Boggs

I'll get 'em when I can... I have the neck at home and I do not have a digital camera and I drove the motorcycle to work, so I could not bring it to get any pictures here. I'll try to get where I am on the 2" slab of mahogany with the maple veneer on each side with the rough cuts at lunch today or at the end of the day. How's that? Best I can do... Boggs

Should've worn a mask. Need a roto-rooter for my lungs today. That Cuban mahogany is dense as hell! Got 5 chambers roughed out with the 2 big ones to go and also got the neck rout 95% done for the mid-body. I'll just use a follower (bearing) router for the padauk section when it gets glued on. Hope to have the chambers roughed by the end of the day today and hopefully the mahogany section overall ready for the padauk by the end of the weekend. Also, got the primary fill coat on the padauk headstock. Has an interesting effect the way I did it... Basically, I think it is ready for sealing and I think I will go with the hard tung-oil Tim has if that is all right with him. The feel of it is so much nicer than laquer or varnish even though it will need maintenance. The body will have the nitrocellulose finish for more durability... Progress-a-happenin'! Boggs

I have several threads on my semi-hollow prototype build starting here... http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7208 http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7268 http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7466 http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7543 Boggs

Elton, check out this link. I had some tear-out when I pulled off my neck under the fingerboard where it is glued to the body. You will see what we did to repair it. If you have questions, feel free to ask away! You would want to have a couple of very sharp chisels and a plane (also very sharp) in your tool arsenal. Boggs

Actually, we have two. Both support our music program at our church and we as musicians don't make a dime off of them. Autumn Stroll is really an EP of six instrumentals I wrote and is played by myself on guitar, and three players in our group "Circle of Friends." You can read about the project by clicking on the Autumn Stroll CD cover on the page I will give you the link to. It has sold in 10 different countries! The other CD is our Christmas CD of non-traditional (for the most part) songs and traditional songs not necessarily arranged in a traditional way... Imagin "Silent Night" in Dixie, for example! Also, there are two original pieces on this CD which is entitled "Colors of Christmas." One is another original instrumental piece I wrote which has kind of a Chuck Mangione vibe called "In The Arms Of The Babe" and the other is called "God Comes Near" of which the lyrics were written by one of our bass players and the music was composed and arranged by our phenomenal pianist. This is one which should become a standard and probably would if it had any kind of distribution network. Phenomenal piece of music. Anyway, the link to these CDs is at www.dynrec.com/cof . There are sample clips for both as well although they are in a quite compressed format. They will still give you a good idea though. Cheers! Boggs

Actually, if it is a "cheap" guitar, it would be a perfect vehicle to learn how to do some of these repairs and setups yourself! Let your misfortune become an opportunity. There are a lot of good folks here who can talk you through some of the steps and there are other sites like www.frets.com which can give you ideas and help build your confidence in fixing this instrument. Boggs

...at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Phil Keaggy with Muriel Anderson and Laurence Juber! Talk about an acoustic dream event!!! Boggs

Needed to start getting measurements for the new bodies. Really hurt to take apart my "first born". If somebody finds a decent 25.5" scale bolt-on neck, let me know. I have to put her back together sometime. By the way, that Cuban mahogany is real stable. It was several weeks since planing it down and it only took about 10 minutes total for both sides to true it up on the sanding plate. Tim and I got the maple veneer glued up on it Saturday despite several mishaps with titebond (such as the cap blowing off when the tip plugged making for a second emergency road trip to get more). We should both be able now to lay out the body shape and rout patterns and go to town. We also need to glue the bookmatched halves of the padauk together now that we have our clamps freed up from the laminating process. We also tried a French polish and pumice wood filling technique on a couple of scrap pieces of wood but were less than impressed with our first efforts. Lots to learn about wood filling and finishing. That's it for now... Boggs

Thanks for taking the time to check it out, GregP (and others as well... 75 hits!). I find it interesting that quite literally junk woods can work as well as they do. I guess the body wood is the least in the tone equation. I have long felt that the neck and headstock have far more to do with tone than the body wood does. It is a very long moment arm from the nut to the neck joint that the strings work on... Boggs

Yes, it would, except that piece is going to be next to impossible to flatten... Thank you for the comps on its tone and for taking the time to check it out! Boggs

I let a friend of mine borrow my prototype (still the pine/plywood version) to record with and check out. He provided me with these clips of my guitar directly compared to his blueburst SC90 with M22 pickups. The patches in his Line6 were plug-and-play more or less optimized for his SC90 to see how the two compared directly. He noted that it would have been a bit difficult to get a correct tone from mine since it played so loudly unplugged that it affected more of what he heard from his monitors at the low levels of recording. Interesting... Anyway, here are the links. Definitely worth checking out. Rich apologizes for his playing especially of The National Anthem... No need, but that's just him! ;-) The first will be the SC90 and the followup will be mine playing the same thing through the same patch. I don't know what pickups were selected or where volume pots were set or anything like that. I just thought it was cool of him to spend an evening doing this for me. The proto comes apart Saturday morning... It's gonna be real hard doing it. :-( I'll have to get a neck and electronics for her to revive her someday. She ain't real purdy, but she'll blow your mind! http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric...C90-Clean05.mp3 http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric...son/Clean05.mp3 http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric...90-Roland01.mp3 http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric...on/Roland01.mp3 http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric...-VoxMatch02.mp3 http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric.../VoxMatch02.mp3 http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric...-bomb-iac01.mp3 http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric.../Bomb-iac01.mp3 ...He did a single clip of just the bridge coil to show that Tele Twang capability. Picture playing some Surf with this selection just tweaked a bit. Quite a range, eh?! http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/boggs.com/Ric...son/Clean06.mp3 Boggs

Nice work!! The design integrates very well, too! Boggs

Tim took #4 and in photoshop simulated planing to increase convergence and ended up with this... I think it looks great! Real nice work there, bigdguitars! Boggs

Lookin great there, Bow! Nice work! Boggs

+1. Boggs

Cool! I'm actually more of a natural wood guy, but I can see how folks would like other things, so I could embrace the flame thing some. The Parker shape is really well done and the flame addition could make it really unique. Looking forward to seeing the end result! Boggs

Awsome work, loosetoe! You guys have some real talent on this forum!!! Boggs

Takes a lot of cojones to make a neck... more than i have for sure! My hat's off to ya, man! Great work! Boggs

I have found that when a design kind of grows on you, it usually stays with you. When something has a strong visual impact and impresses you outright, you tend to tire of it sooner. The growing on you aspect is a very good thing! Thanks, GregP We find this wood very nice to work with. I personally wouldn't want to make a solid body out of it because I would think it would be bright as hell tone-wise. That is why I chose the mahogany chambered body with padauk top and back... to tone it down a bit but be more dynamic in response than just mahogany. I am shooting for versatility here along with showing as much wood as possible. I've never gone the conventional route in anything I have designed whether it be my old Formula Vee race car suspension I designed or my motorcycle customization or this guitar... The guitar community is generally very conservative and has a hard time "breaking away" from the conventional, long-time standard guitar shapes such as the Strat or the Tele or the LP... Nothing wrong with those designs at all in my book...except for those things I have addressed in my design from a function standpoint. Even mine has its compromises like the rapid-fire volume swells. The way I see it is there are pedals that can do that function and if you want to do a volume swell on an acoustic guitar, well, that would be the only real option unless you got an acoustic electric with controls on the soundboard. Not really much of a compromise in my book! With regards to your projects, guys, THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! The personal satisfaction is great! Carry on, gentlemen! Thank you so much for your participation and honesty and sharing your thoughts. You guys are pretty darned . Boggs

Make sure your levels are correct and that you are plugged into the line in and not the mic in on your sound card. Sounds like your input level was too high or the input impedence was wrong. I am running Vegas and converted it (in too high a compression) to an mp3 in Sound Forge. Hope this helps. Boggs

...And that wood is unfinished. You should see it filled with a French polish!!! I can't believe that more guitars don't use this beautiful variety of wood... I think Guild used to make necks from it if I am not mistaken. Boggs

Thanks! The change is remarkably subtle... None to the lower end at all. Just primarily the slight elongation of the upper left "horn" with a less round arch and a little more access to the upper frets on the upper right. The waistlines really haven't changed at all. It never ceases to amaze me how a little change can have a huge visual impact! Boggs

From my building partner, here are negatives shown on the actual padauk of my revised body (final edition) so it can be seen in the actual wood... The components are just set on top to give you a general feel for what it will look like with pickups and bridge and tailstop and the volume and tone knob. I need to figure out what to use for the front and what to use for the back. Suggestions? Boggs

I would think some more subtle flames, thicker at the bottom, just around the perimeter of the guitar except for the top portion of the body... kind of like it is burning from the bottom up but hasn't caught at the top yet. Know what I mean? Boggs

Nice work, man! KUDOS!