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tirapop

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Everything posted by tirapop

  1. No Nylon for this baby, its steel all the way. Classical neck... no truss rod, right? Not a good combination with steel strings.
  2. You don't need bracing. Take a look at the guts of a Danelectro. Just a block for the bridge and neck, bent wood sides... pretty much what you describe. Speaking of non-standard Teles, check out Specimen Products Schnellercaster and Indian Corn guitar. They mention Sears Silvertones, which were made by Danelectro, and masonite, which Danelectro used for the top and backs of their guitars... I got the impression that they're hollow, too.
  3. http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=24315
  4. I heard this story on Public Radio. Teens and a preteen from Mississippi perform in a really tight Blues trio. The guitar and bass are made from muffler guitars. Check out the video on the page. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=92423408
  5. No, this one isn't built differently enough. The problems with the old one was the slop between the plastic carriage and the guide rods, and the overall flexibility of the plastic parts.
  6. Give an industrial designer a 3D printer and he'll reinvent the guitar. There's a video, too. Yeah, it's probably going to look more interesting than it sounds.
  7. National has long been making the Resolectric. One of my favorites of this type of guitar is S.B. MacDonald's. If you'd like to see a resolectric conversion, check this out.
  8. I saw this on the Makezine blog. http://flickr.com/photos/mctracz/
  9. http://www.stewmac.com/tradesecrets/bridge...ts38rorick.html
  10. Lily Afshar plays a classical guitar modified to play 1/4 tones. The whole scale isn't 1/4 tones. It's set up to play a specific ethnic scale. You can hear about it at NPR.
  11. David, Sounds like you've found yourself a nice situation. Georgetown is probably the last enclave left. The other transitional artsy neighborhoods, like Fremont and Belltown have be gentrified, condo-ed, and otherwise made unaffordable. The nice thing about Georgetown is being on the approach to Boeing Field and the port traffic make it a less desireable place to start dropping in condos. We just need to keep the city from siting all the undesireable projects there (sewage processing plants, sex-offender housing, strip clubs, etc.). All the work they're going to do on the Alaskan Way viaduct are going to keep house prices and rents down (relative to the rest of the market) for the next few years. I'll have to check out your shop when you're part of the art walk. Again, welcome back.
  12. Welcome back to the Emerald City. So where in town are you setting up shop? I'm not accustomed to the concept of someone moving to Seattle to set up a business. Outmigration has been the standard response to the high cost of living and traffic.
  13. Mikhail, you might try putting "saddles" of different materials on top of your rosewood stopbar. Some brass and maybe plastic rod of the same diameter would give you an idea of how sensitive the sound and feel are to stopbar material. Rich, as far as the non-linear elasticity near yield (which is the definition of yield, something plastically deforming), it would have a negligible affect on the overall string stiffness. When the string bends over a sharp corner, the part of the string on the outside of the curve will yield, not the entire thickness of the string. For the entire string to yield, the string tension would have to be very close to yield. Noyce's picture shows string tension is about half of yield. A bent string and the high friction forces with large break angles would make the string act as though it were fixed at that point.
  14. As far as aluminum goes, Stewmac sells aluminum compensated bridges. Their wear probably isn't too rapid. As far as adding mass, it favors lower frequencies. Greater mass means greater inertia and it's harder to reverse greater inertia in shorter time intervals.
  15. I like the idea of guitar-like acoustic bass. Surfing around for info/ideas, I came across a critique by William Cumpiano, luthier and acoustic guitar construction author. He might be overly cranky, because he's earned the right and likes to exercise it. I'd try to maximize the body volume, as much as possible. There's a cello-ish acoustic bass, that might be the right size. Maybe use a wedge body (thinner on the top/bass-string side and wider on the bottom/treble-string side) to get an easier reach to the strings. I'm partial to an archtop design. Selmer gypsy jazz guitars had bent tops to form un-carved arches. Maybe a simple X-brace with a curved top... or even a bridge post (like on violins/cellos/d-basses).
  16. There's a fair bit of slop in those drill guides between the rods and the sliding carriage. I've tried shimming it with pieces of foil and that helps a bit. The problem is that the whole contraption is pretty flexible. If the bit starts to wander, as it plows through the wood, there isn't a great amount of resistence to keep it straight.
  17. Flick, Start with this, from the MIMF website.
  18. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7129994
  19. I guess I missunderstood what you wanted with Formica. I don't think you can get a design cast in Formica. It's made in huge heated presses... it's an industrial product not a craft product. If you put you design on top of Formica, it wouldn't be any more durable than putting it on most surfaces. I don't know how chalk would respond to clear coat. You might be able to mist on some coats without getting the chalk to run and fix the surface enough to build a thick, durable coating. You might also look into taking clear plastic sheet, sandblasting/abrading the inner surface, and then do your chalk drawings on the inside. It might not work with your style. If you build up layers, it would be reversed, the first thing you put down would be what shows on "top".
  20. I think it's pin-worthy. You pin things that people can refer to, even if the thread isn't active. A list of links to luthier sites with inspiring guitars is something most builders would like to be able to refer to.
  21. Formica guitars: Formicaster Girl Brand top, front, and another.
  22. You can thank the Makezine blog for this. http://www.petersreviews.com/index.php?/ca...es/19-NAMM-2007
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