit, I'm not sure I'd go any further apart than that. At least not on a "guitar" that will be played like a "guitar". Alex

The last guitar I built was a hair under 1-1/4" thick. And I think I've done a few more about that thickness. Maybe a tad closer to 1-1/2". Biggest problem is the jack, but I almost always use the flush mounts that only need a 1/2" hole. Some switches are a bit tall. But I haven't had problems with any so far. There is a big enough range of blade and toggle switches to find one that fits in your control cavity.

Geo, You can run 2 tubes in parallel, but still single ended. My amp runs 2 6l6's for 26 watts. I could get a little more power from it, maybe as much as 28watts. But I run them a little cold because I liked the tone more. I can't see how perry would get 36 watts from 2 EL34's in parallel. I think you'd need 3. EL34's are good for about 12 watts each in single ended setups. But I was always told that it was a big no no to run more than 2 in parallel. 1 tube alone must be able to dissapate all the power by its self in a pinch. But that could be wrong. I'm not a tech. More info please Mr. Ormsby. Unless you got some trade secret going on.

Never studied any "normal" phasers, but that's basically how my univibe clone works.

What gauge strings are you planning to use? I found that a .070" tuned to f# at 28.5" was a little loose for my liking, went up to .079", now I can take it down to E with no trouble. And its so much nicer to play tuned to F#. Feels more like a guitar than a bass.

I recently wound a soapbar style pickup for a baritone 7, tuned EAD-ADGB. I made a wide, short coil(p90 style), with 40.5AWG (I was given 9 pounds of it by my transformer guy, and its now my favourite wire) wound to the most irregular pattern I could manage to 4.3kohm. Resulting in a low impedance, mid output(about the same as a 7k strat pickup I use in my test guitar) pickup with a ridiculously wide frequency response. I used far more turns than I had ever done before, and the treble end was much darker than previous pickups I'd done in this style. The bass has a touch of dirt to it. Definately not muddy at all. But I think that has more to do with the woods I used in the guitar, the scale lengths, and the stainless strings. The biggest problem with winding your own pickup, is the limitless variations to the coil design you can use. I came up with a design I like for extended range instruments, I have a variation I use for regular guitars and steels. I have another design like a strat pickup, but its like no strat pickup I've ever heard before. While this doesn't really help you, I'm just doing a rubbish job at pointing out, there are many factors in pickups, and designing a pickup to do specific things, can be surprisingly diffucult. If you want to make the pickup for this guitar, I'd recommend a heavier than "normal" guage of wire. But depending on many other factors, you may then need a small preamp to get the output levels you are probably wanting. You'll have no trouble winding a pickup that works first time, but whether it has the sound you are wanting, is another story. I think it was my fourth pickup that was even remotely what I wanted. Now I seem to get it right every time, but I did a lot of research into low impedance stuff to get there.

If it counts for anything, I generally have my tone control about at 2-3. I guess you could say its a sweet spot or something like that. The pickups in my shop guitar have a really wide frequency response, and if I didn't have the tone control as a filter for the high end, I wouldn't have my hearing. I don't know enough about pickup winding to get the mids and low end of my pickups, without getting a tele like treble end. Alot of people don't seem to get that the guitars tone control is not the same as the treble on their amp, and that it's meant to be that way. And you don't have to stick to traditional cap values either. It doesn't HAVE to make the guitar sound like poo when your roll it off. You need to match it to the pickups. It is a filter for your pickups, not a substitute for the treble on your amp. Alex

You seem to know your stuff, alot more theory than me at least, but I should just point out, the mps2222 isn't exactly known for its fidelity(you said you wanted a clean gain). Hell, I've seen its chosen because of its lo-fi, high noise sound. Now BJT's aren't my thing, but I'm sure a bc547 will do a much better job of what you want it to do. I've used them in a few designs I've done before, they are pretty good. There is probably an even better choice though, I just have hundreds of them. I think you'd be better off with jfets though, diode clipping was never my thing.

It's all about supply and demand. I seem to remember him saying in a mag somewhere that the market got flooded with sub standard pickups after he put the book out. And he got about 20 stupid questions for every copy he sold.

That depends on what you deem "tapered enough". This one is 2-1/8" at the nut and 2.5" at the 24th fret . A 6 string I built a few months back was 1-15/16" a the nut. Just feels more comfortable to me. I do have kinda chubby fingers though.

Thanks for the info on that pickup the world pickup, I had looked into their stuff for one of my acoustics but couldn't justify the cost when there were shiny tools I could claim as business expenditure. I'm very tempted to try that pickup out, but might play around with a cheaper piezo one first. My old man had an idea to minimise the piezo quack, and I've got a few ideas of my own to try out. Plus I enjoy making as much stuff myself as possible. Hooked up the neck pickup this afternoon also. With heavy distortion, it sounds like satan is coming, and he wants to eat my blue eyed babies And clean sounds pretty close to the guitar acoustically. I deem this guitar a success. There's gonna be some funny looks when people realise THIS guitar is the one making all that racket. It looks so calm and subdued.