mledbetter

Thou shalt not quoteth ed roman.. lol.. That's awesome though.. that heel sucked. There is no excuse for it whatsoever. Makes me think something in their CNC tooling made it hard to do the original carve or something so they left that brick on there..

now, tell me how many chords use those 2 frets, on those 2 strings exactly, This is so misleading, Just by adding this 2 bent frets your guitar will sound so much better... whatever, mledbetter, this is not against you, but the Inventor of this system, of course it works, but only on those 2 string and fret combination, outside of it, they are useless. No wonder I had never heard of this before. COmpensated frets is a thing of the past for me know, I thought that this was somenthing more useful and radical to mount on a guitar, but this, com'on. I thing you should save your money, and if you are going to try and compensate for anything it should be at the bridge or nut. ← Personally, i'm not purchasing any of it.. but the same arguement could go for the nut.. after you fret the first string, the nut makes no difference.. with this after you fret after the 3rd fret nothing makes a difference.. I don't claim to understand it but it's the same principle as the compensated nut. A dude on the MIMF fniished a guitar with the fretwave systems and swears that as screwed up and wierd as it looks, it works. I personally would never try it but it's interesting nontheless. The bridge compensation is 99% of your intonation control.. Nut compoensation can make up for most of that 1% left over.. and really by the same theory, the fret compensation could work too, but who wants to cut curved fret slots.. what a pain in the ass.. Also.. i don't remember seeing if the fretwave required a different tuning method.. i'm thinking it does. Kind of like the Feiton system requires changing your tuning practice a bit.. Personally, I tune by ear using the 3rd and 5th harmonics so I probably get some sort of tempered tuning that way. I get headache from the 3rd string a lot, like anyone else but i get the least amount of headaches tuning by ear with the harmonic nodes.

how much would that body cost to purchase from say warmoth.. or usacg? Use that as a base.. subtracting what the wood is worth and see if that's worth the trouble. I worked as a consultant for a long time so I had to price out a lot of work that I did and usually i would just try to figure the hours and take my desired rate and see if it jived with the client.

How long have you let it cure? and do any of you do a wax treatment? I just want it to get to where you can't mar it with a fingernail. Like I said, on maple it's great.. but ash for somereason has made it really difficult to harden.

well i guess the only thing going for it is that it doesn't go past the first 3 frets.. I think it's very strange though.. Honestly.. with the strides made recently with Gibson's MagIC technology and the variax and stuff like that.. I would bet that in 5-10 years guitars will have on board pitch correcters and all kinds of transparent technologies that will replacel these attempts for mechanical pitch correction. If you haven't seen the MaGIC stuff.. check it out.. i think the site is www.gibsondigital.com. It's crazy stuff.. forget the midi guitar

See that's what I wondered originally. if was more just passive altering of the circuits to get the sounds. Basically preset tone circuits.. More along the line of the vartone idea. Aside from creative switching of the 5 pickups, certain combinations are routed through different signal paths that alter the tone to model the sound they are after. Harmony Central has a lot of reviews on teh 513.. Most think it sounds great but it's no more a strat or a paul than any other PRS.. just has some versatile combinations. You have to like it for what it is otherwise you'll be disappointed.

ui'm not sure what the music store guy was thinking.. you could have bought some parts from him! Building your own guitar can be expensive.. as long as you and your parents know that up front. An explorer, if you go mahogany could still cost you 100 bucks in wood. Then you have hardware, electronics, tuning machines, etc. One bargain basement source I would recommend is GuitarFetish no ebay.. he has a line of pickups that are really inexpensive but the quality is superb. I bought a set of his high end tele pickups and the construction is amazing. Initial tests sound-wise are good as well.

That's been the best thing about TO for me is i've done them in the house and no one complains. Given that it's so heavy on the varnish component, and that you can tint it.. I'm wondering if you could get away with adding some universal pigment to the undercoats. That's the only thing I haven't tried.

I would imagine that like was said before.. when it's all boiled down it's not much different than an HSH with coil taps. I think companies like that will go out of their way to get a new rig that they can patent.. makes people feel special that buy it. I think it's a creative use of singlecoils though and very few companies have figured out how to get true singlecoil and true humbucker sounds out of the same pickup. I admit I was misunderstanding coil tapping.. Thanks for the explanation, whoever posted that. That makes a lot more sense. Not sure who, if anyone, sells a stock single coil with a tap but you could wind one yourself I suppose.

<lobbing a grenade and running for cover > I fail to see the difference between a properly cut nut and a zero fret. As Frank said.. a nut cut low and to the right radius gives you the same effect. A zero fret is probably easier to pull off. Anybody seen the fretwave system? (www.fretwave.com) The frets are actually compensated.. looks surreal but they say it works. The logic: If a properly cut nut and a zero fret behave the same way theoretically, then a properly cut compensated nut would have the advantage over both. Otherwise you could go with a compensated zero fret.. like the fretwave deal. MM if you have a zero fret you're done. the nut behind it is just a string guide so your question doesn't make sense to me. You keep saying "i'm definitely going with a zero fret" so it sounds like your question is answered. Your string guide could be a piece of chewing gum. it doesn't matter. Save for the bone capo discussion.. the stability of your strings behind the fret will have an effect on tone.. but the point is you're not going to affect intonation by altering something outside of the scale boundries.

No.. that's why it's so much fun to try to uncover the mystique!!

well over on MIMF there were naptha users and mineral spirits users.. i've just tried stest scraps with naptha. will try other stuff. So far so good though.. only complaint was that naptha accellerates the drying so much that sometimes it's hard to get even coverage. I wanted to spray it but so far i've just ragged it on. I like oil finishes so I experiment a lot with the stuff.

Yes.. in fact a buddy of mine had his instructions from his music man.. to restore, do 2 coats of tru oil and apply wax. I would do more coats. rub it on liberally, let it sit about 5 mins or so.. wipe off and dry. several hours between coats.. maybe even overnight to make sure it's dry.. buff with 0000 steel wool in between.

i'm a jj man

From what I've read on the 513, it's not quire that. It's 5 single coils, the outer 4 of which combine to make 2 humbers. Now, of these four, each must be tapped somewhere within the coil to produce the lower output necessary for the reduced output humber mode. It is very interesting... ← Right.. and i think the only way to do that is a stacked singlecoil.. Now the two coils may not be the same.. it might be a 5k stection and a 2k section. I have no idea.. Someone can sneak into a prs dealer with their multimeter and let us know!

Do the 18 watt amps have the signature early marshall tone? I've never gotten my hands on one to try it out. Some day I'm going to go crazy and build myself a 1x12 combo with one input switchable between tweed champ electronics for clean and a low-power gain amp for dirty (which is why I'm asking about the 18 watt, it's an ideal candidate). I've never built a guitar amp before, but I've built several hi-fi audio amplifiers, so I ought to be able to manage it without killing myself . ← I've never gotten my hands on an 18watter.. it's supposed to be super vintage vibe though.. I've listened to a ton of clips from folks that built theirs. www.18watt.com is the site. I have a fender pro jr.. 2 84s, one ax7 and 1 at7 maybe? i don't remember.. Dude from www.eurotubes.com put together a package for me. Excellent price and the JJ tubes i absolutely love. I told him i wanted early breakup and a super tasty distorted sound and the combination of tubes he shipped me were dead on. It's only got a volume and a tone knob. Used to break up at 8 or so (out of 12) and now it gets gritty at 4-5. I just crank it to 12 and use my volume knob to go from clean to dist. It's a beautiful thing. 15 watts though and it's still loud as hell. I have a 6db cut attenuator that I made for it. That keeps the peace.

I don't have a guitar in front of me.. but two ideas come to mind.. a high chord 0 0 8 7 9 0 That should be b-minor'y For a low one.. 0 0 4 2 0 4 is a G#/E and sounds neat.. Change it to a G/E and it would get darker.. 0 0 4 2 0 3 Again, i don't have a guitar in front of me.. i could be way off but that's a suggestion.

Your hands size shouldn't matter. Your whole hand lays across the strings.. you just have to make sure your index finger is not touuching the strings.. The bar just kinda sits under your slide hand between your 1st and 2nd fingers. Maybe the medium size for one of those. I play with a stevens style bar. It's easy to keep a hold of. Picks.. i pick with my fingers.. i'd say your bigtime steel players use finger picks.. but i don't play acoustic or steel with picks.. i alsays use my fingers. You definitely want to fingerpick.. it's just a matter of whether or not you want finger picks attached to your fingers. I personally hate em. They get in my way but to each their own.

I thought about the same, can we say animal cracker. Ash is a good choice for a guitar, just keep us posted on the progress. ← Hey.. there's a design scheme in there somewhere.. it'll change. It has no form right now. Should get it routed and carved this weekend if I can get the rabbeting bit I need.. My initial delimma is neck material. I'm thinking maple.. I want to start with 8/4 stock to cut the PRS style neck joint.. it's gotta be think. Mahogany is more readily available in that thickness, at least for me.. but i'm afraid that mahog with ash is giong to be muddy sounding. Thoughts?

uh.. i'd aim a little higher than 15 dollar tubes.. I researched amp building for a LONG time and didn't bother because of the expense.. that and the lethal voltages but if you're building a marshall clone then if you want the sound you have to source the RIGHT parts.. not the cheapest.. mallory caps, proper transformers wound to the right specs, most of the magic is in the parts. Otherwise, like Lovecraft said.. it will be all that work and not much to show for it. Check out the 18 watt clones. There is a forum dedicate to 18watt builders. Those are killer sounding amps. Tons of info, schematics and support by folks that are in the same mess. Google it, I can't remember the site name.

I did that once. My first guitar was a Kay.. back in high school. When I mastered all the led zeppelin songs I aspired to, I bought a telecaster and me and my buds ceremoniously tried to trash the Kay. It's amazing how tough plywood is

MasterMinds.. You hijacked a thread and your very first post indicated you didn't even know what a skunk stripe was and that rear installation of a truss rod was even possible.. You get people's ire up when you hijack a thread.. but you will get even more flames when you flood the thread with "what about this.." "no.. well then what about this.." "still no.. then what about this.." Questions are cool, and I am one that will usually answer even the ignorant ones without getting an attitude, just because I like to help.. but you need to at least start your own thread. If it's a dumb idea, people will ignore it. If it has merit then a discussion will form around it. Bottom line is that folks who have read, studied, built, had trials and errors, don't like it when someone else wants to take a short cut and just ask for all the answers up front. That's what the books are for. You learn by doing. Period. It seems odd that you're ready to debate equal temperment and tuning inaccuracies in fretted instruments when your other questions about building are so basic. Guitarists have survived for decades with imperfect intonation, you're much better off nailing down the fundamentals first. This was all meant to be constructive.. not a flame. Hopefully you will take it in that spirit. We have 4 pages here and the topic ended before the first page was even through.

I'm planning on binding this. Have never attempted such. Anyone here have any preferences on types? AllParts carries jsut about everything. I don't want plain white or black.. am considering a grained ivoroid, or maybe even a synthetic abalone or pearloid. Have never actually seen the latter though so I have no idea if it looks good or not. Any suggestions or experience pointers would be greatly appreciated. I've never seen a bound carved top ash body before.. I just think it would look cool. In the photo the body looks all rounded over like a JS body.. i'm not doing that though. i'm routing a shelf for the binding, another shelf for the bottom of the carve, then i'll do a proper carve on the top.

I like the headstock shape.. I don't even mind the logo but for design points.. the two together don't work as well as they could. Your headstock shape is pretty traditional and the GP is fairly modern.. Maybe a script style font, something a little more classic looking would be nice.. Are you going to try to inlay it? or just print some decals? Awesome project. It's really coming along. Mine is finally underway but i just freehanded the whole thing and am designing it as I go. That's what happens when you ruin your body blank and can't bear to throw it away

looks a lot like a wilkinson to me. The hipshots are a lot beefier.. Wilkinsons are minimal.. it's all saddle and just enough plate to hold the saddles.