pauliemc

Oh man I can not wait to be free of customer work for a while... I have so many unfinished projects.

So I absolutely hate doing fret dots after the neck is set. For me it is a miss and I have to struggle with the whole guitar.

+1 to that. I hate when I miss the dots & have to do them after i have the neck installed.

as to customer work. I only just got a heap of acoustics out the door for a client in the past week, & 2 customers come in today ordering an acoustic guitar each.

Diggin the funky fretboard on that thing there Mr Demonx, works realy well with those body timbers.

cool, bit of down time. I could do with a bit of that, need to rebuild the motor on my harley. 300,000 miles, time for a total rebuild I rekon.

Maybe my sarcasm on whether you would have still taken the work on was missed.... sorry!

Sounds like he was the one that wouldn't go away....

Ah, sacrasim. OK, missed that one.

CHRIS.

Nope, aint gots no piks. this was before I had a digital camera. But i think I have negativs somewhere back at the house.

Regardless, I have another one coming up later this year. I need to wait untill the flowers are in season here or else I end up with crappy ones. they were €120.00 a dozen last time & I need 3 dozen. So im waiting untill they are good enough.

I will do a thread if anyones interested.

Speaking of build threads, Anything more from yourself

That's a peach of a job right there. Would you accept it if he agreed?

Nope. Id have found some other way to push it back out the door.

But the SOB almost went for it, I ended up makin him a clear resin JEM with real roses encased in the body.

Know the waters before you go anything beyond thigh deep. Hell, potential clients should have some kind of manual to read before they spec up.

I dunno man, sometimes its the one's that have read everything available on the web & library shelves that are the biggest problem to build for. I much prefer players with a good idea of what they want, that just need a little tweak. as opposed to somebody with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything guitar, but no concept of how to use it to make a decent instrument.

I had a guy a few years back that wanted a multi laminate neck thru Jem, But he wanted spalted maple & burled walnut in the neck

(the spalt would be the majority of the neck, with 2 burled walnut pinstripes). He had found information on how to stabilise the spalt with CA & had an article from a woodworking journal about using laminations to prevent heavily figured timbers warping.

I tried to tell him it would not be stable enough so I would not take the commission. But he just kept coming back with articles & technical specifications & all sorts to prove me wrong & convince me to build it. after he drove me nuts for weeks, I finaly had to just give him a "please go away" quote €8000.00 & NO Warranty.

ha ha ha mad bstrd !!

at least you know what your gonna get before I start your build, even if I have to tell you what you asked for is wrong & that you realy want what I want to build you instead.

Carl Thompson's habit of throwing out most of a client's specs and instead building them the instrument they need or deserve. Takes a lot of confidence and honesty in oneself and trust from the client to pull that one off!

I do the same thing. Clients get to drive the design a certain amount but then it time for some good ole " you will get what I tell you your getting - & youll like it OK "

Havent had any complaints yet.

..>> Battery powered pickups suck.

Anyway, What did that wenge beast finaly weigh in at ?

I am sending out an Alpha today that tips the scales at 3.75 lbs, which is fairly light. & I taught " I bet that Wenge slab wots-iz-face is buildin doesnt weigh this little"

3.75 is feather weight. Are you sure that is not 3.75 stones I know you island dwellers like to make your own sh*t up?

It is still sitting in the garage with its finish curing so I don't know yet. You can bet it will not be 3.75 lbs. I am thinking it is going to hit around 7lbs but that is a random guess. I will let you guys know.

Nope. she be light as a fookin feather. But then its made of poplar with an ash neck, so there is nothing realy heavy in there to start with. the Alpha body style might look like a normal sized gitir but the amount of carving on it reduces the actual volume of timber massivly. The entire top edge is only 16mm diameter & it tapers a fair way down the body front. gets even more carved up on the back.

Hmmmm. fire would be my first choice here actualy. But he likes the damned thing. It plays realy nice, but has emg singles in it that just dont do it for me.

hate the thing. one minit its got sound, then nothing. or it randomly volume swells up & down for no reason. or there is noise like low gain on a clean chanel, then its gone, then its back again. or it looses all its top end & turns into a bass. But as soon as you go to take a look at it - its perfect.

Anyway, What did that wenge beast finaly weigh in at ?

I am sending out an Alpha today that tips the scales at 3.75 lbs, which is fairly light. & I taught " I bet that Wenge slab wots-iz-face is buildin doesnt weigh this little"

yea. it has to be old stuff. & even then it has to be stored about 2 years before you cut it up for blanks.

I have a few left here (19 to be exact) that came out of a bell tower that was being restored. I can remember the work starting & then getting left for years. the guys that finished the work were dumping the lot because they all had to be cut in 2 to get them out after the work was done. So the boards that I ended up getting from it were inside this old church tower since 1999. score. dry as a bone, free & filthy so I didnt have to weather them for any of my gammy lookin teles (when they get orderd, which is rare, but hey screw it)

that Daisyrock issue has raised its ugly head in my brother inlaws Fender strat. Intermittant faults are a total pain, Im at a complete loss as to where the problem is.

No offence RAD. But When things things like that happen to builders like you it makes me smile. Just to know that you get it wrong even once is a comfort. It lessens the hell all of those supposidly simple wiring jobs I cant even begin to understand.

As far as im concerned, if its not right when I wire it up I blame it on the invisable vampire midget ninja's that are running round my workshop (koz it couldnt possibly be my fault ). strip it all out & start again

Gotta agree with RAD about the tennon. It does tend to take over from the remaining bulk of the body a little. But if your glue joints are tight & you have used a good glue that dries glass hard (not like some crap that dries kinda rubbery) you will still get an excellent sound.

Iv found that gluing all the surfaces has a different affect on tone than if you only glue 3 faces (bottom & sides), or glue 3 faces & leave a small chamber at the end of the tennon. Attaching the bridge directly on to the tennon is another way to go. you know, have the tail end of the tennon come up thru the guitar top & attach the bridge directly to it. Kinda like the voodoo in my Lotus builds where the nut & bridge are sitting on the same piece of timber with no joints in between to break the flow.

But you know the way it is, There are an absolute mountain of ways to do this stuff. & they are all developed to generate great tone - that some guitar player then subverts by using a digital delay with an analogue delay, a chorus pedal, reverb, a compressor & a noise gate, all together, thru an amp thats got massive gain driven to its limits. & then a fookin wah pedal on top.

As to tone wood & long tennons & voodoo

I used to use a big long tennon on some junker wood teles i build. Absolute crap tone wood in the bodies - just reclaimed scaffold boards from building sites. I would go to great lenghts to ensure that the neck tennon went all the way down the body & finish under the bridge. I would then screw a piece of brass to the tennon & mount the bridge over that. Drill thru the lot to the back & use string thru ferrules.

Even though it was a glued in, long tennon neck. I still put on a neck plate & fake half lenght neck screws so it looked like a bolt on. Wicked cool guitars, looked like crap but played & sounded great.

Untill some Jazz player friend of the family (I used to jam with him wen I was about 12 ) asked for one built without all the funky mods." just use the crappy junk wood, It will be fine" So I did. & it sounded better than any of the previous elaboratly built gitirs. Iv been making them with terrible lumps of pine dragged out from skips on sites ever since.

You just never know with this voodoo stuff

Cool lookin top there Scott, should look even better when you carve it all up

You got lucky. My oldman is missing that finger on his fret hand from a bandsaw accident.

Its the one tool in the shop that im truly afraid of, & I rekon a healthy fear of the thing is good to help keep me in one big chubby piece.

I love great danes. but the chick wont let me have something that big (yet ha ha ha)

So, today a regular customer of mine comes into the shop. He lays out a sheep skin on the bench, I took one look at it & knew what he wanted. Its gonna be a few weeks before I get the 2 big orders out the door & get onto this one properly, but it should be a laugh

You have that headstock thing well & truly sorted Scott. Most of us spend years going thru all sorts trying to find something we like, you nailed it right out of the gate. Gorgeous, again - God I hate you

Yea Wenge polishes up real nice. I sometimes sand it to 600 then polish it with a leather belt to kinda burnish it up to a nice sheen.

Still always chicken out & put some oil on it if its for a customer & then there is that niggeling voice in the back of my head that just keeps whispering "biiig eviiil spliiinter of deaaaath" it is wenge after all

Paulie lives!

Sounds like your shop is busy as sin. Between that, little Mac and the chick, you must be having a hard time coming up for air. Did you get a new dog to feed your walnut scraps to?

Cheers

SR

Hey Scott. Yea im back up to speed again. kinda hahaha . Paulie 2.0 takes up a lot of time, but I still get a lot of hours in at the shop. Im doing some gitirs for 2 clients that are other companies just now, so im kinda off the radar because of that. No piks & the like. Even had to get the apprentice to sign a non disclosure agreement for them so he could be in the shop while the work is going on.

Funny you mention the dogs. I got a new mutt (almost a year ago now) big huge German shepard - St bernard mix. 60Kg monster of a thing.

Avenger,

I share your pain with Cedar. I used to like it, But then I got sensative to it, now I hate it. I cant abide any timber i have to wear a mask & gloves & long sleves to work on for more than an hour or so.

Personally I love the smell of Wallnut & hard Ash, they remind me of sweets I used to get as a kid.

lookin good Scott. should be interesting to se your take on a bolt on strat type thing.

I've used ahs for necks. It's fine.

There are a LOT of woods that are traditionally not used for necks, but there are no reasons I can legitimize for it. Ash is one of those, especially the hard Northern ash.

yea. northern hard ash is great for necks. I use it a lot in laminations, but maby only 5-6 one piece necks a year. but maple being so widly accepted & relativly inexpensive, it tends to be used more than any other timber by the big boys.

you should try a wenge neck. if you can get over the fear of javalin sized splinters. great material for shredder necks as you can get it to work at stupid thicknesses.

hi paulie, i saw a a lot of acoustic guitars in the workshop. but no thread ? surly with that many guitars there should be a thread

Hey red. Nope , no thread. those acoustics are for one customer, & some of their customers like to think that they all came from the bla bla custom shop. they are not AEolian builds so no threads with any piks or I would loose the contract. hence no uploads of anything for the past while.

It is friggin heavy. I chambered it and it is still heavy. Rings like a bell when you hit it but weighs like a ton of bricks. I will weigh it this weekend before I carve it if I can.

I am going to go very heavy on the carve on this one to try and get the final weight closer to what it should be. I knew it would be bad just didn't know it would be BAD.

I think once I get it carved up it should be good though.

Yea. I figured it would be. I did one of my Black Lotus one piece gitirs from a big ole chunk of wenge last year. Ebony fret board. 2 humbuckers & a hardtail. Even with the insane amount of carving on a lotus it still weighed in at over 13 lbs.

although, I put piezo pups in the bridge & holy crap did that thing sound sweet.

Id say you will get some funky sounds from that, Just use a WIDE strap

lookin good - as usual

just a point of interest, how heavy is that wenge gitir ? as thin as your super strat models are id still rekon that thing weighs in at a fairly hefty lump. Id say its gona sound good, wenge tends to have a realy good tap tone too it.

stupid question, But you have tried shellac right ? Im sure I saw you use it in a previous post. But its all I realy use for pore filling.