Pyroiguana

Well, I'm not particularly sure that is the same fuzz - granted, it is possible, but I can't be sure. I was thinking about building the tonebender real quick and trying it though - it is incredibly easy.

I'm asking a huge favor from anyone with a VOX starstream. I've been trying to find schematics for the electronics inside for ever and I have not had any luck whatsoever. I did find the V809 (I think that was it), the little plug in repeater effects module VOX made, and built it. It sounds good, but I was wanting to compare it to the repeater in the starstream. I am mainly looking for the fuzz, however (I LOVE that fuzz tone it gets) and perhaps the bass/treble boosts. Now - I was hoping someone would be willing to take a look inside their Starsteam and maybe take some pictures of the electronics, or maybe even share some more detailed info? I would appreciate the effort SO much. Anyone who does know the location of a drawn schematic please tell, though from my searching I really don't think there is one circulating anywhere. If I can't get a hold of the schematics/whatever at all, perhaps someone could point me to a fuzz pedal (to build) that gets the same kind of sounds as the Starstream? Here's a wonderful video showcasing the guitar: 0:50 is the boosts 1:10 is the fuzz 1:45 is the repeater Thanks!

I appreciate all the help guys! But I think I've already got it figured out. Pierce showed me the undrilled plates, and I reworked my plans to use that.

No, I don't really use wah at all, really. Besides, I'll have the option of bypassing the effects completely. So I'm not to worried about all that. Having the delay system with the time/repeat controls within easy reach to adjust/mess around with in real time is one of the main reasons for this ; )

I never really liked the look of concentric knobs... And I always thought they would be annoying to use. I decided what to do. Four knobs, and a 3-way mini switch at the top. Should fit well, with mini pots. I'll just drill the holes with the blank tele plates pierce suggested. I decided to take off a pickup, so this works perfectly now. It doesn't matter so much that it will be a little cramped. The top knob (volume) is gonna be the only one to see frequent use anyways, the other three will be for effects. I just posted a layout here. The parts on the guitar are not perfect porportions at all in the image, dont take any of that into account ; ) I think this issue is solved. Thanks!

Okay, well I'm planning yet another guitar, to be built after I finish a 12 String Teardrop and a semihollow bass. This one will be my "experimental guitar", I guess you could say... It's gonna have onboard effects. First off I was planning on putting this in. I love the sound & "experamentability" of vintage tape echos, and this sounds so so sooo perfect for me. Has anyone tried this, or another one of his products? If so, what did you think of it? I know it wont give you the same sound as the real thing, but that's okay : P Then, I'm going to make my own fuzz circuit using a online schematics. (I think I found one that fits my needs, labeled 60's Fuzz, really simple) Second question. I have a unused switch that needs a purpose! Here's a layout of the guitar with labels for the controls: The middle switch on the jaguar panel needs something to do... Suggestions? (The pickups are pretty much undecided at the moment, I'm looking for a nice vintage pickup... If I cant find one, p90s maybe?) EDIT: Dont mind the dimensions on the guitar design, I wasnt bothering with porportions that much.

Well, I need the switch. I'm gonna have a five-way strat style pickup selection, with three pickups. Maybe I'll just stick with three then. Thanks for the help.

Hmm. It doesnt damage the chrome? Crack the finish? Do you think theres even room for four? I drew up a plan for a future guitar last night, a jaguar redesign. I plan on experimenting with electronics on it, and 4 knobs would be very helpful, although I could get by with three.

Does anyone know where you can find tele style control plates for 3 knobs? I looked online and was really surprised when I couldn't find any. Thanks.

What made you decide to taper the spalted maple? Also, it would be nice to see a birds eye view of the top. I'm curious to see how it works with the shape. Glockenspiels, huh? It seems like a rather simple instrument to specialize in, but I'm sure he could prove me wrong XD

Still need a answer to that question! : ) ^ Update: I've been really busy with quite a few projects that have priority, so I don't have all tat much time to devote to this right now. But it is inching along, I expect I'll be able to work on it pretty much full time in a week or so. Still tyring to figure out the depth lines for the carve top... In other news, I just stopped by radioshack and built myself a piezo pickup for my sitar! It work amazingly well. The simplest project in my life... Get the peizo out of the casing, solder the two wires to a jack, and presto you got a pickup. Being a sorta quicky project, it doesn't look too hot but hey, it works. The circut board & peizo crystals are seperated by a bit of caulk, and the peizo and jack are held to the sitar by duct tape XD Next time, I'll design something more classy. The parts for the whole thing only cost me 5 bucks! I don't see any reason why you would buy a 50 dollar transducer when you can make it yourself with 5 bucks. It sounds excellent.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was asking. Sorry for the wierd wording...

It's going to be hand painted, in some sort of psychadelic design. I'm still waiting on him to figure that out, though. Progress is going a bit slow now... I was planning on beginning the routing today, but we couldnt get it down to the wood shop for thickness sanding today. So yesterday I glued up the top, and I'll bandsaw that today. Routing will begin tomorrow, instead. I'll also cut out a routing template for the pickups today. I also gotta plan out the carve. I was gonna use the drill press method, so do you think it's a good idea to glue up some pine, and do a prototype carve on it? So I could see my first plan flows nicely. Would also get some practice carving. But. I need some advice: The top is currently 3/4 inch thick. The carve will take up the top 1/2 inch of it. The left chamber, with the f-hole, needs to have a top to match the carve. What's the best way to do this?

: P Well, here's a pic of the jacaranda, and the bottom half of the body at the moment. The final, smooth shape will be routed after gluing, it's just a rough cut now. I couldn't really get a nice pic of the jacaranda wetted down... dries too fast, and my camera kind of sucks. Couldnt get it to look like it does IRL on the picture. Basically, it's got the same coloring as rosewood. Don't mind the scribbling on it right now, I was trying to figure out what the cavity cover was gonna look like and how it'd work with the chambers. Halfway through doing that, I realized I had to sand it anyway XD I think I got a good control layout planned out in my head, though.

Alright then, that's great. I'll do the thinline style chambering. I just picked up some jacaranda cara for the fretboard. The piece looks alot like rosewood, which was our first choice, but they said rosewood was hard to get in their area... The piece is nice. Might possibly be able to get 4 fretboards out of it, even. It's got a little sapwood on the back which I might use on a practice neck i'm making (i love sapwood, my brother doesn't so.. woohoo!) The practice neck is for some future build. I might as well post a few pics of that here, too. Wouldn't have been my first choice for a fretboard (IMO it's a little boring) but my brother wanted it, so.. Can't do the routing till tomorrow maybe. Our planer leaves quite a bit of nicks in the wood, so i'm gonna thickness sand it to get a nice and flat gluing surface. Cept, I don't have a thickness sander. Fortunately, the guy at the store said that he'll do it for 5 bucks. Will bring it down there tomorrow afternoon. Im fortunate to be doing this when I'm young, I have ALOT of time on my hands Mickguard - Yeah, he pretty much never plays sitting down. No worries about that. Mexnoob - Haha, if you read that little description, he starts out by saying stuffing foam in your f-holes is ugly and totally ineffective, and then goes on to recommend a product, which, strangely, involves stuffing foam in your f-holes. In any case, I think I'll be fine without em. Thanks for the tip, though.

Hmm. Well, the top will be around that thickness over all the chambers except for the f-hole one, which will probably be as thick as a normal semihollow top, maybe a little thicker. I was planning to route the chamber for that to take up the whole left half of the body, essentially. So I guess it would basically be the same as a semihollow interior, albiet with thicker walls and rear. Would that be that prone to feedback? If there's a good chance of uncontrollable feedback, I'm totally willing to forget about the f-hole and instead just keep the top above it nice and thick. I was planning on doing the chambers like the thinline: Thanks for the response.

So, im building a 12 String Vox Teardrop, as you might have guessed from the title. It's for my brother. I've just started the woodworking on this build, decided to post a topic so I can ask some questions as I go along. Here's the plan: The body will be chambered, so I am cutting out a top and bottom out of cherry at the moment. There will be a f-hole, design undecided at the moment. The top will have a medium-shallow carve. Two Phat Cat P90s, gotoh 12-string bridge, most likely standard les paul type electronics. Bolt on neck, made out of hard maple and a undecided fretboard wood (still need to take a trip down to the store and let my brother pick something out). It will be hand painted, we'll see about that when we get to it. Expect some kinda interesting psychadelic design. All I've done so far is glue up & roughly cut out the bottom half. After the chambers and control cavity are routed out, I'll start work on the top. After I get the f-hole and areas beneath it and above the control cavity to the right thickness (the layout and mounting of the controls still needs to be designed), I'll glue the two together and then router the edges with a template. Then comes the neck, and then after that I'll route out the neck pocket and pickups. Then carving, and controls. That's the plan. I'll start posting pictures of my progress soon. Probably will get around to the chambers and control cavity tonight or tomorrow afternoon. Okay now for my first question. I've seen alot of warnings about chambers and feedback. What are some good tips to minimize this? My brother does use quite a bit of feedback in his playing, but his current guitar is a solid body and the feedback is restricted to the strings so it's easily controlled. Heavy body feedback is very much not welcome. Is it better to have multiple serperate chambers, or one or two large ones? Now, another question just popped into my head about feedback. What elements contibute to causing strings to feedback? For example, my brother's solid body gretsch can feedback extremely easily but my strat and my last custom guitar dont.

Ooh, another suggestion! The bass side seems a little too straight in that one spot. I noticed something slightly off about that side but couldnt figure out what till now. Maybe you could very slightly round that out on the next one? That one straight line doesn't really fit in with the otherwise very curvy body. And I definitely like the inlayed wood and stripe alot more then the pickgaurd one. The inlayed part really gives it a unique, interesting look.

I love it! The only flaws in my eyes are the mismatched horns (if you kept them both the ric bass kinda shape i think it'd look better) and the stain. I love the color you ended up with, i think it really matches the rest of the guitar, but if you could redo it and get that same color wih a more uniform stain... How was the stripe done?

I don't think you guys realize that I've already started working on the neck : P Besides, I have enough cherry in my backyard to build a house out of. And the piece I used was actually very small, pretty much just big enough for the neck. So It's not like I am wasting anything, really. As for practice on the body, I don't think I need it. For all the routing, this time around, I'll be making templates, (and testing them) and the teardrop design is very simple. I'll be carving the top a little though, and I'll practice a bit o' carving on something else before that.

Alright then, I guess I'll buy the parts! Dudz, there's another reason that I won't use this neck. The headstock area doesn't give me that much extra room to hold 12 tuners... So this one's just for later. Anyone up for answering the truss rod question? Thanks! Oh, and here's what Benedetto wrote: "A volute, which is structurally unnecessary, can also be a detriment to player and therefore is not advisable" Seeing how it's a practice neck I might as well try it, eh? An added challenge.

Okay, well this summer I plan on making two guitars. One for my brother, a 12 string Vox teardrop, and one for me, most likely a semihollow neck through bass. The teardrop will come first, as it's obviously the easiest. Seeing how this will be my second guitar and my first try at a neck, I plan on making a practice neck first. Now, my first question. Should I actually put money into the neck so I have a finished neck for future builds? Or is it not worth it. I did'nt want to buy wood for my practice neck, so it's made from one of the hundreds of planks of cherry I had in my backyard (that I made my first guitar out of). I don't know whether using cherry for a neck is in any way detrimental to the strength of it, that wasn't something I was too worried about seeing how it's just practice. But now I want to know if I can actually use it. I'm going to order parts for the teardrop soon and I'd like to include the hardware for this neck if you guys think it's actually worth it. I'm absolutely sure I'd be able to use the neck later, for some other build (Not the teardrop, cause it's going to be a 12 string and I'd rather make a multi-peice neck with stronger woods for the extra tension) Second question. Does the location of the truss rod parallel to the neck matter? I plan on using the box type construction truss rods, seeing how it's so much simpler... But I have'nt seen any information on where to start/end the channel. I assume that it doesn't really matter at all, that you just place it as far up so that the adjustment is accesible, but I wanted to be sure. Third question. What's the deal with volutes?? I've read quite a few places that its supposed to increase the strength of the neck and that it's highly recommended. But I got that Benedetto archtop book from the library for info on neck construction, and he says it doesn't do anything at all and it's detrimental to the player anyways. What do you guys think? I'll post pics of my progress after I actually get somewhere. Right now all I did is glue on the angled headstock and draw out the neck shape and dimensions. I can't really do all that much until I know if I'm actually gonna put parts and a nice fretboard on it. Thanks.

Woohoo! Whamola! They're, like Xanthus said, a one string standup bass you whack with a stick, BUT with a important differnce. There's some sort of mechanism (i imagine it can vary) that bends the string mounted on the headstock. You play it by holding the mechanism with your left hand, bending it to change the pitch and whacking it with a stick with your other hand. Or you can just play it on the fretboard. I was thinking about making one sometime. They seem so fun to play. How are you making the string bender? (if at all) Here's a good video of it in use both ways:

This sounds interesting. You might wanna go and find someone who's starting from scratch, though XD This is really all I'll be doing: - Fixing the top crack - Cleaning the parts - Carving a new tuning peg - Replacing the sound post - Installing a bridge I don't think that list will give you all that much info on the construction of a violin. Is the guitar going to be acoustic, acoustic-electric, or semihollow? It seems like you'd also have to readjust the demensions a little, at least. It might look better to give the guitar a little extra width, for one. And you'll have to base it more off a guitar than a violin if your doing a semihollow. I suppose you could have the same kind of sound post idea if you do an acoustic? I look forward to this proposed project of yours ; ) Do it!

Haha, woops. I keep catching myself saying that, over and over again. I'm not used to violins!