crafty

The quality of the parts in a Saga is no better than the average $100 no-name you can pick up at the local music store. They're great for learning basic assembly on, but they usually require a little tweaking to get 'em just right. You also have to keep in mind what you sell, you support. What I'd do is if you're good at custom finishes, finish the bodies with a cool design and sell the kits unassembled with a $30-$40 premium. You'll probably make a lot more money that way, especially if you can make it worth people's while to pay you their hard-earned cash for a stellar paint job.

Oooh...that top looks like it's really on fire...that's your first finishing attempt? Damn. Putting Dimarzios and SDs together in the same guitar...whoa, that's almost like putting a Ford engine and Chevy transmission in the same truck! At least, in terms of controversy. Both of those pickups should be a good combo. Hope all works out well with your neck fitting. Be sure to enter this beast in GOTM when you get it all finished up. It'll get my vote just for that top and finish.

Sorry, we're going to have to penalize you for making a guitar that looks better than the original. -12 points. Seriously, though, that's a good looking finish job on there from the pix you've given us. I've been thinking about getting a LP Studio with the gold top and doing the exact same paint pattern, but I've been sort of hesitant because it's a limited production. You did a damn good job with yours, though. BLS Forever

Excellent!! Love the BLUE color especially, but those chrome pickup rings really set it off, too!

Dammit, IT WASN'T A DEROGATORY STATEMENT!!!!! If I had said, "Duh, we know this", THAT would have been derogatory. Your original post commented on the fact that fretboards sit "slightly proud" of the face of the guitar. Anyone who's ever played the guitar would know this. We don't need to hear it again from the Hiscock book, which I'd venture to guess most people here either already own or have read from cover-to-cover 100 times. I wash my hands of this thread. Idch, build the guitar how ever you feel like building it. I hope it turns out well.

There have been 22 posts so far on this topic. None of posters, besides idch and myself of course, have seem to taken the time to actually read idch's previous posts before responding. The top of the fretboard on my Strat is 5/16 or 4-5mm above the surface of the body. That is the critical measurement, NOT how much neck wood is showing in the pocket. Fretboards tend to vary in thickness. If I have a rosewood-fretboard Fender neck and a rosewood-fretboard Gibson neck, the thickness of both the fretboard and the entire neck is going to be different. The most important part is how high the top of the fretboard sits. My statement about "strings hitting the body and pickups" was my attempt at stating the obvious without making Andy the newbie feel stupid. He's using a hardtail bridge, not a Floyd, and certainly no locking nut. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that he's going to use the nut or the style of nut already on the neck. Again, nothing to see here. I swear, I think next time I see 22 posts that wind up getting the original poster nowhere, I'm just going to ignore it and watch the fireworks instead.

Seymour Duncan Classic Stack. Alnico II magnets, noise cancelling, nice chimey, bell tone.

Here's the RIGHT ANSWER(S): NO NECK ANGLE IS REQUIRED FOR A FENDER HARDTAIL BRIDGE. NO STRING TREES ARE USED ON NECKS WITH ANGLED HEADSTOCKS, EVER. THEY ARE NOT NEEDED ON THESE NECKS. The top of the fretboard is always a little higher than the body of the guitar. This is so the strings can vibrate without hitting the body or pickups. 4-5 mm will probably suffice just fine.

<extreme Discovery Channel announcer voice> Perry sets out to build a custom Soloist guitar for a client from far, far away. But this normally punctual luthier runs into problems when his high-tech, secret recipe laquer finish doesn't cure properly <shot of the Soloist hitting the Wall of Death> and the deadline looms even closer <shot of clock on the wall>. Will this master of the guitar deliver on time, or will he miss his deadline for the first time? The frustration, the fatigue, the FAME!! THIS TIME, ON AUSTRALIAN GUITAR!!! </extreme Discovery Channel announcer voice> For our non-US cable/sat TV friends, the Discovery Channel is supposed to be our Science and Technology channel over here, but they do run a couple of shows called American Chopper and American Hot Rod that have an announcer outlining what's going on before the start of each episode. Quite entertaining. Sorry 'bout the laquer problems, Perry. It sucks when you have to make that call to the customer that's going to disappoint them and embarrass yourself.

First of all, I never said that Alder was the best tone wood in the world. I said that it was a better tonewood than Walnut. Here's my reasoning and you really don't have to take it to heart. Just look at my sig. Figured woods like burled walnut and flamed/quilted/spalted maple are nice to look at. They also have very nice sonic qualities. However, those nice burls, knots, and flames are all imperfections in the actual structure of the wood. Those are what we call dead spots. This is very important on the neck of an instrument, but not neccesarily on the body of the guitar, unless it's some sort of acoustic guitar. Here's why I tend to claim that spruce and rosewood are the best tonewoods in the world: they are. Look at every high-end musical instrument, besides guitars, and look at what they're made of in terms of wood. Rosewood. High-end marimbas and most wooden woodwinds are in fact rosewood. Classical stringed instruments have either used spruce or cedar for the tops and rosewood or maple for the sides and back. Low-end instruments tend to use mahogany for much of their construction. Why do they do this? Look at the structure of the wood. The grain in rosewood and spruce is mostly straight which allows sound waves to move cleanly throughout the body of the instrument. The density of the wood also makes a difference. Spruce isn't a very dense wood, so it's well suited for acoustic instrument tops and piano soundboards. Rosewood IS very dense which means it's very well suited for instruments like woodwinds, percussion, and solid body instruments. If I had unlimited funds, I would build a solid-body electric out of rosewood. It allows for the widest range of musical voices and anything you don't want you can eliminate with the amp settings. Tonewood choice and selection is far from BS. I appreciate the beautiful walnut and maple instruments just like everyone else, but I do recognize that beyond the pretty face they're just not the most musical woods you can buy.

That's gonna be a cool finish. I think the best part of a custom guitar is the finish and the artwork. Anyone can throw a Strat together from Warmoth parts, but making it really unique is tough. I'll PM you sometime later this year for that Korina guy's eBay info. I gotta graduate from school first in May and rebuild my workshop with fancy new tools before I can build something new. Thanks for the offer, I'll definitely take you up on that at some point.

Besides my MIM Strat, newly loaded with a sweet EMG-SA set, dark blue pearl pickguard, and Schaller locking tuners, I'd have to say this one Samick electric I played in a store down in Norman, OK about ten years ago. I can't remember the model name or number, but it was a neck-through double cutaway with a laminated maple-mahogany-maple-mahogany-maple neck with mahogany wings. Gold hardware, TOM, dual humbuckers with gold covers. Beautiful instrument. I've never seen one like it since, though I'll probably wind up building a copy of it as soon as I get out of school. BTW, if anyone knows the model name of the elusive Samick, or knows where I can get one, lemme know!

The screws simply help focus the magnetic field on the individual strings. At least, that's the point. The field is usually so large on passive pickups with bar magnets that if the screws don't line up perfectly, you won't hear much of a difference. Also, you don't have to polarize the screws or anything weird like that. Just use screws that are made of steel or some other metal that is attracted to magnets. Brass screws will probably not work very well at all.

I would strongly consider taking the SG back and getting back the Jackson with the Sustainiac. Here's why: 1. It has all the electronics you want. 2. It has a Floyd Rose-style bridge. If you want to dive-bomb, nothing works better than the FR. Take an hour and learn to tweak and tune it, and you'll be okay. 3. You won't have to spend the money upgrading the pickups. The cost for those Dimarzios is usually about $59-$69. You would nearly double that with installation, and forget about trading in the stock pickups. I'd be willing to bet that the Sustainer installation will cost much more than just $50, and if you don't like the sales staff at the store, chances are the techs won't be much better, even if it is a national chain. 4. There is no good, stable tremolo bridge for the SG. Nothing nearly as good as the FR or even a Wilkinson with locking tuners. You may be able to find a Kahler, but it's just as complicated as an FR and it will probably need to be rebuilt. Sounds to me like you were more satisfied with the Jackson than the SG. Yes, FR bridges are a pain to work with, but it's either that or go out of tune with heavy use of the whammy. The SG is never going to sound like that Jackson, no matter what you do to it. BTW, have you tried the Fernandes guitars? They were one of the first to develop a reliable and easy to use sustainer system, so much so that when people retrofit a system into their guitar, 90% of the time it's a Fernandes system. Even EVH uses a Wolfgang equipped with a Fernandes Sustainer and a Steinberger Trans-Trem!

Arrgghh!!! I hate the internet and this forum!! Everyone thinks I'm being mean instead of sarcastic, so I start using little smileys that are cute and laughing. Still, people think I'm still being mean and rude!! What do I have to do here?! Kevan, I was just kidding around. That's why I put the in there and was quite serious when I said I was eager for a manufacturer to put this unit on the market. No offense was intended here. Jeremy, I'm not sure if your comment about "actual products" was being aimed at me or not. I'll just say I don't think it was. True, I don't build guitars from scratch nor do I have the means to do so at this time. I've never come up with a design as unique as Kevan's tremol-no nor do I really have the interest to do so right now. My experience comes from modifying and upgrading instruments owned by myself and my friends, certainly nothing that merits starting a new thread anyway. I don't even have a digital camera to take pictures of my random projects. I've also been working with wood and woodworking tools since I was five years old, even just a little sander, so I DO know what I'm talking about with woodworking, too. I've also been a musician longer than I've been a woodworker, so I know what works and what doesn't for materials and design. Now that the pissing match is over, nomusicnolife, you're not stupid. The Tremol-No will not modify your guitar so you can mount a fixed bridge on the instrument. Instead, it will convert your bridge into a "fixed" bridge on the fly with the turn of a knob. However, the tone and sustain will never be the same as a fixed bridge because it's still a knife-edge trem; It's just locked into place. If you want to mount a permanent, string-through-body bridge, you'll have to fill the spring and block cavity with wood cut similar to the product you mentioned in your first post. I don't know of anyone who makes a pre-fab billet for your RG, so you'll probably have to get some sandpaper, a coping saw, glue, and some wood, preferably basswood, and make it yourself. Have fun

Dark forest green is a cool idea. Maybe with a couple of dark maroon racing stripes running down the middle it could sort of break-up the color of the instrument a little, too. I really want to build a Korina Rhodes, too. I love the feel and sound of Korina Vs and the way Rhodes-style Vs just sort of fit a little better.

Check out the Dimarzio SDS-1. It's exactly what you're talking about. Sounds a little warmer than a regular single-coil because of the bar magnet and has less string-pull issues. Neat way to warm up a Strat bridge without going to a humbucker.

Nothing like shamless self-promotion for a product that no one can actually buy yet... I'm waiting with baited breath on the word from AllParts...

Yeah, you'll get a range of sounds. Good luck keeping your settings straight, though. The only "puny" mind I see here is yours, Meegs. I think you should take a look at some of Ormsby's work before you accuse him of having a "puny" mind or lack of creativity. Also, I HAVE used complex wiring and switching schemes before, and they are simply too complicated for anything other than one-off recording. There's a reason why Gibson and Fender never sold very many Les Paul Recording or stock Jaguars. They're simply too complicated for gig use. I don't have a problem with people sharing ideas, but like Perry said, "what's the point?" What kind of special sounds are you really trying to get, or are you just doing it to do it? There comes a point where simplicity and elegance goes a lot further than complexity and "porcupine" guitars. I don't like the idea of having to keep a notebook with all of my settings just on the guitar. BTW, if you're looking for friends on the internet, buy a dog instead.

From PRS's Customer Support Center FAQ: Here's the problem I have with Ed, and no, it's not because I'm jealous of him or think I'm in any way superior. Most of his statements are based on hearsay and conjecture. I have a BIG problem with someone who supposedly takes apart $1500-$4000 guitars just to get to their parts which he supposedly sells really cheap. If someone brings in their PRS to get the pickups swapped out for the BlackBacks (SD Custom Customs), he just keeps the stock pickups without giving the previous owner any money or credit for them. Then he goes and sells the used pickups to you for $40 a pop, and there's no way to tell how old they are. Those pickups were probably worth maybe $10-$20 used. As for the bridge, their are many aftermarket bridges available that will work the same or even better than the PRS Stoptail. TonePros, Schaller, and Gotoh all make bridges that will work quite nicely. On the other hand, if you do need an "authentic" PRS bridge for a reproduction, you can find them on eBay or your local PRS dealer.

Perry, I noticed you didn't install the studs for the bridge or the string ferrules before finishing. Have you ever had a problem with the finish cracking when installing the studs or ferrules after finishing? It was just something I read a while back in the Hiscock book, so I was just curious.

Yeah, yeah, I'm just busting some chops here. School has started back up and one of my professors has put me into a sour mood, so I'm taking it out on the forum. Anyway, Squiers have gotten better in some cases, but with the variety of manufacturers and countries of origin, the quality tends to vary. I did play the limited edition Chinese Affinity Alder Blonde Tele last week and it was a very nice instrument--especially for $155. You're the fourth person I've heard complain about the tone of the Texas Specials. The first three are the primary reason why I didn't buy some last week, but I've heard some pretty wicked tones out of 'em from Jimmie Vaughan, and the price isn't bad. I personally prefer EMG-SAs and SD Quarter Pounders, as I have used those before. I'd be willing to bet that his problems have more to do either with bad pots or a short somewhere in the wiring. Even stock Squier pickups don't sound AS BAD as he's describing, no matter if it's plywood, agathis, or cow pie.

Oh my God...I think I'm really going to be ill...someone actually gave Ed $80 for two used PRS pickups and bought into the hype on Ed's website... Oh the humanity!!

Uh oh, Squier Fanboi alert!! Quite honestly, Squiers have ranged from okay to dismal quality. Comparing Squier quality to Fender quality from the early '80s is like shooting fish in a barrel. I've played a couple good Squiers and many really bad ones. Sounds like you just got a bad one. Let's say it's made out of agathis (japanese for "really bad wood") and it might be worth keeping. If you want a bright single-coil sound for not-so-much bread, try some Texas Specials or some Rio Grande pickups. If you can spend a little more dough, an EMG-SA set, Dimarzio HS-3 set, or SD Quarter Pounder set may work nicely.

Seymour Duncan Schematic This diagram is actually for two singles and a humbucker instead of three humbuckers, but it will do fine. Instead of hooking up the white wires on the neck and mid pickups to the switch, you will hook up the black wires just like on the humbucker shown in the diagram. The ground is now Green instead of black. Solder the white and red wires together on each pickup and cover with shrink tubing. If you want to use a switch to coil-split a pickup, you can solder the white and red wires to a switch instead of covering them with shrink tubing, too. Also, use 500k pots instead of the 250k shown in the diagram.