Daniel Sorbera

I'm quite happy with the way budget electric guitars are turning out these days, there are lots of very nice ones out there. It really is a great thing because now the average joe can have a decent guitar that wont cost an arm and a leg.

Sounds like your doing a great thing for the kids. More young people should learn exacting technical work, I know it helped me a lot learning this kind of thing at a young age. Definitely post/have your students post any questions they might have, this place is a great way to learn. 99% of the members here are very knowledgeable helpful people. You could even have a sub project where they have to use the search engine here and find answers to questions you give them. If you *really* want to challenge them and have them learn something you could bring the physics of a vibrating string into it also with questions like, what is a scale length and why does it matter when applied to the way a guitar string vibrates to produce a tone? Or what happens to the vibrating string when you fret it at a higher position on the neck? This could be really cool for your students.

Try tapping around on the top with no strings on, and make sure it's not your tuners.

Variax Link The variax is a guitar made by line 6 that has modeling technology (to make your guitar sound like many different guitars) instead of normal pickups.

Replacing the pots didn't do anything, it still only has one repeat and the same problem with the volume pot. Does anyone know what the problem might be? Or a good place/person to ask? Another thing is the signal seems to be very quiet. The guitar sound coming through is slightly more quiet than strait into the amp but the delay sound is so faint it's hard to hear. Could it need new heads or something? It makes a squeaky sound when the tape goes around but it seems to work fine...

I have an old echoplex tape delay that works except for two problems. There are two pots on the front, one labeled ECHO Sustain with the numbers 1-9 marked out. It should raise the number of repeats from 1 repeat to 9, except it stays at 1 repeat through the entire range of the pot. Does this sound like a problem with the pot, some circuitry in the delay, or a mechanical problem with the delay? The other problem has to do with the other pot on the front labeled ECHO Volume. This pot should in theory raise the volume level of the delay through it's range. But it currently stays at a constant very quiet volume from 1-8 and just after 8 the volume of the echo gets a bit louder bit your guitar volume rolls off completely. Again does this sound like a problem I could fix by replacing the pot? EDIT: Ok I just found a schematic and I know they are 500k pots, and I have some on hand, but I'd rather not just solder one in to see if it works because there are a good 4 wires coming off of each lug so it will be a pain. here is a link to a schematic link Here is a picture of it.

If you really want to than go for it. Personally I would cut the fingerboard separate and glue it on just for the ease of building, but thats just me. I would put a truss rod in to counteract the temperature/humidity changes. I'd finish it in something (oil is fine) because I don't like to leave woods totally unprotected, but then an ebony fingerboard has no finish, just some food for thought.

ahhh the glorious life of being a mod. lol

Well the best way to do it is to have your booth inside a larger heated room that it sucks in air from, but I see thats not possible in your situation. +1 on filtering your air going out before it hits your fans.

Very good post. Not many people know about the problem of runnout.

+1 90% of the exotic wood caps you see are for looks only. They may or may not help out the tone to varying degrees. Sorry to be so vague, but since none of this stuff can be proven people only have a vague clue as to what different "tonewoods" will wound like. and those new taylors are butt ugly. Just saying

As previously stated, never plug the speaker out of an amp into the input of another amp. You will destroy one, and likely both of them. The easiest way to do what your trying to accomplish is to buy something like the THD hotplate or Weber MASS and turn it all the way down to linelevel. That will allow you to plug it into the input of another amp.

Wow man. Wow. Thats bad, thats really bad.

Generally when someone offers you help you don't respond with a short "well that sucks". Now, what about it sucks? and how can we help you? Inlay work is not easy, or cheap. It takes practice and lots of time.

Cool thanks for the info. I might do some tests with that for the next one.

Yes it is possible to do, and yes it's a royal pain in the rear end. A grain fill is 100% necessary (I used epoxy) but other then the monstrous pores in the wood it takes a finish quite nicely as you can see here. I have actually done one with an oil finish, and it turned out really really nice. It has a great feel to it and the look is amazing, even after years of abuse (I gave the guitar to one of my friends and he has been gigging with it multiple times a week ever since). I would definitely recommend an oil finish on wenge bodies simply because it makes the wood look/feel so cool. That guitar turned about around the same weight as a PRS double cut, so the wenge really isn't that bad when used as a back wood with a maple cap. Hey doug could you give us more info on mixing silica into the epoxy? Like where you can buy it? Got a link?

Since this is an EMG question I'll just put it here. Where do you guys buy EMGs? Is there anywhere that has a decent selection for a good price?

It's my take on taylors new neck joint. Imagine taking a bolt on electric neck but with a fingerboard shelf and adding an acoustic butt jointed heel to it. Thats pretty much it. I like it because it's easy to do and the fingerboard is very stable above the 14th fret.

It really is a pain to work and even more of a pain to finish.

I've built plenty of guitars out of wenge and they all turned out great. Amazing sound, a bit on the heavy side, and pretty hard to work/finish. But it does make a good looking guitar (especially as a back wood with a maple cap thrown on for good measure).

That is really cool. I like how your making all the components yourself.

When looking at how guitars have been made for the last 50 years (ie fenders and gibsons) it's important to note that they used what woods/design elements they could that were cheap and easy to make. The reason fender used alder and swamp ash is not because they have some magical amazing tone, it's because they were easy to source and were cheap at the time. The same goes for the mahogany gibson, mahogany was very easy to come by back then, they used it to make house studs if you can believe that. So my point is don't be afraid to try something new just because it's not like anything else in the market. Go ahead and make that osage orange solid body carved top electric with a piezo bridge, or whatever else you would never see from a factory. It has the same chances of turning out to be a nice guitar as something more traditional.

Not too bad actually. You just have to keep reminding yourself it's a lefty. I made a list of all the areas of the build that would be reversed and I double checked every time I worked on one of those areas so that no mistakes were made.

Kinda hard to see from the pictures, but it's looking good so far. Just remember to not mention my name if you do decide to sell it

Never tell me where you live, I don't think I could resist.