thegarehanman

I don't know about modern randals, but that one i owned had two 12" Electrovoice speakers. That's right up there with celestion in my opinion. Actually, I butchered the randal and made it ito a 2x12 cab for the carvin 100w tube head i bought. a friend wanted the amp part for god knows what so i just gave it away. I'd feel bad about doing that to say a vintage fender tweed amp, but a randall...not quite.

wouldn't that require two rheostats? you'd need both amps at full blast in the middle, i don't think they make a rheostat like that. you'd have to have two with the inputs on opposite sides...that'd be a tricky thing to fit into an expression pedal.

Randalls will not die. I don't know about their tube amps, but if they're anything thing like they're solid state amps, they are almost bulletproof. I was given a Randal RG300 for free. It had been sitting in the guy's garage for a while. I owned it for a few years and had only replaced the on/off switch(my fault...dropped the sucker) and the casters. One day when I was taking it appart I decided to look at the manufacturer's notes on the metal chasis for the preamp, the thing was made in 1975! I was playing on a nearly 30 year old solid state amp and it sounded(and almost looked) new. I folded and bought a tube amp though.

I just wrapped up recording of a few songs with my band. The guy who recorded us did it for free; he's a friend of my basist. He went to berkley and studied recording. His setup is currently worth $15k. He's using Pro Tools LE with a lot of effects pluggins. He has a roland 32 channel external midi controller to have quick access to faders and what not. He's running it on a Mac that has about 2 gigs of RAM and at least 100 gigs of Hard Drive storage. He has a Joe Meek stereo compressor(ammaaaazing!) and some other odd and end rackmount effects not worth mentioning. He was using a Newman Condensor. Interesting thing to point out: he uses a metal wind screen in place of the traditional fabric one. Apparently it attenuates less high frequencies. By the way, he records at 48bits(I believe, it might have been less, but it was deffinitely more than 24. maybe 32?). He said that even though computers will only read 24bits, the music will still be noticeably clearer when played since there's more information to begin with. I'll post a link to the songs when he finished mastering them. Considering how good it sounded before he started fiddling with the levels and any effects, it should turn out quite well. My band is just doing this for kicks before we part ways for college in the fall.

i don't know those dimensions off the top of my head. only thing i would think of would be having to rework the pickguard. i really focus on les pauls and any other carved top guitar. just trying to help the guy. down boy, down.

i use a visual sound Jeckel and Hyde overdrive/distortion pedal. best $150 I spent in my life. You can get any sound imaginable out of this peal. And the best part is you have 2 channels so you can have 2 different tones in one pedal. Be it blues or really heavy rock, I always can get the sound I want and it always sounds better than the distortion you can get from a tube head. I actually bought it out of neccessity. I use a Carvin ValveMaster Head. The clean channel is the best I've ever heard, but the distortion channel is s***. Now I'm all grins. I sound like a visual sound rep. don't I? ha!

clueless?! first, why would i know where the pickup is, it was simply hypothetical. second, if the strings are fretting out, who's to say his truss rod isn't incorrectly adjusted?

I'm building a semi-hollow guitar and I've been trying to make humbucker mounting rings(from wood) for it. I can get everything perfect except the inside. It's amazingly difficult. Anyhoo, someone said on another thread that stewmac sells premade wooden humbucker mounting rings. This is just not the case; i scowered that site to find nothing.

Does anyone know where I can get flamed maple humbucker mounting rings? Wooden rings are critical to the look I'm going for on this guitar.

*EDIT* I found the parts on allparts and specialtyguitar. just for those of you who may need these eventually: they are 70 on allparts and 40 at specialty guitar.

Move the bridge 3/4" to make the scale length match the neck(assuming the neck even fits right.) I think you need to fiddle w/ the truss rod. If none of this works then "i spit in your general direction."

How about this for an inlay? I sketched and scanned it. I think it would echo the elegance i'm going for in the guitar.

sketch

I think I'll go buy a scroll saw tomorrow. I simply have to have wooden pickup rings on this guitar; it's really not a question as far as i'm concerned. However, now I'm considering using maple and dying it to match the guitar top. Those first ones were close, but i agree devon, they could be just a tad bit cleaner. I'm not losing this fight. I am > pickup rings(i sincerely hope so).

Seems like the only way to do that would be w/ two power attentuators and some way to pan from one to the other with both at minimum attentuation in the middle. Assuming this is the only way to do it, it's going to cost about $6-800. Now if you had two heads going to two cabs, you could just use two volume pedals or mod one out to be a pan pedal.

I don't know if I'm missing something here, but it seems to me like those are the best answers available.

*i've been wrong before

**EDIT**I am such a lousy speller**EDIT**

planed the neck on the neck thru i'm working on in about 2 minutes with a jointer. thank benjamin for electricity(franklin, that is).

I probably won't ever use this, but it'd be really nice to know how it's done(propperly). Does anyone have experience with dying(i assume) the woods or MOP pieces used in an inlay? The thing that confuses me about it is that you can't dye it before you radius the fretboard, but it would be really hard to dye everything correctly with the fretboard radiused and all of the pieces next to each other.

Let me try to cover all of the...(complaints?) hehe.

1)I don't entirely understand what you're trying to say about the neck. I'm getting the feeling that some of you doubt the structural integrity of the thing, but it seems like you are refering to it as if it were a glue in neck. You must reallize it's a straight through so the size of the heel really doesn't give a good example of the amount of wood holding it on. Also, there will be 2 carbon fiber reinforcement rods that continue from the neck onto the guitar(for about 3/4") underneath the fretboard. I have left the area of the top uncarved(on the inside) for this reason.

2)I agree with your ideas about the inlay, perhaps it will detract from the guitar's elegance. However, I will be doing some type of ellaborate inlay. I only did stars and my signiture on the last one, and I want more practice with inlay. The word practice might scare people, but no worries. I'm thinking of something with curves...hmmm(no vines).

3)As far as the humbucker mounting rings go, I really like the ones I've made. The only change I would make in that category would be to use maple rings made from the same stock as the top. I don't like the whole ringless humbucker look; I can't stand seeing the little mounting brackets on the sides.(not to mention...semihollow guitar, eh?)

This guitar will be recieving a les paul type pick guard(obviously not a stock one). However, I'm going to make it out of plexi glass(the really good type though, forgot the name). It's not an attempt to make it look futuristic. I want a pickguard, but I don't want to stop the flow of the grain.

Oh, and the first guitar is not a baritone. For some reason my image host kind of messed that picture up. Also, the headstock might make the neck seem longer since it's narrower than a gibson headstock.

Geez, I have a big mouth, don't I.

Obviously I have yet to go over the whole body w/ a scraper, but in reality, those edges are not as sharp as they seem. This is an instance where I will not be able to sell people on the design until it's finished. As anyone does when they begin a project, I have the finished project invisioned in my own mind. I am working towards that vision. I'll be damned if you don't want one when I'm done.

Now let's just hope I don't end up eating those words.

I'd better get to sleep, got to go record some tracks in the morning.

By the way, here's a pic of my first one. It has a bit of wear and tear, but that's because it's my main guitar and it's seen 3 years of loving abuse.

My 1st Guitar

I understand how you can have a distaste for the control area. I wasn't sold on it at first, but it's really grown on me. I'm working on carving the back of the top now. It's got to be 1/8" everywhere(well, mostly). Same thing is happening to the back. The only hole in the back will be for the battery holder(for the LR Baggs preamp). The controls will all go in through the hole for the two mono jacks. That was actually one of my motivations in making it stereo capable. Fortunately the LR Baggs x-bridge preamp comes standard stereo. I have quite a bit of work left, especially considering the elaborate inlay i've got lined up for it. As far as space goes for controls, there's no problems. The pots I got are smaller than standard and the knobs are metal tele type knobs so everything works out well.

Now that I think about it, the method I'm using for installing the controls is much like the one used for that Les Paul Supreme a few posts down.

I'm new to this forum, but I know my way around a shop. I've been building everything imaginable since childhood. I've helped with additions on houses, large and small scale metal sculptures, amp. cabs, furniture, and guitars. This is my second guitar, but it feels like I've been doing this all my life(in a good way).

Here are more pictures than you probably want to see of my most recent "project."

Here are the specs:

-my own design body, double cutaway

-semihollow

-contoured flamed maple front and back

-straight through poplar/mahogany neck

-mahogany sides

-ebony fretboard

-ebony peghead overlay

-all wood 5-ply binding

-kent armstrong 12 pole PAF humbuckers

-LR Baggs tune-o-matic piezo bridge and preamp

-schaller tuners, straplocks and fine tune tailpiece

-stereo/mono switchable output

-all gold hardware

-die finish

-double acting truss rod w/ carbon fiber reinforcement

-did i forget anything?

sorry about all of the image links, but forum rules rule the forum apparently. trust me, they're worth looking at.

3 of the 5 sections of the neck before gluing

some of the woods that are going into the guitar. among them is poplar, maple, mahogany, ebony(not pictured) and flamed maple(not pictured)

the neck being glued up

the neck after being roughted out

shot of the neck and sides after being dovetail routed

another shot of the body joints

the neck heel after the neck has been sanded

rought sketch of the inlay design

the middle left f-hole will be used for this project

a shot of the guitar after the neck and body sides had been glued together

the humbucker mounting rings, made from the same stock as the neck

the front and backs of the guitar being glued up

the front after initial routing, before any hand carving

the front of the guitar after final routing

the back of the guitar after final routing

the guitar front after rough carving

the guitar front after sanding

the guitar front after sanding

Hi, I'm new to this site. I've been building for quite a while and I've used stewmac's downcut bits, dental bits, and the variety of mini cutters you can get from harbor freight) The harbor freight cutters suffice, but don't do the job as well as I'd like. However, I have been able to get just as clean a cut with my dentist's old bits(which are about between 1/16" and 1/32") as I can w/ the overpriced stewmac bits.

my $.02