soapbarstrat

You don't have to glue or screw anything into the soundboard. Don't those Sunrise acoustic pickups mount into the sound-hole with some kind of clamping mechanism(s) ? I once mounted a hot Fender single-coil in the sound-hole of an old Harmony short-scale acoustic. Sound very good. I made it totally reversible by making some brakets out of cut up popsicle sticks, which clamped to the sound-hole edges then the single coil mounted on to that. The pickup wire coming out of the sound-hole with a loose output jack on the end was a little annoying (I didn't even want to drill for a jack in the guitar). If you actually mentioned somewhere what make/model this "old acoustic" is, I missed it. But just because you get a really good deal, doesn't mean you can't shoot yourself in the foot by doing invasive mods. That old Harmony I didn't want to permanently mod was bought for one dollar at a yard sale.

10" to 14" conical radius would probably fix that problem right up. But I never trust the printed specs of a locking nut radius. I'll rig it up with strings and use 'under the strings' radius gauges to see what radius it really is (often on a locking nut, it's never a perfect radius), but comforable nut action is an absolute must for me on a guitar, so I think the compromises should be kept to an absolute minimum. Mole hills suddenly become mountains when it comes to tweaking a guitar nut.

I like that little vise, but I already got the ruler.

The Book of Mormon has a pretty decent guitar set-up chapter, although it's written as if you're supposed to be working on several guitars at the same time.

Yeah, since the real grain was black filled you didn't have to worry about color matching.

Stay away from the damn Chinese forstner bits ( Harbor Freight, etc). I have a set. What I spent on them, would have been more useful even just paying the shipping for quality bits.

I get a kick out of some of you guys thinking Perry is going to try to teach you graining techniques just casually in a forum post. But I have to admit, I wonder how much practice it took him to get that good at it. Hard stuff to do. I have not done it enough to be good at it.

Or another way to put it (at least how I understand it), is you press the fret in, and the little "diamonds" mash endgrain wood, but if you keep the fret held down in place, some of that mashed end grain above the diamonds can spring back out a tiny bit, helping to hold the fret down a little better, even without glue.

Looks like a real nice job. I found this a bit funny : "...and bolted in a straight replacement, using M6 nylox nuts and a section of .25″ steel cut from a discarded hydraulic door closer arm". Because on my DIY version of "Jaws 2" , I used pieces of steel taken from a discarded garage door opener to make my own bottom Jaw of the clamp. Maybe you share my curse of always looking at things and thinking "what can I take off of that, to build me something else".

I guess I always cut my nut blanks so close to the proper size that a belt sander would be a little too fast. Plus, I guess I feel more comfortable with the blank held in a vise while I use coarse, medium and fine files to finalize the shape. I noticed Erlewine used the round end of the belt sander to put the radiused bottom on a Fender nut, but you can use a drum sander on a drill press to do the same thing. And since most nuts have a radiused top, you are going to have to keep the blank moving when knocking down the top on a belt sander. I think with the same amount of attention, you could also knock the top down on a radius using that same drum sander on the drill press. As for thicknessing a blank; well there's different ways, and one way, would be one of those "luthier's friend" sanding jigs that mounts to a drill press. I think I've even heard of nut blanks being thicknessed with a Wagner safety planer on a drill press ???

I asked LMI many years ago what the purpose of the sealer is and they could not give me an answer. Instead they gave me some phone number of some luthier I never heard of and said I should ask him. I never bothered calling him. I would hope these days they can give you a better answer than they did me.

Pretty much impossible that they are not the same. Do a google search including both names. Plus, all the instructions, and safetly precautions, written on the back labels are *exactly* identical, each and every word. Edit : Here from the homestead finishing website : "The following fine retailers sell TransFast and/or TransTint Dyes Stewart-MacDonald's Guitar Shop Supply (our dyes are sold under the "Color-Tone" product name)" ***As far as I can tell (with nothing more than a quick search) is that the *TransFast* is a powder.

I have both Colortone and transtint and I mix the two together. So far, I have mostly diluted my stain with Everclear and shot right on the wood, then clear whatever over that ( 1 part poly, super-glue, hard telling what else). If I ever want to know if those stains will work with 2 part poly, I'm just going to try it out on scrap. Manufacturers are often quite conservative with how they recommend their products are used. Although in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if the people who make the transtint are "hands on" enough that they actually thoroughly experimented with mixing their stains with every possible medium.

Well, now StewMac has that cool neck relief gauge which looks ideal to me. Not just because of the dial, but because it's aluminum (I suppose a hard polycarb type plastic would work just as well), so it won't scratch or scuff the frets as badly as a steel straight-edge. And of course that dial; Necks respond differently to T-rod nut tweaks. Now with a dial gauge you can see just how much a neck is responding to the tweaking, *while* you're doing the tweaking (assuming you can hold the relief gauge in position with one hand, while the other hand is cranking the wrench.

The only thing different, are the labels stuck on the outside of the bottle and StewMac gives some colors a different name.

I'm assuming you mean there's a plate (think this part might be called a platen ? ) between the two outer rollers and it's thickness or rigidity can vary from one machine to another ? I've never heard descriptions by the makers mention how rigid that part is, so now you got me wondering how I could know what kind of plate is on a sander I might have my eye on. Thanks for bringing up an important detail like that. I also think J Pierce is right about those other narrow kind of sanders being very handy for small work like nut work. I have even seen drill bit sharpening jigs that mount to those kind.

Nobody is saying what they bought is absolutely necessary. OP didn't ask "what's the minimum I can get by with". Jason mentioned spray equipment, which I wasn't even thinking about but it should be included. I got my big air compressor as an interest payment for loaning a friend some money. Plus I have one of those small airbrush compressors, which is actually a high quality unit (Made in USA or Europe, I think). I got that as payment for jack-hammering a concrete slab into pieces for someone. And a Paasche airbrush and a badger airbrush, etc etc My table-saw was free. Back to the drill bits. I know I have one large metric that I paid $18.00 for . It's for drilling the hole to be tapped for the threaded nose of a Dremel to screw into (have the tap too) Oh yeah, I have 4 dremels. Yikes. 3 bigger routers. I end up using the $12.00 laminate trimmer the most. Some of my drill bits are carbide. Some cobalt, some diamond coated. I have a different vise for every day of the week. And I'm only half-joking there. I feel like my tools have all been paid off from work I've used them for, but how long ago did I feel that way ? Not really sure, 'because I didn't buy them all in the beginning.

Try a search for this one. Been done until we were blue in the face. Practice first on people who aren't on the level. Make sure you have a couple of friends to hold them down for you.

I have at least 200 files. Yes, *you* would have spent $10 for each. I didn't. hehehe "Drill bit set for $50.00". Yes, perhaps you are unaware of a whole set of numbered bits, letter bits, fractional bits, forstner bits, brad point bits, bits reground to work better on wood/plastic, bits left stock for metal, metric bits. not to mention where they are made, I have some made in Germany and made in USA, as well as crap Chinese ones (I try to use these for the house rennovation work, but they are often too crappy for even that ! ) I said the little things add up. I can see you are not aware of all the little things. How about taps and reamer and dremel bits ? I got my share of that damn crap too. Dial indicators, straight edges, fret spacing ruler, nut spacing ruler, oh yeah, the damn nut files, I don't even know if those are included in the 200, but I did pay full price for 95% of those bastards !

Never heard of anyone's first though about a belt-sander being *watts*. That huge one Dan uses on the nut video is way over-kill. If you watch the StewMac shopstand video, he shows his much smaller belt sander, which is more ideal for making nuts. Somehow I've managed to make nuts from scratch without any belt-sander.

Hard to answer because I'd guess around 35% of my tools pull double duty for guitar work and house rennovation work. Must be at least $3,000, and probably not over $5,000. I'm not including supplies (you know, like $60 $90.00 worth of stain at any given moment, $100 to $300 worth of sandpaper at any given moment). I don't even have a bandsaw or jointer and all kinds of other stuff. It's the damn little stuff that adds up. I have around $400-$500 worth of drill bits. $200.00 in files, although they should have cost at least $1,000 (my only lucky deal of the century-- guess I used up my lotto winning luck. Bad move). When I started out, I'd guy buy every crap thing I could think of, if I had enough money for it. Like if I wanted to make a template, I'd go buy plexi or plywood or MDF. Now I keep an eye out and find junk like that for free.

If you ask around enough, you will find techs who've had their hands on enough Pleked guitars to know that the results vary. There's good plek jobs and really bad ones. So much for the machine doing all the work. That would be ideal ; for the machine to know how to do everything just right, and a minimum-wage bozo just has to be there to push some buttons. No, the operator has to make all kinds of correct decisions and do a little hand-work to finish off the pleks job. It's certainly not an optimal job, if the guitar comes in, is set up on the plek, t-rod adjusted, and plek process done all as fast as possible. Problem with that is after you do any major, or moderate truss-rod tweaking (which a lot of guitars need to have done), it's going to take at least a day for that adjusted neck to show if it's going to hold that adjustment you made (they'll often creep a little and you need to tweak the adjustment more). If this "settling in" time is skipped, then I think the Plek fret-leveling is going to be less than ideal after the neck has settled a little. You'll find some players who have both pleked and non-pleked guitars that they say are every bit as good as one another. These guys don't seem to spend a lot of time on message boards. What you'll find even more of, is players that had a hack non-plek fret-job, then a good plek job, and then think they can call every non-pleked job inferior to a pleked job. They'll say *no* human can do as good a job as this machine, even though they've actually never had their hands on work done by most of those humans. Seems paying the Plek fee gives one the right to judge anyone's work if they don't use a Plek. Funny thing about these guys is they spend a huge amount of time on message boards. You'd think with their amazing pleked guitar, they'd be spending less time posting and more time playing. But, yeah, I would not want to be just starting out with doing fret-work for money, with that machine around. It will certainly take business away from you and even more so as the Plek machines get cheaper and newer versions come out, then the big boys sell their older Pleks to smaller guys.

50's -60's necks on Danelectros = Poplar (although they had Brazilion Rosewood fret-boards on top of the poplar. How crazy does that sound these days ? Yeah, all the dumb-asses thought there was no end to how much BRW you could get. They even made shipping pallets out of BRW in South America.)

When I used plastic picks, I'd punch a hole in the middle to make it more slip resistant. Mostly use home-made metal picks now. Haven't even payed for a pick since the 80's. Got this one free too.

I have that video. Yes, it's pretty good. Can't stand those little leaf boxes he makes, but he really knows his way around a bandsaw. I guess I've only watched it twice. I don't remember anything about the "tires" in it, but I do remember him showing how to align the wheels.