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Plans for my first guitar


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Okay... I'm going to buy the neck-through neck on Carvin and try to buy something else for it out of each check. We'll see how that plan goes. :D

Anyway, I also plan on getting mahogany for the body and maybe some figured maple to cover the top. I was thinking it would be cool to do an Explorer type design with a hard-tail bridge with locking tuners. Now I have a couple of questions...

Is it possibe to put a flame maple top on it with the neck extension? I was thinking of getting a 3/8" bookmatched set and routing it doun to 1/8" think where it would be covering the neck. Would that make the body too high?

Next question. I was thinking it would be cool to do a 3 pickup model with a passive in the neck and bridge (SD or Gibson) and an EMG in the middle. Would it be possibe to have a seperate output jack for the passives and the EMG? Maybe like a strat style on the top for the passives and a Gibson style on the side for the EMG. I don't know just a thought.

Thanks for any advice and/or input... I really appreciate it. B)

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When I put my EMG ZW set in my Les Paul I had one of the engineers at the tv station I work at help me with it. He had never done a guitar before, but he knew how to solder and I didn't. It actually came out awesome, so he said let him know if I ever needed anything else done. I just always thought it would be cool to have both options in one guitar.

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Sounds like a cool project...but I can't really think of a reason to use locking tuners with a hardtail bridge.

For a while (a short while!) I used a locking nut on my LP (tuneomatic bridge), and making fine tuning adjustments was a pain in the rear. The strings stretch, you go out of tune, then you need to unlock just to tune up again (which I need to do at least once or twice during a gig). I personally would not use locking tuners unless I had a trem with fine tuners. With a hardtail bridge I would say just go with regular tuners.

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i'd have to agree with the above on the tuners, just get a good set of tuners... the gotoh models all feature "rock solid" shafts that aren't all jiggly, so i'd say go for something like that for good tuning stability

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the thing you are overlooking with the locking tuners is that they are a great time saver when stringing.you just stick the string through and lock it down,no wraps needed for stability.i have sperzels on my v and i love them...it is a hardtail.

locking nut?on a hardtail?that is useless.

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the thing you are overlooking with the locking tuners is that they are a great time saver when stringing.you just stick the string through and lock it down,no wraps needed for stability.i have sperzels on my v and i love them...it is a hardtail.

locking nut?on a hardtail?that is useless.

yup, i've replaced the tuners on some of my guitars with sperzels. One is a hardtail, I love it!

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Locking tuners it is...

Also, has anyone bought wood through Gilmer Wood? They have the mahogany and the figured maple I want and I was just wondering how they are to deal with. It would be about $90ish for the mahogany blank and bookmatched maple which sounds pretty decent. I just hope that one body blank will be enough for an Explorer, but don't think it will, especially for the maple top.

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I was looking on Carvin today and saw the guitar on their main page. It's the yellow one below...

gandbimage.jpg

I was thinking I could do something similar with the Explorer I want to build. I could just have the plain maple neck extension and cover the wings with the figured maple. Just wondering how you guys think it would look. Or if I would be better off just doing the maple with mahogany wings minus the figured maple. Any input is appreciated. Thanks guys... :D

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Locking tuners it is...

Also, has anyone bought wood through Gilmer Wood? They have the mahogany and the figured maple I want and I was just wondering how they are to deal with. It would be about $90ish for the mahogany blank and bookmatched maple which sounds pretty decent. I just hope that one body blank will be enough for an Explorer, but don't think it will, especially for the maple top.

do you have the plans for an explorer?

You might need more than one depending on the size of one.

I can measure mine out for you. Its a Hamer Standard...I think the lower ...arm? is a lil shorter and thicker than a Gibson

Based on the ACAD plans I have for a Gibson ur gonna need at least (this is giving a lil bit of room to work with ...not A LOT...just enough) 666mm X 490mm

explorer.JPG

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I've got the plans on my computer but don't have a cad program to view them. I was going to download a trial but didn't have the 2-3 hours to download it (damn dialup). I'm just kind of gathering everything right now. I'm hoping 1 blank of mahogany will be enough due to the maple neck extension. I just can't wait to get started. :D

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Have you gone to guitarbuild.com?

they have TurboCAD there, its free and I dont think its THAT big? 7MB.

Or 20MB for VoloView Express (But I dont think you can edit w/ that).

http://www.guitarbuild.com/modules/mydownl...ewcat.php?cid=1

I don't understand what you mean by 'neck extension"?

Are you gonna just glue the malple on top of the mahogony?

or are you gonna make sure the total is about 1.75" thick.? Or what?

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In the picture, it has the neck-through neck like I am getting, but they left that the plain maple and just put quilted maple on the wings of the body. I just was wondering if it would look weird on an Explorer body, or if I should just do mahogany wings with no maple top. I just want it to look really nice. :D

Thanks for the link. I've been on that site, but didn't think to go there for that. B) The one I went to download was about 80MB and would have taken about 3 hours. :D

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