B. Aaron

As mentioned more than once elsewhere on the forums, Brian May of Queen made his fretboard out of oak, stained black, and lacquered. 40+ years on, and it still works for him

And Robert Benedetto built an archtop guitar with lumber yard knotty pine for the carved top (with a huge knot in the face of it) and it sounded just fine, but you don't see pine tops appearing everywhere.

Just because you can use a material doesn't always mean you should.

I've set up a lot (a LOT) of guitars with a variety of locking tremolos, from genuine Floyd Rose and Schallers to cheapo Peaveys with locking tremolos. There is a big difference in tone quality, tuning stability, ease of adjustment, and overall durability between knockoffs and real ones. The cheap ones wear out quickly (stripped threads, etc) because the metal is too soft, and they generally don't match up with replacement parts very well because they aren't quite the same shape/size as a genuine Floyd Rose.

I haven't used the ones from Ebay specifically, but I'm pretty sure they won't be as good as the real thing. If you have a good ear for tuning/intonation, you'll probably end up upgrading to a real one eventually anyway and getting rid of the cheap one.

I'd recommend going to your local Art Shoppe and talking to the people who work there. I don't mean some place like Michael's - I mean a place specializing in art supplies for professionals and university art students. They should have ideas about what kind of coatings you can use over pastels and the likes.

P.S. I have already done this myself, but the products I have access to may not be available in your area. In the interest of building relationships with other people in your LOCAL community and making cross-disciplinary links with pros in other fields, I would strongly recommend meeting these people yourself rather than just taking my advice (instead of meeting some neat new people!).

I think you'll need those two thin walnut stripes in there for contrast, or else the different maple figures will just look sloppy next to each other. Flame down the middle, quilt on the sides, walnut in between.

It's like fine fashion: when wearing a suit, you CAN wear a patterned tie over a patterned shirt, but only if the patterns contrast enough that they don't just muck each other up (i.e., big stripes with fine stripes is okay, but fine stripes with fine stripes is not). On the latest mockup, the flame and quilt are too close in color/lightness/darkness to put next to each other, so you need something contrasting to separate them. Something like luscious, delicious, simple walnut.

In summary, I like the last option in post #4 best out of the options presented so far.

In comparison to hard Maple, Red Oak is (believe it or not) about 10% softer and more 5% less stiff. It's about the same weight. I suppose, therefore, that you can make fingerboards and necks from it, but I dislike its texture and I would personally rule it out on those grounds alone. See: http://www.woodworkerssource.com/show_nume...Quercus%20rubra for some numerical data.

Regarding Walnut:

Most of the necks I've made recently are ⅓ to ½ Black Walnut (juglans nigra) in their cross section with the rest being maple. Black Walnut is about 10% lighter than hard Maple yet just as stiff, but it's about 30% softer (and thus easier to carve and unsuitable for fingerboards). Being softer and lighter, it's going to have a darker tap-tone and less sustain than Maple... but it's still heavier and stiffer than mahogany, so don't imagine that it's going to be grossly dark or dead. Structurally it is just fine in any application where Maple would suffice, and more than adequate for a situation that would normally call for mahogany. Tonally, you will get different opinions depending on who you ask: Roger Siminoff hates the stuff, while Carvin builds entire guitars from it (i.e., DC400W) because it's a little like maple but less piercing.

Personally? I like it, because it's easy to work with, it seems tonally sensible to me, and it smells delicious when freshly worked.

Something to consider: most Jackson guitars (which have an indisputably metal history) are traditionally alder with maple necks, much like a Fender. I wouldn't consider Alder to be "bright" at all. I've played a lot of humbucker-equipped Alder guitars and they generally have great low-end and a nice smooth clarity in the upper frequencies; I just think it has the "bright" reputation because it's so frequently paired with single-coil pickups. Mahogany on its own (without a maple top) can be a pretty dark sounding wood. When you think of metal tone as you perceive metal to be, do you start out with a dark guitar or a full-frequency instrument?

A lot of people call Sapele a mahogany to help them sell instruments, but it ain't mahogany. Neither are Sipo or Agathis, and some manufacturers (I won't name names) refer to them as mahogany too.

Basswood: 28 lbs/cu.ft.

Alder: 28 lbs/cu.ft.

Poplar: 30 lbs/cu.ft.

Honduras Mahogany: 31 lbs/cu.ft.

Khaya Mahogany: 31 lbs/cu.ft.

Soft/European/Bigleaf Maple: 35 lbs/cu.ft.

Sapele "Mahogany": 42 lbs/cu.ft.

Hard (Sugar) Maple: 44 lbs/cu.ft.

Those are averages, not absolutes.

What do you prefer about the ZPS system over the Floyd-style LO-TRS?

its not about the playability of the trems im after. I barely use the trem at all.

for me the ZPS trem is eye catching and I love the looks of it.

I want to see my guitar sexy in my eyes. just for personal satisfaction.

Hhhhhuh. I... guess that's allowed? Seems like a lot of time, work, and money (in parts) just to make the bridge of your guitar look prettier.

What do you prefer about the ZPS system over the Floyd-style LO-TRS?

Could someone confirm if my theory and thinking below is correct for working out where to put the compensated wraparound bridge.

The adjustment of the bridge for the intonation should always lengthen the string from the given scale length. This is to allow for small area of string at the bridge and nut which can not vibrate, the thicker the string the larger the area that can not vibrate except where changing from plain to round. Therefore if my bridge is correctly compensated having where string breaks on the high e string with the bridge fully forward on its adjustment at the exact scale length (25.5") will work and allow me enough adjustment.

please tell me if I'm being stupid.

I'm pretty sure that's not why compensation is necessary (i.e., I don't think that's the physics/mechanics behind it), but in solving for compensation you have the right idea: you'll never need to make your string length shorter than the scale length for proper intonation. You'll probably be safe as long as your high E saddle can get to within a millimeter of the scale length, and your low E can probably safely be 2 mm past the scale length at its forward-most position.

...but play a few 40 year old wenge fretboards and you will see why i dont like grainy fretboards...

They don't even have to be that old. I've seen 10 year old Wenge fretboards that had such pronounced grain ridges that you could not only feel them, but SEE them.

Awesome ! so , according to these nice folks , it's as heavy as Maple , which kills the "too heavy" theory....... it's as hard as Rosewood or slightly harder, and not as stiff as either one , but real close to both ..... Interesting.

Thanks for that info . Good stuff.

Keep in mind, though, that the numerical data there only represents the average of the wood samples that they tested. There's a huge variation within species from tree to tree, and even variation within the same tree: wood from the bottom of a tree is (fairly consistently) heavier, stiffer, and stronger in almost every way than the wood from the top of the tree, according to the research I've seen so far from people who study trees for the lumber industry (and have nothing to do with instrument construction).

So it's a rough guide as to the differences between the woods, but that's all: it's rough. I have two nice pieces of curly Red maple that weigh 35.5 lbs/cu.ft and 38.6 lbs/cu.ft., but the species average is only 35 lbs/cu.ft. Weigh and compare everything you can, and keep notes from one instrument to the next! I would suspect that generally, heavier pieces are denser & stiffer than lighter ones. (Cast the words "strength to weight ratio" far from your mind right now. Just forget them. They're almost useless once one realizes that stiffness is proportional to thickness and shape, not overall weight.)

Just be careful that your wood isn't unusually heavy because it's not dried out entirely!

The pertinent hard data for you, courtesy of the www.woodworkerssource.com species library; I've also included the same information for hard maple and East Indian Rosewood so you can see how it in context with well-known neck/fingerboard woods.

Padauk:

Stiffness: 1,688 1000psi.

Weight: 45 lbs/cu.ft.

Janka hardness: 1725 lbs

Hard Maple:

Stiffness: 1,830 1000psi

Weight: 44 lbs/cu.ft.

Janka hardness: 1450 lbs

East Indian Rosewood:

Stiffness: 1,737 1000psi

Weight: 53 lbs/cu.ft.

Janka hardness: 1720 lbs

No common finish will actually completely prevent moisture from getting into or out of a neck anyway. All they can do is slow down the change in wood moisture.

Yup. Simple physics that are hilariously just making it to lutherie hahahaha. Ervin's stuff deals with that a lot as well. HOWEVER, if you're interested in the actual physics behind lutherie you should check out a book called "Left Brain Lutherie" I forget who it's by. My friend Todd's an engineer and loves the thing for some "light reading"... I on the other hand have no interest in knowing THAT much about my hobby lol.

Chris

I know! It just kills me that it's taking so long for simple stuff like that to find its way into instrument construction, and that there are people out there who say things like "science has no place in the world of fine guitar construction." Evidently they don't care about accurate fret placement?

Thanks for mentioning that book... it looks like something I should add to my collection. I think I'll pick that up some time this week.

I wasn't saying he does it for those reasons. I'm just saying his book shows how it can be done.

Chris

Fair enough!

The math behind it goes like this: cube the change in thickness to find the change in stiffness. For example, if you double the thickness of something (2x2x2), it will be 8 time stiffer. If you increase the thickness by even a mere 25% (1.25x1.25x1.25), it will be 1.95x stiffer. Adding a little bit of thickness to instrument sides with a light stiff wood (such as spruce) adds a lot of stiffness to the final product without adding much mass.

Go read that Bogdanovich classical guitar book... he does this but with pretty thick "veneer."

Chris

That's not quite the object of what Bogdanovich is doing though. He doesn't just use a cheap core with a fancy veneer on the outside. Rather, he's making thicker composite sides of rosewood (~1.6mm thick) and sitka spruce (~1.2mm thick) to produce something stiffer and more stable than solid rosewood alone. Once you do the math it works out to being about 2x as stiff as plain rosewood sides would be.

Bogdanovich isn't the only luthier who does this. The Ramirez 1a (perhaps the classical guitar by which all others have been judged since the '60s) has rosewood sides lined with cypress (even the old Brazilian rosewood ones!), and Daniel Friederich makes his sides from two 2mm pieces of East Indian rosewood - that's right, he has 4mm thick laminated sides, which produces sides 8x as stiff as usual! There is a method to the madness sometimes.

In other words, does it matter near as much what wood choice the "wings"

are on neck-thru guitars as compared to a bolt-on or set neck?

The short answer: on a neck-through where the BRIDGE is mounted in the neck rather than the wings, the body "wing" wood probably has less of an effect on tone than it would with a bolt-on/bolt-in/set-neck guitar, but it will still have some effect.

On a related note (but not the answer to the original question), I think the wood that the bridge is mounted in will have much more impact on the sound than the wood the pickups are mounted in (which is the way the question was originally phrased). The body & neck woods talk to the strings (because they are physically connected to each other through the bridge, nut, and frets) and the strings talk to the pickups (by creating disturbances in the magnetic fields of the pickups). The pickups do not talk directly to the wood because wood is not ferrous, and magnetism is the only language pickup speaks.

I don't think you'll find any oil finishes that don't darken the wood. Even Tung Oil, which most claim "doesn't darken and yellow as it ages," imparts an initial golden-yellow tint to maple. You might have to go with some sort of lacquer or urethane if you want to keep it really pale.

Fingerboard oil is intended for unfinished fingerboards to help clean them and afford some moisture protection. Maple fingerboards are usually finished the same as the back of the neck in order to keep them clean because they soil easily - hence why fingerboard oil is unnecessary.

Another way to do it:

Fret your D string at the 1st fret with one hand and at the neck/body joint fret with the other hand. Take a peek and check how much space there is between the D string and a fret in the middle of the neck (fret 8 or 9, for example). For a bass, you want about 0.5-1.0mm between the string and that fret in the middle of the neck. That should work nicely with an action of ~2mm on the G string and ~3.3mm on the low B string (when checked at the 12th fret with nothing fretted) and the other strings gradually shifting between those two extremes.

You can fill small chips and dings with super glue (cyanoacrylate, aka CA glue) too, and it'll turn out mostly clear. Just be careful not to get it anywhere it shouldn't be because a) it's glue, and it can sometimes leave cloudy white stains on existing finish. If you want to mask off part of the finish to protect it from the CA glue you can smear a little Vaseline on the areas you want to protect, and if the CA gets onto there it'll peel off easily after it dries and you clean the Vaseline up.

Those Ibanez guitars have plywood fronts, backs, and sides. The fancy hardwood you see is all super-thin veneers over something pale and nondescript.

I think they must have had trouble with the tops warping because they have a huge 1/8" plywood structural assembly beneath the bridge that couples it to the tail block. You can see it if you look in through the soundhole or if you remove the endpin/jack and look in through the tail of the guitar. I like to call it "the bookshelf" because that's almost what it looks like.

So! Not only is the entire body made out of plywood, but there's a huge piece of structural reinforcement impeding movement of the top. They sound pretty pathetic.

It can be done by adding a metal plate under the bridge where the string ball catches then put a ground to the plate. Not really an easy task but it can be done and to save time a bit of epoxy so you can glue it over the bridge plate using the strings to hold it in place until the glue sets up. Does not need to be thick..

At least that is what I would do if I had no choice...

That's what Taylor does with their acoustics.