unclej

as long as you have a good solid glue joint and drill pilot holes for the trem screws i don't think you'll have any problem.

someone may be quick to correct me but my first thought is that if your guitar will have a bridge with adjustable saddles you could compensate the intonation fairly easily if the slots are truly only 1/64" off.

fryovanni said a couple of things that i'd like to echo.."Tonal preference is VERY subjective." I've always been of the opinion that if a particular piece of wood didn't have what most people consider great tonal qualities it could be made up with proper pickup selection. personally i choose my wood more for it's natural beauty and how good i think the final product will look. i love working with spalted woods and their density is inconsistent at best so you would think that their tonal quality would be inconsistent as well and yet i've never made a guitar with it that sounded bad. second, "Have fun with your project!" while there are a few here that make their living building guitars most of us do it for fun and personal satisfaction and some of us, like myself, sell their guitars to support their woodworking habit. if you've got a good piece of wood that you like..go for it. enjoy the process and the satisfaction of a job done in a craftsmanlike manner. don't worry too much about the rest of it. good luck with your project.

thanks to both of you. i'll check those sites out in the morning. thanks again rokeros..that first link is exactly what i needed. the part that i couldn't figure out is the positive latch system. they had a great explanation with diagrams. i appreciate it.

Make sure you search for "Kahler" otherwise you'll just be reading about water closets and such... hehehe damn..i even looked at it under a maginifying glass and i was positive it was kohler..

well, i've got a new one that i could use some direction on. a student has purchased a nice guitar by tom anderson guitar works and it has a kohler trem system on it. it's similar to a floyd rose but has an odd little locking bar on the back inside the trem cavity and i can't for the life of me figure out how it works or how to set the whole thing up. i can't find any setup info online and was wondering if any of you have any experience with them and can steer me in the right direction. thanks.

well, i had a pretty good teacher and years of woodworking experience so i'd say that my biggest mistakes were trying to cut my neck pockets freehand and without a template. makes for a pretty sloppy pocket. i also felt that "my" guitars had to be totally unique so i made a couple of beasts before i settled on a design that i was happy with..something between an sg and a strat.

most maple fretboards that have a factory finish on them have been shot with lacquer. if you don't want to do that but want a harder type finish you could apply several coats of tung oil. if you just want to condition the board then use the mineral oil.

i've installed several electric guitar pups on acoustic guitars..mostly older guitars that i intended to use only for bottle neck slide playing. i've done them with no controls and i've done them with volume and tone controls. you don't need a preamp at all. if you want controls just go to seymour duncan's website and look up one pickup with volume and tone and follow that schematic. good luck.

linseed oil is a very dark oil and will add a darker color to your maple. if you feel that you need to put something on it get yourself a bottle of mineral oil at your local grocery store and use that. it's clear.

i'm not 100% sure about this so take it with a grain of salt..my business partner at the shop has his own company making short scale custom basses. he uses a lot of purple heart and it would appear that oxidation is more of a culprit than uv. he uses a homemade oil finish with equal parts of poly, linseed oil and thinner and so far has had no problem with the purpleheart changing colors after the finish has been applied. i use an older formula for my guitars..equal parts of linseed oil, varnish and turpentine. if it sounds like something you'd like to try then substiture regular varnish with spar varnish made for marine applications. it has uv protectants added.

thanks al..that's probably what i'm going to end up doing. drak, it's a 70's instrument and the headstock has darkened a lot and has major lacquer cracking. i'm actually going to french polish the whole guitar and i think the headstock needs to match the rest of it. i think what i'll try first, without any great expectation of sucess is to very lightly sand the finish over the decal and see if i can smooth it down til there's just a bit left covering the decal and then sand around it to bare wood. then try to buff out the finish left over the decal without burning through it and blend the shellac to the edges of what's left over the decal. hey, it's worth a try, right? if that doesn't work i'll just make another decal.

a customer brough me a great sounding old 70's gibson flat top with some finish issues..the neck and headstock have serious lacquer cracks and the body sports a truly botched refinish attempt. the top was partially stripped then sanded then i'm not sure what. the sides were shot with what appears to be poly over the existing lacquer and has a lot of runs. anyway, i'm going to completely strip it and start over. so the question..is there any way in the world to strip or partially strip the headstock without removing the original gibson decal? it's probably going to be easier to strip it and then make another decal but i was just wondering if any of you had a trick up your sleeve.

yes it does..if not you'll get hum.

that was my fault..i hit enter before i started typing my answer then went back and edited. i wouldn't change what you have now..that's just the way i did it. i ran my sides a little long because i know how difficult it is to get an exact measurement of a curved surface. you can run yours a little long, bend them one at a time and then just mark the two center points of the one in the mold, remove it and cut it off. then both sides should meet. i have no idea how the pros do it but that was the easiest for me.

shimmy..i'm making my first uke at the moment myself. i made a two piece mold, also out of mdf and have already bent my sides. i cut my sides just about a quarter inch long so that with careful clamping i ended up with just a bit hanging over..i bent and clamped them one at a time and while they were still clamped marked the center line where i was going to cut off that 1/8th" and did so with a back saw. now they're perfect when the two sides are clamped together...if you're planning an end wedge inlay like i am the joints don't have to be perfect..you're going to mount the neck over one and inlay over the other..if no inlay then your tail joint needs to be pretty precise.

shimmy..the dremmel tool blade that i'm talking about is a small, thin diamond coated blade much like a mini-circular saw blade. i use it for a lot of things including cutting thin metal and it works great. you simply hold your dremmel nearly parallel to the body and proceed slowly. keep in mind that it will try to kick back to the right so don't try to cut all the way through on the first pass. mark the outline of your opening with a sharpie and then make a shallow pass all the way around scoring the outline. go back around cutting a little deeper and then go all the way through. it takes a soft touch and a firm grip and it's loud on metal and you need eye protection but it's not terribly difficult. after you get the hole cut take a small file and dress up the sharp edges and you're good to go.

i just completed my first side bender and being the cheap rascal that i am i was looking for a heat source that i already owned..and found it. i drilled a 2" hole through thick piece of rock maple..mounted my pipe to that and then clamped the handle of my heat stripping gun into a jergensen clamp and aimed it at the hole..works like a champ. my only expense was the 2" pipe, a cap and a floor flange. i polished the pipe up and drilled 5 holes into the bottome of it and two into the cap to allow air flow. works like a champ.

i used my oil finish on my last build..a teleish chambered semi hollow and it's beyond a doubt one of the greatest sounding guitars that i've ever built. i don't think the oil would be near as likely to change the tone of a thicker top plate like a chambered electric as it would a much thinner acoustic top.

shimmy..you definitely don't want to use a router on a metal guitar. it would be extremely dangerous and i'm not sure you could find the bits for it anyway. i'm assuming that the guitar is brass..mabe chrome plated but they're usually brass and brass is relatively easy to cut. if i was going to do this i'd probably do one of two things. get a metal cutting blade for a jigsaw and use that or a diamond disc for a dremmel. in fact i'd probably just stick with the dremmel..much more control. you're going to want to take the cone assembly apart..i'm assuming that it's a resonator type..and check inside to see if you're going to be cutting any bracing or cutting into the neck block. good luck

thanks everyone for the info and the links..i'll check them all out later today. the reason he brought me this particular guitar to experiment on is that it's really, to him, a beater guitar that will probably never be worth bringing totally back to pristine condition so were just going to see if we can make it a little better.

a floyd rose is a floating trem system and when set up properly it is perfectly parallel to the top of the body of the guitar. i'd be willing to bet that yours is sitting at an upward angle and not flat. setting them up properly isn't rocket surgery but if you don't know how you might want to take it to a qualified tech who can set the tension properly. when setup they're very reliable and stay in tune pretty well. good luck.

ok, this is a term that i hadn't heard of until yesterday. a good customer brought me an old martin that has quite a few issues. there have been quite a few cracks that have been repaired. someone started refinishing the top but didn't complete it and the neck has some major finish cracking leading me to believe that it's lacquer. the customer asked me if i'd ever heard of the techniqe of flowing..taking a rag with the proper solvent and rubbing a small portion of the finish until it softens and "flows" back together. so i have two questions..did martin generally use lacquer on their older guitars? (he brought it in late sat. so i haven't had time to date it) has anyone ever used the flow method and with what results? i guess three questions..will the flow method work on older lacquer if that's what it turns out to be? thanks

i use oil finishes a great deal and here's one thing i've learned that will help your project turn out right..after you've put down your tint and have it they way you want it to look let it cure for 24 hours before you apply your oil. if the tint isn't cured the oil will disolve it and spread it around as you're applying it and your color may turn out spotchy. good luck with your project.

i've never used their bigsby trem but i'm a big fan of their pickups. i use them on guitars that i bolt together from spare parts that i want to sell cheaper than my custom made ones and i've never used one that didn't sound great..especially for the price. hope that helps a little.