Alarung

Thanks for the info thus far, I should have been more specific to the problem, It's a six-saddle tele-style bride, solid saddles (as opposed to folded steel). The strings always break right on the saddle. If it's a wound string then the coil pops. I played with the action on the saddles back a couple months ago, long before any problem. I've never touched the intonation. I put a set of 11's on it today, and I like the feel. More suited for Blues and Jazz, which I find I'm playing more and more of these days. We'll see how they hold up.

G'Day I'd always played D'Addario XL 10's on my Pacifica Tele, minus one set of EB Hybrid Slinkys that I didn't like, untill about a month ago when I put a set of XL 9's on it, just to see if I liked the lighter gauge. I don't know that I did, but that's not the point. Every single one of those strings was broken in 2 weeks. After this I put my 10's back on, and they've been popping like corn too! I don't have an overly aggressive playing style, and absolutely nothing that the stings go through has changed. This has never happend before! I used to change my stings every month or so, and usually never had breakages. Anyone got a suggestion? Thanks,

Tis nice stuff, but why'd you rip apart that poor Showmaster? What are you going to do with the body from the SM?

Thanks VanKirk, thank you very much.

Well, I've cut wood! I've got my body shape cut out, My inspirations were the Ovation Breadwinner and the Jaguar, but it came out looking more like a Warlock Jr. Pic's will be up as soon as I find my USB cable. Here some specs, 2" thick many peice Ash body. I've got a beautifully grained Ash top and back, over a block of 12 ash slabs, arranged quarter sawn. Done more for lack of a block of wood the right size than anything else, but should prove quite sturdy . 22 fret Stewmac neck, 25.5" scale. Gold Hardware. 2 point Strat-style tremolo. Stewmac Golden Age pickups, exposed coils. The bridge pup is overwound, the neck is not. Finish will be sunburst, tobacco with a splash of red. Pics soon!

Has anyone used them? I remember that Setch put them in his double-cutaway GOTM, but I haven't heard much about their quality. The prices are certainly attractive. What's the scoop? Thanks,

I'm on the market. My ancient Yamaha classical's still wonderful, but I need a steel string. A local antique shop has a line I've never seen anywhere else, called SongBird. I can't find much on the Net, except some HC reviews and a family shop up in Ontario that carries them. Now, these SongBirds are an interest to me. We have a solid spruce top, nice looking mahogany back and sides, excellent action, electronics (I've not heard them plugged in), and tuners that say Grover on them, plus a "Handcrafted" label and a "Made in Korea" sticker on the back of the headstock. For $450 Canuck, about $340 US. This dosen't seem feasible, and do I want a guitar the says Handmade In Korea for that price? Not to mention the finish, which is God pleasing. Can you guys say anything about these? And what does anyone know about the lower end Martins? Thanks,

First accoustic : Yamaha G-150-1. Classical, From the 70's, not sure when. Still plays like a dream. A gift to my Dad from, of all people, a travelling priest. First electric : Yamaha Pacifica 302S, Tele style. Needs new strings, and also to get out some more. I love the thing, all green and blue pretty with gold hardware...

Looking nice... But not like a Pacifica Tele. What model was it before you changed it? I have a Pacifica 302, and I must say it's a nice guitar. Most Yamaha's are. I'm not a fan of turning "guitars" into "axes", but to each his own. Great job man!

I'm diggin Cutlass! It's got class. And suits the look of the instrument quite well, which should count for at least a little. Or a lot.

Cover dimensions...a wee bit bigger than 8.5" x 11". I held a sheet of letter paper up to mine. But seriously, there is no better book out there. There's a couple hundered builders on this forum that'll agree with me on that.

Something nautical...or something individual...or something... Privateer? Freeman? Paladin? What other kinds of guitars are you planning on making? How will they fit in with the image you project currently? What kind of customer base are you trying to cater to? Building guitars is the feast of the Gods. Selling them is the work of the devil. That's a fairly high-shred look you've got there. Do you want to make LGM a shred line? Or do you just want to have the best product? Sorry dude...I'm rambling. Sniper, it's the least generic.

Whack! 70 bucks for Gotoh? Get Grover's! StewMac's Grover Tuners.

Dude... Sweet... That inlay is gorgeous. Props!

Thank you very much!

Aight... For a guy who tends to act like he knows what he's doing, I don't do very much. So one could say I know how to do nothing very well . I've just finished my first set of homespun pickups, but need to attach leads. Now, where do I put the ground? It seems that I would take both ends of the coil wire on the hot, so where does the ground go? I've seen many tut's on how to do this, but they don't actually say where to put the grounds\hots. Thanks guys.

"Make Your Own Electric Guitar" by Melvyn Hiscock. Read it, wait a while, read it again.

A Dimebucker is merely a humbucker, with steel rails instead of the traditional polepeices. It also uses a Ceramic magnet, which will make the pickup sound brighter, some might say harsh. According to a Harmony Central review, the "secrect to the Dimebucker's crunch is the small amount of metal mass in the core of the pickup". I'm reading this to mean that they have a very small core, and as such can fit more windings on each coil. And at 16.25K Ohms for the whole unit, they're probably using a VERY small gauge of wire. A P-Bass pickup generally carries abot 10K Ohms. A normal humbucker has about 8K. So we have a Humbucker that has roughly 2 times the output of a regular humbucker. A fine gauge of wire 44 or 45, coupled with a ceramic magnet, might be able to do this. But to pull it off proper you'd need research, and development, and money... PSW made many good points. His advice is solid, and is well worth heeding. Google for Pickup Winding and designs, that sort of thing. You'll find some interesting stuff.

This guy uses apple in some of his stuff. As fretboards, I think... George Rizsanyi. His guitars are markted under the Maritime label these days.

Pretty sweet stuff. What do you call the one at the bottom? It dosen't match any of the body style pics you have there. What kinda hardware do you have on it?

Hmm... I got my wire from StewMac, but they don't have magnets or bobbins. AllParts has magnets and bobbins, but no wire. It's a conspiracy by the Men in Black. You didn't hear that from me. Jason Lollar has a book on it, but it's basicly a 20 dollar instruction manual for a pickup coil winder, and other homemade designs can be obtained free on the net. Google for them. Bobbin's have no substance to them, and can be handcrafted with ease. RadioShack carries magnets, but you need some modifications to designs before you can use them. Or at least the ones I got. Ampage has a forum for pickup makers, here. And Jon Tirone's page has some neat articles on the subject. Jon's site. Pickup's are weird, mostly becaue there is absolutly nothing to them at all. They're magnets with wire wrapped around them. That's it. Hope this helps!

Yamaha! I got a 30 year old Yamaha classical free from a travelling preist (I kid you not!) I still have yet to hear, let alone play, a steel string acoustic that can duplicate that warm, rich, creamy sound. I emailed Yamaha on it a while back and it went for $160 US new...an excellent instrument. I also found a Yamaha 302S Tele for $350 Canuck, with case. Stock pickups aren't great for distortion, but the clean sound is awesome. And the neck is PERFECT. Not Wizard thin, but thin enough that it fits in my hands perfectly. Strat necks feel fat after playing the beast. They sound better than they have any business to, especially at the price.

Opps... Thanks Frank.

I hear South Africa's actually quite nice this time of year. Regarding sustain, There are several ways to build a guitar with great sustain. The neck configuration is key, as are the woods. Of course, there are pedals and other artifical sustain enhancers, but wood and neck configuration are what a builder can do. Sustain is when the body of the guitar continues to vibrate. Denser woods vibrate more than lighter woods, so they have better sustain. Maple, and ash are some of the denser "standard" woods. Also, the less there is to obstruct the vibrations, the greater the sustain is. A 2 peice ash Strat has much better sustain than a 5 peice alder one. Likewise, a Les Paul with a 1 peice maple top has better sustain than a 2 peice plain mahogany LP. This is where the neck configuration comes in. When a string is hit, it vibrates the length of the guitar, and the less there is to get in the way, the longer the vibration lasts. So a bolt-on neck, which is tightly bolted to the body, but still bolted nonetheless, has worse sustain than a set neck, which is bonded to the body like the peices of the body are bonded to each other. But the style of neck with the best sustain is the neck-through style. It's the hardest to fix in case something goes wrong, but the string is vibrating along the same peice of wood from nut to bridge. And that produces the best sustain of all. There's also a rumor the the weight of the headstock can affect sustain? Here. Hope this helps!

Oops... Yeah, I plugged in the nickel wound modifier, and it worked. What I get for not reading all the directions...