Boggs

The real visual imbalance is the upper left "horn". It is too bulbous. I think that is the biggest factor. That will be addressed. Rapid-fire swells would be difficult for sure, but that is what "volume pedals" are for. Keeps the knob out of the way the other 99% of the time. How would you do swells with an acoustic? Also, I made changes in pickup selection on the fly Sunday, and I suck at it! It really isn't bad at all. Boggs

I'm sure it's easy to find, but I still have a hard time visualizing how to do a series of swells while playing notes, a la Steve Morse. The EVH and Wolfgang guitars, for example, have the volume knob right near the bridge pickup to facilitate swells. I believe you about the comfort, that's for sure. In my design, based on a 335; and also on a Godin LG I own, I find the lower waist makes the guitar feel oddly unbalanced on my lap... like it's wanting to slip off. More wood forward from the waist would alleviate this. Cool beans about the amount of noise. I didn't really realize that having them down there would help rectify any noise situations. Greg True enough that for rapid fire swells, it would definitely be harder on mine, but that is where a foot pedal would come in handy to take care of this function for the 1% of the time you might have to do that. It just seemed like a better compromise for the other 99% of the time the guitar was played. Glad to hear you appreciate this ergonomic feature. It does make for a challenge in achieving visual balance especially when due to the size of the wood I have to work with, I am limited to a maximum guitar body width of 12 inches. I could do much more with the design if I had wider materials to work with. The noise thing was a complete surprise to me! I don't know for a fact why the guitar is so quiet unshielded, but it is and that delights me to no end! I will still shield the cavity of the final product though. I also did add a conduit system for routing the pickup wires to ease feeding them through the chambered body into the controls cavity and to also separate them from each other. That may be making a difference as well. Boggs

Great feedback! Thanks, guys. The center switch is significantly taller than either of the others, and I have switched "on the fly" without any difficulty. I will probably give them a bit more room on the final product based on your feedback. The volume control is on the bottom so you can blindly roll your hand down there and hook it with your pinky or even palm remarkably easily. Don't even need to look because it is the first control you find when you bring your hand up. As was noted, a volume pedal is also an option as is hammering and rolling the volume pot. I designed this for the 90% of people who want controls more out of the way. Also, you will note that the orientation of the switches is such that if they were hit during aggressive strumming, they would not change position ( action perpindicular to strumming motion ). The other nice artifact of having this electronics chamber where it is located is that it is dead quiet even without having shielded the cavity!!! I played it this Sunday in a live application and it was perfect! Both upper "horns" will be reconfigured for more visual balance, but I do need to keep volume as the horns are chambered and I want to keep as much acoustic volume as possible. The final version will look much more eye pleasing. That is why I built the prototype. The offset waists really do make a difference in terms of comfort whether sitting or standing while playing. I let someone try it out and comment on it and the very first comment from him was how comfortable it was. I didn't prompt him. Made me feel real good! He also liked the switch layout and tone versatility. The ability to stand it on end without a stand was also a very cool feature of this design. Also, when using a right angle guitar chord, stepping on it will not pull it out and there is a lot of beef in that area. The chord just follows the body line... I wanted to keep the headstock smaller for physical balance. It is difficult to achieve with a semi-hollow or chambered body guitar. That headstock is a standard Alan Holdsworth model Carvin shape. I also like the 2+4 configuration anyway, and I felt this would work very well for my application. No string tree needed. Pull seems to be evenly distributed in this configuration for a lower twisting moment on the neck. I like that engineering aspect of it as well. Thanks for taking the time to be critical. I respect anyone who can say to me what they really think and especially those who take the time and care enough to! Keep the comments coming! Boggs

Classic techniques? We're just kind of makin' this up as we go along with what we've got... Neither of us had tried anything like this before. We just sort of jumped in and said "What the hell!" Right way or wrong way, we got it done! Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback! That steamer is for general use to steam wrinkles out of clothes or any other purpose where superheated steam is needed. It is made by Eureka. The hose and needle are from Stewart MacDonald and are made for that specific purpose. http://www.stewmac.com . The holes were not in the exact spot as it had the old fashioned open tuner tree. The new machines did cover them, but I filled the old ones with toothpicks dipped in glue and broken off at the surface and sanded flush. I should also mention that Tim did the finish on the neck with a French polish technique. I sanded the old finish off by wet-sanding by hand. Took a while and a few cramps on that one! For the fingerboard repair, I made several blocks of various thicknesses so I could sand all of the areas between the frets without having to remove them. It did a couple of things for me. #1, it reduced the depths of the divots. #2, it was almost like scalloping the fingerboard giving me slightly more effective fret height compensating for wear. #3, it gave me the dust I needed. Make sure that you use a very thin superglue. Try several types out on sample pieces before you try the real thing. Boggs

The grille was not in contact with the speaker in any way. The screws that secured it into place were only in at the edge of the baffle and were nowhere's near the speaker or the connector to it. The practice amp would drive it at medium levels but became distorted from clipping beyond that. The powered mixer was highly distorted as soon as you could hear any sound at all. The effect appeared to be load (or lack thereof) induced. It responded differently to two different amps which have different load sensitivities. I did not move the cabinet or the wires. I was careful in my approach. Removing the grille without touching anything else solved the problem. If I didn't see and hear it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it. I design and conduct system tests at Xerox for a living. The only factor changed was the grille removal. Fascinating! Here are pictures of the front and the back without the grille. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of the grille at this time. You can see though how the speaker baffle is recessed in and how the speaker frame extends out from the front of the baffle. The speaker mounts from the front. You have about an inch from the front of the speaker frame (which is a good 1/4 inch forward from the speaker surround) to the very front of the scabinet side overhang and the grille was bent forward to a point where it would be almost flush with the overhang. It was not touching the speaker or interfering with the motion of the cone or surround at all. Here are the pictures... Boggs

No questions? Boggs

I had a problem with driving my British Series speaker in my home built cabinet with my Mackie 808M powered mixer and even to some extent with my practice amp. Volume was practically a whisper with nothing but heavy clipped distortion. It had performed beautifully when I tested it out at home with my practice amp. I then made a steel protective grille (very open like the type used to hold lava rocks in gas grills) to go over the front of the cabinet (not even touching the speaker and no screws anywhere near the speaker). That is when the trouble started. I went to play through it using my Mackie 808M powered mixer and, well, I described the sound above. The practice amp did better, but still distorted at low to medium levels and was nothing like it was at home. Taking off the steel grille completely solved the problem... Apparently it had to screw up the magnetic circuit to a point where impedence must've been almost non-existant... Put the grill back, what little sound there is is total crap. Take it off, and it lives in all its glory. Who'd have thunk it?! I am going to have to find some black anodized aluminum for it. Anyone ever hear of this problem before? Boggs

Oops... Double post. Coffee ain't kicked in yet...

Hmmm... Nearly 70 views and no questions? Damn, I must be good!

Looks GREAT, Bow! You may want to try Frets.com for some ideas on how to go about doing inlay work. I haven't done it before, so I can't be of much help to you there, I'm afraid... Boggs

The upper bout will be refined significantly, but the lower and the offset waists are ergonomically designed and will remain essentially unchanged.

Here are some photos of the neck I had Carvin build for me... They were MOST helpful and easy to work with. The neck is mahogany (they bookmatch it in 2 pieces for additional strength and stability from twisting) with ebony fingerboard, stainless steel medium jumbo frets, offset MOP fret markers, and an overlay of maple and a second overlay of padauk I provided to them like the body will be. It is using the smaller 2+4 Holdsworth headstock for balance and locking Sperzel machines. It is a compound radius neck (12" at the nut to 15 inches at the body). The pictures are of the unfinished neck. Here is the built-up prototype... Bear in mind that there will be some minor visual cue changes on the final product. And finally a couple of sound clips. For some reason, my mp3 converter compresses the hell out of the tone. It is much less damped sounding than the samples. The first clip is just going through a few pickup combination changes flat except for the last where I added a little reverb and then chorus. No attempt was made to "tweak" for a usable tone. It is just to give you an idea of the level of different combinations are available. The second clip shows you it can rock hard with grit as well... It was plugged into my Genesis 1 and directly into my computer. http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Gui...totypetest1.mp3 http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Gui...totypetest2.mp3 Cheers!

Here is the 1/4 inch thick padauk which will be used for the top and back on the final product. In between the mahogany and the padauk both top and back will be a binding layer of maple veneer for visual contrast. Sides will be rounded so the mahogany and maple will frame the padauk. For the prototype, I have used a European hardwood plywood. Total cost for the body woods for the prototype are less than $10. Here is the prototype body... The electronics compnents fit in this cavity and are a main feature of this guitar. Each coil can be selected independently in any combination. Controls are out of the way of the player so no accidental switches will result. The volume pot os the lower one for blind access for volume swells. Each switch location represents which pickup is controlled and it points to the coil selected. Very intuitive. Next installment is the neck and working prototype with sound samples... Boggs

The actual wood I will be using... Chambered body will be Cuban mahogany about 1.75" thick. It will form the skeleton... I made a practice body by cutting a 3/4 x 12 x 36 plank of pine in half and gluing them together making it 1.5 inches thick. I then drew the basic shape and cut it with a jigsaw and shaped the outsides with a drum sander, a Honda CX500 rear brake show eith sandpaper stuck to it (you read right!), and a disk and belt sander. I then drew up the chambers and cut them out with a jigsaw. Next installment, the top and back... Boggs

Here are some potential pickguard materials... What do you think? Here is a link to the guitar as used in our Colors of Christmas CD. http://www.dynrec.com/cof . Look for the clip entitled "In The Arms Of The Babe." After I get the pickguard on and the inlay done, I will post that too. I hope you have gotten something out of this. Cheers! Boggs

Repairing the tearout from the neck reset. Sanded the area, shaved some maple with a sharp plane and laid ply layers of the shavings with fish glue and sanded when dry. You can see that we cleaned up the mortice and shimmed to fit as well. Trimming the dovetail with a sharp chisel to the new angle... That's my expert buddy, Tim. Tim shows that it fits! You can see we removed the old neck finish. The new neck angle with the built-up bridge. Note that instead of aligning at the base of the bridge where it meets the body, it is at the base of the saddle now. Gluing the neck... That's me. That's Tim fitting it. Clamping. The fit... You can see the tuning machines have been installed. Progress showing the nut and saddle blanks and the neck finish. Pickguard has been removed. The lighter area is the original color of the top. The gold is the natural vintage aging of the original finish. Next up, potential pickguards and a link to a sound clip of the repaired guitaras used on our second CD...

Making the nut and saddle from fossilized mastadon bone... After cutting a piece for the saddle, sanded it on a glass plate with sand papers adhered to it. All done by hand. Next shows the carved nut blank... Slots were filed by hand. Next up, fitting the neck at new angle.

Resetting the neck... Old angle. See how it lines up at the base of the saddle. Very high action. Building up the bridge for better saddle stability... Rosewood veneer to be laminated onto the existing bridge. Note the screw in the bridge where the JLD Bridge Doctor has already been installed to remove the belly in the top. Gluing and clamping the bridge laminate. First is clamp detail. Make tools as you need to. Carving the bridge veneer... The bridge repaired... Next up, the nut and saddle...

Next installment, fingerboard repair... There were deep divots from 30+ years of playing this guitar. Pics don't really give you the sense of the depth of them. I first sanded the fingerboard between the frets using sandpaper and a block which fit between the frets allowing it to slide. I did this by hand keeping a consistent radius. I then carefully collected as much of the rosewood dust as possible. I then cut deeply along the grain in the areas of the divots with an exacto knife (took a bit of soul searching) and brought grain up to the surface level. I used the saved rosewood dust to fill and pack the area under and between the wood grain I brought up with the knife. I then got the thinnest cyanoacrelate adhesive (super glue) and dropped it onto the repair area allowing it to wick into the matrix. I then resanded the area. The repair is hardly visible now and the surface is nice and smooth again! This shows the worst area after repairing it... NICE!

This was my first guitar. It is 30+ years old and was in despirate need of a neck reset, fingerboard repair, and a bridge build-up as well as adding a JLD Bridge Doctor to reduce the belly in the top at the bridge. I also added new Grover mini-locking tuning machines for good measure. Following is a pictorial of the work. I have yet to do inlay work on the headstock as planned or add the wood pickguard my friend and I have designed. Too many projects working at once! Neck removal... Note some tearout of the laminate which we repaired easily. This thread will continue with more repairs and photos.

Just wanted to say "Hi!" to you all and say that I have had a couple of projects working as an amateur builder/fixer-upperand have been really enjoying it! Rebuilt my 30 year old Yamaha 12-string including building up the bridge, installing a JLD Bridge Doctor to get the belly out of the top, removing the original pickguard, repairing the divots in the fingerboard, doing a neck reset, installing new Grover mini-locking tuners, making a fossilized mastadon bone nut and saddle and refinishing the neck all with a friend, tjfuss who may yet come to this board too... I also have been designing and building a new semi-hollow-body guitar the prototype of which I will be playing for our church service this Sunday. It will be made from Cuban mahogany for the 1-3/4" thick body skeleton and 1/4" thick African Padauk for the top and back. there will be a 1/32" thick binding layer of maple between the padauk and the mahogany for contrast. Sides will be rounded. The neck is made from mahogany with maple and padauk overlay on the headstock and ebony fingerboard with black locking Sperzel machines and stainless steel frets. All controls and bridge and tailstop parts are also black. It is dual humbucker with any combination of single coils available tapped also at the flick of a switch. 3 switches give you any combination of any to all coils. I have played the prototype and the tonal variations are extremely impressive. Next winter, I hope to build another (solid body this time) guitar a bit more conventionally using bookmatched koa I picked up while I was in Hawaii for the wing top and back with again mahogany for the wing body material and it will be a koa neck-through. I have posted pics of the woods for the semi-hollow on another thread (cutting body shape without a bandsaw) but here are pics of the koa for next winter's project... Let me know what pictures you would want to see of which portion of any project. Enjoy! Boggs

Hi everyone. First post here... I'm known as "Boggs" on several other forums and as a guitar builder, I am an amateur so any advice from me should be taken with a bit of a grain of salt. I am free to share my experiences, however. I have been designing a new semi-hollow electric and have made up a prototype using surrogate woods to test my procedures, techniques, and to test out my ergonomic features. I did cut out my surrogate body using a jigsaw leaving plenty of room from the line for shaping. I found that using a drum sander on a drill press did a nice job of getting the shape close and working the concave curves and a disk and a belt sander really smoothed out the convex curves. I also at one point double-back taped sandpaper to a spare Honda CX500 motorcycle rear brake shoe and I used it to tweak the waistline curves... Use your imagination! See what you have lying around the house and put it to good use... By the way, I am playing the prototype for the first time this Sunday... I used it at rehearsal yesterday and it blew some minds... The prototype just uses cheap pine for the main body with Cheap European hardwood plywood for the top and back of this hollowbody. The neck is mahogany with maple and padauk overlays and ebony fretboard with stainless steel frets and locking Sperzel machines and is the final product. The electronics are Carvin H22N humbucker in the neck and C22B in the bridge position. Both buckers are coil tapped and either coil can be selected for either bucker and combined in any fashion. This is accomplished with only 3 switches. The system works beautifully and my tone range defies description... I'll post pics in the appropriate forums. The final body will be 1/4 inch thick padauk top and back and about 1-3/4 inch thick Cuban mahogany skeleton for the hollowbody. These layers will be bound with a 1/32 inch thick layer of maple for contrast. We have very few tools and yet we have all we really need to get the job done. Just takes a little more time is all. Don't fear the task or get discouraged! Here's a pic of the not yet quite final shape of the prototype... Here are the woods I'll be using... Cheers! Boggs