orgmorg

Tulip wood is what's called American poplar

No, "Tulip poplar" is not the same as the "Tulip wood" that is being discussed here.

Confusing, yes, but they are very different woods.

I would actually use a dowel. If the point of using the cross grain plug is to match the grain of the top, but then you don't bother to finish it to match, because it doesn't show, then W-T-F?

A dowel is going to have much more integrity than a cross grain plug with a hole drilled in it anyway.

Actually, I would have just left the bridge the way it was; even though, as everybody knows, any deviation from the way things were done in 1954 will result in vastly inferior tone.

I am assuming the new posts won't thread into the old bushings?

What exactly are the new and old bridges you are dealing with?

I went with the L5, just a really great looking guitar, nice and simple. A few rough spots, but they actually go well with it.

Madhattr's is absolutely perfect. I probably should have voted for it, but something about the L5 really got me.

A lot of good stuff going on with the Hellcat, but a couple things catch my eye~ the veneer on the back of the headstock looks pretty rough where it transitions into the neck. Also, I really don't care for the bridge at all, and have a hard time believing it intonates properly.

Decadentjohn's guitar is fantastic, but I really want to see a big CBS Fender headstock on it for some reason.

Looks like someone else noticed something fishy:

http://www.wkrn.com/story/15325684/feds-raid-gibson-guitar-corp-in-nashville

"Hmm.. let's just call it Obeche, and no one will know the difference..."

Although, now that I think about it, I suppose there is no more reason to believe that "southern swamp ash" actually comes from the south than there is to believe the "submerged portion of the tree" bit. Actually, a shorter growing season would be more conducive to lighter weight, as the denser summer wood would be in a closer ratio to the porous winter wood.

Swamp Ash is actually just another name for Black Ash

Ah, but this is another myth.

Black ash (Fraxinus nigra) is a northern species. It is indeed also known as "swamp ash" as it prefers swampy locations, but many other species of ash have been called "swamp ash" as well.

Don't confuse folk nomenclature with marketing jargon.

I have had warmoth necks before with clay dots - even had one were i needed to swap them for pearl. it seemed to be ordinary plastic rod, not as brittle as bakelite. i could not be sure what they are made from but i wouldnt describe it as anything but relatively soft plastic. i see they advertise the phenolic dots - they also state they are cream

They do state that they are cream, but they are really just an off-white. Bakelite may not be the right term, but they are definitely some sort of phenolic. They look like they are spooged into little molds, and you can see the little sprue on one end. They're about 1/4" tall too. I insert them about 3/32", cut them flush with a fine saw, and have another dot left over.

So let me get this straight my hand rolled, with killer beez wax by jamacian princess cap doesnt make me sound like Jimi?

Only if you get the ones that are rolled left handed.

Have you tried the Warmoth dots? They are phenolic (bakelite.) I haven't used them in rosewood though, so I don't know if they darken like that.

Ya, I don't use the ceramics either. Mostly because they are percieved to be cheap/inferior. I don't mind shelling out an extra 50 cents for a capacitor to appease the voodoo gods. What gets me is the $20 ultra boutique caps. Even if someone specifically requested one of those and was willing to pay for it, I'd like to think I would refuse purely on principle.

But after doing this test, I totally see how people can really believe they are hearing these amazing tonal differences they get themselves psyched up for. Like: "Wow, man! I put these Mullard Mustard caps in my Strat and it totally makes my Peavey Bandit sound like a Marshall plexi!!"

The human brain is a never ending source of amusement.

Don't waste your time.

I went ahead and cobbed together a test panel like I was describing.

Set up this circuit, and a normal circuit side by side.

Spent some time switching back and forth between the two.

Not a bit of difference.

I think using the lower value caps (which does make a difference) is still new enough to me that I am hearing differences in comparison to the higher value caps in my head.

Maybe I need to start doing drugs again.

I guess the tone cap still offers a much less resistive path than the treble bleed cap, even for the freqs that would normally go through the latter.

Oh well, I'm learning something anyway, I suppose.

Nice!!

I know how hard it is to get decent pics of combinations of distressed surfaces and bright plating.

Good point, but I don't have one like that, nor am I likely to. I would build one if someone requested it, but that hasn't happened yet, and I much prefer the 1 vol 1 tone setup for anything I build on spec.

I thought about putting one together just for test purposes, but I think what I will end up doing is building an outboard test station with a variety of switches and pots and such connected to alligator clips so I can easily swap out caps and resistors, and have two (or even more) parallel circuits to switch between. Then, before I do any final wiring in a guitar, I can wire the pickup switch straight to the output jack, plug into the test board and have at it. Then I can swap out components without soldering anything.

Yes it would. Then I could see how much of this is all in my head.

I will soon have another guitar done that is similar enough to do a reasonable A/B comparison.

Ha, it didn't hit me until I read Wez's post that I had voted for a blue quilted maple top.

And with gold hardware, no less.

My typical aversion to those two elements barely even registered amongst the splendor of everything else about this guitar.

Actually, the gold looks great in conjunction with the black alumitones and the snakewood tuner buttons.

How many legs is a horse supposed to have?

Most have four, but them Norse deities did everything in a big way (Cue Wagner opera with Bugs Bunny.) Sleipnir, Odin's Steed had eight.

Truly awesome and appropriately over the top!!

2 P90's with 250k pots. I initially had 500k pots, but the guitar was overly bright due to the body wood being oak, so I put the 250's in. That's really how this came about~ needing a usable tone control to moderate the piercing treble. It's nice to have that available for when you really want to cut through for a lead, but it is also nice to be able to turn the tone control down without sounding like your amp is buried in a pile of laundry.

It seems to work better with the 250k pots than it did with the 500k

I have also used it on a guitar with a P90 neck/Tele bridge (also 250k pots)

I like the idea of doing it as a '54, but you will probably need to use a flux capacitor on the tone control.

I have never really liked the way the typical tone control on a guitar just turns everything to mud, so I got to tinkering with it.

I usually use a .001 treble bleed cap with a parallel resistor across the vol pot. In this mod, the resistor stays put, but the cap goes between the middle lug of the Vol pot and the normally unused lug of the tone pot. Then I switch the other two lugs around, so the lead from the vol pot goes to the wiper of the tone pot, and the tone capacitor is on the lug that lead would normally go to. I don't know enough about electronics to really say exactly what is going on, but My guess is that as you turn the tone knob into the normally muddy zone, it passes some higher freqs back to the output, with increasing resistance. It really makes a huge difference, and turns it into a much more usable control. I like a .010 or .015 tone cap with it, but it works good with a .022 as well. I figured I would share it here, and maybe someone else could explain it better and even improve upon it, in terms of fine tuning it and such. Possibly it has even been done before, but I have never seen it.

Well, since you are already copying a few of Gibson's other lousy practices, why not go all the way?

Just a little good natured kidding there, I'm sure these will be excellent instruments regardless.

Well everybody does seem to be putting bear knuckles in their guitars these days.

I used a polished stone ball, about 2" diameter.

Butternut is not very strong. Using it like you said, with the walnut would be a good idea. The grain is almost identical, just a lighter color, so you would get a nice two tone effect.

As for the tone, I have no idea. The gutars I built out of it sound great, but I am not good at describing tone.

Butternut can vary a lot. Some is very even grained, like on Maggotbrain's guitar, and some has a lot of reaction wood with very fuzzy grain. You can see this in the log. It will be very lumpy looking. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion, just something to be prepared for when working it.

Hey, that looks familiar!

I had forgotten about that, glad to see it taking shape.

I like butternut. It is lightweight, but yes, it is very soft, and will dent if you look at it too hard.

I use this to my advantage by beating on it and using the resulting texture to create cool stain effects.

A propane torch can add a nice touch, as well.

But you know me, I will build a guitar out of anything.