Crusader

I've noticed in the pictures that everyone puts their strap buttons in the centre of the back of the guitar I find the guitar tends to swivel or tilt in the standing position (unless Steat type guitap) So on my guitars I've put the strap button just "north" of the centre and it sits more comfortably I just wanted to say something lol Got any gopd gear? "the scotch is nice but more so with Goodgear"

I'm pretty sure that thing they picture in that GuitarFrenzy thread is a dual action trussrod so anything I said is void One day I'll have to put up a picture tutorial of what I did to trussrod my guitars cheers! Ich bin ein bier trinken lol

If you're using a single action trussrod you need a very thick washer set in about 35mm from the nut (that the strings go over, not the trussrod nut) Fender use about 3/8 but I used 1/2 inch. You can tell what size it is by measuring the timber filler that surrounds the trussrod bullet-nut

You're refering to the likes of Iron Maiden? Thank goodness for AC/DC...hang-on they're called AC/DC Makes me think of the Backstreet Boys. "Which one of the ... they're all gay" lol

I picked up my new Les Paul the other day. Its just a Studio so I'm not expecting it to blow me away. Just want something to compare my guitars with First impressions on bridge pickup were "similar to mine" but the neck pickup sound was very distinct. So I reckon there's no voodoo about having a pickup on the 2nd octave node. It makes me want to learn "American Woman" (the original version) I'll get around to doing some measuring one day and see what I come up with. Not something I look forward to (I'm going blind) but I just have to know if the fret spacings are the same as the SG I had

Your favourite guitarists are gay

Is it the sort of trussrod they have inside a "U" channel? (I can't see much from the pictures) Just crank it up and see which way it bends then you'll know!

As far as I know any Maple used in bodies or necks is "Canadian" or "Rock Maple" - and I'm pretty sure that is sugar maple This is what I have been told (If I remember correctly) Whether it's birdseye, flamed or otherwise depends how it is cut and/or just a natural feature of the timber It was explained to me not long ago that flamed maple comes from very old trees that are collapsing. The lines that go across the grain are evidence of this. It is where there is greater density due to the timber collapsing - and this greater density usually results in greater sustain when used in a musical instrument I'm pretty sure Birdseye comes from timber which has been cut the opposite to quartersawn, but obviously the feature has to be in the grain in the first place It has no musical benefit, it just looks good Again I repeat this is what I have been told

Ha Ha, somebody had to say it! Tell you what - I am blown away by that organ-guitar its incredible, but it just looks like so much work! Talking about organs reminds me of another idea I had regarding true pitch but not with guitars Organs are all electronic so why can't they alter sound according to what chord you're playing and achieve true pitch? It might be a circuitry nightmare but I think it could be done

I find a 335 is hard to play on the top frets. The ear curve is too sharp and restricts my hand - just my 2 cents

Sorry if people misunderstand me but my idea is similar to what you're saying but the fret still goes under the strings, otherwise it wouldn't be a fret! Today I was thinking about it and plausible things actually started coming to mind, and guess what its already been done! Thankyou WezV. The metal fingerboard is exactly what I started to think of, believe it or not! The process of thought went from having multiple frets to a rough metal plate (like lots of tiny frets) inserted into certain areas. Then the idea went from that, to having this type of rough metal surface all over the fretboard. A fretless board that gives you freedom of pitch and still gives sustain like a guitar instead of the "pluck" of a violin! Will read-up now on this metal fretboard Hey billm90 the idea of having strings on the back of the neck is similar to something I thought of. But my idea was more like an alternative to having a trussrod And I know what you mean when you say you should have written it down. Ideas come and they fade so quickly! I like the idea of buttons on the back of the neck but I wouldn't say its completely new. Its combined with a keyboard on the Piano-Accordion!

I do agree, the idea of the black-and-white "piano" fretboard would just be a bit of a gimmick. But it would help you learn your Ionian scale! To this day I still don't know if I'm playing a major, sharp or flat note unless I relate back to the 1st or 6th string and work it out The last bit is called a 'slide', and 'fretless instruments', and are older than fretted instruments by far. I'm not talking about a slide or fretless board. I'm talking about a crazy idea that was probably conjured up during an alcohol-influenced dream! Cut a long story short - Just imagine if wherever you put your finger on the board, there's a fret under it. Of course you could just use a fretless board but it would sound like plucking a violin...

You have jolted my memory - On the thread with pictures of my guitars, someone complimented me for the one that has the body thick at the bottom and thinner at the top so the fretboard is easier to see. The twisted neck was one of the concepts that inspired me to do that

We think alike!

I wasn't thinking of changing the tuning of the guitar. My idea is to have like a maple fretboard with ebony inlays under all the sharp/flat notes. That means little pieces of wood about 5/16" wide under the strings between the appropriate frets. Yeah a lot of work! On the other hand, a lot of luthiers put very elaborate designs into the fretboard. I think the piano idea is quite simple compared to that

No-one got any suggestions about this? I also have to add that I get this "double" sound when I play the sixth string on most of the guitars I've made And when checking intonation on my guitars the tuner needle wanders up and down a lot - but with the SG it reached a point and held steady I know if I lean forward the reading goes down and if I lean back it goes up and I'm quite sure its not buzzing on any frets or the nut or the bridge So my thoughts go towards inferior timber, bad glue joints or poor installation of the bridge & tailpiece posts Kind-of changed the subject now but anyone got any thoughts? cheers

Thats sounds like a good idea, where did you get the x-ray? Anyway its good to hear about someone else doing it the hard way. Do you have fun making the filler-piece? or skunk stripe as you call it I do mine by putting a small piece of wood in the groove and move it along whith a pencil tracing the exact curve onto the intended filler-piece. Then after I shape it to that curve I router the edge with a round 3/16 bit so it fits snug against the rod. In the end there's no 'air' inside the neck, just wood and trussrod (Even I think its going overboard) Then getting the filler piece to fit at the ends is another drama all on its own. Its not so bad if the body end gets hidden under the join but some of mine are double ended On the topic of brass nuts, both Fender and Gibsons are made of brass. The Fender has a brass insert for the thread Nothing wrong with making your own nuts though. What makes if funny to me - its the sort of thing I would do!

I just had to come back Are you turning the adjusting nut the correct way? Maybe there's a left-hand thread or something If the rod moves to the back of the neck it sounds like you're adding pressure to it rather than pulling it

So it would be a single-action trussrod I think That really is strange. Not sure if others have sorted this out yet but have you got any pictures?

The Maple I bought for the cap (22 x 8 x 3/8") has been in the shed a few months now and is slightly warped and cupped (by about 1/8") - should I still use them? I think as long as I can check they are actually flat when they're flat, I should be okay What I'm planning is to screw them to something at the corners then sand them and check for flatness But I'm also wondering about tap testing. I'm very familiar with doing this with fretboards or anything that I can grasp but these pieces are bigger than I can hold in one hand, so I drilled a little screw in each side at 1/4 length Being quite wide it produces a different sound by tapping at the edges than the middle (all about an inch from the end) Tapping close to the edge they produce close to the usual sound but tapping in the middle I get a confused "double" sort of sound (there's a term in Physics books for this but right now I can't think of it) Basically they don't resonate for long Could this indicate the timber has hairline cracks or something else undesirable?

Same here, but I can't believe Southpa makes his own nuts!! I bought a bunch of Fender and Gibson style nuts from Zenith Music in ~ 1995 After doing one Fender-style finish at the headstock I got the bug and did them all that way. Makes a showpiece of it rather than covering it up. So I've got plenty of Gibson nuts! Not asking any trade secrets but do you router from the back for a solid maple neck? Just wondering, how did you know what to do? After having a Strat with a maple neck I decided thats what I want for my project guitar (which turned out to be seven so far LOL) I couldn't find anything in Libraries on the shape or how deep to make the curve so I did an enormous amount of R&D using my Strat and Bass as guinea-pigs The various things I did included Loosening the trussrod off and putting on four 54 guage strings and crank them up so the neck bent as much as possible. Then I traced the curve onto paper I also did the opposite, with no strings attached I cranked the trussrod up as tight as possible and traced the curve onto paper I made a test-neck out of radiata pine and did all sorts of measuring, checking things over and over again before coming up with a plan Its been about ten or twelve years now and they haven't shown any signs of bad design, except one The "M4" trussrod curve was too shallow and it didn't work. I routered out the filler piece, glued in a strip of Maple and re-did it. Now that particular guitar has a 1/4 inch filler piece instead of 3/16 I'll have to dig up some photos & put them up, but I have to scan them first (how BORING!) I did a lot of home-made stuff which I look at now and think "What the?" But I still can't believe Southpa makes his own nuts -

Yeah I had the idea of a removable fretboard too, so you can compare the difference between ebony and rosewood etc The method I dreamt-up for attaching is more like - Ya know how hardware stores sell those shelving systems. You put screws in the wall which you have to adjust to the right distance and the shelving has like eye-things that click in. No tools required, but screws through the fretdots is probably better Thats excellent, I hope it works out On the topic of bridges, what I'd like to see is a whammy bar that doesn't need the guts of the guitar routered out like Floyd Rose and Fenders. Its 2009 now and you'd think they'd come up with something by now. Instead all we get is a Les Paul with a Floyd Rose with the usual springs in the back. The Les Paul Access has otherwise got all the changes that I would do to a Les Paul - no need for me to make one! At the other end, what about a tun-o-matic nut, an adjustable compensating nut? That yellow Spinal Tap guitar just cracks me up. Does the volume control go to eleven? But theres been some interesting ideas being thrown around, its good Oh yeah I nearly forgot, talking about accoustic guitars. This idea stems from when I bought my first mahogany (which was African) The peice of wood was about 2.5m long and 2 inches thick. I G-cramped my maple guitar to it and strummed a few chords. My jaw dropped and I thought "Ive been using the wrong timber" I was amazed at how it resonated and wondered how it would sound if you bolted a neck to a huge chunk of lumber, like five metres long and three inches thick (or go one better and bolt a neck to a tree) Anyway at the end of all these thoughts came the idea of an accoustic guitar that was not a portable instrument but one that stays in your loungeroom like a piano On TV recently on "The Inventors" (I think thats what its called) A guy invented a big accoustic guitar that had two sounboards and gave the player stereo sound. It was like bigger than a double bass

Now thats something I would like to do

I have to give credit to Avengers63 for me starting this topic when he said "I had a weird dream last night..." Over the years I've had various ideas that are crazy and yet sometimes actually turn out to be very plausible. Some come from weird dreams and the first that comes to mind is the idea of angled frets. I tried this in 1996 and recently discovered its a well accepted technique. I never saw or heard of it before I did it, so I'm something of a pioneer (tickets on myself ha ha) The only time I saw it was on a classical music album cover showing a guitar with one fret on an angle. It may have just been an artist's impression but then I'm sure no idea is totally new My appologies if my grammar isn't too good (Yep I bin drinkin again - why else would I be hear?) Anyway here's some of the concepts I've had and if you read the other thread I'll be repeating myself - sorry Angled or "Fanned frets" I once had this dream where I had a guitar with a neck that was bent, strings and all. Even during the dream I questioned "How could this be?" and the answer was that the strings were made of stronger, thicker steel and were designed for the purpose. A really nutty idea but it went towards the angled fret guitars I've made Tool-less locking nut I once saw a female heavy-metal lead guitarist (on video) who had a muting device on the headstock (for while playing hammer-ons) I immediately thought the idea could be put into a locking nut, or a capo (read on) Btw I know Gretch once had a muting mechanism at the bridge end Double Fret-dots at E The "Baritone" guitars I made were designed to tune to D and one of the concepts I had was to have the double fret-dots at E - meaning they would be at the second fret, fourteenth and twenty-sixth Second Fret capo To complement the concept above I had the idea of using a capo so the guitar could be used for D tuning or E to suit whatever you were playing. I quite often wondered if you could somehow have a built-in capo or even get the second fret to raise up to become like a zero-fret. The lever-thing the chick was using (mentioned above) kept me thinking along those lines Fretboard like a piano Make the fretboard "checkered" to match the major and sharp notes on a piano Keyboard on a guitar Hammers like a piano on the strings of a guitar and a short keyboard The only thing I can still play on the piano is a bit like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company C" and one day I tried playing guitar left hand and piano on the right hand - and I could do it! I suppose the idea came from that I like the idea of "true pitch" rather than "tempered pitch" but thats impossible with a fretted instrument (This idea just couldn't work but its still an idea and I'll mention it) Instead of having frets fixed to the fretboard what if they were attached to your fingers? Obviously you would be restricted to a 4-stringed instrument and each finger would be "assigned" to a string - It just wouldn't work Instead of a locking nut If you have seen my pictures of the tuning pegs as close together as possible then think even more advanced Have the tuning pegs close to the nut but the winders at the usual position connected to the pegs like a tailshaft Self - tuning guitar Have little electric motors in the tuning pegs and a tuner built into the control cavity connected by wires through the neck. And have a switch next to the volume control to choose different tunings... RATS - its already been done! In 2002 I was at this gig in Joondalup watching a band with a (or two?) female guitarts. Between each song they had to re-tune their guitars and they commented "Sorry about this, one day someone will make a self-tuning guitar" And I thought don't you worry about that - someones working on it I betchya

But how else would you do a solid maple neck? I know some manufacturers have a maple fretboard on a maple neck, but to me that just seems crazy. I like the idea of the frets going straight into the neck