GarageRocker

I've had a Performax 16/32 for quite a while now, and taking light passes -- which is what it's designed to do -- it's within .001" from one side to the other. To each his own but I can't imagine using a thickness sander to take off more than 1/8" total. I use the planer for that.

Have you tried Wood Finishing Supplies? There's no one there on weekends but at least you can order online.

That's correct if he's using a current style MM bridge but the older bridge plates were longer. And he may be using a different bridge anyway. The centerline is 3 1/2" from the witness point on a bridge saddle before adjusting for compensation, and as you said, 30 1/2" from the nut.

Not just lower. They were almost flattopped. Look at the first three pics here for a good example.

LMI's price is way high. They aren't six bucks anymore but you can buy them for less than half of LMI's price. There are a couple of versions -- the plain saw-rasp and the "planer" version with a knob so it can be used like a plane. Search for Shinto saw rasp. Japan Woodworker and a number of other places carry them. They're great, and they do last a long time.

Kalamazoo was Gibson's economy line made from about 1965 to 1969. The SG-shaped model you have was called the KG1. The other body style that looks sort of like a Fender Mustang was called the KG2. The bodies are compressed chipboard, not basswood. The stock pickups were the same single coils as on the Gibson Melody Maker guitars. Gibson never offered replacement necks for sale separately, aside from watching eBay I don't know where you'd find one. There's a site called Everything SG with a forum, they don't have a For Sale section anymore but you could at least ask, you never know what someone might have laying around. Good luck.

Allen Guitar http://www.allenguitar.com/supply.htm offers true 24 3/4"" scale as well as 24 9/16". If a 12" radius is okay with you, you can save by buying one of their pre-slotted ebony boards. otherwise you'll pay job charges for only two boards. The listing in the pre-slotted section shows 24.750" but says "Gibson scale" so I'd recommend confirming with Randy Allen that it's a true 24 3/4". I bought a different scale length so I haven't seen one personally.

My final post in this topic: The only ways to prevent someone else from reproducing your guitar design are to obtain a trademark on some or all of its "trade dress", if it qualifies, or to obtain an industrial design patent on part or all of it, if it qualifies. A copyright will not protect you at all, in the US, Australia or anywhere else. Seek the advice of an attorney who specializes in trademarks.

There are minor differences between countries, but (once again) no, it's not very different. The US, Canada and Australia all subscribe to the same international conventions and treaties. In addition, AUSFTA (the Australia/US Free Trade Agreement) brings the US and Australian provisions even closer together. Of course, you can keep repeating your false claim, but it won't change reality. Where did I ever doubt its validity? Of course it's valid, and the same provisions can be found in US copyright law. What you can't seem to understand is that it doesn't have anything to do with reproducing objects pictured in an image, only with reproducing the image itself. I challenge you to find even one case and post it here. Find one case in Australia or anywhere else where a copyrighted portrayal of a guitar or any other useful article has prevented someone from reproducing that article. Here is a direct quote from the US Copyright Office, and you had better believe that the same thing applies in Australia: Copyright in a work that portrays a useful article extends only to the artistic expression of the author of the pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work. It does not extend to the design of the article that is portrayed. For example, a drawing or photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted, but that does not give the artist or photographer the exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same design.

1.It's not name calling, it's an accurate description. You're obviously utterly ignorant about intellectual property laws. You're making false statements that, if people relied on them, could cause them to fail to protect their designs. And you persist even though it's been reasonably explained to you. 2. You're not helping, you're harming. The law is what the courts say it is, and you obviously haven't a clue what they say. You won't find any case law anywhere on this planet to support what you are saying. 3. There are no essential differences between Australian IP statutes and case law and those of any other countries that are part of international IP treaties. 4. I read the final sentence of your quote, and I already explained that you were ignoring the first sentence. That covers a three dimensional reproduction of a two dimensional artistic work. A plan design of an article of commerce is not a two-dimensional artistic work under the law. It's not an artistic work, period. In any case, when you copyright an original drawing, photo or picture, what's copyrighted is the image itself, not the objects in the image.

If you stand by your comments, then you're an ignoramus giving false advise. I don't mean to be harsh but there's no other way to put it. You don't know what you're talking about. Please read my reply to Perry. You're completely misinterpreting this. A guitar is not an artistic work as defined under the law. What this means is: if someone creates an original two-dimensional work of art --- say, an oil painting of a man playing a fiddle -- then someone else can't get around the copyright by making it into a sculpture or even into a non-art object like putting a reproduction of the painting onto an article of clothing, furniture or anything else. It does not mean that you can't make a fiddle like the one in the painting.

Mr. Ormsby, No, that's not how it works. If you publish and copyright your plans, copyright applies only to reproduction of the plans, not reproduction of the object depicted in the plans. Example: one of my neighbors just bought plans for the fancy New Yankee Workshop Router Table. He can not only make one for himself, he can go into business manufacturing and selling the tables if he wants to. What he can't do is copy the plans and start selling them. The only way to protect objects depicted in plans is to trademark the trade dress of the object -- if it qualifies. A router table would never qualify, but a guitar can if its design is distinctive enough to be identified with its maker instead of just as a guitar. A sculpture is an object, but it can be copyrighted because it's defined under the laws as a work of authorship, not an article of commerce. Of course, it has to be an original work of authorship to qualify. I wouldn't want you or anyone else to think that you're protected against copying of an object just because you've copyrighted the plans. You're not.

I really hesitate to come out of lurk mode here, but Luke, you're badly misinformed. This has nothing whatsoever to do with copyrights. Period. Copyrights cover works of authorship. The only things that can be copyrighted by a guitarmaker are the contents of his catalogs, sales brochures, website, etc. I'm talking about writings, photos, sound samples composed by him, etc. There is no such thing as a copyright on an instrument design. Forget about it -- it doesn't exist. Please stop talking about copyrights and guitar designs -- you're misleading people. It's possible to get a design patent on an instrument design if it's "a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture" and meets other patent requirements. That's apparently what LGM has applied for. Most guitar companies don't even consider doing this because it's difficult to prove that most guitar designs would qualify as new, original and non-obvious. Besides, a patent is limited duration, generally 20 years from the filing date. What Gibson, Rickenbacker and others have done is obtain trademarks on their distinctive bodyshapes and headstocks. It's the same principle as a Coke bottle: the bottle is just a functional item and you can't trademark function, but if the shape of the bottle is distictive enough that the people who would buy it associate it with your company, then you can trademark its "trade dress". And once you get your trademark, it lasts indefinitely. As long as you keep making the product and keep defending it against infringers, it's yours. Fender applied for trademarks on the Strat, Tele and Precision Bass bodyshapes in 2003. It was "published for opposition" early last year and a group of something like 18 other companies opposed it. Will Fender be successful? Hard to tell. If they can convince the USPTO that the guitar buying public connects those shapes with Fender, they'll get their trademarks. If the opposition convinces the USPTO that those shapes have become generic, they won't. Don't take my word for this, it's public record. Go to http://www.uspto.gov/ , do trademark searches for Rickenbacker and Gibson guitars and you'll find their trademarked shapes along with their trademaked names and logos.

Wow, how dare eBay blindly abide by a law! Where would we be if everyone abided by laws! This is real simple, guys. "bigsby" is not a generic term. If your vibrato wasn't manufactured by Bigsby, either under Gretsch ownership or its previous owners (Paul Bigsby and then Ted McCarty), or manufactured under license from Bigsby, then it's not a genuine Bigsby® and you can't call it that, period. That's trademark infringement and can expose you to very expensive legal action. It could even expose you to fraud charges. It's also Keyword Spamming and Brand Name Misuse, both are specifically prohibited by eBay: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-keywords.html . You can't put "Compare to Bigsby" in your auction title. The most you can do is describe in the body of the auction that it's similar to a real Bigsby, so long as it's very clear that yours isn't a genuine Bigsby. I know of someone from a Tele forum whose 1000-plus positive feedback eBay account was terminated about 18 months ago because he insisted on defying Gretsch on this exact issue. Don't make the same mistake.

I'm just starting on my first one and can't speak from guitar building experience, but keep in mind there are hundreds of thousands of expensive US-made Gibsons and Fenders out there, all with flatsawn bodies, and I've never heard of any problem with the body wood being flatsawn. There are also plenty of flatsawn necks out there that have never had a problem but there are others that have. I agree that a flatsawn blank laminated in quartersawn orientation should be more stable.

I've owned three Rick basses and while I love the tone, I advise you to RUN AWAY! from even considering that bridge. It's difficult to intonate, the bridge part itself is a floating bridge that's completely unconnected, it rests only on two setscrews. The forward section is a mute that almost no one uses, those thumbscrews are used to raise the mute pad and damper but they usually don't work well and they get in the way of palm muting. The base of the assembly has to sit in a big rout to keep the bridge from being too tall. And to top it all off, the string spacing is narrower than most basses, it's about 2 3/32" center to center (vs. 2 1/4" for most 4 strings). Take a look here: http://www.rickenbacker.com/pdf/btailpiece.pdf . The only reason Rick keeps it is because of the purists, changing it would no doubt change the tone in some way. If you still want to build one, you might ask at the Rick Forum http://www.brunnet.net/cgi-bin/rickresource/discus/discus.pl . You'll probably get an answer and their deepest sympathies!

Thanks to all of you for your input. I'm gonna go with the LMI fretwire.

No, on these two, the fret tangs go right down to the wood, and the ends of the tangs are visible, they aren't undercut. One is a 60s Gibson with a rosewood board. One one fret, one the treble side, you can see filler where there was a chipout, but the rest of the frets are seated in the wood with no filler and absolutely no gap or daylight. The other is a Fender with a one piece maple neck and a gloss finish. On three frets you can see little gaps and they have the polyurethane finish in them. But there's no gap on any of the other frets. My other non-bound one is a Rickenbacker guitar and you can clearly see the filler in the gaps on all frets. But I don't mind a little gap, I would just rather not have a big one. Maybe with the compression from installing them, beveling the slot edges and wetting the slot a little to swell it, I won't have much to worry about.

Thanks, yes, I had considered that and I still might just go that route, it's a good long term investment. But I was hoping on the first few to just use a pre-slotted board.

Hmmm....I have three non-bound instruments and two of them absolutely do not have any putty or filler. They are both quality basses but not what I'd call high end. In any case I'm not interested in what mass production companies do, I'm interested in finding out what kind of gap I might expect after the frets have been pressed or hammered in and the wood has been compressed a little. If anyone has used LMI's service and fretwire, I would appreciate hearing about it. Thanks.

Hi all, I'm ready to order some fretboards and fretwire for my first couple of bass necks. I plan on buying from Luthier's Mercantile and having them slot and radius the boards to 16". I have heard their fretwire is very nice so I also planned on buying their jumbo fretwire FW110 which is a .110x.050 wire. Then I noticed there's a big difference in the tang depth of the various sizes. The FW110 is .054 deep while some of the others are noticeably deeper. I will not be binding these boards, so naturally I don't want noticeable gaps under the wires that I would have to fill with a lot of superglue, thick finish or wood filler. So I called them up. They told me that when you order both slotting and radiusing, they radius the slots to match the board radius, and in any case the slots are .085 deep. Now I realize that the compression from pressing or hammering the frets in will take up some of that gap, but it seems to me that there would still be noticeable gaps under all the frets if the initial difference between the tang depth and the slot depth is .031. Would I be better off to order something like Jim Dunop 6100 or the Stewmac equivalent? The tang is much deeper at .075 and I could live with the slightly higher crown. Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Could the compression from fretting make this barely noticeable? Have any of you used LMI's wire and their radiused/slotted boards? Sorry to be long-winded, just want to make myself clear.

If it pleases you to define it that way, go right ahead. But in the lumber industry, it is defintely determined by how it is sawn.

I presented facts from an industry bible backed by the largest wood research organization in the world. You can ignore them if you wish. I'm not trying to convince anyone, just to correct your misinformation. People are free to believe what they wish. Of course, the boards in the pic on that .pdf are just representations, but take a look at the quartersawn board's appearance. I don't care how many flatsawn laminations you stack, it's not going to look like that. There are a few places in your average log where a flatsawn board could be exactly 90 degrees off a quartersawn board. But as a rule they are not sawn that way. And that also should be apparent from the drawing and the written description. But don't just go by a drawing. Go to a lumber dealer who carries true quartersawn stock. Start flipping flatsawn boards 90 degrees and see if you get the same grain as a quartersawn board. You won't. I thought I made it clear -- twice -- that I believe lamination would make a neck more stable. I guess you'd have to define "strong" further, because laminating by itself doesn't necessarily make a neck stiffer, but it certainly won't make a neck weaker.

You know, I tried to be nice since it was my first post and I have plenty to learn about building guitars. But you need to be careful of your facts. You're the one making unsupportable statements. No, that's not what it means at all. It has to do with how the wood is sawn from the log. Here's a .pdf of chapter 3 from the USDA Forest Service's Wood Handbook: http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/FPLGTR/fplgtr113/Ch03.pdf Look at the explanation and illustrations on pgae 3-2, also the table at the bottom of the page. It should be pretty apparent that flipping a board on end can't turn a flatsawn board into quartersawn or vice versa. Umm, I said it makes it more stable if it's done right. That's not the same thing as stronger, which is what you said: that more laminations make it stronger. Rip-and-flip laminations do help counteract movement. I do like laminated necks, and I'm planning two laminations of ebony or pau ferro in between three walnut laminations for my first two necks -- I have some nice stable old walnut.

Hi all, I've been lurking for about a month, appreciate all the good info here. I'm a long-experienced woodworker who's planning to build a few basses soon. Rotating a flatsawn board on its side does not make it quartersawn. Flatsawn is sawn tangential to the rays, quartersawn is sawn parallel to the rays or radially from the pith. You can't change that by rotating a board, all you're doing is changing the orientation. Adding more laminations does not necessarily make anything stronger. People talk about a good glue joint being stronger than the wood, but that just means its failure point is higher, not that it makes the structure stronger under normal use. There are two big advantages to rip-and-flip laminations: If you do it right, it will be more stable than a solid piece; and you can make the it stiffer by adding laminations of a stiffer wood.