mistermikev

edit - also sounds much nicer... recording quality is much improved here it seems.

interesting... I'm hearing a difference... but it might have something to do with your test picker and how consistent it is? listening to blackwood vs tas oak... the front of the note is varying quite a bit to my ears. that second pluck... it's more percussive. the first pluck seems to ramp up... I can't really tell if it's doing it consistently but those first two I def notice it. def the second pluck sounds louder.

yes, that is what I heard.... or at least what I thought I heard! and yes... it seems I did understand your original description and def should NOT be hearing any difference. so in summary... think it means there is not a difference.

well... I don't want to hear a dif cause I'm afraid of backlash. I don't think I have golden ears or anything... listening to the amp version (first of all sounds like dog poo poo what is that buzzing???). the first two strikes of the low e... the second one is darker. so... there are two strikes, then hard stop... then two darker strikes. right at the begining. then a third set of two dark strikes. if I understand you correctly this does not match with what you told me. i think you said that each strike is alternating? set 2 and 3, of 2 strikes each, sound a small amount dif. no idea what I'm listening too and fully aware of putting my ears out on a limb. perhaps placebo, perhaps imagining things... perhaps just an anomaly. I jumped around a bit to see if I was really convicted about what I heard and I think my orig take describes it accurately as I can. d strings sounds pretty consistent. can't really hear anything in the high e either. the two strikes within each pair - I can't distinguish anything there. clean sound - third set of two low e's sounds different than first two sets. again, fully putting myself out there... this is my honest interpretation whether it makes me a retard or not. doesn't exactly sound 'darker' but maybe... flabbier? again the set of two strikes sounds fairly consistent. again, can't tell if there is any difference on the upper strings at all.

right on. I don't know of too many GOOD solutions to remove a stripped truss nut. in theory you could put lock tite on a socket and let it set... and remove it that way but boy... if that goes wrong it could be bad!

looking good. glad to see an update. can't wait to see it in color.

not sure this is going to help much... as it would seem like a unicorn to be able to buy a replacement... but if you can take the nut off w/o damaging it you could take it in to local hardware store and figure out the thread size. then you MIGHT be able to find a purpose specific nut for it. I have not seen much in the way of truss nuts but stew mac has some... https://www.stewmac.com/SiteSearch/?search=truss nut

must be hard to stay focus'd too!

i so want to listen to this but phone speaker would spoil it for me. mental note I will dive in after work tonight and respond - thank you so much for doing it!! EDIT: for the record my confirmation bias is that oak is going to sound very bright in the highs and tight in the lows... pine will be flabby on the low end and dark on the top. that said I will try to hear them blindly.

i think I might have a slightly used latex fist... perhaps mount the pick in that? lemme know if you want a send (hehe). seriously I think as much could be compensated in the pick itself. I know that when i strum an acoustic with a fender thin pick... zero resistance... place the sm thing with a dunlop 2mm and all the resistance is in the hand. I believe I have some picks that have a thinner pivot point between the thumb grip and the tip... I think something like that, or just a fender thin... would mitigate any hand movement. all that said... I think your actuator is pretty sophisticated. reminds me of "house on the rock" which has been a fascination of mine forever... have been there several times. For those who don't know... it's a house the was built (as I recall) by one man... thousands of mechanical instruments inside it and they play some pretty complex tunes. oddly, less robotic sounding than what you might get just loading some classical piece into midi and playing back on a generic soundcard. Perhaps I'm romanticizing it. I completely support where you were already headed... but if you want the fist just say so!

wow man... the detail of the cutout for her dress/cleavage... that is amazing work. reminds me of those crazy stone carvers that could make it look like a transparent veil was over the face. incredible attention to detail. also, now i've seen her soul(s).

seen lots of wood pickguards, folks using records, license plates, carbon fibre, metal - all sorts of things. my guess is that trad ceramic would be very brittle in a thickness that would lend itself to a pickguard... but no reason it couldn't be reinforced with fiberglass webbing or other. I'll stop short of discussions on whether plastic pickguards contribute to sound.

I have a couple of build threads here where I do a semi hollow with a radius top/back. I just cut the semi hollow, then created a jig for my router (with help from many here) that would carve the contour into the body stock, then bent a top over it and glued. then I do one with semi hollow and a carved top that has more drastic contours. might give you some ideas to look at those threadsanyway. I think it's totally do-able but it's up to your buddy to know his limits... certainly there are lots of folks here who will help with advice if you/he are open to it. I've used 1/8" tops on semi hollow, 1/4" tops, and a 1" carved top. def the thinner the more it is going to resonate... but then you have to have careful planning to make sure it is supported and structurally strong. afa center block... in one of my builds i actually used birdseye inside mahog to mount the neck pickup... honestly didn't notice a huge difference but it doesn't mean you won't. I think as long as you use good quality hardwoods... it'll sound good but zeroing in on a specific sound is something many hear have spent their lifetime mastering... gotta start out by just making a guess and taking a shot. i second: black limba is awesome/beautiful. can't go wrong there!

well that is certainly an interesting piece of trivia. the thing that I wondered most was 'do they actually wear osh-gosh-b-gosh... and the engineers for our train did! I grew up a few miles north of oshkosh (that's where that company is) and now have to wonder how they became synonymous with engineers??

saddly... I am painfully aware... and would prob shock you if I took a pick of "our" closet. Fortunately my wife is NOT size 13 shoe... those could get even more spendy. Might cost eleventy doll hairs. reaching pedals... well I just assumed she was chauffeured around... an uptown gall like that.

sorry, I may have taken some offence to that when I probably shouldn't have. then again "actually building" - you sun of a motha... designing a project plan IS ACTUALLY building something (hehe)! well... software engineer generally means you have a bs in cs here and that you've taken a position as a soft eng... similar with chem/mech/elec... but back in the day you could actually learn enough to do those types of jobs w/o ever going to school. my best friends dad is a great example of that. worked his way from low level work up to mech engineer. really smart guy too... knew a LOT about a LOT... but now a days... even if you knew that much... you'd never get in the door. anywho it's the difference between the position and the title. I like to kid myself sometimes that I'm a scientist... (I do have a bachelors of science despite how dumb I might seem!) but I know I'm just a code monkey. (also code monkey IS my official title) railroad engineers are engineers because the title is engineer. they do have to have a lot of mechanical skills as they are the one's who inspect the train and rails... but yeah, not the sm as mech eng.

I thought that might be the case... but didn't want to chance her wrath by mentioning her!! perhaps you should just do what I do... tell her "you know, you haven't bought yourself a new pair of shoes for a while, huh?" that ought to free up some 'you' time!!

"they don't really 'DO' things" - I bet there's a lot of engineers who would argue against that, in fact... I bet most of them think they do everything. in the software dev field you need to not only know how to do your job... but know how to do the job you are developing for. for example... if say, you were servicing the print/mail industry... you gotta know an awful lot about print and mail, postal reg, etc. have to learn about inserters and how they interface. "gross". i think the higher you go the more peoples jobs you have to understand how to do... seems a long way from doing nothing but "ok"!

i dunno, there's a lot of dif types of engineers... software, chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical.. train engineers, domestic engineers (my personal favorite engineers).

well I'd agree except the clever engineer part... all of them seem pretty clever to me!! This weekend even met some train engineers... seems like quite the life unless you have to live it. for me - just wanna "do what I want and I wanna get paid" (tom waitts).

big dif between "didn't care" and "wasn't profitable for them". microsoft is absolutely notorious for going after people for licensing. tis why we spent some 30g to get legit server os and mssql licensing for our servers. not saying they'd bother... but if you get in their sites you will rue the day! anywho... I'm pretty sure we'd all love to be full time builders... I would anyway. just all the things that go along with that that I have no interest in - i.e. building multiple copies of the sm thing, having to consider profit margins instead of just building from the heart. all of that's for the birds.

thank you sir - always a kind word and never lost on me. say... isn't it about time for another build from you??? hmmmm?

well aren't we all? i mean, if you mfg a guitar you are a guitar mfg right?

ok, so finally making progress again... whew... not sure I mentioned it here... but my cnc controller started acting a fool. z axis was randomly dropping down or up. ended up burning some stuff and that was a little scary. I have a fire extinguisher right next to the cnc so not too worried but never something you want to see. inlay bit dropped down so deap it was beyond cutter length. fun times. so at that point I figured I could spend a month trouble shooting it... but thought it might be time to just upgrade. Ended up buying a gecko g540 and ess from "Automation Technologies". Shout out to those guys cause the customized it to run my vfd from the controller and we had some ups and downs but they were extremely helpful... can't recommend them enough. upgraded my steppers to 372oz, upgraded my spindle to 2.2Kw. now my machine runs amazing. responds to more than one direction at a time while jogging... will always jog whether in jog mode or not, rapids are scary fast, super happy. so about two weeks ago had it all working, did some test jobs... went thru the tuning routines with mach3... and resumed work. here's some shots of the back of the neck - axis profile. very non-intrusive vallute... matching overlay for the headstock presented some interesting problems for bending (do not get water on a bookmatch join!)o turquoise surrounded by brass for inlays... looking pretty solid if I do say so... fretboard is a compound radius from 9.5" to 16". fret slots need some manual finishing as I cut this w my old controller and it would not effectively hold the radius. I'm going to try again with the new machine asap. don't know how well it comes across... but fretboard is bookmatched with sm wood as the headstock... that's right BOOKMATCHED fretboard gonna look pretty smart against matching bookmatched top. one big bookmatch festival! here you can see the bookmatch pretty good but hard to capture on account of how white this wood is... and ran the first 'test' body today. ran for 4hrs as this is all a finish/rough 3d pass. not sure how well it comes across... but this thinline cavity is arc'd just like the top will be arc'd on top of it. you can see looking at the orig hight of material at the edges... we've got about 7/8" of drop off from center. it's a double compound curve... at center was 10" and it transistions to 16" (at back) and then 7" transistions to 14" at front. where are my manors... also shout out to mikro who is always guiding me regarding cnc stuff and was very helpful in my decision making process when I was considering what controller to buy - can't thank you enough!

so she fought you hard then... all the more satisfying I bet!!