GEdwardJones

That is one really beautiful doctor job you've done, looks beautiful!    

I'm surprised nobody has offered 'Iommi Black w/ upside down crosses' yet. 

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the thing that always kills me about this...

Iommi's crosses are RIGHT SIDE UP

Everybody misses that one.

For the prices Wesley sells guitars for it makes you wonder how much they cost to make. My wood alone for my first project is gonna cost me about as much as some of their guitars get sold for.

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Unless you're a bulk manufacturer you can never guage how much a mass produced guitar "should" cost in relation to how much it would cost you to make the same thing.

And yet, someone still bought it for more than you paid for it.

We should all be so lucky.

I guess it all depends. There are some objective things that make guitars bad, (lack of) quality is one of them. I mean, if crap starts falling off when you touch it, or the nut is cut incorrectly, or all the pots are crap. That's easy to define as "bad." But when people start saying stuff like, "they all sound terrible," or "they play like crap," well, that's subjective and should be taken what it's worth.

Personally I have a bias towards cheap guitars, because I'm never afraid to drop a cheap guitar. Plus, my three best playing guitars combined cost roughly half what my worst playing guitar cost new, and I'd put two of them up against anything you've got, tonally. So, I've had good experience with them.

But that's just me, your mileage may vary.

I can talk from experience about Wesley guitars, I bought a warlock copy from them recently with the intention of using it to learn about setups, fretting etc.

I paid about £50 - it wasn't worth £5!!

There absolutely junk I would recommend spending the money on beer, playboy, pringles, cheese or a lotto scratch-card,  all immeasureably more value than these guitars!

I sold mine about a week after i bought - for more than I paid I might add..

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Well then, seems it was a good purchase

you guys will never listen and will never learn.

go ahead,disagree all you want.if you took those guitars apart and knew what you were looking at,you would very quickly come to realize that NOBODY can make a good production guitar and sell for those prices and make a profit.nobody.

i would not waste my money on a squier either.but a squier is in fact a better guitar than those rondos.maybe after a few years you will learn.and then you will regret all of the barely playable guitars you have sitting around...i know i do.

i only wish somebody would have been around to help me out when i bought my first guitar...then i would not have spent the last two years wondering how to make it decent.

because it was my first guitar i love it and could never part with it...but it is very low quality...

but even so,the quality of the guitar i am talking about easily surpasses the guitars at that rondo store,one of which i have hanging on my wall while i try futiley to figure out how to salvage it after the fingerboard seperated.

now i can clearly see all of the fits,glue joins,and inner workings of this guitar,and as i already said in another thread...it is pure bastardization of wood.

can i make myself any clearer?

but go ahead.buy your junk.

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Lesse, I've been playing guitar for, damn, almost 20 years now. I bought an Agile Les Paul from Rondo two years or so ago and I still play it regularly when I'm not feeling "metal." It's a good guitar.

There IS a difference between "inexspensive" and "cheap." Making blanket generalizations about inexspensive guitars does no one any good.

Here's the deal. Bass occupies a greater dynamic range than guitar. That is that speakers for a bass amp have to be less "focused" than those of a guitar (this is why you'll often see bass amps that can also act as keyboard amps and PAs). While I disagree that you'll get a "better" sound from a proper bass amp (a lot of the bass that you grew up listening to and listen to today was recording through guitar amps) you will get a more accurate sound through a bass amp.

That being said, remember that greated dynamic range? The speaker in a guitar amp is NOT designed to move that much. Actually producing the lowest note on a typical four string bass is pretty much pushing the speaker as far as it was designed to go. Add high volumes to this and you're asking to rip your speaker cone in half.

Which, you know, will really only just make you sound like Lemmy, Danny Lilker, or Pete Steele, so that might be good for you.

I like the last drawing a bit more, it keeps it from looking too muchc like a Rosewell, as people above have stated. That being said, I also agree with curving the bottom a little more for symmetrical purposes.

It reminds me of one of Prince's "cloud" guitars.

???

Never heard of that one, although I'll ask one of my friends who has more of a specialty in patent law. A good way to help your trademark/dress case would be to engage in interstate commerce with your product. It can be as simple as sending a purchased item to a friend in another state as long as they give you money for it. That may be where you're getting the idea of mailing a letter to your attorney.

A certified mail receipt is pretty tough to be considered as evidence proving the date of your idea because it doesn't prove the date of the document inside the envelope, only the date the envelope was mailed somewhere. You could have mailed envelopes out to people and stuffed them later, you know?

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To clear this up, 'cos this is a common misconception.

You can NOT use a certified mail receipt as proof of the date of creation in the US. However, and this is where it gets fun, the "poor man's copyright" is a recognized part of English common law. So, if you're in the US and you try this is highly doubtful that it'll work. But if you're one of our friends from across the pond, you've got better chances. (I actually just found this out myself, I knew it wasn't valid in the US, but not that it WAS valid somewhere.)

There was a point, not too long ago, when I could give you every spec on every RG in production over a 10 year period without even thinking about it.

But that time has passed, sooooooooo..

What you have is one of two things:

1. An old RG150 that's been retrofitted with a single locking bridge. This would account for both the plywood body and the IBZ neck, as well as the "good try, but not quite" monkey grip route.

2.A chinese copy with an IBZ neck tossed on it. China is notorious for backwards engineering products (both legally and illegally) so quickly that they can have the knockoff on the market before the original appears.

The bridge is a little bit of a conundrum because, it DOES look to the naked eye pretty much exactly like a Edge Pro looks, right down to the IBZ style push fit arm, but it could very well be a Chinese copy.

Either way, you got it for about $35US, so that ain't bad.

Pretty sure its not an edge, the edge is a double locking bridge this is a replica of an Ibanez not an origional and its single locking. It only locks at the nut not at the bridge.

I dont have callipars or anything and Im trying to see if a OFR will fit it. The tremblock is also to small for the route as the springs bend around the the wood when you pull up. I really am not haappy eith this bridge, I need to replace the nut so the low quality really doesnt point to an edge. The strings almost come out when you bend dive bomb and the tuning stability is crap.

Help would be great.

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It looks like the new Edge Pro. If memory serves the Edge Pro can work as a double OR single locking trem (but I'm a bit rusty on my IBZ trems). But, yeah, everything about that picture says Edge Pro to me.

Not correct. If he uses a locking nut and tightens the nut, the strings can possibly (and quite probably with a cheap locking nut) go out of tune and since he can't tune at the bridge, he'll be stuck with bad tuning.

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A locking nut is designed to lock strings in place, thus are high friction, by using the base, but not the actual lock he's increasing his chances of nut-based tuning problems (the type that, with a regular nut, you'd probably fix with a pencil or a drop of lube). He'd reduce the probability of having these problems if he locked down the nut.

But, in the end it might be 6 of one a half dozen of the other.

I actually kinda like it natural.  I think it has character.  I'd keep it as is because of that.

People are weird.  They see this and they say "that's ugly wood" but then they see something topped with spalted maple and they go ga-ga.

Spalted = diseased, decayed and dead.

But, you know, your guitar.  Have fun with it.

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But the thing is, it really isn't that nice a wood - rather featureless and a dull green. However, I do love natural wood finishes, so I think nitefly's suggestion of staining the front (and keeping it natural) is a good compromise, it will take the dull green-ness away and add some richness while at the same time keeping the natural wood and odd laminate dimensions.

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It's really all perspective. You may like a piece of wood that others hate or you may hate a piece of wood that others like. In the end it's your guitar, have fun with it. I like the wood natural, it's so imperfect that it has kind of a cool vibe to me. Maybe I just think you have great finishing skillz. Either way, have fun, do what makes you happy.

I actually kinda like it natural. I think it has character. I'd keep it as is because of that.

People are weird. They see this and they say "that's ugly wood" but then they see something topped with spalted maple and they go ga-ga.

Spalted = diseased, decayed and dead.

But, you know, your guitar. Have fun with it.

If SPEED is what you're after, then thin is in. If TONE is what you're after, then fat is fab.

Vai may have the speed on that skinny little Ibanez neck, but Jeff Beck has the killa tone with those old baseball bat necks on his Strats.

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I always HATE when people say this.

I like big honkin fat necks. I have fairly big hands and wrist problems. Thin necks literally HURT to play for long periods of time. But even not counting that I could always play faster with fat necks than with thin necks simply because they were more comfy.

Thin != Fast

You'll play fastest on the neck that best fits your hand, not the one that's smallest.

A friend of mine found some perfect condition barstools by the dumpster at her apartment. Since she needed barstools at the time she got them, washed them down with bleach and then she and my wife painted them with some silver hammered texture paint. That was a little under two years ago and the stools still look good even after regular use.

The worst thing about using such a beautiful top is you have to cut routes into it, I hate seeing any of it get routed away.  Oh well what can you do.  Very nice top Drak, you definately pick out some of the best wood.  Later. J

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It's not a bad thing. It's just complicated. No one understands it, but his woman....

I know it cover, I have done it too, but I find is a lot easier to cover white with black or any other color. 

Especialy when using spray cans, or my cheapo airbrush.  I have to use the lighter colors firts

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Actually, a bigger problem is red. I've always had a horrible time with red covering white. Even if the white was a primer...

Nobody actually compared you to Ed Roman.

Personally, I don't know enough about Kauri to know.  But I know the second you say "agathis" people will tell you your guitar won't sound good.  That's not true.

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Err, yeah, I musta misread somewhere, sorry bout that, it's pretty early round here(for me at least, and after 3 pages of bitching, its easy to get confused)

And I never said agathis till borge I think it was brought it up. Anyway there are 2 or 3 threads about the differences between agathis's, or should I say, agathi'. Yeah Asian agathis is rubbish, but I like the vitensis(fijian) its light and easy to carve, and I've got enough for 3 or 4 more guitars, so I'm not complaining about it. But obviously it's considered rubbish by people who are in the know. But thats just like pine, dang I've got a crumby lap steel I made one afternoon from scrap pine while waiting for some glue to dry, I didn't ever bother finishing the electronics cos it sounds so good acoustic.

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Eh, no biggie. I basically said that if Paul Reed Smith and Ed roman were on this board, they'd still have to play nice. The comparison there was basically two people you wouldn't expect to play nice together. It was an analogy, maybe not the best one.

As far as Agathis goes. Lots of people say it sucks, but if memory serves, Ibanez actually introduced a more "upscale" model of a guitar (The AX, the LP Jr/SG knockoff) because several of their endorsers (John 5 and The Prodigy's Gizz Butt to be exact) loved the cheapie, agathis one so much.

So, you know, there's something for everyone.

*** is happening, I go to sleep, wake up, and my thread is 3 pages of irrelevant bitching.

People please, calm! Perry, you can be a grade A jerk sometimes!

Kevan, can I start a new thread once I've got the pics?

Now, if you people read, I said my dad called and I can't use their workshop now till friday. I planned this build to a schedule that revolved around when the workshop is empty(I need to use the bandsaw, table saw, planer and mill, so I need a bit of space). My home workshop is the perfect size for me,IF I continue on the path of only hand powertools, but I'm not(I'm eying up a bandsaw and table saw).

Now I got a call not long after my original post, telling me that their customer had underestimated the number of plug installations needed to do(imported welders) and it was 3-4 days worth not 1 day. So most of the week, he will be away from his work, and under OSH rules I can't be there using machinery unsupervised(I'm only 16) and there is an inspector based next door, so his boss would come back from holiday, and have no business. So I will now be building it from friday, but it will give me time to glue wood up first(my kauri comes in 80"x9" boards) and finish making the routing templates(I'm chambering and all that).

I dont appreciate being compared to people like ed roman and litchfield.

And Fijian kauri ain't really that cheap anymore, stocks are declining so cost are going up, I scored this wood free, so I can keep cost down further for my friends.

And Perry, when you have problems and want to personally attack me, do it in PMs.

And I'd would hope, to have some progress pics by monday or tuesday.

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Nobody actually compared you to Ed Roman.

Personally, I don't know enough about Kauri to know. But I know the second you say "agathis" people will tell you your guitar won't sound good. That's not true.

Yes, like I trust you to not sell my address to the Chasey Lain fan club....

If Perry wants to prevent another Litch incedent then Perry should not come out of the gate insulting people. Nobody here wants to be insulted, nobody here deserves to be condescended to first thing. I couldn't care less if Perry was Paul Reed Smith and Mr. Alex was Ed Roman, he should still play nicely with the other kids.

Oh, I agree and I'm just tryin' to be a voice of reason. We all know Perry is a grouchy perfectionist and it's his way or the highway, always been, always will be. Nothing to see here, move along...

I'm curious to see how this Agathis monster turns out, anyway. Never heard anything good made from that wood so it should be cool if it turns out right.

Later taters, I'm going to go watch Wedding Crashers now

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The problem with using "cheap" woods like agathis and poplar is that people see "oh, that's made with _________" and are automatically biased against it.

Personally, I'm of the belief that everything sounds good to somebody

Whoa, Whoa, WHOOOOAAAA!!!

Okay, before people start getting banned again...time out, cool off, think about where this is all coming from. Perry's looking to keep another Litch incident from happening again, and some people are getting pissed that he's not putting smileys in his statements. It's not worth ruining another thread over.

Breathe.

Mr. Alex, show us what you got and prove 'em wrong. I think that's what he really wants, after all?

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Crafty,

If Perry wants to prevent another Litch incedent then Perry should not come out of the gate insulting people. Nobody here wants to be insulted, nobody here deserves to be condescended to first thing. I couldn't care less if Perry was Paul Reed Smith and Mr. Alex was Ed Roman, he should still play nicely with the other kids.

If telling people that they should be civil is out of line, what is IN line?

Your initial response in this thread was, at best, spiteful and meanspirited.  Now if you want to be spiteful and meanspirited, fine, have a ball.  But, then you have to accept that people are going to call you on it.  Making threats to people who call you on it is a craptastic thing to do.

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No, it was a comment to someone who seems to talk a lot but not post pics of his work. If he HAS to post about selling a carved top guitar for $500 NZ, he aint a very experienced guitar maker....

Change your signature, as per these rules

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Yes, I will change my signature to RIP - Mitch Hedberg. 'Cos, you know, THAT'S a huge breach of decorum.

You're not helping your case here.

My old ROTC instructor defined tact as "the ability to tell someone to go to hell and have them look forward to the trip."

If you thought dude was making a mistake maybe you should've informed him of such without the inflammatory language. Nobody likes being called a prostitute. Although, it could be a cultural thing, maybe it's more offensive up here than down there, I dunno, I doubt it, but could be.

Either way, I stand by my post.

Also, I changed my post to something which is both within the forum rules and undeniable.