thedoctor

Go get a life, Frank

No, buy 6 individuals or buy a set of 4 plus 2 individuals. If you need 14 bananas, buy tweleve and two. Capisch?

Kiln dried anything doesn't need the preparation that air dried does. If it is going into a steam or microwave kiln it is usually just shoved in there. To properly air-dry, you have to seal the ends for the long term. Air-dried tends to have a lot more end-splitting than kiln. When you find a nice, unsplit piece of air-dried, you found a nice piece of wood. It be happy.

Old standards for me. They can be played any way you want. Rock-style, metal, jazz or any other treatment as long as the old standard stands out as the song it was written to be. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE Bessie Smith doing a song axactly as it was written for her but you can do SRV's Telephone Song in a jug-band style and have another old-standard. Black Betty is a good one. How many of you can remember String of Pearls? Van Halen or Pearl Jam could do a take that would KILL! Minnie the Moocher by Cab Calloway was almost as good as Commander Cody's version. Etc., etc. Almost forgot, SRV's Riviera Paradise!

AR-322 Aircraft Klean-strip Remover. Spray cans and kicks it some stripping butt. It is sold all over the world to remove decals and rivet dimple-cracks before painting airplanes. Made by W.M.Barr & Co. of Memphis, TN. Washes off with water. Do NOT get this crap on your skin or in your lungs/eyes. Try the local airport! READ THE DAMN INSTRUCTIONS!!! I just found the same stuff at the local NAPA auto store! Who'd a thunk?

WHEN you get a job? You are taking the bar exams in Mizzou and you wonder WHEN you will get a job? Pass and you will have to beat them away with a stick! Best of luck but you probly don't need it. Be a good boy and stay away from politics, would you? KC has enough crooked lawyer/politicians as it is.

I play through the Sony home theatre thingie at home all the time. I have a $29.00 Beringer mixer plugged into it and play my stereo 7-string and my bass through it. Ain't no thang. Just the Hi-Z conversion on the guitar. It's passive. The bass is active and could be plugged straight in. Turn on the small-hall or virtual surround and have at.

I never even gave a thought to routing steel. What a horrible thought! I build hi-def plasma CNC machines and a new template made of steel or aluminum is about 5 minutes away. We ALWAYS keep a "demo" model in stock to do government work. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Nuff said, nuff said. (another Monty Python quote)

I guess I am old school but my bits never touch my templates. I use routing collars around the base of the router instead of bearings. Hence, most of my templates are 10 ga. to 3/16" steel or aluminum or phenolic. If, for some reason, you need the shank of the bit to rub on the template, stay away from phenolic! OHHH, the smell!

There are a few bass shapes that don't get used much. With that color scheme, I would go for a Tele bass. No, seriously! But there are a couple others, such as an SG bass, an LP bass (very cool) and the slim-waist symetrical double cutaway. I haven't seen many of these shapes used on a bass. Happy to provide pictures (at last) as my new camera (thank you, nephew) kicks some digital butt.

Yep, Hipshot, StewMac, Warmoth and AllParts sell individuals. In Y-shape.

No, Crafty, that is called "quality-control". I am surprised you didn't subject it to even more rigorous, ie:longer, testing.

If you have a viable plan, which you do, you take it in and find out what they sell or can get for the project and ask them if they would like to promote an in-store exclusive axe. They provide the materiels that they can, you supply the labor and talent. They get to put it in the front window as an exclusive and use it in advertising. It is actually quite cheap for them as advertising needs a "catch" to work. Players from all over will want to come in and see this one-of-a-kind beast. It works, I tell ya! Eventually you do get to play it, sell it, whatever. But for now, you don't need to come up with all the cash.

I don't know where you are from but it is quite easy to get a sponsor in the form of a regional music store to front the cost of an "exclusive" locally made axe. Ask around. All they can say is no. Or, heck, yes!

Just realized that the binding comment was pointed at the wrong Craft. Yeah, if they are good sounding pickups and won't screw up the bridge PU by pulling the sustain out, cool. I have never in my life messed with a 1/4 pounder or a Floyd Rose. Hard to figure but they have avoided me all these years. Home for the summer? What be your major? Putting a couple through school myself but I made them move out to their own digs. Can't feed the world, you know.

I build CNC plasma cutting machines (and repair them) as part of my regular business and the difference between what we build and what you need to reliably route wood is immense! We don't use stepper motors because they don't have the response time or speed capabitities plasma and oxy-fuel needs. BUT, we don't have to overcome latent resistive tool-force cause our tools don't touch the part. Any errors that are caused by the machine not getting to the next increment (due to friction or collisions) are caught and corrected for by the position encoders used to tell the servo system what to do next. The cheaper stepper systems assume that this will never happen and just counts step instructions given to the motor. Therefore, use the sharpest, highest horsepower router you can find to keep from bogging the steppers down. I prefer the little 4 horse air-routers made by ARO. They wiegh about one and a half pound and last forever, if oiled. When you are actually forcing a tool through material you are a lot closer to a CNC milling application and we don't mess with those. They are cheap, slow and powerful, just like you would want to route wood. And, wow, are they accurate! Darn, almost forgot my point. The DIY retrofit kits and such that I have seen for mills are very much up to the task as long as you don't ask them to do it very fast. I helped an old friend setup a X-Y table to engrave plastic wiring-box seperators and it was a piece of cake but he thought it should only take ten seconds to do a 2 by 3 foot grid and, in fact, it takes about ten minutes. That, IMHO, is his bad. There is about 220 linear feet of routing involed.

Good lord! You mean I was actually RIGHT when I was trying to make a joke?

Well, dang folk. He asked about quantity and we just embellished, as we always do! Steve Martin had a saying that applies here but I will be darned if I can remember it.

Get one of them cheap M-Audio USB interfaces with a hi-Z input. You will never believe what you can do with one.

Crafty, I know the bridge will need to be modified to mount it but that ain't no thang. I was wondering more about the application as far as how it will play with the neck pickup. The string-pull was another issue because I have never put in a 1/4 pounder. It is a case of using a pickup cause I got it versus spending another $76.00 to get a rail or something. Are there any ballpark string-to-pickup dimensions to use on the 1/4 pounders or am I best to try everything? BTW, I am slowly getting better at binding. That is a whole nother world!

I like the looks of both a laminated and a solid mahog neck. Because you can, I would go with the solid or one-piece. Please don't paint it.

I agree that you don't need the best-quality C-clamps for woodworking. If you don't abuse them, a few 8" hardware store cast clamps will last a long time. The only clamps I have are expensive, copper-plated screw forged clamps made for welding and the old wooden block clamps. Both are more than a person needs for laminating a neck.

If you don't enter that guitar, I am going to start a write-in campaign. That is right up my alley. Simple, stark, uncomplicated and well done, I must say. I cannot imagine being able to get wood like that so easily. Green eye of jealousy appears at the end of this reply.

How about sunscreen?

I think I would buy a new Rogue or Squire and just have at it. For a little over a hundred bucks you can start out with something that at least works. I lean towards the Rogues because I really like the necks. You can't feel too bad if you screw up a Rogue.