soapbarstrat

Well, I'm not so sure you *have* to get someone licenced. I have a friend who's not quite licensed, only because he needs more time of actual work experience. But he's hooked up 3 phase motors, etc. And he actually took a 220 line in my house and ran a 110 line off of it to make a new outlet in my workshop. The 220 was from an old AC unit. Not impossible to find someone who can do it. Check out the "Skill'd Trade" section of craigslist. Yeah, maybe hard to tell the bozos from the real deal. You're in CA so that makes it even harder. When lived there, complete bozos often had store-front businesses !

I got your funny right here Late 80's. Last time I found myself looking presentable.

Ok thanks for the info. I though maybe I just happened to get ahold of some weird ones, or at least a weird bulb that got too hot. I actually like the fact that they get so hot. Could find many handy uses for these things. Most floor lamps can be taken apart and made much shorter, etc. Maybe even put one inside a metal tube as a "bending iron". I know, could be a recipe for disaster, but the price can't be beat.

So halogen lamps are always really hot ? I found one of those ones people have in their house (floor lamp that throws light onto the ceiling) See them out for the trash quite often (I have 2 now). Bought a halogen bulb at Harbor Fright for 85 cents. Put it in that lamp. The lamp has a dimmer switch. Turned all the way up, it started smoking. Half way, it was "ok" but still damn hot. One winter the furnace was down for repairs. That halogen lamp worked like a space heater to make my shop warm enough to work in (with freezing temps outside)

Closest shot I got. Oh yeah, that's good enough to notice whether it's Poplar, Pear wood, maple, or play dough.

If you want to leave the dowels in there, you can just do like Tacoma, and use wood dowels right in the fret slots

Man, I tried not to laugh when I read that, and my head almost exploded Somehow reminds me of when I was a youngster on the yellow school bus and a bunch of kids were picking on this one guy, because apparently he had a 16 year old brother who tried to paint a real car with a toothbrush.

I've only used maple and phenolic for "scratch made" fret-boards. Phenolic is not much fun to work with, but I sure didn't have any fret-board shrinkage happen later. If I can ever manage to retire and do more of that I want to do for myself, I'll make at least one fret-board or one piece neck out of oak. Heck, I think my early 60's Kay might have a poplar fret-board. As in good of shape as if it was maple ) of course, it might be maple. Tricky with this one, 'cause it is quite hard, but pretty much non-existant grain lines. Almost forgot : I got a 1/4" thick piece of bamboo here that just might be more stiff than any wood fret-board I've handled. Makes me wonder. I wouldn't eve rule out Mahogany. With "super glue" wood hardening, you can bend the rules.

I guess in a perfect world, the company that made the saws would have a name, and maybe come in a package with a part # or something I think maybe Zona is the maker of the StewMac "gauged" saws. Of course they have the handles painted red. You know how StewMac is with trying to make ever damn thing red. I find 'fire engine red' to be a distracting color when I'm working on something. Give me gray or black for a tool handle so it's not the center of attention.

It should make the cheap wood as hard as any hardwood, so I think it's at least worth a shot. Basically what you can do is coat the walls of the hole with medium super-glue, then just pack the hole completely with baking soda (not baking powder). Might have a different name over there. Sodium bicarbonate or something like that ?. Then let it dry long enough, then knock as much of unglued baking soda out of the hole as possible. Then re-drill, etc. Actually, get a bushing out first and experiment in scrap wood first. I wouldn't do just any damaged wood hole like that (like a screw hole). But the bushings are a one time thing and they press in, instead of screw in, so it's a little different. from the way those frets look, I'm wondering if your buddy somehow has a Nerf arbor press.

' Ibeenhad ' needs to be the headstock logo. About that trem post : You might get by with less work, better resale value, and the same end results, by doing a coating of baking soda and super-glue in the wood hole, redrill with proper size drill bit, then press the bushing back in. If there's also the problem that the bushing itself has actually been made wider, from the stud rocking back and forth in it (making the thread match loose, etc), you can flip the bushing upside down to get a fit like when it was new.

You don't come across that way, at least not any more than anyone else here.

Price on these keeps coming down, 'cause the quality is apparently not what it used to be (they used to be made better, from what I've been told). I have one of the "shoddy quality" ones. Needs a lot of tuning up to work smoothly. Best thing I did was to buy the threaded rod/ nylon locking nut upgrade kit from Stew-Mac. That got rid of a whole lot of sloppyness in the swivel jaws. (I did not buy the vise from Stew-Mac) Don't even think of trying to buy replacement threaded rods anywhere other than stew-mac, because it's a totally "out in left field' thread size on those suckers. But if you can make threaded rods yourself on a lathe, or have a friend who is able to do that, you're even better off.

I don't think Perry ever claimed to be the first to do the painted rivets thing. (although he might be one of the few to do it *well*). Here's an awful example of painted rivets/sheet metal, from the late 80's.

I would leave the neck as a bolt-on, and put threaded inserts into it, so it can be bolted tight into a neck pocket. Nothing magical to me about a set-neck design, especially some kind of "spliced on" version. I've been there, with the " since I got this cheap, I'm going to push the envelope with spending time and money, and quite possibly turning it into scrap" type of thing, and most of the time regretted going about it that way. Sorry about the beer comment. I thought it was innocent and slightly funny. I would drink more myself, if I could afford to.

Sounds like it's a pretty good beer too.

High action/ low saddle, usually means neck re-set needed, but you have to make sure nothing else is affecting the "reading" like cracked/broken/loose braces, or the wood bridge itself possibly having been made lower than it should be someone (although doesn't seem to be the case with how yours looks on the photos). Also need to see if there's any hump or rise in the fret-board affecting the reading (could be the neck needs more of a tilt after those kind of fret-board problems are eliminated). Adjust the neck perfectly straight as possible, before laying a Straight-edge up to the bridge (which you need to do to find out how much of a re-set is needed). I don't think I have enough experience to say anymore. I've only done one neck reset and I was able to cheat 'cause the dove-tail joint was already loose.

35, 45 degree are pretty extreme on the taller fret sizes. You can be SOL real quick, end up with outer strings slipping off the edge all the time (once bought a "factory second" neck for quite a discount because of this). On something like .055" tall, I will try to keep the bevel under 20 degrees. And that's just the top 1/2 of the fret end, or probably less. I don't use a file bevel holder, just wouldn't allow me to do it like that. Better to not have enough bevel on the ends than too much. You can bevel 'em more later. I think on at least one of my own guitars, the bevel is no more than 10 degrees and it feels fine to me when I play. I don't measure the bevel (what a PITA that would be), so maybe I'm often doing them around 10 degrees. Can't say much for the ball ends, except if done right, that can also help a lot with keeping strings from slipping off the edge. I'm working more and more with making fret ends like that, but my technique, so far, makes it go much slower than it probably should.

How about West Heman, with an extra N added on for good luck ?

Late Mailed Invoice

I keep hearing more and more about how it wears off. A vicious cycle : You want your new neck to look old, so you quickly make it look old, but then from wear, it starts to look more new in places. Maybe eventually it looks so weird, you buff all the shoe polish out, then it really looks new, more new than if you would have just treated it like a regular guitar and got honest wear during that time. And what does one get out of making a guitar look old right away ? "check it out, looks vintage don't it ? " "Hell yeah, looks real old" "yeah, been sitting here thinking about how vintage it looks" "yeah, real cool vintage look" " think it needs to look even more vintage ? " "not sure, maybe we need to look at pics of real vintage guitars" "I already spent 6 hours today doing that" "oh, well guess you better leave it be then. How does it play ?" " not sure, never played it. Afraid it might take away from the vintage look".

The .010" seems slight to you, but in 'fret world' it's an extreme difference. The type of thing you are talking about here, has been done : a "down hill" fretting style. I think they always go with at least 3 sizes and they are are blended into each other. Never tried it, so can't say a whole lot about it. Just the idea of different sized frets makes it seem unappealing to me (Don't want to feel an increase in fret-board friction way up the neck, and the tips of my 1st and smallest finger are small enough to fit between most of the frets up there). Anyway, even with 3 sizes, there's probably some significant re-crowning to do on many of the frets. If you are thinking of not blending them together, and having .010" difference of height between frets 13 and 14, I'm suspecting it's going to be a problem when you fret the 14th or 15th fret and it makes hard contact with the previous fret before making good contact with the fret you are playing. Might get a serious case of that "back buzz" (where strings are laying too hard, or on too many frets, behind the fretting hand. But, I'm just making semi-educated guesses here, since I have not actually done this. If you're careful, it's quite a reversible mod to experiment with . You could even experiment by finding pieces of guitar/bass strings (or metal wire) .010" higher than the frets and taping it next to the 13th or 14th fret and see what effect that has on playing positions around there. (I mean see if it causes the problems I wonder about)

Way too kooky. You might need a "rising tongue" taken off the fret-board, if you are having such a buzz problem from upper frets. I'd rather have 'em all the same height, and if there was some buzz, I'd rather jack my 21st fret action .010" higher than have those frets .010" lower.

Yes, it should all start and end with that. Problem is, doesn't lend itself to a forum discussion too well, which in turn means the forum discussions don't go so well. Don't get me started with poplar. I've got various pieces of that, that go from one extreme to the other.

"Different points of view" is that there, in fact, are at least two different types of Ash used in production guitar building. I've got a hunk of the hard Northern Ash in my wood scrap box, if I need to reconfirm how hard and dense it is (which it certainly is) I've also got boxes of oak flooring scrap and half of it is quite light. (still fairly hard, but HHS bits have zero problem with it) Forget Mr. Smart, where's Agent 99 ?