mledbetter

12 strings don't detune any faster than 6 strings but perfect relative tuning is essential in a 12. One string slightly out of whack and the whole thing sounds terible. On a 6 string one string can go a little off and you won't notice it right away, especially if you're playing lead. but chords on a 12'er - forget it. You'll be tweaking the tuning machines ALL the time.

There are several sources for blanks online. Swamp ash is great.. the only thing i would say is if you went with alder or a soft maple blank you wouldn't have to mess with grain filler. Ash is full of deep pores that you have to fill before you can put a smooth finish on. You can pick up cheap 3 piece alder blanks on ebay sometimes for 20 bucks or so.

Lapsteels probably aren't the forte of most folks here There are plans for one at mimf. I was actually going to build one for a while and i've seen a lot of them. You want pretty close to 2 inches thick. Basically it's a big wedge of maple 2 inches thich.. you cut a curve up the back to flatten out the peghead area, you can get creative there - angle it or whatever.. and then draw your neck lines.. or you could inset a fingerboard blank and fill the slots in with veneer or something solid and contrasting. The rest iof it is just like building an electric. If you get a fingerboard blank, get a dobro blank as it is unradiused. Stew sells them pretty cheap. Speakign of radius.. LP Jr bridges aren't really very good for a lap steel as they have a preset 12" radius to them. That is a real pain on a lap steel. You want the strings perfectly flat or you can never get multiple strings to ring out without pushing down real hard. I saw a steel someone build with a LP jr bridge, but they ground the saddles down so it was level. It's much easier to get a cheap hardtail bridge with adjustable saddles. I can't visualize 28mm. i live in the land of inches and feet A lapsteel only needs to be 6 inches wide or so, you could get two boards and stack them.. laminate them together to make one blank thick enough for the instrument. Good luck.

Yeah, you do NOT want to breathe MDF dust. Or any dust for that matter.. It's insanely easy to work though and butter smooth on the edges. It's also very cheap so I would recomment making 2 templates.. And if you wear one out, take the saved one and make a new template from it so you always have a perfect original. Eventually you'll wear the edges of MDF out.. it's only paper after all I do my shape prototyping on MDF.. then when it's where I like it, i just use it to crank out the final template.

Some awfully broad questions and no easy answers. I'd search around this forum some, but you're probably best taking it to a builder. Generally that type of conversion involves squaring up the tremolo cavity and filling it with a chunk of wood, then installing your fixed bridge after. Conversion to a non locking trem would be easier, some, like the wilkinson trems have a knife edge on one side to accomodate different post widths. That might work. As for the nut.. i'd just remove the clamps and leave the bottom part. That's the easiest and cheapest. Tremolos aren't that hard to trouble shoot though.. it sounds like yours has some issues.. take the plate off the back, watch it in action and you should be able to see what is rubbing, or keeping it from operating smoothly. A new trem bar is a lot cheaper than any of the above mentioned ideas.

You know.. I wonder if with a little ingenuity.. if you couldn't purchase a bridge plate transducer type of pickup and adhere it to the sustain block on the trem. Might have to route some.. or even a button transducer to pick up the vibrations.. I'm not a huge fan of piezo sounds anyway.. i dumped my piezo in my acoustic and went for the BPT style.. much more realistic. i don't know. might be an interesting experiement. A button transducer is cheap. Might have to pre-amp it as the vibration through that much steel will be kind of weak.

ZZounds.com has the 1620x for 579 i believe.. that's below cost as it lists for 1299.

Great comparison. And it should be also said that it is very fair that a great luthier makes a living out of his art. I do not think it is the price of luthier-hand-made-guitars that we should be questioning, but that of certain "custom" guitars which I seriously doubt are handmade, or certain signature guitars like the Pagey one which I believe to be really too expensive for what they offer. If someone believes he can do as well as an experienced luthier for less money, well then... ← Exactly.. you can pay 4250 for a DeTemple and know that he slaved over your instrument for several weeks.. Or you can pay 3Gs for a fender custom shop guitar and know that the only difference between it and the others, is the wood went to a higher paid craftsman after the CNC spit it out. Honestly, there are a lot of builders selling in the 1500-2500 range that are handmade and would absolutely slaughter a fender or gibson custom shop model for less money. You pay for the experience and quality. My taylor acoustic (allbeit mass produced) cost me a heck of a lot more than i would have liked.. about 2Gs and that was in 1995. But never once have i worried about it, had a problem with, it sounds as good today as it did back then. Before it i went through about 4 acoustics. 1 stolen 1 just sucked and 2 went bad, warped or some other problem. You get what you pay for ultimately. The taylor probably has about 250-300 dollars worth of wood and hardware in it, but the peace of mind that came with it's manufacturing and history were worth every penny.

I just dig a blue quilt.. plus the finish, natural binding, lam top, carving.. Maidens was just awesome looking. Looked like a very professional job. Not knocking anyone elses, they were all cool and unique looking.. I loved the cocobolo on godins.. makes me want to build something with it. Way to go everyone!

There you go.. I think what BigD was referring to is how a dowel behaves.. A plug is different as the grain goes with the wood. You inlay end grain into cross grain you're more likely to have movement. A plug cutter is the perfect solution. You can just get exotic veneer and use the plug cutter to make your dots. I might even consider that myself. Ebony dots in a maple fingerboard would be way cool..

I think that could look really cool. You would keep the tele shape and everything.. 1 inch is nothing.

i can't remember which is which.. transtint or transfast. one is waterbased.. I assume you are using the alcohol based one? Could be a bad batch of dye?

The 513 looks interesting. Had never checked it out. There are some reviews on harmony central that talk about the sound combinations. If someone just knew what all the switch positions did the wiring wouldn't be too hard to figure out.. well i couldn't figure it out but there are wiring geniouses on here that could probably just look at it and guess. My guess is they probably have a combination of switch routing and different caps and such to alter the sound. BigD might be one to ask about that.. Somehow they are getting the full array of strat sounds out of it but when switching to humbucker modes, are getting real humbucker sounds which make me think there is some filtering/tone modification going on under the hood as well. To me the most sense is switch 1 controls pickups 1, 3 and 5.. just like a strat.. Switch 2 controls pickups 2 and 4.. neck series/neck parallel/both on/bridge parallel/bridge series. I haven't counted but that might give you 13 combinations..

The tele basses had a tele style pickup and headstock.. The original actually preceeded the p-bass and that was more of a nickname that stuck. But who wants a bass with a wimpy little tele pickup in it

Those steinbergers could be useful to you.. you could have 6 standard tuners and have the steinbergers in between them.. get a 12 inline that way, but they would be staggered on top of each other so your headstock isn't 18" long

I've seen that rory project before.. it's pretty interesting. This is unsolicited.. i'm not tryign to sell this guy's stuff but check out www.nashguitars.com He is one of the best relic'ers i've seen. It's total passion for him and his stuff looks awesome. He basically starts with raw wood, finishes it in nitro just like the oldies then starts his mysterious process of aging. There is a big article on him in ToneQuest. It's got to be liberating doing relics for a living.. "i'm sorry sir your guitar slid off my bench while i was working on it.. the good news is it has this super cool looking crack running up the back now!! (that'll add 200 dollars to the price)" My biggest pet peeve is hardware relic jobs where they just rust the hell out of everything.. Some of these things look like you would get tetanus just by touching them. that's not realistic. a well played guitar will have corrosion and a nice patina on it.. but come on.. who would play something that has rust flaking off of it. A lot of guys put all their hardware in a box of rusty nails and let it sit for a while. I think the whole relic craze is kind of crazy.. but i have a 20 year old strat that is a natural relic so who am I to judge others for wanting the same but with a shortcut

The intricacies of the truss rod channel.. now is when it should be mentioned that you get a book.. Hyscocks book is probably the best. Truss rods on 2 piece necks are straight forward but the one you are talking about is a one piece with a skink stripe.. it's partially routed, then a hole bored in the heel to connect the nut through to the rod.. A book will give you all the details.

How about a John 5 style headstock but 6 on a side? ← That;s what the USA Custom 12 neck looks like. I thinkn fenders 12 models look like that too.

Oh ok.. not familiar with Sky.. Am familiar with Kent Armstrong though. GFS has a bunch of pups that look like that.. pearl and wood covered types. Pretty nice looking though.

That's awesome.. bringing back the memories.. ahh yes.. Doug Marx of Metal Method.. I swear he and beaver felton have been in magazine ads since the beginning of time. I can't believe they are still at it. Anyway.. that double neck was quite an ambitious headstock.. Perfect for it's market. Just unnatural from a traditionalist point of view. I'm fascinated by Rickenbacker's method.. It's a normal size peghead with 3+3 kluson.. Then 3+3 kluson again mounted to the side of the headstock with the posts entering 2 channels ala classical guitar peghead. Pretty nifty. Do a google image search for "rickenbacker 12" and you can see what I mean. You can get 2 sets of gotoh klusen's cheap and maintain that vintage vibe too.

That's really cool looking. Is that a GFS pickup by any chance?

I just got a quote from a local machine shop.. 20 bucks to grind my plywood blade down to .023 kerf needed. Not bad at all. It wouldn't be hard at all to make your own version of the slotting jig for the table saw.. Just have a template board with lines that you match up to the 0 line on your mitre guage. Slot a bord in minutes that way.

A lot of people seem to like the saga kits. They are cheap and as a foundation, not too bad. Concensus seems to be that the tuners suck in a major way.. Also the wood is pre-sealed so you have to keep that in mind when considering finishes.. but to just clearcoat, or do a solid color on it's a great way to try it all out. And like mentioned above.. you can buy them from UniversalJems.com and support this forum that way. his prices are competitive.

Do you not have the mitre box? If not,if you had a straight enough block of hardwood you could use it as a guide. Even attach it to a piece running along the side to square it up. The backsaw (with a little help from finger pressure) should ride against the block until a groove is started then you can just use the block to keep the blade vertical. I can't remember what the stew back saw looks like.. maybe the bolts for the depth stop will keep you from using a stop block like that. not sure. You could always build yourself a little mitre box with a floor and two panels with a slot to accept the stewmac saw.

I'd have to jump in and defend behringer to some extent.. I've had nothing but great experiences with their pro audio stuff. I record with behringer equipment and use their stuff live too. Sure there is better stuff out there but for the money they always seem to hit the cost/quality ratio right on the head. Their powered nearfield monitors are great and about half the price of a comparable mackie set or something similar. Their V-Amp from what I understand is no match for the POD, but again, it's 199 bucks instead of 400. To me, distortions are a very picky subject. Delays, choruses, trems, etc.. i have faith Behringer can rip off successfully. We'll see what they do with the distortions. Lets face it, pedal design/construction isn't rocket science.. most of what you are paying for is a name, or boutique inflation.. I'm anxious to hear some of these babies.