frank falbo

How about a one piece Mahogany blank? Maybe we could swap something in Vegas.

I made one like David's years back, but we had pillow blocks on either side, where it looks like David's has bar clamps. And like Erik it was all metal. Erik called the two L/R bearings "pillow blocks" but actually I've always referred to those as linear bearings, and when I say pillow blocks L/R I mean rotating bearings attatched to the center bar. I can't tell from the pics, but on David's I wonder if the center bar stays still, and the bearings on the main apparatus are used for both sideways and up/down motion. Perhaps those bar clamps aren't tight and the bar rotates in the clamping harness. Anyway we felt that the bearings should all remain linear to increase life, so for ours the bar rotated on pillowblocks. It was great. We did some great stuff on it. Unfortunately I don't have any room for one now. The few principles I can contribute that aren't here yet are that the base needs to be 100% stable. We had a steel table. To us, a ply table could wow. So I like that Erik braced his. We had MDF on top, but the "real" table underneath was steel. If you have a twist in the table it is brutal on the copy. If its a neck, your profile can distort from low frets to high, and from treble to bass. We also used all steel for the center harness. David's is so thick that it's probably fine, but we didn't want to use wood and have it move over time. My partner was a welder so it was easy. For most of us (including me now) it has to be made out of wood, and that's fine as long as you're sensitive to the fact that it can move. Maybe with my space limitations I'll steal Erik's idea and make one that's hinged.

Yeah he didn't say he had jumbos, I was just saying "if" because those are all the kinds of variables I can think of that could affect whether the 1 11/16" nut would work on his guitar.

Right. When I'm doing a guitar from scratch, or a refret, I usually have a really wide playing surface, with a hard break angle right at the corner of the fretwire. It takes a little longer to get a good fret dress that feels unobtrusive, and I still have a good bit of rounded shoulder to the neck wood itself. But I prefer a string spacing that's wide vs. the neck width, so I'm more likely to be around 3/32". But again, the distance to the edge of the neck is irrelevant. It's all about the distance to where the fret starts to break. Edit: So if he's got jumbo fretwire on that thing, and WD angled it at 40 degrees, plus it's a vintage "V" shaped neck with rounded shoulders that angle back inward even before the fret tang, then he has to go narrower. That's where I agree with Setch, and say just take your time and space it yourself, without a ruler. I don't like those rules, anyway. Some compensate for the string thickness so you're equidistant between the strings, while others are linear. I just like doing it on a per guitar basis, so you can have the freedom to compensate for the fret bevel/neck shape.

Not if he hasn't strung it yet

It all depends on your fret height, and the way they're dressed IMO. If you have jumbo frets that are rounded over, then you're more likely to slip off. If you have a sharp angle on the fret ends, or a big round-over on the shoulders, that decreases your playing surface too. Those 70's strat necks were really narrow AND overrounded AND overdressed. I haven't seen WD necks in a long time. I don't know how yours is, but if it looks like you have a lot of fret top surface in the remaining 3/32" on either side, then don't worry about it. It's just a nut. You could work the slots before you glue it in to get them close, and play it a little to see. If you don't like it, start over with something else.

That's a great way of looking at it. If you can write with it, then that means it's going to be "writing" on your strings, and thus diminishing over time.

I'd like to see it so I know how much your route is off. My vote is to route a rectangle (with rounded corners) and fill it with matching wood. You still have the chance of it telegraphing through the finish someday. But using a synthetic IMO is more likely to telegraph. Hey you could always replace it with TWO battery boxes! That'd cover your mistake. You could run an 18-volt system, or have one house a "back up" battery that can be switched in on the fly to save the gig!

I just got an African Mahogany board big enough for three solid (one piece) bodies. It's gorgeous. No splits, no knots. Just 5 feet of pure creamy goodness. Too bad one of the bodies will be painted black. You could argue that Honduran is more consistent, but you can find some great pieces of African Mahogany. You should always see your wood before you buy it, but if you had to go sight unseen, you're safer with Honduran IMO.

Unfortunately there's nothing you can do. I did a real nice strat from scratch for someone, probably 8 years ago now. Beautiful Swamp Ash finished natural, maple board, etc. just a bright, clean looking guitar. 6 months later the maple was filthy, he switched from 10's to 11's with no rod adjustment, and it just looked sad. I can handle the dirty maple, but this was just negligent. It's their stuff now, you can't let it get to you. That's a great guitar by the way, I'd be sad too.

I've made rings. If I could pay $40 to a competent worker for some good ones I'd do that instead. Everyone's time is worth something, including mine. Yes, if I wanted to use the same piece from some other part of the guitar I'd do it myself again, but for a typical species ring I wouldn't hesitate to pay, even for the $70 ones if they're good. WHOA!!! I just checked out S.G. and that's $40 for the PAIR?!! There's no way I'd be making my own for $20 each, materials included. Even $25 for Ebony is fantastic. Even if they're rough, and I need to sand them and finish them, that guy wins "bargain of the week" in my view.

If it's your first time, I would say make your body, sculpt the neck joint, and then trace the neck joint shape onto your neck's heel. That way you can carve up to about 1/8"-1/4" of that line. Your neck heel contour will best match the pocket line that way. As for ferrules, anything Stew Mac/Warmoth/Allparts etc. are selling will be fine. They all have different dimensions, though. I like how Stew Mac's have a larger footprint than some of the others.

For wood, you can soak it for a long time, and the color will penetrate. But if you're inlaying into maple, for example, then your colored dust from leveling those pieces will easily stain the maple. I would bury them slightly below the surface in a superglue bath, or cover them with plexi or epoxy. But even before that, I'd try to find an aptly colored material.

I agree. For me personally, I honed my skills for years without one, so I never made the switch. But I'm in full support of the neck jig method, and I can't tell if my first post made that clear. Maybe with your tutorial I'll make one finally. Daveq-You should be stopping before you kiss the top of the frets. Then do the final fine sanding, which I do with a dead flat block. As for height tolerances, it all depends on the player, their style, their expectations, and limitations brought on by the neck itself. If it's a great neck that stays straight under tension, slight differentials are less noticable. If it's bumpy under tensions, then minor fret differences can be magnified. Which brings you back to the neck jig, which controls that. I love doing fretwork for close clients, friends, and myself. But I agree with the doctor that more often than not, it isn't rewarding doing it for "off the street" clients. They usually expect too much. I can't fix poor playing technique with a fret job.

I'm about to put a bubinga top on an old Carvin V220. It will only be about 3/16" thick, though. Nothing really thick and carved like that Mockingbird. The Carvin already has pretty high strings and a good neck angle. So I'm going to let the new top be a little higher than the original surface. Basically I'm going to overhead route the thickness away and clean it up by hand. That's the only way I can see getting a perfect, uniform thickness across the whole guitar, since it's already been built. It would be a good idea to thin your sides to final thickness before you install them Then you just have to level the center to match the sides. That can be routed with jigs, or from overhead.

That's exactly the idea. To level the frets so it's straight under tension. You could have a perfect board/fret surface, but when you string up the guitar, strong and weak spots within a neck prevent it from pulling into perfect relief. Most of the compensation is for hot and dead zones in the truss rod. In other words, you could string the neck up, and get your bow. Then when you adjust the rod, you find that the bow comes out very well from frets 1-9, but there's still some bow between frets 10-20, mainly surrounding where the neck meets the body. That's where it gets thicker, and the truss rod has less effect, even if it goes down that far. So now you have a straight neck that appears to play like it has a ramp up at the end. That's why we sometimes do the "fall off" at the end. It's more noticable unstrung. But under tension it ends up straightening out with the rest of the neck. Wes, your guitar may be perfect for 100 years. But a new build, especially one by a competent builder, is less relevant to the plight of factory guitars that are in use already. Your situation is common to good new builds. What you might find is that over time some parts of that neck pull differently than others. You might find a year or two of tension has a slight bending effect near the neck joint. Most factory guitars have minor dips and humps all over the place once they've been played in. Leveling without tension gets you 90% to perfection anyway, so there's legitimate debate to the necessity of a neck jig. I don't use one, instead I rely on instinct and experience (much cheaper than the neck jig, perhaps less reliable) to compensate for what I see when I read the neck under tension. So I learn what the neck is like, de-string (and perhaps release the truss rod a little) and then level away. I also add some tricks that the neck jig is useless for. Regardless whether the neck is compound radius, I apply a slight compounding to the upper frets. There's a typical "high traffic" guitar solo area, from the 12th fret up. I put in a slight flattening, from between the G and B string 12th fret, fanning out to the full width at the last fret. This cleans up the solo bends tremendously without altering the feel. I do it to the fretboard if I'm refretting, but it works really well on frets alone. Sometimes I end up taking a slight bit more off the first fret, depending on where the truss rod starts working. Sometimes you can get a neck perfect but the first fret still has a little upward curve to it. To try to get that straight, you'd put a hump in frets 2-6. If you decide it's all voodoo, then don't worry about it. There's a lot of snobbery in the fret world. I like to think I have the knowledge, but without the snobbery. But then I think, does that statement alone mean that I DO have the snobbery? Then I get all self consious So maybe I've listed some of the "mysteries" of the "pro" fret level, but at the same time, with a little instruction a newb can do a great fret level. My first level came before high school and it was fine.

I've often contemplated an "open architecture" guitar as they describe it, but I always draft it with the "scoop-outs" on the back. So the front looks regular. Opening the front like that is plain ugly. The whole thing becomes gimmicky. Plus, the way they've designed it, it seems most if not all of the "plugged in" sound is going to be steinberger-ish. In other words, I can see how those wings might produce a cool acoustic sound to the player, but the core block is what's governing the string vibrations more than anything. And come to think of it, anything with an F-hole is "open architecture" really. I mean, if you can see in there, or accidentally drop a pick inside there, it's open architecture IMO But when I think about that kind of stuff it's always sculpted from the back so parts of it are thinner like a wafer. The Parker is kind of like that, where parts of the back follow the front carve, and other parts flare down and get thicker for support. But if you just start with a steinberger and then add wings, you're going to get that kind of sound no matter what kind of acoustics you add. I guess you could put a contact transducer in the sides, but then the guitar would have too much "touch noise". It's like if you press your electric guitar against a roll-top desk it will get way louder. But did the plugged in sound change?

Yeah me too. That's the only Jaguar I like, and I like it a lot. It's a perfect marriage of everything; the stripes, the colors, and the mirror nitro finish. I could be wrong, but I think I read that it's heavy. If so, that's the only downside I can think of. Otherwise it's a perfect guitar. And there's not really room to hollow out any sections either, with the clear guard. Hey, actually you could bore out holes or slots in the strips from the side before you laminated them. That might be cool. You'd have little tunnels inside there between the laminates, or you could do the same sized oval cutout in each to make a larger hollow cavity when you glued them all together.

I'd say use a regular tele pickguard, and hollow out the majority of the pickguard area. Then put your tummy cut in there, too. You'll have weight reduction on both the treble and bass sides. The original Ibanez Talmans were hollowed out under the guard, much like what you'd have if you did under the tele guard, up into the cutaway.

I didn't make my first neck until I had done lots of refrets. I don't know why I like to correllate the two, but I do. I think it's because doing refrets not only teaches you about fretting, but you learn all the things that can go wrong during neck construction. You get a chance to really analyze all those necks and use that knowledge on your own build. My advice would be to try building the neck, but design your guitar around the standard strat or tele heel. That way if your neck doesn't turn out, you can just put a standard replacement neck on there and you've got something instantly playable. With a set neck, your whole guitar is dead, or at least you'd have major work replacing it.

I designed a Cort way back that was great with my carve on it. Then they stopped carving it immediately after I left to cut costs. (fools!) I thought it just looked like crap without a carve. Then they started doing a more PRS-style scooped out carve on it later as they made higher end models of it again. That looked really good, too. But totally different than my carve. So you had two great guitars and one crap looking guitar all with the same silouhette. To me, the carve is everything. Not on the classics, necessarily. Strats, Teles, LP juniors, etc. have sort of made their mark as they are. But on more modern designs, the carve is very important to me. And on some guitars it's just as important that they remain flat. I vastly prefer the flat top MM Axis/EVH over the carved top Peavey. I don't like the new arched top Ibanez RG either. I like it flat. A carved top is won or lost in the details. +/- 1/8" here or there can ruin it or me. I guess it's because, like the shape itself, the carve directs your eye. So if it sweeps your eye in an abrupt pattern, or two areas of the carve come together awkwardly, my brain shuts off. Have a look at Switch guitars. The shapes are kind of lame anyway, but the goofy carves totally kill it for me. I don't think the John Pattitucci Yamaha bass is carved well, either. Then there's the often overlooked bevel. The SG needs those bevels. And although flat topped Warlocks with binding are okay, those bevels sort of make it. When guys like Metal Matt come up with new goofy shapes, the bevels really add the finishing touch. Nothing says "I want to kill something because I have rage issues" quite like a bevel against a sharp point.

Actually, it can be an advantage if you have any gaps. You can push those flips back down into your glue mixture to sort of close the gap. Any lifting is going to shear right off when you level the inlay anyway. If you score the wood, then the upcut is fine because there is no fuzz. It disappears when you reach your score line. Greg I have some bits I'll send you with those roller saddles (what?! you haven't sent those yet?! What the heck....well, you are sending me some free bits, I guess that makes up for it. )

If it has only seen 40 grit as you said, then you might be in for a big surprise when you start really sanding down to the 200-300's. You might just be seeing too much of a scruffy surface to make a judgement. Also vacuum the surface really well as you sand up the grits so you can get a glimpse of the real grain. Then try some oil on a hidden place or some scrap to really get an idea of what it would look like. I think a thin nitro or oil/poly finish with a finishing wax would really look great on there. Or maybe it needs a sunburst?

Forgive me if this doesn't apply, I don't know what your project is, but can you use two barrel jacks?

It's so your body can be grounded, and therefore act as a shield for noise. An electric has many parts that are susceptible to noise, whereas your acoustic, with a piezo and an output jack will have no need for a string ground. If you were also putting magnetics in there it would be an issue, but you could also use a well shielded active pickup like a Bartolini or EMG, and still avoid the "need" for a string ground. Although personally, even with shielded actives and a well shielded electronics cavity I still like to install a string ground.