customguitar

I'm loving the build. It looks amazing!

I think the bearing on the bottom of the shaft is for use with a router table, but then again if it's on the top you could still use it... So I'm not actually sure anymore, haha

Thank you all very much! I'm going to put in an order for some parts and see if I can get it all to work. I'll post my progress.

From what I've seen, people will typically put rubber bands around the jaws of clothes pins to give them extra clamping power.

Hmm... Well, the electronics in the plan are fairly inexpensive. I might by them and see if I can succeed in building my own before I buy a system, both for money reasons and just because I enjoy messing around with stuff like this (even though I have very little experience). I did come up with one more question though. In order to add a volume control to the system would I just put the pot before the signal reaches the piezo buffer? and also what size pot would be suitable?

So I'm actually going to try and start this project soon, but I decided that before I go and build the instrument I wanted to get all the electronics sorted out and working. So I have a couple uneducated questions about the Helmke circuit. The parts list he's provided is no longer up to date so I can't find the parts he suggested, I went through and found parts that I thought were similar, but I'm an electronic noob and don't know if the are actually parts that work. So my main question is whether you could checkout a couple of parts and make sure the are satisfactory. He said on his page that, "The input and output capacitors (0.033uF and 0.1uF) should be something good for audio" I found: http://mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.asp...40-PEI2A333G-RC http://mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.asp...40-PEI2A333G-RC "The 4.7uF capacitor can be tantalum or electrolytic, doesn't have to be anything fancy" http://mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.asp...647-UVZ1E4R7MDD "The 20pF capacitor is now 1pF - really just a tiny little value to shunt RF to ground. " http://mouser.com/Search/ProductDetail.asp...40-50N5-1R0D-RC Those are the parts I was unsure of, if anyone has the time to check and see if they would work, or suggest better ones that would be really great. Also has anyone tried the solder wire from Guitar Fetish? I'm going to be getting some other parts from the project from there and was thinking about getting that wire, but I was going to pick up a 25 watt iron from Mouser for cheap. Last question. Should I just pick up some insulated wire from radio shack or get my wire elsewhere? Thanks again for all your help. I wouldn't even be this far without all the information on this forum.

Here is a website that explains the calculator counter and has some photos on it. http://europa.spaceports.com/~fishbake/counter/count.htm

I checked ebay and there were a few different sets. I don't know how good they are though. Set of Six and Singles The seller of the single files sold a couple of different sizes.

I was planning on a twelve inch radius with the medium/medium stewmac wire.

I've read that people like to get the non-radiused fretboards from stewmac, to make it easier to make sure it's flat, and make it easier to clamp on when gluing. My question is are the fret slots cut deep enough to allow for the radiusing after gluing it on, or will they have to be cut deeper?

We've got about 2 inches right now at our house (it will probably melt by morning though). During the winter we had about four feet of snow come down in about a week (most of it was in one day). It took forever to melt though.

I play the viola (but not very well, I've also never built one so I don't know a lot about there construction). Not sure why there is a string tied around the sound post but I agree with JohnRossitter see if there are any violin luthiers, so that you can ask them some questions. Hope it turns out well.

Well it did a wonderful job!

What I do is use rasps at the headstock end and the heel end, when those parts are at the required shape you join the two pieces with a spokeshave/drawknife/etc. Ok, that's probably what I'm going to do.

Do you only us a rasp when shaping your necks? (just gathering different peoples opinions/ways of doing things for my build)