Mickguard

I never use the tone controls on my guitars, but I like a bright sound. And for some reason, I never have any luck with volume knobs, the ones I wire just never seem to work right. So I leave them on full. Although my understanding is that the simple fact that there's a pot on the chain adds to the resistance (i.e., the pots are resistors), the result being a reduction in the extreme high end of the signal. I had a guitar wired without any pots at one point and the result was actually quite nasty -- there are frequencies that you really don't want to transmit to the amp. So I think you should have least one, and possibly both a volume and tone in there. However, you can easily wire the pickup to mini-pots that get hidden within the pickup cavity. Just be careful it nothing gets grounded out. If it's a humbucker, it'll be really easy -- you can build a recess into the wall of the cavity large enough to house the pots. You could also just hide them in a cavity in the back of the guitar. A killswitch is useful. I'm using a very hot, very noisy chain right now, running into two noisy tube amps -- so on my pedalboard, I have a dual-looper pedal. The first switch serves as a bypass to the tuner (but doesn't cut the signal to the amps). The second switch functions as the kill switch -- instead of using the normal output jack, I run a Y connector from the output of the second switch's send jack. (This also leaves me with an option to add a third amp--I'm planning to add a bass amp pretty soon). (I don't use the tuner as a bypass because the looper has no leds...so sometimes I get confused by what's on and what isn't!) The looper I have takes up much less room than a volume pedal. And it means you'll get to build the guitar the way you really want it. (Although I like Myka's option too). But then, you'll always have to have the looper with you. If you don't use a pedalboard, then that's not very convenient.

My latest guitar had a similar issue -- maple neck with ebony board --it was sold to me as rosewood, but it really looks and feels and sounds more like ebony especially since the neck is quite stiff. In fact, it's so stiff I was unable to get the relief I wanted with just the truss rod. I ended up putting on a heavier set of strings (Power slinkys 11-48), and that pulled the neck into perfection. I'm not so sure about it being the frets -- his string action is not unusually low, I can't believe the frets would be so far out (on a new factory built neck) that they cause a buzz on every string, all along the neck. I'm not saying that a Mighty Mite will be perfect, but the guitar should be playable, assuming the rest of it is put together properly. The neck angle idea seems more promising -- half a millimeter or even less will be enough to transform a guitar, especially a bolt on type. You don't say what kind of guitar you've built, though, and the type of bridge on there is going to have a big effect on this whole equation. Maybe I didn't read the whole thread correctly. Pictures can help too.

You can get shorter trem blocks -- I have one from an old Applause strat clone that is much shorter than the real deal. Lighter in weight too. Whether that has a significant effect on tone....well, that's kind of hard to say. Only if you're selling $100 replacement tone blocks. I agree that you ought to look into using a different bridge --there are trems that don't require the same depth.

Do a search for 'chambering' --that's what you'll want to do to the mahogany to reduce the weight. There are various ways to go about this. As for the top....the main issue is whether you want to build THE guitar you want to play, or just want to get your feet wet first. I find it hard to work up the energy to build a guitar I'm not really interested in playing. One way to go is to build a parallel guitar, that is, a 'practice' guitar with less costly woods-- you'll end up completing each step twice, the first time on the practice guitar, the second time on the real deal.

When we get into a studio, we'll be able to spend more time working out the right sound. In the meantime, I have a few kick drum samples that I like -- it's pretty easy to plug them into a track so that it matches exactly the original kick track (within a couple thousandths of a second). Takes quite a long time to program, but the result is better than we were able to achieve by ourselves. Although I use both tracks -- our kick track has a nice boomy sound to it, the programmed track has better definition. I'm doing the same with some of the snare tracks (which takes even longer than the kick). There's no way I can capture all the nuances of his snare playing with the snare hits I have, so I'm using them just to add a bit of crack to the overall mix (the snare he was playing was more woody than snarish, if that makes sense). As I'm mixing these tracks I'm finding that most of the time I'm muting the two tom mikes we put on -- the kick tracks, the snare mike and the overhead/room mike pretty much cover the full picture, the tom mikes just add in more sound than necessary. I'll be seeing a friend tomorrow who's trained as a studio engineer, I'm going to see if he'll come by to give me some tips n' tricks on mixing.

That's a volume pedal you're talking about. An expression pedal is different, more involved electronics. I was looking for an expression pedal for the bass synth pedal I bought, but didn't want something that would take up a lot of room on my pedalboard (no room left!) So I bought a photo eye thingamajig --it's built directly into the jack, you 'play' it by cutting off/letting in light....don't know how well it will work, but should have some interesting results if it does. I'm pretty sure they're easy to build if you can find the parts.

I'll be picking up the book. The kick is okay just a bit flabby. I'm experimenting with building a matching track with a good-sounding kick sample I have here. That should help focus the sound (although it's going to take a while).

I'm a bit wary of statements that start with "Music is..." or "Melody is..." --it's just hard to blanket all the possibilities of what music might be with statements like that. Try more qualified phrases like "Western must tends toward...." or "Experimental music often has a healthy quotient of self-congratulatory masturbatory uncertainty..."

I just wouldn't have much confidence in ever getting this guitar to play like a real guitar. They're just not really built for that, they're more something for a little kid to bang on for a while, get disgusted and never want to play guitar again. I mean, sure, it looks like a guitar. If you're really looking for a guitar to practice on at work, why not do what John Mayall did to his guitar -- he took a Squier, chopped off the wings so it's basically just a small rectangular body. The neck is normal scale. Or have a look at the Fernandes Nomads --they're quite compact, and some of them have built in amps too. A bit pricier than a kid's guitar, sure, but you can find them used for not that much. I really like the American Flag model. There are also short-scale guitars out there -- look for a Rickenbacker 325 clone.

We ended up recording in 24bit/96k ...computer and soundcard had no problems at all handling the higher resolution, and there's a definite difference over the 24bit/44k recordings I'd been making. I'm really amazed at how little noise there is (on the drum tracks....my guitar/amp/pedals are a whirlwind of buzzes, hums and other goodies). We also used five mikes finally. Couldn't get the sound we wanted with just three mikes -- partly because the drummer does a lot of work on the toms. So in the end we had a mike in the kick, one on the snare, one on the lo tom, one between the hi toms and finally an 'room' mike positioned to catch the cymbals and hi-hat. The sound is pretty decent, considering our inexperience and the rough conditions. With a bit of EQ I'm finding it pretty easy to nudge everything into place. It's going to take a while to get all the mixes done...I've got to re-record my vocals, and some of my guitar parts (since I recorded a tracking vocal at the same time)... The kick is still a little...floppy...hard to describe--doesn't have the tight focus that I'd like it to have.

Well, it's interesting that he came back here to defend himself, sort of, so at least it's not pure spam. Still, bursting in on our cozy lil' cocoon here is not the greatest way to sell yourself. Put a negative veil over your music before I even heard it. Nothing special there. Certainly nothing pioneering. It's all been done before, some of it was done 50-60 years ago already. Why can't it be enough simply to make your music, without having to puff yourself up pretending to be something avant-garde/innovative? Well, you're young yet, if you're truly intelligent, you'll get over all this intellectual hoohaw.

Yeah, guess I'm just a 'glass half full' kind of guy...

Heh heh, now you're talking my language. I'm definitely trying to avoid any semblance of that ultra-slick production that pretty much destroyed most music in the last decade. Even bands that should sound good get boring after a while, because the recordings are just too perfect. My favorite albums are all pretty low-fi when I think about it...I've been listening to different things lately, trying to get ideas of global sounds. And pretty much everything I'm really attracted to ends up being pretty raw --sometimes just because of when it was recorded (rockabilly) or other factors (Velvet Underground, Suicide). I think my goal here though is to get fairly clean, somewhat neutral recordings for the most part. That way I'll be able to play with the software to really develop what I'm looking for. Oh yeah, I also find it interesting that most of the music I listen to has the drums mixed pretty far down...even though in this band (since there's only two of us) the drums actually take on more of a lead role...if you can imagine that... I do have an old guitar amp speaker kicking around, I'll try stripping a jack to hook that up...unless someone is going to tell me I'll blow up a preamp that way...

I read about that trick - I have a 2x12 cabinet here --- would I be able to run a lead from that into the mixer then? (It has a mono/stereo switch, so I'd only use one speaker). Should I be worried about blowing anything up?

I haven't been following this thread, but it's timely since the new band's recording our demos tomorrow. We'll be doing that ourselves here at my place, in the old barn (actually sounds great during rehearsals). The monitor question: Buy them as soon as you can. I have a pair of Alesis Monitor One MK2s...don't know if they sound better or worse than another set, but what I can say is they make a huge difference in mixing and getting the mix to sound right everywhere else. It took me a long time to give in and spend the bucks for them, but I really should have bought them much earlier -- no point in spending all that time fretting about mic placement, etc. if your mixes sound like crap. And without monitors, they will. Don't remember exactly what I paid for the Alesis set but they were reasonably priced (I already had the amp, so I bought passive) for the quality. Plus the place I bought from threw in a set of monitoring headphones (nice to have A/B capability). I find it fairly easy to get the guitar sound I like, I'm more worried about the drums. I'll have up to 5 channels for those. Need two for the guitar (dual amp setup) and one for a tracking vocal. I have 8 inputs on my soundcard (Marion Marc 8 midi), so there's my limit. One suggestion I read says to use just three mikes -- one pointed at the kick, the other two as overheads (but positioned at a level between the toms and cymbals), and those two can be placed behind the kit, instead of in front. The reasoning being that this treats the kit as a single instrument, and will produce a more natural sounding recording. I'm hoping it will be easier to mix too. So I'm tempted to go that route -- but I'm thinking of adding a fourth mike farther away (and in front of the drums) to capture some of the room sound. I've read that I can place that mike sort of pointed toward the kick, and it will help bring out the snare too. I plan to speak to the drummer about his dynamics, especially with the cymbals --he definitely slams on those things when we're playing live and the worry is that they'll dominate the rest of the drums. He's got pretty good control, so we'll see. I use Cool Edit Pro for the multitracker. I've looked at more recent apps, but none of them seem to offer the same sort of instant accessibility as Cool Edit Pro. (I haven't looked at Adobe Audition, the updated version of Cool Edit Pro, but since Adobe's stuff all seems to get overly complex very quickly, I've been mistrustful). I really hate working with Cubase, just seems counterintuitive. CEP works great, almost never crashes (once you've figured out a couple of quirks), and is so simple to use it's ridiculous (I don't use Midi). I just discovered a cool feature in CEP that lets you split a track into several new tracks based on the frequency ranges you set --I'm thinking this will be very useful for mixing the drum tracks, especially if I use just three mikes. I'm hoping to be able to borrow an SM57 for the guitar --otherwise, I'll have to use an SM58. Preamps are the biggest problem-- my mixer only has four. I bought a mic preamp, which gives me five, and I'll use a Sansamp Tri-AC for one side of the guitars. I'll have to use a PA mixer for the last two preamps, but one track is the vocals, which will be redone later anyway. (I have an old Teac 3440s here-- 4-track reel-to-reel-- which would give me 4 preamps too, but I lost the power cord!) Last thing I'm trying to decide is what resolution to record at. I'll do 24 bit (CEP actually interpolates at 32-bit) but from what I've read, I'm going to stick to 44.1k -- although my computer's brand new, plenty of RAM, I could probably handle 8 tracks @ 96k --I just wonder if it's worth it, since these are only meant as demos.

Ah, okay, makes more sense. I think instead of 'near miss' he meant 'close call'. Maybe they don't teach English in the frozen Canadian wasteland. Greg?

So I'm not sure I understand what the issue is then, if it's not the string length. Are you saying that recessing the bridge didn't work? Might help if you put up some photos.

You could easily glue in a shaving (using the same wood). The repair will be invisible, especially since there will be a nut covering it.

It's so cool that you have a dream. Shame your father can't get behind it, but it's up to you to convince/show to him that you have what it takes to make the dream a reality. It's all on you. If you really want to go into business, then I suggest you study up now, get yourself into a decent college, then get yourself an MBA. I write about companies all the time -- there are plenty of instances where someone starts from scratch and builds an empire, but they usually started out 50 years ago or more, when the business climate was a lot different. These days, an education is a lot more important. And I bet if you start pulling good grades, show your father your willingness to work hard, he'll come around. Ultimately, though, you're living for yourself, not your father or anyone else. Don't let others dream for you.

Oh, I can definitely see myself going back to "guitar - amp- no pedals" mode one of these days. That doesn't work with the current band though, at least, this batch of songs. There's just me and the drummer. Meantime, I've been developing different signal chain ideas based around the dual-looper I have. What I'm coming back to now is just using the looper as a performance pedal -- to switch in the effects that I use dynamically (the Synthwah, the wonderfully nasty Punkifier and pretty soon the Bass Synth) -- since the other effects are always-on when they're called for in a song. This way I only have one switch to deal with when I'm playing, and it's more solid than the Synthwah's switch.

Nope. You came off as an 18-year-old kid. Don't make it worse by being a smartass. It's the guys jumping in with advice without first bothering to get any details that struck me as wrong. Especially when that advice is going to cause an irreversible mod to the guitar. Anyway... From you're description, I'm thinking that the bridge might not be causing your problem. There are plenty of other reasons why the strings would start buzzing like that, and since the guitar isn't that old, I'm willing to bet it's neither the bridge, nor the saddles. What seems more likely to me is that the neck shifted and needs an adjustment. Another possibility, that there's not enough downward pressure on the saddles, that is, the tailpiece needs to be tightened down. Or the nuts slots have gotten too large. Or the neck has developed a hump. It's still possible the saddles notches are worn too. Or a combination of these things. See, this is why I'm suggesting you hold off on any surgery until you've figured out the real cause of the problems. Most of the issues I've mentioned can be tested without resorting to any permanent alteration to the guitar. Just because you've read about problems with Epiphone bridges doesn't mean that they're true (most of the problems I've seen deal with the (ply)wood failing around the studs, not the bridge itself). Hell, the bridge is just a few pieces of metal screwed together, they've been manufactured like that for 60 years. Besides, if you're seriously tempted by work as a guitar builder/repairer, then learning how to diagnose and correct this guitar's problem will be good experience. A lot better than just whacking it with a drill. Oh, last thing before I wash my hands of this: just because someone has woodworking experience doesn't mean that will translate to guitars. In fact, from my experience, older woodworking guys have their own ways of doing things, which may work great when they're slapping together a cabinet, but will completely screw up your guitar is you let them have a go at it.

Ah much better. Still need to get a few more gigs under my belt though.

Kp, don't take it personally, this isn't directed at you, this type of thing comes up pretty often, where a new guy drops in all hot n' bothered because he thinks there's something wrong with the guitar -- usually he hasn't asked the proper question, and often doesn't know enough to ask. Of course, no one says that we have to hold people's hands when they come here. But still. In this case, the guy's resolve is based on what is more than likely a false premise. So sure, I could let it go and let him butcher his guitar, but I see no reason to do so. Now there are other types of mods people want to do to their guitar where I am forced to bite my tongue (or my typing fingers) and just let him get on with making a muck of things. Like changing for gold-colored hardware.

Hold on...let's take a step back here and figure out what's really going on. What do you mean, the bridge 'crapped out'? I find it unlikely that the bridge would break, unless you've been pounding on the guitar. At the worst, you'd have to replace the saddles -- sounds to me like you've worn out the slots, that's all. It will be easy to find replacement saddles for that bridge. Second, the Epi is an Asian-built guitar. I find it hard to believe that the studs are some other kind of specification --they really should be standard issue, and available everywhere. I think it's entirely unneccessary to take a risk at destroying the guitar (since it sounds like you have neither the tools nor the experience to do the job) just because you happen to have a different bridge on hand. You can find an entire replacement bridge for 10 bucks on ebay! This guitar doesn't appear to be made anymore. Chances are it will acquire a certain value over time, at least from diehard Aerosmith fans. Makes more sense to leave it stock. But I'm guessing a simple saddle change is all that needed. I like Graphtech saddles a lot. And jeez people: when you see a post from someone who obviously is inexperienced at this, DO NOT ENCOURAGE HIM to attack his guitar with tools. I mean, at least, you can take a moment to help him figure out what the REAL problem is. You wouldn't go cutting out your colon just because beans give you gas, would you?

I knew someone would have thought this up...that's one cool box. But it's kind of pricey, it's going to have to wait until I'm rich. In the meantime, I think I'll just add a second fuzz after the chain, that will get me there too. I use different settings for the SynthWah depending on the song. I'm mostly using it for noisy synth-like sounds, filter sweeps, that kind of thing, more than for the wah/envelope type sounds.