Keegan

Interesting, but I wonder if the speed of sound is the reason. Speed does not equal frequency. The speed of sound is the speed with which a sound propogates through the air - e.g. the delay in hearing a thunderclap. However, if the resonant frequency of a metal string changes with temperature, then we are onto something Actually, it has to change, because metal contracts with cold, and that puts more tension on the string. The question is if it is enough to change the tuning significantly. Speed doesn't equal frequency, but velocity equals the wavelength times the frequency, and the frequency depends on the source of the wave, so if velocity increases, the wavelength has to decrease. This would make it go sharp in heat though, not in cold, and it'd have to be an extreme difference for it to even matter, that's where I ****ed up. I also thought I was checking the tuning quickly enough for nothing to heat up or cool down, but I guess the metal conducts heat so quickly that I didn't remove them from the equation at all. I guess now the thing to check is the tuning at different time intervals in the cold. I'll try it again, this time with a timer for 3 minutes in the cold. If it's even sharper than it is as soon as I get into the cold, then I'll know that something's losing heat and shrinking(probably the strings, because then they would go sharp; if the wood were losing heat, it would contract and the guitar would go flat, unless maple contracts faster and the neck tension changes, but the wood would take longer than a few minutes to get cold). Edit: Yup, not only did it go sharper over time, each string's pitch changed at a different rate, in order of size. It has to be the strings getting looser or tighter with temperature then.

Hmm, it probably is the strings, not anything else. They conduct heat a lot quicker than the guitar, so they would change long before the wood would. Also, more velocity would equal higher pitch, not lower... I thought I ****ed something up when I set the frequency of the guitar string and the frequency of the sound in air equal to each other to get v/w=v/w, I guess I didn't. So higher temperature = smaller wavelength = higher pitch. Strings would expand in heat, making them looser, and the sound lower pitched. Thanks Borge.

Edit: Figured out the real reason... I didn't think the speed of sound would be enough to make a guitar out of tune...

If the scale is 25.5", the 12th would be at 12.75" and the 24th would be at 19.125". I think you left out the .5 and just did a scale length of 25" in your calculations. As far as I know, those necks are incredibly stable and the transfer from neck to body is great. There's also some supposed tone voodoo with having the pickups attached to the neck. I don't know about that, but it can't hurt. Sounds like a good idea. Pickup placing may be tricky though. Edit: Oh, and that's impossible for the wraparound to change the tension. Tension = (w^2)(f^2)(m/l), where w is the wavelength, f is the frequency, and m/l is the mass per unit length of the string. Wavelength is determined by the scale length of the guitar, intonation adjustments at the bridge, and fret positions. Frequency is kept constant. And the mass per unit length only depends on the gauge of the string, the construction of the string, and the density of whatever it's made out of.

How does a wraparound change the tension?

Well, not exactly, because SD doesn't really give much info about their pickups. But Dimarzio does give the output in mV, and an X2N is similar to a Dimebucker, except that the dimebucker is wound even more(to 16.25kohm, the X2N is 13.68k). The X2N is already 85mV more output than the Super Distortion. A Dimebucker will have even more output than that. That's a pretty good neck/bridge difference, it'll probably be pretty balanced. You'll have to play around with the pickup height a little, but not too much.

This would be killer with a loop and a compression pedal. Then you'd have not only bass and guitar but also percussion. You might tune it down a bit to ease off the tension, and to play some really thick rhythm stuff. Maybe even try an open tuning of some sort and play around with fingerstyle on it. I could think of a million things to try on this guitar.

Ah, I knew someone would call me out on scarf joints because I forgot to exclude them. I was speaking specifically about Gibson necks, which are usually one-piece, and made rather poorly. They can't even make necks as good as their budget subsidiary, Epiphone. A good scarf would probably be stronger than a flat headstock even. But I'd be more worried about it breaking somewhere else if it fell because of the headstock angle. An angle around 4-5 degrees might be best, enough to set the strings down over the nut, but not enough to cause any instability. It'd be kind of nice if it came back to the same level as the back of the body, too.

Anything less than 17 degrees like Gibson does is good. I kind of like not having the headstock break off when I accidentally bump into something. Personally I like flat, but anything that angles reasonably, just enough to bring the strings down from the nut, is good. I haven't had this problem yet with a flat headstock, so I don't even see the need for one.

About 6 or 7....oh, guitar headstock, right. Well, tuner position and string angle are the only things that really matter with the length of the headstock. My strat is about 7.25", that gives you more than enough room for 6-in-a-line, so that's the most you'd ever need because any other configuration(excluding more than 6 strings) can only take up less space. Well, unless you do some crazy thing where the string pull is all funky and off-center.

Is this what you're looking for? http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wirin...tic=switch_f_bp Except that you'd substitute that switch for whatever kind you're using, if it's SPDT then just ignore the left side, and do the neck pickup instead of the bridge.

So why are 25k pots used for active systems? Does it have to do with the impedance?

Damn that is sexy. I hope the danish oil over my padouk looks half as good.

I don't think so, I dunno. You might as well experiment. You can't really hurt anything unless you heat up the lugs of the pots too much or connect the battery back around to itself with no resistance. That's how I learned, playing around with the wiring in my strat.

Looks awesome, KP. Way to steal the thread, IPA, those look so awesome... Steel and guitars, a match made in heaven. Argh, now I need to save up $5000, or figure out how to make one myself... I can only think of how to plate a guitar in steel and rust the steel, no idea on making an actual body out of it.

[---] (they're wired to each other) [WW] (White from the volume, white from the pickups) [TT] (both go to the middle of the tone pot) That's looking at it right side up, so if you pull the knob up, it connects the center lugs with the top lugs, when you push it down, the center lugs are connected to the bottom lugs. So up=bypass the tone control completely, down=let treble bleed to ground through the tone control. 'S kind of an odd wiring diagram, since tone controls usually come after the volume in the signal path. Volume is similar, but I don't think you'd have anything to gain from it. I have really bassy pickups and just bypassing the tone control is plenty. Unless you're just looking for an easy way to kick it into overdrive. In that case...hmm... [---] (wired to each other again) [WW] (white that used to be on the middle lug on the volume, white that used to be on the lug clockwise from that as looking at it from the bottom) [VV] (wires going to the volume control as normal) Do you see how that works? You're basically taking the output from the pickups in each case and wiring it straight to hot signal output, bypassing the controls completely. So when you pull up, it connects the middle lugs directly to each other via the top lugs, and when you push down, they're connected to the controls as normal. Sorry if you don't get it, wiring is really hard to describe in text, and it's also hard to translate from a diagram because you have to flip stuff upside down. Whenever I say "up" or "top" lugs, I mean the ones closest to the potentiometer, because they're the ones that the middle lugs run to when you pull up on the knob. Edit: This is how it would look as you're wiring it. I left out the ground connections, because they're still the same(ie, right lug in this view goes to ground on each pot, except the tone has a capacitor inbetween)

Is the volume pot attached to the PCB? If so you can't do that, but you could still wire a bypass on the tone to just bypass the tone control and give you more top end than turning it to 10 even would. I think you would just have the white and the wire from A on the center 2 lugs, then you'd wire the "down" lugs to the middle lug on the tone pot and the 2 "up" lugs to each other. I have no experience with active electronics though, I'd have to fiddle around with it to tell you for sure.

Awesome. I love how it changes with the contours of the body carves. It looks like you skinned a dragon or something. I've never seen lacewood look this good. Too bad with the clear coat you won't be able to feel the wood, lacewood really does feel like a reptile of some sort.

I meant fret both the 1st and 24th on the Low E at the same time and look for a very slight gap. You should just barely be able to slide a card underneath the 7th fret while fretting the 1st and 24th(you'll probably need someone's help to test that, unless you hold the card in your teeth or something) without it lifting the string up. You can see the gap if you look at it from the side. The height of a quarter for the action is pretty typical, so I don't think the action is your problem. There's a very severe problem with the neck if you have no space at all under the strings when fretting at the 1st and 24th, you either need way more relief or something is wrong with the frets. The neck should just bow slightly forward. If it already does bow forward, don't try adding more relief, you'll probably break the neck before you get a decent amount.

Is this your first build? If it is, you'd probably be best off making it easy on yourself by getting a pre-made neck with a paddle headstock so that you can cut your own headstock. In any case, the neck needs to be done or at least fully planned first, so that you have measurements to work off of for the body, especially in the neck pocket and bridge positioning.

You might want to get some sort of metal or wood shim, then rerout the whole pocket to the right depth for that. Or you could forget the shim, rerout the pocket so that it's the same depth throughout, and then lower the bridge by the same amount. This option may or may not be possible, depending on how deep you need to go and what bridge you're using. I wouldn't fill it unless it were absolutely necessary.

Hmm, that should be plenty big. You just need to draw it on a bigger piece of paper that you can scale to full size easily(or better yet, draw it full scale), with a proper neck pocket. Standard neck pocket is 3 inches long by 2-3/16" wide. Again those are Fender dimensions, so if you make your own neck it can vary, but that width is pretty universal for 25.5" scale. The length is more dependent on how much wood you want under the fretboard, and how far away you want it from the strings. With wood under all of the fretboard, 24 frets, and a 3" neck pocket, you'll move the bridge about an inch further up. You could have extra wood beyond the fretboard that bolts into the body, moving the bridge even further up with the same length neck pocket, but then the whole thing might be ridiculously long. Adding more wood would also make the width of the neck pocket change, because the taper would be different.

How big is the body? Edit: No, a bolt-on doesn't have a tenon, it's just the neck itself. You need at least a 3" pocket to bolt it in I think, at least that's what Fender uses, you might get away with less, but not easily.

Maybe when you leveled it the neck had some relief in it, so you were taking more off the frets near the nut and the end of the neck. Either that or your neck is backbowing, but you'd notice something like that. When you fret it at the first and last frets, is there any space between the strings and the middle frets? Edit: Oh, and what's the action at the 12th fret like?

They sell an equal tempered neck, as well as two others, one that's made for "guitar keys" and one that's made for "jazz keys"