unclej

Wow. Nice job, man. You are making me reconsider my finishing choices for this up and coming project. thanks..the chief of surgery at a san antonio hospital bought it..big jimmy buffett fan. i bought the material at walmart..they've got some pretty cool stuff there. they're a lot of work but they're fun. by the way, here's the link to another one that i haven't finished yet. http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-10/867653/Pb060002.jpg

a customer dropped off a big fender amp yesterday with an "occasional" problem that has nothing to do with my question. i noticed that the master volume control had been removed and asked him about it and the last tech modded it that way for him. he didn't know why and neither do i. what do you gain by doing that?

i've done two material covered guitars and both of them had a radius. if you'll go to the home page here and then click tutorials and then finishing i think you'll find one of material guitars. i followed those instructions and they worked very well. i didn't wrap the material over the radius..i stopped it and then shot a poorboy burst around the edges. good luck. by the way..here's a link to a pic of one of my material guitars.. http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-10/867...yofPA290002.JPG

one of the guitar teachers that works for me has a strat with a floyd rose..i'll ask him tomorrow about routing and post it here.

just a quick follow up on this post. i tried a little experiment based on the information that paul provided. on the little gretch amp that i've been working on i installed an 12ax7 and got some of the greatest overdrive and feedback that a rocker could hope for. when i replaced it with a 12au7 and played an epiphone dot through it i got a great george benson, clean sound. then i put in a 12at7 and got a good in between sound..a little overdrive at high volume and pretty clean at the lower settings. you probably all knew this already but it was fun, new infor to me. thanks again.

cole, you might want to give the guys at allparts a call monday. : 713.466.6414 i don't know if they carry individual parts but they've got an extensive inventory and if they can't help you they might be able to tell you who can.

if you'll look again you'll see that they're actually mostly bassist jokes, not racist. ( i can't get the smileys to work on this computer or you'd see the little green laughing one.)

there is a smaller transformer that appears to power the magnet as well as well as handling the signal output. if i get a chance i'll post a pic this morning. it's a moot point now though. he decided i could have the speaker as well so i can just make a new cab for it and not worry about the conversion.

Yes. You might pick up some additional hum as the electromagnetic speaker winding acts more as a choke than a straight resistor. You could use a choke instead of a resistor if the hum becomes a problem. thanks joe..i appreciate the help. i haven't seen your name before..hope you're enjoying your time here.

dremmel offers a small circular saw blade or a slightly larger diamond wheel. either will work well for what you need. you can do it with a router type bit if you have a base for your dremmel but if you're freehanding it the saw or wheel will give you much more control. the way i do it specifically is to lay out the width and length of the slot that you want. drill a hole with a bit that's the same width that you want on each end of your slot and then cut the two sides between the holes with your blade or wheel. good luck.

ok, a buddy brought me an old gretch class a amp that he wants to barter for. he buys and sells guitars and amps for a living and got this one real cheap. he's not interested in keeping the amp but wants the speaker out of it to re-sell. it's an old hammond organ electromagnetic speaker out of the 60's. it's probably not the original speaker but the wiring to power it is. while researching the speaker i find that hammond says that it can be replaced in an organ with a permanent magnet speaker if a 700-ohm 20-Watt resistor is placed in the circuit. if i place that same resistor between the two wires that power the magnet in the speaker can i then install a regular speaker in the amp?

thanks paul..as usual that's the exact information i needed. i've saved the page so i won't have to ask again. john

i had a customer bring me a fender blues de ville yesterday that needed a little work. guy plays the harmonica through it. after he described the symptoms he told me that someone had told him that if he replaced the 12ax7 closest to the power tubes with a 12ay7 that it would help eliminate some of the feedback problems that he was having because it would change the gain levels. i was honest and told him that i didn't have an answer but that i would find some info and let him know. so that's what i'm doing..trying to find some info. what would happen if he replaced just that one tube? thanks

damn rhoads, you've got a sharp eye...i don't know what happened on the rear ferrules..i used a drill press and a pilot hole. i drilled the front holes first and like you said, they came out even. when i turned it over i used the same pilot hole and didn't notice the spacing difference. as for the pups being slanted it must be the angle of the pictures. they're both straight. i used a bridge pup in the neck to keep the cost down. i already had the pups and i knew the sound that the neck pup would give me so i used it. the bridge is slightly angled. i measured it carefully and didn't need any more than that to get it to intone. in fact if i had angled it more it wouldn't have intoned as well. thanks for the interest and the compliments.

godin..he loved it. i put a .1 cap in it and it's real twangy and crunchy..very country sounding. the vines on the headstock are painted on like the control plate and the rest of it. thanks redwhiteandthemaple..good eye on the other strap button..i hadn't installed it yet because i didn't know whether he wanted it on the end of the horn or the back. he came in today and got so excited that he left without making up his mind but i'll install it when he finally gets back in.

a few weeks ago a local country musician came in and we started discussing me building him a custom guitar. i got a good feel for what he plays and the sound that he wanted and when i asked him if he had any thoughts as to body style, finish, etc. he went to his truck and brought me his "lucky shirt." his lucky shirt was a bright red western style shirt with a horseshoe and some roses on the rear yoke. he said he'd be real happy if i could incorporate the design of the shirt into the guitar and other than that he'd leave it up to me. my kind of client. anyway, here it is..solid mahogany body..satin poly finish..solid maple neck from allparts..gotoh tuners..a couple of seymour duncan pups with a simple three way switch. i wanted a string through but didn't want quite the neck height you get from the normal mounting of a tom so i recessed the posts to the point that the tops of the adjusting wheels were just level with the guitar top. worked great! REMEMBER ONE PIC PER POST RULE! Nice guitar by the way!!!

if you have access to a spindle sander you could straighten it out with that. the spindle stands at ninety degrees to the table and will give you a straight side. they're also great for sanding the inside curves of the horns. if not take Arseneau's advice but add a template. get yourself a top-bearing straight bit long enough to cut the entire thickness of your body. attach a template to the top of your guitar and run the router around the template and there's your straight edges. good luck!

So the question, how much of the shank of a router bit needs to be in the collet to ensure safe gripping of the bit? I would like to extend the router bit as much as safely possible to increase the depth of the cavity. remove the nut and collet completely from the router. place the nut over the shaft of the bit and then place the collet over it. when the end of the shaft is even with the bottom of the collet replace the whole thing and tighten very well. that's your safest minimum depth.

i get the feeling from your question that you installed heavier strings than you usually use. that probbly explains both of your situations. generally when you have a problem with strings "popping" out of the bridge holes it's because the ball end itself is sitting on the end of the string peg or that the twisted wire that holds the ball end or "bead" to the end of the string is binding in the pin's slot. so when you tighten the string it pulls the pin out of the hole. the solution is to make sure that the ball end is seated properly on the bridge plate before you tighten to pitch. the problems with tuning is just the larger sized string binding a bit in the nut slot that has been cut for smaller strings. as you tune up it sticks in the slot a bit and then slips free causing it to be a little sharp. take a really sharp pencil and rub the tip in the nut slots and this will lubricate it a bit so that it doesn't bind. if it continues and you intend to keep using the heavier strings you might think of enlarging the nut slots. hope that helps some.

actually you learned two things today..you should never doubt an old red neck texas deer hunter.. (for some reason the smilies aren't working today or you'd see the one with the big grin on it.)

deer antlers are basically an outgrowth of bone so as long as your piece isn't from the center, porous part of the antler it should be just as hard and tough as a bone nut. i didn't see the thread on treating bone and antler but if you like the look of it as it is i'd go for it.

curing of any finish depends on many factors..the thickness of the finish, humidity, temperature and air flow. three days generally isn't near enough time for lacquer to totally harden as you've found out. folks here will let their guitars cure for weeks before buffing out. it's hard to be patient but let your body cure for a couple of weeks before trying to sand out the marks..if not you're likely to make it worse while trying to sand them out. and by the way, hanging the body in a closet or pantry is as good a place as any to let it cure.

man, that's some scary looking machinery..wonder how many fingers and hands and for that matter lives were lost using them?

depends entirely on the type of finish that you're using. use the search function above..seems like there was a pretty thorough discussion of this subject a couple of months ago that had all the info you need.

my first suggestion is to take a close look at the fret pulling plyers offered on stewart mcdonald's website and then go to your local hardware store and find the same thing in their tool area. they'll have flat ground jaws and you should be able to pick up a pair for about half price. check and see if they have a bargain bin of chinese cheapie tools. i found some in the one at my local store for $3.00. if that won't work for you there's one other thing you can do. i'll likely get flamed for this but take an ice pick or small finish nail. place it on the end of the fret on the headstock side of the tang. tap lightly with a small hammer and the fret should start popping up. keep tapping until it's out. the real drawback to this is the likelyhood of chipping out some of the fretboard right next to the fret. especially if the fretboard is ebony. now, don't do the icepick thing until someone else comes along and answers this question. there my be some other acceptable methods that i'm not aware of. good luck.