Crusader

Thats an ES-175. It looks the same but is quite different, full hollow-body and 20 frets. But I know for sure that there is differing information out there on the 137. Might be on the Gibson site or another site that looks very "official"

Yes thats one of my sources. Although they build the guitar I read elsewhere that they are 24 3/4 so I'm wondering if it is a misprint. The only way to really know is to measure it yourself Mainly I want to know if they came out with different scale lengths one year to another cheers

Hi I'm Doug from Perth Western Australia Started Piano about 6yo and changed to guitar around 12. First had the idea of making a guitar when a mate showed me a magazine with Dave Hill from SLADE and his "Super-Yob" custom guitar. It made me realise that an electric guitar doesn't have to be a traditional shape During English and Social Studies I would draw ideas for body shapes and consequently failed those classes. About 20 years later I found a chunk of Jarrah for the body, and it stayed on the wood-heap for about another 20 years. Then around 1992 I got started and messed it up completely and it went back on the wood-heap So now I spend more time on theory than actually making anything. I've made 7 guitars and only one of them has reached completion. I've learnt a lot from making them. There's only so much they tell you in books and a lot of it you have to figure out for yourself Spent a lot of time trying to design unique body shapes but now I've gone off the idea. I feel more accomplished if the end product looks like something familiar, like a Strat or a Les Paul

Hi, does anyone have a Gibson ES-137? I'm wondering what the scale length is and I'm getting mixed information. One source says 24 3/4" others say 24" and another says the same as a Les Paul It would be great if someone has one, could you tell me what it measures from the Nut to the 12th Fret and from the Nut to the 22nd fret. If its the same as a Les Paul it should be about 312mm and 450mm, respectively The ES-137 might have come out with different scale lengths and if anyone knows it would be great to hear from you cheers

Thankyou! Yeah its not unique any more, but I think its better (and just a tad lighter) I could have made the neck full width into the body but decided to give myself this option When I get the whole thing finished, goodness knows!

Wow some incredible work going into this, is the customer a Freo supporter?

Hi all, have been too busy working but somewhere during the last couple of years I found the time to get a bit more done. I decided to do the cutout. It wasn't easy after shaping the top http://i587.photobuc...84/IMAG0186.jpg http://i587.photobuc...84/IMAG0190.jpg http://i587.photobuc...84/IMAG0192.jpg http://i587.photobuc...84/IMAG0194.jpg http://i587.photobuc...84/IMAG0195.jpg

Lol thats cool Yeah my thoughts on this are; you don't want the sound of the timber interfering with the sound of the strings which is what I think happens on a couple of my guitars. When I had the SG and put it on a tuner the needle reached pitch then held steady. But on a couple of guitars I made the needle waves around a lot before it settles, then for no apparent reason it jumps around again. They also don't sound 'clean' when played, they have a "phasing" kind of sound...very subtle but its there. The nodal points on these guitars are no-where near the bridge or the first fret so I think it could be the reason I don't think length of headstock and position of nut to be too important but position of bridge and tailpiece might be critical My mother's violin (although a lot harder to 'tap-tone') does also seem to have the bridge at the nodal point Anyhow Its not something I'm going to delve into too much but I think it might have some relevance, especially if you're going to experiment with radical body shapes etc

Can't believe its been a whole month since I was on here last. All progress on my recent build has come to a holt due to the quest for the mighty dollar...in other words I've been working too much and haven't had the time to pursue this hobby. So anyway I thought it might be interesting to share what I have noticed or "discovered" about guitars I have bought, electric and accoustic The length of the headstock is roughly half the distance from the nut to the body join (16th fret on LPs and Strats etc) The bottom of a LP body is almost perfectly round and the Tailpiece is in the centre of this 'circle' I predict this is also true for an ES335 You can 'tap-tone' a guitar (best done in the dead of night when there is complete silence) I have found if you hold a guitar at about the 1st fret (muting the strings) and rap it with your knuckles at the base or end of fretboard it will "boing" just like a blank piece of wood - But if you rap it near the bridge you just get a 'thud' My accoustic guitar seems to have the bridge right on this point while the electic is just off a bit - The distance from the top of the head to where you hold it is the same as the distance from the base to where it 'thuds' about 215mm - If you take the strings and hardware off, the point where you hold it moves up the fretboard - The bass guitar is a different kettle of fish and I haven't finished investigating it yet My conclusion is these must be important aspects of guitar building and could be what is wrong with my first few guitars which have very long necks Anybody have any comments or thoughts on this? cheers

I agree the reason would be for the production process, but I also think its actually better for tone and resonance because there is less neck timber removed just under the fretboard. I can't see that it would make a huge amount of difference but apparently it took Martin a long time to add adjustable trussrods because of this reason and I also read somewhere that Fender started off making their guitars with no trussrod, although it took a lot longer to make the guitar. There is a company out there somewhere making guitars this original Fender way

Thankyou, I hope it is helpful to someone or at least interesting. What I have shown here is just a sample of what I've been doing over the past couple of years with guitars I've made. It all started when I had one of them on the saw ready to chop the neck off (various reasons)then it occured to me I had not checked it's intonation. So it was saved and it turned out to be fairly good Nice day for the beach today wasn't it? Hey, recognise that maple cap and those frets? Well I will keep going with this when I have time, see how things turn out

With my guitars, even my recent build which is copied straight off an LP the sound comes from the nut-to-peg end On a previous guitar I used a big paper-clip. Lol not very "proffessional" but was effective

When doing this sort of research you sometimes come up with results which are the opposite of what you might expect. For example I thought the thicker strings would increase in pitch less than the thinner strings because I thought they would be under greater tension. On the other hand they might all be under the same tension and the different results are due to other factors. I know there are mathematical formulas involving thickness, mass and length to determine string tension but I hope I don’t have to learn all that to achieve my goals In any case what I have learnt recently may change the whole angle of what I initially intended. I have read more about fanned frets and the reason for it is the same as why grand pianos are better than uprights. A longer string will achieve a deeper note with a thinner string and therefore have less inharmonicity. Cut a long story short it leads me to thinking that different fret factors may not be necessary and this will be the focus of my next tests and experiments

Hilarious, and he's going to wrap it in toilet paper and put it under the christmas tree

That's what I think too but it is good to see some ideas happening

The first idea that came to me was to leave the headstock dead straight and put the tuning pegs on the face upside down, and drill long holes through the headstock to meet the tuning pegs. Trouble is the strings would meet the pegs on an angle. You would need to angle the pegs so they are square to the strings Obviously the way they put tuning pegs on a Classical guitar is actually the first idea that came to mind, then it went back to it. I didn't think you could take out so much timber off the headstock and still be strong enough though EDIT: Pretty cool, so thats the opposite of what Our Souls is going to do...this is giving me some other ideas

I haven't put tone controls on the guitars I've made so far because I never use them. I just have one volume control and one or two switches and keep it as simple as possible I'm wondering if other people have this same approach or do you think a tone pot is important?

I have been thinking about an idea for a headstock but someone has already done it Check out this guys guitar I'm sure some people already know about it but I thought it was worth posting The tutorial itself is very interesting too http://video.answers.com/jude-golds-guitar...onics-302202682

So a string that is less elastic will have more increase in pitch and a string which is more elastic will have less increase in pitch, is that correct?

I didn't want to bring this back up but I found I made an error here I put up the wrong charts which don't include Freqencies, which is what matches up to the Demonstration Aplett Tillmans Demonstration Applet http://www.till.com/articles/PickupResponseDemo/index.html Here is a chart with Frequencies up to the 5th fret The lists in blue are the Frequencies and the ones in purple are where the nulls are When you open the aplett it should show Number of frets 24 Open String Frequency 110Hz Scale Length (Inches) 25.5 You have to change the Position (Inches) to 6.375 then you're in business I find the Demo Aplett a little hard to understand because the fequencies are shown 2 5 100Hz 2 5 1KHz 2 5 10KHz 2 The first null comes up just to the left of 500Hz and the next is just to the left of 1KHz These are 440Hz and 880Hz shown in my charts in purple And they are the 4th and 8th Harmonics of the Open string I'm not sure if the aplett is working properly because when I move up the fretboard the frequencies don't change it just moves the yellow line which indicates the frequency of the first harmonic As I said I didn't really want to bring this up again. If I could edit the post with the charts I would have just done that. This topic is not for everyone it can take a lot to understand what I'm going on-about and I regret the way I have said some things I was totally skeptical when I first heard about this and when I started making guitars I just avoided the issue by not having a neck pickup. It was 33 years after I first heard about it when I bought my second Les Paul, as soon as I played on the neck pickup I was convinced, I thought "that old guy was right" Then I did a ton of experimenting with two of my guitars and I was totally converted The trouble is I don't see how I can prove anything here on an internet forum. If I recorded the difference it would rely on your computers ability to reproduce the sound accurately. And all the diagrams charts and scientific explanations really mean nothing. Its what you can hear with your own ears cheers Doug

Its good when it doesn't matter, as long as you learn not to do it when it does matter!

Lots of Laughs, you're absolutely right there! Yes and they say it lacks "character" especially with modes ie: Phrygian, Lochrian, Dorian etc Before I had the internet one of my favourite sources of information was a book called "The Oxford Companion To Music" by Percy A. Scholes and I read the section about Bach with great interest

I wish I could get myself to do more planning before building. During my recent build at some stages I was running back and forth from the shed to the house getting measurements, it was very chaotic Nice looking work btw and I'm amazed how clean the floors are!

Yeah, really ad-hoc LOL Yeah probably take of about 1 or 2mm at a time or even less close to the end. Lots and lots of passes

True but any problems I face doing this I'm sure you will encounter with any guitar It will help me have some idea of how much the pitch increases when playing fretted notes (Measure the distance between the fret and string with feeler gauge) And I might find a particular string gauge or brand more desirable. Notice that the 52-11 set has more variation in how much it increases in pitch than the 46-10 Another thing I have been doing is figuring out how much increase and decrease in pitch there is if you move the fret up or down 0.5mm I have a Graphics calculator that can give me a formula for this and one of the formulas it spat out for me is Y = 51805.0909X^-0.999999 Where Y is the pitch in Hertz and X is the distance from the theoretical bridge Now here's a chart I made showing the Intonation of the few frets I've put on so far The 6th string frets have been placed by the tuner and the 1st string frets by the standard fret spacing formula, although some of the frets didn't end up exactly where I wanted them to be. Anyway they will soon come off because straight away I see that I can't get the 3rd string to intonate. I need a shorter scale length for the 1st string. I know there will be a lot of bugs to iron-out but like I say I'm not aiming for True Temperement