mu_sound

I used the tone pros fully intonable wraparound bridge. very similar to these Pigtail wraparounds from stew mac http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bridges,_tailp...und_Bridge.html

I'm working on a "thin archtop" style guitar and instead of stuffing the electronics through the pick-up holes & f-holes I was considering making an access panel on the back of the guitar and using the same wood I'm cutting out as a lid (cover) so that the existing carve, grain and pattern on the figured maple match perfectly. My first concern was wether or not it would have an impact on the acoustics of the guitar. My guess was that if I make it small ( less than 2.5in by 2.5in say) it would probably have an impact on the resonance of the back of the guitar, but probably not enough that my ears could tell. If it needed to be sealed I could probably use some insulation material but that seemed like overkill since I am cutting holes in the front face (f holes, pickup holes) so its certainly not airtight! My next worry was how to do it so that it looks nice in the end. First I'd need a lip to keep the wood from falling through. No problem I could glue in a couple of scrap pieces to serve as a lip and as a place to screw the lid onto. or as a friend suggested, I could glue in dowels on the opposite side that keep the lid in the right place and I can screw into. Next how to cut it out so that the edge is clean and I can use the center cutout. That means I cant drill pilot holes and I should probably not try to have any square corners. Large radii all around! So, no pilot holes kinda rules out a scroll saw, jig saw, etc. I thought of using a template router technique. Making a female template (a hole in a piece of wood or lexan) with the proper shape and slightly oversize. Using a bushing to follow the template I plan on taking shallow cuts with a 1/16 or smaller diameter bit. The trouble with smaller is they get progressively more fragile. Wider leaves a larger cutline which in my case is a larger gap between the two pieces of wood. Any suggestions here as far as a bit diameter (I'm using a 1/4" shank router, but I can switch to a 1/2" or a Dremel tool-1/8"). But I digress, you go around and around making progressively deeper cuts until you poke through the wood. In my case its only about 1/4" of guitar body that I have to go through. I have no idea about a Ibanez Artcore. You also probably want to take all of the internal components out before you do any of this otherwise the router will pretty much take care of all of your wiring! Also, you may want to rethink this panel unless you want to refinish your instrument. I'm sure the router will make some scratches and dings in the finish. Anyway, give it some thougt, you already have a beautiful instrument, if you want to tinker with electronics why not pick up a cheap korean made guitar. Usually what sucks in them is the pickups, so it will be a great place to tinker. As for me, does anyone have any words of wisdom for me before I carry the above out on my nicely carved and beautifully figured maple back? I'm plannning on taking a similar approach to the f-holes in the front, but in that case I dont have to reuse the cetral wood, so its a bit less stressful for me, and I can use a normal inlay bit (1/8" cutter).

while I'm at all this question asking, why use two pus pulls at all why not do it the way shown here: http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/schem...v_1t_3w_1pp.pdf is it different? and why are there two empty contacts? If I use a 3 way switch its a bit different than a push pull since it will have 3 positions. So why does the push pull pot have 6 contacts anyway? I havent been able to find a schematic for a push pull pot. Silly isnt it?

Bump! Ok so I don't think I would have room in my hollowed cavity for a push-pull pot. I saw a pic in Newark and they are huge!, Anyway I was wondering if I used a DPDT On-OFF-On mini-switch as a substitute for the push-pull pot, wired exactly as shown in the SD link in the original post. Would I get the same functionality? Did I get the functions even remotely close? Anyone? ...Anyone?.... Ferris.....Ferris Beuhler?

Thanks Jeff, So if I were to draw a logic diagram for this: I'd get 3 way Switch Pos. | Push/pull vol | push pull tone | left...............................push................push .............Full Neck humbucker center .........................push..................push ............Neck/Bridge parallel right.............................push ................push ...............full bridge humbucker left...............................pull ................push ............red-white coil neck pickup center..........................pull ................push ........... red white coil /full bridge in parallel right ............................pull............... push .............full bridge again? left................................pull.................pull .............. red-white coil neck PU center ...........................pull................ pull............... both pickups red white coils in parallel right..............................pull ................pull ............. red white coil bridge PU And the whole time the volume and tone pots stay Volume and Tone is that about right?

Hey there, I am trying to sort out what kind of wiring I am going to employ in my current build. The guitar is a semi-hollow body (maple top & back, mahogany sides) I got myself a LR Baggs fixed (non-tremolo) piezo-electic bridge. I also have 2 Seymour Duncam Jazz pickups. I was thinking about a switching arrangement that gives me the PRS options I have in my last build. however, I read on SD's website, that I have to take apart one of my pickups and revese th bar magnet in it. That sounded like a definite detour...so I was thinking instead of using an arrangement like this... http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/schem...v_1t_3w_2pp.pdf Only thing is I am not sure what the two push-pulls will do in this arrangement. I am ssuming I will get bridge hum, neck hum, & bridge/neck (parallel) with the 3 position switch. will the push pulls split coils or blend or what? sorry for the dumb question. I figured I'd sort out the magnetics first and then deal with the piezo/magnetics options. I might end up making some choices by the amount of real estate I have inside the cavitiy. I may not have room for a push pull, maybe Iam limited to mini-switches galore!

Since I'm curently building a Jazz guitar with double humbuckers and a piezo, I am quite interested in this Petrucci style guitar. However, I just looked at the ernie ball site, and all I can find on the switching configuration is the following: Controls 500kohm volume and tone - .022µF tone capacitor Switch 3-way toggle pickup selector, with custom center position configuration Pickups 2 Custom DiMarzio Humbucking - specially designed for Petrucci what does custom center position mean??? wait wait...following their schematic link gets you to more details. However, it looks like theres at least one more toggle switch that wasnt meantioned and a wierd EQ for the piezos that looks like trim pots in the back of the guitar? http://www.ernieball.com/mmonline/techinfo/ So it looks like the switching is very simple, bridge H, neck H, and inner coils in parallel. Silly question. I am using Seymour Duncan SH-2 pickups, do I have to invert the phase of one of the two inner coils for the middle position to be hum cancelling? That would just call for changing the wires areound right? I've seen a diagram on the Seymour Duncan website that if you want the PRS style switching to be hum cancelling you had to reverse the actual magnet polarity by flipping the bar magnet over 180 deg. That seemed like more destruction than I actually wanted to do on a brand new pickup. Hopefully I wont have to go that route with this approach. On my PRS I tend to use just the Neck position and the position two positions adjacent so i guess that means the inside coils in parallel and the inside coils in series.

Duh, I guess it would have helped if I had actually posted a link : http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/sum96tip.shtml so that what I was referring to...has anyone tried this? liked it? disliked?

Has anyone tried this? ANy comments on the sound? I am building a guitar with LR Baggs piezos & a pair of Seymour Duncan Jazz pickups. would an option like this be overkill on a "jazz guitar" or would it enhance it? -Ed

Not to discourage you from building, because its loads of fun, but if you love Jr's, Guitar Center had them on sale for $99 (Korean made Epi Les Paul Jr. to be specific). I picked one up as a travel guitar. I just unscrew the 4 neck screws and fold it up and stick it in my carry on. Makes the luggage a bit heavy, but at least I had a guitar for my week in Houston. I doubt that you could build a guitar for less than that. Of course the quality of this guitar is not exactly much more than $99. The nut needs to be filed smooth (the high E binds a bit). The tuners suck! The frets arent exactly flat. Once I got the strings changed to 11's and adjusted the truss rod, it had a bit of a nasty buzz at the 3rd fret. So I'm sure what you build will have better craftsmanship and better quality components. The pickup is a very important part of the sound, so make sure you find a pickup that has that dirty Junior vibe you like. I really dug the tone I had that week in Houston. I was playing into a Danelectro $20 headphone amp with the distortion cranked playing "My Head's in Mississippi" a la ZZ Top! I had a ball. Good luck with the build! You will have a blast. -Ed

Thanks everybody! All of your kind words have really made my week! I wish I would have posted them earlier now :-)

Hi there all, So I finally got around to updating the webpage with pics of my first finished guitar. I learned a whole hell of a lot! I made a few mistakes along the way. The biggest was choosing a crappy piece of my large maple slab to use for the top. I thought I would make far more mistakes and end up with something rather unplayable. Luckily, the mistakes I made were minor, and should be improved upon in the next build by changing some steps in my process. For example I carved the neck to shape, including the taper, made the truss rod hole, mounted the slotted & unfretted fretboard, then trued up the fretboard to the tapered shape of the neck (mistake), then radiused it. I should have radiused it before truing it up. The reason being I got a bit of "roll off" at the edges of the fretboard, (ie. the radius increases at the edges becasue my radiused sanding block slid sideways sometimes eating the edge a bit more than the center. Had I trued up after the radiusing procedure I would have cut off the part with the "roll off" issue. I suppose I could also radius the fretboard before mounting it, but I thought that would be riskier because then I have to hit true center when I glue the two together. Another mistake was not hammering in the brisge studs before I painted. beacuse I sized the hole for a nice press fit , it casued the wood to push outward a hair, which caused some of the lacquer to chip off near the bridge post The other mistake I made, and I'm not sure how to fix it on the next run is how to mask the fretted neck so that you dont get gaps at the frets (I think that I did this part ok) and also not "peel off" some of the lacquer atthe side dots, I had this happen on two frets. Its barely noticeable but I KNOW that they are there. Biggest mistake I made: I copied most of the Santana model PRS except for the inlay, scale & pickup switching, I used a 25" scale. However I forgot to compensate for the extra .5" when I located the bridge stud positions. So when I mounted the bridge I had to force screws out a bunch in order for it to intonate properly. I keep thinking I should make an adapter so that I have more metal to metal than just the surface area of the hex screw. I hope the above made sense to someone other than me. Rock on -Ed well here are the links to the pics: finished guitar: http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/f...%20guitar1.html early in progress work: http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/e.../earlyneck.html http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/gluedneck/neck.html http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/t.../templates.html http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/w...d/woodshed.html http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/colors/colors.html

I think you are correct, the truss rod did not fix the buzz, perhaps I was just picking a bit lighter. I guess the big thing the truss adjustment fixed was the action. The low E still buzzes a bit from 12th through 15th. If you think the fret level is the issue I think I'll pursue that route, its easy enough re-dressing frets. Do I have to be careful not to lower them so much that fretting those notes will make them buzz worse?

It truns out my local hardware store (the good one: Berg's Hardware) had the clips (they call them E clips but whatever) in two sizes that were close 7/64 & 3/32, At $0.10 each I took a dollars worth of each to make looking for the little buggers and writing out a reciept worthwhile. It turns out niether is quite right the fasteners must be metric. Strange seeing as they are made in the USA. The 7/64 clip slides on much easier so I'll go with those until they fall out. The string trick sounds like a nice solution in a pinch! Thanks Hey does anyone know the tradeoff between more height at the nut vs. more height at the bridge? My buzz is only happening on the low E sting between the 12th & 15th fret, everywhere else its fine. I dont think raising the low E side of the wraparound bridge would be a good idea since it would raise the action of the other strings with it. I was toying with the idea of putting in a new nut with a shallower E sting slot, but it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through if at the end it does not so what I want. I've tinkered with shimming the low E by placing another string in the slot. When I put in a low E sting (.049") it felt horrible, the string definitely did not fall in line with the radius of the fretboard. A B string felt a lot better but I think it suffered acoustically from having only a tangent contact with the string. However, my buzz seemed to go away (this is a good buzz kill really!) in all but the 12th fret. Hmmm..perhaps I should check my fret flatness near the low E??? you think? WOW! I checked the relief on the neck yesterday it was around .008" I rechecked it right now...it was over .020" wow, I guess thats the wood breaking in?? I tweaked my trus rod a quarter turn or so, its back down to .007" I'll check it again in a day or so..WOW! Well that seems to have alleviated my hum and gotten me much nicer action in one fell swoop.....will the miracles to newbies ever cease?

Definitely! Thanks! I just got in there with a flashlight and found one of the little buggers near the low E string saddle. They're the c-clips you had in that tiny little picture. I'm not sure if there the same as snap rings, I think snap rings have two little holes that youre supposed to jimmy around with a spoecial tool, but you almost always end up with snap ring bits flying around the room (wear goglges please). I think this variety is more benign, and I might be able to find them at a hardware/automotive store, if I'm lucky. Otherwise I have to get them from tone pros. Who incidentally have a pdf on replacing the saddle retaining clips on their tune-o-matic version. I guess these wraparound styles havent been around long enough for someone to screw up the retainer clips. Are you crazy man, and screw around with that finish that took me hours to polish up??? Just kidding, It was definitely one of the options under consideration. I decided to mod the bridge since I thought it was much easier to chuck up a 4" x 5" brige than a odd shaped large monster witha neck like a guitar. As it turns out I took out plenty of material from the bridge (.050") and adjusting nuts, so much so that now I have a bit of buzz on the low E. Is there a good primer on "set ups and intonation" I think that is a highly ignored topic in guitar building. For example what is the tradeoff between filing the slot in the nut a little lower vs. lowering the saddle a bit? I ended up just trying to copy the setup on my PRS, but I'm finding that the change in bridge made such a huge difference that I amost built an unplayable guitar (the action was way high and i think I should have located the bridge studs about a 1/4" back, or conversely mounted the nut and the rest of the fretboard a little further up, big OOPS!!!) It turns out the highest strings on the PRS sit about .435" from the guitar body, unfortunately the tone pros wraparound bridge is .6" tall. Now that its built I've finally got it to a place where its intonated (unless those darn saddles move on me) and the action is tolerable. I'd like lower action of course, but unless I recess the bridge (or remove more material from it, bad idea I think) I cant get no lower action (Mick Jagger eat your heart out). Either way if I bring the strings lower, the fretted notes on the low E tend to buzz, so I'm wondering why bother modifying the body or the bridge. Could it be my truss rod could come to the rescue here? I measured the neck before stringing up, It remained dead flat (within about .001") After stringing, It has a bit of bow to it, and it has a nice amount of relief (about .008") I didnt think the truss rod needed to be adjusted. I set the depth of the slots at the nut so that each string (bottom) was .020" from the top of the 1st fret. (thats just like my PRS) Because of the buzz on the low E, I'm wondering If I went a little too deep. Even though it was not flawless by any stretch of the imagination, I am very pleased with how well it came out.

I have a tone pros wraparound intonable bridge installed on my guitar, unfortunately I didnt take into account the increased height of this bridge when setting my neck angle, so I had to machine a little off the back of the brige and a little off the adjusting studs as well in order to be able to bring the action down to a tolerable level. In the process I guess the vibration of the cutter on the bridge set three of the little springloaded intonation adjustment screws loose. In other words they dont just stay and spin around in the shaft as the saddle rides along the top, they have a tendency to slip out, not exactly desirable from an intonation point of view. Since I modified them, I doubt that Tone Pros will be at all interested in solving my problem. What I cant figure out is how they were held in to begin with. Unless the spring was somehow holding the screw in place? I cant see any retaining rings on them or anything. Anyone else had this problem? Any ideas?

I am done shooting my first guitar. I used the stew-mac gun (made in taiwan and looks like just about all other guns I've seen recently), the Behlen stringed instrument lacquer (which is very thin before thinning). At first I was getting a lot of "orange peel" and a lot of bounce back (the spray not actually sticking but flyaing all over tarnation). I found the overspray was solved by dialing down the regulator at the gun to 35psi (the compressor outlet hose was set to 90psi). The orange peel was a bit harder to figure out. My friend kept telling me my atomization wasnt right!!! Atomization Shm-atomization!!! those little troubleshooting guides are worthless!!! I tried thinning I tried more distance, I tried wider fan settings, more fluid less fluid, After a lot of trial and error (thank God nitro buffs/sands really easily) I finally figured out it wasnt so much the settings on the gun, as much as how my hand moves over the workpiece. At first I was too afraid to lay down too much material and get a run. After I realized a run was not the end of the world I was a bit more agressive with the liquid. Once I started doing very slow passes over the guitar body, the "orange peel" went away and turned into a beautifully slick wet looking layer. I think I shot well over 2 quarts, at least one third of that was spent in the air, booth, fan cowling, etc when I had too high a pressure setting. another third went into two very thick coats (which finally filled my poorly grain filled mahagony pores) that were sanded back down to nearly gone. The other third was when I think I finally figured it out. The big question I had, is how to tell when I'm done. I just decided that it was done today. After the second to last coat, I buffed the surface down and then applied a 50/50 cut of lacquer (as recomended by the Behlen can) and I will be letting that dry for the next week to a month or so (the can says 72hrs). I'll wait until the smell is gone....here is hoping for a heat wave in so cal. The finish already looks like glass and I havent even buffed it out yet! I love nitro!!! Dont fear the nitro, the nitro is your friend, the nitro wont let you down! Pics will be forthcoming.

Hey there forum, So I'm getting around to the last portion of my first build. We just glued the neck yesterday. We built up a crude paint booth. I practiced spraying on a twisted piece of birdseye maple...boy the scrathes really come to life when you get a finish down...but I digress... I wanted to ask if it was desireable to pore fill under the nut. My instinct says nothing should be under the nut but naked wood and system 3 epoxy. That would mean attaching the nut before the pore filling, or masking off the nut area before pore filling. Any thoughts? Of course reading up on the threads on fillers and sealers, lots of you use system 3 as a filler, so there wouldnt be any harm in having a filler layer under the glue layer. However, I am using a paste filler on the mahagony parts. I have the maple top and the rosewood board masked off. Its been beastly hot here in Pasadena, CA recently, so I wonder how it would even be possible to spread system 3 on a body before it cures on you. On another note, does anyone know where to get lids for the spray gun that stewmac sells? Spare cans? Its made in Taiwan, but has no brand my guess it its quite generic.

In my job we have to polish metal surfaces so that they are optically flat. That means that the actual surface imperfections are on the order of a wavelength of light....hundreds of nanometers. The only way to do that is as was described above, polishisng away all of the surface imperfections with the lighter grits and just "buff" with the higher grits. We usually start the surface our of the machine shop with a Ra=16 to 32...pretty dull looking, a few lathe marks here and there. We start to polish the surface with 30um diamond grit. This is the step that takes the longest. we then successively step in downward increments (30, 15, 9, 6, 3, 2, 1, .1um) and rarely do I ever go over .1um. There is a conversion factor somewhere for grit# to micron size, but I think 30um=600grit and each time you halve the micron size, you double the grit #. But I digress.... I was told a long time ago by one of our gurus in polishing....If you dont remove all of the scratches with the current grit, when you start using the next size down, all that you do is fill the larger scratch with "slurry" from the smaller size. It gets trapped in the crack and thats what dulls a finish!

Thanks to the both of you for your replies. After your hint BlackKnight, I went back into ThumbsPlus and asked it to keep all lower case filenames when it generates the script, now it seems to work fine. Here is my new and improved link... http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/colors/colors.html Jer, I'll try a brownish shade under the yellow....I'll see how it goes. Thanks to you both!

So I got these analine dyes so I can experiment with colors before actually comitting to one. I found a cheap (or perhaps just small quantity vendor) that I could get a small baggie full of 40 different colors of dyes. http://pysankyshowcase.com/ I know I know, you already ridiculed me once for this easter egg thing, but it was a buck a color, as opposed to $10 each from a "reputable manufacturer" I didnt test all of them (I skipped a lot of pinks, maybe not enough of them :-) ) http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/i...ss/DSC05405.JPG Anyway, I'm liking the blues and purples as well as the yellows. I'm making a PRS Santana inspired guitar, so I'm favoring the Santana Yellow and the Dark Green. http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/i...ss/DSC05416.JPG I tried to dye black, sand back, and dye color on a few different swatches with very poor to mixed results. It looked horrible under the yellow. http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/i...ss/DSC05411.JPG Nice under the Dark green, it made the red kinda purple, which was nice for the coor, but not the desired depth effect. And it was nice under the light purple shade. http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/i...ss/DSC05444.JPG I'm not sure if I'm not sanding back enough or if maybe multiple layers of black/sand back are needed before the color layer. Heres the yellow, post sand back pre color dye http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/i...ss/DSC05410.JPG A nice vintage cherry burst might be nice. Although at this point, I'm thinking a nice easy single color guitar might be better....decisions decisions. You can look at more in progress pictures yourselves...warts and all. It was supposed to have a nice automatically generated HTML script so you wouldnt have to click on text based links, http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/i...20Progress.html but something happened to my html code when I ftp'd it to the host server it kept the refernce to the thumbnails right, but not for the enlarged picture. I realized it wasnt working right so I stopped downloading the rest of the files. Youll have to slog through them yourselves unless someone can tell me how to fix my script. http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/in%20progress/

From "The PRS Guitar Book" by Dave Burrluck or as my friend refers to it, Guitar Porn..... in reference to the Santana I model circa 1985 "The success of the PRS vibrato was not just down to the bridge itself. Although the original roller nut idea was abandoned, a nut made from a nylon/Teflon compound (which Smith likes to refer to as "unobtanium") was installed to reduce friction, the headstock back-angle was made shallow (about seven degrees) and PRS/Schaller locking tuners were fitted as standard." in reference to the Dragon guitars circa 1993 "The Dragon I was also the first guitar to be designed without the company's vibrato system in mind (although a very small number have been specially ordered with a vibrato). This allowed the ehadstock angle to be increased to approximately 11 degrees, which is flatter than the vintage Les Paul ofaround 17 degrees, but steeper than a standard PRS back angle of about seven degrees. Smith says the extra angle puts a little more tendion on the nut, that "every little facet makes a small difference" The new angle was subsequently applied to all 22-fret guitars except the EG." in ref to the McCarty model: But the McCarty model wasnt just about Smith's interest in Gibson's classic Les Paul. It was a combination of factors. Guitarist David Grissom had called Smith in late 1992 saying he wanted a guitar that sounded like Duane Allman on Live at the Filmore East album. "Basically, all the things Ted [McCarty] had been talking about, all the things we were aiming for, and all the things David Grissom wanted were the same things." says Smith. "The McCarty model was essentially a Dragon guitar with a thicker body, thinner headstock, lighter tuners, and different pickups." no mention of heastock angle but I assume its the same as a dragon. Cheers!

Hey there, from my reading on the board and various other resources it appears that rosewood fingerboards are left without a finish on them. I was wondering if I need to fill the grain or just leave it open after the final sanding. I can see that you wouldnt want to put a thick coat of lacquer on, but is there really nothing at all on the rosewood? not even tung oil or shellac? Sorry for the noob question, but I just want to make sure before I put the frets in.