billm90

im done

im done

the reason for the piezo system is to pickup each string by it's self. with piezos on each string, the E string wont be heard through the A strings piezo. Sorry if I am explaining things to you, that you already know. I am not sure how to comment on the question. My limited info on these tunning changes leads me to think the only other way is with a midi synth system, like the VG-8, which uses a gk-2 pickup. gk-2 pickup is basically mini humbuckers for each string similar to the piezo layout. For question 2, I dont know if floor pedal means a midi type unit?

I have done every one of my leds neck differently. I am no pro by any means, but through barbarian tricks I can do anything. First guitars was an acoustic nylon. I did not remove anyhting. drilled right through the top of the fret board throuh the back of the neck. Used a dremel and made a channel in the back of the neck for the wires. glued in the leds with the dome sticking out the top of the fretboard. pre cut the led leads to a size that will fit. ran pieces of wire that tied all the leds to gether, filled the channel, sanded the leds flat to the top of the fret board, painted the neck. Then I did an electric, and I put 2 leds on each fret. one on each side of the truss rod. did this one pretty much the same way I did the nylon, but I am going to do it over as I am fixing this guitar up. The electric nylon I did, I put the mini leds as side fret markers only. same slot in the back of the neck, but this one is closer to the side of the fret board. drilled the side fret marker hole, the drilled another hole at 90 that to actually get the led in that hole with a section for the wires to come out. later I tried removing the fretboards. this makes me nervous still... I have done it and put a channel in the fret board, or the neck, it depends on how your guitar is set up. The last one I did, I just ran bare wire up and down the the leds. this makes wiring it up a lot faster. as for doing tricks, like multiple colors etc... I kind stay away from that as I already hate putting the leds in the necks. The best way to do this is to remove the fret board, for a nice clean look. if your messing around with some old junk guitars, and want it in there quick, channeling the back of the neck gets the job done. If you take a look at the pics in the web page posted in this thread, there are some really cool ideas if you have a bolt on neck and stuff. There work is a lot cleaner then mine, but when I am done with mine, you cant tell what I did with filler and paint... lol My channels are a lot smaller then the average ones I have seen. my channels are only about a wire wide. I run the two wires on top of eachother.

I have done 5 or 6 guitars with leds. I usually make it simple. one 9v, directly wired to the leds. no resitors or drivers or anything. battery life = I have not drained one down yet. I can get away with out resistors I believe, because I usually run min of 9-10 leds. to dim the leds, you can wire them all up and put one of those resistor between the leds, and the battery, it will cut the brightness down to something you can look directly at and not go blind. I just did a mega bright white fret board on my acoustic 8 string I am goodfing with. the are really bright. one resistor and they drop down to something I can look at. I am going to use a switch to change the brightness.

I have done the few under the strat saddles. I had mine on a popsicle stick to not damage them. I was not really happy with them. I was going to try and solder some under the saddles. I have the vintage type. As for buying those, I went on ebay and bought 500 of them for 30.00 or something like that.

What kind of guitar are you doing this for? I have made a **** load of DIY piezos. Let me help save you some time. A tap test will only tell you if the piezo works. Make each piezo replacable. Make it similar to the RMC pickups. I am going to make each one out of a small pieze of metal, and glue the piezo to it. I made mine in the past on classical guitars, with a piezo on each string, but I epoxied each piezo to the whole saddle. Usually one or two strings were low on output. I would not find out till it was all together, so I would build a whole new set. I did this several times and to this day I am still finding pieces of plastic or wood covered in epoxy with 7-12 wires hanging out of it. All my failed attempts. If you end up with low output piezo's, mixing it down wont be the best route. just fix it right (make new ones), then you can mix down the rest as you please for balance. Next. running passive mixing. My fishman bridge with piezos says to use a 5meg pot. I dont have one, never seen one. I run it straight to the jack. they really knew what they were doing because it is pretty loud as a passive piezo. They say performance will be lowered with a lower value pot. I had issues when I tried a 100K pot, but also had other complicated stuff going on with it. so I am unsure. If you try mixing the piezos before a preamp, run a test to see how it sound striaght to the jack, and then through a pot. I am actually going to do this pretty soon as I am gearing up for a ton of nylon's going to electric with diy piezos. Another few things I would like to break down a little more scientifically but have not had time. 1. Does the amount of wire/solder used effect tone/output? 2. Does rigid mounting like in epoxy help, or should it be attached at one small point, where it can move semi freely? 3. 0n a classical bridge, is mounting in front, middle, or behind the saddle work better? These questions arise as I have pretty much done something similar to all of these and had different results. which make me more aware now when I make these things, how the results vary. I should make a guitar that has a 1/8 jack on top of it so I can just change out saddles done every which way and see what the results are.

My first DIY were some disasters. I would just keep trying. But dont work on it in a hurry or frustrated. that is when you settle for half assed repairs. Jake take a break from it and let those failure feelings go. When you think about where you went wrong, correct for it, and try again.

first off the build looks awesome! The clear hollow body has been something I have been thinking about for years. The pain in the ass factor has kept me away from it. I have had decent results with plexi in the bandsaw. no cracks or tears or whatever you want to call it. sand the cuts, then hit it with a propane torch as you do. To drill, I just use an old soldering iron to melt through. I drilled through a piece once. never again. Need a bigger hole, a dremel with a taper grinding bit does the trick. for pickup hole cuts, I use a dremel with a carbide disk, and just melt on through it. then clean up with a dremel sanding roll on low speed. I have built a few pickguards with plexi. forget that rubber made lid stuff.

I am affraid to. There will be riots and a huge uproar about why I would even bother. tell you what, once I get it to an acceptable appearence, I will post pics. But you should be ready for something a bit "different"

Never removed the neck. It appears to be slightly bent, but not enough to give me the bad result I was getting. I found the old fret board, lined it up and it is closer then the new FB. Compared the new to the old, and the only issue I see on the new is I am like 1/16 an inch wider at the 12th fret. this is something I could easily remove once I have the FB set correct. I didnt want to mark the guitar top, then I thought of using tape as a guide. this thing is probably not even worthy of a topic on here anymore. I am going to just line up everything using tape, glue the fret board on and deal with any other issues that may come of it not being exact on the neck. Perhaps I should of just started over, but... I have other projects to move on to.

say I built this thing from scratch, how would one go about locating everything (neck and bridge) Do you just draw a line up the middle and try and line everything up? Do you have a jig? should I temp glue some posts and fishing line from headstock to bridge and try and find my edges for bridge and neck? The bridge is loose, so I can move it anywhere. but the marks of where it was is telling me it is off. The neck has never been removed. It could be wrong. it has not occured to me that would be the issue. hmm I am starting to hate acoustics.

well there are 2 of them I wanted to get inside. one is a low grade acoustic that needs some TLC, and I was going to try a mad scientist project on it. Lots of wires. I think I could kick the back off it and make a new one. Not to concerned about it. the one that is actually, well, was actually nice once, it has a bow right in the middle of the body. the deepest part of the sag is at the sound hole. I took the strings off a while back and the sag has backed off some, but still pretty visual. I really dont know if I would be able to get the work done through the sound hole. I saw a mini series on TV that they did some work like this to a martin I believe. Maybe I could... Currently I dont feel anything inside loose or broken. I really dont know why it did this, or how old it is. fret board is a mess as well. I will remove and make a new. But I am having throughts of converting to an 8 string nylon. this would be the perfect guitar for this since It needs this work done. I could build a wider fret board, reinfoce for this tension (need to do homework on this) and have to do something about making the neck a little wider to fit the fretboard. recently I have a huge interest in mutli string guitars. I have been building a 10 string for a long time, but I am slow and overwhelmed. (plus I purchased about 15 project guitars that eat my time up) After seeing an 11 string alto guitar, I was thinkinng about going in that direction. Probably too much of a project for a guy's first ground up build, but the whole multi string thing is what is motivating me to do it. Im sure if it was run of the mill guitar I would have left it behind long ago.

Is there a certiain "way" one should removed the back from an acoustic to do some brace work inside? Would the iron trick work on it?

do you guys have tips or tricks on how you get your neck or fretboard aligned right squrely to the body so the strings are perfectly straight to the bridge? This is a classical guitar. A very wrecked classical, that will never be classical again. I removed the old fretboard since it was screwed up, built a new one based on the old one. when I line the board edges up with the neck edges, it results in my high string being 1/4 an inch off at the bridge from where I want it. I have done this twice now. How can I get a good idea of where my strings will be, so I can get the fretboard set right? I have 2 other classical guitars I am planning to do some other things to that involve removing the fretboards, build new FB and glue back on. I cant go through this on these 2, they are in decent condition.

on my frets that suck, I take 1200 grit and sand them a little. I have a dremel with the pencil like externsion, and a mini polishing wheel. I use metal rouge, the stuff that polishes metal, and I polish them up with that. when done, the frets feel slippery. like the strings just want to fall off of them.

??? I have no idea. like hidden away inside it?

I have one I will work on some day, little worse then that. Im off to the linked thread to learn.

Mount them like a strat, but instead of a pickguard, use the body cap asthe pickguard (since it is hollow inside) Make a strip of metal for each pickup slightly longer then the pickups. drill holes in the ends. tap them, or glue/solder bolts to them. glue/attach the pickup to metal strip. alighn to body, cutand drill holes insert and install springs and screws, set it up. will that work? I am adding mag pickups to an acoustic. this is what I am doing.

Dont know about the floyd, but I have a fishman strat style trem with piezos, and I am very happy with it. Currently I am running it with nylon strings on a strat guitar. I have them wires right to the jack, no volume pot, since it needed a 5meg pot. no pre amp as well, right into my processor, it is louder then my piezo preamped acoustic/electric nylon guitars. however I have played a godin with the rmc pickups, and found 2 string really out of balance volume wise. I dont know if the guitar had been damaged, or perhaps an issues with the strings. but not impressed.

to start over, If you wish to rapidly cut the guitar sound in and out, use a momentary switch. If you want to shut the guitar off and forget it, like a stand by on an amp, use a non-momentary, or a toggle switch. use the push to make button (engages both terminals on the switch). "Make" it ground out the hot wire as I explained in post #2. When you ground out the hot wire, it kills all sound. no hum. all you have to do is run 2 wires (from switch to jack), you dont have to cut any existing wires out of the guitar. Push to break will open the line (disconnects the terminals on the switch). You could do it that way as well, but by Keegans wiring. it is like haveing a water valve on the electric flow. you push it in, and it stops the flow. problem is, if you have a noisey guitar, that hum will come through. Or it may not. you would have to cut the hot on the jack and put the switch inbetween. I just put a push to make momentary switch on my Flying V. I wired it hot and ground at the jack. push the button in, sound is shut down. This is probably the easiet thing to make of all electronic projects. Any of this clear things up?

I totally missed the description in the ebay page. dont use that switch.

yup. just add wires from the hot and ground right off the jack, and one to one post on the switch, one to the other post on the switch. When you push the button, it grounds out the hot wire and sound is killed. that easy. I have one of those buttons in the link from radio shack. I have a few different types actually. not sure what one I like more. but the one in your link was my least favorate. a foot switch could be done the same way.

Roger that. I will work something out.

There is only a support piece in there made out of sheet metal. I seemed much like a hack saw blade, just a little firmer. obviously not going to hold up to 6 or 7 strings. I am thinking about cutting a channel into the neck and building a support, or try out a DIY truss rod. I know the tension is going to be an issue. I have some off the wall ideas dealing with fiberglass. I guess my first concern is the scale length. the theory part first. Would it be correct to say, no matter the scale length, asuming thing are correct. you can go between nylon strings and steel strings and it will still play in tune?