frank falbo

That's why he makes them smaller, because then they have the same overall weight and mass as a larger body, just smashed into a smaller package. THey're not any heavier than a traditional instrument. Plus he uses a long upper horn so they balance well. They really are cool instruments, but different than anything else. He mostly does basses, and it's a great idea for a bass. It's very tight and clean, but with some good lows that something like a Steinberger can't get acoustically. And it's vibrant, too. The guitars are totally different from anything traditional, but they still sound really great. The Korean Cort Curbow models are only similar in looks. They don't employ any of the same materials.

You could make a custom saddle out of a bone/brass/bone laminate, that looks neat. A piezo is wrapped in shielding, so possibly contact alone would ground the saddle, too. I do like the idea of a thin piece of metal laminated to the bridgeplate. Also, if you used a brass nut, you could consider that a grounding vehicle. I made one guitar where I think I grounded one string by contact and then the brass nut did the rest. Also a string retainer bar would bridge the strings, too. You could use the brass nut all by itself, if you ran a little wire inside the truss rod channel or next to it. Then, put a terminal at the end of the neck that you can solder to.

Greg Curbow's instruments are made from a material he calls Rockwood I think. Anyway it's laminates impregnated with phenolic under ultra high pressure. It's basically void-free. It's a good sound with excellent sustain. Maybe take some time to learn about him and his instruments as a side study of density vs. tone.

Do a search for the compensated nut. It compensates for everything EXCEPT open strings. You have it backwards. There was a long post that explained and debated it. As for fretwave, I just think it's like two people came up with solutions to the same problem, and I personally feel the compensated nut was the winner, hands down. But both are valid.

It's adequate, but like everything you should practice on scrap before using it on your guitar body. In my case I "practiced" on a bunch of furniture and other woodworking. I only decided to use in on headstocks and a guitar body once I was familiar with it's characteristics, most of which I listed out above. Shrinking back is after you think the whole thing is dry, and you buff it, for several weeks/months it will still sink into the wood's pores. It's also the lacquer loses more solvents and physically gets thinner. So that's why on my headstock overlay it was fine. The 1/16" overlay is backed by a glue joint. The lacquer has no place to go. Plus, most electric headstocks without an overlay are Maple, so there's minimal shrink back there because it's so tight grained. The reason it kept shrinking back into the bridge was because it was a thicker, solid piece of wood. If you have a porous wood and you fill the grains first, then it should be fine. If you have a Maple guitar it's fine too. That's why I decided to use it on my solid quilt Maple 7-string. Saying it takes a long time to cure is almost the same as saying it shrinks back for a long time. But a finish can remain "less than cured" and still not migrate into the pores of the wood.

I've brushed Deft from the can. It's currently on my Ash/Mahogany coffee table in the living room. I've used it on headstocks. It can go on pretty thick, but then it takes a long time to cure. It also shrinks back for a long time. My classical headstock overlay and bridge are highly figured Walnut. The headstock was great, it's a perfect mirror finish. But for now I've steel wooled the bridge to satin because it's really sculpted, and every time I'd think I had the buff perfect a few grain holes would open up. I should've used grain filler, but I figured for something so small I could just saturate it with the finish. (I have a gallon of it) I also have a 7-string that's solid quilted maple. I used it on that, too with no filler since the grain is so tight. I haven't buffed it yet, but I'm very happy with it. It's a very efficient way to get a good build fast, if you don't need shader coats, and if it will not run/bleed your stain or undercoat. Because you're brushing it, every coat is "wet" so it will re-flow anything that is compatible underneath. The 7-string has water based aniline, and it was fine. Everyone else is right about the ventilation. You'd better wear something or go outside regardless of what you use. The thing I like about the brushable is that it skins over pretty quickly, so I can paint it somewhere, and then bring it to the garage or outside to finish curing without fear of it picking up dust. I did my coffee table in the dusty garage and it skinned over before anything really got in there. I've used it mostly on furniture but as I get to know it more I've found uses for it on guitars. Headstocks are my favorite. It seems like it was made for that. You can lay it on thick, it's self levelling, and it seems to cover and fill in one or two coats. Then it buffs easily. It may not be as durable as a pro-grade gun nitro, but on headstocks it doesn't have to be. Plus in your case you're comparing it to rattle can. It's definitely as durable as that.

Those pickups debuted on the '95 Cort "Sterling" series, name changed to "S" series, now called the "G" series. I don't know what they did with the pups on those guitars after I left, but I owned the S1000 prototype shown in the 95/96 catalog, and they were the only Cort/Mighty Mite pickups I never changed. I thought they were great. I wish I'd kept that guitar. With all the mediocre pickups they were making at that time I saw no reason to import pickups, so we didn't sell pickups. Who would want Powersounds or Ibanez EX stock pickups anyway?! They wanted to just bring those in and brand them "Mighty Mite" and all of a sudden start selling them as if they were so great. But then they updated their machinery and started using Alnico magnets and all of a sudden there was something good there. That's when I started thinking we could sell them. Those Alnico vintage winds are great, and so are the Alnico Strat singles. It's been awhile since I've heard the P-90s, but I think those impressed me too. They started selling them right after I left.

Congratulations! It's nice to see good product come to fruition in an environment where cheap, dumb, crap is dumped into the troth daily to feed the sheep. You deserve whatever reward this brings.

Is it the tele? I was thinking maybe your string tree was biting, but they're graph techs, and that's about as slick as it gets. Let us know if it's actually at the tuner or in the space between the tuner and the nut. If it's at the tuner, a good way to alleviate that is to put a lot of winds on, and make sure they're perfectly stacked. That way the pressure is dispersed a little. But more importantly, the string makes it's final pass around the tuner towards the bottom, where the shaft is smoother. In other words, the string doesn't cut across the hole or the bevel at that point. It's past that part and onto the lower section.

I liked it better when Doc said it.

Oooooh, your typing error yields some very interesting, very Freudian connections to this thread's title.

Yes.

I guess the thread just hit the Wall of Death!

Oh certainly! I own several guitars with dowels in there. I just filled an RG last week so it would fit right. I'm just saying that if you're staring at a brand new neck, with new, clean holes, why fill them? If you don't have body holes yet, you shouldn't fill them just because you aren't sure how you're going to get them to line up.

Here's my reply from the other linked thread. I still think (along with the paper method too) it's the best choice. What a waste of time it would be to fill and re-drill perfectly good holes. You don't want to make weak holes, and that's what you can get if you use a hardware store dowel only to re-drill close to it anyway.

Nothing yet. It is still awaiting sentencing. Any ideas? ← Well for starters, send it over. (like you haven't heard that already) I would hollow out the back up to about 1/2" top with a center block thick enough to accomodate the trem. It's too late to go back on that one, or else I'd make a custom wooden TOM base that was wide enough to cover the trem route. Either way, even with the trem I'd leave the center disconnected from the back. Then I'd re-back it with 1/4" of limba (or similarly figured maple to give it some "pop") If you "floated" that top and re-backed it, you'd have a piece that at least produced some type of strong tone, regardless of the resonant peaks and swell. Then you could work with that electronically. I'd love that guitar, even if it was stripped down to a carcass. That might be a fun experiment, to send it back to you and see if I could get it to the point of pleasing you.

The neck should be workable. Don't count on the screw holes lining up, but so long as the RG170 is an AANJ (and I think it is) they should physically go together, and the intonation should be within range. Just plan on filling and re-drilling two if not all four screw holes. Japanese RG's don't line up well with Korean ones, and the 170 is Indonesian, so it's kind of like "twice removed" from the family tree.

That Jackson is fantastic. It's the only time I've seen anything from an SG that I like, besides this new Zakk one. I'm no Zakk fan, but any endorser pulled from Gibson is a victory. I know someone who has one of those Westone V's, if anyone wants it pm me. It looks pretty cool in person. I almost want it just to have it around on the wall.

I've used body shops to blow clear on guitars. You have to make sure you have prepped the surface, and they have to know if their finish will make your undercoat sag or drip, as with duplicolor mirage. So to a certain extent, you want someone with good knowledge of the chemistry, not just a "body shop guy" who just hangs your guitar up and blasts it without regard for your final expectations. Depending on the body shop, you can pay them for the wetsand and buff, too. I hate that part. Actually I like it once I make myself start, but I dread it beforehand. If you're trying to build a mirror finish, you should find someone shooting 2 part poly. That'll really build nicely on a guitar. If you just want a gloss finish that shows the wood grain texture, then you might as well rattle-can it yourself with some Deft or something. The reason to go to a body shop is to take advantage of their equipment to shoot 2 part, IMO. Because anything else is very do-able if you take the time to educate yourself.

Well, criticism of the instrument at least. (or critizism as you say) Feel free to tell me that my instrument is of poor quality or design. Godin SD was the only one to tell me anything about the instrument. He said he doesn't like the bridge. At 15 he already knows the appropriate place for judgement. Thank you Godin SD, it's not my favorite part of the guitar visually either. Unfortunately it's a matter of function. It kind of has to look like that. That said, it's the most comfortable bridge to rest your hand on-ever. As far as putting effort into the presentation, that would be true if I were selling it. I didn't think I had to "sell" it to you guys. I figured you'd judge it on merit. Even if your post was just to poke fun at me, saying that you wouldn't vote for the guitar because of sneakers is what felt wrong. I can see four other good reasons in that post not to vote for me, and none of them have to do with the photographer.

I used Deft once and it's fine. Actually I used it over the purple/green just like that dime guitar in Maiden's earlier thread. But even though it's okay, I always felt that since the Duplicolor clear was able to re-flow the mirage coat (as you found out) that I'd rather play it safe and go with an automotive clear. I figure there's some reason why they sell it with an acrylic. Maybe its just economics. So now I have my auto guy do automotive grade clear acrylic. I don't know what he uses. He probably changes brands anyway. If you do a search, Jeremy and others have given some names of good automotive acrylic clear in rattle cans. That's a good place to start. But for everything else lately I've been using Deft and I can't complain. For a consumer nitro it's pretty good. Hey now that I think about it, maybe because Deft is nitro, you won't have the same flow/sag problems with the mid coat. Whatever you do, have fun and remember don't start sanding back until you get a good clear built up over that mid coat.

I did use their clear. It was my first duplicolor guitar, and I just wanted to avoid any compatibility issues. It sucks, and it's soft, but because of that, it buffed really easily. So you can look at it either way I guess. Since then I've just put the clear aside, and I use it now on pedals, or truss rod covers, etc. I'm real easy on my guitars, so the hardness wasn't an issue for me.

Mighty Mites are made in Korea, at the Cort factory. They will be as good as your Korean Ibanez and Fender product.

Well, it's not a "GOTM" picture. My friend had his camera so we shot a couple things. Since I had some pics I figured I'd enter it. I made him take that particular shot because I wanted a silouhette view, so it's my fault I guess. Instead of e-mailing them to me he posted them, so I just used the links instead of downloading and editing them. Now it's too late I guess. My arm is in one of the other ones, maybe that will ruin it for some other voters. I didn't realize those were "mistakes." I mean how about "gig bag and asphalt in photo" are those mistakes too? We were outside because the other guitar was a duplicolor mirage paint job and the sunlight was best, otherwise I might've put it on a stand or something. If it won I knew I'd be editing those pics. And sorry Jehle, you can't use this for an "identify the luthier" because those aren't my sneakers. But if you do an "identify the luthier by his forearm" then you're welcome to the other one.

I play it on my lap sometimes but most of the time it's on a keyboard stand. I thought about making some elaborate pedal steel type stand, but it's not worth it. Part of the reason I made a half guitar on the treble side was to keep it from tilting. You can't see from the pic but the bass side is tapered like the Ibanez Radius. So it feels comfortable on the lap, too. But mostly I did it because I thought it looked cool.