Redhat

I use a lot of 3rds and 6ths in my playing, and equal tempering just doesn't serve my playing style terribly well. To me, werckmeister3 tempering actually sounds like an improvement. I checked out Tru Temperament this afternoon, and I think I'm going to try an emulate the idea. The guy there even outlines the process. I'll post how it goes. Cheers

http://www.kirnberger.fsnet.co.uk/TempsII.htm This site contains a lot of historical data on temperaments, including Werckmeister III.

I'm thinking of trying to make a fretboard using the Werckmeister III well tempered tuning system. Any one looked into this before, willing to offer any tips? Thanks!

What your website URL? I'd love to check out your other guits! Also, I love the second guitar, what types of wood is the top made from?

Bet you can blast out some wicked runs on that thing! Sorry, just had to! Anyways, awsome build!

I should also mention that I ended up not reinforcing the neck. After many discussions with many builders, it became very clear that to do so was really only catering to my paranoia. So, next up, sanding down to the final shape, and sourcing the fretboard.

Ok, here's the roughed out neck and body, with truss rod installed. Now I just have to find a fretboard for it. Does anyone know where to get a 3" wide ziricote fretboard?

Ok, so I got the truss rod cavity routed and the rod and top cap installed for it. I did the cut on a milling machine, and I'm absolutely amazed at how precise it was, exact to 3 decimal places! I have to get one of those. I'll be roughing out the rest of the shape tonight, and will post pics then. I had a blond moment trimming off some of the excess wood though. I did it on the table saw, completely oblivious to all put the highest point on the blade when doing the excess wood around the neck joint. Ouch! Must have had my fill of lucky charms that morning, or I'd be starting from scratch. All the over cuts will be trimmed off when the neck is shaped! On another note, I'll also be building the prototype for my intonatable nut tonight, and I'm pretty sure my design will work fine. Anyways, pics tonight. Cheers

I agree with the headstock comments. The only thing I would mention in addition is that it looks to me like the angle of the oval and the angle of the upper horn offset are similar but not quite exact. Maybe matching the angles might work better. Then again, they might match anyways, and I'm just looking at them wrong. Otherwise, I really like the color combo you've picked out. Props.

Thanks Elysian, appreciate the info.

Elysian, just out of curiosity, what guage strings do you play? I run 11 to 52's on all my 6 strings, and I really like to crank the string tension up pretty high. The 7th string will be a low B, and the tension I have on most of my necks is why I was thinking of the carbon fiber. Are there any negatives to reinforcing a neck with carbon fiber? I really have been jumping back and forth with the decision, but at the end of the day, I'd pick sound quality over piece of mind if I HAD to choose. If there aren't any negatives, I'm just going to do it so I don't end up worrying about it. In reguards to the fretboard, I've pretty much settled on Macassar ebony. No point experimenting with woods I can't find info on, and orange and olive wood both fall into that category in terms of musicality. That being said, if anyone living in south western British Columbia knows of a local hardwood suitable for fretboards, please let me know.

In terms of top and bottom, i was thinking from a playing position, so left and right when upright is what I meant. I have a full size drawing with all the details. It has indeed helped, and doing so actually lead me away from my original headstock design, which was originally a little more Gibsonesque. I actually traced a copy of it Photoshop to do the rough mockup I did. Still thanks for the tips, and I do hope they help out any other newbs who might be reading this thread.

First off, I gotta say hats off to the LED side fret markers on the Priest Tribute. Anyone who's ever played on a dark stage knows what a life saver those would be. However, I have to give the nod to Mythical Dream. Though all the other entires were awesomely done builds, Mythical Dream is just so unique, and so utterly far beyond my simple skills, it just has to win. I will add a caveat to my vote. Dream only wins if I'm showing off the guitar in a hermetically sealed glass case. Otherwise, for actual use, Priest Tribute would get the nod.

Well, I've done some more work in terms of planning, and have a little mockup to post. I'll apologize again becuase my camera skills suck, and it looks a little askew though my full size plans are perfectly square. Anyways, I've also decided that I am going to add extra carbon fibre supports to the neck. The headstock is going to be 3 machine heads on top, and 4 on the bottom. What do you guys think of the design? I'm fairly happy with it, but am always open to suggestions. I just have to choose a fingerboard material. I had been thinking ebony, but am now considering some other woods my local supplier has in stock. Has anyone tried olive or orange tree wood? They both seemed quite hard and suitable to a fingerboard, but I want to do some research on these woods before jumping in on either. In terms of the optical pickups, my local electronics shop was out of stock, so I had to order the reflective object sensors. In terms of design, I did a little more research and found some guys at the Universiy of British Columbia who have used these sensors to make pickups for a standup bass, and their reports are that they offered better acoustic results than standard piezos. Their design had two sensors per string, perpendicular to each other, under the string so as not to interfere with the actual performer's picking, in a sort of 'V' shape. Anyways, I'm quite excited to get the parts in. I'll keep you all posted.

It is going to have a Fender style headstock, with a scoop down to a parallel face (in relation to the fingerboard) with a fixed strat type bridge. I'm still not sure if I should reinforce the neck though. I tend to run really thick guage strings, and I'm leaning towards adding carbon fiber reinforcements because of the added low B on this seven string, but any advice is appreciated. Thanks for everyone's input so far. I'm also going to pickup some reflective object sensors tomorrow to see if my optical pickup idea will work. My thought is, if it works, blending the optical with the piezos would create a really close approximation of an acoustic sound, leaving the magnetics for electric sounds.