KeithHowell

The head gaffer still posts! Well I'm the technical one. My friend and colleague Richard owns the company.

If anyone is interested in buying an Afri-Can please let me know.

Keith

Guitarist Steve Newman said to me he felt that his steel string guitars improved with age however his nylon string guitars lasted around 15 years then started to deteriorate. Steve's guitars are all mostly made by Mervyn Davis. Have a look at MervynDavis for some interesting concepts in acoustic guitars.

Keith

Does anyone have a suitable technique for sharpening a round bottom plane blade?

Keith

Picky? We are talking a magnitude of 1000 out here. If you get a zero reading it means you have a dead short across your pickup. You will have infinity with a open circuit. It will also matter what range setting you put your meter on. The highest reading of the range should be a bit higher than the expected resistance of the coil ie around 5 Kohm.

except it wont be near-zero becuase of the resistance of the extremely long peice of wire that the coil is made from. It will most likely be somewhere between 4-7 ohms on the average single coil.

Most pickups are somewhere between 2 - 25 ohms resistance.

If you havnt even got a multimeter the easiest way to test it is to wire it striaght to an output jack and see if it works

Thats 2 - 25 KILO ohms. Most single coils are around 5 Kilo ohms

Have a look at http://www.guitarbuild.com and download the Telecaster Plan. You can get all the measurements of there.

Does anybody know what body edge radius was used on Gibson's Flying-V s?

Run the drill backwards to burnish through the finish first. Then set it to the forward direction and finish the hole.

Keith

On a stereo jack I'm pretty sure it's just hot and two grounds, the hot is the short one usually and then it doesn't matter which other one is grounded.

NO! A stereo jack and socket has two hots and one ground, otherwise it wouldn't be stereo but mono with dual ground (huh?).

Keith

Have a look at Acoustic Guitar Not a cad plan but an interesting DIY project with drawings in PDF format.

Your guitar leads are acting as an antenna and picking up 50 or 60 hertz hum. The leads probably arn't sheilded properly.

So I can skip over the break contact?

Yes just solder to the ground terminal and the non-break terminal.

The easist way to check is : stick a plug in the jack and see which contact the tip connects to then measure with a multimeter set to ohms between that contact and the lugs to see which one it connects to (while the plug is still in and disconnecting the contact)

Keith

I hate starting topics with simple quick questions, so I am just going to add on to this topic. I bought a mono jack, but it has 2 conductors and is a closed circuit, can I still hook this up? Instead of having two solder terminals it has three and that throws me for a loop.

One of the terminals will be connected to a break contact. ie when you put the plug in it will disconnect it from the other contact. The remaining contact will be the ground connection.

Keith

Have a look at Cumpiano's bolt in neck system at Bolt in neck

I've used it and it is simple and very effective. I have just modified a Hofner 12-string, which had a very dodgy mechanical bolt in system, to this method with very successful results.

Keith

I generally find it better to bolt all the pots to a piece of aluminium which is then fixed inside the cavity with a few screws with just the shafts sticking through the wood. The metal screens as well and you can solder everything together outside the guitar without having to scratch around in the cavity.

Keith

Ovation used to make entire necks out of aluminum. It's environmentally stable, and makes a decent neck material

We too made necks out of aluminium for our African-Guitars. However the neck is very temperature dependant, on very cold days it will back bow (it had a wooden fretboard) and need to be warmed up before you can play.

Keith

I replaced the set screw arrangement and it worked pretty well

How did you remove the hook arrangement? How is it fixed into the neck block? Did you cut a proper neck joint and bolt on the neck?

Keith

The neck seems fine. It was probably made as follows: the fret board was glued all nice and flat then the truss rod was tensioned giving a bit of back bow. Then everything was leveled and radiused. If you then relax the truss rod a bit you will add relief and tightening it will work as normal against string tension.

Installing frets with tangs wider than the slot cut in the fretboard will tend to give you back bow but frets with corresponding tangs should keep everything nice and level. The oversized tang installation is a technique used by some luthiers to reduced relief if the truss rod can't (some older acoustics had non adjustable rods)

Keith

A colleague brought me his 1974 Hofner 12-string with the neck pulling to one side. After removing the strings I found there was at least 3mm movement side to side and up and down of the neck. Releasing the neck screw I discovered a really strange hook and plate system securing the neck. Has anybody repaired/removed this system and converted to a bolt on neck? For a picture of the Hofner system have a look at:Hofner neck joint

Are you turning the guitars volume down when you play at lower volumes or just your amp?

If you are getting the problem when turning down the guitar you might need to put a treble bypass capacitor in the circuit. Have a look at the circuit for a Telecaster. The cap bleeds some treble past the volume pot and you don't have the sudden treble cut when turning the volume down slightly.

Keith

Played plenty sports. Mostly golf and (field) hockey, along with a bit of cricket,squash, basket ball and football. Still involved with hockey and am deputy chairman of our club, manage 1st and 2nd mens teams and play a bit for our masters (over 35) team.

Keith

Have a look here: Dennis Havlena

He has a project making a 40" bass and somewhere an article on making your own strings as well.

Go to a plan printing service you will need to print at least an A0 sheet for a full size guitar plan.

Keith

Well given that most pickups have a DC resistance of greater than 3K ohm the formula V=I*R gives

I = V/R or I = 9/3000 I = .003 or less than 3mA and the greater the resistance the lower the current.So I don't think you would have damaged the coils.

Keith

What value could be put on an original Eddie van Halen finished guitar, signed and authenticated and originally played by him?

Keith