thegarehanman

We find things just fine. Engineers design laser guided missiles, after all. Well, that's only partially true...civil engineers only build the targets.

Soapbar, if you take another pop at engineers, I swear on my favorite pair of pants that I will come down to your house and add 1000 overpriced, poorly made, easily broken components to each and every appliance in your house! Some engineers mess things up, but that seems to be isolated to the really dumb ones and the ones who use the left side of their brain exclusively. The more artistic of us just sprinkle the world with wonderful gadgets, doodads, and turbomachinery. I think the stewmac jig is a pretty good design, tbh. If I were making one from scratch, I might change a few things, most notably going from a wooden spine to...well, anything other than wood.

Play with a soda can and a ruler for a few minutes and you'll see what I mean.

Is your ruler missing the first 2" of measurement? Because that would mean the 12th fret is actually 15" from the nut and the bridge is 30" from the nut. hahaha...but seriously, check

Hey guys, I've made a lot of progress on the Jason Becker tribute double neck guitar. Below are a few clickable thumbnails. If you want to see more pictures of this guitar and some detailed shots of the inlays and what not, check out my site. The link is below. https://garehanguitars.com/8-27-07.html peace, russ

pete, check your mail

Soapbar! The secret! How many people will we have to kill before you stop blabbering about our plot?! You'd better not clue them onto the fact that a guitar whose strings have one radius at the nut, the same radius at the bridge, the same radius fretboard, and a tapered neck means that the strings at the sides of the neck need to be higher than on a guitar with a compound radius board! Oh, nuts.

Southpa, the time a string vibrates is perhaps a concern, but the answer to the question you posed is simple: as much as possible, block any means of the string dissipating its energy to its anchoring points. One way of doing this would be to make the guitar out of something quite rigid...like granite. And this has been done before to certain extents, and we know that often times the result is a very trebley, harsh tone. So in that light, time would perhaps be better spent looking for things that dissipate the frequencies you don't desire, more so than looking to maintain all frequencies as long as possible. That's what the guitar body and neck on an electric is mainly doing after all: filtering out different frequencies at different rates. Some frequencies will dissipate so quickly to the body that they're not even audible, some will slowly dissipate and will create undertones, others will hardly dissipate and will die out mostly as a result of forces of air and gravity impeding the vibration of the string. Of course, this is similar, but slightly different in acoustic instruments. In the case of acoustics, the frequencies that are not quickly absorbed and dissipated by the guitar, keep the string in motion. The string's motion then puts the top of the guitar into motion which, in effect, acts like an air pump. Also, out of curiosity, Perry, did you test multiple(3 or more) of each sample in your tests? Also, did you take the multiple samples from multiple species of wood?(say 1 set of tests on all mahogany blanks from the same tree, another set of all ash blanks from the same tree, etc). Also, did you limit your tests to only audible frequencies? peace, russ

Pete, if you're looking for a site, check out godaddy.com's "website tonight" setup. It's very cheap, and you can add a storefront and shopping cart as well. I wouldn't worry yourself too much about someone competing with you. It's bound to happen at some point and you're already competing with the sustainiac. You just have to focus on keeping quality high, prices reasonable, and getting this thing on the market as quickly as possible. peace, russ

So what's been the problem with the other builders you've contacted?

I have the 16" model. It's nice in that it's pretty heavy, so all you have to do is slide it across the frets, its own weight provides enough pressure to remove material. If you want to level frets with the strings off, than that tube is a pretty good way to do it. peace, russ

...my first guitar was a plywood stratocaster, and with the right set of pickups, that thing sounded awesome. Remember guys, sometimes there is more than one answer to the same question.

Jammy got my vote; I just wish I'd thought of that first! haha. This lot is a really impressive one. Like chris, I love mike's guitar (probably mostly because of the wood choice), but that heel was a killer for me. Ben, you already know I like your guitar; very clean work, and that's probably the most important thing about a guitar,cosmetically. Great job everyone, it's a month for the books. peace, russ

In my experience, the necks I've played that had cf rods in them seemed to have fewer dead spots (or had dead spots less often) than necks without them. While the cf rods might not be a neccessity, have some bafoon leave two guitars in his trunk one hot afternoon, one with cf rods and one without. Then see if you're not sold on cf rods. They really do wonders for a neck's elastic memory.

Buy a flat scraper to thin the neck with, it should give you a lot of control and remove material well, but not so quick that you lose control. You may end up hitting the truss rod route, which would make the neck useless, but that seems like a risk you're willing to take. Finish profiling the neck with sandpaper. As for swirling, do a search of the forum, it's been covered many times. Also, there's a tutorial for it on projectguitar.com

Whoa whoa whoa! That's so far from the truth (...disregarding the fact that these are all only our opinionts ). I've used cocobolo for necks and while oily, tonally dead is the absolute last term I'd use to describe it. It really lends to a rich, clear tone. I'm sure if Myka or Fryovanni chime in, they'll have similar sentiments as I know Myka has used EIRW for necks and I think Rich has as well. Have you ever even made a guitar with a rosewood neck? And if you didn't like it, what makes you think the neck was the culprit of the dissatisfying tone? peace, russ EDIT: Mattia beat me to it

Drak, the concern with the "flesh" tone after spraying the white didn't stem from the white not being, in fact, white. It was more based on the fact that you're spraying white over wood, which often can be sort of salmon colored, and could tinge the white, since it's not opaque. This shouldn't be too much of a problem as the maple top I'm using is pretty much as light as maple comes. Thanks for the $.02 tip though.

For what it's worth, I find that temporary on buttons make better killswitches than toggles (if you just want the killswitch for the staccato effect, not to kill your guitar's signal for an extended period of time...which I use a vol pedal for anyhow). Anyhow, the buttons I've used have lasted longer than the toggles I've used (I've used both closed toggles and gibson style toggles) and they make less scratchy noise when you're using them. peace, russ

Thanks marksound; I prefer to stick with my polyester finishes though, so I'm going to see what I can do with that for now. The current plan is to just add a few drops of white to a batch of clear, like maiden suggests. I remember hearing that it helps to add a tad bit of blue to the white to avoid having the finish look flesh colored. I was mostly just curious if anyone had really good pictures, to see if what I'm aiming for is feasible or unrealistic.

I'm debating on what sort of finish I want to spray on an upcoming build with a AAA flamed maple top. I'm leaning towards a transparent white finish, but I'm not sure that's the way I want to go. The deciding factor will be how transparent a finish I can get while still maintaining the white overtones. I plan to do some test pieces, but I'd love to see some examples if anyone's perfected a technique or formula for this already. peace, russ

double post

Greg, actually, you can apply wax to a scuffed up finish, and as long as you wipe it off instead of buffing it out, you can cover a lot of the tiny scratches without bringing it back up to a high gloss again. With the wax it's more of a satin look than a matt look, but I actually prefer the waxed scuffed surface over its non-waxed counterpart. peace, russ

Well, the whole nature of getting a matt finish from a gloss finish is putting (very fine) scratches in it so that light is scattered rather than being cleanly reflected. The only other way to get a matt finish is to either 1) apply no finish to something that's already not glossy or 2) apply a specifically matt finish (which typically can not be leveled or polished as that will make it glossy). However, in my experience, a good waxing should fill the fine scratches left by 0000 steel wool while still retaining the matt appearance. Keep in mind, you'll likely never get rid of 100% of those scratches without bringing the finish back to its original high gloss. Don't know that that explanation helped your problem, but at least it explains the situation.

I don't claim that everything you're doing is in vain, I only wish for you to admit that perhaps, just perhaps these "improvements" will not make the difference in the voice of the guitar that you expect it to do. Or, for that matter, to merely show us evidence otherwise, so that we may say "well that's compelling evidence, perhaps we were wrong after all!" In response to your analogy: If you plant a standard flagpole in the ground with 20' above the ground and 20' below, and the ground is firm, say clay for argument's sake, the pole will bend at the point that it meets the ground when you try to push it with any appreciable force. Now, replace that pole with one that has 20' above the ground and 30' below. What happens may I ask? Well, it bends at the point that it meets with the ground, just like the previous post. However, who is to say that we don't want the studs to have some play. Perhaps it's that play(and when I say "play" I mean movement so little that it wouldn't be noticed when trying to wiggle the posts by hand) that might give us a desirable overtone in the instruments voice? Also, there's little accomplished by making the bridge posts longer since force is applied to the bridge almost perpendicular to the top, not parallel to it (the lateral force applied to the top will of course be a function of the break angle at the bridge, and while existent, is still minimal). Instead, you should be making the lip on the bridge studs (the part that sits on the surface of the top) larger and the studs for the tailpiece deeper. Will this improve anything on the instrument? perhaps...likely not, unfortunately. Although again, that would depend largely on what bridges you're comparing it against, as I've seen many stud variations from manufacturer to manufacturer. I think what this truly comes down to is you're a little rattled that people are telling you that you've spent all of this money and perhaps, just perhaps it won't give you all of the improvements that you anticipate. Am I a doubting thomas? Maybe, but I certainly wouldn't be if you'd engage in an intellectual conversation with the rest of us, rather than going on about how all I care to do is discredit your you tube blather. peace, russ

How many units of tone will be transfered as a result? I believe the metric unit for tone is the voodoo, just for the record. What would swing a lot of us would be to hear the guitar first with a bridge that has standard studs than hear it with the extended studs. Keep in mind to use the exact same setup and songs in both instances, for the most reliable results. Oh rich, I'm just having too much fun with this. Could you tell? But seriously, flick, mind giving us some real-world and objective audio clips to get an idea of the differences? peace, russ