Kyle Cavanaugh

Dude, that's not Rock Maple as used in necks if I'm correct, I think it's the western variety. I'm not too sure it's all that strong...

It's been done!

I went and did an A\B test and yeah, you were right, it's actually very dead sounding, especailly compare to my body with the resonance enhancing contours! Oh wait, that was my Epi Les Paul I compared it to originally... my bad! I checked it again and there are some places on the Paul that are pretty resonant while other spots are really dead. I Think they used like some sort of Asian Pine for the back instead of Mahoghany, it's really very light for a Les Paul! If it were better, why would we waste money on old growth, non-recycled wood again?!?!?! Duh!

I simply traced the strat heel onto it, found the width, and used half of that as the radius. I took a compass and used the middle of the top of the heel and as the center. Voila, instant AANJ. I figured that. Anyways, the only place I know of where I can have access to a planer is my high school's wood shop. Unfortunately, I remember taking Woods a few years ago, and the teacher would always make me rush. He also didn't trust me, in particular using large machinary like that, so he always ran it through for me. And when he did, he'd always chip it up really bad, even it was something easily workable, like Poplar. He also made me use twice as much wood than I needed to because of that, and because he like wasting wood. I spent $40 on some Cherry to make a breadbox. I am considered one of the "Special" ones at my school I plan to have the last laugh... I got this far without dismembering myself... ALONE with NO help. Sorry I hate ranting, but I think you guys can tell I'm kind of pissed off that I didn't have a very good childhood... Anyways, I'll talk to the wood shop teacher and see if he'll help me out by letting me use the planer and maybe see if we could take our time while we're at it. Of course it's tough because I'm only spending 3 periods at that school then it's off to my vocational program (2 of which are study halls, luckily). Otherwise, I'd rather risk it with the belt sander or spend a little money to have a REAL woodworker plane it somewhere. I can't have it all chipped up like I've seen him do, especially if I plan to clear coat this gorgeous piece of wood!

I got a free slab of 2" MDF, and it resonates better than the Mahoghany I'm using on my nice guitar believe it or not... I'm making and LP JR body out of it, and I think I'm going to be making a headless, using a neck whose headstock was destroyed in an unfortunate tuner reaming incident...

OK, I got the stuff from Stew-Mac yesterday and mapped it out (yes, I drew a centerline). There's actually enough room for the neck pocket on it (I did trace a Strat neck pocket and modify it slightly). However, where I plan to put the neck pickup, the corner of the mounting ring (if I used one) would overhang slighty over the lower cutaway's scoop. I could easily fix this by taking about an 1/8" off the top. I think I'd take the othe 1/8" off the back, because it's kind of gotten all scratched up from working with it anyways. I'm thinking instead of risking having the wood all chewed up by a planer though, do you guys think maybe I could use my belt sander? Would I be able to retain having a square surface? It's got like a 40 grit belt on it at the moment, so obviously it's require being run over quite a bit with the palm sander. I guess you could hang things on it, it can shake the dust off, too!

I've yet to see a new Gibson that looks that nice!

OK guys, today I took the drum sander and made some contours around the cutaways. It was intended for the following reasons: 1. Reduce the weight, because it's some pretty dense stuff and I'm not going through the trouble of planing it down from the 2" it is 2. Look cool 3. Allow better upper fret access; great for shredders although I doubt I really needed it for only 22 frets. and 4. I found it actually helped the resonance, it's tap tone in other places is quite dull at the moment, but I think that will change once I add the contours. Thought I'd mention, the camera really brings out the imperfections on the contours, although in real life it's not really visible, nor can it be felt. I'm working on getting the misshapened sides out as I go. Regardless, I'm surprising myself how quickly this is going and how well it's turning out. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/kor...le/DSC00239.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/kor...le/DSC00240.jpg Thought I'd mention, I'm waiting on a shipment from Stew-Mac. I ordered some stuff to help out, like routing templates for the pickups, neck pocket and control cavity. QUESTION: Should I route the neck pocket before or after I countour the AANJ into it? I'm assuming before, but what do I know?

If each pickup has their own volume, you could try a lower pot value. It will be slightly softer and a little warmer. Half resistance= about an 8 on a Strat knob, for instance. Oh yeah, and you can make your own preamps real easily if you have some basic knowledge, and a stereo output jack. Maybe try this for each pickup and use a voltage divider (or a trim pot for adjustability) after it to attentuate the volume. But, at the same time, it will be clearer sounding, so if you're pleased with your sound already, you might also want to add a cap in parallel with it. Trust me, you can make this for less than $10 bucks or less. I've made them (actually more complex ones...) for close to nothing by desoldering the parts out of dead circuit boards and putting the circuit on a small, cutoff piece of perfboard.

I thought I'd also mention I'm building this for my senior (high school, not college!) project for my Electronics class. I'm like the teachers pet, and kind of made him somewhat confused when I explained to him how the electric guitar worked. LOL I hope to try my hand at building my own necks eventually, when I can afford some tools such as a fret press. Oh yeah, I'm also going to be building my own amp to go along with it, probably Class A or AB solid state. I actually invented a new clipper circuit involving a bridge rectifier that basically eliminates cross-over distortion, although I wonder if that's whan Mesa Boogie uses... it would make sense, although I've never heard of clipping diodes uses in a tube circuit. Crap, this should be in the Electronics section! LOL

Well, here it is, my current project. I took some of my favorite shapes of guitars and made a hybrid, turning out closest to a Stratocaster. The body is Khaya (African) Mahoghany purchased from Warmoth, the neck is Maple, with Wild Cherry-type figuring, with Ebony fretboard and SS frets (I might regret this... but I ordered it over a year ago...) with a Flying V headstock. The hardware it will have wil be: Schaller 475 Bridge (If anyone can comment on what it's like, please do so, but I own it already..) Gotoh SG oval button tuners making my own VERY original design Neodymium magnet humbuckers, hopefully they aren't TOO clear sounding... Active circuit buffer; the one that can be found @ www.tubefreak.com is simple but works well, I expanded on it a little. I believe it's called a common source (common collector with a normal transistor) amplifier. It converts the high impedance of the pickups and such into low impedance by increasing the current but lowering the voltage slightly. It makes it so capatance in the input cable doesn't reduce the resonent freq or act as a low pass filter. (it's like a capacitor in parallel) and maybe a two or three band EQ (wiring that myself), I think a parametric mid control might be most versitle Knobs made from the scraps of wood from the body, so it kind of blends in (this is going to be clearcoated in brush on Polyureathane) Not sure about the nut material yet. Just curious, has anyone here used actual Ebony for a guitar nut? I know they do it on violins. If so, would it sound as bright as freting the SS frets or not? I'm also thinking about Corian, Brass, or Carbon Composite or even maybe Stainless Steel to go along with the frets. I really don't want a real difference in timbre between the open and fretted notes. I'm posting the current progress on the body for starters. I still have some more sanding to do on the edges (don't worry, I got power tools!) and plan to do some crazy contouring. Think something like a mixture of an Ibanez JS, a PRS, and a Strat. I cut the body with a Roto-Zip believe it or not, because I don't have access to a bandsaw (I plan to buy one for future projects now!) and used drum, belt, and palm sanders to get the edges smooth and true. BTW, the camera, being so nice and all, accentuated the grain to about what it will look like with a finish on it! I've tested the finish on a scrap and made something interesting with the scrap. I think I might be banned or something if I said what it was or posted a pic, but I'll say this; my girlfriend sure thought it was cool! The finish has been put to the ultimate test and passed. Moisture resistant, non-stainable, and easy clean up...

B.C. Rich would hire you in a heartbeat! Great work!

It all looks to be mahoghany in the neck, but it's hard to say for sure unless I really saw the grain up close. The middle part is probably quarter sawn if it is mahoghany.

No wonder we're outsourcing all of our skilled jobs to you guys! Great job!

I don't see how Acetone would hurt Poly much, which I'm sure your guitar is. If it were lacquer, then I'd be afraid. Actually, I've used nail polish remover (acetone based) on a guitar to remove A LOT of nail polish and it worked fine and didn't damage the poly finish at all.

I made a slide out of some galvanized steel conduit. It was scrap that was going to be thrown out in my electricity\electronics class, so I salvaged it. I filed the ends after I cut it and I fine sanded and steel wooled it to 0000 to get the roughness out of it all over. It worked really well! Not to mention, it had a plastic coating on the inside to insult it, so it helped control and comfort.

I was just thinking what would be cool is having a circuit in place that'd make the sustainer be able to fade in and fade out like on a synth! I think I know a way, but I'd have to draw up a schematic to show you guys what I mean. What about putting a pair of clipping diodes in the amplifier circuit? Would it make it sound kind of like a square wave on a synth? Heck, maybe have like a fuzz circuit running into the amp that's driving the piezo element? That'd be freaky!

Not to go dissing or anyhing, but you don't really need to know a ton about electronics to be able to wire a guitar up. If anything, you just need to know some basics and know how to solder and with the RIGHT solder (rosin core or the like, NOT acid core). Trust me, it'd be a lot cheaper and probably easier to learn to do it yourself, given you don't burn down your house in the process.

Make sure where the connections were made are insulated and not touching another bare connection. Basically, if that doesn't work, I'm guess something is screwed up with the preamp which I think EMG seals them into their pickups so it's impossible to mess with.

BTW, I know for a fact you can glue basically any wood with Titebond given the surface is prepped and preferably you clamp the pieces together. Titebond is seriously harder and stronger than most woods itself!

Uh, while we're on the subject, how can I go about removing hardened Titebond Original? I had it sitting on the table and I thought it was on tight, but I guess not. And anyways, I guess one of my cats must have knocked it over and it's on the tiled floor. Good thing it wasn't a carpet, huh? This stuff seems to be a lot like Polyureathane I might add, does it have polyu in it? Oh yeah, my dad thought he'd be helpful one day and pick me up some wood glue. He bought me a gallon of Titebond II! Needless to say, I told him to hold on to it in case he's gotta do some reglueing on the porch! Of course this is the same guy that thought he'd help by sanding down my Earvana nut I spent $25 for lower action- with a palm sander that had 80 grit on it!