mledbetter

it's the psychology of any large group. You have a few veterans that stick together, you have a medium sized group of folks that have been around a while and are still sympathetic to the newbies but have rapport with the veterans, and then you have the newbies that want to dream, challenge, innovate, etc. and that's ok by me.

Ask any college professor you'll hear the same story. Good professors are the ones that realize that these annoying freshmen are just like they were once, and without patient mentors, they can never reach the point where they have enough experience to gain true wisdom.

Same goes here. Every single one of you at some point was a newbie, wondering this, thinking that, screwing up stuff and maybe more interested in finding out the answer for yourself rather than have it fed to you, and yet you made it through just fine. The newbies here WILL do the same thing, it's expected, and getting feathers ruffled over it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Jeremy, you post excellent information and it all gets pinned immediately. Whether you feel like it or not people read that and will eventually apply it to their own practice. Maybe not the first time, but after they screw up they will go research what they did wrong and information from people like you will be what guides them back on the right track. That is a tremendous contribution. But you can't keep everyone from making mistakes and honestly, more is learned from mistakes than is learned from good advice. Hopefully you can find a way to not be so frustrated by that and take more pride in the fact that it's your information they will be coming to if and when they do screw up

And I don't put you in this lump, as you tend to stay out of the daily fray, but there have been several instances lately of flat out impatience and absolute irritation at newbies by the veteran class and honestly all that does is grow the very situation that is frustrating you to the point of leaving. If a newbie is afraid to ask a question because the result is "oh great, here we go again.. what an idiot" then they'll be much more likely to ask each other for advice because mediocre advice is more palatable then disdain and rejection from the wiser ones.

But honestly i don't think any of this is going to change. I'd love to be wrong but it's a sociological thing. This is just how people tend to act.

most metal covered pups have a little tab or two that is bent over underneath. You want to undo that tab and sometimes the cover will be soldered to the baseplate so you would have to melt that.

On the soldering, it doesn't take long at all. I pinch the lead of the cap between the tip of the iron and the top of the pot, touch the solder wire to it and then hold the cop as i lift the iron and in about a second it'll be dry and ready. Whole process shouldn't take more then 5-10 seconds once you get it down.

Adhesion might be the word you were looking for Curtis Penetration conjures some different images.

yeah that tremolo/phaser thing sounds really neat.

I hope I posted this in the right place. I work with someone who was telling me about this guy and the only name I have for him is Petra... I think. His playing is like that of Yngwie Malmsteen or Joe Stump. Anyone know who this is? Thanks.

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Petrucci?

To get natural finish checking, you might have to do it by hand and using a good photo or example of a real finish with checking, take an xacto and actually draw your checks into the finish. Then you can do the dirt & grime method of bringing the scratches out. I've seen poly crack only once and that's when my buddy dropped his brand new strat on my concrete floor. Poly doesn't wnat to check. It'll hold fast till it shatters.

David, you're always a class act around here and very generous with your encouragement and advise. Thank you very much for your openness.

I'm a programmer too.. maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel lol.

Personally, I think lollar makes most of his money selling custom pickups, followed by custom guitars and having a book out there to help folks compete against him probably seemed like less and less of a smart idea. I'd say he wants it out of print because every tom, dick and harry buys it and starts their own custom pickup business.

I have never seen the book but i feel I could make a pickup today given the resources with all I have read online. From what I understand his book was primarily about how to build the winder, and some theory behind pup design.

A pup is just a coil of wire wrapped around either a magnet(s) (standard single coil), or pole pieces attached to a magnet (HB and P90 designs, or ceramic SC designs). The "mojo" lies in the bobbin design, guage and composition of wire, and the number of turns you squeeze into the housing.

A winder is a simple as a motor turning a bobbin with some way to count turns. Or if you don't want to count turns, just be consistent with how you build your bobbin and look at the volume of wire and try to kee that consistent.

I will say this, you won't save any money on the first pickup you build. Wire and stuff is expensive, but it will be rewarding and if you build 5-6 pups you would definitely see a savings.

Also google Guitar Jones, as they are a pup supply dealer. You have to email them for the list as it's not all on their web site. You can get pre-made forbon bobbins from them completely with the magnets. Saves time and money scrounging all the materials and trying to make it yourself.

man, a 220 watt tube amp.. you could level buildings with that thing. I don't know that much about dumbles but there are dozens of boutique amps out there i'd love to have that are much less expensive.

That is some very cool product design. You said some changes had been made, and maybe the trademarked logo is one of those changes, but for the market the "big block" brand is perfect. Along with the look that you can stomp the hell out of it and it's going to last.

some folks use shoe polish but it stinks and eventurlaly comes off. SOme even use it to darken their necks but its a good way to get brown, greasy palms

yeah the canned air is what I was talking about. Instant freeze.

you will definitely know it when you see a 3 tone. The fender 3 tone is a definite yellow middle with a red ring and a black edge. This is a nice fade from the center color to the outer color which means it's a 2 color fade.

i say there's nothing wrong with the screwdriver chip as long as there is a reason for it. What made that ding, and will a screwdriver really look like that? Dings often came from instrument cable ends (my taylor acoustic has a nice beauty spot on the front where someone slung a mic cable a little too close to her)

Something as sharp as a screwdriver is going to leave a distinctive mark and that can look repetative.

The other nice thing about the story idea is it will keep you authentic. Light a cig and let it burn down in the headstock. The best way to approximate these wear and tear looks is to study a lot of pictures of worn out guitars. one nice thing about nash's site is it's chock full of pictures. For dings and stuff, i'd use sandpapers, rasps, whatever to expose areas of wood. steel wool would be good for scuffing, deglossing stuff, anywhere you want random light abarasion. Sandpaper is much more agressive for actual paint/wood removal.

A little goes a long way. You can always take more off but it's always much harder to add back, so don't go crazy. It's like getting tatoos, you can always add another one - and likewise the relic can be a work in progress.

There are two ways i can think of.

1st (and this is what I do as I do not have a jointer) use a router table with a split fence. Get the fences square and perfectly even with the bit, so if you ran the board across there would be no cutting. Then take the fence on your feed side and push it back just a hair. You feed from that side, it cuts the wood and on the out side it's flush with the fence so it won't cut any deeper than that. DO 2-3 passes and you'll be pretty spot on if you set it up right.

The other way would be to clamp the board down to a table top with the edge lapping over the edge of the table, and clamp a fence to the back of the board that will let you run your router along the straight edge and have it positioned to shave 1/16 of wood at a time off your board. As long as your straight edge is straight you should be good to go.

Nitro checks because it is fragile. Shellac also checks. Poly might check if you drop it but i don't know that temp extremes will check it. Modern finishes are made to withstand much more temp and condition extremes than the old style finishes.

On the plastic, don't bother with coffee soaking and crap like that. The best relicers will age plastic with lacquer. Some people use a can or neck amber lacquer from reranch and you control the darkness of the effect by the thickness of the coat. Light dustings and careful placement of the color will be important. Think about where the pick scratches are, how shadows would effect the yellowing, etc. Check out that nash place and you'll see great examples of aged pickguards.

For the metals, I don't know the specific chemicals, as the good relic guys keep those a secret (and I have never aged any metal parts) but check with someone that is into sculpture or artistic metal work. Or just dig online and find out what concoction will put a nice patina onto nickel. Years of sweat, smoke and abrasion will yield corroded metal with some greens and browns in it. It should be smooth and not a sharp, jagged thing with rust flakes coming off of it. The metal corrosives are crucial for a realistic look as they accellerate a something that happens naturally by the salt and other corrosives in sweat.

addition: There is a builder about 30 minutes from me that specializes in strat and tele copies and he relics a lot of them. Something he does, and a lot of folks do to some extent, is start first by creating a story for your guitar. If it's a 50s strat, write up a story of where it's been who all has owned it, any important milestones (aka. accidents, occasions, etc. in the life of the guitar). Not trying to be too artsy-fartsy here but doing stuff like that will make it believable instead of just throwing keys and beating it with chains. That's just distressing. Relicing is all about adding a compelling story to an otherwise virgin guitar.

make a bunch of fretboards out of it

Drak, I think you were just lumped in with Perry's comments.

And in defense of those comments, 100 people will come through here and say things like "I have found my calling and want to build guitars for a living.. now how do I radius the fretboard??" After a while you just assume that anyone who verbalizes their guitar building dream is just that, a dreamer.

Truth is, probably 1 out of every 100 might even make it and make a living. I'd love to make a living doing guitars but you can't get the cart before the horse and I don't say anything about it because that's my business and there's no use thinking about it really until I have a few under my belt and get a very realistic picture of the market, my quality and what price point will profit me the most.

It all boils down to marketing 101. You can't sell a product if you a) don't have a product or have a crappy product and the knee-jerk reaction is generally to try to ground folks and give them a dose of reality about the business and the relatively slim chances of making a living at it.

Heck even in the beginning of Hyscocks book, he starts out by saying that making guitars is a lousy profession but is extradorinary fun if you let it be.

Ebay is a hotbet of virtual dumpster divers who want the most they can get for as little as they can pay for it. You can sell on ebay and might even break even but you'll never make huge profit margins there. Only in volume will your margins go up and this is certainly not a business about volume.. unless you're fender gibson or PRS

Who are you two to say that everybody has to pay their dues YOUR way?

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I never said that, find the quote where I said anything like that. AAMOF, I never say things like that, I am a true believer in each person finding their own path.

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So you're saying that in order for me to correctly build a high quality guitar I must go back to the "wax on, wax off" (Karate Kid training reference) stage?

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No, I didn't say that either, and I'm totally baffled by why you would think I said that. I referenced you because of the exact reasons I stated, I think you have more experience with what he asked than anyone else here, I thought that was a compliment, obviously not taken that way. 

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I have never built furniture or cabinets, does that make me some idiot who's chasing some pipe dream? I've built 12 guitars now and now your telling me I need to go back in order to be legit?

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No, never said or implied that at all. Of anyone here that I am aware of, you have the exact information he needs, more than I do, more than Perry does. I think you took something the wrong way.

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Ok so that was my initial reaction. It's just that those comments sounded kind of builder snobbish. My total appology if I was wrong in that assumption.

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I am the furthest person from a snob you will ever talk to, maybe you were talking more of Perry than me, I don't really know, but I am very TRUTHFUL and HONEST, even sometimes BRUTALLY honest, and I HAVE seen dozens and dozens of people ask this same question, almost all of them with NO guitars under their belt yet, so I do stand by everything I did actually say, it is all true. 

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Hey, thanks for the kind words. The ziricote is pretty easy so far. if i remember correctly, it's in the rosewood family so it works about like that. I'm not going to route it, i'll plane or sand the edges flush. With all the wild grain I would say it's prone to cracking. Originally the FB was Katalox which is hard as a freakin rock. Very ebony-like. But it was too thick and I had messed something else up so I cut it off and went back to the ziricote.

I'm hoping to finish the neck up this week and get the binding done so i'll shoot up some new pics as soon as I get some more shop time in.

I like the look of this design revision. I love the color too but I am a sucker for blue guitars. How is Zirocote to work with? Excellent work so far by the way.

~David

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apparently it's all the rage for huffing these days which is just sad.. dumbasses getting frostbite on their tongues and stuff. Apparently several kids have died recently. I swear some people will try anything once no matter how stupid it is.

with nitro i've known people that used compressed air (which is probably what the original "freon" post was referring to). It's not freon but it's got some sort of propellant in it that if you turn the can upside down it will spray out a white frost and freeze whatever you spray it on. I'm talking about the canned air you get for spraying out your keyboard and stuff. any office supply store has it.

research aging hardware too. people throwing all their hardware in a box of rusty nails for a couple of weeks and stuff, that's just not natural. Rust does not equal age. google Nash Guitars and check out his stuff. He makes a living selling relics and he's one of the only ones i've seen that actually look nice and people say that they actually feel 50 years old and broken in, and that is the ultimate goal. You get half the props if it looks worn in, and the rest come if it actually plays like an old classic too.

If playing your relic requires that you get a tetanous shot then you've gone about it all wrong

well not only is the FB not trimmed, it's not attached either, it's just laying on there so that's why it looks strange too.

This guitar has a sister, a mahogany and sycamore carved top that is not as far along. I like both. I love a carved top but this kinda gets that axis look too.

The tele just needs the control cavity routed and she's ready to finish. Just haven't had time. I hated the neck so i'm doing something else with it. I don't like the scarf joint at all with the two very contrasty grains meeting up and not matching. I'll probably kick out another maple neck for that one to get it strung up.

yeah it's a very interesting piece of maple. Some of Rich's (fryovanni) stock. It's not a killer flame, but is nice looking and the edge grain is also very nice. Personally, I love amber guitars but the order is for a blue/black burst so that's what'll i'll give him I suppose. Maybe i'll try to twist his arm a bit

I don't have a ton of progress pics, but here are a few.

1. Peghead closeup

2. Body rough cut

3. Body Closeup

I've got about 5 guitars in the works and this will most likely be the first one that I finish as I have been tweaking all of my templates and jigs. I'd say I have about 10 hrs in this build alltogether so far, although spread out over several weeks.

That's it, hope you like it, and if you don't i'm sure i'll hear about it!!

Now, here is the guitar fairly complete and ready to start fitting.

The body is alder with a flamed maple 1/4" top, .9 binding channel routed, gold hardware with traditional tele bridge/pu and a GFS gold retrotron humbucker in the neck position.

The neck is flamed maple with a ziricote fingerboard that i have radiused and fretted but not trimmed flush to the neck yet. Truss rod channel is cut and ready to glue the board to the neck and then fret. Back is not contoured yet of course.

Controls on this puppy will be a LP style toggle switch and 1 vol and 1 tone. Simple and to the point.

The finish will be like the pic above, a trans blue with a black burst edge. Sides and back will be black opaque as there is nothing interesting to see back there Binding is cream and the control panel on the back will be made from the same ziricote as the fingerboard to tie it all in together.

The heel will slightly resemble an AANJ joint, contoured, with bushing supported neck screws. Tuners are gold 3x3 kluson and the nut is TUSQ.

I had thrown up a post a month or so ago in the general forum about the design of this but since it's almost complete I wanted to put the progress stuff in it's own thread.

Here is the original design, with a few modifications (photoshop mockup)

The design of the guitar is somewhere in between a les paul and a tele, and this is to the specifications of a friend of mine for whom this is being built for. Some love it, some hate it, but it's a custom order so I take no blame or credit for the fusion of the two (although I personally like it a lot)

lol. that's great.

i think it all comes down to like what Wes said.. This guy thinks he's deep and he's not. not in any way, shape or fashion. When you try to be deep and have no depth from which to pull from, you end up with pure grade A cheese..