soapbarstrat

A proper Gentleman uses one of those specific knurled nut toggle switch wrenches like StewMac sells. Well, I'm not quite a proper Gentleman (a bit closer to a hobo that got pushed off a speeding train inside a tunnel- OUCH ! ) so I use a home-made tool, which I totally got the idea from by a repairman named Mike Hansen (Although I believe he went back to being a chemical engineer or something like that). It's a home-made "toggle switch nut wrench", consisting of a piece of copper pipe, with an inner dia of something around 9/16" ??? (anyway, it's a standard piece of pipe- didn't special order it or anything like that) And then the business end has 3 or 4 slots sawed in it, to give that " 9/16" ID some wiggle room. and then over that slotted end, a hose clamp. And then I just happened to have an old wood screw driver handle that tightly press fit over the other end of the piece of copper tube ( I guess the copper tube is about 3" long). So you slip the slotted copper pipe end over the round knurled nut, slide down the hose clamp near the guitar body suface (good idea for thin cardboard with a hole cut out over the toggle switch), tighten that hose clamp which makes the copped tube tighten on the knurled nut and if that nut's on there with a typical tightness, this hobo "wrench" should get it off.

If I'm playing unplugged right next to a hornet's nest (which I often do ; free acupuncture) I don't notice the buzzing so much (on the guitar).

Knowing the exact size of metal tubing needed would be the key and that would also go for making your own wood bushings (yes, I've seen pretty darn thin-walled ones made). As for the small town thing, well, I'm in a fairly big town, but still purchase online at least 75% of the time, especially for something really specialized. There's also "conversion bushings". Plug/redrill is an option, but serious potential disaster for someone inexperienced. Digital calipers, a REAL help on a deal like this. Oh yeah, forgot thin metal sheet, wrap/unwrap until correct thickness. Probably a better way to go if we're leaving digital calipers out.

Never thought he was much of a player, but the solo in 'Too young to fall in love' is pretty rippin.

Is this about looks or feel ? Well, actually with either, I ain't buying that a .005" difference in width is enough to justify going with a wire of questionable quality (and I say that, because I'm not aware of the better fret-wire factories making an in-between size like that, right now). .090 is plenty wide. Think about all those guitars made before the 1940's with .050 wide frets. Seems every one I've ever heard sounds fantastic (if only I knew how much the narrow frets had to do with it)

Years ago, I would regularly use a q-tip soaked in rubbing alcohol. Then a doctor looked in my ears and said they're too clean. But then my ears started itching again quite a bit. Then another doc said I was leaving soap in my ears. Now, I rinse them out with water from the shower head, and at the end of a shower I do this swimmer's trick of using the palm of my hand like a suction pump over my ears. I guess it works pretty good. Still use a q-tip once or twice a month. I'm more careful with the q-tips these days, after pushing many of them too far in and then losing my grip and away they go, all piled up inside my head. My Mom's cousin, WWII Marine veteran, said they'd put listerine in their ears.

Type of body wood and scale length would be a huge factor for me. Let's say we're going full scale length and maple for a body (or Northern hard ash or even Oak), I'd have no problem putting a neck pu as close to the neck as possible. Want to go a bit "safer" but with a bit of a twist ? I like the reverse P-bass set-up if we're talkin split P-bass single pickup. Rocco Prestia reverse pickup makes sense to me (A and E pickup closer to bridge and the G and D pickup closer to the neck)

If you think it's safe to clean something off your hands with lacquer thinner, dry 'em 98%, then go grab a painted guitar body, think again. And that tube amp on the bench. How funny that you didn't remember plugging it in just before someone walked in and had a 10 minute conversation with you. Ok, where was I ? . Yes, I was about to put some alligator clips on the tube socket pins (no need to be careful since the amp is "still unplugged"), so I'll just get back to doing that now ZAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPP !

I would probably shoot for the standard .050" thickness or slightly more. In your situation, I might try a diamond cut-off disc in the Dremel router (upside down, like a mini router table). Then a groove could be cut all around at an even depth. I Would go as far as possible with that, and maybe finish up with one of these diamond coated coping saw blades I have, which look like a diamond coated piece of wire. Just throwing ideas out there. Everything I wrote above could be a total bust in the real world.

I did that on my Chandler Jackson style neck. Part of the problem was not using a drill press and so the drill bit with the hand-held drill kind of went on a misguided path somehow. I then used JB weld glue to fill where where it went through, then was able to redrill and not go through the cavity. Over 20 years later and I have never noticed a problem from it yet, although it's a scar on my perfectionist attitude. Some other guitar projects that I smashed to pieces also remain a scar. Out of sight, but not out of mind, at all. I had to scrap a made from scratch maple fret-board (sized the board and slotted myself), cause things went a little too slow and problematic when using titebond (did the following ones with epoxy and avoided the problem) But that maple one, was my very first board replacement. On one of my earliest fret-jobs, I sanded through the fret board into the heel end truss-rod nut hole. Luckily, it was my own guitar. I guess I thought the more "fall away" the better or something. I'd really like to go back just to observe how that went so wrong, it's still a mystery. All those really bad ones, that make me want to smack myself in the forehead when thinking about them, are from my late teens/ early 20's. Worst that happens these days are some minor super-glue run-off accidents and stuck 'half way there' truss rod added washers (but I think I'm at the point where the slightest hint of a problem makes me mod them to be more easily removable)

I thought 60 is the new 40 ? (And 20 is the new fetus)

You can be pretty certain a plywood top means plywood back and sides too, but plywood is not the end of the world. I think it makes very little difference with the back and sides. And as far as the top goes, being plywood does not mean it sounds worse than every solid wood top acoustic. There's likely plenty of solid wood top acoustics out there that will sound worse. Let your ears be the judge. Make some of those hollow screws like stewmac sells, which allow you to bolt a bridge on and string up the guitar and play it. If you want a guitar to take camping or store in less than ideal conditions, a plywood top can take the abuse. I have been fooled before, using my ears before using my eyes. I found a curbside acoustic and after I got it home, started picking on it and thought it sounded pretty good and then figured it must be a solid wood top. Later found out it was plywood, and yeah, of course after I knew that, it didn't sound as good to me, but there was no doubt that I had liked what I heard before I "knew too much" about the guitar.

Umm, yeah, well, all the plywood acoustics I have sitting around here, if I put a mirror inside it looks like solid wood. I mean what the heck else would the inside look like ? It's not like they're required to rubber stamp " PLYWOOD" all over the inside. Plywood acoustic guitar tops look like solid wood on the faces of either side. Only an exposed edge or sand-through of one of the thin ply layers reveals what it is made up of. Gotta check that sound-hole edge. You pretty much see the growth rings all the way from top to bottom (solid wood), or you see lines running the other direction (plywood). Sometimes it's hard to tell if there's a heavy finish rolled over the soundhole edge. Sometimes you can see the ply layers in the bridge pin holes.

I guess this thread shows a good reason why there's flourescent titebond, although it seems they stopped making flourescent titebond 1, and now it's flourescent titebond 2.

From the photo, I'm going with plywood top, top layer got pulled off when the bridge either popped loose or was purposely take off, then someone figured they'd feather in the damaged area with the rest of the top. Or something along those lines. At least I don't think that's the bridge plate rising from the grave. You should be able to verify if it's a plywood top by looking carefully at the edge of the sound hole.

I took a quick look at the other thread, and since you're considering kooky ideas, how about this little less invasive kooky idea : You make a mini 2 fret board piece that screws down on the body onto that extension part. The screws would be in the fret slots with the fret tangs notched to fit over the screw heads. If you'd undo it later, the worst you'd be left with is the little screw holes in the body.

Alcoholics Anonymous New Jersey

Let's leave " the force" at the Star Wars convention. My #1 has a plate-less heel. OK, it's a left-over from my days of stupidity, but it's still a solid neck-joint.

damn, thought someone was going to step up to the plate and breast feed frets

Hell of a shelf life in my own experience. My small or medium (?) bottle is a couple years old and still passes the "test" (which is , put a dab between finger and thumb, rub together and pull thumb and finger apart. If there are strings, the glue is bad or questionable. Mine doesn't have strings)

That kind of playing technique becomes painful pretty fast, especially continuing to press too hard at the 1st fret. I'll just assume the guys who never adjust accordingly are the guys who just pull the guitar out of the closet once in a blue moon. Overly stiff nut action (forcing my fretting hand to act like a pair of vise-grips) is almost always what cripples my fretting hand.

Super-glue would win the prize for really making you haul ass to get the glue spread and clamped before it's too late. Even the slower setting gel could kick off too fast when reacting to moisture in the wood.

For what it's worth, I first capo the 1st, measure 12th fret action, then work on nut action, rechecking 12th fret action just before making the final tweaks at the nut. And I'll admit, I'm about as fussy as they come about playabilty, but I cut a little slack with perfect tuning. Very small percentage of guitar recordings have knocked my socks off in 41 years, but all the ones that have, were apparently on guitars with un-"compensated" nuts. But yeah, if you want to make a scaled down tune-o-matic nut, wish you all the best.

Hmmm, I can't assume he nailed it in that tutorial. Not sure about that .005" gap, 'cause it's a different way than how I check, because I don't like standard feeler gauges for measuring string space gaps, cause the gauges are too wide. I like to use short pieces of guitar string as gauges, and those don't get below .008", so I measure the fret/string gap at the 1st fret without the string being fretted. On the high E, I'm going for a maximum of .010" (you can sometimes go down to .004" here). Add about .005" on the low E, but often that can be lower. Going a tad bit higher isn't out of the question if someone tells me they like it a little stiff, but stiff to me is .013" high E, .018" low E.

Probably not enough of a market to make it worthwhile. Funny how the guitars where BF is needed the most are the ones with improper action height at the nut. That's what the BF market looks like to me; guys who are pretty clueless about proper action height but want to spend big bucks to "correct it", bypassing reasonable bucks to have the standard nut height tweaked.