mledbetter

I have nothing against the Mod or the person that posted the original question. I just like being part of a clean, professional board where folks treat each other with respect and don't act like children. 1. Kevans Post: His first post to Filthy was terse. Come on.. It's not hard to read the frustration in there. He could have simply said something like "Hey man, there are a ton of threads on this and out bandwidth is limited. Please use the search. Thread closed" and you wouldn't have heard a word from the person. 2. Filthy: His response to the thread closing was horribly out of line. He's a perfect example of an internet hothead that likes to get negative threads started. There are a million of em out there and I think they probably waste almost as much bandwidth as spam. He felt like he was wronged and instead of dealing with it civily, he decided to start a fight. Anyway, an ounce of prevention (in proactively trying NOT to come off sounding ugly) by the mods can save numerous threads like this. Is it fair that you have to be nice to some idiot that asks a stupid question? no.. but you all are basically the "customer service" face for a forum and you set the tone for how people act and treat each other, so sometimes you just have to suck it up and not type what you are thinking Maybe a new feature for this forum software would be a mod translation program where the mod could type "Listen you freakin dumba$$.. use the @#%$@ search button.. " which would kindly be translated to "Please direct your attention to the search feature" lol.. Anyway, thanks to the mods for what you do, I don't envy you in the least - you all make this board a great place to come for information, and thanks to the vast majority of all you other members that don't get your feelings hurt and lash out on the occasion you get your hand slapped for not doing your homework it's a rite of passage is it not?

I've read both Doolin's and Greven's tutorials.. Greven says wait 1 hour between coats. Other things say you can go 30 mins between coats. I'm wondering if the hardness issue is 1) too many coats too soon and 2) wasn't fully cured when buffed which if I understand correctly, can trap moisture underneath the shell. Option 3.. KTM-9 looks gorgeous but LMII is glossing (no pun intended) over the fact that it's not a very hard finish. It sounds too good to be true, and may in fact be just that. I'm anxious to hear though. I may bite the bullet and buy some myself too, and maybe spread the application out over 3-4 days and let it cure longer before the final buffing. Making sure the room it's curing in is warm and bone dry can't hurt either.

I don't know for sure.. With paint you're only doing a few coats, then clearcoating the rest so the actual paint will go a long way. You could ask someone in the color shop how much coverage to expect from a gallon and try to do the math to equate a car with a guitar body.. A guitar is going to be a couple SQ/FT of surface area, probably more like 1.5

Any more news on the KTM-9?

If the lumber is all 8/4.. by 8 inches wide.. theoretically you would have 108 boards 12 foot long each. That is 1728 board feet. It takes about 4 bf of perfect lumber to make a blank. Is this wood FAS? or just a freeforall. If it's FAS then i'd figure 6bf per body to account for waste giving you 288 bodies.. but if it's just random lumber, then i'd go double and figure half of it is waste.. still giving you 216 bodies. That should be correct math.

[quote name='ooten2' date='Mar 11 2005, 03:19 PM']Here's a couple more shop tours: These guys are in my hometown of Houston. I need do take this tour... [url="http://www.robinguitars.com/factory.html"]http://www.robinguitars.com/factory.html[/url] Here's a fun website to explore, and a really good tour. Click on the shop tour link towards the bottom left of the page. Check out the jig for rounding the neck... [url="http://www.jetguitars.com/"]http://www.jetguitars.com/[/url] [right][snapback]176977[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Jet guitars are absolutely beautiful and I can't figure out for the life of me why they chose the def leppard typeface for their headstock emblem..

Yeah, it sounds like either your pore filler failed.. or there was an adverse interaction between it and the other coatings. I don't know anythign about Pore-O-Pack.. I would say you an't go wrong with epoxy.. That stuff won't go anywhere once it's set into place..

Cool man.. that's awesome. Congrats!

Yeah, i think someone was covering a guitar with beer labels or something. It will work. Not the smoothest finish but looks cool.

You might resize the image to get it under the 600px wide forum rule Cool layout though. I'm a photoshop junke.. You can do anything in that prog.

Well, LMI sells theirs for 40 bucks.. better than StewMacs 80.. but LMIs needs stiffeners. I'm working on this one. I have found hobby table saw blades that are .023 kerf however they are 2.5" diameter. I will say, however, that 80 bucks is not unheard of for a table saw blade. Good woodworkers don't cut good wood with 10 dollar blades from walmart or home depot.. My friends table saw is outfited with a new Freud blade that he spent 80-90 bucks for.. I cut 3/4 inch ply with it, even stopped during the rip to switch sides, it never splintered, burned, or anything. Slices through it like it was nothing. LMMI for 40 bucks is probably as cheap as I would go on a table saw fretting solution. And honestly, 40-80 is nothing considering you can cut your slots in a matter of minutes rather than using a backsaw and doing them all by hand.

I'm not trying to rip stewmac.. completely.. They have a ton of good stuff that is great and you can't get it anywhere else. I would never try to find substitute screws and small parts at a hardware store. I use AllParts and WD for that stuff. But for instance.. a precision rule? Stewmac wants 20-30 bucks for these things. You can get a cabinetmaker's rule at woodcraft.com, engraved markings at 1/64" graduations in a 24" length for 9.99. Woodcraft is GOOD stuff, it's a cheap alternative in price only. Things like that when you're building your first guitar, or a small run of guitars can kill your budget. I can't afford to be nickeled and dimed 20 bucks at a time on tools when my budget is tight already. Stewmac has it's place but there is a large part of their inventory that is just regular hardware and tool products that you could get a lot of different places and save a considerable amount of startup money. I simply wanted to pass those instances along so others can save some $$ too.. Save $$ on tools and put the extra into some nicer hardware or electronics or something..

This is my friend Ralph. He's a singer/songwriter acoustic oriented musician but the CD took a lot of different directions and angles. I played on this cd, contributing some guitar and organ tracks. I also did all the packaging and website work (website still under major construction) but there are sound samples for everything. We're currently playing out around our area supporting the CD. Ralph's Website / CD Linkhttp://www.ralphjeffers.com

Good gosh.. that looks like one of my brother's old radio shack projects.. For a trebel boost????!!! I understand vintage mystique but that's rediculous. I know lots of ways to make a guitar more "biting" that don't cost 1500 bucks

Yeah.. save your judgement for Bernie Rico.. From what I understand he was a brilliant builder and is just as much an icon in the the development of the rock n roll guitar as wayne charvel and grover jackson.. I personally don't like the designs but that isn't my style of music. And just like any other big company, They have been forced to go overseas for construction to keep costs down, so their quality has suffered.. but they fill a void in the market because most everyone else quit designing edgy looking guitars. Whe a Z or a V won't cut it.. BC Rich is there with all kinds of painful looking designs.

Admins: I didn't mean for this to go here.. Feel free to delete..

Aah.. well i don't know.. there are ones for tele's and ones for LPs and carved guitars. The LP curve might noe be the same as your ibanez but i shouldn't be flat. Not sure what to tell you there. I'm out of answers

Hi folks.. i've lurked here for a long time, came out of hiding last month and am now glued to this forum for the better part of most days. I am learning a lot and hopefully helping out a lot too. A little bit about myself.. i'm 31, have played guitar since I was 15, have assembled, modded, customized, etc.. for 11-12 of those years. I've wanted to custom build since I got hooked on modding and customizing and spent 2-3 years planning exactly how I would do it, how it would become a side business and how i could use something I love to augment my income. I am now starting that with a couple of friends (who have boatloads of tools and shop equipment, and space) and hope to get the first prototype done later this month. My focus is on strat and tele style, true vintage as much as possible but updates where necessary i.e. compensated bridges for teles, sculpted heel, etc. My first design project was the singlecut lp/prs inspired model I posted in the progress section. That's about it. I have a wife and 3 kids, I don't generally play out but I recorded with a buddy and did all of his CD packaging recently so i've been playing out with him supporting his new CD. I'm also a drummer and bassist, so I do a lot of tinkering with digital home recording. Good to have met a lot of you already and look forward to getting to know everyone else in the future. -marcus

Woodcraft is a high end woodworkers shop.. we have an actual physical store here. i go here all the time. They sell nothing that is junk. It's not like grizzly or harbor freight that you have to be careful what you buy. A cabinetmakers rule is going to be a good piece of equip. Cabinetry is serious business and those guys have to have ultra precision tools and instruments. Rockler is another good online store, they have the rules too but I stopped at woodcraft. You might price compare between the two. Or look at mazon. These days, amazon sells for just about everybody and you can get free shipping sometimes.

AllParts sells the ABM headless guitar head/bridge set for 285. There is a guitar and 4 string bass model on ebay right not for 209 (search for "headless abm" I don't know that you can just saw the head off a neck.. however, you can get Tommy at USA to build you a neck that meets that profile on the end. How you're going to saw the end off and not damage the truss rod or otherwise the general structure of the neck, i'm not sure. You may just need to make one. and you don't have to do neck through if you don't want.. You could always do a bolton. Making a neck for a steinberger type project would be even easier. no headstock transition to worry about, just sand till the head plate fits. If you're worried about fretting and such, you could buy a pre slotted fingerboard from stewmac, built the neck, radius it then take it to a local luth or music store repair person and get them to fret it up. Getting USA to custom build you a neck, you're probably looking at over 200 anyway.. This way you're out 17 for a neck blank, 15 for a truss rod and 11 or so for a fingerboard. Call a music store that has a reputable repair person and see what they would charge to fret a neck for you (let them provide the wire, they are getting it a lot cheaper than you can) I'm over simplifying it a bit, you need other tools to do the neck, to radius it, sculpt the back, shape it, etc.. but One other thing, reading your last post and your reservations about being able to get it perfect.. Doing a headless neck you don't even need a router. Route your truss rod channel, install rod, glue on fingerboard, set up a taper jig in a table saw and cut your taper and shape and you're done. A headless neck really takes a lot of headache out of the picture. Heck you shouldn't need a template either as long as you have measured well and have everything centered up. The table saw will ensure you a perfectly straight edge. With a headstock you have to bandwaw the profile, clean it up with a router, block sand to make sure it's straight.. etc.. Also, MusicYo sells an adapter, that's basically a locking nut, that lets you use single ball strings on their guitars. Save a littls $$ in the long run but the adapter is 25 bucks. ------ LOL.. i just said you don't need a router, then next sentance was "route your truss rod channel" I meant you don't need a flush trim setup with a neck template, worrying about tearout, etc..

I don't know about a "how to" but a headless instrument is a slave to the hardware thatmakes it possible.. ABM is the biggest manufacturer of the headless hardware (if not the only one) and you can get it at allparts. Go to allparts and type "headless" in the search box. Not cheap. You neck profile and radius just needs to match the head plate and then design your body's bridge area around around the 2 piece bridge, with a cutout to be able to access the fine tuners. For a trem you would need to chek out the trans trem. Been a while since i've played a floyd, i'm not sure the fine tuners have enough travel by them selves to be your only tuners. Honestly though, I wonder if you need the head plate. You might be able to leave an inch long extension past the nut and use string ferrules to make your string interface. Or glue an ebony plate on the end and route out string channels. Addition.. Check ebay under "headless ABM" it pulls back two. A good rule of thumb, if allparts, wd or mighty mite sell it, it's 99% likely to be on ebay at 20-40% discount. These are buy it now for 209, retail is 285 so that's not too bad.

Woodcraft: http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?familyid=2021 That's to the 64th.. a cabinetmakers rule. 9.99

Excellent advise. You have to work hard to get your product in the hands of people that will not only play it, but tell all their friends about it. To me, the professional studio musician is at the top of the list. Then the local player-outers. Then your regular music store patrons. If you have people that have bought your guitars, go to Harmony Central, have them fill out reviews that will get your name added to the list.

Not sure how old the instrument is. I know for really old restorations you can get the inlay out.. maybe with heat and steam (unless it's epoxied in there) do you finish.. clean up the inlay bed and put it back in.. It might ride a little below the surface but you could always bump it up a level with some filler.. Then clear the whole thing. The diehard restoration guys will just redo the inlay but i don't kow what your inclination is on that.. Otherwise, check out airbrush frisket film. You could lay it on and cut out the shape.. and just try to shoot a minimal amount of black for the headstock, pull the frisket off once dried and shoot your clear, masking it like mentioned above. That kind of detailed masking though is what frisket is meant for..

Hey, I know.. stick the polepieces up through the fretboard then your fretboard is the top of the bobbin.. lol. That would sound really nice when the string touches the polepiece.. but only if the polepiece is on the harmonic node.. That's an interesting idea though, the pup under the fretboard. as long as it was powerful it would probably work.. or if it had some kind of active circuit to boost the signal to accomodate the weaker signal.