j. pierce

gone. thanks chris!

I'd ask over at the pickup makers forum at Ampage.org - those guys know their stuff and their pretty helpful. Some of those guys get pretty pedantic about specific grades of steel or magnets for their pickups, they certainly know their stuff, and may be better versed in explaining the tonal differences in various magnet grades. You may also be able to find the info you need just by searching the forum.

from an old Fine Woodworking magazine - I believe the article is free :

http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/Mat...DF.aspx?id=2002

Also:

http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/Ski...e.aspx?id=29500

I haven't actually browsed through that article or watched the video in a while, so they may not be helpful. There was a recent article (couple of issues ago?) about drying lumber in FWW, but I don't think it mentioned solar kilns.

And this was in a recent FWW Q&A. It was a temporary kiln, to be heated to 170 for 24 hrs, to help with pine that's still seeping pitch. Perhaps using something like this for the intial drying of the holly would help kill whatever's causing the staining? I can copy the rest of the info if you want.

I don't know much about this sort of stuff, not having had the space to deal with storing much lumber. Just throwing things out there that I had seen, however.

I recently wired a guitar for a friend with both a pushbutton and a toggle. The momentary pushbutton for when he wants the Rage/Buckethead choppy effect, and the toggle for when he just wants the guitar off between songs. Best of both worlds.

Depending on your cavity cover size and such, you could also construct a "box" out of thin gauge metal, properly grounded (with the "lid" being the shielded cavity cover) attached to the inside of the chambering.

But I second Pete - carefully done shielded wire should be plenty fine. It's the approach I've used on most guitars I've built, and I've not had much of a problem with it. To make life easier, I usually wire a pigtail onto the shielding braid, and wrap that connection in heatshrink, so I don't have to worry about the braid shorting anything out, and it makes things a little easier to get the grounds wired than dealing with trying to get the conductor going one way and the sheild going another.

Ah, the red into black burst with a black back and white binding is one of my favorite color schemes. Yours came out much nicer looking than my slightly-similar padauk-topped versions from a few years back.

I had the same thing - the backs of mine looked too good to cover up, but the black really pulls it together.

But yeah, really like this a lot. Your work is getting very good. Nice job!

If they're the the grovers with the two part shaft that turns, I've found that you have to be careful to make sure the internal lock mechanism engages and doesn't slip as you're tuning it up. I've also found that when you down-tune with those tuners, you sometimes have to have a wrap or two on the tuners - I tried just tuning down my guitar with those, and before it got that slack enough to hit C, the locking mechanism came loose.

All in all, I was never pleased with those Grovers that much. I prefer the thumbwheel style. They were just too fiddly for my taste.

If by "sheet" you mean Abalam-type material, it isn't the place, but I've been ordering all my pearl from DePaule Supply, and it's some of the best stuff I've gotten my hands on.

You can get a bit longer bits if you have a router that can take 1/2" shank bits. I use a Whiteside bit with a 2" cutting length, and a 3/4" diameter.

Many places I've been that surfaces wood has a minimum charge - they aren't going to power it on, run your top through and charge you for 20 seconds of work. Your place may be different. But it may be worth gathering anything else you think you might need surfaced if you're going to be paying for a half hours worth of time whether or not you use it.

Nice job! How do you like the pickups?

Love the cream with tortoise combo.

never been a huge fan of carved teles myself.

I'd be tempted to get some cheap rigid foam, and have a go at carving that, even something half scale, just to get a better idea. In the end, it doesn't matter which one of your mockups we like, it's what you like. (Or your client if this is for sale) and the easiest way to tell is going to be to see an actual 3D thing you can turn around in your hands and look at from different angles.

I'd like it with a slightly smaller pickguard that followed the pin striping better, in black, not silver.

I have to question the mix of gold, silver and black and white here. I'd say if your string through ferrules and bridge are gold, use gold tuners too. Except your headstock appears to maybe be silver? Then the black tuners work there, so make the bridge and ferrules black as well. You can get away with black p'ups and gold or chrome hardware, but black pickups with gold and chrome hardware seems a bit much. And I don't think I'd throw a chrome pickguard that close to a gold bridge.

Could a poorly cut nut, one where the strings "edge point" is being made at the back of the nut, rather than the edge of the nut by the fingerboard be the issue here?

There's also Hipshots Trilogy bridge. I've wanted to try that for a while now.

If you aren't looking for dramatic tuning changes, simply shifting the whole register up or down, some of the digital pedals are very good sounding these days. I have an Electro Harmonix HOG, and it does a great job. I can't do on the fly tuning changes into say, open slide tuning or something, but shifting up and down and having multiple voices and stuff does get you a lot of cool sounds. Plus it does lots of other neat stuff.

Nope, that shouldn't change anything. The wattage rating of the resistors is how much they can handle, not how much they use.

I size my fingerboard with a handplane (after rough sawing off the majority of the excess if I'm working with a wider board than I need.) then attach it to my neck blank. If I don't size the neck blank too closely at first, I can often just clamp a couple of small blocks to the neck help me locate the fingerboard during glue-up, and remove these blocks once the neck is clamped, but before the glue is set up, otherwise pins or something works. Rough saw the neck blank after the glue has dried, and plane it close but still proud of the fingerboard. The last little bit gets removed with scrapers during the process of shaping the neck.

Ran into an interesting product today at the market - a company called Preserve makes a series of cutting boards out of recycled materials. They had one that appeared to basically be black phenolic:

http://www.preserveproducts.com/products/p...ttingboard.html

It's made out of a material called "Paperstone". Browsing around their website, it sounds like it's basically phenolic, but made out of recycled fibers, and using some interesting materials to make some of the resins. This page describes the manufacturing process.

So while the easily available cutting boards wouldn't be big enough for your uses, and the buying a very large piece designed for a countertop might be cost-prohibitive, I do know that everywhere I've gone that installs countertops is more than willing to part with offcuts. You may not find a dealer in your country that installs the material, but a few calls and you might find an installer willing to send you their offcuts. The manufacturer themselves may also be amenable, I don't know.

The examples I saw made as cutting boards seemed to have a matte finish - I don't know if they could be polished up or not or if you prefer gloss.

I don't know - I thought it was an interesting product, it seems like it might suit your needs, but it's not something that's going to turn up in searches for "phenolic" and such, as they're trying to market it to a different segment and for specific purposes.

I get the Lee Valley email newsletters, and noticed that they now have a fretsaw in their catalog:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=...618&p=61618

I don't imagine it's very different from the similar offerings from Stew Mac and LMI, but for Canadian PG'rs who live near a retail outlet it might be a savings on shipping, and if you're like me and order a fair amount of misc. things from LV, it might be easier to tack it onto an order from them rather than waiting to have enough needed stuff to warrant an order from SM or LMI.

I don't know, the price isn't really that different from Stew Mac or LMI (although I have no idea the prices from Grizzly or other sources), and it's not like finding a suitable fretsaw is difficult, but it's always cool to have options. Perhaps Lee Valley will begin carrying more luthiery tools, I don't know.

I don't really have anything to gain from this, just noticed it. I like Lee Valley, they've always done real well by me.

The bigger concern when gluing end grain to long grain like that is that the wood shrinks more in some directions than others, and can pull a joint like that apart. I can't say it will happen here, but I have seen it happen in the past.

Yeah, Woodfinder never found any places local to me, either.

what worked for me? a couple of google searches for "hardwood" and my area code (for the places that had websites) and a browse through the yellow pages (for the places that didn't.) I save a lot on shipping, and swing by the local hardwood dealer (I'm lucky they're only a short drive away) whenever I go by, whether I need something or not. The place I usually go also let me know about a couple of other places, and will give me call when a shipment of something I'm waiting on comes in.

If you find the number of a place, it's worth a call before a trip, as it's often hard to tell if someone sells lumber or flooring.

I often find some decent stuff locally on craigslist, although a lot of it isn't dry enough to use yet. A quick questioning post on a more locally-oriented website (like if craigslist serves your area) also might point you to some more local dealers.

I usually buy locally for most everything, and turn to the same web-based sites that folks here mention when I'm looking for the harder to find or exteremely figured stuff. Wood is big, and sometimes heavy. Shipping it costs a lot - saving on that helps. Plus, if you have the time to paw through a pallet and get the perfect piece of wood in a low-priced pile you can save more.

You also don't mention where you're located, unless I'm not seeing it - there are folks all over the place here, so someone in your area might be able to point you to local resources.

You can use foam, springs, tubing, washers, etc ... if you just want the "look".

But if you're one that believes that hard mounting a pickup effects tone, than I would think all of these methods would be pretty pointless.

I fabricate wooden pickup shims that help raise the cavity to the proper height so the pickups can be mounted directly to the wood.

Just place masking tape over the cavity, trace the outline, and use this as your template.

Thickness may vary from one guitar to the next, so a mock-up is always a good idea.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Regardless of whether or not it affects tone, and regardless of the fact you can't see them when the build is put together, those are pretty ace, and very well done. Whenever I can make something that fits that well, it's the sort of thing I'm very satisfied and proud of. Same sort of feeling you get from a perfect dovetail or mortise you've made.

That said, if we're building the guitars from scratch, why not make those routes the perfect depth to begin with?

I like the rings Wes and hollowman have around those EMGs, too. I'll have to keep those in mind if I ever get around to a planned build with those.

Curious - is the phenolic we're talking about here the same material used for turret and eyelet boards on tube amps, and bobbins on guitar pickups, only thicker?

I do not know what kind of and if phenolic is used there.. for bobbins I think is a regular plastic. For fretboard is best to use XX or XXX grade, both are paper based ones. That is what I'm looking for.

Not plastic - I mean traditional fender-style bobbins, two pieces of material held together by the magnets press through them. Uh, I think "forbon" is the trade name of the material used here. I believe it's a vulcanized fiber material? I think that both Forbon and Garolite is also used on tube amp turret boards. Depends on whose doing it. I'm not familiar enough with these materials to say if they're the same thing. The thickness are usually much thinner in these applications than what you're looking for. (I assume you're looking for something like a quarter inch thick?)

I guess my thought was that if this is the same material boutique amp or pickup builders are using in their hand-wired stuff, one of them may be able to help you get a sheet - you'd probably still need to get a whole sheet, but a larger boutique company, or a distributor like Hoffman amps or Mojotone that sells these types of materials for the hobbiest market probably already has contacts with the manufacturers if they're ordering large quantities. They may be able to add a thick sheet that suits your purposes onto their regular order of the thin stuff, and not have to deal with minimum quantities like you do, since they already order regularly from these companies. Heck, even if the materials I'm thinking of are different than what you're looking for, if they come from the same places, they may be able to help you. Just another thought.

Curious - is the phenolic we're talking about here the same material used for turret and eyelet boards on tube amps, and bobbins on guitar pickups, only thicker?

I built one of those a long while back for a friend of mine, tweaked a few things about it, but remember really liking it. Built it into an old stereo speaker enclosure (although I replaced the speaker with one suited for guitar).

Fun little amp. I like playing with chip amps.

They sound remarkably good if you run them through a proper guitar cab.