soapbarstrat

It's an original 'made in Germany' floyd, the good one. Guess I'm just used to a regular nut with all the edges nicely rounded and less than 1/8" higher than the fret-board. And after having the guitar for 13-14 years (hardly ever played it), I only now realize the fret-board radius is 14" and the damn nut is a 10" radius (I had bought the floyd a while before getting the ESP built Kramer body and neck). Never owned a junk floyd copy and don't plan to, unless I'd see one at a garage sale for $1.00

A floyd will likely *change* the tone of a guitar, and it could certainly be that you won't like the change, but you could just as easily like the change. I've been messing around with my old '90 'never made it to final assembly' Kramer, and it's pretty hard not to sound like a Steve Vai wannabe half the time I wiggle that stick. But maybe what I hate more than that, is the pokey "spike" on the locking nut, between high E slot and edge of nut. Although I don't have the clamps on the nut, so maybe that makes me feel that spike more.

It varies, and is quite a mystery to me. Sometimes you have a totally happening amp tone, then every pickup sounds great. Different pickups are like different spices then. That's usually when you're just screwing around. Then on another day, you are in recording mode and everything sounds like crap. But I've been "there" with my Gibson P90 and P94, 2 early 80's hot Fender single coils that have this roar to 'em, like the tone of an added cranked 6V6 added to the amp (put a "baseplate" on one of 'em). My Duncan JBL has given me more dynamic tones than a typical bucker, and I once got this awesome tone from the flat chrome neck pickup on my '61 Kay (I think Dearmond made that pickup, if I remember my research correctly)

George Thorogood for the more raw side, Early Santana for the smoother distortion side, Early Leslie West (Mississippi Queen) for the way too fat sound, and then there's all kinds of old hollow-body P90 guitar recordings that I'm not familiar with, but from a time when amps were not pushed, so they sound more nice and mellow like that. There was a thread over at the Gear page where a huge list of P90 recordings was listed. They don't have one sound, but I guess no pickup does.

Frank Ford seems to know more than anyone would want to know about those "parrot" vises, past and present versions. Stuff on his site about them.

I've seen big name production guitars, where I could tell pieces almost that size had popped off the board during production and they glued the piece back. I don't think colored glue is needed when all the wood is still there. I would probably press the piece back in place, stick some .020" thick teflon in the fret slots, and wick a bunch of water thin CA around it.

Same here, and in fact, as liberal as I am about acting sarcastic on forums, I think Hectors comment would warrant a 2 week vacation.

Oh the memories of not being able to legally use the toilet until I turned 16. I seldom vote for GOTM, but I think I have to vote for this one.

A floyd bridge is a real PITA for the average player to set the string radius correctly, not to mention what a PITA it is to set the intonation, if you don't have one of those special keys (which don't even work on every floyd copy). You have to love the whammy experience to buy a floyd and feel ok about it. They're a compromise for sure. The only popular player I can think of who had a floyd equipped guitar, but didn't use it for whammy work (that I know of), is Mark Knopfler, and he doesn't use a pick, so probably wanted the added brightness a big floyd bridge gives. Anyone ever see what Paul Gilbert did to an Ibanez, where he had the floyd bridge recess inlayed with what I assumed was a piece of wood, painted almost the same color as the rest of the body, and then had a hard-tail bridge screwed onto the inlay ? Looked kooky as hell, but I guess such a method is pretty reversible.

Right into the first part of the job, you can quickly find the frets need enough heat to do a number on the finish on some necks. I like finish before frets because then the finish thickness doesn't take away fret height. Either way is a pain in the ass ! I'm getting ready for a poly respray right now on an unfretted board. The original frets were sprayed over and when they scraped the finish off the frets, board finish came off too. This was a factory sprayed Fender and there was about 1/64" bare fret-board on the sides of every fret.

Sorry for assuming you won't live forever. Crap shoot : Different scale length, neck wood, etc etc etc, from the "fine acoustics". It's been said that 1/2 the reason for using bar frets is to keep a non adjustable neck straight, and the other half is for the tone. Well, you are not going to get the same tone on a strat neck as on an acoustic, so that's certainly crap-shoot territory.

The bar frets make perfect sense on a t-rod-less neck, but what a probable useless crap-shoot on a modern neck. Also, what a pain for someone who gets ahold of that neck in the future and finds out the hard way that they need a more expensive re-fret job on it.

Don't remember ever seeing anyone fretting a set-neck all the way with a 1/2 or 1 ton arbor press. So it has quite a limitation. Also in case there's any confusion : Jaws 1 : French vise-grips modded to press frets Jaws 2 : Bar clamp modded to press frets (I made one and use it all the time) Jaws 3 : Radius block with bracket on end to hold fret press caul.

Sure, if you want to call bronze a "strange brass composition". 15% Tin 1% Iron .1% Titanium And Copper making up the rest. I'm also tired of 'bass frets'. It makes me think of someone years ago, who didn't even play guitar or bass (like an "engineer" working for Fender) , just taking it for granted that everything on a bass is supposed to be bigger. Well then, on a Fender, why not a bigger neck plate, neck mounting screws, nut width, t-rod adjusting nut ? I consider the .038" high fret-wire I have to be the best wire for bass. There are players in the biz out there who like their bass frets even lower than that. What's the "Ritter bass frets look more gold" based on ? Internet photos, or you saw it in person ? I think if you were to totally nail the gold look (well, I don't think there's one certain Gold look), you would have to sacrifice durability. When I work with gold fret-wire in my workshop, under fluorescent lighting, it often hardly looks gold. But I had a customer show me a photo of him on stage with a bass I put gold frets on, and they couldn't have looked more gold.

Come on, you don't need a tut to figure that out. Look at the photos and realize how you can do the same thing with scraps in your workshop. Ok, you will have to buy the radius cauls if you don't want to make those yourself. But Jeez, it's a freakin' radius block with a caul holder stuck on the end. How hard can it be ? I have not built or used a SM one, but already figured out how to do it. Obviously not the fastest fret presser there is, but I figure a big plus with the 'Jaws 3' is if you fret slot is not absolutely consistent, you can concentrate more pressure where the fret doesn't want to go in as easily, while at the same time, putting less pressure where the fret does want to go down easily. I think that can help against the fret mashing down into the wood in some places.

I can't believe you dudes on a tight budget keep trying to copy the big bulky SM arbor press when you could make your own 'Jaws 3' for just a few bucks.

Possible solution : You strip out the metal strands of some electrical wire, then slip the hollow wire jacket over the string that's behind the nut. Maybe it deadens the strings enough. For a spacer behind a 'zero fret' I would go with something slippery; Nylatron, Delrin, etc. I would think a rubber spacer would make the guitar constantly go out of tune, everytime a string is pulled sharp on a bend, etc, and then gets a little hung up on the rubber. Of course you could put some teflon lube to likely solve that problem, but it would be a fight, since the strings would want to dig in to the rubber more and more over time.

Apparently, I have greatly under-estimated the power of a cotton/polyester blend.

Many years ago, I made a strat nut out of steel.And then, it seemed the guitar had some kind of weird thing going on, which I figured was coming from the string on the headstock side of the nut. On recordings, the 3rd string would have this added sound, which I can only describe as the sound that a submarine makes in the movies, This on/off weird tone. I actually thought the effect was cool as hell. But, it figures that it was the 3rd string, because thats always the string I have the most trouble with. I have since found that on a strat, it's best to keep the angle of the 3rd string slot to a minimum. Had I re-done the steel nut like that, perhaps that weird tone would have went away, but who knows.

Assuming your workbench's feet are more substantial than just some little round table legs, maybe glue some some cloth-backed abrasive to the bottom of the feet, and also clean the concrete floor well with solvent. Hard telling what kind of waxy surface there might be on it from previous mopping or even sealing of the floor. I guess you can even scuff up the concrete with sandpaper. I'm assuming your concrete floor is on the smooth side, like mine is.

lots of acoustic players have a 'summer saddle' and a 'winter saddle' they exchange on their acoustic guitars, that suffer from enough action height change between seasons. That doesn't mean the saddle is the only thing that might need to be changed. Neck relief can change too, and hopefully on an acoustic, you can at least adjust that with a wrench.

might want to look into those tail-piece units with fine-tuners.

Sorry if my post came across like I was finding fault with you, because that's not what I meant. What I wrote is something that I've been curious about for a while. I do know it's very hard to trade , because of the simple fact that there's such a narrow chance someone who has what you want will want what you have to trade. Doesn't hurt to try, but most of the time, you have to trade for cash, and then use that cash to buy what you want from someone else.

I assume you mean the post that the string wraps around is bent. Or you could mean the shaft that the turning knob is on. In either case, why/how did it get bent ? I would think the first attempt to bend back would work with the tuner still on the neck. If a hollow metal tube fits over the shaft, maybe do that to bend it back. I have only taken sealed tuners apart because they were beyond repair and I wanted to salvage some parts.

I like that story John Suhr told about how he went to a recording studio while Ed Van Halen was recording there. Before he could see Ed, he could certainly hear Ed playing and it was classic Eddie tone. You would just take it for granted that when you did finally see Eddie playing there, he'd be playing his typical Kramer or Ernie Ball/ Peavey (not sure what year this was). Well, John finally sees Eddie playing and is quite surprised to see Eddie's using an all non-wood Steinberger guitar. The main thing is to stop thinking all the makers using the "official tone woods" are such freakin' geniuses, because they really are not, and it's always easiest to play "follow the leader". I hear guitars everyday made of all the desirable tone woods, that sound like crap. I don't mean all the guitars I hear sound like crap, but plenty of them do. And yeah, you are likely to get flamed for bringing up this kind of stuff, because so many will go nuts defending what *they* think makes the best tone. All kinds of damn tones.