Ripthorn

alright, so I think I found something that works. I bought a new regulator for my larger compressor, set working pressure to 55 psi. Then, I double strained the finish, which removed some of the nastiness. This made it so that I only had one of the "spits" which seems to be debris in the finish. The coat I laid down tonight looks much better, but will need that one piece of debri removed, but I think I found the winning combination.

The metallic is really fine, almost like a pearl powder. I have looked at the tip and it does not seem to clog. I'm not getting a spluttering pattern, just a random nib or blob or every now and again, and it makes it so I have to go back and sand and respray. I'm now on round 4 or 5. I'll see if I can get a picture of it this evening, as the spitting just looks like an island in an otherwise fairly smooth coat.

The nozzle sizes I tried were 1.2 and 1.5 mm. The can recommended a 1.4. I have seen your video before, very good, by the way! I am wondering if I need to run the finish through some cheese cloth or something, as I sprayed the first coats of this finish last October, but the weather hasn't been nice enough until this week to conitnue. I wonder if maybe there are little bits of partially dried finish that are getting in there. They look kind of like dust nibs, but they aren't. Over the course of the whole body, I get maybe a dozen of these guys.

So I am trying to spray deep blue metallic duplicolor paint shop lacquer on my current build, and I can't figure out how to keep it from giving me one or two little spits, which then mean I have to wet sand the whole thing due to it being metallic and a finicky beast. I am using HF HVLP guns, the 20 oz and the 4 oz. I sprayed the 4 oz at about 30 psi and the 20 oz at about 40 psi, but both give me the same issue. I have tried material feed rate changes, I've tried thinning the finish, but to no avail. I have also tried spraying a mist coat of acetone after the color coat, also a no go. I am by no means a finishing expert, so if anyone has any advice I would love to hear it. Thanks.

I actually prototyped a neck profile that was quite comfortable. The contour was constantly changing along the back, supporting the thumb where it sits for me at all points along the neck. Of course, thumb position will differ at the same point depending on what I'm fretting, but on the whole it was pretty comfortable. How I did it was I took notes of where my thumb tends to sit on the rear of the neck when playing at just about every fret. Then I translated that into a continuously flowing asymmetric neck carve along the back. I only did it on a prototype, but thought the idea showed promise. I just haven't been building as rapidly as I would like, so I haven't done a "real" guitar with it yet.

I tend to leave a little above the surface (usually epoxy, but have done shellac and CA). Using a good scraper will take care of most of the excess, then I just sand like normal. A #80 cabinet scraper is great for making sure you don't dig in too much in any one place too badly.

I will actually be building the drum sander at some point. I like building my own tools. Why not?

Very nicely done. I personally am not an airbrushed guitar type of guy, but I can certainly appreciate the skill and the quality of the end result.

It's best to test, as deft tends to be nitro and a lot of automotive lacquers are acrylic. Any other answers are likely speculative. I have used water based sanding sealer under automotive lacquer with good results, but all that shows is that trying it out is the only real way of knowing. Also, why go with a sealer? You could put black auto lacquer straight on. Then I would recommend coating with the appropriate automotive clear, as it has already been formulated to work with the color coat. One other thing you could do is use shellac barrier coats, but now you are talking several products, at least one of which is likely unnecessary.

Old PRS's had the smaller heel, and have held up just fine. I don't know the reasoning, but I presume it is because it is easier or cheaper. I like the contoured look, but for whatever reason, some companies just do what they do.

You could get the Mixol tints and mix them into the wipe on poly. Or you could put the mixol in shellac and then wipe on poly over the top. I have also heard good things about the minwax whitewash, but have never tried it. Thinned Kilz is likely going to pose some sort of an issue with the wipe on poly unless you put a shellac barrier coat between the two. Just my 2 cents.

I did the minwax route myself. I grain filled, wetsanded, and polished as normal, though it didn't take quite the same shine as nitro. I was personally underwhelmed and won't be doing one again unless it is something like for my kids.

I have been using EM6000 (waterbased lacquer) and have been rather pleased with it. Complete burn-in, so no witness lines. I've done one or two instruments in wipe-on poly and am not much of a fan of it. Then again, with all the effort put into a spray job, $300 really is not all that bad. But as Scott said, you could get your own setup for about that price that will finish many a guitar, but then you have to put in the time and effort, along with all the consumables (sandpaper,polish, etc.) and you are on the hook for those times when you inevitably will sand through the finish (I still occasionally do that, and always kick myself afterwards, certain that it will never happen again).

It certainly can grab if you are not careful, but most router bits have the cutters protruding from the main body some so that there is always some clearance. However, if you are going to try undercutting for a switch, I doubt you will find a bit that will allow you to undercut that much. You may have to go at it with some chisels/gouges or possibly a drill bit like a forstner or spade bit. Whatever you do, be very careful as you can wreck the entire body quite easily trying something like this. I did some undercutting both with a router bit and with a drill bit on a tele I built a couple years back. I wasn't taking off nearly enough for mounting a new switch, but it worked well enough.

Do you mean you want to deepen the cavity, or do you want to undercut the cavity? You can undercut. Use a rabbetting bit with the appropriate bearing for the undercut. Make sure that you aren't going to do something like leave too little wood for a screw to grab or anything like that. The thing about doing it this way is that the cavity has to be large enough for the rabbetting bit to get inside. A little more explanation of what you are trying to do would be most helpful.

I really like piezos myself. So here goes a little bit of info. The way a piezo works is that you have a piezoelectric element, which can be a crystal, a film, etc. The way these work is that their crystaline lattice structure is such that when they vibrate, they create a very small electrical signal. The two wires that come off of most piezo elements are simply the + and - of this signal, like a single coil pickup. However, because of how the signal is created, they have an incredibly high output impedance. The reason they sound thin and weak into an amplifier (or mixed with magnetic pickups and then into an amplifier) is that, although your amp has a very high input impedance relative to your magnetic pickups, it doesn't look so big to your piezo. This in turn results in an impedance mismatch which means that some of your signal is converted into reactive impedance which is essentially signal loss. It tends to be the lower frequencies that go first, thus the harsh sound and thus the need to buffer the signal. As far as why you only see two wires, they tend to use either a single element or individual elements that get wired in parallel so that you have an easier wiring job. If you go with something like the ghost saddles, you can do all kinds of cool stuff from an effects point of view, but it is much more complicated. Now for preamps/buffers. A preamp is simply a buffer that has some sort of tone shaping to it. It can be simple or complex. A buffer, strictly speaking, is just an opamp or transistor that has (in our case) a very high input impedance and a low output impedance. This makes the guitar amp's input impedance look big again, so there is no (or very little) signal degradation. The DIY design that I really like and have in my bass is the PZP-1 from Cafe Walter. It is simple to do, has a relatively low parts count, and sounds good. The only thing is that I wired up the output pot as a typical volume pot instead of a variable resistor. I did this because the output was too hot relative to the magnetics I was blending them with. I can now turn the volume down so that there is no spike in volume as I go from all magnetic to all piezo. Piezos and magnetics on blend pots sound amazing. As for commercial units, they all basically consist of a buffer and some tone shaping. Of course, cheaper ones use cheaper components which may not hold spec terribly well. But if you build one yourself, you should be able to get something really good for cheap. I think mine cost $2-4 for the materials and took about 30 min to put together, and that was well before my effects building days, so I had basically no experience.

David, you've got a PM. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, haven't been around these parts too much lately. I have done basically what you have done and used a 100k trimmer to balance the magnetic and piezo signals together when blending.

Some people convert auto engine stands to work in this fashion. Sure makes things easier to wrangle.

maybe just a couple guitars' worth...if you're building for that dude from Cheap Trick.

I mostly use 22 or 20 AWG stranded wire, but the best stuff I've ever used is some 7-strand, PTFE-coated, silver-tinned stuff. It bends and stays in place like solid core, but has the breakage resistance of stranded. Makes complicated setups something glorious.

I have not built the sustainer yet, but I would imagine two coils could have an adverse affect, as you are changing the inductance in addition to the DC resistance, which will affect frequency response. Any of the little lm386 amps will likely work, really all you need is something that will amplify your signal. Less signal coloring is better, but about anything is likely to work. You do not need a strat, just someplace to stick the driver. You could get a single coil mounting ring that fits a humbucker slot and that will work fine. A driver for a seven string and a driver for a 6 string will not really differ other than form factor. It may be slightly weaker as the wraps are distributed over a larger area, thus fewer wraps to get the same resistance. Hope this helps in some small way.

I love PRS guitars, so either a P22 or a Santana. Of course, if it were a bass, it would be a Dingwall Prima Artist. There are a couple other custom builders out there that I would love to get one from as well.

This is how I started, but my strat copy was given to me. I would recommend just using the pickups as they are, since, as you gain experience, you are likely to move on to more and better builds. Plus it saves the budget. One thing to keep in mind is you will need to buy things like wood, finish, sand paper, etc., so don't worry about pickups right now, use the ones you have. Oak or beech will be fine for a body wood. The only reason we use a lot of the woods we use in guitars is tradition. If it is 10-20 years old, you are perfectly fine using it. Good luck, and don't be shy about asking questions around here.

The greenies (two on the left, same construction type, probably just different manufacturers or model lines) are very popular, followed by ceramic disc. I personally am not a huge fan of ceramic because they are more susceptible to heat damage. The bumblebees and PIO caps are tops when it comes to mojo. The greenies are cheap and work well, so they are typically seen as "standard". Me, I like to use all different kinds of things. I have a couple vintage PIO that I want to try out at some point. I also want to use a Sallen-Key gyrator topology to simulate an inductance to do a varitone instead of using an actual inductor. I put weird electronics in some of my builds, but that is part of the fun!

I have done a few neck throughs now and the most difficult thing is to do the steps in the right order (or the easiest order). For example, cutting the body wings before gluing to the neck (and doing as much shaping as possible), routing pickup cavities before the fretboard is glued on, etc. You just have to think through the next several steps at any one time to make sure you won't be making your life any more difficult than it has to be.