jnewman

Sounds like a Kahler might be just what I need. Thanks everyone.

My strat's trem was originally set up as free floating (by the factory), although you couldn't get a whole lot of up pitch change out of it. I got tired of the trem and cranked the springs very tight and now the trem lays flat against the wood and only goes down . I have heard some people say that Floyds tend to be "brighter" than the old style trems, are Kahlers like this too? I guess changing to brass saddles or something could take care of the brightness.

This is correct. A pickup in the exact 24th fret possition will pickup virtually no even but lots of odd harmonics (ie no 2nd but lots of 1st and 3rd). HOWEVER, guitar pickups sample the string over a very long length (I'd estimate a humbucker is 'listening' to at least two and a half inches in length of the string, obviously getting weaker signal further you go from the pickup), and so you wont get a case of a pickup not getting any of a particular harmonic unless its got virtually no thickness (a single coil isn't even close to this 'point' pickup) The statement about a 24th fret pickup not picking up even order harmonics is at best misleading. First of all, the second harmonic actually only has one node, which on an unfretted string is over the 12th fret, and an antinode, or area of maximum amplitude, over the 24th fret. It is not until the 4th harmonic that you get a node over the 24th fret. It is not until the 8th harmonic that you have another harmonic with a node directly over the 24th fret. Then the 12th, then the 16th, etc. This is true but mitigated by the width of the pickup, as you say, if you are playing nothing but open notes. The moment you fret a string, the "24th fret node" has moved towards the bridge and is no longer over the pickup. The nth order harmonic divides the string length L into sections of length L/n with nodes between the sections. If you want to have a node at L/4, i.e. the 24th fret on an open string, then you have to have sections divisible into L/4. So you get (L/n)/(L/4)=4/n. For there to be a node at L/4, 4/n has to be a whole number, so n has to be a multiple of 4. If you put a pickup directly under the 12th fret, or half the string length, then for an unfretted note, you would get only odd-order harmonics as any even order harmonic has sections divisible into L/2. But again, the moment you fret a note, this all goes out the window!

Hey guys, here's my question. I'm building a black limba/wenge body, rosewood neck/macassar ebony fretboard guitar when I get around to it (i.e. when I have some free time!). 6 strings, 25 inch scale, Rio Grande P90's. Although I don't play a lot with a trem, it's something I'd like to play with more, and I got to looking at Kahler trems for this guitar. How does the feel and sound of the Kahler trems sound compared to the current Fender American series two-post trem? That's the only trem I have any experience playing on. I searched around, but Kahler comes up so often in so many threads that I couldn't really find anything specific. Thanks, Jimmy

Here's an option that would work allowing you to use a stereo cable or a mono cable and still use all your pups. Have the pickups' output still be switched and go to the tip of the stereo plug. Have the bridge pickup's output go directly to the ring. Have the sleeve for ground. If you use a mono cable, you just get to switch between your two pickups with the switch. If you want to use your footpedal, set your switch to neck pickup, then you have neck on tip and bridge on ring. With a strat, you could still have the same setup, and still have all the switching options when using mono, but the footpedal would only have the option of one pickup by itself (the bridge pickup in this example), and whatever other one you wanted to have the switch set to. I.E. a strat would have normal switching on the guitar with the footpedal bypassing directly to bridge pup or allowing the normal switching.

The reason that some humbuckers say bridge vs. neck is because the strings have more movement over the neck pickup than they do over the bridge pickup. Thus, for a more-or-less matched up sound, you want a more powerful pickup in the bridge position (i.e. more windings, more DC resistance, etc). So if you buy a pair of pickups for a guitar that are meant to be paired up in a guitar, the bridge one will have more windings and be a "hotter" pickup (generally). I don't know anything about the EMG select pickups, maybe they think you can get away with two of the same one.

I dunno... I'm going to get going one of these days on a guitar with a black limba and wenge body with an Indian rosewood neck and Macassar ebony fretboard... I think they're all pretty good looking and I have high hopes for the sound . I understand the other point of view, but I'd rather look at wood, and I haven't seen a Schecter yet with a limba body and rosewood neck .

As beautiful as Scott's and Wes' guitars are, and they are beautiful, I just can't get over the design and wood choice on the guitar from Skelf! Cool stuff.

That is one SEXY guitar, design and execution! Kudos to the designer and builder!

There is no way I'll ever be able to decide whether to vote for scott or setch or godin. Man. What on earth will I do?

You could always do just a burst on the front, with transparent color on the front of the guitar, and solid edges and back - it could look pretty good! When you're looking for electric guitar wood, you generally want hardwood that has been dried to stable moisture conditions (air or kiln dried). This is important - ask to make sure the wood is dried. Pretty much every wood there is has been used before, but popular ones that are readily available and not too expensive are alder, ash, basswood, and mahogany. Try looking in the phonebook for places that specifically say they sell hardwoods or furniture lumber - a lumber yard that sells wood primarily for construction may not have what you need. There should be plenty of places around Chicago that'll do for it. One problem with going the lumberyard route is that you sometimes have to buy entire boards that can be pretty large - it doesn't often come in guitar-sized pieces . Woodcraft is ok, but you'll run into the same problems there, along with a relatively small selection.

I have an AVT50 that's maybe 7-8 years old? I really don't like it. I think I'll just leave it at that.

I think I'm going to try for a little longer/thinner shape... the 620 looks too round to me > I saw a guy playing a four courses of 3 PRS bass one time - it sounded FANTASTIC! I'm sure you'll be happy with how it sounds.

Is it a 2x6 or a 3x4 12 string bass? I'm trying to make the Ric upper horn work with the guitar I'm currently trying to get started on - I love the shape!

A good chrome finish is unbelievably durable. A bad chrome finish with flake up and fall apart if you look at it wrong . Like so many things, it just depends on the quality of the work. Your questions about notching don't have much to do with the finish, but with the material under the finish. Really cheap parts will be made out of cast "pot metal" which is very, very soft. Quality guitar hardware is made from hard brass or aluminum and will stand up much better to string wear.

They're not ALWAYS walnut... some old Fender guitars had Koa stripes . Litch's tutorial was idiotic. It would be very, very hard to do without ruining a neck. His tutorial was on adding a skunk stripe to an already made neck that already had a trussrod in it by routing a channel in the curved back of the neck (hopefully without cutting through the trussrod) and then gluing in the strip. DON'T DO IT!

Man, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. I got back to school and then I couldn't get the key back for the shop, and then I had to deal with leaving school (I'm taking off the rest of the semester). Anyway, I finally did the test, and the Bosch jigsaw does sharp curves ALMOST perfectly - On the sharpest curves I did, I could just barely tell that they weren't perpindicular, but it wasn't at all obvious. You can see the pictures here: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v494/jnewman606/Jigsaw/ In a couple of the pictures they look really not square away from the center of the frame, but that's just fisheye from the camera lens. Unfortunately I don't have a square handy, but you can still see that it's pretty good. I used the TD144DP "Precision for Wood" blades for the cut I did. I was really impressed - this thing is so good it's almost not even a jigsaw anymore .

As I understand it, if it has one or more small hollow chambers, it is a chambered guitar. If the entire inside is hollow, but it has a block under the bridge between the top and back of the guitar (like an ES335), it is a semihollowbody. If the whole interior is hollow with nothing under the bridge, it is a hollowbody. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.... That's some great looking wood!

I'm sorry, I ended up locked out of the workshop where I've been keeping all my stuff (I'm a college student), and now I'm away from campus on spring break - I'll be back in a week, if you can stand it to wait that long . Again, I'm really sorry - someone had borrowed my keys to the shop and I couldn't get them back before we left.

If you just build a rectangular carcase out of 3/4" void-free plywood with box-jointed corners, you have what pretty much everyone in the history of guitar cabs has used for guitar cabs . If you do the box joints right, you don't need any internal supports - when I finished mine, I could stand on it or sit on it and it wouldn't even wobble.

Bosch actually makes good jigsaw blades, too. I've been using the "Clean for wood" blades at 6TPI, but you might try the "Precision for wood" blades - they're also 6TPI and they're a little thicker with a bit wider set to the teeth so they shouldn't wander as much. I can't do it today, but if you want I'll go cut some curves in 2x4's so you can have a look at it - I really haven't cut anything as thick as a guitar body with the saw in a pretty good while, and I can't promise it'll magically make all the edges perpindicular .

Well... there are two parts to that, basically. One is, for a given input voltage, what are the output voltages at the various taps. That's easy to measure. The second is how much power you can put through the transformer without damaging it. The only way to check that, unfortunately, is to put power through it until it stops working, then cut that value about in half and call that its power rating . If you've got one each of a bunch of different ones, that doesn't help you - you either need enough of the same one to test one by killing it, or you need to just look up its manufacturer's specs.

Are you sure about this? By using two resistors to reduce the voltage level, one will be in series and the other will be in parallel. The series resistor forms a low pass filter with the parallel capacitance of the cable. As that series resistor increases in value, the cutoff frequency of that low pass filter decreases. Assuming a typical cable capacitance of 500-600pf total, a 1 meg series resistance would have that low pass filter cutting treble frequencies somewhere between 250-320 hz. That wouldn't sound like less impact to the tone. As I understand it, the way the whole shebang in a guitar actually works is that it is a high-pass filter - to ground. As a result, increasing the series resistor increases the cutoff frequency, therefore decreasing the amount of high frequency signal passed to ground, therefore increasing the amount of high frequency signal that goes to the amp. This is why a 1 MOhm volume pot sounds brighter than a 500 KOhm pot sounds brighter than a 250KOhm pot.

In my experience, it would be better, but any jigsaw will have SOME wander. There are a few key things you want to do to minimize blade wander no matter what saw you're using. Use good, relatively new (i.e. still sharp) jigsaw blades with an agressive set to the teeth and go slower the tighter the curve you're cutting. Set on a saw blade is how much the teeth extend sideways from the blade. The more set there is, the better a blade is for cutting curves because the blade cuts a wider kerf and can cut slightly off-axis. I also had a look (online) at the Festool, and it looks like it actually has the same blade clamp system, which surprises me as I thought Bosch had a patent on it. They may differ a little bit, but it looks like both have a similar system. EDIT: Something I forgot to mention. Something most cheap jigsaws don't have is what's called pendulum or orbital blade motion (depending on where you are). Jigsaw blades cut on the pull stroke. A pendulum/orbital jigsaw moves the blade straight down on the push stroke but then pulls it forwards on its way up. Pendulum/orbital jigsaws can be set from no orbital action to full orbital action in usually 3-5 steps. A moderate amount of pendulum motion, in my experience, also helps a little bit with wander because it makes the cut start at the farthest point from the saw, where wander is most prevalent. By starting the cut as far as possible from the saw, the cut on the side of the wood away from the saw is less influenced by wander, which holds the entire blade more in line.

Solid core does have one big advantage - it stays where you put it . If you bend it, it stays bent, while stranded wire has a tendency to try to be as straight as possible (i.e. big wide curves, not tight bends). (Edited for spelling)