Primal

I just browsed Amfisound's site and that company makes awesome customs.

Eh, they are alright. Nothing special. I do like the Viking LP, though.

Email sent, Joobsauce.

Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil. Not sure about the wax.

How much? However much it takes to attain the desired finish. You can actually built Tru-oil up to a very nice shine. I use small pads of t-shirt material (actually, they are gun cleaning swatches from wal-mart) to apply many many many very thin coats.

By the time you buy a large enough piece of ply wood (say, 3/4" doubled up), you would probably pay just as much as a cheap body blank from Gallery Hardwoods or some other online dealer. At the very least, pick up some cheap poplar and Home Depot. It will likely be cheaper than a large piece of plywood (think about what all goes into making plywood).

I used to go to an open mike night in a jazz club in Amsterdam. You'd get all these conservatory kids getting up there with their sheet music. Made Sinatra sound like Tiny Tim. (think I'm showing my age with that one!)

Pfft, if they need sheet music, they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a jazz club. Now, if they were lead sheets, that's a different story...

(IMO) flatsawn is the best for 1 piece necks because you have the flexibility of flatsawn thru the neck with quartersawn characteristics on the sides keeping it sturdy from warping side to side; however, idont personnally like 1 piece bass necks; whereas i would say get (at least) 3 -1" thick flatsawn pieces and turn them on there side and laminate them that way so theyre all quarterd; much easier than finding a 3" piece of quartered stock

Like Supernova9 said, you just contradicted yourself. Besides, you say you like quartersawn for side-to-side stiffness. It makes far more sense to utilize the stiffness of quartersawn wood in the same plane as the tension put on the neck (i.e. tension from the strings -- front-to-back stiffness).

And Supernova9, I think you need to take a chill pill. No need to lash out at someone. Take your own advice and use EVIDENCE to disprove someone, rather than insulting them. At least that is constructive...

There is nothing wrong with having two batteries running your preamp. I have two nine volts in my bass with EMG pickups (had even contemplated putting in three for even more headroom, but decided against it). Physical size, however, is definitely a big issue.

If your buddy is really good with electronics, he might be able to chop the fuzz circuit out and separate the two. However, thats simply more trouble than its worth. Why not just buy a nice Bartolini or Aguilar preamp?

You can't fault anyone for pointing out that you posted in the wrong section. Because... well... obviously you did.

Humbuckers come in two widths: normal and F-spacing. The "F" stands for Fender, and is designed to align with strings that are spaced via Fender's "standard."

Wes, it times like these when I don't blame you for taking your hiatus...

Clear lacquer or Tru-Oil!

David, if you had typed in "debanados" in to Google, it would have offered a spelling correction of "devanados" which translates to windings.

The general consensus in the past as been that if you are going to build a set-neck guitar, use a set neck and don't bother with a bolt-on. By the time you add enough wood to strengthen the joint, you've negated any cosmetic reason to have a set neck and you would have just been better off to bolt it on instead.

I'm not sure, but I believe that the ebow, while having a smaller coil, actually has more of the coil acting on the string than the DIY driver (i.e. the driver only uses a short section of the entire coil, while the ebow uses the entire length of the coil).

Welcome, KD! It seems like most people here are also a member at MIMF. I am a member there myself. There are a bunch of great builders on both forums, and I'm sure you will be able to learn a lot here!

...why not just go with a piezo?

Related question: what about the effect on sustain? I've been playing more and more on the neck pickup lately, in part because the brige pickup's combination of needle-sharp tone and shorter sustain.

As mentioned by Maiden69, as you move closer to the bridge, the amplitude of the vibrating string decreases. When using the bridge pickup, as the note decays, the pickup has less and less vibrating string to detect.

As an example, and one that is only for the sake of demonstration (these values are all fabricated, but still convey the general idea):

At the 12th fret:

Distance traveled by the vibrating string right after being picked = 4mm

Distance traveled by the vibrating string after 5 seconds = 2mm

Difference between the two = 2mm

At the bridge pickup:

Distance traveled by the vibrating string right after being picked = 1mm

Distance traveled by the vibrating string after 5 seconds = 0.25mm

Difference between the two = 0.75

If we do a few calculations, we can determine that after 5 seconds, the vibrating string loses 50% of its energy while the string at the bridge pickup loses 75% of its energy (I'm not sure if this statement is correct since I doubt the relation between the distance the string vibrates and the energy of the vibrating string is linear). Still, you can see how they relate.

That was far more long-winded than I had anticipated.

Related to billiousfrog's playing position comment, if you like to play sitting down, try holding the guitar classical style rather than on your right thigh (ironically, this is how most V players hold their guitar when sitting down). It really helps reduce stretching, and puts the neck in the PERFECT spot for playing.

Probably the best thing that has ever happened to me as far as technique improvement was the month of upright bass lessons I took. Part of those lessons was the left hand position, and it has helped my electric bass playing, as well as my guitar playing. Basically, with a very relaxed hand, touch the tip of your thumb with the tip of your middle finger. When you play, try to keep that hand position wherever possible. It's not always possible, however for chord work it was invaluable to me (finally I could play all sorts of barre chords!). Likewise, ALWAYS have your thumb near the center of the neck whenever possible. This, along with using the tips of your fingers rather than the pads of your fingers, will help tremendously when it comes to avoiding cramps and other hand-related aches and pains.

What kind of files are you talking about? If they are pictures, use photobucket or some other similar picture hosting service. Also, be sure to review the picture posting rules.

Also, the neck pocket refers to the pocket routed in the guitar body in which the neck is bolted into. There are piezo pickups that can be inserted between the body and the neck in that pocket.

David, I designed my sustainer to use a 12v battery (actually, an 8-cell AA battery clip). The components you use dictate the power you can use. The LM386 chip has a range anywhere between 6v (I believe) to 18v+, depending on the manufacturer and specific specifications of the chip (those voltages are estimates -- they can have a variety of values). Obviously, you would not want to use an 18v power supply for a 12v circuit, because reducing the voltage via resistors greatly decreased the efficiency of the battery. As for the cell phone type batteries, for the most part I think they are too expensive to use during this phase of research. Once this project is finalized, if ever, then we could start looking at alternate batteries. As of right now, however, standard off the shelf batteries are more cost efficient, I think.

Hi Primal, thanks for your reply....one thing that makes me question that statement is the fact that very subtle nuances are indeed picked up by the e-bow, a fact verifiable through experimenting with an acoustic (bronze wound strings) guitar. In my opinion it is extremely expressive, but simply lacks the power to drive the acoustic strings into sustain with no pickup. Thus the response is a little too slow. But in terms of nuances it is far more subtle than when aplified. If anything the power of the pickups themselves tends to create a more distorted sound, then you lose the amazing violin like timbres produced by the e-bow on an acoustic.

I think you misunderstood me. When I said nuances, I was not referring to expressiveness. I was referring to tonal characteristics of the vibrating string and how the neck pickup picks these up compared to how the e-bow pickup picks these up (and then transfers them back into the string to drive it).

You make some good points, David, however I'm not sure how effective driving the driver with the middle pickup is really going to be. Keep in mind that the ebow uses a very small, very simple (in comparison to the neck pickup) coil to pickup the string vibrations. I highly doubt that this coil is able to reproduce all the nuances of the vibrating string at that node like the neck pickup can. Also, as far as the nodes go, the node above the neck pickup is only really the most useful when playing open strings. As you move up the neck, the nodes move further away from the neck pickup. Once you get up past the 15th fret or so, the only tonal characteristics you are going to hear will be from the actual specifications of the pickup (wire diameter, resistance, etc).

This is not to discredit your ideas -- I'd love to get my neck pickup back. However, I think we need to tackle the EMI problem before anything else.

And I'm not sure why we care?

Do we REALLY need to advertise myspace profiles on this forum? Sheesh...

Okay, WAAAAY off topic, but I gotta say... Everytime I see one of your threads and see RIM, I can't help but think dirty thoughts...

*shudders*