thedoctor

I just can't let a subject post go this long without a single reply. Is that trash dumpster still available? No, that was just plain mean, but, unless you are doing this for the love of orphaned musical instruments or as pentance for some horrible sin, I think I would return it to where it came from. If you got a reason to really, really want to repair it, then fine. I will look for you to repost and help if I can. It's just that I probably wouldn't spend the time to fix it, if it were my time. In this case, it isn't.

feyla, I seriously don't have the slightest idea how to post a link but my son took some really stupid pics and said he'll help me post it Saturday. Its me at my absolute worst!

I am putting this on tools and shop seperate from my complaint about Carvin necks in solid-body cause this is the good half of that disaster and involves tools. Pretty fart smeller, ain't I? As I explained the tedious process of hot-kniving a fretboard off to my son, he commented that I was spending most of my time heating the wood and the knife(a piece of 14-guage MS sharpened). I knew that they used electrically heated wire to cut the foamcore he works with at Disney but it never clicked. We took a hacksaw blade and sharpened the center 6" to a crappy chisel edge and ViseGripped(registered trademark) a piece of 1 X 4 to the last 2" on each end. I ran #6 welding cable clamped to the gun of my Lincoln 110 volt MIG welder to one end and the ground clamp to the other(mistake in hindsight) Watching the blade heat when I stepped on the trigger, we realised we didn't have a welder setting low enough to keep the knife at just about 220 degrees and this Carvin glue was needing a lot of heat. I spent the next hour stepping on and stepping off the gun trigger but got pretty good at cycling it without that telltale smell of burnt wood. Needs refining but I had fun. Here is the ground mistake: I smelled what I thought was the beginning of wood burning but it was my left glove about to flame-on next to that cheap ground clamp. I would post a picture but don't quite have a full grasp of the picture-posting rules. Wasn't that pretty, anyway.

Soapbar, I KNOW you are above this display of intoloerence! Please prove me right and don't join the ranks of these buzz-killin' forum mashers.

I believe I have a winner in this category. International Luthiers has a $109.00 complete Tele kit that is complete.......well, that's what it is supposed to be, right? Complete. A girl that I teach in Sunday school bought a HT version(hi-dollar, $160.00!) and I got to say, the neck sets up VERY well. These kits sound like crap plugged in but they are complete. Complete. Another word that sounds dumb when you say it over and over. Complete. It's like compete with a speech impediment. Not very PC.

1nf. Just gotta ask. Are you a lefty? Body looks that way. If you want a non-tem 6-string bridge, you are like the only guy at the prom with 155 women at your disposal. There are billons and billions (Carl Sagen quote) of cool choices out there where the stars are! What music do you play? The scale is kinda determined by that but not absolutely. I like to cut out a full-size body shape from plywood (complete with neck) and play air-guitar with it for a while to see it from the players view and make obvious changes to it. Plywood is cheaper then body blanks and is more "tactile" then CAD drawings. Know we'll hear more 'bout this. Emergency EDIT!!! I forgot to tell you about the splinters when you play air guitar with your mockup! Gloves or iodine and tweezers!

Hey, Happy, watch the fur fly now! It competely, totally, absolutely 100% depends on what you play and what you like. Here comes the fur. There is no standard Strat pickup but for me, the Epiphone/Gibson rules! While I go get out the BandAids(registered trademark) what kind of music do I play? And when are they going to put one of those registered trademark asterick thingies on my keyboard?

Yeah, deadmike, the glue holding on the fretboard must be awesome if it didn't do any damage. Do the math on a 3/16" piece of even high-stregth steel rod and dis dude has FAR exceeded the modulus of elasticity. Into the mode of mechanical deformation. What an idiot! Should be a Wieght-Watchers ad.

axo, if I may call you that, you seem to be a lad with some time to spend on supthin as worthwhile as building a guitar so I'm going to make a suggestion. Buy a cheap, maybe evn crappy, kit for $150.00 to $200.00. Spend some real time on every little part of that kit and don't expect anything really good to come out of it. Avoid disappointment and you will be ready for the next step: your OWN guitar. Built just the way YOU want. Cheap kits are a blast cause there is no fear of failure! You will save every penny you spend on the kit by learning what it really important in your OWN guitar. Listen to the guys that disagree with me, though. Can't be right all the time.

I'll trade you the scope for the TV crap if you keep the TV crap. This homey don't do TV. Ever. Ever, ever. I.ll look for a set of 1/4" HV test leads at the old shop cause I don't want you using your agligators (sic) on tube amps. Got no reason to hate you, yet.

I said this out loud and started laughing. Lets make it "schleptical" and it means "labor-intensive"!

KTL has it nailed but I would like to offer an analogy to maybe muddy the waters. I love muddy waters. If a guitar were a drum, the bridge would be most effective in the center, right? Dear god in heaven, I just described a banjo! Shame, shame. Well, guitars aren't banjos. Ignoring the neck for the moment, guitar bodies recieve most of their energy from the bridge. The vibrational length, frequency, would be the distance from the bridge to where the stiffness (MOE) transferes enough energy to overcome inertia (mass/density) in a given direction. This theory would say that regardless of stiffness and density OF the wood, as many possible different lengths from bridge to edge should be the best for all around flat freq. response. More bridge to edge lenghts of the same length should fatten that particular freq. Also means the best resonance would be had from a body made from a crosscut slab with the bridge right at the heartwood center. Now there is an ugly thought! Maybe a solid body with 1/2" thickness at the bridge tapering out to 2" at various distances away from the bridge. Not a pretty sight. If you could vary density as it approaches the edge? Like an old fashioned flywheel made offcenter? Another Kodak moment. I'm done , finally. Plese don't take me seriously.

CRC non-flammable BrakKleen is a wonderful, deep cleaning solvent for removing oil. It just loves to eat laquer, acrylics, varnish and anything else it touches. Dries in about a minute but you shouldn't let it. Keep wiping to soak up the solvent/oil mix and get it the freak out a dere. DO NOT weld or use any flames around this stuff! Non-flammable but creates a nerve toxin when exposed to UV and heat. Do you think one of those truss rods with a flat top bar would reduce the pressure on your fingerboard? I do.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Poplar does have consistency issues but who says you want to be consistent? Maybe a green dye set deep would compliment poplar's generally undesired shading. Decide once it is stripped.

SWEET SCORE!! That VTVM is to die for! I never knew Bell & Howell made a digital meter. Huh. Probly got a scope for you if you don't mind later vintage, over-built HOT. I never turned mine back into the Air Force. Dual-trace in a presurizable flight case. Thats our tax dollars at work for you!

One way or two way truss rod? Set screws were a bit of overkill, weren't they? Maybe not. If the rod is one way you can set the rod with silicone sealant at 4 inch intervals making sure it is off the bottom and sides until dry. If your channel is huge, use o-rings at 6 inch intervals. O-rings work on 2 ways but usually there isn't enough room.

Put some varnish on the clamp and you could gett $110.00 from one of the E-baying hounds! I've got a monopod I built out of my broken import piece of crap tripod and two pieces of aluminum conduit. Very small when collapsed. So small I can never find it when I need to. Oh, well. Hides my palsey when I can.

That cove cut in the end of the headstock is incredible with the wood showing through the dark top. Love it. Look at the headstock without those side cuts. I would lean towards that.

I have cooled off enough to explain and ask. This is the second Carvin neck I have had to relace the truss rod on for the same stupid reason. Sloppy work. The headstock end was installed with about 2 turns of thread left and the body end was locked up with assy. glue. (what IS that stuff they use? Tough and takes massive heat to soften) So I am looking for opinions on the replacment. Stew-Mac? Homemade? Something else? It is a long-scale 5-string bass. I would be lying if I said I hated the neck otherwise. StewMac has HotRods and Martin-style heavy-duty for bass. The Martin style will fit easier but that's not the issue. Never used one a dem two-rod Hot Rods.

I don't think EMGs look good with rings. Something about that basic black monobloc just says don't crowd me. I go to a hydraulic shop and get fat o-rings that barely stretch around the pickup and roll them on. Takes some time to get them to roll against the body but the finished product don't offend me. Specially for 20 cents.

Yeah, you'll get it fixed. Same body and all. How long did it take to notice this? I ask because I kept a guitar (Jackson) up to snuff for my nephew for a couple years and one day the low E was right at the edge of the neck. I thought it had spent too many nights in his trunk and the neck warped. Not so. A really sloppy install(huge holes,loose pocket) had let the neck suddenly kick left. Doweled the old holes, Devconed the pocket and redrilled. Worked great but requires you use a neck plate instead of those countersunk washer thingies.

Think what you got there (or used to have) is either a Harmony or a Kay. That chunky body tells me what it ain't but the real indicators live under that headstock veneer. Don't expect any logo or anything cause most of that was decaled and wouldn't have survived the devastation it has gone through. I think someone was going to make this into a 6-string before you got it. Is that a zero-fret or the end of the "veneer"?

Lovecraft, those look fab! Did I just say "fab"? Watched the movie BirdCage last night. Robin Williams as a gay guy. Those prices are very good, in my experience. The asians make good components. Ugly, though. Just guessing, those are UNIChem or Matsu caps. Good stuff.

Well, since you haven't decided on preamps and are happy with just stereo. I used a TubeWorks MosValve with two PaIA preamps(tube) and connected the effect-out from chA to effect return on B with digital delay. On the preamps, I mean. I like the depth and wierdness you can get with full effect blend but its not very subtle. If you had a stereo-output delay unit (I don't) you could do a lot better blending the delay from,say, the neck pickup to both output channels. If I can borrow one from my nephew (good luck there) I think i"ll try it. The PaIA preamps are OK but need help when you first get em. Cheap, though.

Split it while it is frozen. Forget guitars and this cut. Disjoint set. Does burn well.