Jump to content

kingfisher

Established Member
  • Posts

    39
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About kingfisher

  • Birthday 01/23/1950

Profile Information

  • Location
    West Yorkshire UK

Recent Profile Visitors

494 profile views

kingfisher's Achievements

Explorer

Explorer (4/14)

  • First Post
  • Collaborator
  • Conversation Starter
  • Week One Done
  • One Month Later

Recent Badges

0

Reputation

  1. Thanks Wes, don't fancy head end, but those long allen keys may solve the problem.
  2. I am currently building my first acoustic, a Selmer Django Reinhardt copy (the one with the small oval soundhole). I am not looking for full authenticity here, and I wish to fit an adjustable truss rod, one of those threaded rod in an aluminium channel things. How do I do this? If I fit the rod to the length of the neck, it will be nearly impossible to adjust (small soundhole, long way from neck) Should I make a longer neck that reaches inside the body nearer to the soundhole or what? Or should I look round for a long allen key? Anybody done this?
  3. Mine neither. (fortunately) Actually it is not expensive and actually it does dry clear. It is waterproof though.- (why is that a bad thing?)
  4. And as regards tuners, in an ideal world I would like one with a readout of the actual cycles per second, but I don't know if anyone makes (an affordable) one. Also, maybe we are a bit at cross purposes here. Are the Earvana and Feiten systems more designed to give a better compromise for chords? (we all know if you tune to a perfect sounding open E chord at the bottom of the neck, and then play a C chord, again in the first position, the C chord sounds way out). This would explain the Satriani thing, depends on what you are playing - if you were only playing E shapes up and down the neck -who cares about C shapes? The "Kingfisher method" (if I may humbly use that term) is more about putting the frets in a better place for up and down the board on a single string. Now, moving the frets about as I propose will certainly affect the chord thing - but how I don't know. - is this E/C thing better or worse on a Gibson or a Fender? - how should you tune the guitar (fifth fret, octaves or WHY). It is my untested and unsubstantiated belief, with no evidence whatsoever, that the chord thing will be affected in a positive, good way.
  5. Using 17.818 on a 650 mm scale I get 324.989 = 325 - 0.011 Using 17.817 on a 650 mm scale I get 325.002 = 325 + 0.002 I stand corrected on that point. John. As for the Earvana stuff, that is irrelevant to the argument. My theory ONLY relates to the octaves. Earvana assumes perfect octaves and is dealing with the stuff inbetween. !7.817(ish) will not give you perfect octaves, so presumably the Earvana stuff is a non starter without you sort that first.
  6. What do you mean "rusty old door hinge" The tailpiece is a repurposed ferrous artefact covered with a copper/zinc alloy, originally designed for variation of angular placement relative to a entrance frame. When I get a minute (too busy worrying about Rooney's ankle at the moment), I will redo the experiment with different string gauges. I purposely used the most commonly used top E gauge, and set the "action" to what I would regard as pretty damned good at the 12 fret. We already know that thicker strings behave differently, - your bridge is never straight, - but on the other hand when playing in the oxygen thin atmosphere of the top of the neck, we tend to be on the top three strings - (ever noticed how the tuning up there is very flat on the bottom three strings). Gibson may have optimised the number for thicker strings - hence our disparity. One thing I am convinced of - if you use the mathematically pure 17.818 (17.817 if you are Jewish) calculation - your instrument will NOT be in tune Sadly I am afraid this may be a leap too far for some (even with the Gibson connection) and wrongly fretted guitars will still be made. "The SG is 0.5 mm out" - sheet, I do my fret slots by hand with a saw - I dream of being 0.5 mm out.
  7. And the crappy aluminium zinc parts bend over time. I know this.
  8. Well they stick aeroplanes together with it - hence the name
  9. Aerolite 306 I use it for neck and body laminations and find it to be the business, yet it is never mentioned on here? Anybody else use it?
  10. Wes, I agree with everything you say - but - (you knew there would be a "but" didn't you) - I am not looking for perfection because I don't think it exists, I am just trying to involve in the equation the fact that we have to press a string down to get any other note than open. 17.818 (or 17.817) takes no account of that at all, and I think it should. In fact my experiment (within experimental error) proves it should. Do you think the neck profile needs some work?
  11. Yes normal action. This is why there are 2 frets on the slidy bit. I too expect to get different results with different gauges, as we know the usual bridge compensation differs with gauge, probably a fan fret system could compensate for some of this. (ie a different divisor for top E and bottom E), but then we are getting into the realm of specialist instruments (harder to sell?). Consistency will be difficult without more accurate measuring equipment. For now, as I say, I regard this as an improvement, invisible to the user, but tunes a bit better. If anyone would care to duplicate my experiment, please do and tell us your findings. Do you think I should enter this instrument in guitar of the month? (this is a joke by the way for the humorously challenged.)
  12. In the spirit of modern experimentation, I thought I would build a guitar to try see what happens - As you can see, it is built from exotic timbers and is minimalist in form, having just one string (9 thou). The action is normal to low, and requires pressing the string down. (9 is our best selling gauge by the way) First I set the bridge and nut 650mm apart (- they are both fixed), and tuned it to E, using the tuner in the picture. Next I slid the movable frets to about halfway, and moved back and forth, until I hit E again. Nut to fret distance 323.8mm Up another octave, nut to fret 486mm Next I wrote a php program <a href="http://www.rockfactory.co.uk/fretcalculator.php">fret calculate</a> results here - Scale is 650mm divisor is 17.91 1 36.2926 36.293 2 34.2662 70.559 3 32.3529 102.912 4 30.5465 133.458 5 28.841 162.299 6 27.2306 189.53 7 25.7102 215.24 8 24.2747 239.515 9 22.9193 262.434 10 21.6396 284.074 11 20.4314 304.505 12 19.2906 323.796 13 18.2135 342.009 14 17.1966 359.206 15 16.2364 375.442 16 15.3299 390.772 17 14.4739 405.246 18 13.6658 418.912 19 12.9027 431.815 20 12.1823 443.997 21 11.5021 455.499 22 10.8599 466.359 23 10.2535 476.612 24 9.681 486.294 As you can see a divisor of 17.91 seems to provide a fairly close match to my experimental results Here is the php if anyone needs to check “ <p> <?php $scale=650; $divisor=17.91; echo "Scale is " . $scale ."mm" . "<br /> <br />"; echo "divisor is " . $divisor . "<br /><br />"; for ($counter=1; $counter<25; $counter++) { $fret=$scale/$divisor; $total=$total+$fret; if ($counter==12) print "<br />"; echo $counter . "&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;"; print round($fret,4). "&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;"; print round($total,3) . "<br />"; $scale=$scale-$fret; } ?> </p> “ Loads of potential errors here, - new string, maybe more elastic than a used one - measuring equipment (cheap tuner and steel rule) a bit primitive - but nevertheless I will be going with this until convinced otherwise. Still working on this when I have the time - will post if any more insights.
×
×
  • Create New...