dpm99

Narrow down the problem. Without unplugging anything else, pull the cord out of the guitar and put it directly in another guitar. If that guitar does not hum, the problem is obviously in the guitar you wired. If this is the case, and the guitar is wired correctly, I can only conclude that the guitar is haunted. You can test for this by throwing it in a river. If it floats, it's haunted. Burn it and scatter the ashes. If it sinks, it's not haunted. You won't get much use out of the guitar after that, but at least your mind will be at ease. (Personally, I'd start checking connections if I were you. We've all been there. Just don't give up.)

I would assume the hum also goes away if you touch the strings or the bridge. It should happen when you touch anything connected to the ground circuit. It's a very common issue. You need to check your wiring and make sure all the necessary grounds are connected. For a strat style guitar, that means all pickups must be grounded, as well as the bridge, and the ground must be connected to the ground on the output jack.

Welcome!

Whoops. It wouldn't have helped anyway. I misunderstood what you were trying to build. I say +1 on the under saddle piezo.

Really nice. What kind of learning curve do you think there is in reproducing this kind of work?

Have you looked at these? They're very nice.

Hey, don't buy one of those things. Drums sanders are terribly easy to build, you'll save a bunch of money (especially if you already have a motor), and you can build it to spec. If you want it to sit on your benchtop, you could make one that would do it. If you want to make one that can sand 16/4 wood that's 40" wide, you can do that. Mine has a 22" capacity, and can currently handle wood up to about 2.25" thick (though I'm soon going to modify it for 3"+ stock). It can also bring down material to an incredibly thin thickness, and if you get creative, you can build it as a multi-purpose tool. It's amazing what you can do with a spinning steel bar. Plans for these things are all over the internet. I think a few people around here have made one. I'd certainly be glad to help answer your questions if you decide to do it.

Hey, my post was entirely factual and accurate.

It does sort of matter. I personally think something like Jello would make terrible pickup rings. I can't never get screws to hang on in Jello. The same thing goes for earthworms. TERRIBLE material to work with, by the way. Most metals, woods, and plastics work just fine though.

I think the Gotoh Stealth tuners have replaceable buttons. If you want something smaller than that, you're probably going to have crank up the DeLorean.

What if you had a pickguard with some hot model positioned so that the burl would actually look like her boobs? Sorry, it's one of those days...

#4 is an owl. #3 is an evil wizard. He has one eyebrow raised because he wants to know why you've come. #2 has 2 Miyazaki style ghosts poking their heads out of holes. #1 is boobs. You like the owl, huh? Go with the owl then. They're all good.

I love this jig. I wish I could weld. Someday I'm gonna build something like this myself though.

It's tough to say. I think it depends on whose ears are listening. But I would say that most guitarists couldn't tell the difference between, Basswood, Alder, Mahogany, and Rosewood...at least in terms of sound. Did you ever see the movie, "The Red Violin?" There's a scene where they have violinists play a bunch of old violins, and while the artists are all quite sure they're correct, they're almost always wrong. It plays out in real life with guitars too.

I mostly just have places to hold my crap. I keep the big tools in a section of the garage, but there's no room for a workbench in there. That will change in time.

cukaracha, Let me help you out. You're not getting many straight answers because this is a topic that gets covered often. Try searching the forums for "wood tone."

This generally sparks an interesting debate. Where's the popcorn?

Wait, he said a 5 string bass. Didn't you mean 13.3? I'm assuming, of course, that he'll be using round wound strings.

Really, really, really hard for me to pick this month. I wish I had two votes.

I'd stick with what you have, but only because I prefer larger capacitors. You could just run down to Radio Shack and pick up a .022 for less than a quarter though (not counting gas).

Watch these. They should help.

Well, I stand corrected.

+1 Dang it! Can't pick. SO MANY great guitars here.

I'm not an experienced acoustic builder, but I've done a bit of research for work on hybrids. I'll throw in my 2 cents, for what it's worth. I would be concerned about structural stability. In an acoustic bridge, the strings pull up and forward at the bridge pins and push down on the saddle. Pressure is distributed across the bridge. So the strings are pulling the bridge away from the soundboard at the bridge pins, but they're simultaneously pushing the bridge pins down. On an archtop, the tailpiece is where the strings attach, and there's a reason you don't see tailpieces attached directly to soundboards. By putting the connection between the bridge and the soundboard forward of the saddles, you're taking away the part that's pushing the bridge into the soundboard. It's just trying to pull it off there, which is why you see these attached on solid bodies. That's not to say it can't work. But you'd have a fundamental change in the way the bridge interacts with the soundboard. It wouldn't be the same "wobble" that happens with an acoustic bridge, nor would it be the down-up you get with an archtop bridge. The sound you'd get would not be like either. It would be unpredictable. You'd need to do some major reinforcing at the bridge plate, and that's going to effect the sound too. All that being said, I like crazy ideas, and this certainly qualifies. Just think through it if you're gonna move forward. It's a BIG deviation.

No it wouldn't! You have to learn that stuff anyway, if you want to build guitars.