jmrentis

I heard this guy is all strung out on that Titebond 2! LOL Just kidding, but seriously this is getting sick. It's at $4000 and still has not met the reserve. If I were that guy I definitely would not have put my face in the pic , I'd be nervous that someone would come after me after they found out that it was nothing special and actually kinda junky for an LP! Jason

I won't be using a locking nut, so is it worth doing instead of single piece? Does it have a much greater strength than a single piece or provide any resistance against twisting or warping? Thank for the help so far. Jason

Why? Don't lose it! Just because the people here don't like it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. All the people on this website have probably made one at some time or another, or have just seen so many in there profession that they're probably sick of them. This shouldn't keep you from making something you like. And anybody that doesn't know much about guitars like some of your friends and family will think that it is a very cool design and funtional as well. So I say do it! If it turns out good enough, you can even trick some people into thinking that you have a very nice expensive guitar(not that the rg isn't nice or expensive). Do it, if that was what you wanted originally, by all means Do It! Hope it works out for you and post pics as you go! Jason

I am wondering if it is a good idea to do a scarf joint on a laminated maple/jatoba/maple neck. I could do a single piece and cut an angle in it, but I see quite a few laminates and single piece with the scarf joint. Is it stronger this way, I will be having the truss rod adjustment near the headstock? I have never done this type of joint is there any serious problems with this that I need to watch for? Thank for your time and I hope to hear your thoughts and opinions. Jason

Godin SD, Thats looks incredible, both of them. Is the neck on the wenge one hard maple(rock), with flamed or curly figuring? It's not soft maple is it? It doesn't really look like soft but it's hard to tell, it looks really nice with the horizontal stripes on the back of the neck. Also is it one piece besides the fretboard? You did an excellent job on all of it. I really hope some of my stuff comes close to being of the quality of yours, I would be so happy! Keep up the great work, it's always so inspirational to see somebodies art come to be a beautiful piece. And a complex piece that is able to be played is even better. Jason

Any help guys? I've done more research and read here that headstock angle can never hurt. Is this true, if you don't need it would it put excess tension on the strings and nut or not? I was thinking maybe of changing to an angled headstock in which I would have to buy more wood because my current blank is only like 1 1/4" or 1 1/2", I wouldn't be able to get any much of an angle with this. Thanks for your help. BTW is a bump when you post just to bring it up to the top of the list, is this a bump or just more questions. Jason

Hey Guys, I've been going back and fourth on this and still can't make a final decision. Need some professional help besides counciling. So here's the deal, my project is going to be a Jem/Rg style 6 string flat bodied guitar with no arm contour, with or without handle not sure yet, hardtail bridge,HH, locking sperzel tuners. The body will be a purpleheart back with a quilted maple top, I know it will be a bit heavy and bright, thats cool with me, I might drill a bunch of holes to compensate for this. Now we come to my problem, the neck, I have a rock maple neck blank already, also I have a soft maple piece the size of a neck blank, very nice figuring and pretty hard for soft maple. I'm not planing on using this unless it's laminated and majorly supported. Would it be worth cutting the soft piece from 6 inches across down to 3 and sandwich them around the hardmaple? Would this laminate still be weak? I don't need a neck angle or headstock angle I don't think, it would be recessed from the nut though to get an angle from nut to tuner pegs. Should I just use the hard maple single piece and do a skunk stripe and stiff fretboard along with a truss rod? I didn't necessarily want to buy more wood because I have everything else and my hardwood shop is a bit of a drive, but if I will not get a strong neck that will last I'll do it. If so what makes a good skunk stripe. I would have to buy another piece of rock maple and a wood for skunk stripe or trod cavity. So I need some guidence, if anyone has any ideas on what direction I should go please let me know and if you see something that could be improved put it down as I'm always open to change, other than the body wood, thats set for this project! Sorry for the novel and thanks for taking the time to help! Jason

Thats awesome! We all can be millionaires. Just make a standard LP body using descent wood, buy a neck and fb and call it something it's not. Wow since that guitar is selling for almost $4000 right now, I think Myka, Metal Matt, and everyone else that I can't think of right now, that are making beautiful great sounding finished guitars would blow that guys crap out of the water. If they did what he is doing and flat out lie about what it is, they could sell their guitars for twice or three times as much as what he is. It's kinda sad that there are that many brainless idiots out there. Although it really brings up my selfesteem! If all it takes is a finish to be worth 20K then why not spend a couple hundred and make 20K instead of a few grand. Why because it's Bullsh!&. Jason

Go for it. Even if you don't know anyone, call and ask, say you need to a make a template for that specific neck to build a replacement for it. I personally went down to guitar trader near me and they let me copy the RG guitar onto cardboard so I could build a template for it. I wanted the Jem but they didn't have, so I called Guitar Center and they said come in on Monday and we will help you out. Every place I called which was 3 total was totally cool with me tracing out a Jem ibanez which is $2099 at Guitar Center. So just be cool to them and they should have no problems with you, if for some reason they say no, just ask them if they would do it them self or if there is a better time to come back because sometimes they are busy and don't have the time to deal with it. Anyways Good Luck and I hope it works out for you. Jason

Hey Fryovanni, I was wondering the thickness on your fretboards. Are they all the same or do they vary? Do you ever get any cocobolo in for fretboards possibly? Thanks for you time and help! Jason

Hey Matt, is that where you get your zircote? Do you know what the thickness of his fretboards is? I looked through it again recently and some some very nice flamed and quilted maple. I will be doing a quilted maple top on my purpleheart body. How thick should I go for a top? It will most likely be a jem style guitar, I know everyone has done one, so now I have to do mine. Got any new pics on your progress, Metal Matt shredding some Metal Mayhem! LOL Kinda makes guitar building sound badass. Maybe you should think about starting a company name for your work on guitars. Maybe start stamping the back of the neck on the headstock or the cavity cover. That way 10 years from now your first lines of guitars will be considered collector axes and wil be worth a whole lot of money. Keep up the progress! Jason

I got it! I bought a 20x14 6/4 piece solid purpleheart. Damn it's heavy, I'm sure after cutting it down and routing it will be perfect. I'm thinking that Matt had a great desciption, it has to be a thick sound being that it so dense, and a bright sound because it's super hard. I can't wait to get started. Is a bandsaw my best bet for cutting the general profile? I think I need to get one, so where would the best place for one Ebay? Also is it necessary to have an angled headstock? My factory ibanez doesn't. It has a recessed headstock. Would that be stable enough with a maple neck and cocobolo fretboard with truss rod and skunk stripe? My friend has my camera, so when I get it back I'll show you the fat piece of purpleheart I got. It was $6.54 B/FT. About the same as alder and soft maple(not figured). Thanks for the info guys! Jason

How do like them? I have a buddy that loves the air norton as a bridge pup, ever tried that? Does that combo have a defined bottom end, is it clean and tight enough? Because thats probably the setup I was going to do, or have a sh2n duncan for the neck. I think that would work well too. Thanks for the input! Jason

Maybe you could do a pearloid pickguard, and some gold knobs like you said with mother of pearl inlays on top. This link is to a ebay store for knobs, they arn't top notch but I think you have alot of options, and it could help you decide on what you like best. Good luck and let us know what you do, maybe a pic or two! Jason Ebay knobs

Thanks for the link. It sounds like it will work great. Maybe depending on price I will look into using it as my body with the quilted maple top. Either purpleheart or jatoba. I don't the price of b/ft but I will find out today. The jastobe looks super nice, looked like finished stained wood and it wasn't even sanded down smooth! Thanks for checking that out! I've been seeing a lot of guitars at different site that have been using cocobolo as tops and fingerboards, man that stuff looks sweet! It would go well with as a fretboard for a maple neck! Hows the progress coming Matt? What are you doing as a finish, a clear finish or solid color. The clear finish tinted would look good to bring out the flamed purpleheart. Jason

Hey no worries that sounded like a good desciption to me. I like to have that solid brightness, but I also want that strong defined bottom end.METAL. It sounds like purpleheart is the way to go for me. I will be adding a quilted maple top, so that will even all the hardwood that I'll be using. I know maple ain't soft, but western maple is definatly softer or less dense at least. I also saw a wood named Jatoba at the store, I'm interested in what it could be used for, tops, necks, bodies, fingerboards, ect. Thanks for your input Matt. Keep us informed on your projects! Jason

If you are going for the name The Claw, you could paint the knob so the pointed part looked like a nail, and the rest like a finger, so it looks like a claw from a dragon or monster or somethings. BTW those are dope. Are they push on or set screwed? Are they plastic? Lookin Good! Jason

I know this dicussion is over more or less but I want to give my two pennies, although they might not be worth much now being that my dollar isn't very strong right now! I hope someone gets that! Anyways heres my idea, if you take your drawing of a cross sectioned tree, so it looks like a bunch of circle inside each other progressivly getting smaller, then draw your piece for the quarter sawn cut, then draw your piece of flatsawn cut (now here's the important part) overlapping the quartersawn piece, so the it looks like either a upside down T or a +. In doing this you will see like WES said that the piece that is overlapped is part of both, so in one direction it flatsawn, and flipped 90 degrees it's quarter sawn. If it's a 1 by 4 quarter sawn, the 4 is the quarter sawn face and the 1 is flatsawn face, it may be a small face but it is still a flatsawn face. There is no other way it could be anything else. Like Wes stated we are guitar builders, we don't pickup crap pieces of wood off the edge of a tree, we are talking about choice pieces of wood. If you want your guitar to look good and be strong or sturdy(same difference)then you want perfect pieces. Which is not that hard to do. You don't need to worry about small angled wedges from the edge of a tree, if you build guitars, you shouldn't even take this argument into consideration, being that you should never even bother looking at them. They will bring you nothing but problems with twisting, warping, and will look terrible with no grain definition. You got to think, trees are F'*in big, a piece like a neck blank can have a damn near perfect straight grain, even one piece sized body blanks and bigger can. So when your at the store look through the wood, and you'll see a lot of it is going to be near perfect, and those pieces have a quarter sawn edge and a flatsawn edge. Whether it be a 1 inch face or a 1 foot face. People like Wes have a lot of knowledge behind them, and not just personal knowledge, but also all the knowledge and experiences of so many luthiers and professional builders, so disagreeing with him is like disagreeing with hundreds of people with countless lifetimes of experience. If you disagree with him, you better have some solid stone cold facts to back it up. So that is my two cents. It seems pretty black and white to me. I hope my diagram instructions make sense. Jason

And who says its tough to make a guitar!

I believe he means a book or any printed resource. I personally don't know of any good ones, but I'm sure someone does. There are a great amount of people on this site that I know will have some recommendations. Hopefully that cleared things up for you. Jason

Does anyone have a guitar with a purpleheart body? I know Metal Matt you do, if you have one done, what does the purpleheart project in tone? I know it's pretty hard, so is it really bright? Would it be too much with a quilted maple top and maple neck? My local stores have it cheap so I looked at it and it sounds like it wouldn't be a bad idea at all. And the guy told me it finishes well and ages good. Just need some opinions. Thanks for your time! Jason

How's it hangin Gary? Hopefully down by your knees by straplocks! I hope that made sense. Welcome to the information wonderland, a place of endless opinions and experiences. Most of it is very helpful. Hope everythings well for you! Jason

Matt, No worries that means we are on the same page as far as necks go. We can exchange thoughts and ideas as we go. Did you get a chance to check out cocobolo ? I'm not sure if it's strong enough, But if it is, I'm all over it. It might go really well with the maple neck. Are you doing a one piece, is it maple or oak? I know you love that oak! Keep up the wood shredding! Jason

You're right I need to use it, I wanted to so I could make the comparison with the rock maple. I know that rock maple is definately harded, but it wouldn't hurt to see what other differences there are. Does anyone have any pics of a red maple neck, laminated or not? Thanks orgmorg for the motivation. Is there a better truss rod for a fatter neck, are carbon fiber rods a bad idea? Will have the truss rod adjustment in the headstock weaken this wood too much? Thanks for all the help! Jason

I had to edit, I double posted my message somehow. How do you delete a message? Sorry!