Argali

Okay, but that really doesn't help my problem. The damage is done, and I'm wondering how to fix it.

Quick story: I originally had Dunlop Strap Locks installed on my Gibson Les Paul Custom. Those sucked, so I had my luthier put in Schallers instead. Catch with those was he had to insert dowels and glue to make the thinner Schaller screws fit. Well, three years later...during band practice yesterday, the screw holding the top strap button came right out. How the hell do I fix this?

grizzly tools has a few different kits, one that is like a prs one has a floyd and one has a stoptail. they'll probably ship anywhere.. http://www.grizzly.com/products/item.cfm?itemnumber=H6082& dave ← This looks pretty cool, actually. Price-wise it's on par with Carvin's Bolt kit.

The F-holes aren't too bad, but they are damn big.

please do not disparage that guitar design.i like it very much,and i know for a fact that rob builds his guitars very well. i would play that guitar...not to mention nile is metal at it's insane best ← It's all good. I'm sure the guitar is great; I just don't like the headstock. For the record, I like Nile a lot.

Those KXK guitars are, er, nice, but far too metal for my tastes. The one that Karl Sanders from Nile is playing is ridiculous - the headstock looks like a stupid polearm! Man, some of those guys get so carried away... Soloway is a cool guy, and I've traded e-mails with him some years back. His guitars aren't necessarily for jazzheads only. I think they'd fit well for the music I play - a weird mix of bands like Isis and Neurosis, Jesu/Godflesh, Failure and Deadguy. Thing is, they're a bit pricey as is, and I think he'd charge me more to build a Swan with a slightly longer scale that's tuned B-to-B. Myka is looking very appealing right now, because I'm in New Jersey and he's not all that far away from me. Hrm... As far as building my own, that's coming. I'm an apartment dweller right now, so I don't have room for any serious tools or anything like that. I plan to continue reading as much as I can until I can purchase a house with a garage, which will hopefully be within the next five years. I'm asking about custom builders because my fiancee is looking to get me a nice guitar as my engagement "present" (I got her a ring, she wants to get me a guitar - pretty sweet deal, no?), and I've always wanted a really nice baritone.

Pretty cool stuff, but they seem to fall more in the Superstrat/Ibanez JEM camp, which doesn't interest me much. I really like Jim Soloway's Swan, but I'm looking for a slightly longer scale length, tuned B-to-B.

Don't know these fine gentlemen, alas. Any links to their work...?

Can anyone suggest some good luthiers who do custom electric baritones? Looks like I'll have the ability to spend about $2,000 on one soon enough, and I'm currently hunting around for some good ideas.

Isn't that Korean-made?

I like the idea of a splalted maple fretboard. That would definitely create a guitar you don't see everyday.

One very annoying thing about Warmoth is the lack of available options with their baritone conversion necks. I will give them credit about answering e-mail fast, but the conversation I had with them also consisted of me asking a bunch of questions and getting a string of, "Nope, can't do that" in response.

I was perusing through some strange Meshuggah forum, and the cats on there claimed the Nevborns didn't stay in tune very well. I find that hard to believe, but there it is. It's interesting to note that Fredrik Nevborn is a graduate of the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery.

But that doesn't really make sense. Check out the Nevborn site - those guitars are amazing. I can't imagine that anything Ibanez could build would match that. (Then again I notice there are hordes of Ibanez-lovers in this place...)

Really? I thought they used them exclusively to record Nothing. I saw both guitarists use them live, through POD Pros, and they sounded like pure mud. Shame because they're beautiful guitars.

So exactly why are the guitarists in Meshuggah using Ibanez guitars again instead of their custom-built Nevborn 8-strings?

I'd rather not have this thread derailed into the silly "EMGs negate the qualities of all tonewoods" debate. I have EMGs in one guitar and they're fine pickups. But I think I will want passives in my pending baritone, just as a personal preference thing. Back to talking about woods! I e-mailed Warmoth today to get a price quote on a redwood Tele body. Stay tuned.

I should explain a bit more. Essentially my friend and I want to build baritones because we're interested in exploring new sounds. We find ourselves wanting to tune our standard-scale guitars down further than they already are (tuned to dropped-C), but then we began to think, Why not just build baritones? While you can tune a conventional guitar down very low, this can cause complications. Intonation becomes a bitch. Staying in tune can sometimes be a challenge. If you want to go down as low as B or A, you have to use very thick strings, and for some that isn't an easy progression. And even with thick strings, sometimes the tension is very loose and "wobbly," even when set up by a good luthier. I've recently gotten into guitar mods and repair as a new hobby. After 14 years of playing, I want to get more involved with actually making guitars. The baritone project is going to be one of the first guitars I try to put together from pre-made parts - mostly Warmoth stuff. So right off the bat we're looking at a bolt-on neck. It will most likely also be one body wood that we're talking about, because I like the idea of making a baritone Tele Deluxe (two humbucker design). Pickups are another thread entirely, really. I am leaning toward a set of good passives, though my friend wants to use EMGs. It's a bit tough to articulate exactly what kind of sound I'm going for. I'm not what many people call a "flogger" - someone who tunes down in a dropped-tuning just to bang away on big, one-finger monkey chords. I like heavy rhythms and complex chords, and I need a guitar that can deliver them with both clarity AND a sense of warmth. Sometimes clarity translates to sterility or an almost digital lack of presence; I hear this on a lot of thinner "shredder" guitars, like my RG550. The antithesis of that is my Les Paul, but the sound coming out of that walks a very fine line between being muddy and being articulate. So I'm looking for something that can deliver a kind of sonic density, with a very warm and organic low end, as well as non-harsh, almost piano-like highs. This is very important to me. Many guitars that are designed for "metal" players over-emphasive low-end chunk withou paying attention to the rest of the guitar's register. So you'll be playing chords on the high strings and suddenly everything sounds ghastly. I have never been a "scooped" kind of guy when it comes to tone, and neither is my friend. In fact I have my Rivera Knucklehead 100 set up so that all my tone controls are over 6. I'm also not one to adhere to wive's-tale philosophies on guitar design. I'm not automatically dismissing maple as the body choice. Hell, the more I think about it, it could work out well. But as you point out, why do what others have done? How often have you seen a koa baritone? Remember that half the point of building our own guitars is to satisfy ourselves and our own innate curiousity. The other half is to sound damn good.

Very interesting. With that tuning, and how you use it, I think your Strat is more in the territory of a Fender Type VI or the new Jaguar Baritone Custom, which has a 30-inch scale length and is tuned like a six-string bass. So what didn't you like about the original alder body? And what kind of pickups did you ultimately put in there?

I like ebony.

Wonderful posts so far guys, very helpful. I think everyone should consider what I'm trying to do - make a baritone instrument that really doesn't currently exist on the market. Therefore I don't have much to compare it to. I can look at other guitars out there and talk about what I like and dislike, but then you have to wonder if those woods or wood combinatiosn will sound good in baritone form. Sure, we're really only talking about an increased scale length and heavier strings, but it's amazing the difference that can make on the overall tone of the guitar. In a way, then, I feel like I'm stepping into alien territory a bit. There are some baritones out there that come close to what I'd like to do, but really it seems many are made just by slapping a longer neck on a standard guitar body. This seems to be the case with the Fender Sub-Sonic and the Les Paul Studio Baritone, at least. Everything I know about tone woods I know from playing standard-scale guitars. My Les Paul is the classic maple/mahogany combo, my Fender Strat is made of alder and my Ibanez RG550 is basswood. I personally don't like basswood very much. Alder is a very nice and balanced tone wood. And of course the LP sounds great, but would that wood mix work on a baritone? Would it be too muddy, especially when you're talking about using very heavy strings and tuning A-to-A? Some thoughts: 1. Other than the Harrison Tele and a specific model of PRS, I have not seen a guitar made of rosewood - not even very expensive custom jobs. This makes me wonder. Warmoth does offer them, though. 2. Solidbody electrics made of redwood are even more rare. I'm not sure if Warmoth offers them, either.

Looking at baritone guitars currently on the market as a comparison point are tricky. I'm building a custom guitar where money is really not an object (I intend to spend quite a bit of time putting this together). Mass-market guitars are often built with less-than-ideal tone woods as a way to keep cost down. I know - I have an Ibanez basswood guitar. This isn't really a bad thing, but I want the best tone I can get. I don't mind spending the money on a more expensive body wood. It may be that alder is a good choice - turns out a model of the Nevborn 8-string guitars made for Meshuggah has an alder body. Warmoth describes padouk to be close to maple tonally, so that while the wood is beautiful, it may not be the right choice. Rosewood is a very intriguign possibility. I've read that it can be heavier than mahogany. Why is it difficult to work with? And if I did get a rosewood body, I obviously wouldn't paint it. I'd want some kind of finish that would let the beauty of the wood show.

Arguably, alder was used in all three guitars to reduce their total cost. I'm sure that was the case with the Jackson.

Hmmm. You make a good point. However it seems that baritones made of swamp ash and alder are rare, no?

Swamp Ash is generally a bright wood though, correct? I've wondered about using a brighter wood to compensate for the heavy strings/low tuning that we will use (we're going toshoot for A-to-A tuning), but I'm not exactly sure this will be the best approach. I've read many reviews of people complaining that maple and swamp ash are excessively bright.