jnewman

I've built a few amps, it's good times. You do have to be very careful. I have built a Fender 5E3 tweed deluxe which sounds great and was pretty simple (although the chassis design means it's a little cramped), a modified 18W (the "normal" channel became an EF86-based channel a little like a vox and the "vibrato" channel lost its vibrato and gained the plexi tone stack) which is more complicated and still needs a bit of tweaking with a 'scope but also sounds very good, and a Trainwreck Climax which sounds just fantastic but is also moderately complex. There are literally bunches of companies which offer 18W kits, if you've never built an amp before a kit is a good way to go. A few of the places I know that sell 18W kits are www.ceriatone.com (who I have done business with and have been very happy with), www.gdsamps.com, www.bnamp.com, and www.tedweber.com (some of Ted Weber's kits are modified a fair bit from the original designs).

Palm routers/laminate trimmers often don't adjust their depth quite as precisely. They have smaller bases, which make them a little less stable. The biggest problem for a lot of people, though, is that they can't really use large-diameter router bits. For one thing, they don't have enough power, and for another thing, I don't know of one off the top of my head which has a 1/2" collet, they all just have 1/4" collets.

Fair enough.... my spokeshave experience is pretty limited. The last neck I worked on I actually did use chisels for the heel area (neckthrough) and rasps for the main neck shaping. I guess a spokeshave would make it easier to get a consistent carve through the length of the neck and that would make the flat bottomed one the best.

Huh, so it's single ended? Sounds cool!

This is an image I found on the Veritas website: Of the three, I would be most likely to use B for neck carving as the places I would most want to use it are to shape the heel and neck/headstock transition. They call B a curved spokeshave. I think it's C, which they call a concave spokeshave, that a few people love and a lot of people are objecting to.

To me, from that one picture, it looks like the top is flat and the body is a standard LP guitar size. It almost has to be flat, because the whole point of carving the top means that the bridge should be at the highest point, and if that were true on that bass there'd be a veritable cliff right behind the bridge, since the bridge is so close to the tail of the guitar. I say it looks standard LP guitar-sized just based on the fact that the body/neck join is at the 18th-19th fret and the bridge is still almost at the tail of the guitar.

You have an odd definition of "exactly." Sure, there are some similarities, but there are plenty of differences, too. The larger tail-end bout is one a different side and shaped differently, lower horn is different, headstock is different, etc. It's pretty hard to come up with something that doesn't look at least somewhat like what someone else has done at this point. Not saying it's impossible, but it often mean that either you've made it uncomfortable to play, made it weird enough that most people won't want to play it, or that you just haven't found the guitar it looks like yet. In short, you came up with it, you like it, so build it and don't flip about it.

While it is within the realm of possibility that your pickups could vibrate enough to affect your sound, that would be a very low-order effect compared to how your string type and scale length affect string vibration and compared to the effect of the frequency-variable damping for the complex anchors at each end of the string on the vibration of the string itself (differences in this damping effect are due to differences in the wood, other materials, and construction methods). I'm in agreement with fryovanni here.

I think there's a bit of a terminology divide here. There are three shapes of spokeshaves. Those that have a completely flat sole, those that have a slightly convex face with the curve in the direction of the blade, and then there are those that have a SUPER convex face across the blade for shaping thin spindles. I would go for a flat one or the slightly convex one. Probably the slightly convex one for what I personally want to do with one on a guitar.

I think it's looking pretty good so far. I like the Jaguar shape a lot. The one piece of advice I have for you is never to try to joint anything with a hand sander. As you've found, it's not a particularly effective method. Find a shop that'll give or sell you ten minutes on their jointer or buy a bench plane and learn how to use it. Either way, you'll get better results in less time. Once you've used a hand plane a bit, you can get an invisible glue line on a body or top in a minute or two. You can even use a long, flat block with sandpaper on it. But using an electric sander isn't a very good method. Actually, if your table saw is pretty good, with a good (new/sharp) blade you can get a pretty invisible glue line straight off the table saw. You have to have a jig or fence in place that lets you push the piece straight along the blade though, any wandering and you have to start over. On the subject of your pickup choices - the JB jr. is a single coil size humbucker, but is still a humbucker, while the humbucker sized version is called just the JB. Did you mean to have a JB jr., JB jr, JB guitar, am I misunderstanding? It's not something I would do, but if it's what you want, go for it.

There's some pretty comprehensive stuff on shielding a guitar and stopping humming on www.guitarnuts.com. Even if your humbuckers are acting like humbuckers, there's still a bunch of wiring in the guitar that can pick up noise. Having problems with the way your ground is wired can also cause a lot of hum. All that info is dealt with in detail on guitarnuts.

I don't think there's any reason to worry about the neck wearing out to the point that it is no longer functional. You can wear down the frets to an unplayable state or break the nut or things like that, but those're all easy to fix - you just replace the frets or nut. I mean, you play a guitar for two hours a day for years and years, and it'll definitely get dinged up and worn in, but it shouldn't stop playing well. I would be more concerned about all the scratches your fancy paint job will get in it over the years. Make sure you get a hard two-part poly clear coat or something equally durable over the painting. On the subject of a replacement neck, you almost certainly won't be able to use a standard Fender/Warmoth 22 fret neck with your existing guitar body, but you'd need to give a lot more info to find out for sure. I doubt it, though. There's also the question of whether or not the heels are the same shape and size. There are some necks that are made specifically with an overhanging 22nd fret to make a 21 fret guitar into a 22 fret guitar, but again, that's for a specific standard size of 21 fret neck and there are no guarantees it'll fit like YOUR 21 fret neck.

I'm assuming that given its name is "Dynamo 36" it's probably 36 watts . 36 watts also usually means four EL84's, or sometimes 4 6V6's, although there are plenty of other options.

I just HAPPEN to have a Strat that came from Fender with two single coils and a bridge humbucker here, and I just HAPPEN to have a pair of Rio Grande P90's in my desk drawer - and what I can tell you is that the P90's have a narrower spacing than the single coils, but as near as I can tell exactly the same spacing as the bridge humbucker that came from Fender. Of course, the strings aren't centered over the polepieces on the bridge humbucker, but it sounds fine so I don't really care . It's my understanding the Rio Grande's take standard P90 covers, so I guess they're standard size.

Dude, chill... people here don't mind answering honest questions and helping people who need it, it just rubs EVERYONE the wrong way to have someone say "Here's a very simple question, but I don't care enough to look up the answer, so I expect you guys to tell me without any arguments or backtalk." That's just not reasonable. If you respect the people on this board, then you'll get some respect, too, and you'll have a lot better chance of actually getting questions answered when you need it. Incidentally, you can find out just about anything on the net, and the tension in a guitar string isn't anywhere near as random as you'd have to get to make it a hard answer to find.

Odd section for this question . You might be able to find a saw with the right thickness blade if you have a real woodworking store around. If all you have is a home depot or a lowes, I wouldn't plan on it. Keep in mind that the saw has to be a .023" KERF, not a .023" blade. This meens it cuts a .023" slot. This actually requires a blade significantly thinner than .023". I have the stewmac saw and it works ok but I don't particularly like it. If I had it to do over again now, I'd get the japanese saw from LMI (which I may do anyway )

That is a really, really good sander. I have one and I like it a lot. I've heard some people say the Festool is better but it's also a LOT more expensive. As I recall, the Porter Cable is significantly more also. I just wish it weren't quite so tall, but then they all are, pretty much.

Taunton's 2007 tool guide rated the Skil 1825 router pretty well, which is about $100 with plunge and fixed bases. The space alien Hitachi gets pretty good ratings, too ($180), and then there are the classic Porter Cable and Bosch options ($200-280). I've used the Porter Cable 690 and it's very good, and I have a Bosch 1617 and think it's great. Those prices are just what I remember reading.

Hmm... I guess if you put a preamp on the output of the passive channel you might not need a summing stage... I wonder how well it would work. Lovekraft knew a lot more about this stuff than I do, so I imagine it'd work fine.

Good deal! I like them, they cut well and stay sharp for a long time.

Buffering the output will change the sound, but only to a small degree. Actually, it'd be more accurate to say it un-changes the sound . There are some frequency-variable signal losses inherent in the volume and tone controls (even turned all the way up) as well as the guitar cable that buffering the output eliminates. You could actually do the preamp stuff just on perfboard without even making a real circuit board, it'd just be bigger. The real problem would be troubleshooting it if something went wrong. If you're really wedded to the passive/active thing, the easiest thing to do would be to have the passive output and active output go to an on-on selector switch which chooses between them and can't blend. There's also the stereo plug setup you mentioned, which would require either a special Y-cable which splits the TRS (tip ring sleeve, or stereo) plug to two mono plugs, or a stomp box which would take the stereo in and have two mono plugs out. I rate this as slightly more complicated because it requires special equipment outside the guitar to work right.

Well, the EMG pickup will already be using EMG's preamp, so it will have a buffered output. If I were doing it, I would make a little circuitboard (pretty easy- you need the copper clad board material, a laser printer, a sharpie, and some crazy chemicals) with a dual opamp. The first opamp section would be set up as a simple voltage follower on the passive channel output. This would give the passive pickups buffered output. I'd use the second opamp section of the chip to make a summing amplifier (http://www.ecircuitcenter.com/Circuits/opsum/opsum.htm) which would just take three resistors (or three resistors and a potentiometer, if you want variable gain). You'd need some little capacitors as a part of the power supply, and maybe a resistor or two. If you used surface mount components, it would be smaller than a postage stamp. You would want to select an opamp with decent audio-frequency performance, low noise, low idle current, and power supply of 9V or less. I've noticed that some guitarists/guitar builders complain about opamps and want to use transistors, but I've built enough audio equipment with opamps that sounds great that I'll go with what makes more sense to me . It's not particularly hard if you've done it a few times but it's not trivial if you haven't.

If you want to wire them as separate systems, yeah, it's as easy as it sounds, but that doesn't allow for any mixing of the two systems. If you want to mix the two systems, you CAN'T just wire the outputs together. You can't use a normal selector. It won't work right. You would have to add an active preamp that takes the two signals (from the active system output and passive system output) and combines them. This could be in the guitar or it could be a pedal. Different brands don't matter for wiring or volume/tone, what does matter is combining active/passive. If you want to wire them to separate outputs, or a switched output that doesn't combine them, then no problem. If you want to combine them before the amp, it means some kind of extra preamp. Period.

No, you don't get any interference... you wouldn't want to use an EMG preamp designed for active pickups, but you can use preamps with passive pickups. A volume pedal / eq pedal / clean boost pedal is usually pretty similar to what you might stick in a guitar.

Actually, the length of an oscillator is given by the distance between its outermost nodes, or points of zero oscillation that exist at given frequency of oscillation. Those occur at the saddle and nut. There may be a little buzz behind the bridge and beyond the nut, but it's not a part of the same oscillation system as the string between the saddle and nut. As an example, if you pluck the string between the nut and tuner, you get a really high pitched twang that dies out quickly and has nothing to do with the pitch of the string. It's actually a pretty simple experiment to build two similar oscillating systems with anchors at one end and pulleys at the other, both the same distance apart. If you anchor wires on each, drape them over the pulleys, and hang the same weight of the end of both wires (which gives both strings equal tension, as by definition tension is the force applied along a string's axis), it doesn't matter how much wire hangs past the pulley, if you pluck either wire you get the same pitch note (vibration frequency). To more closely mirror the guitar system, you can anchor at one end, have another anchor, then a pulley and a string, with different distances between the second anchor and the pulley. Either way, you have the same tension and oscillating length and get the same pitch. I admit that changing things past the nut and saddles can change in a minor way how a guitar feels and plays, and maybe to some extent how it sounds, but for a given string at a given length between saddle and nut, there is a unique resting tension which will result in a given pitch. Either way, you're not going to convince me, and I probably won't convince you, so I think I'm done arguing . I do like your design and it looks like it's turning out really well - I look forward to seeing the results of this one and your other RV projects.