tirapop

It looks like Jehle's Tele has patterned paper. Fender made the Pink Paisley Tele with wallpaper as a base.

I love telecasters. The shape is so classic and iconic... I think Springsteen and Chrissy Hynde play Teles as much for the visual connection with the roots of rock & roll as the sound. Gotta love that tele twang. I love the look of the slab body, even though it isn't that comfortable to play sitting down. I actually like the shape of the tele headstock better than the strat. I've got a soloist body (Warmoth flame maple drop top) that I'm going to modify to take a tele neck (Warmoth again, ebony fingerboard).

Several years back, Fine Woodworking had a cool, cheap little trick for veneering. It was right after they'd done an article of vacuum bag veneering... which works great but has a big cash outlay up front. The trick was to apply glue to both the substrate and the veneer and allow it to dry, then use a steam iron to bond them together. IIRC, they used yellow glue (titebond) applied with a roller. For the veneer, they misted the unglued side with water, to keep it from curling from the moisture in the glue. It appeared to work pretty well. They had to play with the iron settings to keep it from scorching the veneer, but, hot enough to melt the dried glue.

One of my recurring doodles for a guitar project is a Strat with the horns lopped off. I was sort of inspired by the minimalist lines of the MacDonald Resolectric. I don't mean a body that looks like a Strat without the horns... but, a Strat that had an industrial accident/elective surgery/whatever: the normal roundovers just stop at the cutlines. It would be like a hotrod "bobber", with extraneous bits hacked off to save weight. Anyway, I like Strat-ish guitars that have something-caster names. I want a name that captures the horn hackage. Is there a word for removing the horns from a bull? So far I've come up with: Amputcaster Manglecaster OSHAcaster Strat de Milo Anyone got any good ideas?

You can get a Versalaser for $10K. It's a desktop device a bit bigger than a laser printer, capable of cutting and engraving. You might even be able to cut the inlay material AND cut the reliefs in your fingerboard for the inlays.

Yeah, that was a positive response. Keep the horns. They're a unique, interesting feature. What are you going to make them out of? Wood laminations? Metal like on the Fat Girl? Lots of options.

Your sketch reminds me of the Girl Brand's Fat Girl Bass.

Yeah, if you aren't carving the arch into the back, the traditional way is to trim a curve into the braces (on the edge you glue to the back) and clamp them flat to the back. When the glue dries and the clamps are released, the braces spring back and the back has a curve in it. That's the way it's done in Sloane and the Cumpiano/Natelson books. Don't know if arching will have the results you desire. You might look into a wedge back, as a increasing volume (cubic inches not dB) in an ergonomic little package.

I hopped back to the first page, to see where it all started... Your work is brilliant, inspiring, humbling. You sir, rock.

an observation based on pics and links... Project Guitar Forum : The Cult of Quilted Maple

The brass plates for the headstock increase sustain by increasing the inertia of the guitar, like those metal bars they stick in some guitar bodies (like Reverend). The heavier the guitar, less energy is transferred to the guitar and more energy stays in the strings, where it dissipates more slowly. Don't know what copper would sound like. I think the relative tone of metals is mainly the difference in their damping coefficient and to a lesser degree the density. The damping coefficient is a measure of how much vibration energy is lost in the metal through heat. More mass lowers the natural frequency. Annealed copper is really ductile... soft and easy to bend. Copper work hardens easily, making it stiffer when you stretch it or bend it. The damping coefficient probably changes with work hardening. I think the biggest knocks against copper as a bridge material are its low strength and its ductility. Anything that has a concentrated load on it is going to creep: saddles, the part of the plate where height adjustment screws for the saddles rest. You don't want to put threads in copper. You probably would want to treat copper like it was wood... You know, if copper and ebony got in a fight... I think ebony might win.

I think with fully acoustic instruments, you need softwoods because they're lighter and stronger. The lighter the top is, the more efficient it is in converting the strings energy into making sound. Denser top materials would reduce the volume and the treble response. With an electro-acoustics volume isn't an issue. With piezo bridges, the treble can be boosted. Some production archtops use laminated tops... hey, some production flat-tops use laminated tops. You decide what's important in your guitar.

Yeah, you can cover a guitar in copper. http://www.girlbrand.com/turnall.gif http://www.girlbrand.com/turnhrnx.gif http://www.girlbrand.com/cop-fil.gif http://www.girlbrand.com/cop-fil2.gif

Monkey, you need a 1'X1' CNC to make small custom parts? Are the parts metal? Then you really need to build a smelter to process the the stock you'll use. Oh and a mine for the raw materials you'll use... right? If you don't know how CNC systems work or where to find out about them, you definitely shouldn't buy/build a CNC system. If you want parts CNC'd, it's much cheaper and easier to have someone else do them. Do you have a CAD program? Have you taken the time to really know how to use it? You have to be able to make a solid or a 2D pattern before you or anyone else can CNC a part. Do you need CNC? You say you need CNC because cutting out your spidy guitar with a bandsaw is way too hard. You clearly have not concept of how difficult, expensive, and time consuming it is to build your own CNC system. Summer project? You could spend years collecting the parts and trying to get it to work. You're clearly looking for a shortcut to building guitars. Here's your solution: pay someone to build your guitar. It might seem expensive, up front, but, it's going to end up costing you less than buying/building a CNC system and all the wood you're going to scrap while you learn how to get it to work. You'd get your guitar sooner and it will be a better quality instrument.

Luthier Danny Ferrington made acoustic guitars with explorer body shapes and he didn't have any problems with them. I don't think there's anything inherently weak about the shape.

Speaking of Flying V's... PerryL, what is that baby blue V you have as an avatar? Any better pics of it?

So, what's the advantage of a compensating nut? Does the bridge not get the intonation correct? Does the compensating nut only work with certain string gages? I've read that zero frets are supposed to have perfect intonation. Are they any better or worse than a compensating nut?

In Fine Woodworking Magazine, they'd done a few tests of surface prep and bondline strength. They found that a freshly planed surface gave the best bond strength. When the surfaces are sanded, the outer layer of the wood is a fuzz of fibers. The glue bonds to the fuzz all right, but, bond strength is now limited to what it takes to shear those fuzz fibers, not the strength it takes to tear the surface fibers apart from a continuous piece of wood.

There's always adding ballast. Some guitars have metal bars/rods to add to the sustain. You can use a little of that goodness to balance your axe.

I think the idea of using wood grained laminates is appealing, not because you'd fool anyone, but, that it's so cheesy! Sort of the same attraction to having your name spelled out on the fingerboard or body in lariat script with something that looks like rope. I agree that there are lots of cool laminates to play with... patterns, solids, metallics, faux stone and wood. There are some cool old kitschy patterns out there. Can't argue with the damp wash cloth cleanup. Need a coaster? No? Some of the Girl Brand guitars have laminate tops and sides wrapped in the same polished aluminum edging you find on old Formica topped dinette sets. What's not to love?

I'm looking forward to seeing pictures, when they become available. The Formicaster build is really an eye opener: cheap materials and no template required. His $2.95 200W bulb bending iron, makes the case for low cost of entry. I'd like to try a 3/4 scale Jaguar/Mustang style guitar in red laminate with black bindings and pearloid pickguard. There are some pretty convincing looking woodgrain laminates. Specimen built a guitar with curly maple and mahogany laminate. I wonder if it's possible to shoot a convincing sunburst on a woodgrain laminate. Thanks for the Pagelli link... hadn't seen those before. They make some pretty nice designs. These remind me of the Jetsons http://www.pagelli.com/e/2instrum/image/gr...ter_vorne_g.jpg http://www.pagelli.com/e/2instrum/image/gr...ter_vorne_g.jpg http://www.pagelli.com/e/2instrum/image/gross/eg_manu_g.jpg something else entirely http://www.pagelli.com/e/2instrum/image/gr...ash_vorne_g.jpg cool acoustic http://www.pagelli.com/e/2instrum/image/gr..._nur_body_g.jpg

Linda Manzer?

Cool! Let's hear about your guitar. What's the shape and what color laminate are you using?

Here's the link to the formicaster. I can't find the link, but, there is an acoustic oriented page and the author described going to a guitar trade show and admiring a guitar that appeared to have ebony sides. On closer inspection, it turned out to be masonite. The luthier was showing off his skills, making cheap materials look and sound good.

The jigsaw pieces could just be outlined as an inlay or just routed into the surface, without going all the way through the cap. This is kind of like a real jigsaw guitar, chopped up from WD parts.