mledbetter

Well that makes sense.. They said they are proprietary pickups.. so a stacked single coil that is tappable would make sense. Then you can have a true single coil, a true humbucker (two half strength singlecoils) or a full on HB like the rio twangbucker, or the lace dually's.. Then you have a 5 way switch and a 3 way switch.. and the 3 way routes the wires to the 5 way to control which options are selectable. Hurts my head to think about it but i'm sure you could trace it out and figure out how to wire the thing. Where I would leave off is the distortion and sustainer thing. Buy a pedal. True distortion comes from your amp anyway!! Guitars with built in distortion just scream "synsonix with theh built in speaker" to me.

it's hard to find info. The really bad relicers will gladly tell their secrets, but you probably wouldn't want them. The really good relicers have secret sauces and such that they age hardware with, and other things that they don't want to share, as they probably make their living of fof it. My advice.. be creative and make up a history for your guitar.. i.e. back in the 70s they tried a different bridge on it (extra holes in the guitar) One night my buddy opened his beer bottle on the upper horn.. It's more complicated than beating it with chains and sanding the finish off. For hardware.. several people i know use the neck amber from reranch and mist the parts. For metal.. i have no clue. it's trial and error. certain corrosives will have the proper effects on chrome. Ask an art student. They do that type of stuff all the time to force a patina on copper and bronze. Put a couple of cigarette burns in it.. Use amber to spray some nicotene stains where the guitarist kept his cig in the headstock there.. Sand the finish off the back of the neck and let it get dirty.. Finish checking is easy if you have a nitro body.. jsut get the guitar really cold or hot, and then quickly take it to the opposite.. Or in another post, they mentioned one of gibsons custom shop guys that draws checking in with a razor blade. You can dull the body by getting some 0000 steel wool and really working the finish over to a nice dull shine. Be creative, and give your guitar a story and it will look legit. My guitar is 20 years old and survived my torturing it during highschool so it actually has a story Check out www.nashguitars.com He does some amazing relicing. he gives his instruments a story and really pours himself into the work. Anything else is just beating the crap out of your instrument

I was wodnering too about behlen's stringed instrument lacquer vs their qualalac.. According to them , the qualalac is harder. The qualalc sealer also doesn't appear to be a vinyl sealer as the instrument line is.. does that make a difference?

How do you account for the soaring sales of Suhr, Tom Anderson, Sadowsky, Grosh, DeTemple?? Guitarists tend to be traditionalists.. moreso than bassists.. That's why the top dogs in boutique bass building are all originals.. tobias, thompson, f-bass, etc.. Bassists are much more accepting of a beautiful instrument regardless of the name or look. The driving force, i believe, behind the clone market is that the quality of fender and gibson is gone way down hill. If you're going to spend 1000 dollars on a strat that you're going to have to mod the hell out of to be happy with it, why not just spend 1500-2000 on a custom strat that you know is of the highest quality.. New les pauls list for 3-5000 easily and the ones I have played are horrible. Maybe they just weren't set up right but if you work in a music store, you'll see all kinds of F & G guitars come in with runs, sanding marks, atrocious setups, etc.. Big company guitars are not generally built by luthiers.. They are built on an assembly line by people who most likely don't know the first thing about the guitar. They just know how to screw on a bridge, or solder some pots.. whatever their little part of the process is. So you can't totally knock the clone market. I would argue that it's easier to break in and make a living building clones than with your original. At least the luthiers I know that make a living at it went the clone route. They can build a better strat than fender can and people will pay for it. And generally the les paul / prs fans are the ones that will buy the set neck boutique guitars.. McNaught, McInturff, JET, etc.. I would say most people buy boutique because of a quality expectation.. not out of rebellion and wanting something unique. Some do.. but the majority are folks that know what they want, have the means to get it, and won't settle for production line garbage. The bottom line is for the builder to build what they love and seek perfection in that.

Oh i don't doubt for a minute that EJ can hear all this stuff, and i've never heard anything but great things about him as a person.. It's just surreal to witness that level of human perfection in something. Almost abnormal. I don't think anyone was bashing EJ too much. Maybe the first post.. I'm a fan though, he amazes me. And that he does all that on a strat..

Why are you wanting a plastic tonebar? You won't get the sustain or the sound you will with a true steel. There are a ton of them on ebay. 10-30 dollars - seems to me going to the trouble of building a nice lap steel, then skimpingo n the tone bar doesn't make much sense. By the time you make moulds, buy releasing spray, etc. etc.. you could have just bought a dunlop tone bar. If I were trying to go on the cheap here, i'd go get a piece of iron pipe from the hardware store and polish it up on one side.. or buy some of their bar stock and grind it smooth. Sometimes a heavy pocket knife works as a slide.. There are a lot of options.. but plastic isn't going to give you the sustain you want with a lap steel i don't believe.

Go to a woodworking store and get one of those rare earth magnets with 20 lbs of force Here's what I would try.. Find a nail with a head that will go through the hole in the stud.. put it all the way down in. Get a rubber band and feed as much of it into the hole behind the nail as you can and then pull up.. The nail should catch the rubber keeping it from marring the threads. With some pliers you should be able to work it out.

well i think it's a little more than coil tapping.. it's 5 single coils. Somehow with 5 single coils and 2 blade switches they get 13 sounds.. i've got my hunches what it is but i've never seen one. I did some searching at the us patent website but didn't fine anything. will look further. There is one patent awarded to some dude in nashville that did something similar. 2 hums and a single coil, a 5 way and a 2 way switch.. basically the 2 way goes between strat and LP wiring.. interesting concept.

Kevan.. are you talking about the conversion bridge from www.customshopparts.com? It's a plate that covers the cavity.. it's got flames on it though hot rod conversion thing. Kinda cool looking though.

I don't expect plastic shell hardness. but before the naptha you just look at it funny and it would scratch.. Yeah i'm real careful about the naptha. It doesn't even come in the house. Rags are hung to dry then disposed of.. Isn't napthat what zippo sells as lighter fluid? or is that an old wives tale?

Go all out.. I'd gun for dick dale what does he care at his age.. of course you'd have to build it upside down or whatever it is that he does.. Congrats again on the sale, and on the great feedback.. upward and onward..

oh yeah.. didn't see that part. Buy a neck dude.. seriously..

If it's a relationship with a music store you are cultivating.. just use their connections to get you bodies and necks from allparts. They are actually very high quality. If you have no tools or experience, you're better off buying pre made parts as long as you are sure of the quality. however, if you have the tools and experience, you can make a body and neck for <50 bucks whereas you'll pay allparts 110 per body and 75 or so for the neck wholesale. But to start out and if it's a semi-planned business venture, quality comes first. Get premade stuff (not saga kits, they suck) but premade stuff that you trust. Then you build some customer confidence. Offer a reasonable cost made in USA guitar and you could do ok for some extra $$$. Follow that link above though and spend a few weeks searching and researching. Premade bodies and necks solve only 2 of your problems. You have to know how to finish, setup, wire, carve and shape nuts, fret level/dress/etc.. it's not something you just jump into and have immediate success.

It just so happenes that the 5150 thread in "in progress" shows just how to do that.. check it out it's pretty neat.

EJ Autistic?? I could see that I guess.. He's a human guitar machine. I've never heard a player so precise. He is an absolute freak about tone, signal chain, amps, pretty much everything. The highest level of perfectionist.. I love his stuff but it's hard to classify.. People call him texas blues but he fits much more into the class of vai and satriani to me.. he's so precise and there's not much "raw" about him like with Stevie Ray.. Or much bluesy for that matter.. Fluke.. the advice here is good.. Build first out of passion.. for yourself. If you're good at it, cultivate it and explore making a career out of it. I don't know of any major builder that just woke up one day and said "i want to build a guitar and make a living out of it" The best luthiers do it because they love it. If they didn't get a cent they would still build. Your other types of builders are the former guitar tech like Suhr, Pensa, Sadowsky, and a whole host of others that all had years and years of guitar repair, building experience and industry contacts under their belt before they hung out their shingle as luthiers. Those tend to be the ones doing clones. There is a place for strat and gibson clones. In the bass world, exotic, multi-lam instruments are widely accepted. In the guitar arena, not so much. In my experience, the studios don't like them. Session guys won't buy them because they can't use them. You take your 5000 dollar custom guitar into the studio and it's got so much "character" that the engineer can't get a good mix, he'll hand you a strat or a paul and make you do it over. So there's nothing wrong with the strat clone idea, it's actually quite sound.. but it takes patience and a lot of experience before you'll make any kind of money at it. If your only intention of building is for personal happiness, you'll never be discouraged. If your intent is profit, you can count on being discouraged.

volume knob. ← The knob is Tone. It controls the Volume. ← You beat me to it

no doubt. i've always kinda wanted to build a 5150. i'm not an EVH superfan.. I don't even play like eddie.. I love his tone though and have always liked his no nonsense approach to guitar. Eddie always sounds like eddie.. Just a humbucker and a tone knob.. Besides, with the EVH art series giong for 15-20k average on ebay (the hand striped ones mind you).. this is a whole lot more cost effective

Plus a bit tiny enough to do the slot, with the kind pressure put on it (those aremeant for inlay cutting, not 1/8" slotting) you'd spend a fortune on bits. I'm taking a plywood blade to this shop this week for rim grinding. I'll post how it goes. For all the trouble of the dremel rig, you could buy a decent 100 dollar table saw, a 10 dollar plywood blade, spend the 20 bucks to get it machined and then the 25 or so stew charges for the fret template. All in all you'd be out 150 bucks or so.

most sunburst necks i've seen are simpley sprayed the light color, then the dark color is blended onto the heel, and the headstock.. everywhere your hand goes is light, back of the headstock and the heel are dark to blend it back into the guitar. You could do this with ReRanch's sunburst cans. You can save a little dough though and use Behlens Jet Spray colors.. you can get a good set of sunburst tones in that line of nitro.

Thanks hyunsu.. you build some really nice stuff. That's the first time i've just freeformed a body. The sculpting process is a lot of fun. Lots more to do, but a lot of fun. **addition** If the dyes agree with me, this will be the color scheme.. Ignore the line downt hemiddle.. it's a photoshop leftover.. Tobacco Burst Mockup

Here is my newest project. Started out as a botched tele body.. the router grabbed the neck pocket wood and took out a golf ball size chunk.. yikes!! Anyway.. i just started sketching, bandsawing and contouring and came up with this. Will be a 25" scale PRS style thing.. prs style neck pocket that goes under the neck pickup. Will be my swamp ash special.. I have more contouring to do. Going to buy some rasps to deepen the cutaway contours and firm up the carved top shape. With the PRS style neck pocket, the bottom cutaway will be right at the 21st fret so access on this one will be easy. Planning a bolt in neck with machine screws and steel inserts for strength. Anyway, still very rough but it's taking shape. Very comfortable and a nice piece of ash.. is at about 5 lbs and some change and no routing has been done yet.

Birchwood Casey is the manufacturer. Yes you can buy it from them. A gun dealer might be easier though. The headstock i think will require spray lacquer. Never tried it but I dont tink tru-oil will adhere. Who knows though.. it's heavy on the polymer.. Thinned, you can spray it with a gun, or some even use those little preval sprayers for a small job. Doesn't hurt to try, but otherwise i'd just spray the headstock with the rattle can.

Here is a photo of the test scrap. about 4-5 full strength coats and 2 50/50 TO/Naptha coats. Last coat 20 mins old and dry to the touch. photo link if above doesn't work This is an offcut of my swamp ash material. Nothing done but oil. It enhances the grain, maybe "yellows" it a tad.. more of an aged look than anything. As far as a maple neck.. it's great. A buddy of mine just did his bass neck with 4 coats of it. Feels like a dream. Not nearly as "sticky" as a gloss finish. Can't recommend oil enough for a neck. TruOil is pretty easy to use too.

I've been having the hardest time getting tru-oil to behave over ash. It never seems to fully harden no matter how long i let it cure.. one piece had been curing for over a month.. a slight grazing of a pic would absolutely mar the surface. I had about given up on it for anything but the maple neck. Then i read over on MIMF about some folks thinning it 50/50 with naptha. Figured i would try it and man oh man.. A new sample i was working on.. I grainfilled with oil/sanding (oil and sawdust work into the pores - it actually works fairly well for an oil based pore fill) and had about 6 ultra thin coats of tru-oil on it. Beautiful gloss, but still easy to scratch. I put 2 light coats of the TO/Naptha mix on it, let it cure and over night I already hahve to really work at it to mar the finish. It's a thousand times better. I have another piece going that will be thinned TO from start to finish. Some guys say they do about 30 coats, which seems like a lot but with the naptha it dries in about 15 minutes or so.. enough to steel wook and recoat. The finish couldn't be easier.. 0000 steel wool in between coats and 000 to final buff if you want satin, and rub with a good cotton rag if you want a shine. This is all over ash.. it's much easier to finish non porous woods with tru-oil. There you have it. I'm going to experment with other things.. tinting it with pigments and stains, etc.. I know stains work. I can't imagine why i couldn't get a semi opaque finish with a universal tint. I'll post my findings.

in fact. i'm wondering if you couldn't just get a really thin scroll saw blade and cut the flames out of a maple top.. then dye separately and glue on together.. filling the crack with epoxy.. then you'd have the continuous quilt pattern but sidtinct color areas. that could be cool too.