Crusader

I didn't know anything about Gibson neck-joints when I made that guitar but now I know its what is called "Transitional" I remember cutting about 3/4 of an inch off, so it could have been a Long Tenon Joint! Getting back to the topic of Maple Tonight I was mucking around on a few guitars and the conclusion I came to is the Maple I have been using is not very tuneful. Everything I've made with it has an upper mid-range mono-tone sort of sound to it. I have already re-made one guitar to get rid of it and was the best thing I've done. That guitar now (to my ear) rivals the tone I get from my R9 Also I recently met a guy who has a "Doves In Flight" accoustic which is made of Maple yet has a beautiful warm tone. The closest thing I have to compare to that is an ES-137 which is made of Maple with a Mahogany block. It has a bit of that nasally mono-tone sound when playing accoustically but mostly disappears when plugged in. However my guitars are solid bodies and the nasally sound dominates when plugged in So my conclusion from all this is, yes Maple does vary in tone EDIT: I just noticed the date on this and I can't believe its been a whole year! Oh well that's shows how often I get to working on things around here

The bridge on the Gibson was tilted due to a loose fit, so I made a new bone saddle for it and spent a bit of time making sure it is seated properly. Its hard to tell if there is improvement but the Washburn is still louder Now I was mucking around with them the other day unplugged and it seems the Washburn is much louder accoustically, so perhaps that is part of the equation

I just started with a piece of white melamine and started drawing free-hand with a pencil. But when I built it I found that the shape didn't accomodate some of the ideas I had in mind. So next time I laid my Strat on the melamine and marked key areas like the bottom, top of horns etc. then proceeded to draw free-hand I go over and over it with a pencil, rubbing out areas and eventually come up with something I like. My two current projects are a design I drew in the 1990's

Ever since High School back in the 1800's I've had ideas about guitars and one of them is to tune the guitar to D, and use a capo on the second fret to play mostly in E. Then at some time I had the idea of a built-in Capo I saw a video once of a chick lead guitarist who had a device attached to the headstock that would mute the open strings while she was doing hammer-ons. And I thought that would be pretty cool if that was a capo Another idea I have is to overcome the problem of the capo putting you out of tune. Have the fretboard higher between the Nut and the second fret and use lower profile frets for 1st and 2nd. Another idea is to have the capo swing around from underneath or from over the top There are also other ideas I have floating around but I'm wondering if anyone else has similar ideas or if there is actually something out there like what I'm talking about

Wow you must spend a lot of time on Photoshop, any time I use it I'm banging my head against the wall the whole time. And I'm just doing a black outline on a white background LOL! I notice on some you have come up with a different headstock shape but the Fender style ones are just the same. Although I like the upside down idea. Its a great place to put a name At first I didn't think there was any merit in the SG type you have designed but just then I noticed it has a sort of LP carve to the top rather than chamfered edges. I'm actually thinking of something similar for my latest project, which is more of a Strat shape

A guy in primary school used to call me "doodle" so I just had to check out your post! Nice looking guitar, good to see something that doesn't resemble a Strat or a Les Paul. When I was in High School (loooong time ago) I used to draw guitar designs in boring classes like Social Studies or English. I came up with a sort of Flying V with chamfered edges like an SG. it took about 25 years but I did get around to making it The Signature looks good on the timber scratch plate, and a nicely balanced colour scheme, well done! And I think its cool that you came up with a name. The only names I come up with are like "M" for Maple or MH for Mahogany. The first two I made were out of Jarrah so they're "J1" and J5" (2, 3 and 4 died in infancy)

I completely forgot I have another guitar with an LR Baggs but it's not an accoustic, it's a full hollow body semi-accoustic that I made. Its a little bit louder than the Fishman

Come to think of it I have never broken that end, only on the outside. Yes that would be all over!

I have two acoustic guitars with Piezo under-saddle pickups, one with an LR Baggs Element and the other a Fishman Prefix-T, and the LR Baggs is much louder. I have to turn up the amp quite a bit with the Fishman I have checked that the saddle is seated properly and it could require further attention but I thought I would ask; Is it normal for Piezo UST's to vary like this?

Dimarzio's have the wires taped up and tucked between the coils. I imagine all pickups do this. You carefully pull them out and take off the tape But sometimes you get this......... I was lucky with this one, I found the wire straight away

Do you want to avoid this?

This is what I did about ten years ago. I was trying to see if this would work instead of having a middle pickup Needless to say it did not work but at least I broke the pickup to test my repair skills another day ...and the day came recently

I fitted a door on a recording studio the other day and the guy had a Hummingbird. He let me measure the frets and I also measured the frets on my recently acquired Songwriter, so for what its worth The Songwriter is 25.3 inches The Hummingbird 24 5/8 inches Both calculated by the 12th root of 2 (1.0594631)

I might be a bit late but my 2 cents The lengths will be too short for it to be a problem and if you are going to do a carved top like a Les Paul I'd say there wouldn't be any problem at all. But Joining edge to edge doing a book-match is where it would get tricky. When I was confronted with this problem I glued the top pieces on one at a time, but that still had its issues

^ Lots of good advice from Curtisa By the way the "wonky" frets remind me of a couple of guitars I made in the 90's. I used slightly different scale lengths on left and right with the aim to improve intonation. I don't know if it worked all that well but what I did learn is that it didn't affect intonation too seriously. It was a later project where the last fret was way off and had to be re-done I have a few pictures here that might help with your issues Last time I cut frets I clamped a block of wood to the fretboard like this. Having a go at fanned frets on this one I cut the block to size so it acts as a depth gauge What I do to sand a fretboard straight and flat is clamp sandpaper to the saw top Just another to show how I clamp it on I left the fretboard flat on this one. And after sanding I re-cut the fretslots with the proper depth gauge attached. Its amazing how much you sand off without realising it

Nice looking piece of wood! Yes the frets look wonky but it might be an optical illusion due to the grain. I wouldn't be too concerned about most of the fretboard but the last 3 or 4 look the worst and thats where they are most critical. I had a guitar once where the 5th fret was out of place by 0.5mm and it had hardly any effect on intonation. Whereas on one guitar I made the last fret was out by about the same amount and the effect on intonation was very noticeable I would measure them with a good steel rule and determine which ones are actually out, and by how much. Measure on the left side and the right side. You might find the second last fret is okay and only need to move the last and 3rd last frets

Thanks Scott I didn't know there were tints you could mix with water or lacquer, I thought it was one or the other. I noticed one of the Colortone products from StewMac can not ship outside USA, same as Nitro, which is what I thought. But if you don't have to use that type of stain there's no problem cheers

Years ago I wanted to match the red on my SG for a project and I had to mix two different stains to get something close (Red and Rosewood) Now I want to match the red on the back of my '59 Reissue LP and I'm wondering if mixing is what people generally do, or can you buy stain that is close enough without mixing? Another question is, what type of stain do I need to go with Nitro (Mohawk) cheers

Wow that one is EXACTLY the same. To be honest I didn't even notice the trussrod cover LOL Ha, thanks but if it had been a different colour I wouldn't have had a clue. Its funny how some things stick in your mind for so long, High School was 42 years ago! I also remember the guy commenting something he really liked about his Teisco, it may have been the light weight

I haven't been getting much work lately so I just sit around musing over the Stewart McDonald website entertaining myself, but now and then I think "Hmmm I could use some Hook-up wire, Hmm I could do with some more pots... I've clocked up close to two grand on the black plastic card in my wallet and now I'm just sitting around waiting for it to arrive. SMD is pretty good but - One thing I purchased which is most annoying is JUST some STRINGS from a supplier who only sells guitar strings. They are out of stock of some DMs I ordered. Its been over three weeks now and I'm wondering if Dean Markley Signature nickel steel are still in production I'm just wondering is anyone else is in the same boat?

I think I got it http://canadianvintageguitarhunt.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/vintage-60s-teisco-kingston-tele.html I knew a guy in High School who had a Teisco which wasn't a copy of anything but it had a similar colour scheme

The first thing that comes to my mind is Teisco, but those tuning pegs are the same as what were on my Riviera Commander 335, except mine were single units (I still have them) I notice they cheaped out on Fret-dots and here is a Teisco Tele showing the same missing dots (one more) except the rest of the guitar is quite different https://www.adamsstringshack.com/store/p18/Teisco%2FKingston_made_in_Japan_tele_style_.html Hope that helps

The idea of having both Les Paul switch and 5-way Strat switch is great. I was contemplating it on a Les Paul I built but didn't want to do any more routing. It has a HSH configuration and deciding how to do the switching is a headache. First of all you have to decide what combinations you want - sure you can have them all but there's just too many solder joints and confusion trying to remember what they do This is what I did to experiment: I sent the Neck and Bridge wires from the LP 3-way toggle to a mini on-on-on switch. In the middle is normal 2 humbucker operation. Then click one way and the Neck becomes the Middle, click the other way and the Bridge becomes the Middle Now that I have experimented I decided that this switching is too confusing to remember and the Neck (split) + Middle is a good sound but not fabulous enough to keep. So I plan to use a mini on-on switch so the Neck becomes Middle on the LP toggle switch

Cheers, thanks for that. You know I was thinking when you mentioned that binding can expand with glue. So if it expands in width (assuming that's what you mean) then it would shrink in length, especially going round a bend

L-O-L Where do you get your binding from? I've heard that SMD binding doesn't work with acetone. I've looked elsewhere but haven't found anything more than 8mm wide