Ripthorn

I made my own miter box for the fret slotting saw and it works great. It took about 30 minutes and was made entirely of scrap MDF. As for a long radiusing beam, you could always make one with your router using the tutorials on this site. I love the look of that bar sander for $9.

You could strap resistors to get a roughly log taper (which is what I meant to say). With the amp, you could always put the pot at the end of the circuit and use the pot as a variable voltage divider and then the value of the pot is much less of an issue. I have used 100k's in place of 1M for volume before and the difference is not drastic. The grounding of the signal is all dependent on the ratio of the resistances the signal sees, so having a 200k resistance to ground will only be slightly (perhaps not even noticeably) quieter than a 500k. Here is what I would do: If the amps volume pot is in the circuit somewhere (not on the end) then I would hard wire a full-on control (0 series resistance to the signal with 100k to ground) and put the pot on the output of the amp's circuit (as long as you don't exceed the amp's power output, then put the pot just before the power amp section). If you are concerned about that, then get yourself a dual concentric pot and wire up one of the sets of lugs for the regular pickup and strap resistors across the lugs to get your 100k log taper, then you have independent controls and don't need the 4PDT switch and can get away with a much cheaper DPDT.

If you have a link to the schematic for the amp, that would help. There are other possibilities here as well: - Use the 500k pot for guitar volume, but when switched have the switch put in two resistors strapped from the outer lugs to the middle lug such that you get a roughly 100k linear pot - Compromise with 250k pot - Use 100k pot and when switched to guitar mode, put a 100k or so resistor between the pot ground lug and ground - Use two different pots so that he can have completely independent controls I'm sure there are others, those are just off the top of my head.

The standard posts are little thin posts with thumbwheels on them while the posts are more substantial and can be adjusted from the top (as opposed to the side) using a flat head screwdriver. This is preferred when recessing the bridge. If you aren't recessing the bridge, you could go with either, but I'm a sucker for the stud mounted version. If you want to go real cheap, you can find ones on ebay for really cheap, but the quality will likely be reflected in that. Best of luck and remember, failing is all in how you define it

For the control cavity, 1.5" is a typical depth on most fender models. You can go shallower if your parts allow for it.

The most important part of a DI box is to do the impedance matching that you will need. That will depend on your source and your intended output or receiving device. If using an unbuffered piezo, you need to account for it differently than using passive magnetic pickups. I'm sure it's possible, though I might personally rather start a DI box from scratch rather than rework something that is not purpose made for the application. That being said, go for it and see what happens.

There is an ebay dealer that I like that sells generic double action rods for cheap. He also has a website called bitterrootguitars.com. Shipping is usually free or cheap, and he is very nice and very fast. I am not affiliated with him in any way, just a pleased customer.

bump. Would dropping the price $10-20 make it any more attractive to anyone?

For binding, you probably don't need the swan neck (though it is really handy for other guitar-related things). I would probably just go with a medium thickness straight scraper for bindings, especially if this is your first time using one. But that's just me.

I love the look of that Hannes bridge, I really want to put one on one of my next builds. If you are going to remove that dam after pouring in the epoxy, I would use waxed paper so that it will peel of easily. I love this build, glad to see it coming back again.

I saw your wood stash at TDPRI. I am incredibly jealous. I'm going to get myself some em6000 for my current builds. I hope it turns out as well as yours.

That switch will do the trick. I was thinking the three way toggle switches.

I have a used EMG 81/85 set with the tone/vol pots, output jack and battery terminal (see pics). The leads are incredibly long, but the jacketing in a couple of small places has been melted slightly due to my inexperience with a soldering iron when I first installed these. The 85 has the terminal connection but the 81 does not. They are in perfect working order with some small, slight scratches on the top. The only reason I'm selling is because they just aren't my sound. Asking $110 shipped to CONUS.

I am thinking about getting a solid carbide spiral bit for truss rod channels. My question is whether you guys prefer upcut or downcut and why? Do you like a smoother bottom or a smoother top edge? What you all think?

Links don't work for me. How about some photobucket or similar? I love seeing budget builds.

A typical 3 way switch doesn't allow for 3 pickups, only two, because the center position is just bridging the two contacts for the outer positions. You will need either a 5 way or three individual toggles. Tell the dude those are his only two options (unless you can find an appropriate DPDT on/on/on switch, but I doubt one will work for this particular configuration). At least, that's my gut reaction.

One thing to remember is that winding a pickup to 4.8k with 43 gauge wire is going to have more output than a pickup wound to 4.8k with 44 gauge wire. This is because wire has a hire resistance per foot as the gauge increases (diameter decreases). Therefore, you get fewer wraps of 44 gauge, resulting in lower output. However, Ricks and Danos had famously low output pickups, which is one big reason why they are so sparkly clean (more windings will tend to make high end roll off). Also, your capacitor won't matter much to your circuit as long as the pot is on 10. 250k pots should be fine, but if you need more high end, swapping for 500k's is easy. P.S. Welcome aboard, the addiction has just begun.

For some odd reason I thought they were aluminum. Never mind me, then.

Getting them anodized would probably be pretty cheap, and you could get a wide range of colors. Powder coating aluminum is also pretty easy and durable, though you will likely have a greater finish thickness with powder coating.

I personally like either the Aria or the Jazz Bass. I have never been too big on the Rickenbacker aesthetic and if I were in a similar position, I would want my primary instrument to result from it. I do think the Aria's horns are a little pointy, but overall I think it would work well. The jazz bass is fairly hard to argue with when so many great bassists have used one. Anyway, that is a guitarist's two cents.

A blend pot is different. It has two rows of lugs and in my opinion is much better than just going with a standard pot. What I would do is add another pot (a blend one) that combines the output of the selector switch with the piezo. Run the output of the blend to the volume and tone and have them work as master controls. Of course, your other option is to hang the tone circuit off the output of the selector switch, therefore "only" applying it to the magnetic pickups. I use the quotation marks due to the fact that the blend pot is a passive device and therefore the tone pot will interact with the piezo circuit to some degree.

I did this same type of thing on purpose with a guitar I built last year where I had walnut as the top and alder behind it. If it weren't for some stupidity on my part, it would have turned out absolutely incredible. As it is, it still turned out quite nice, though not as nice as it could have been.

I have some ipe, and haven't met too many woods tougher than that. Good suggestion, the only bridge I thought of making myself was more of an acoustic style, but I wanted adjustable intonation.

Do you mean have the 1st switch reverse the polls on the neck and 2nd switch reverse the polls on the bridge? That's right, because you don't have one pickup common to all three positions, so you can't do it with just one switch. Even if you used one switch to reverse two pickups' polarity, then there would be at least one position where they will be together and in phase. So you would have to have two switches to switch out the phase. The coil splitting portion also requires the superswitch since you are changing which coil will be engaged as you change positions. Is there a reason to not select just one of the neck pickup coils for all positions? That would probably make this much easier. However, what you have should be possible, I just don't have the time right now to work it out (two little kids running around wreaking havoc and all).

Just some quick observations: 1) you can't get 2, 3, and 4 in your first diagram all out of phase with a single switch, you will need at least two. 2) you will need a superswitch to do the switching, since the traditional 5-way blade switch really only has three unique positions with position 2 simply bridging contacts 1 and 2 and position 4 bridging contacts 2 and 3. 3) you can't get all your coil tapping options as shown in the second portion with a single switch, unless you get creative with a 4 pole superswitch. Other than that, you should be able to manage. I'm sure others will chime in as to the specifics.