j. pierce

Hipshots got most of their dimensions on line - from their website, click on "downloads", then drill down to the product you want. They've updated it recently and have much more of their dimensions online. I don't remember if their dimensions for the tremolos include the depth of the block (Which I assume is what you're interested in if you're concerned about body thickness.) In that case, as Restoration said, contact them - they've always been super helpful sending me product dimensions and such.

Is that bridge route for the Hipshot supertone bridge (or whatever it's called - their replacement for the old gibson bass bridges.) Curious as to your opinion on it, it's piqued my interest since I saw it.

Usually a non-issue with modern pickups, but vintage styled humbuckers have quite long "legs", which can be a hassle when direct mounting, and if you've got a thin body, could foul things up a bit. Just something to keep in mind.

Wow, I stumbled upon the Glendale stuff last week, and until you guys pointed it out, I never actually looked at the *price*. And there I was thinking it'd be a neat thing to try.

Billy Gibbons seems to think both you and Leo have it wrong, and prefers a non angled bridge pickup on his Esquire: http://www.glendaleguitars.com/BFG.htm http://www.celebrityrockstarguitars.com/im...ns%20Guitar.gif

I'd honestly have been tempted to thin the headstock down a bit, add a headplate to it to cover the ding, and make a smaller truss rod cover, but that actually doesn't look half bad. I love the look of walnut on a sleek build like this.

They make long shaft pots, you know. I've also found with the 5-ways I used on my build, that I could replace the bolts with slightly longer ones, and while I still needed to recess a bit for the switch toggle to clear, I didn't need to recess quite as much. When you're going for a very tight fit like this, remember to account for finish thickness! Looking very nice so far! Very nice work on the dragon cut outs.

When I did these, I used a router, and made two ledges. One for the binding, obviously, and another just a hair over where I wanted the thickness of my top to be at the edges, so I didn't carve too far down. That went in about a half inch from the perimeter of the body. I made rough removal of the stock with a surform and rasps, not too much time spent with those, but rounded out the top of the body (in a fashion similar to picture "1" in your diagram.) I used a small block plane and some spokeshaves to clean it up. I added the recurve with one of these and some spokeshaves. I cleaned the whole thing up with a few various card scrapers where need be. Having a good edge on my tools, and using the card scrapers where need be because of grain direction, I avoided having to sand. Relatively quick process given that it was done with hand tools, although I'm sure the angle grinder is *much* faster, and very satisfying to do. (I enjoy working with hand tools.) My main motivation for this method was the ease of cleaning up shavings compared to dust, and the noise level. Working on a third floor porch in an apartment complex, it's nice not to have dust flying onto everyone elses space, and to be able to work around my weird schedule without disturbing my neighbors. (I was doing most of my routing in my fathers backyard, a couple towns over, at that point) It was also a case of having those tools, and not having an angle grinder. Chisels will get you to step "1" - to get past that, you'd want to switch from chisels to carving gouges to put in the recurve, if you wanted to go with the chiseling method. It's difficult to make that kind of angle with a straight chisel.

I will have to say, I don't have a perfect A/B comparison (which would be difficult given the methods of construction) but in general I really like the sound of a neck with carbon fiber in it, and use it in all my builds now. Like has been stated, no real dead spots, and it seems to have a little more "snap" to it. (Not really brightness, but a little more defined attack if that makes sense.) I have rebuilt the neck of one of my builds with a new one that had carbon fiber in it (amongst other changes after I ruined the original neck; I used maple from the same board) and I really liked what it did to the sound. I haven't had any problems adjusting a neck with carbon fiber in it until you start to reach the limits of the rod - but in those cases, you're really adjusting out for something that should have been addressed in construction or resolved in a different fashion than just cranking the rod. For all normal cases, the carbon fiber doesn't seem to interfere with the use of the rod. I do take to not only removing string tension when adjusting the rod on these guitar, but pulling or pushing the neck slightly in the way I want the rod to adjust the neck. The rod doesn't end up having to force the neck into position - just hold it there. (Did that make sense?) My guitars without carbon fiber really need adjustments twice a year as the humidity changes; while I might tweak the ones with carbon fiber a little bit, they can stay playable all year long without needing adjustment. I have one guitar I haven't touched the rod on but once since I built it a few years ago, and that was just to tighten it a little more to get rid of truss rod rattle. I think in general, they're cheap insurance, and plenty of folks have used them with no ill-effects.

I haven't seen it for sale individually, but I will say having used one, that it's an abysmal unit.

Why not bolt a small plate of metal to the ear of the replacement humbucker through the centered hole, and then drill and tap two new holes on this plate spaced appropriately to match the mounting rings? Or, what about replacing the pickups *and* the mounting rings? On the Rio Grande Pitbulls - I couldn't find anyone who could actually get those when I wanted a set. I had them backordered for over 6 months from two different places. You may be able to order them direct from Rio Grande, I can't remember if I tried that or not.

Sure could, although I'd place the trem unit a fair bit closer to the bridge - in my experience having the bridge that far back reduces the break angle of the strings enough that you tend to get ringing from behind the bridge.

Have you checked it against a good straight edge, or just doing the "table check" you describe in your post? You don't say what sort of table you're talking about, but there's always the chance your table is the bit that's not flat in your test, unless you're talking about a nice workbench or a tablesaw table or something.

If you've got a full-sized PDF (I suppose other file types would work, I just save PDFs from Inkscape for my design work) just take it down to the Kinko's on Main Street in a thumb drive - I took my baritone design there and got a full size printout in B/W for under 2 dollars. Handed it to the guy behind the counter, and walked out with the plans rolled up five minutes later.

I had fairly good luck filling it with epoxy (I used the system 3 stuff, but I'd suggest the Z-Poxy brand, as it's easier to work with and more forgiving on mix ratios) but it darkened the tone of the wood considerably. I don't know if all epoxies do that, or or just the one I used. (I have two different types of System 3 epoxies, one that darkens the wood more than the other) Test on scrap. But that aside, I was able to get a perfectly smooth finish on both the neck and carved top of padauk on those builds. Nice clean work there, by the way!

I've seen tailpieces with wooden hinges before. Is that good enough? A solid piece wrapping around the corner isn't likely to be ideal if made of wood - with the forces exerted on the tailpiece, I'd imagine you'll have issues with the strength of short pieces of endgrain. Maybe there's a way to orient the wood around this that I'm missing.

I love me a pretty thick, round old baseball bat neck. Feels great in my hand. For a "faster" feeling neck, I like the same thickness, but knock a little off the "shoulders" of the profile. My hand used to ache and cramp something awful when I was blistering out barre chords with super fast chord changes back when I played thrash stuff. It was amazing how much a difference just going to a slightly thicker neck made.

Nothing I can help with, but I do remember seeing a thread a while back about this. Don't know if you saw it. http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...mp;hl=tailpiece There's a link to a few pics at David Myka's website as well in that thread.

I got one of these for my upcoming baritone build. Only place I've seen 20" dual action rods, (thanks to the advice of a poster here) off-the-rack, but LMI will do custom lengths. The quality on doeringer's rods doesn't seem quite as nice as the rods I've been getting from LMI, but it doesn't particularly dodgy or anything.

Amps work on magic smoke. You let the smoke out, they stop working. I haven't found a reliable way to shove it back in there, though. (Sorry, nothing of value to add that hasn't been said.)

My limited experience with Walnut has been very pleasant - a bit on the brighter side, without being shrill. A pleasure to work with, too.

The spring loaded capos are often designed to put enough tension to handle the often higher string gauges and possibly higher action of an acoustic - I find they clamp too tight on my electrics, making everything go sharp. My favorite capo is now this one: http://store.daddario.com/category/146490/Dual_Action_Capo It goes on and off with a squeeze of the handle, like the Kyser ones, but you can dial in the tension so things don't go sharp or get buzzy by not being tight enough. Since switching to that one, I don't have to deal with re-tuning everytime I capo. This works quite well too: http://store.daddario.com/category/146486/NS_Capos And is so small it never gets in the way, weighs nothing (helpful if your guitar is already neck-dive prone) and has a similar adjustable tension setup. But it's not as quick to go on and off. I do like that I can put this one on upside down, and slide it to the side a bit, and not capo my low E, if I want that low note for drone tones. (I have a notched Kyser capo for that purpose on acoustic, one of these days I'll mod one of the dual action ones to do that on my electric.)

Well, if it goes away when you touch the metal parts of the jack, that indicates it's going away when you ground it. Have you tried using a continuity probe or multimeter to make *certain* the strings are grounded? Touch one end to the strings, and one end to the metal of the plug body and make sure the two have continuity. Also might be worth checking the cable, and that the pickup shield wire is properly grounded.

I've never had feedback problems, even with quite extensive chambering - I really think it won't become an issue until you have enough mass removed and a thin enough top to allow the top to begin to vibrate as well, like a semi-hollow (think 335) or acoustic might. If you're using a 1/4" top or something, I don't think there's too much to worry about... Your mileage may vary however. If you're just talking some chambering or holes however, you're not apt to run into too many problems.

I really like a lot of Dimarzio's offerings for splitting and such - I'm not a huge fan of the single coil of a humbucker sound on it's own, (although it does have it's uses) but do like using one coil each from two splittable humbuckers. But I've found a lot of Dimarzio's pickups (I particularly like their minihumbucker) offer a couple of really cool and distinct sounds when switching between series and parallel wiring. I know there's a lot of cool stuff out their now, but I've been using their pickups for ages now; before the boutique market really took off. I prefer their lower gain stuff, like their Air Classic. Their higher-power stuff gets a more useable single-coil tone when using only one coil, but I don't care as much for the tone of the humbucker settings on the higher-output pickups, but that's just my preference.