Myka Guitars

I am really looking forward to this. I haven't seen the West Coast builders in a few years. It should be a great time! ~David

Check out this amazing video that documents the hand making of a vacuum tube (scroll down to video): Vacuum tube construction. This is incredible. The skill of this craftsman is quite evident as he competently assembles a glass vacuum tube. ~David

Try some veneer softener. Here's a page about it. ~David

I agree with Rich, small adjustments might be needed to dial the setup in perfectly. I would probably use a truss rod but you don't need to. I believe Steve Klein used Guatemalan rosewood without truss rods for necks on his ergonomic guitars. I got to see and play a couple and they were both setup perfectly. So it can be done I have used cocobolo, madagascar, and indian rosewood for necks and find them to be very stable necks, They are not that heavy and you can design for a better balance and use lighter tuners. I have a cocobolo neck guitar with an ebony fretboard and truss rod that I built about 15 years ago and I have never put any tension on the truss rod and the neck has not moved at all. I made the fingerboard dead flat before I fretted it and that was it. But it could have worked out differently and I may have needed the adjustment ability of a truss rod. ***EDIT*** I just remembered a setail, this cocobolo neck was laminated (3 pieces). I actually do not have any proof of stability of a neck without a truss rod. Only my experience with the Kleins although it was not explained to me in detail how they were made. And I agree with Erik that ebony is not as stable as some of the rosewoods used in making necks. ***END EDIT*** One approach to doing this without a truss rod might be to string up the guitar and measure things before you fret it. Then you can make adjustments to the plane of the fingerboard to match the relief that you want (or don't want). Once it is fretted you can string it up again and you should be very close provided your fret tangs fir correctly into the slots. I have a nice piece of Macassar that I am thinking of using in the same way. But I will probably use a truss rod. ~David

This is simpler than it looks. The cover is cut from the same piece as the body so that the grain is near perfect. It is easier on quartersawn straight grained woods to do this and you can see the results in these pictures. It looks like it is the same piece but it is just the next consecutive slice of wood from the body. The route is done from the back (like normal) and the depth is set to the same depth as the cavity cover. The gouge is to get your finger in there to pop the cover off when you need to get inside. ~David

Wow, I just might have to pick one of those up. It sounds extremely versatile. It will come in handy on my next personal project. I plan to tackle a strip backed lute with a veneered neck. A tool that can carve the tighter necks on those will come in handy. And another great quality tool is always nice! ~David

That looks pretty nice. I have a collection of Lie Nielsen so I just bought one of their smaller bronze spokeshaves. It is also pretty nice but does not have the versatility that the Veritas has (you have to adjust the blade depth by feel without fine adjusters). I still like it though. A good spokeshave is a lot of fun to use. ~David

You already have all of your answers with your books, DVDs, and plans. Go with the same specs for the 17". Get the height measurements from Benedetto and redraw your curves to fit the new profile. If you are attempting an archtop guitar this task of engineering it should pose no problem. And it is best if you take the time to figure this out for yourself if you are to truly understand what you are going build. ~David

Oh, I get it now. You want a capacitor with the tone control always in the circuit with the option of adding in 2 more values. This will work for that: Cool concept. It opens up some interesting ideas for a modular tone control. I just got a package of NOS caps to play with. I think I might try this out. Thanks! ~David

A 1-piece neck is a neck made from only one piece of wood. No scarf joint, no added heel block, no headplate veneer. Fingerboards don't count. There is an opinion that this yields a better tone. Some agree, some don't, and some don't disagree either way. ~David

al heeley, for all the corrections you are giving it would seem that you could have figured this out fairly easily by yourself. It is pretty simple circuit but I think you are confusing yourself by insisting on something that will not work (trying to keep con1 and con2 connected in bypass mode). It helps to think of this as a whole circuit including the volume and tone controls instead of just a capacitor switch. This can work with just one standard dpdt on/on/on OR on/off/on 3-position switch. To bypass the caps (tone circuit) is the same as wiring just a straight volume control. You must bypass the entire tone circuit in order to do this or you will turn the tone into another volume control. This is just like JoeAArthur said. He took you back to class but you weren't listening. What you want to do is toggle between 3 options: cap1, cap2, and bypass. Pretty simple. The way to do it is to take the wire that would normally go from the volume control to the capacitors and run it though the switch. The middle position is set for the caps bypass. The other two positions toggle between the capacitors (which are hard wired into the tone control). Notice that in the middle position the caps and tone control are completely out of the circuit for true bypass. ~David

Good point. I just started making my own preamps so followed the advice of my acoustic pickup maker. I will test out the active preamp and passive magnetics blending. If it can work that way it would be an excellent way to go. I ws under the impression that active and passive don't mix but I guess it really does come down to impedance matching. Thanks! Glad to hear that you are on your way Jon. I will post what I find when I test out Setain's suggestion. ~David

A way to simplify your preamp (so that you can afford some nice piezo saddles) would be to make a simple circuit like this: Tllman Preamp. It uses a small amount of very cheap parts and works great for a piezo preamp. I have built this exact circuit and it works great. I tested it with undersaddle pickups as well and coaxial piezo and piezo saddles (like the Ghost system) and it worked fine for all of them. You will have to add a volume and play around with tone circuits but this is a simple way to go. To blend the piezo with the magnetics build three of these. Run the magnetics and the piezos into two seprate preamps. Then take the outputs and run that into your blender pot. Then run that into a final preamp to your output. You may want to include a separate volume for each instead of the blend. Keep in mind that this will affect the magnetics since it is making them active instead of passive. If you want a cheaper version of this already built check out the Dtar Timberline. You can order the preamp separately if you call them direct. It has all the volume and tone circuitry figured out and allows for another source (typically piezo and microphone). I have used these before and they also work great. ~David

It's in the works...

I haven't bought a guitar since I started building my own. Now when I go into a guitar store I almost never find anything that plays as good to me anymore. I would not hesitate to have a guitar built for me or pick one up if I like it. The problem is that I am always thinking of what I could build for myself and so I usually gather ideas and build it exactly how I want it. I really enjoy what I build and since I design them to fit my playing style and make them comfortable to my hands I truly cannot find anything off the shelf that comes even remotely close. I am totally biased and quite spoiled. I do have a custom Andrew Olden that he made for me in trade for one of my guitars. I love it but my friend Troy won't give it back. He borrowed it and gave me first right of refusal should he decide to get rid of it! About original designs, I went full circle with my ideas. At first I designed anything that was different than the traditional guitars. I made some weird stuff. Then I started to realize that pointy guitars or instruments that had appendages for the sake of a wild aesthetic simply were not comfortable, or they were but only standing up. It was then that I realized why guitars are shaped the way they are. There are only so many ways to comfortably interface 6 strings to the human body. I don't claim to have completely original shapes but I do make them my own (it actually is all in the details) and use configurations that aren't necessarily traditional, or at least not for the specific instrument. Come to think of it I might buy a Stevens LJ if I had the cash. His design is so friggin' cool. ~David

Or you can get extreme: Makoto Tsuruta headstock joint. ~David

Rich, my mind has been on acoustics lately and I got to thinking about lattice bracing and remembered this project of yours. Very cool to see it coming together so well. The bracing looks very interesting. As you know I have been working with asymmetrical systems but I have also used the double-X. I suppose lattice is the next step in that evolution? I imagine your unique bridge design working very well with this. So my question is how much of a rotational affect does your bridge have on the top? Is there still an upward pull from behind the saddle? Or is the tension distributed very differently? I am very curious to see one of these in person some day (maybe you'll come to our studio opening Sat, Feb 9th?). ~David

No way, your stuff rocks! I have always enjoyed your guitars and the way you seamlessly work your themes into them. Great work as always. Also it is good to hear about the Douglas Fir. My brother in-law had the opportunity to strip a 1940s bungalow near Cleveland before it got demolished. He gave me a stack of stair treads with the same tight grain lines. I was planning on building an archtop with that. Thanks again for the pics! ~David

Check out Nik Huber. I have seen a few of his redwood top electrics. ~David

I'm no expert on color matching vintage instruments but perhaps letting it age for 45 years might darken it up? I actually had the same ultra-yellow shock when I used StewMac's amber on maple. I toned it down by adding brown and touch of red to the mix. This is the result: This was approximately 10 drops amber, 8 drops brown, 1 drop red in 16oz of lacquer. Mix some up and try it on some scrap wood until you get what you want. David

Yes one can. How about an all rosewood guitar? ~David

Man that whole thing sucks. Glad to hear that Gilmer is taking care of you. They are excellent people to work with. Whenever I have something that I cannot afford to have stolen or delivered to the wrong place I make sure that they cannot deliver without a signature. It is an option with most of the common carriers. This way they leave a note at the door and try again in a couple of days. Whoever shows up to pick it up has to show ID. It can still be taken advantage of but it is much more difficult. Might be worth doing on your next order. For what it's worth LMI no longer ships UPS anymore. Too many issues. EDIT: I sometimes have my stuff shipped to the UPS facility with my phone number in the address. They call me when they got it and I go pick it up. Never had a problem with this approach. I hope the next batch of wood is everything that you expected in the first place. ~David

Thanks for the comments. I appreciate it! To answer your questions: MrAlex: I expect to get about as much acoustic sound as you can get from a piezo undersaddle pickup. I have gathered a lot of information on this style of guitar from some of the acoustic forums (mostly from Rick Turner) and I have read over and over that most of the tone you get from an undersaddle piezo element is the sound of the strings on the saddle and only a little is actually from the soundboard itself (this is why transducer pickups are still being developed, like the K&K pickup systems, that capture more of the acoustic tone because they are located on the soundboard). I did some tests with an acoustic bridge and saddle fitted with a piezo on a solid block of wood. I was surprised by how 'acoustic' it sounded. I think what we are used to hearing is actually just the undersaddle piezo characteristics. davee5: Thanks, those miters were tough. In order to get them to stay in place I used a heat gun to fix their shape but that added to the problem. The heat made the plastic slump and stretch. After going through a couple pieces I finally taped them in place and heated them with the hole as support. This worked pretty well heating and then holding in place until cool again. When it finally did hold its shape the miters were then possible. I would love to see how some of the archtop builders do this with the standard f-holes. I suppose I could have used a thinner piece in the soundholes but I liked the look of the bolder white lines. Mickguard: The center block is 3" wide. I put in the braces to give some support to the thin top and back as well as making the guitar more solid. The bracing is 1/4" wide by 3/8" tall. Not too much different than an acoustic and still allows the body to be quite responsive. As far as if it is totally necessary. Yes, I think so. The top and back were just too flexible without them. In a flapping around sort of way and not in that crisp resonant way I wanted them to be. s erikbojerik: Good catch! Actually this is not the exact same shape but it is from the same Sungazer family of instruments designed by Rob Taylor. This one he calls the Flaretone. There isn't any radius on the top or back. And the braces are glued into tight fitting grooves. The entire centerblock is glued down to the top and back. There is no air gaps or anything. Just a solid join. I'll get some new pics up later this week. ~David

I am working on a pretty cool project lately that I thought some of you might be interested in. It is very different from my usual designs being a a true acoustic-electric semi-hollow. The main idea was to have an acoustic guitar that could play at stage volumes without too much feedback and then be able to switch to a full-on electric mode with the flick of a switch. The body is built much like an acoustic with thin bent wood sides with a full thickness center block of mahogany. The wood is Brazilian rosewood and the neck will be mahogany with an ebony fretboard and details. Here's a pic of the construction: You can see more pics as well as a photshop mockup by clicking here. The larger piece of mahogany will be for an access panel. There will be an acoustic style bridge with a coaxial piezo element and an onboard preamp. Since the soundholes are way too small the access panel just makes sense. The piece by the upper bout is for a strap button. Notice also the pieces of kerfing that support the braces. This side assembly is extremely rigid with the braces tied in this way. I love the contrast of the binding but I do not like working with the plastic binding at all. It is messy and just not as easy to work as wood bindings, for me anyway. I may just be more used to wood bindings but I do not plan to use plastic again if I can help it. I like the look of wood much better. This was a client request so... I should have more progress done this week. I'll post pics if I get the chance. ~David

Nice project! I also love the wood choices and enjoy the use of pink ivory. What is the tap tone like with this wood? About binding...yes you will have to bend the wood to fit. The way I do this is with a bending iron like this one from StewMac. Wet the binding with water from a sponge or rag and bend it a little at a time testing it to fit the guitar body. When it gets dry it will get brittle again and crack so keep it wet as you bend it. A trick I use if you have a tight bend or a difficult spot is to get it as close as you can, tape it in place, wet it again, then push it against the iron using the guitar body as a backer. It results in a perfect fit. Bend one side at a time and start the pieces at the tailpiece and end them in the neck pocket (which gets routed away. When I glue the binding in I use the tailpiece joint as my reference, put glue in the binding ledge, place the binding in, and tape it. Once it is taped pull it all tight with some twine. I start in the waist area and work back the cutaway first because the glue sets fast and the lower bout is usually pretty tight with just the tape. Last tip I have is to make sure everything fits perfectly during a dry run before you get out the glue. This is what it looks like after gluing: And after it's all cleaned up: ~David