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AccidentalChef

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Everything posted by AccidentalChef

  1. Well, if Metalhead's guitar is Ginger, I guess I'll call mine Mary Ann. 25" Scale Maple/Claro Walnut/Padauk neck through Curly maple body wings. Claro walnut top and back, accent layers are Padauk/Maple/Black Veneer/Maple Ebony fretboard Evo gold fretwire Claro walnut pickup rings Claro walnut truss rod cover recessed Schaller roller bridge DiMarzio Air Norton and Air Zone pickups Graphtech nut Sperzel locking tuners. Walnut knobs with claro walnut cap and maple accent layer Claro walnut headstock veneers with maple/walnut accents Claro walnut binding with maple accent Continuous wood control cavity cover. Controls: 3 way switch plus Volume Volume Tone Tone The push/pulls on the volume pots give my system series and a phase switch. The tone push/pulls take care of my coil tapping. With both push/pulls down, the humbuckers are in series. With both up, they're in parallel. When just one of them is up, I get either the inner or outer single coils, depending on which one is up. Build thread: http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=41317 Thanks to Woodenspoke on this one. Without his knowledge (and his power tools!) I couldn't have done a build like this any time soon.
  2. http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_p...gaswitches.html StewMac has a switch that's designed to do what you're describing, and they've got a wiring diagram for it on their site. That would probably be the easiest way for you to go.
  3. Thanks for all the advice, everyone, and especially anderekel, for taking the time to photoshop the kahler onto my design. I'm leaning more heavily towards the kahler now, but if I do go that way, I'm pretty sure I'll go with the trem. It comes just as close to meeting my requirements as any of the hardtails, since the route doesn't have to go all the way through the guitar. I'm going to have to recess any of the fixed bridges on my list, so it seems like a little extra routing for the springs on the kahler trem won't be a big deal. I can lock it down if I decide to stay fixed, or unlock it and dive bomb like a mad man if I get a case of Van Halen-itis. I may still go with the recessed schaller, though. In my mind, the kahler does look a bit too big. This guitar design certainly doesn't have a metal feel to me, and the big bridges with fine tuners on them seem to have a bit of that hair metal vibe. I've got a little bit more time to decide before I've got the money to order the bridge, so there's no huge rush yet. On the other hand, the sooner I make my final hardware choices, the sooner I can finalize all my template designs.
  4. Thanks for all the input everyone. I'm considering the Kahler a little more seriously now, but I'm still concerned it'll be too big or just not work with the design. Here's the latest mock-up I've got online, by the way: In that picture, the bridge is a Hipshot, which I do like the look of. If it were top loading, I'd probably just go with that. I'm trying to picture the Kahler on there, and I'm not sure yet if I can see it working with the design. Any opinions on how it might look? Also, Wes, could you give me an idea of the dimensions of the Kahler? I haven't been able to find a decent spec sheet online. Any idea how far I'd have to recess it to avoid a neck angle? I'm more opposed to things sticking too far above the body (strings, bridge, pickups, etc) than the neck angle, though I'd like to avoid both.
  5. Maiden69, any particular reason you feel like the Kahler is the best of them? Keegan, I can't wait to hear how that one turns out. I've done some google searching, but opinions on the Schaller are hard to find. By the way, cool to see another Colorado builder. I'm in Denver. Andrekel: Wow, that bridge is awesome, especially with how much I'm playing with alternate tunings lately. It's not the right bridge for this build, but I might have to design a future guitar around it. That thing is just plain rad. By the way, this forum is awesome. There are so many knowledgeable people who are so quick to help out. Hiscock's book is great and everything, but the wealth of information here is just amazing. Thanks to everyone for their advice.
  6. I've looked at the wraparounds, but I feel like they'd appear to stick up from the body more than I want. If I recessed one, I'm not sure I'd be able to change the strings easily enough. I want something that mounts flush to the body for this design. My original design is here ( http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...c=39944&hl= ) and it's only changed very slighty as I've thought about it over the past couple of months. I feel like it needs a bridge that looks more like a trem than a TOM, but I don't actually want a trem on this one.
  7. I'm in the process of gathering up the parts for my first build, and I'm having a little trouble picking out the bridge I'm going to use. I'm also working on getting all of the relevant templates designed, so I'm at the point where I need to finalize my hardware choices so I can get them finished up. Here's what I'm looking for: 1. Fixed bridge. I'm not a big trem user, and to be honest, I don't want to route for one on this build. 2. Not a Tune-O-Matic. It just isn't the look I want for this guitar. This also goes for the wraparound types, since I'd want to recess it, which seems that it would make changing strings extremely difficult. 3. No strings through the body. I don't want to see string ferrules on the back, and I don't want to risk drilling them imperfectly. 4. Gold. I'm using a walnut top and I think the warmer color of gold will look much better than chrome or black. This shouldn't be a problem, but it's still a requirement. I'm aware of a few options, but I'm not sure which way I should go. The bridges I've looked at so far are the Schaller ( http://guitar-machine-heads.com/hp135016/3-D6.htm ), ABM ( http://www.allparts.com/store/guitar-bridg...002,Product.asp can be found cheaper elsewhere, but allparts has the biggest picture), Kahler ( http://www.wammiworld.com/u7330.html ), and of course the cheap strat-style bridges that can be found on eBay or elsewhere for about $20. I'm curious if anyone has any experience with any of these. I'm currently leaning towards the Schaller, since the ABM and Kahler both just look too big, and my design isn't a huge body to start with. I do like the style of the ABM the best, but it just looks too long to me. I'm not a huge fan of the fine tuners on the Kahler, since they make the bridge bigger, and seem completely unnecessary for a fixed bridge. I also feel like the cheap bridges don't look nearly as good as the other options. I'd rather get the right bridge to start with than be disappointed in the finished guitar because of it, even if it does cost me quite a bit more up front. Is one of these bridges clearly better than the rest, or are there any that I've missed?
  8. I've seen pictures of PRS Private Stock guitars that used black onyx for inlay material. You'd probably have a much easier time working with that than obsidian, which is black glass. I was actually looking around earlier and came across a source for it: http://www.neweragems.com/details.asp?productid=790 I've never ordered from that company or worked with onyx, but if you give it a shot, I'd love to hear about it.
  9. I played a guitar that was pretty close to one piece a bit over a decade ago. I can't remember who built it (guitar shop owner fell in love with it at NAMM that year and bought their display on the spot), but I remember it sounding beautiful. That guitar was one piece of mahogany, with a maple top and a separate fretboard. I don't remember what the fretboard was now, but I'm quite sure it wasn't mahogany. Ever since, I've wanted to play another one like it. It could be very wasteful to make a one piece guitar, but I think you could also do a good job of it with proper planning. The leftover wood from each side of the neck would be wide enough to make wings for a neck through, as long as you were careful to preserve the pieces. It doesn't seem to be a completely unreasonable project, though I certainly don't plan on taking it on for my first build. I'd hate to slip with some random tool and wreck such a big piece of wood.
  10. Thanks Rick. I'm pretty happy with it, though it might get a little fine tuning. I also tweaked the lower horn just a bit more. It seems to match the upper one even better now.
  11. Metalhead28 was right... the string angles got pretty weird with the original headstock design. I used FretFind 2-D to get a string layout, and extended them past the nut, then tweaked the headstock to make them fit. With the new design, the strings are straight to within 1/32", and I can shift the tuner holes slightly one way or the other depending on exactly where the strings hit the pegs. I tried to keep as much of the feel of the original headstock as possible, while making it more functional. I'm having a hard time matching the feel of the curved upper horn on the body, but I think I've gotten pretty close here. At first, I didn't agree about the treble horn, but after I stared at it a bit, it started to bother me. Design flaw, or the power of suggestion? Who knows. I tweaked it just a few 32nds of an inch, and I think it matches the upper horn better. As it is, the tangent line to the inside of the bass horn hits the fretboard about 1 and a half frets farther up than the tangent line from the bass horn, but since it's shorter, the curve appears tighter. I might straighten it just a bit more, but I need to stare at it for a bit to decide. It also looks a little narrow to me now, so I may tweak the width. I also smoothed out the curves on other parts of the body, but it might not be very noticeable at this resolution. No fancy wood in this picture; I'm a beginner at Inkscape, and that took me too long to do the first time, especially for a rough draft! Thanks for all the advice so far. My craftsmanship probably won't be perfect on my first build, but without a great design, I've got no chance.
  12. It's a 6 in line. When I drew it by hand on graph paper, I traced the strings to where the tuners would be. I'll have to check what I drew on the computer and see if it lines up. Thanks for the tip; I might not have caught that until the headstock was already put together.
  13. So, after a week or two browsing the forum, I've got a pretty good idea about how to go about my first build (and Hiscock's book is on the way from Amazon). I spent a bit of time over the last week coming up with a design I like. I'm sure it was inspired by dozens of guitars I've seen over the years, but my goal was just to come up with a clean, smooth double cut shape. Nothing revolutionary, but I don't know if revolutionary is even possible in traditional designs these days, so I'm not worried about it. The woods here are just examples. I don't plan on using spalted maple for a while. I'm leaning towards a mahogany body with a quilted maple top and a 5 piece neck through (mahogany/walnut/maple/walnut/mahogany), and possibly an ebony fretboard. For hardware, I'm planning on a fixed bridge, and hum/single/hum pickups. I've got the wiring almost figured out, and I'll post that in electronics when I'm happy with it. The basic idea of it is a 5-way switch for the primary control, with push pulls and/or toggle switches that can reconfigure the 5-way to make the switch work like a strat, les paul, or something in between, by changing how the switch does coil tapping and what pickups are on in the middle positions. The idea is that you might have to hit a couple of switches to get the 5-way how you want it in between songs, but once you've done that you only have to use one switch during a song. Any opinions of the design or wood choices I'm thinking about would be much appreciated.
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