SwedishLuthier

If you use your ordinary tuners you don't need locking tuners for that, or for medium tremolo use either. Having that said, I tend to use locking tuners for all tremolo guitars I build... To lock the strings without locking tuners you turn the tuners so that the hole is perpendicular to the string path, thread the string (is that what you say???) through the tuner and tighten the string slightly by pulling on the string end, wind the loose end of the string back over the top of the head (the guitar head silly...) and towards the neck, pull it back under the string, make a kink and ... wait, there must be a better way to explain this... hey! found a picture (think 3+3 headstock here, looking at the tuners from the neck end): Tada! no more slippage or problems when using the tremolo. Maximum 1/2 turn of free sting on the tuner shaft.

I voted for Boggs. It was the one that seemed to have the best over all look and feel. Nice woods and the logo was really nice RADs is showing his building skills but i don't really like the headstock at all, or the offset tele-ish body. I cannot really put my finger on why the body doesn't really work for me. there are better exaples of tweeked tele body shapes that I personally feel looks better and have a bit more "harmony" in the curves. And the headstock...well I'm not a pointy guitars man at all so don't listen to me in regards of the headstock shape. Argytar's tele is something I normally would have liked. A tweaked classic with the 3+3 headstock, gibsonesque pick guard and stuff. But the distressed look only look dirty to me (could be the picks) and the stuff giong on around the pickup selector (was the plan to use a traditional Tele style selector?) seems to indicate that there wasn't enough efforts put in. A clean body, "problems" with the switch sorted out and the kills switch in a style that match the guitar and I think it had scored much better. Ajax gets high scores for originality, wood choices and finish, but I get a feeling of "close but no cigar". The curves of the body doesn't really work together. The upper part of the body (in playing position) work really well but not with the lower part. There is some struggle between the both halves from a design point of view. the headstock design is nice but (at least in the pictures) it makes the string paths crocked and to me that is when design gets more attention over function and that is not in my book a good thing.

- I'm with the band. The story of one of the most (in)famous groupies ever. - Nick Mason also wrote a killer book on Pink Floyd. The dry english humor was great. - White line fever by Lemmy. Really funny and (surprisingly) quite intelligently written. Probably a ghost writer, eh?

Welcome to the board, Ajax. Looking forward to se your work.

is it the thread thats worn, or the Allen socket? The traditional Gibbson and Fender trussrods use a separate nut. Many modern once use a nut welded to the rod. More or less 100% of the double action rods have a nut that is welded.

Even though it is a PITA to get it out you could try using a 350 K Ohms pot (I guess it comes with 500 K) for the tone of the neck pickup. Or a 250 K pot

Oh, yeah, thats much neater. Good save. BTW, an awful lot of pickups in that instrument. OK, not much more than in a strat...

Not to take away from the OP, but how does a PAF sound? How many of those who talk about "the PAF sound" have actually listened to a real PAF pickup? I have, but not in a controlled environment meaning I really don't know how the pickups themselves sounded. We tend to use "a PAF sound" describing anything we like except for the distortion pickups type sound from the 70's. Were the original PAFs overwound? Under wound? Or what? In reality Gibson used a very poor QC during the first years of production. No turn counters were used and no DCR checks were made. They simply let the bobbins spin until they were full. Very scientific... Seth Lover designed the bobbins to hold 5000 turns of wire. Allegeable there are PAFs with as much as 5500 turns of wire and as little as 4500 turns of wire. The difference is 22%! And the coils weren't match. They were thrown in a big box after being made and the next person down the assembly line simply grabbed two bobbins and made a pickup. The pickup could consist of two very hot coils, two very moderate coils, two very un-mached coils and every possible combination in-between. The magnets used also varied quite a bit, although not as much as in the Fender factory (some claim fender used more or less whatever magnets they could find that had the right dimensions in the early years). So with all those variables there are not a single PAF sound, there are infinite PAF sounds. So when a lot of my fellow pickup winders use the term "PAF sound" that really doesn't say a thing. Having that said, I too use the term as Duncan and a few others have cornered the PAF sound as a slightly under wound, slightly brighter sounding pickup and as that have become the industry standard description, I need to use it too to make the customers familiar, to set a common lingua, even though I really don't like to use such a vague, and really not very correct, description Sorry for the rant... Nice to hear that the Parson street pickups are good. The SM long leg bace plates are considered one of the best to use in terms of "vintage correctness"

The 3D-quality of the second body is amazing. Good job!

This is generally looking very good. It is possible to minimize the visual impact of that Truss rod mishap (right now it sticks out like a sore thumb): Rig up some hardwood straight strips aligned with the flame maple laminate in the "between pickups" area. Carefully rout out, with a template following bit, the maple completely, but only to a shallow depth, say 1/8" or 3mm. Repeat with the other laminate. Glue in strips of maple that covers you repair. That way the fix will be almost completely invisible.

Thats what I do. I use a carriage bolt with the slightly domed head downwards to push the bushing down Thats pretty much in line with my view too. I dunno. Don't blame me

Great, thanks!

This is soooo OT, but anyway... I have been looking for a different design for knobs and this seems to be something in the direction I had in mind, those low, big, recessed knobs. OK with you if I steal this idea?

Thanks for the tip. I haven't found their wholesale page before. Need to register right away.

Hi Bearzwud and welcome to the forum My prefered way of handling this is to return the body as it obviously is flawed. If that isn't possible you can try to find larger bushings (anchors). That might also mean you need to use a different bridge and tailpiece as the threads might be different. But thats probaly not a bad idea anyway as on most kits the tuners, pickups and bridges quality are so-so. Third option is to fill the holse and redrill them. Most likely it will not be too vivible even under a clear finish (as is is a SG it is mandatory to make it brown, ask Agnus Young). However if you do an opaque finish you can just go ahead and fill/redrill as that is probably the most convinient and fastest solution. However it is not a good solution to epoxy them in place. We can debate the tonal effects of that until the world ends without coming to a consensus. However it makes future repacement a PITA. And if you really like the result of your first build and would like to change out the probably not so good bridge in the future you probably need to be able to pull the bushings EDIT: Dean beat me to it. But I must say that tape around the bushings is a bad advice. Really bad. The tape will compress on the neck side and the tuning will not be stable, the bridge will most likely not stay in place, so generally a bad idea

OTOH if you manage to create something that a bit of out-of-the-box thinking can come up with there are a currently un-serviced market that might, or might not, be huge.

YEah, I know that 27"-ish is usually considered minimum for 8-stringers. I have pretty short fingers and a 27-28" scale would be too much of a streach for it to be comfy for me. And this is a test guitar that I will probably keep for myself so if it turns out only half decent I', OK with that. I have ordered special string to see it that can help a bit. However what this company does ins't going up in gauge. They produce a standard gauge 7 and 8 string but with a much stiffer feel to them. I think this will fix the problem and also maybee change the way we look at minimum required length for low range guitars. Or it will only be a half-decent solution and I need to step up in scale for the next test. If anyone is interested I'll report back Got it now... let us know how they go. I know I have a couple of 7 string 25.5" scales in the wild that spend a lot of time tuned to A that would benefit from a higher tension string. Got the strings today. 5 weeks to get the produced, 4 days to get them to my door. First impression, definitely a stiffer feel to them. Maybe not to make up for the slightly short scale of this guitar but really not as rubbery as the standard Ernie Ball 8-string set I used initially. Need to evaluate this further before I can give a final verdict.

When re-reading the thread i saw this. o'rly? I have done one electric violin and one electric cello (=by no mean an expert) and I have experimented with a few different variations of magnetic pickups for a customer with an electric violin. I say, forget it! It doesn't work. The way the string moves means that you need to have the pickup parallel to the movement of the bow. Trying to fit pickups between the strings i do-able but my experience is that it still sound like crap. I ended up using a bridge-integrated pickup from Rich Barbera for both instruments. Great stuff, great sound and its high impedance so you can plug it directly into an amp for overdriven tones too. The cello player have just been enrolled to a metal band so I'm looking forward to see her in action with a totally fuzzed out cello together with guitars and drums. The highjacking keep going on...

I also does not agree with this statement. Hollowing out a body doesn't "take away" from the tone of the guitar. It does change the tone, indeed. But most people claim that it add a new complexity to the tone. However that last part is just opinions...

interesting idea. I'm all for thinking outside of the box. However I still don't get the whole idea (probably just me being thick-headed). Are you going to use an acoustic top on it? or a hardwood top? Or leave the channels open? If I understand the last pic right, you will rout out a big chunk right under the bridge area. Right?

As mentioned before more than once, bracing, however often referred to as tone shaping devices, are first and foremost there as a structural reinforcement of the top. As we cut a big hole in the area of the top were the strings execute the most force on the top we need to put a big X in there. If we move the hole, as many modern makers are starting to do, to an area of the top that is more or less dead acoustically (part of the top or the rims) that will make the structural part of the bracing less important and the builder are liberated to use bracings that maybe can somewhat change the way the top vibrate. Having said all that (sorry for the rant) I'm really curious to know more about your ideas as I don't really understand what you are doing different. Are you integrating the bracing pattern in to the main body wood by routing out the main mass of the body but leaving the "bracings" intact? Or are you starting with a thick top and tout out the wood so that the bracings are integrated/cut from the same piece as the top?

YEah, I know that 27"-ish is usually considered minimum for 8-stringers. I have pretty short fingers and a 27-28" scale would be too much of a streach for it to be comfy for me. And this is a test guitar that I will probably keep for myself so if it turns out only half decent I', OK with that. I have ordered special string to see it that can help a bit. However what this company does ins't going up in gauge. They produce a standard gauge 7 and 8 string but with a much stiffer feel to them. I think this will fix the problem and also maybee change the way we look at minimum required length for low range guitars. Or it will only be a half-decent solution and I need to step up in scale for the next test. If anyone is interested I'll report back

I recently made a multi 8-string for myself, just because I wanted one and it was the perfect oportunity to try both multiscale and 8-strings. I didn't want the scale to be that different to a standard guitar (and I use 25" on all my personal guitars....) so I made it 25-26". The low B was really OK, but the F# was too rubbery. I found a company that makes custom strings and I have a special set on its way to me with a B and F# string that is designed to have a considerably stiffer feel to compensate for this. Not that expensive either, 18$ a set. The strings were made this friday and are on their way to me right now. I'm very curious how it will work out.

3.75 kilo would make sense.

Just give me time to put some brews in the cooler and you are all welcome. NO kidding!