KeithHowell

I can't believe the price you guys are paying for veneers in the States. There is a company here in Cape Town that has just veneered the top and back of a guitar for me which cost me R100 (roughly $11 US) and that included book matching, application with their special glue and pressing in their heated press so it should never come loose. Whats more both the glue and most of the veneers they sell are imported from, guess where, the USA. Keith

I have seen several references to modge podge. Can it be used for a finish on electric and acoustic guitars? If so what would the technique be? Ten coats of modge podge wet sand and finish with a few coats of clear lacquer? Keith

What I would suggest is: Put the JFET buffers as close to the piezo's as you can. There should be room for a tiny circuit board in a Strat with a 9v battery. Trim the outputs of the buffers with trim pots mounted on the circuit boards to get a good balance. Replace the Strats jack socket with a stereo one and wire the magnetic pickups to one channel and the piezo's to the other. You can then plug a stereo cable through to the equalisation box which could be clipped to your strap or on the floor with your other effects. If there is still not enough room in the Strat for the 9v cell it is possible to feed the power on the output lead. I would have to discuss this with my audio expert colleague and come up with a good design. The important thing is to keep the high impedance bit short. ie from the transducers to the FET buffer. Keith

I would highly recommend adding a pre-amp for your piezo system. The piezo has plenty of output but is a very high impedance device (about 1Meg) and wiring it directly on to a potentiometer will load it differently across the range of the pot which will result in different frequency responses for different volume settings. A colleague and I have just modelled a similar system on software and buffering the piezo with a preamp makes a huge difference. I would suggest using a jfet buffer directly off the piezo. Have a look at this link: http://www.cafewalter.com/cafewalter/piezo.../oppiezobuf.htm for some designs. You can then follow the buffer with a pre-amp with tone controls for equalisation. A gain of one through all this is fine as there is plenty of output from the transducer and the only thing to worry about is getting a decent frequency response out of the system in to the amp (we don't want to overdrive the amp here, this is acoustic type sound not death metal), even the length and impedance of the cable will make a difference with a 1meg impedance source. I am about to fit the system to the acoustic guitar I am building. I have a modelled design of the tone circuitry if anybody is interested. I will be building it and testing soon.

Looks interesting. Has anybody tried this out? There's a company in here in Cape Town making, whats called an Afri-Can guitar which has a machined aluminum neck and an oil can for a body, they have quite an amazing tone. I haven't played one yet but I have heard David Kramer playing one on stage. It follows very much in the tradition of the local "blik" (afrikaans for "tin") guitar which is a crudely built home made guitar made by local rural musicians using a 5 litre oil can and a piece of wood for a neck. Keith

Yes you use a few different blocks. All the math is on www.buildyourguitar.com so you can make any radius you like. You could possibly, I haven't tried this, make a block with one radius at one end and the other at the other end with the side supports smoothly interpolated between them. The block should then have the compound radius you require. Keith

Jeremy's correct. Don't even bother trying it with an ink jet printer, the ink won't even stick properly onto the label backing. Laser jet and photo copier toner is basically plastic which is melted when it passes through the hot rollers of the machine. This is why it works so well if you use the same technique to make printed circuit boards. (instead of the scotch tape you iron it onto your copper of the board, remelting the plastic and making it cling to the copper where it will resist the chemical etching process) It will work with a photcopy machine as well, but in my experience, from the pc board angle, a laser printer does a better job. It puts out a crisper and more dense image. Or maybe its just our copy machine at the office thats not so great. The newer digital type seem to have a much crisper image. Photocopying of course will allow you to do designs by hand on paper without having a computer! (Does anybody do this anymore! The reason I build guitars is because I get enough hitech all day long. I'm a software engineer). Keith

Have a look on www.buildyourguitar.com for a easy method of making radius sanding blocks to any length you like. I have made a 9.5" and a 12" and they work great.

Here's a method I've worked out which makes great decals without having to go to a printing house to get it made. All you need is access to a Laser Printer, some Self adhesive label backing paper (the waxed paper stuff that is left over once you have removed the labels, stiffie disk labels work great) and some clear adhesive tape. The following is basically a minor modification to using the label backing to make printed circuit boards. 1) Design your logo and print it out onto paper on the laser printer. Before printing mark a corner of the page you will be printing on so that you can reinsert the page into the printer with the same orientation. 2) Cut a piece of label backing big enough to cover the printed logo on the paper. Allow a decent margin around the edge. 3) Using one of the paper labels, cut a strip and stick the label backing onto your printed paper page making sure that the waxy part is up and the paper label doesn't cover any part of the logo. DO NOT use the clear cellophane tape it WILL jam your printer. The paper labels and glue are designed to go through laser printers. Make sure the end of the label backing you have stuck down is the leading edge as it moves through the printer. 4) Place the page. with the stuck on label backing back into the printer making sure it is orientated as per your original mark you made before the first print. 5) Print your logo again. This time it will be printed onto the waxy surface of the label backing. 6) Take a piece of the clear self adhesive tape and stick it down over the newly printed logo. Rub it down with a blunt object ,like the back of a pencil, making sure all the all the printing is covered. 7) Carefully pull the tape off the backing and you should have one neatly printed logo on the tape which you can now stick wherever you like, preferably on your guitar, and then finish over the top of it. Just be aware that the solvents in your finish might disolve the ink or the the clear film you have used so try it first on your test piece you used before starting on your guitar. Keith Howell