govtmule

I have a tele style gutar wired up with two P-90's and a master volume. I shielded the control cavity with copper shielding tape. The top 1/4" or so of the cavity has no shielding to make room for the cavity cover. Here is a ROUGH diagram of my wiring: The PUP's have the old braided hookup wire so as a ground I wrapped a wire around it two or three times and ran the other end to the volume pot case. See connections "A" and "B" in the above diagram. The problem that I have is that if connections "A" or "B" are pushed down into the cavity the entire signal goes to ground. No sound at all from either PUP, no matter which one(s) are switched on at the time. If the connections are left alone, kind of hovering up about where there is no shielding tape the guitar plays just fine. If I touch the tape I get a little more of a buzz through the amp. The shielding tape is not grounded to anything directly but the volume pot is touching the tape directly because the mounting hole for the pot is taped as well. If I run a ground wire from the shielding tape to the back of the volume pot, no sound whatsoever, all signal is grounded. This is the first time I've shielded my electronics cavity so maybe I missed something, any help out there ? Thanks, Steve

Looks good Matt ! I'm curious how you kept from blowing the lower horn apart with your router. I'm assuming that you used a bevel bit in a router table ? It gets so thin that I would have thought you'd run the risk of blow out.

I've been pretty busy screwing up someone elses guitar build. You're right though, I really need to get back to screwing up my own. I've got the wiring finally under control and got the pickups mounted. Tonight I'm going to string it up and finish the nut. Pictures to come soon hopefully.

what i would do is veneer the whole front right up the curve to the edge just behind the nut, you dont need a thick headplate for this or you will have to bend it with heat... just a thin piece of veneer will bend fine as it is Sounds like a solid idea. I'll see if I can dig up some maple veneer and cut a test piece to see how it looks.

Lookin good RDub !! Am I the only one that finds it funny that in your GOTM entry pictures for your guitar "made for metal"....there's a few shots of it by a cd rack that contains not only Ballet Classics Volume 1, but Ballet Classics Volume 2 ?!?!?

Thanks John ! I'm kind of dreading talking to the guy because knowing him I think his answer is going to be, "it's okay, no problem", even if he really wants me to start over. What about a 1/16" to 1/8" rosewood overlay just going around the tuner posts and maybe the rounded portion of the headstock as a "design addition" type thing ? I'm no Paint expert but something like this ?

Thanks for the advice Wez ! I was leaning towards a matching maple veneer but I have two issues with that: - How do I transition the maple into to scooped rosewood fretboard without having a noticable line where the rosewood stops on the headstock face ? - I don't think my headstock face is quite dead flat so am I opening myself up for possible slight gaps around the edge ? Before the neck carve but shows the transition to the headstock

I'm building a strat for a guy and I had a little mishap with the tuner holes. Any ideas on how to cover up my "fix" ??? 1. I drilled the tuner holes a bit off center b/c I didn’t use a fence or a brad point bit. Original holes a bit crooked 2. I decided to plug the tuner holes and re-drill because only being off by 1/16" max, the mounting hardware should cover up any bit of the old plugged hole. Plugged and re-sanded 3. When marking for the new holes I realized that my string pull would not be exactly straight if I left the tuners in the same spots. So I figured that I would also correct the string pull issue and locate the tuners where they should have been in the first place. Yep, DIDN'T EVEN OCCUR TO ME THAT I WAS NOW PLACING THE TUNERS IN COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SPOTS and the mounting hardware would no longer cover up the plugs in the old holes. It's not pretty The worst of it Right now the plan is to finish the neck natural and the body black. Any ideas ? - Inlay ? - Maple vaneer on headstock ? - Dark or burst finish on headstock ? - Larger mounting washers ? - Firewood ?

Hey - my local Best Buy just got a musical instruments section. Seriously. They seem to cater to all the kids trying to make the leap from Guitar Hero. I heard that was in the works. I haven't been to my local Best Buy lately to see if it's happened here or not. Ironically my Best Buy is across the street from my Guitar Center.

Yeah, that sounds like the post that I'm talking about. I dropped by my local GC the other day with a guy that I'm building a strat for. I wanted him to try out some necks with a variety of finishes so he could tell me what finish he wanted on the start that I'm building for him. Now I am by no means a "luthier" and barely qualify as a hobby builder but I was shocked at the piss poor condition of the frets on most of the brand new guitars there. Fender was by far the worst. Fret ends were loose, exposed, sharp, and even lifted in many cases. Anyway, that old post came back to me and I thought I'd give it another read to get an idea of the best way to approach my GC to see if they'd be interested in having me spruce up the fret work on their inventory. I'm not sure if they'd go for it but may be a way for me to get some fret jobs under my belt and some beer money in my pocket. Any advice out there ?

They do seem to be the Walmart of gutar shops don't they.

Does anyone remember who on this forum mentioned that they did fret jobs for Guitar Center ? I remember reading this post a while back about the crappy fret jobs on new guitars at Guitar Center and someone who worked for them cleaning up the fretwork on new guitars. Any help out there ? Thanks, Steve

Dropped the price to $80 if anyone's interested. Thanks, Steve

Sweeeeeet.....in camo even !! Nice. It's always the low tech solution that's the best !!

Good point, thanks. I've thought about splicing into my homes forced air ductwork and running a supply over to the ceiling of my shop just to cut the chill out of the air and hopefully keep the temp a bit more stable in there but I have a whole house humidifier on my furnace so I thought the extra humidity that I would be intorducing out there would do more harm than good.

That internet....it knows EVERYTHING If the air is warm enough up there to make a difference for me I think this is a good idea. This way I don't have to cut a hole in my roof or in my existing vent PVC but I don't think the air up there is warm at all this time of year.

Quite possible that is a contributing factor. Is the attic portion insulated? Is your shop area tightly isolated from the rest of the garage, you said it is walled off and those are insulated...are the outside walls as well? The best thing to do is to add heat, if you can and ventilate. I keep my shop at 50-55 F unless I'm out there working (it's a garage as well). I have R-19 in the ceiling and R-13 in the outside walls. At my house the cars stay outside, so the overhead never opens. My guess is you need to add heat and vent the moisture out as you surmised, the problem there is you are sucking the heat out as well. Maybe someone will have another suggestion. Good luck. Steve Yes, the attic portion is insulated. The main garage walls are all insulated and the two overhead doors. The wall that I put up between the two main stalls and the third stall (my shop) is NOT insulated. Just drywall on the garage side and open studs on my shop side. I wouldn't say that the shop is tightly isolated from the garage.

My shop is a third stall that I walled off from the main garage. The side walls are insulated and the overhead door is foam insulated. On the coldest days the temp flirts with the freezing mark but is usually in the high 30's, low 40's. Actually last week it got down to -29 with a wind chill of -50 and the shop temp was around 30. BUT...in the winter I see frost build up on my shop ceiling where the coldest side wall meets the ceiling. And if I turn on my heater to work out there, that frost melts and then drips down onto my shop floor, work bench, and worse, onto my wood storage racks. What I think is causing it: I think that the warm cars being parked on the other side of the wall, and the dripping snow off of those cars is causing humidity in my shop to rise up and collect on the ceiling where it freezes because that side wall is not protected from the wind outside and is by far the coldest wall. Sound possible ? I've had a contractor crawl up into the roofing and verified that there is no moisture coming in from above or outside and dripping down onto the garage ceiling so the moisture seems to be coming from below the ceiling, not above it. The RH in my shop right now in the dead of winter here in Iowa is 65% to 67% according to my gauge. That seems a bit high for the winter to me and I only notice it that high in the winter. So either my gauge is off or my concrete floor is radiating a bunch of humidity up to my ceiling. So if that sounds like a likely cause for the shop rain, how the heck do I cut humidity other than a de-humidifier. I'm afraid that the de-humidifer would freeze up out there. What if I hooked up a bathroom type exhaust fan into the ceiling and hooked it into the nearest bathroom exhaust tube (not sure of the proper name) heading out through the roof ? Any thoughts from anyone on the cause or fix ? Steve

Thanks, I'm going to definately try a fence. I'm sure that will help with stability. I think another problem I have is that I have never sharpened the cutters. I must be a little slow but honestly from the instruction booklet I couldn't figure out how the sharpening stone was to be used. After seeing some youtube videos recently it's clear now.....duh.

I have the Wagner Safe-T planer and have been a little hesitant to use it. Maybe I don't have it setup right or the blades are not sharp enough but it grabs and pulls at the work piece a little too hard for me. Makes me think I'm always an inch away from my hands being pulled into the blades. Maybe I'm using it at the wrong speed. Any advice as to what speed I should be using this tool at ?

I've seen some examples of people using fabric under a few layers of epoxy. Looks pretty cool. I would think that you would run the risk of ratty looking edges to your electronics routes but the examples that I've seen have been sharp and clean.

I have all three Larry Robinson Inlay Techniques DVD's for sale or trade. They are in mint condition. I'll take $90 for the set plus shipping. I'd also be willing to trade for mdf body and headstock templates. PM me if interested or with any other offer. Steve

Daniel, My condolences. Sorry to hear of your loss. Try to always remember her in the best moments you shared together. Thoughts and prayers. Steve

Matt, Looks good ! I'll be watching this one. I'd like to make a mini guitar for my daughter who's turning two next month. She loves to look at daddy's "Geeetaarr" magazines and pick out her favorites already. Steve

Thanks a lot. There's a lot of things that could have turned out better, but for the most part I'm happy with how it's shaping up for my fourth build. The two toggles are on/off switches for each pickup. So it's got a master volume, master tone, and each pickup is ran through it's own switch first. No reason in particular other than I don't really like the traditional tele pickup selector switch and I wanted all black hardware and didn't see any traditional three way toggle in all black. I didn't want a nickle colored switch with a black tip. Plus, this way I won't have to roll the volume down to zero to totally kill the guitar. Just flip one or two switches.