weaponepsilon

I saw StewMac sells an unmounted head in their banjo supplies section. Well, now I know that I wouldn't be destroying a rare antique or nothing. Guess its time to clean her up and get her going. UncleJ, fancy a "Dueling Banjos"?

Okay, I'll open this one up to you guys. I work with this guy who asks me if I do stringed instrument work. Naturally, I say yes and hand him my card. He starts asking me about violins and how he has one and wants to give it to me. Okay, so now I can get my feet wet on working on violas and such. He brings me not a violin, but a tiny banjo, no bigger than a ukulele. I'm at a loss for words to describe this instrument. Its says Slingerland Maybell on it. I did some research on the net and came up with hits for a 1920's concept called a Banjo Ukulele or Banjulele (??) Right, so the thing is in pretty good condition except 1) its dirty, and 2) the skin head is broken. The budding luthier inside me says to fix it up and rock out (if thats possible on a banjo) but the collector in me tells me to do nothing and sell it as is. Any thoughts here guys?

Woot! Finished! ALright I Knew the answer is to always ask the old man. (this should probably kept somewhere for reference) I couldn't figure out an appropriate way to add inlays to an already finished neck. So I ask my dad about radiusing the inlays and gluing them. In about a minute, he grabbed a small chunk of scrap wood about 3'' by 1.5'' deep and about as wide as the inlay itself. He cut out a small space a wide as my last inlay and told me to use the space to lay the blank and sand it. I used my radius sanding block from StewMac and clamped it to the workbench with 320 grit, radius side up. Then I took a heavier grit to a normal flat sanding block for the bottoms side. Using the wood jig I spoke of, I put the inlay in and sanded against the clamped down radius block. Once it was sufficiently curved, I carefully sanded the bottom of it to the right height to lay it in. No fuss no muss. When I moved up to a larger inlay, I would just take another 1/16 off the inside of the jig with the table saw to accomodate the inlay. There you have it. Easy answer to a off question.

They are approximately .050 thick. This is already a finished neck, I'm just putting in different inlays . I meant laquer on the top of the inlays to thicken the the surface of the pearloid if you set it in deep.

Hey, really tight on time, so I'll make this quick. I have these flat pearloid inlays for an LP Custom. They are flat, and I was wondering if I should radius them to the fret board or should I just put them in a tad deep and coat them with laquer or something? Just a quickie, Any thoughts?

What? You guys don't like Ed Roman?

Sorry, it's been awhile. Musical instruments is how I pass the time between work and family. I swapped out the jack with another guitar. It worked. I can fix things, but that doesn't necessarily mean I know how they work. heh.

First off, your mistake was to play in a church musical...I'd never be caught dead in a church. Here's a really interesting story if you like Jesus musicals... My dad was in a (then) famous 60's Minneapolis surf band that went national. During the course of his tours, his prize Dan Electro Bass cracked in half. He went out and replaced it with a brand new Fender Jazz Master bass. (I've never heard of it although he's since worn off the name on it.) Now years gone by, Pops never once abused his bass nor did he ever break a string. Some guy in a local production company wanted to borrow this bass because of the way it sounded. This troupe was the first ever production of that "Jesus Christ Superstar" and they went around with Dad's bass. Eventually he gets it back and it had seen some heavy wear and tear. My dad had been on the road and gigging with this bass for over 30 years at that time. Some jerk borrows it and practically wears it out in less than a year. If any one has the original score to this play, they're listening to my dads bass. Lesson learned: Never let anyone play your axe let alone take off with it for a year.

I already did so. The cord and cab are fine. The guitar is an old passive electronics harmony and I can see the cap on it. I don't any problems with the jack, but I'll give that a try.

Hey, I've been a bit of an observer for quite sometime now and I learned quite a bit of useful information from this site. Now finally, I must ask a question. My old 4 string bit the dust when I was jacking in one day and there was a loud pop. I believe that I just toasted my cap. Any clues? BTW. I just wanted to say this site is 100 percent more helpful than MIMF. -Ryan