Jump to content

ACSpike

Established Member
  • Posts

    71
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by ACSpike

  1. I had been told that copying a patented design was illegal even for personal use, though there is a case where copying is allowed as research to fully understand and improve on an invention. I still don't quite understand how pictures, drawings etc can constitute patent infringment. I thought the patent only protected the actual physical invention not the description of it. Does anyone have any references on the issue?
  2. Fender had patents on those designs. I saw the documents on the patent office site when I was looking for the Gibson moderne.
  3. Here's my list of calculators. I think FretFind is the best, but I'm slightly biased. Everybody seems to have a slightly different way of looking at the problem. So you should be able to find one that makes sense to you.
  4. great, without your prior art someone else can hold the world hostage
  5. right now I'm using Inkscape and some homegrown stuff done in php and javascript (Fretfind and Wihbet). With that combo I can generate previews and full scale templates. I think I could recommend Inkscape. Its free and a pretty nice vector editor. My homegrown stuff is too rough for most to use. I keep saying this, but someday I would like to cram some of the stuff I've been writing into a single app that generates custom guitar plans online.
  6. I got one about 6 years ago. I really haven't found as many uses for it as I thought I would. I could blame that on playing mostly bass since I bought it. I think it is a cool product. Its fun to play a song in standard tuning flick a few switches, play in open E, flick a few more and play black mountainside and then go back to standard tuning. Do realize that when you change tunings you drastically alter the tension on the neck, so it is really hard to just flick the switches and be right on. Sometimes the best it will do is get you close. Close enough to really speed up your tuning between songs. but not perfect. So I would say if you play slide or a lot of alternate tunings, go for it. Don't get it if you just want dropped D. There are other products for that. I have never used it to drop a whole or half step across the board, so I don't know. But I tink if that was my goal I would save the $150 and buy a capo.
  7. I just went at what is left with my finger nail and I can't scratch any of it off, but a noticeably large portion of it is missing from years of play. It had to come off some how. Do you want me to try something specific? I don't mind ruining the finish on mine. Edit: scratched off with the end of a paper clip but definately scratched the surface. Nail polish remover did nothing but move dirt around. After closer inspection even in the places where the silver color has worn off I can still see the outline in the light if I look carefully.
  8. Or wait a few years. The logos on my select are mostly gone now.
  9. I guess I'd have to say "go play around with FretFind." Just for the record I like shorter scales. I have a little 22.5 inch acoustic. My next project is going to be a short scale bass. Nothing to be ashamed of. I used to think longer meant better. Perhaps I'm getting old but comfort is king. No more 35 inch basses for me. I'm guessing you mean that the 12th fret isn't perpendicular. No problem in theory. This is an art form after all. The question should be how you want it.
  10. Best I can say is that it has been done. I put what I believe is Australian Lacewood on my guitar. I don't have enough experience in luthiery to say whether it is good or bad. And it has been 8 years since I worked with it so I don't remember much of that either. If I wouldn't have scalloped the whole board it would have been very nice too look at though.
  11. I started gathering more pictures to draw last week. RGs, Soloists, and double necks in this round. But I'm kinda burnt out on drawing guitars and the holidays are busy so it will be a few weeks until I get at them. Another problem is I'm not much a fan of those styles so I don't really know which is which. I'll guess you are referring to LGM Guitars and rhoads56. I would remove their designs with out question if they ask. I hope they won't ask. Anyone can see that those are two of the coolest designs on my site. There are a lot of people to piss off. Any major manufacturer probably wouldn't like it because my drawings are too close. Anybody around here who is asking for dimensions to make an exact copy of thier dream guitar won't like it because it isn't close enough. I should probably pull the whole site because of patent, trademark and copyright. I don't know how copyright could get involved. These are all my own artistic renditions of what I have seen. Patent shouldn't protect the owner from my drawings, since the patent documents are drawings and they are public domain. Trademark may be a danger but I am not conducting a business. The fact is I'm too ignorant of the legal issues. I could do a better job of providing links to the owners of the designs. So that people can find the people who really make these things. In the end I am just trying to make a resource for the community, both for players who are looking for a design that fits and for builders who want to make something classic but all their own. I think it would really suck if I have to start removing designs.
  12. Well, I'm glad you asked. All of the outlines are stored as bezier path, the format used to store curves in PDF and SVG files. The PDFs and thumbnails are generated by a PHP program I cobbled together. I just need to write a program to make DXF files. But I'm a complete CAD newbie. I need to analyze the DXF file format and understand how to write bezier curves that would be supported by most applications that people around here use. I need help with this part. I need a few people to send me sample DXFs with a simple one or two segment curve and nothing else. And I need people who know a little bit about DXF to share thier knowledge. I actually started a thread in Off Topic Chat yesterday. There isn't any replies yet. I'm going to wait to start working on this untill I find a few people to help me. Honestly, If I make DXF exports I probably wont ever use them. If you think you will, spend some time and help me figure it out. Thanks
  13. If your talking about my PDFs... They are... or were vectors. I store cubic bezier paths and generate SVG or PDF. You want to export them to an editor? I can tell you how to put the curves back in Inkscape. I'd like to do standard cad like DXF but I don't know the format or the programs that use it, yet.
  14. You could do the same thing with my strat body shape backwards. Or you could spend a few seconds using the tool on my site to flip it and have a lefty outline to draw on. I love the Iceman. It was one of the first bodies I drew. Wish I had time to make one. (quick lefty plan how to: Point at the picture on the body archive page, the name should pop up. Point at the named button on wihbet, the dimensions should pop up. "width x height in" put -1 in the "scale x" box and click "process". change that back to 1. put the width in the "translate x" box and click "process". click "make PDF". Done!)
  15. I found a cad plan recently but I don't remember where I got it. I can send it to you if you want. If you wanted to draw a plan on the computer you could use Inkscape like I do. That is how I traced this Iceman. I started to write directions for how I do it here.
  16. If you are going to go to all of the trouble to get it printed, you should make the necks on FretFind put them together with wihbet and print them all at once. I will have to write a script to make the PDFs as one huge page, but that is trivial. It will be a bit sucky to do by hand like this, but it is faster than drawing. eventually when I get the time or a little help I will stick all of these pieces together into an online custom guitar plan generator. I'm not quite to that point yet, but that is the idea.
  17. Not yet. I split it so that I could print them and tape them together. If you follow the wihbet link, you could make a small one that fits on a page. I thought a huge page would be useless, why do you want it?
×
×
  • Create New...