Buter

The last line of your post says Near as I can tell, that is what has happened. Perhaps you should have written 'PLEASE DON'T OFFER AN OPINION IF IT IS NOT COMPLIMENTARY, I REALLY JUST WANT YOU ALL TO TELL ME HOW CLEVER I AM'. All that really matters is the end product. Nobody really cares how you acheive it. Quite contrary to what the above poster says, I think most of us on here are completly open to change. I personally look at this site as often as possible specifically looking for better ways to do things. The flip side to that statement is that most of us have tried several methods of acheiving a specific task and have settled on the way that works best for us (until someone shows us a better way). If you post on this site (or any other, for that matter) you are most likely going to get responses - good, bad and somewhere in between. If you specifically ask for responses, you will definitely get them; don't throw your toys out of the cot when it happens. B

The problem most likely lies with your string slots being too deep, not too wide. Having said that, if the buzz is coming from the nut itself, wide slots could well be the prolem. Check you string clearance at your first fret. I always use a zero fret so I've got no idea what clearance you're actually looking for. From memory, when you fret the third fret, your string should just barely clear the first fret. Have a search to find out what clearance you need or wait for a kind soul on here to give you the info. B edit - Mender has a valid point below. I just wanted to point out that simply because your headstock is angled does not mean that you have sufficient break angle over the nut. If your tuners are quite tall or your headstock thin, you can have a nice angle on the headstock itself but have very little angle as far as the strings are concerned.

Nice! With the exception of the handsawing, our build techniques are nearly identical. I make heavy use of the router, router table and router planing jig. You're also the only other person on here I've seen use a lazer. Cheers Buter

No disrespect intended whatsoever. This is the most overcomplicated method I've seen yet to find the answer to what is a relatively easy question. So much so, in fact, that I'm not actually going to take the time to figure out if it is correct or not. I think that were someone having difficulty trying to figure out their neck angle, reading this post would just make matters worse for them. IMHO, there is no easier way than a full scale drawing. Your drawing doesn't even have to be of the entire guitar, just lines representing the important pieces of the equation. There are loads of descriptions (Hiscock, Koch, Perry...) easily available, even on this website, that can guide you through making the drawing. For what it's worth, when I'm trying to figure this out, I'm not looking for an angle, I'm looking for the distance the distance below the plane of the bottom of the fingerboard I need to mount my bridge for a specific scale length. Working in small angles can be difficult (for me, anyway) and a small anlgle error can equal a dramatic error in distance at the bridge. Just my opinions, mate. Cheers Buter Here's Perry's tutorial

You haven't made it through the winter in Finland yet! B

I could really go for a hammam sandwich and a banya split. B

Dude This little island has already been completely shut down by snow this year. All of my tough guy friends were bringing laundry over just to hang out in my sauna, drink beer and play darts. Of course, the women folk all thought we were doing something productive... B

Forgot to add... Another trick of mine is having the clothes dryer in the workshop with the outlet plumbed into a bucket to collect moisture instead of discharging to the outside.. When you are drying clothes, it not only makes the wifey happy that you're helping with the laundry, it supplies you with an abundance of moist, warm air. This alone could heat a decent shop whilst drying a big load. Just beware of the effects of very humid air on your lovely kiln dried wood. B

Hiya Scott Thanks, but those two can't hold a candle to yours (I do love that LP, though). I hope to contiune with some much nicer ones after I finish getting this damn house built. I just found out that I'll have to learn how to fly a new plane in the next few months as well, so that will be about three more months of little/no building. Funny you should mention the recessed ring idea - it is something that's been rattling around in my head for a little while. Stay tuned. Hiya Wes I don't know about the rest of the boys, but my screw choice is actually goverened by the inserts I can get. I'm using inserts that accept an M3 machine screw which won't fit through a normal pup mounting tab so its off to the drill press we go. Nice to see you building, btw, it's looking great. Cheers Buter

The first place I would look is the nut. It sounds like you may have cut a couple of the slots too deep. It really just sounds like you need some experience/practice in fretting and setting up your guitars. So go get them out of the closet and make 'em play! Good luck B

Ed Roman - ain't he the fella that said that he wouldn't build guitars anymore if he couldn't use his cnc machine? Anyway... Here's the first guitar that I did. The pup mounting ring so close to the cutaway really messes up the look of an otherwise good looking guitar. Now, here's a lovely LP-ish guitar with a sculpted heel and quite an aggressive cutaway. I wouldn't have been able to do it this way if I were using a ring. I needed to pull the pickups out anyway to change out the temporary screws (the nickel machine screws stick out like a sore thumb) and paint the pup mounting tabs black, so that will give me the opportunity to change the mounting a little bit. So, for me, I prefer the ringless look and it serves a design purpose as well. No worries about the pups becoming loose in their mountings, either. RAD does have a good point, you need to drill out the tabs (I do, anyway) to do this which means it's not an easy swap back into another guitar. Spoke's tut is really good. I've used similar methods to make rings before. I tend to cheat a little bit and laminate a layer of fibreglass between two layers of wood. It helps to eliminate short grain induced swearing. Cheers B

Thanks guys. I've actually got a bit of foam under the pups at the moment, but I've cranked the mounting screws right down so that the pup mounting tabs are snugged right down to the body. I think that I'll double up on the foam and use slightly longer screws to make sure the mounting tabs aren't touching the body. This should work out well because I wanted to raise the neck pup a little bit anyway. Hi Patrick (sp?) I'm not sure who is MAJORLY FREAKING HYPING this method for attaching pickups to a guitar. I read pretty much every UK and American guitar magazine each month (I'm not a sad bastard, honestly - you try sitting around at airports as much as I do) and I don't recall any of the reviews even noticing whether or not a mounting ring was used, let alone hype it. My personal opinion is that ringless looks better and it is my guitar so I win! Body mounted pickups also allow the cutaway to come down lower and closer to the FB which I also like the look of and the easier upper fret access is self explanatory. I will probably still be doing this in 15 years and I hope that my guitars are turning out half as nice as yours. You do beautiful work, mate. Cheers everyone Buter Buter

I've gone away from using pup mounting rings and mounting the pups directly to the body with threaded inserts. It looks much nicer this way but the pups do pickup every bump that the body takes. I know a few of you have forgone mounting rings - are you using any gasket or rubber/delrin washers to isolate the pup from the body? I let a local pro gig my last LP and the only negative feedback was with an amp at gig levels, a good bash against the body was a bit frightening. I've got a few ideas about how to fix the problem, but surely some of you have come across this already, I'm interested to know what you've done about it. Cheers Buter

If you cannot tell which way the grain is running, I'm afraid it will be difficult to help you. I imagine it is a language thing, not an intelligence thing on your part. As soon as someone puts into a context that you can understand, you'll grasp it quite quickly. If you can imagine petting/stroking a dog. Don't stroke it the wrong way! Good luck. Buter

I asked a similar question this summer and here are the replies. Cheers Buter

It can't be explained any better than this video. With this bit I will rout out a 40mm body in one pass, provided I haven't cut too far outside the final shape on the bandsaw. Anything much more than about 1.5mm and I will do that section in two passes. You stated that you were trying to route up to 4mm at 40mm depth, that's too much for my liking. Cheers B Hiya Muzz, you just posted as I was writing. Good, er, point about the pointy bits. After sending countless bodies flying across the shop, I stopped routing anything too pointy; I just get close and finish by hand. No two alike that way, totally custom!

I use a radiator like this. Don't mind the price, I just grabbed the first image off of Amazon, you can find them for much cheaper. I'll admid that I never saw a heater like this when I lived in the US, but, then again, we didn't really need heaters where I'm from. When the weather turns cold, I switch the thing on on a low power setting and it stays on until the end of next spring. During the day I tend to crank the power a bit more to stay warm cuz I hates being cold. I have a decent sized workshop with marginal insulation and it still seems to do just fine. It's not the ideal situation, but it sounds much better than what you've got and it doesn't cost the earth to run. Cheers Buter

Yeah, but Southern pride is as strong as ever. Interested to see how this one turns out, John. Buter (very proud Texan)

Certainly a possibility with anything I'm involved in. In fact, when something does not work the way that I had planned or expected, I make the initial assumption that I have done something wrong. Once pride is out of the question, troubleshooting is considerably easier. WRT this particular guitar, it is the first one that I've built or tinkered with that had seperate controls for each pup. Knowing that this was the first time that I had wired a guitar this way, it was a reasonable assumption to believe that I had done something incorrectly when the instrument behaved differently than what I was expecting. In this instance, after rewiring, asking questions and examining other guitars, I have reevaluated my initial diagnosis (that I had made a mistake) and come to the conclusion that the guitar was behaving exactly as it should, given the way that I had wired it. The sound coming out of this guitar is absolutely monstrous and I can get some really killer tones with both pups switched on. Given the previous sentance it sould be no surprise that I am leaving the wiring exactly the way it is. Having asked the question here and reading the responses that followed, I now have a better knowledge of guitar wiring theories. I'd say I've got a win/win thing going on here. Thanks for all of the responses, guys. Cheers Buter

Check out the stuff on the front page (of the site, not the forum). There's a wealth of info on there. Had you done that, you would have found this little article. Just a bit further down the page on the forum home you'll see a finishing section under the tutorials sub group. Would you be surprised to hear that this little thread is the very first one and cleverly titled 'swirl, swirl, swirl'? Also, check out the work by Andy t. His swirls come out really nice. Good luck with it. Cheers Buter ps - where in S. Texas are you? I'm from N. Padre.

Thanks for posting that, Jaden. Best of luck with it all. Cheers Buter

First off... Killer guitar 2nd... I really dig the logo (something I've been struggling with for a few months now). Finally... You post great stuff, keep it up. Cheers Buter

Thanks guys. You're right, Ken, I didn't say where the volume pots were. The output from the pups goes into the push/pull volume pots and then out to the pup selector switch. (sorry, my little girl wanted me to put that into the post) I have used the left hand tag (when viewed from the back) of the volume pots for the volume input/tone pot output and the middle tag as the output to the selector switch. I'll have a closer look at the wiring diagrams that Tim provided a link for. I think they just switch which tags are used on the volume pots (from memory). I went to my friends house last night and he's got about 8 LP's from various years, most original and a couple of copies (one Jimmy Page as well, if you're into sig guitars). Half of his guitars behaved as mine does, half do not. There was no obvious rhyme or reason to it, but it may well be the small differenct that Tim pointed out. I would have looked in the cavity but I saw Tim's post after I got home. After thinking about it, you would never really want both selected with one of the pups all the way off, so it is just a discussion of wiring theory, really. The fact that the guitar did something I wasn't expecting means I've a bit more to learn about basic wiring, hence the question. Cheeers Buter

Am I just being a bit thick? With the pup selector to both pups, turning either of the volume pots all the way down kills both pups. This is the first time that I've wired a guitar this way and I've never played a standard LP with the 2 vol/2 tone pot setup. I'll try to describe how I've got this little monster wired - 2 buckers with their hots going to a normal on/on/on 3 way and the wires from the other coils off to their own push/pull for a coil tap. The out put from the 3 way then goes into an active tone booster circuit that also has a bypass. There is also a concentric tone pot that serves both volume pots - each volume to its own tone pot in the concentric (I've tried disconnecting one lead and the problem still persists. The output from the active circuit goes through a kill switch (which also disconnects the battery supply) and out to the jack. So, have I done something wrong, or does this normally happen with a 4 pot setup in the 'both' position? Cheers Buter

Looks good, fairly unique. How have you grounded the strings? Ola grounds one bridge and uses a zero fret to ground the rest - looks like you're using a standard nut. Buter