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FireFly

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Posts posted by FireFly

  1. I figured it'd be a bridge mounted pickup like all the others. I never even thought about a pickup like a guitar's that picks up the vibration without a bridge transferring the signal...

    Anywho, on this project!

    I had it going pretty well. I was going to update it once I got all the hardware replaced with the proper stuff... Then I routed for the bridge, and strung it up...

    See, the original Kahler bridge was made to directly replace a TOM. I purchased a flat mounted bridge instead. It wasn't until after I set the neck angle that I realized my mistake.

    So yeah, I don't know how to break a wood glue join. I'm scrapping the project.

    I'll probably try again once I get another hundred or so to blow. This was a lot of fun to work on!

  2. My dreadnaught guitar rings best on a C note. So the cavities do have effects. You actually tune a violin cavity when you carve it. There's a science to the arch of the top and back, as well as the height of the sides. If not tuned properly, annoying things like wolf notes, and dead notes happen. A properly tuned acoustic cavity in a violin can produce an instrument that fills a stadium with music without using any electronic amplification.

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  3. A good thing to do is apply a coat of finish to the guitar before you paint it. There's a tutorial on this site somewhere that shows the entire process.

    Basically:

    sand the guitar to 400

    grain fill

    apply poly (3 coats, sanding with 400 between coats)

    primer

    paint (3 coats, lightly sanding between coats for adhirance)

    finish

    I think you can do this, and probably better than I could given your experience with building from the ground up, and finishing!

  4. I'll add a drop of superglue to each end of the fret after I've tapped it in, but I do it so I can add wood dust so the extra depth between the tennon and the fretboard isn't as noticable... not to hold the fret in... This is just me, but I've never been handed a guitar that had a fret fall out because it wasn't superglued in.

    Glue under the frets to fill the voids helps with tone. Gibson used fish glue in the old days.

    I'm going to pretend they're mini sound chambers that also help with tone :P

  5. I'll add a drop of superglue to each end of the fret after I've tapped it in, but I do it so I can add wood dust so the extra depth between the tennon and the fretboard isn't as noticable... not to hold the fret in... This is just me, but I've never been handed a guitar that had a fret fall out because it wasn't superglued in.

  6. At times, I'd recieve a job to customize an already existing instrument... add/replace hardware was the usual request. I'm working on this stupid explorer right now, and I just wanna throw the thing out the window. I've never had such a hard time picking a black or white guitar, and this guy has had me recoat it 3 times already. Black, no, white... black with white pinstripes? no, the opposite... Can I have black pickup covers bla bla bla

    So I can't imagine building one from the ground up to someone's exact specifications. At least this one is only a kit... I feel bad for NotYou.

  7. I never considered the number of feet of fret wire used in a guitar. Usually I just have a big roll of it sitting in my shop and I cut as needed. Someone else always kept it in stock for me. The shop I'm in now doesn't use rolls of wire. They buy it in tubes. Its a little frusterating, because I always feel like I have waste when it comes to the fret ends, because there's always that little bit left over.

  8. You can "tack" a nut in with glue as well. I do that on my guitars. With customers guitars, I use a really weak gel superglue, and that'll hold it in enough where it won't move, so the customer can't complain about shotty gluing, but it'll be workable if future repairs are needed.

  9. Thats an inventive clamp! I'll have to try that sometime, as I don't have any of those locking pliar vice gripper thingers...

    The sandpaper on the soundboard for shaping the bridge is something I use a lot these days. I've never done it with a pickup ring before though.

    As for the toothpicks, I would have used dowels and a jeweler's flush cut saw to fix the holes, but its not going to be seen under the pickup ring, so either way works. I'm gussing the "drill and fill" method is looked down on in this case because you'd want to retain as much of the original wood in the guitar as possible?

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