tirapop

The Musicmaster and Duosonic were the predecessors of the Mustang. They came with 22.5" and 24" scales. You can learn more than you ever wanted to about Musicmasters/Duosonics here.

All those things probably do make a difference, as does the thickness of the top, the depth of the body, and how the bridge puts sting load into the body. The thicker you make the top and the more direct the connection between the bridge, thru the body to the neck, the less influence the chambers will have. If you look at the Warmoth site, Tele bodies can be had routed out as a Thinline or just lightened. The Thinline has two big chambers on either side of the central slab and a little pocket at the tail. The hollowed option has a bunch of little cavities, presumably to make them less acoustically active. So, size and shape make a difference. Putting in vents makes the body a ported resonating chamber. Oh yeah, and then there's the wood. To see how all this stuff interacts, you need to experiment and see. Is there a chambered guitar whose tone you want to emulate? Try to see how they did it and use that as a starting point.

Someone used to make 10-strings that were just 12-strings without doubling the strings on the two bass strings. If you're only going to add a pair of light gage strings, maybe look at banjo tuners. They don't need to be located near the edge of the headstock, with the knobs inline with the shaft. I don't know if the shaft would get in the way. They make detuning banjo tuners, so, you could have fun with tunings of those two strings.

Vintage Gibson Flying Vs used a TOM with a string thru body, so, it's possible. To keep the strings bottoming on the back edge of the bridge, the body string holes have to be set further back than they are on a Tele. The other issue is the height of the bridge. You need to either angle/raise the neck or recess the bridge.

Found this pic. Hey, he's got his own website. Another pic and another.

It's cool, seeing the laminate in the pickup route. Too bad no one makes transparent pickups... maybe a custom job?

Is this possible? Shoot a base coat. Let it skin over, and then sprinkle glitter over it. Shake off the excess. Spray with translucent color like Metalcast. Then start spraying clear to build enough thickness to level the finish. No, I've never tried this and I wouldn't expect it to produce a factory finish. But, maybe it wouldn't look so bad.

So, have you only built just those two guitars? Man, you work is immaculate. Both are absolutely gorgeous. You need to expand the build pics on your site. I wanna see more!

Depending on how you approach this, you don't need a center block. Shallow body acoustics can be made like regular acoustics with thin tops reinforced with bracing. The thicker the top, the less reinforcement is required. Specimen makes an archtop that has the "bracing" carved into the top. Some jazz style electro-acoustics with carved or laminated arch tops use a simple X brace or a pair of fore-aft braces, like the Specimen's (but, less squiggly). Selmer-Maccaferri guitars use a pair of side to side braces. Danelectros used a small block under the bridge, instead of a neck to tail center block, to support the masonite top. Are you really planning on using a flat-mount Bigsby? I think that would require a thicker or reinforced top and the mass would suck the volume out of the guitar. A B6 style, which is used with archtops, only attaches at the tail block wouldn't take away from the projecton of the guitar. It does require a taller bridge to get enough string brake angle over the saddles. That might ruin the Tele look you're going for.

If you look in the tutorials, there are a few on doing bursts. Also check out Guitar ReRanch.

You know a kit is more than just bent sides (which you'd have to build or buy a bending iron for). I think the tops and backs are joined and thicknessed. If you've got handplanes and lots of patience (a thickness sander would really help), go nuts. The neck joints are dovetailed or mortised, which can be difficult to do yourself. You started off by asking if building an acoustic is a whole lot harder than building an electric. If you're not concerned about looks, it's pretty easy to make a good sounding solid body electric body. Start with good wood (cut it on a table saw, think Gretsch Bo Diddley). Buy templates for the neck pocket and pickups, take time to measure and locate them and carefully route them out. All you need to do now is bolt on a neck and the rest of the hardware. Compared to that, making a good sounding acoustic body is much more difficult. There's a lot more precision and complexity involved in making it sound good... or bad if you get sloppy. The best sounding acoustic guitars are the ones on the verge of collapsing under the load. Beef it up and it diminishes the sound/tone. Well designed solid bodies don't work nearly as hard or with as slim a margin for error. I'm not trying to make it sound like building an acoustic is beyond your skills. You can easily make building a solid body as complex and exacting if you're trying to achieve something unique and artistic. Check out a book or a construction web site and see what's involved. Then assess your skills and tools and go from there.

Check out the links on Martin Koch's website. There are a few books out there. The process of building a guitar is pretty involved, so, having a hardcopy with really good photos is a good investment. I've got an old Irving Sloane book and "Guitarmaking" by Cumpiano & Natelson, which used to be the bible. There are more books out there and some might be better. Go over to www.mimf.com and see what folks over there think about guitar construction books.

There's also Luthiers Mercantile International.

I've got a cheap baritone uke. It's tuned DGBE, just like standard tuning on the top strings of a guitar. It's easy to pick up and play. With the standard nylon and wound strings, they stick more on the plastic nut than my guitar. I don't know if that's an inherently uke thing or just my cheapo. I'd guess that you'd want a locking/roller nut and really slippery/roller saddles. Standard ukuleles use nylon strings and don't have truss rods. If you go with steel strings, you'll have to fabricate a rod or find one for a mandolin. Specimen Products makes a cool electric uke, they describe as "Les Paul style". You could stick with nylon strings and use a piezo pickup. A guy made his own "silent uke" with his own DIY piezo pickup. If you're interested in ukulele stuff, in general, Ukulelia is a good place to find out about ukes and to see what's new.

a ukulele... For my b'day, my wife got me a Grizzly ukulele kit. It's cheap little thing. The body is mahogany veneered plywood. The fretboard is veneered plywood. They finish up nice... check out the pics. I'm not sure how I want to finish it. Oil? Rattle can laquer? Interesting stains? Robert Armstrong has done some cool painted finishes: Yowl-A-Lele, keyhole uke, and the doghouse uke. This guy has done some interesting stuff with linocut prints. Any suggestions?

There've been a couple pine threads already. http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...wtopic=1396&hl= http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...wtopic=8461&hl=

Yeah, it would probably work. This piezo (not a microphone) is designed to attach to an existing bridge plate... so it's designed around the thickness of the top (.1"-.125") and the bridge plate (about .1"). Your maple is a bit thicker/heavier. On an acoustic the top is light spruce (or cedar, redwood), but, that area around the bridge is the most braced part of the whole top, so your 1/4" maple top might not be too much stiffer. You need underside access. The conventional under saddle piezo would be easier to install and more directly couple to the strings.

Okay, now somebody figure out how to drive some of the speaker output into the strings for a low tech sustainer.

Thanks Kevan, that's the one. I found a better pic of it. Interesting website, too.

When people replace steel bolts with lighter ti bolts they have to use anti-seize lubricants to keep Ti from getting stuck to other metals. Ti has a tendency to gall. In places where Ti rubs against other metal it can stick and can deposit itself on the other metal. I don't know if this would accelerate Ti fret or string wear. I'm all for pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box, etc. I can see the aesthetic appeal of Wasabi's waved fretboard or the shingled fretboard on the Bond. But, no one's really answered the question, "what does a metal fretboard do for the sound?" Does a metal fretboard alter the stiffness and damping in a desirable way? Is there something about the string's contact with the fretboard? Strings are mainly in contact with frets and fingers. If the strings don't necessarily need to touch the metal for the Ti tone, the metal plate could be buried under a non-metallic fretboard. The Ti could even be an inlay in the fretboard. The tang of the frets could be trimmed off in the center over the metal inlay. In the center of a fretboard, little Ti would have to be removed to radius the fretboard. I've seen picture of an electric guitar whose neck was a tube. The "frets" were metal plates along the tube, radiused on the string side. It didn't look very comfortable, but, who knows. Having mostly air between the frets is like an extreme form of scalloping. A metallic fretboard could use plate frets. The fretboard could be notched on its edges (maybe also slotted in the middle) to locate the plate frets. The plate frets could be bonded or brazed on. They'd be taller than normal frets, but, that might not be a bad thing for some players. The fretboard could be extruded or press formed with the desire radius. If extruded, it could have a "T" cross section, like the fretboard fused with the truss rod. It might be stiff enough that it would deflect negligibly under string tension. A wood or plastic cap would give the back of the neck a familiar and comfortable shape. Ideally, trimming the metal would be done with waterjets or lasers. All of this is in the realm of the possible for a well equipped and well funded shop. If you're messing around in your garage or basement, don't waste your time and money on Ti fretboards.

Are you talking just fretboard or whole neck? Ti would be prohibitively expensive for a whole neck. Ti does have a much lower coefficient of thermal expansion than aluminum, about a third. Ti is going to be very difficult for you to work unless you have access to a well equiped shop. As metals go, Ti is pretty gummy, which slows down cutting/machining and accelerates tool wear. I don't know how you're going to accomplish fretting. When you drive frets into wood, the barbs in the tang crush wood, to make room for them. If you drive metal frets into a conventional sized slots metal fretboard two things can happen: elastic deformation (the Ti will stretch and the frets will compress) and plastic deformation (something gets bent or dented). I would guess that your Ti fretboard is going to be longer after you've driven in all your frets. Conventional airplane wings and bodies are made of aluminum sheet riveted to other bits. As the rivets are driven, they expand in their holes, "stretching" the holes. The net result of having a long sheet aluminum with a line of rivets in it is that the part grows. Since frets aren't evenly spaced, the growth is going to be nonuniform and greater as you go up the neck. I don't know if it would be enough to affect intonation. Also since metal doesn't crush (change it's density/volume), you could end up with the fretboard swelling upward around the fret barb locations. You could make wider slots and glue in the frets. That might work well enough, but, when you have to refret, the heat you use to soften the glue to remove the fret will also soften the glue holding the fretboard to the neck. So, you're looking for a metallic sound from your fretboard? I'm ignorant about what metal fretboards would sound like, never having heard one. What's it sound like?

Probably no help, but, here's a link to someone whose used linocut printing on ukulele bodies. http://art.chuntao.net/linocutgallery_04.htm

If you're near any manufacturing or transportation businesses, you ought to look for discarded wooden pallets. Depending on the point of origin, they can be made out of hardwood. A co-worker found a pallet made of mahogany that he turned into shelving in his house.

I'm not a metalhead... if it weren't for this forum, I wouldn't have recognized the name Dimebag Darrell when I heard it on the radio this morning. So, educate me. What songs do you think show Dimebag at his finest?

On my list of guitars-to-build is an aluminum skinned resolectric (basically a semi-hollow body guitar with a resonator cone plopped in the middle). It would have wood sides and interior. There'd be a nicely figured veneer on the sides. I like the look of the screws on Specimen and Industrial Guitars. The top would be flat sheet, screwed to the wood frame. I think with thin aluminum sheet, I could use a laminate trim bit to do the final trim. The back would also be aluminum sheet screwed to the frame. I think it would also be glued and use pan head screws (countersunk with a hemispherical cap) ground flush. The back would be pounded out a little in the middle for an arched back. Shape-wise, it would be a single cutaway somewhere between a Les Paul and a Maccaferri "Django" guitar. I like how ornate old resonators are. Something art deco would be cool. I remember how there was an Egyptian fad in '20s and I thought it might interesting to create a period guitar in that style. A soundhole, where the toggle on a Les would be, in the shape of Osiris' eye, obelisk hieroglyphic inlays on the ebony fingerboard, an ankh on the headstock, and some kind of Egyptian design motif (palm trees?) punched into the resonator cover plate. There'd be a neck pickup and a piezo on the resonator cone... maybe a bridge pickup built into the coverplate.