SwedishLuthier

Please note: I didn't made that claim. On the other hand, it was made from a very experienced luthier that I have had the oportunity to talk to and he knows his stuff. He have used Birch extensively. Have you used Birch? If not that seems lika a "tone voodoo claim". Not intended to pick a fight but I thought that was a comment that lacked some substance to it...

There is a swedish builder, Robban Sarling of Ares Guitars, that uses (used) birch for necks. He said that they sounded very much like a maple neck. Haven't used it myself.

After I buildt an electric cello I got the question if I could build an electric violin. So here it is: The Electric Violin (I know, one more fantastic name...) To make yourself heard in a rock group or from a large stage has always been problematic for violinists. You either use an external microphone and get a good sound but get a lot of problems. For example you need to position yourself just so or you will not be heard. Forget about taking a stroll to se how the drummer is doing. Or you use an integrated microphone which often means huge problems with feedback. The third option is to use a solid electric violin with a state of the art pickup system, preferably from Rich Barbera of Barbera Transducer System, and get an instrument that doesn't cause massive feedback and still sound very natural in an amplifier without the need of a preamp. Or you plug it directly into an guitar amp and go from warm clean sounds to screaming distortion. Or as the owner of this instruments says; ”This is perfect when the kids have gone to bed”. Very Rock'n'roll... Specs: Design - Peter Naglitsch Electric Violin Body - Maple with chambers Neck - Maple Bridge/Pickup - Barbera Transducer Systems integrated bridge and pickup Tuners - Grover Fingerboard - Ebony String holder - Ebony Chin rest - Ebony Full front pic Full back pic: From the side: And a picture showing the pickup system: More pics and info: http://www.peternagl...tricviolin.html No more instruments from the Violin family now for a while, OK? EDIT: The color isn't really as vibrant as the pics suggest. More a nice warm, bright amber.

Like the neck blanks and are envious of that table saw. I don't have room for a "real one" and have to cope with a small hobbyist style table saw.

OK, a little bit like the old Telecaster Thinline? But "only" for the switch and neck bucker? Could be really cool.

Thats probably the idea behind using glue, the thought that it will prevent future problems, a bit like demonx said. However I cannot say that I have ever had a fret lift on a guitar that I have made from scratch, not yet...

Everything is looking good here. The only thin I don't get is the front cavity for the switch. Any special plan for that? I mean, the "normal" way would be to make the cavity on the back and have only a small hole on the front but you have obviously some nice, different ideas going here.

I have talked a bit to the TT guys. The frets are cast or sintered. They are not bent. The fret slots are curved like the frets. If you are a licensed TT installer you buy the frets from them and install them (its a franchise). If not you need to send the guitar to them to get the fretboard exchanged or get a new neck. AFAIK the frets are not for sale as is, but I can be wrong here. A new TT neck costs in the range of 800$ and up. Warmoth makes the necks. I once saw the price +1200$ to make a new fretboard and install it on an existing neck. I prefer and advocated Earvana. Why? Have a look at the Earvana nut and imagine "straightening" the nut and at the same time streching the contact points of the frets with it while keeping the 12'th fret straight. What would that look like? Pretty close to some TT versions. And the cost is a 35$ and you can adjust it yourself for new string gaugers, new string action and such. There are other systems that address intonation problems, like buzz feiten. Cheeper than TT, much more expensive than Earvana, but more or less variation on the same theme. I know Perry (Ormsby, Rhodes on this forum) have a personalized version that he once promised to tell me about but never got around to do (if you are listening I would still be interested...) and there are other systems were you gradually add thin slivers of bone to an existing nut to achieve more or less the same thing. Cant find it right now, but try Google for size... The main thing is, if the guitar seems badly intonated to you even though it is 100% in tune and perfectly intonated on the 12'th fret you should consider one of the above alternatives. All of them will improve overall intonation. Non of them will solve all problems. If you don't go down the path of "true" true temperament and that means exactly what Workingman has described, you can only play with other true temperament instruments and you can only play in one single key. You need a different guitar for each key, including semi notes. Lots of guitars. And forget the idea of changing key mid songs. Trivia: Johan Sebastian Bach were so exited over the newly invented "well-tempered Clavier" that he wrote a series of 24 pieces, called das wohltemperierte klavier, each piece in an individual key just to celebrate the fact that this was playable on the same instrument. Or something like that. EDIT: I just checked. Custom jobs starting at 2000$. Outch. Cant find anything about frets being sold to non-certified installers.

The main question here is as Paulie says; Why glue them in? I know I have been hit hard for this statement here before but I stand behind it: If you cut your fret slots right there is no need to glue frets in. If you need to glue frets in to get the to seat correctly you have not made the fretboard in the right way and you should first practice on scrap and then do it right on a new board and scrap the one with problems. However if you are doing a re-fret you do not control the width of the fret slot and there might have been more several re-frets before and the slots might be in really bad shape etc and then there is all reasons in the world to use glue. I use thin CA for re-frets. I seat the frets as close to perfect first, then I run a drop of thin CA on each side of the fret and quickly follow that with a rag soaked in acetone to get rid of all surplus. If you just want to secure a fret overhang on a bound fretboard there is also good reason to use glue. But if you do the job right on a new fretboard there is no use for glue for the main length of the frets OK, fire up...

And then the second one: The Electric Cello This one comes with a story. This is a very special instrument to me. The story begins a few years ago when a very enthusiastic daughter to some of my closest friends brought out her first borrowed cello and showed us that she had just begun to learn this beautiful instrument. The same moment I gave her my promise I realized I would have to live up to it; I promised her that, if she still played cello at the age of 18, I would build her an electric cello. That promise is now fulfilled. With inspiration from Yamaha’s ”Silent Cello” I designed an instrument that also picked up on modern Scandinavian furniture design. The integrated Barbera Transducer in the bridge allows the player to go from a natural sound, through experimental sound with echoes and effects to a roaring distorted sound directly into an amplifier without a preamp. Design Peter Naglitsch Electric Cello Body Laminated maple with added parts of ash Neck: Maple Fingerboard: Ebony Bridge/Pickup: Barbera Transducer Systems custom made integrated bridge and pickup Tuners: Warwick String holder: Ebony with integrated inputjack Finish: A combination of black satin laquer and tung oil Full frontal: Body detail, showing custom made bridge with integrated pickup system "body part" with string holder and integrated input jack Back: More pics and info: http://www.peternagl...ctriccello.html

I've been very busy last few months. I will show two new instruments now. Yeah instruments, not only guitars. But first: The NorthStar Surfer (surf’s up dude!) An alder body with a traditional tremolo bridge and single coil lipstick pickups give this guitar a clear and focused sound that still never becomes harsh.

With a four way switch you get all the more common combinations plus both pickups in series. A nice boost for solos.

The never out of style look of lipstick pickups and sparkle finish gives an echo of both something Japanese from the mid sixties and surf music.
 Specs Design: Peter Naglitsch NorthStar Body: Alder Neck: Maple Fretboard: Rosewood 12" Radius 25,5" Scale Pickups: Peter Naglitsch StarStruck Custom Made Lipsticks Tuners: Grover Tremolo: Wilkinson Controls: One volume, one tone, 4-way switch Frets: Medium Fretmarks: Aluminum Finish: Blue sparkle body and clear coated neck (coming out a bit dark, first pic is most correct) Get your swimming trunks on, time to surf! Full frontal: Body: Body/neck showing flame maple neck: Full back: More pics and info: http://www.peternagl...starsurfer.html

What do you think about the spanish cedar? I just got like ten neck blanks and a five body blanks home made from spanish cedar and even though I haven't had the chanse to try it yet, it looks very promising. Fanstastic tap tone in the pieces I have here.

Festool baby, all day long. OF 1400 for smaller work and OF 2200 for tough use (I think I got the model numbers right...). They are a bit pricy, but part of a system (priceless if you need that) and extremly well buildt. Generally; Stay away from all cheep machines. As soon as a low quality router ruin a piece of work it will become extremely expensive.

A bummer 'bout the scale length. It looks really good. I had a Jazzmaster in to change the bridge to a Mastery bridge and it made a big difference. No buzzing and rattling. It looked a bit more "modern" too. BTW, no e-mail in my mailbox...

I get that you don't want to spen a bunch of money on this, but if there is a significant difference you will not be able to tell were it comes from. I sugest that you use exactly the same neck, hardware and pickups (moving them from one body to another) if you want to prove that the body wood have minor efect on the sound. Just my two cents... Wez kinda bet me to this

I see a risk that some people will attribute the differences in sound (better or worse???) to the different hardware. So if you want a completely foolproof (if there is anything like that at all) you should use the very same neck and hardware (and finish) on the two test vehicles. But please go on! I would very much like to see (hear) the result. I predict that people can hear a difference but that there will be no distinct consensus regarding which sample is made from what guitar and what sound is best/worst .

Re: the Travis Bean neck I'd say that they were pretty "normal". More so than you woul'd expect from a guitar with flat radii fretboard... I think that you can get a leaner neck profile by removing more wood along the *"split line" making the half circle more into a shallow C shape. However the Scheltema jig is realy interesting. I will need to play around with it in CAD to see if I can make it work with my angled heads.

The Travis Bean Aluminium neck were turned, split and then holowed out.

Nope, I'll PM you EDIT: I got the error text: The member MartinJ can not use the messaging system I think you need to post a few times before you can use the message system. We had quite a bit of spam for a while so this was done to remedy that. You can contact me via my web page

Great stuff. I am doing something similar right now and I decided to make a wooden tailpiece. However I was so concerned with grounding issues (and to some extent strength) so I came up with a completely over engineered solution (can post a pic if anyone is interested). However (and that’s the point of my post…) I’m very interested in how you have solved the grounding with an all wood tailpiece and a violin/Benedetto style tailpiece.

I just got a bunch of Sapele body blanks in from a Spanish vendor and they are superheavy. I make thinner bodies than your standard LP guitar för my standard models but for something like that (LP) there will need to be some weight reduction done to make comfy guitars.

A somewhat older thread but anyway... I finaly got hold of a bit of this tape. Not the easiest thing here in Sweden when you only know the english name for it... BTW I found out that it is also called filament tape (I should have known that, thats what Benedetto calls it in his book) Anyway, I had the oportunity to try some of this stuff last night with some tricky 5-layer binding, One thick high outer binding, one strip of Zip-flex (and that stuff is by itsel amazing, first try there too) and three super thin, flimsy purfling sized binding (total sandwitch from outside: thick white-abalone-thin white-thin black-thin white). And I must say that this tape is amazing. It had the rignt amount of "stick" (even sticking on slightly dusty surfaces but still letting go easy enough), super high strength (not streching or giving), high shearing strenght (think that is the right word, it never teared when pulled over an edge of a binding etc) and generally didn't stick much to CA glue, or the other way around, CA didn't stick to the tape. I was able to pack all the strips so hard together that when I flooded the joints from the top of the guitar the thin CA didn't reach the bottom of the outer rebate for the thick high binding. I had to go over the guitar a second time to get good adhesion there. No problem, just evidence of how good the tape worked. I can wholeharted recomend this to anyone doing bindings. Thank you very much Shad!!!!!

Whoaaa, flashback. It was years ago I did that pickup, right? Nice to see the build taking off at last. And looking nice too.

This forum doesn't host pictures so most of us use Photobucket to host them and then link/paste paths via the image functionality of this particular forum software. IMHO most old guitars will be significantly better after some TLC. Will it increase or decrease the monetary value of the guiar? Hard to say. Will it make you a more proud person? Probably. Will it get you hooked on guitar buidling/restoration? Most likely. So be warned! If you cannot get pictures up try to get more info about model names etc and maybe post a link to similar guitars as that will help to understand what you got there. And of cause: welcome to the forum

Love to see/hear the reasult of that. Innovations are just to scarse in pickup winding these days.