thegarehanman

Well, I think the cove bit would yield a much cleaner looking recess. The forstner leaves inside edges with 90 degree angles, ugly if you ask me. Honestly, the way I did it was I used a forstner bit to drill a hole in a template, which I centered over the hole for the pot. I then used a bullnose bit with a bearing in the template. This gives you the option of recesses with curved edges and flat bottoms, rather than completely flat bottoms with a forstner bit alone or completely curved bottoms with a cove bit.

Bilious' technique might work. Looking at the cove radii and overall diameters of the bits on that site, it looks like there are some that should work just fine for this sort of application. I would deffinitely try this on scrap first, of course. You're likely to get better results at about 1000rpms than at your drill press' highest setting, you'd need to remove a thin layer of material, then back out, and so forth until you get to your desired depth, of course. It's worth a try as long as you're safe about it.

No, it's not the chrome itself I was referring to. What is sold in rattle cans typically has a solvent vehicle which will dissolve in water. This solvent's purpose is merely to keep the paint in a liquid form until it hits the body. Once it's applied, the solvent evaporates as your paint dries(both things are one and the same). Once the paint is fully cured, it won't dissolve in water. It's difficult to quickly explain what exactly is going on, but just know that you're unlikely to get it to float on water, but once cured, it shouldn't dissolve in water(we're still talking about aeresols, here). Now if you can find an oil based liquid paint that's meant for chrome finishes, that's another issue entirely.

It's doubtful, since it's likely solvent based and would probably dissolve in water.. You'd probably be able to do a black swirl over a chrome base though.

The curves with the stick on chrome would be difficult, and you'd never be able to get perfect seams. However, I do have two thoughts. Doing the curves would be much easier with the assistance of a vacuum bag, think of it like man handling the sticker into position. Also, perhaps you could make the seams look intentional by putting rivet heads on one edge where there's an overlap, to give it that airplane fuselage look. As for the spray on stuff, if you can achieve the results that alsa has as samples on their site, you'd be in good shape. I've heard of chrome painted guitars looking pretty shabby after the finish settles into the wood. The only ways I could think to counter this would be to either use a material other than wood, use an acrylacizer on all of the wood surfaces to more or less stabalize the wood, or use a really thick, durable sealer like ibanez puts on all of their bodies.

Yeah, but also a pain to tweek the tuning on the fly in a live situation. I don't quite understand what you mean by that, unless you're referring to changing the actual key your guitar is tuned to. David, I like this one much more than the other one. No matter how much I looked at it, I just couldn't really get over the blue and cocobolo right next to eachother. Of course, your work looked spotless. Interesting that you're looking to get into making hardware. I'd really love to get a mill in my shop and make some of my own as well. Do your machinist friends have access to a chrome plater? I don't know of any locally that will take small jobs, but a friend of mine has gotten into powder coating lately, so I may have to send a case of beer his way in the near future . Anyhow, looks great. I'll be interested to see where you go with that sympathetic string idea. More importantly, I'd love to see what you're thinking about for a bridge. I've got some drawings of some bridges that might transfer the energy between the two courses well, but I can't help but look at them and think of how much more effective doing it with electronics would be, not to mention controllable. peace, russ

My rule of thumb has always been about 1/8" minimum, unless I'm routing for inlays, but other than that, I make passes equal to one half the diameter of the bit I'm using. Also, David, setting your router to it's highest speed is not always a good thing. Typically you want a lower speed for wider bits. Your router probably came with some guidelines and recomendations regarding speed. peace, russ

Well, since I don't plan on being a professional luthier or selling this idea to the masses for that matter, let me get you thinking about a design. Your second course of strings is slightly shorter than the bass strings and have a bridge located somewhere between the main bridge and the end of the neck. The symp. strings anchor at the headstock, but are tuned at the body end using something like steinberg gearless tuners, with the strings going over a tom before hitting the tuners, of course. the signal from the main course is picked up by a mag. pickup and to sent some form of a sustainer meant to recieve a bass signal but drive guitar size strings(the symp. course). Since your symp. strings' pickup would also fall under the main course, a mag pickup is out of the question here. Instead, perhaps piezos in the tom bridge. Have the ability to tweak your symp tone and main tone, and probably the relative volumes of the two before sending them to your amp and you're in business. The whole concept makes me think of reverb that plays complimentary notes rather than the same notes the guitar plays. What's the neck made from, you ask? Well, it's a completely hollow kevlar/carbon fiber neck of course! just remember where you heard it first. peace, russ

Lmii rods are 3/8" exactly, 1/16" smaller than the hot rod. Same price too, I think. Those are all I use. No sense in using anything thicker than necessary.

Check the hot rod thickness again. I don't remember it exactly, but I seem to remember it being more than 3/8." If it is 3/8' inches though and you have 1/8" under it and 1/4" of fretboard on top of it, before radiussing the board, you should be good. The trick here is making sure you make the truss rod no deeper than necessary, and not accidentally using a fretboard thicker than 1/4" and then still going for a 3/4" neck just to accidentally carve into the truss rod cavity. Keep a caliper handy at all times to check the thickness and depth of everything as you carve, route, etc. Also, you can keep just a hair more wood in the neck if you use a round nose bit for the length of the truss rod channel and then use a sharp chisel to square off the cavity where the end blocks of the truss rod go. peace, russ

$50?! Tell him I'll do it for $45, including the switch. What a steal, right?

needs some work, but you knew that. planning on a solid finish? Also, I feel like the horn might look a bit better if you pulled it in just a hair. Seems like it sticks out too much. More importantly, what's your fretboard thickness? I don't know what sort of truss rod you're using, but if it's dual action, getting your neck to .75" will require good planning so that your truss rod doesn't come out the back of the neck. I've done .625" before, but that was with a single action rod.

Matthew, what part of louisiana do you live in? I'm in baton rouge. I have a/c in my shop, but I only turn it on when I'm in there which is not often, although it is insulated so the temp doesn't fluctuate as rapidly as outside. I don't find that my tools rust very much, but when they do, I typically just wipe them down with some oil, typically one meant for finishing wood that doesn't really effect the wood's color much so that should any come off the tool onto wood(which I've never noticed, very thin coat, like i said) it's not a big deal. peace, russ

I typically call a finish that has a consistent pattern reminiscent of the peel of an orange, orange peel. Call me conventional. But seriously, you can find me wrong, find me attractive, find me insolent. I don't care. However, until you know I'm wrong, I'd suggest you save both your breath and some embarrassment. Telling someone who knows nothing about a subject the wrong thing is much worse than telling them nothing at all.

DFW, look at it this way. It's not impossible to agitate those strings on the sympathetic course mechanically...but it will be quite hard. You'll need to get as much of the energy from the main course to the top as possible, to set the top into motion. Also, you may want to isolate the harp so that you don't waste energy sympathetically vibrating those strings that could instead be used to vibrate the real sympathetic course. If an acoustic bass is a bone stock speaker, then this bass would probably be a bose speaker...but bose speakers are only what they are because of the design and thought that goes into them. Inevitably your next version of this will improve upon the current one, but why not put the hours you're not at RV to read up as much as possible on acoustic design(if you're going with a flat top) and archtop design(if you're going with a carved top). Also, try to figure out which instrument in the stringed instrument family has the highest downward string pressure(on the top) to top area ratio. Focus on this instrument as it will be the closest in terms of tops specs and bracing to what you want. I'm not trying to shoot you down in those previous posts, I'd really love to see this work well. I'm just trying to get you thinking about how to make it work well. peace, russ

Your definitions of closed and open systems are a bit confusing, rich. , but I think I know what you're getting at, you mean mechanically closed or open without consideration of electronic signals. I agree with you though, it seems that the sudden change after I posted the hardingfelle link is an indicator that little research has been done on the subject. Sure, you won't know exactly how this thing will work until you build it, but you can get pretty darned close to understanding how everything will interact with some simple analysis' of each mechanical system. I hope you realize that the uses for this sort of bass will likely be quite limited and probably no modern bassist is going to want to work solely with this type of instrument. It will certainly be a fun instrument if you can get the sympathetic strings working properly, but for most it will remain a secondary instrument.

I had a friend in jazz band in high school who had a black gibson lp stolen from the band room. A week or two later someone anonymously dropped it off at the principal's office. The person who stole it even put on a new toggle switch knob, which the guitar was missing upon being stolen. Highschools are pretty small, figuratively speaking. Word gets around. I wouldn't lose hope just yet.

dfw, with your current top design, i doubt you'll ever be able to get the top to react like a real hollow body type, even if it's constructed like one. It's simply too small an area, and the shape isn't exactly conducive to decent compression on the top. I have a feeling the only way to acoustically duplicate the hardingfelle's results in bass form would be to build a full out contrabass. If I ever get around to building an electric bass with sympathetic strings, I plan on agitating the sympathetic course electromagnetically. I'm also planning on using a full carbon/kevlar hollow neck no thicker or wider than a standard electric bass neck. peace, russ

You don't want to shoot poly if you don't plan to do it often, it's not cheap to do it and do it safely, moreover. I saw that you asked if after buffing if it would be similar to a fully cured coat of poly and didn't know exactly what you were referring to. However, after sanding and buffing, if done properly and after the finish has fully cured, you should be able to get it back to the high gloss it had before you sanded it.

Rich, check this out. That's where I got the idea from, but I want to try it on a bass. I have a feeling that the energy generated by the main course of strings on a solid body bass will not be great enough to send the sympathetic strings into motion enough for them to create an audible noise. However, I've got a pretty cool electronics configuration I've been working on that would fix that. I just wish I had time to build guitars right now...more importantly I've been dying to get to that acoustic. peace, russ

Is this one of your spritzer bottle bursts, southpa? Sexy, sexy. I suppose this is a good example of how finishes will differ in results depending on how they're applied, because with the stuff I spray, I'll get orange peel if I put too much down. I put down very thin, medium wet, coats to avoid orange peel, but I use a catylist cured poly. guitar101, understand that the polyurethane you're using is far, far different from the finishes used on production guitars that's commonly referred to as "poly." apples and oranges, really.

Tell us how it stands up in the long run. What do replacement blades go for? I have a feeling that ebony is going to tear that blade or your dremel a new one once you're done with an entire board, but who knows, maybe it'll work.

Low end fuzz, you really need to read up on finishing before you give advice, because a lot of your facts are off on both this thread and the other you posted in recently. Orange peel is not caused by oils or silicone. Orange peel is the result of finish that's been applied too heavily, or(more often than not), incorrect air pressure, typically too much. With a spray can your best bet is to probably hold the can away from the wood a bit more and/or apply thinner coats. Silicone on wood will cause bubbles or poor adhesion. Wood that's still drying and gassing off will often cause small bubbles in the finish. I also would highly recommend against starting sanding at 320 grit, unless you're leveling some really uneven spots between coats. Even with a good bit of orange peel, I normally start sanding the last coat with 1000-wet, maybe 800 wet if it's really uneven. I've used stewmac's polishing compounds too, but they didn't strike me as being more efficient or effective than other compounds. Lately I've been using a few different Mcguires brand compounds as I can pick them up at pretty much any automotive store. Also, guitar101, don't jump from 800grit to 1500 grit. That will likely leave you with fine scratches or you'll be sanding for ages with the 1500 grit. Try to keep your jumps between grits to about 200 or 300. Although, I do go from 1500 grit to 2000 grit, but the coarse compound I use is equivalent to something like 2000 or something close to that, so I'm able to get the 1500 grit scratches out pretty easily. If you can't get rid of the orange peel, that's ok, just sand it out. I'm pretty sure that poly will need a good bit of time to dry, maybe more than a month. Don't try sanding or polishing until you can apply pressure to it with your thumbnail without it denting. Sand and polish before that point and there's a good chance the finish will move around after you're done and you'll have to do it again. Another thing I didn't mention is that there's a possibility you're getting bubbles because of putting it on too thick. Since it air dries, if the surface film cures before the rest of the finish, you could potentially get bubbles as the lower layers gas off. I'm not sure that's what's going on here, but it's a possibility. peace, russ

I echo setch's comments from experience. Poly melts into previous layers just fine, but it's easiest to avoid witness lines if you spray all of your coats before any of it has fully cured. I personally think poly sands really well, but I base that on how much the finish gums up the sandpaper. I find sanding and buffing a poly finish to be a treat. I think(if memory serves correctly) that hvlp's use about 1/3 the volume of finish that a standard gun uses for any given area. As for laying down a smooth finish with a cheap lvhp gun, I do it all of the time. Sure, it needs a little work with some sandpaper and a buffer when I'm done, but so does any finish I've ever sprayed with an hvlp gun : . Just remember, you really should not be spraying any non-water based catayzed finishes without proper skin protection and ventilation. That means a full spray suit, a decent mask(or better yet a fresh air supply) and a proper spray booth with explosion proof fans, lights, etc.

I was always under the impression that a straight neck was even more important on a well-tuned fretless than on a fretted one as you'd want the strings quite close to the fingerboard. So dfw, the 12 sympathetic strings are going to be guitar strings, right?