ccbryan

You'll have at least one potential issue that I can see. If in straightening the fretboard you plane/radius the slots away, you'll have a very hard time reslotting accurately with the fretboard attached to the neck. I would even say that if you lost more than 1/5 of the slot on each side reslotting would be iffy. If you take the fretboard off you'll be able to get it flat and firm and jig it so your slots will be straight across. If you can straighten the fretboard and keep your slots, then I really don't see a big problem. With an archtop the loss of a millimeter or two off the fretboard can be compensated for easily at the nut and bridge. Chandler

I have three reference sources for flattop construction and of course they have three different procedures for attaching the bridge: 1) Glue it on before finishing, 2) mask the bridge area with tape during finishing, and 3) finish the whole guitar and scrape away the finish under the bridge. I'm weighing the options... what are your thoughts? Options 2 and 3 obviously involve finishing the bridge separately from the guitar. I'll be spraying lacquer... how would you think that would influence the decision? Thanks for your feedback...

Good heavens Jammy, that thing's clean enough to eat off of! Mighty tidy work. I'm just a bit ahead of where you are with my acoustic, just finished gluing on the linings today, finish gluing top braces tomorrow. Cheers... Chandler

Clear nail polish will also do the trick. Just dab it around the rattling area. It dries hard and will just break off when you need to adjust the saddle using the screw. Keep it off the finish though. Chandler

Hi folks. I have gotten some momentum going on my first attempt at an acoustic instrument and I think I have enough about it now on my website to warrant giving you a heads up. I'm making an OM sized mahogany bodied guitar from plans purchased from LMI and construction guidance from a mixture of Irving Sloane's and David Russel Young's books. Here's a teaser: Acoustic in progress Read all about it at www.geocities.com/ccbryan/BuildAcoustic1 This is my second guitar... my first was a Les Paul that I mentioned here when I completed it a couple of years ago: Handmade Lester Read all about IT at www.geocities.com/ccbryan/BuildLesPaul Geocities is stingy with bandwidth so don't get discouraged if you get a 'temporarily unavailable' message, just check back later. Thanks for looking!

Duplicate post.

Or.... there's always the Bay... there are two 135s sporting P-90s on the slab right now. (Neither of them mine...)

Well, what I meant to say was that P-100s and regular humbuckers would sound similar; P-90s would give it a quite different and delicious flavor. Maybe worth the bucks...

Eek! Please allow me to apologize for shooting my mouth off without knowing what the hell I was talking about. Chandler

D'oh! You'd think I'd read the page before I throw it up there, wouldn't you? Ok, P-100s are humbuckers sized to fit in p-90 slots, not the other way round. Soooooo... the 137 will be a good bit closer in sound to the 135 than I thought, since both sport humbuckers.

Luthier's Mercantile (LMI) has padauk for backs and sides, quite reasonable prices too. Here ya go... http://www.lmii.com/CartTwo/thirdproducts....odHeader=Padauk Chandler

Epiphone Dots and 335s aren't hollow...

Possum, I'm pretty sure archtops aren't generally braced. The arch gives the top sufficient strength by itself. Also, with a tailpiece the stress on the top is much less than with a glued-on bridge. And tune-o-matics on archtops are common... http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bridges,_tailp...top_Guitar.html Chandler

Feedback at moderate to high gain is the reason solid and semihollow guitars were invented in the 50s. Hollowbody and real loud just don't mix unless you're a long way from your amp or you take steps to make the guitar act a good bit less like a hollowbody, and then why would you need a hollowbody? Gibson invented semihollows to reintroduce some of the resonance (amplified) of a hollow guitar, but the reason hollowbodies are relatively loud unamplified is that the top is free to vibrate. It's the vibration of the top, not the strings, that makes the volume. That's also, mostly, why they feed back: sympathetic vibration of the top in all its resonant frequencies. So any kind of contraption that hinders the top's vibration is going to 1) reduce feedback, and 2) kill unamplified tone. Sadly you can't have it both ways. By the way, it's not only the top's vibration that leads to feedback; I have a custom-made semihollow where the center block does not extend all the way to the back. The back's freedom to resonate gives the guitar a super tone, but it's way more prone to feedback than my ES-335 -- and way less so than my hollow Casino. Good luck... Chandler

Well...from what I can figure from Gibson's website, both the 135 and 137 have a center block. That takes them both much closer to the 335 family than the 330/Casino family. So the sonic differences between the two will come down to the pickups and the tailpiece. A trapeze will theoretically have less sustain because the strings don't press down as hard on the bridge as with a stop TP. As for pickups, the 135 model described here... http://www.gibson.com/products/gibson/Classic/ES-135.html ...has P-90s, not P100s. P100s are P-90 type pups designed to fit humbucker holes. Either way, its a single coil vs. humbucker choice. Basically, I'd say that the 137 is essentially a downmarket 335 (center block, stop TP, humbuckers). The 135 with single coils would be a hybrid -- semihollow with single coils (a tantalizing prospect!). For hollowbody action (trapeze TP required)you'll have to fork over 5 or 6 grand for a 330 or head over to Epi Land. Good luck... PS. I just noticed you said the ES-137 was available with P-90s... If so, cool! but the models currently showing on the Gibson website both have humbuckers. Chandler

Grizzly Industrial is getting into guitar supplies in a fairly big way, and they are selling tonewoods. They sell 7.5x2x20 inch billets of curly and quilted maple in all grades, including "Billets of the Gods" exhibition grade quilted at $350 per piece! 4A and 5A quilted billets are $169 and $275, respectively. In the catalog they look pretty sweet... Chandler

You could do it the way I did, which I realize now was pretty much bass-ackwards, but it worked. I glued the (already slotted, inlaid, and tapered) freboard to my neck blank before any shaping of the neck. Then I trimmed the neck blank to 5/16 of the fretboard or so, which left a lovely little ledge onto which to glue my binding. Unshaped neck with fretboard and binding I then radiused the fretboard and fretted it with the neck still in this shape. Only afterwards did I wonder if I should have left radiusing and fretting until I had shaped the neck almost completely because when it came time for the shaping I couldn't set the thing down! I was forced to use this setup, with the heel clamped in my bench vise and a scrap piece supporting the peghead: Neck Shaping Except for the concern about mashing my neck tenon heel in the vise, this actually worked out pretty well, giving me full access for spokeshave, rasp and file. Shaped Neck Point being, it's an alternative to unleashing a router on your beautiful neck! Chandler

Welcome... to the wonderful world/slippery slope of luthiery. Cherry and oak aren't normally used for guitars, though I'm not exactly sure why. I expect that oak's relatively open grain and huge pores have something to do with it. Les Pauls are normally mahogany with a maple top. Better (more traditional, anyway) choices as far as domestic wood would be walnut and hard maple. Don't forget you'll need something quite hard and preferably smooth and not oily for the fingerboard, traditionally rosewood or ebony. Are you going to do a carved-top or flat-top? Most carved-top Les Pauls have 1/2 inch or so of maple on top of the body, though some are mahogany throughout. A carved-top body is just over 2" thick at the edge and about 2 1/2" thick in the center under the bridge, that extra half inch being the maple. When I made my Les Paul from scratch I used a technical drawing sold by Stewart-McDonald (find it here). It was invaluable. Mine was for a mid-50's Custom though, so some minor adjustments were necessary for the pickup cavities etc. to accomodate current parts. To see the saga of my Les Paul building, go here. It might be bandwidth-restricted, but just try back later. Cheers, Chandler

OK, sorry for all you guys having trouble with the pictures and links on my Geocities site... So here are some glamour shots: LP Full Frontal LP Front LP Left LP Front 2 LP Back And a couple of the in-process shots from my website--- if you want I'll post more of these here. Just let me know if you wanna see them: First, Carving the top.... And bending the binding The fingerboard is ebony and the fret markers are LP Custom style, but other than that it's built just like an LP Standard. Cheers! Chandler

Why is it better?... quartersawn wood is more stable -- it will move less as humidity and its moisture content change. Plus, it will move in more predictable ways. Flatsawn wood will cup, bow, twist, etc. where as quartersawn will pretty much just shrink and expand slightly. Also (though this isn't really important for a guitar neck), many woods show especially pleasing figure when quartersawn. Good luck, Chandler

Matt you are right! Gawd how embarrassing! the correct link is this one . In plain text, it's www.geocities.com/ccbryan/BuildLesPaul.html Thanks for pointing that out! Chandler

Hi guys, hope I'm not being naughty double posting this.. I put it up in the solidbody forum first because I didn't notice this one...d'oh! This is really the place for it, I guess though. Thought you might enjoy checking out the Les Paul I made last year. The full story is on my website with step by step construction details. Geocities/Yahoo restricts bandwidth pretty tightly, so if the page comes up as unavailable just check back later. Cheers, and keep up the awesome work fellas... Chandler **** Corrected link 12/19/04

Before committing yourself to a design and hardware you need to make a full-size drawing of the lengthwise centerline cross-section profile of your guitar. Show everything from nut to tailpiece using actual dimensions. Draw the strings, putting them the correct height over the fretboard and extend them out to where the bridge is. You can then see how much room there is for the bridge and how high (or low) it will need to be. That will inform your choice of bridge or your decision about neck angle. Always best to work things out on paper first! Good luck, Chandler

Thanks for the kind words guys. I really am enjoying this guitar. It sounds absolutely killer, big, warm, round sound with loverly bite when you want it. The Gibson 57s are outstanding! It's a dense, heavy sucker too... don't know if I mentioned it on my site but it's right around 10 pounds. Really dense, perfectly quartersawn mahogany. Yes Dave, that's a PM 64a. I'm pretty happy with it too! My only quibble was that the table and wings weren't extremely flat, but I felt like they were within my tolerances, especially since I didn't want to take the sucker apart once I got it together! And yes Setch, the neck is a trifle chunky, but I wouldn't go so far as bringing baseball into it! Not real deep but with slightly square shoulders. A bit wide too; I used the full width of the binding without really thinking about it rather than thinning it down, which gave it a shade more width. It's not a familiar neck profile, but it's very friendly. And it's the first neck I ever made, so whaddaya want for nothing? Cheers fellas, Chandler

If you're gonna be making a Les Paul I highly recommend getting a measured drawing from StewMac. It was invaluable to me in making mine. Gives all critical dimensions, angles etc. Since you're asking, though, the neck angle is 4 1/2 degrees. The tenon (assuming a 'short-tenon' model) is 3 inches long, 1 13/16 inches wide, and 1 11/32 inches deep. These dimensions bring the top of the tenon flush with the guitar body so that the fretboard will lie flat on the top where it overlaps the tenon. If you don't buy a technical drawing, be sure to draw out your plan with great care to make sure nothing goes awry... especially the cross section showing the neck angle, and placement and height of the pickups and bridge. As for the carve, the way I did mine was laborious. I didn't do the stairstep router thing because I didn't trust myself not to screw it up, but used just about every other tool I had: hand planes, power sander, tablesaw, chisels, gouges, scrapers, you name it. The trick is to get it close with whatever works quickest and best for you. Once it's close you have to move to gouge, scraper and sandpaper. And the only way to learn how is to do it and see what works best for you. Sorry, but that's all I can tell you there. I made a post with a link to my site showing most of the construction steps in this forum if you want to check it out. Good luck, Chandler