mu_sound

So I've been working on my first guitar for some time now. The fretboard is being glued as we speak. We're actually getting close to the hard part...the finish. SO my friend and I have been doing a bit of reasearch on the topic of finishes. I kept insisting to him (he's the big wood worker, I'm the guitar afficionado) that all of the big names in guitar say "Use Nitro-cellulose!" With me, being a newbie woodworker, he wouldn't listen and he kept insisting that he'd prefer to do a oil/polyurethane hand rub rather than go through the trouble of setting up a spray booth and buying a spray gun. So he said, "I have this episode of David Marks taped, lets go watch it, it will only take 10 minutes." Ten minutes later, David Marks says "While everyone knows by now that I prefer Tung Oil/Polyurethane as a finish, Nitorcellulose is the Cadillac of finishes." Marks goes on to show two guitars made by a friend of his that are Nitrocellulose finished....next thing you know my friend is looking for a spot to set up the paint booth :-) Anyway...My friend brought up the complication that we live in California and it might be hard to get Nitro in CA. Well I looked through a few websites and I found this one: http://www.woodfinishsupply.com/USCBase.html Anyone ever use stuff like this? Any suggestions or warnings? Also I ran across a link while looking for aniline dyes, It turns out this artist makes the beautifully ornate easter eggs and sells aniline dyes that dissolve in water & vinegar (although I think the vinegar is more for the easter egg application) for .95 cents a color. I figure you cant go wrong at that price, almost everyone else sells a can of powder for between $10 & $15 (usually a 4oz can) I have no ides how much you get for .95 cents. http://members.aol.com/pysankyshowcase/index.html I sure hope they work on wood, not just egg shells, otherwise I'll end up with egg on my face :-)

Well after reading through a bit of the Line6 user group link on his webpage, I would guess that they dont sell the electronics at all, it seems like their lawyers are very IP protective. So much so that they threatened to sue the guy for putting his guitar's electronics in a different body. Good thing he doesnt intimidate easily, he does great work. And my God, where does he get all that wonderful wonderful wood? The waves on that one green maple top guitar are deep enough to sink an oil tanker!!!

Wow very impressive. My question is where does one get Variax electronics without having to strip one down? It would be awesome to put Variax guts into a homemade axe. It would probably still cost a pretty penny since Line 6's woodwork is less than impressive.

Thanks for all of the advice. In answer to one of the replies above I got the crazy idea from both the instructions included with the truss rod and from a book I have on PRS guitars. The book shows a lot of necks in progress and you can clearly see how the channel runs the entire length of the neck. It just didn't make any sense to me why it was so. I guess from a mass production perspective its easier running a full length channel vs. stopping at the collar and chiseling out the end. I haven't posted any pictures yet, but I'm getting around to it. I was very happy with how easy it was to carve the top. I even got a little raised lip (like the PRS models) with relatively no trouble. Now I'm shaping the neck, but at the point where I am at, I think I should think about attaching the fretboard already. I cant get a good "feel" for the neck when its still 1/4" too thin. BTW no one had any comments good bad or otherwise about Stew-Mac & LMI's fretboard material raw stock. Here's your chance if you missed it the first time.

Hey there, I'm now just about done with the body on my double cutaway. I just bought a nice hunk of mahagony to make the neck out of. Before I get too far along with it I was wondering if I could get a little advice. I am using a hot rod dual action truss rod from Stew-mac. It has the 1/8" allen hex adjustment. It calls for a 7/32" wide channel in the neck. This being my first guitar I have a perhaps silly question....from most of the pictures of works in progress that I have seen, it looks like you route out the truss rod channel through the entire length of the neck, from about the nut all the way to the heel. It seems to me that if you do that there is nothing to prevent the truss rod from being pushed further into the cavity while making an adjustment. I know the instructions from stew-mac say to put a dab of silicone RTV to the end of the rod to keep it from rattleing, but I dont really trust RTV as a mechanical solution (to hold the truss rod in place securely). I thought perhaps of just routing out 17-18" worth of the neck so the truss rod doesn't have room to slide down, but I don't know if that is a bad idea. Am I worrying needlessly? Should there be solid wood under the nut & end of the fretboard? Any thoughts? My local high end wood supplier had pretty crappy selection of rosewood for fingerboards...a lot of pieces with kinks in the grain lines or splits, holes or other flaws. I am pondering using the fretboards sold by stew mac or LMI but I hate not being able to look through them and pick and choose. Anyone been pleased or diappointed by their stock? while I'm asking questions, I know this may be a better one to ask in electronics, but here goes anyway...Anyone know of suppliers that carry 5 position rotary switches (like the PRS style switch)?

I was calling him a nutjob because of the political rants he expresses on his website. I guess he has his soapbox and he intends to use it, but as a businessman, it doesn't make sense to piss off half of your clientele.....nutjob! Back to the bridge issue.... I've seen lots of the fixed intonation style bridges, but if the bridge radius is set for say a Gibson, wont it NOT work for a PRS radius?

WELL I didn't exactly buy into the hype since I'm buying the discarded parts rather than the ones Ed is recommending. You did read my post right, I'm pretty obviously mocking his recommendations. I just stumbled across the website while looking for PRS pickups. Are you saying his quality is suspect or just that he's a nutjob? If its the former then I guess I screwed up, but if its just the latter, then, no worries, there was no hype packaged along with the pickups, just bubble wrap. And if you know of another place to get PRS parts, please let us know. I'm sure the original poster (as well as myself) would appreciate that.

HI There, I had a rather stupid question, but one I would appreciate an answer to. I've been toying with building a hollow body guitar. Because of that thought, I've been looking at all sorts of guitars to get ideas from. The main thing that struck me in this process was,....since there is no electronics cavity on the back of the guitar, I assume that the pots and jack etc. are inserted through an already cut hole in the body after the guitar is painted.....Since the F-holes (like say on a 335 dot) are smaller than the back end of the pots I couldn't figure out how they got the little buggers in there. The only choice that seems reasonable is to put them in though the pickup cavities (if they have though holes into the body chamber). Is that right? If so, I'm guessing you have to prewire everything, shove it through the hole and then use your 10" long x 1/4" wide finger extensions (flexible of course) to route the knobs into the proper holes. Sounds insane....please tell me, how is this really done?

Stew-mac did not carry the intonable PRS style bridge that I wanted, but I found a really nice one from tone pros. It has the additional feature that you can lock the bridge in place with a pair of set screws. That way your bridge doesnt fall off if you should inadverantly loosen all of the stings at once while changing them and it makes intonation more repeatable. I think PRS doesn't really like the set intonation design, since they have begun using an adjustable bridge in their high end Dragon & McCarty models. However if you are really set on an original PRS bridge, then your best bet is Ed Roman Guitars in Las Vegas (you should be able to google them). HE takes pride in dismantling PRS's and then breathing new life into them by putting in Seymour Duncan Black Back pickups and God knows what else...whatever!! I got a pair of original Zebra coil HFS & Vintage Bass pickups for $40 each. (Thats half off the PRS price, although they are used, well used). My guess is Ed Roman would probably have that McCarty bridge for ya. He may even give you a choice of Nickel/Chrome or Gold finish. Good luck

Industrial graphite is just like pencil lead graphite, it WILL rub off on you. There are about a google of varieties of graphite, they all have the same chemical composition (Carbon) but they have different bonding structures. This leads to changes in the material properties, but its still dominated by the usual bulk graphite properties. In other words, it will always be brittle, youre likely to chip off parts of the body if you ding it. And if you ding it with something sharp, you may just cleave your guitar in half. Its rather soft (in comparison to hardwoods & tonewoods). And it makes a huge mess when you machine it. I usually see our machinists wear respiratory gear when they machine graphite. It does not contain minute glass particles, but the effect is similar to that of fiberglass-silicosis or asbestosis...for graphite its just carbon, but carbon fibers can be just as bad as glass fibers in your lungs.

Stickering is now my preferred method for storage (I just didnt know thats what it was called). The pictures of the lumber you see above are stacked just as you described, so if it helps, I should see the results of that when I take the stack down later. Heres the full stack.: from the bootm, figureb maple, straight mahogany, double walnut layer, and the twisted mahagony. Accodring to what you say I should have more supports and probably have the twisted board on the bottom so it bears more weight. Honestly though, I wopuld be afraid that it would twist back. I've been adised to build a sled so I can take off the high corners with a dado cutter and then the rest can be surfaced flat. I think I may just cul some long sections (like for a neck) and see just how bad the twist is, and if it can be hand planed flat.

No actually the giutar center guys quicky took the axe away from me when I came at it with my clipboard, a 24" scale and deep throat calipers :-) But seriously, I did it myself with a JPG off the PRS site. I drew a 12.5 " rectangle and then expanded the JPG to fit the nut to the 12th fret within that rectangle. Any round off error stems from there. It bothered me that the nut to high E saddle height was less than 25", but the lenght of the low E is much more than 25". I guess thats so you have room to intonate in either direction. Is that true or am I just plain fooling myself? I mostly wanted to get rough dimension that I could work from & know how much lumber to buy. How much I'd need for a neck etc. The really cool thing is that while it is imported into my CAD progarm (since its 3D) I can take my model and spin it around (looking at it from different angles) and the JPG that I am tracing spins with it...its quite a trip :-) My parts are on their way, I'm dying to get started, but I have to get my darm plotter working so I can have something to make a template with. Damn hi tech toys! By the way I think I am leaning toward making the neck from a mahagony walnut mahagony laminate.

Youre right, I missed some of the later posts before I posted my own. OOps, its pays to read, right? Anyway, the plexiglass over the speaker may deaden the sound way to much. Its not like you'll be driving it with a 10-20W amp, so it will already be limited even if you pop holes in the plexi. The frequency reponse will go to hell. I'd opt for a cloth or metal grill.

So finally I get to post some pictures: here is the figured maple: http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/w...ed/DSC04808.JPG thats the flamey side this one is the more quilted side: http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/w...ed/DSC04804.JPG And here is my tracing project: I hope I dont get in trouble with any lawyers http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/s...ntanaiibody.jpg

Great suggestion on the pignose or danelectro or Marshall or any of the little amplifiers out there for $60-100. Pick the tone you like and the put it into your guitar. I'd personally ditch the box and just figure out how they mounted their PCBs (little green electronics board) and use a similar pattern to attach to the guitar. As for a jack. Why bother. all the components are internal so you could actually wire the two wires you'd normally send to the output jack, directly into the input of the amp. wire to wire no 1/4" male & female jacks at all. The only reason for the external jack is the headphone/OFF function. Speaker placement---> if you want a lot of direct coupling, mount it under the strings like to picture above. I would use a grill cover to prevent an errant pick from slashing the speaker foam or cone. My guess it it would depend on what youre starting with. raw wood or an already existing flat-ocaster or a SG or whatever. BTW I have an almost working pignose in my garage that is doing nothing.

Its twisted so that a level sitting accros the diagonal has easily a 3/4" gap (relief for us guitar folk). Now could you explain stickering? The design you refer to is what I was considering making, but It bugs me that the heel has to be two piece. I need about 2.5" x 1.5" for what is visible on a custom 24 at the heel . I hope I dont get in trouble for this, but here is the design I am modeling, without the tremolo and with the swithching on the custom 24 instead of Carlos' funky mini switches. Whoops...you cant post images unless they are already in a website. I'll have to figure that one out later. I gotta get to work. But in short it is ever so slightly assymetrical.

How about some more advice.... Last April I bought a large piece of 8/4 mahogany (it was about 15" wide an 3 or 4 feet long). Over time (and perhaps due to poor storage conditions) it warped, it developed a twist to it diagonally. I paid too damn much to surface sand the board, but it would untwist as it went through the machine and make the effort futile. I ended up buying a nice straight piece of 6/4 mahogany (also 15" wide and about 4ft long), along with a beautifully figured (kinda flamed kinda quilted) 4/4 maple. I am making a double-cut set neck guitar, and I would like to make it with a one piece neck. However, I have invested quite a bit on wood already, so the thought of going out and buying a true 4" x 4" mahagony slab to get 2 necks out of is making me reconsider a one piece neck. I could laminate some of the twisted mahagony and get a two piece neck or laminate a 3rd piece of wood in there like some walnut I have lying around. I think it would be wasteful to use the figured maple for a skunk stripe, although it would look beautiful. I have not bought the fretwood board yet, but I'm thinking rosewood. Originally of course I asuumed I would built a materpiece worthy of the Smithsonian on my first try. But since then I figured I am bound to bow to the mighty Murphy sooner or later, so perhaps a two (or more) piece neck might work for Mark I. Any thoughts? Second, Am I asking for trouble using wood that has already warped on the neck of all places? Or is it safe to assume its done warping and I'll carve off most of what is not neck shaped.

As far as a template, i toyed for several weeks with generating my own using Photoshop and Solidworks (a seriously expensive 3DCAD program) However, since guitars arent exactly square, it was a bit diffucult getting the lofts sweeps and tapers to work right on the computer. Ihad a whole lot of fun rotating the guitar model like mad, but In the end I found some DXF/DWG files on a website recommended on a different thread that should work just fine. Unfortunately the 25" scale neck drawing had some bugs in it, so I could not download it. So in a sense I will use a template (paper) pasted on top of the wood as I bandsaw it. It would be nice to have a template to aid in the carving of the top, but thats too much to ask for I think. As for tools. I helped my buddy purchase a JET (or Delta) 14" bandsaw. He already owns a table saw & router. I have some of my own tools, but most of the seroius horsepower is in his shop. As for the bridge piece, I think I'll go with what I purchased, but I got mad at myself for forgetttign that I originally wanted to load the strings through the bottom of the guitar. Hey a question for the stoptail/bridge combo....Should mounting stud for the low E side be set back further (making the string much longer than the high E side). If so, how much. is there a good rule of thumb. I'm planning on using .011" gauge strings and I want to make sure I can get good intonation range and low action.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to start off a thread and introduce myself. I'm Ed from Pasadena, CA. Ive been working on my first guitar build for some time now. I havent actually cut any wood yet, but I've been doing a whole lot of searching on the net and in books & handmade music on the DIY channel. So far this is the best resource I have found yet. Thanks to Brian for keeping it up. I have always wanted a PRS Santana model, but since I cant break free of >$10000, I decided to build one. If that turns out ok, I'll plan on doing a semi-hollow body afterward. I've found a couple of good DWG & DXF files for a Les Paul double cutaway (which is the same shape as a Santana model PRS) I have purchased some of the hardware necessary to build the guitar: 1.8" hot rod truss rod, Super Jumbo frets wire, fret saw blade, fret template, abalone shells from the beach, and a bridge/tailpiece. Its the bridge tailpiece I am regretting right now. I wanted a stop tail that could be fully intonated, I found that TonePros make a wraparound bridge/tailpiece, that can be intonated, however in retrospect, I think I should have decided to use a TOM with the strings loading from the back of the guitar. It would have been cheaper and acoustically preferrable. Darn! I hate making bad decisions at 2am while online shopping! Anyway, I am still doing some "bookwork" before I start cutting wood. If anybody has any helpful resources that I might find useful, feel free to pass them along. Thanks -Ed