thegarehanman

Since it's just a cheap part, if I were you, I'd just polish up the area that's been cut (sand it with increasingly finer paper, then hit it with a polishing wheel, etc), then just brush on some clear nail polish to the cut area to prevent rust.

peace,

russ

Rich is right, but it's important to keep in mind that hardening steel is not the only avenue to better hardware. For example, stainless steel fretwire is already on the market and boasts a much longer life span than standard nickel alloy hardware. Also, while saddle wear is an issue, rolling saddles seem to be attacking the source of the problem (friction induced wear) rather than just avoiding the results of the wear by using a harder metal. Just some thoughts.

peace,

russ

This thread did open with "what if this process was applied to guitar hardware & pickups ?" & then some history on & what Cryogenic Treatment is .. Then the following post set the rest of the bashing mode that continues , I have no ego just passing the info & made no comment on the inherit sustain of anyones pickups Gee guys get real ... jump off the wagon

So now that you've gotten that out of the way, why not respond to mpeg2's comments? We're still wanting for your opinion on the matter.

Ok, most of the people that are carrying on this thread already know about superconductors. We don't need some copy/pasted material from wikipedia. We're talking pickups operating at room temerature and I hardly doubt anyone's going to be producing high-temperature superconductor magnet wire in the near future, at least not at prices that are feasible for pickups. Oh, nevermind, this is like arguing with a mindless search engine.

I'd love to hear more thoughts from our resident material scientist; he may be able to answer some of the questions some of us have posed that flickoflash can evidently not answer.

I built a .5 scale strat about a year ago. The super thin neck and body were a bit of a challenge, but I never really had problems with intonation. I was using a home-made rosewood TOM style bridge with an acoustic bone saddle. If you have any questions, shoot me a pm.

Ok, you said frets, not fretboard. Of course plants aren't going to tediously sand fretboards to a compound radius with a straight block. If you're determined to do it their way, grizzly actually sells the whole jig (it'll cost you a pretty bit though). Really though, getting a board roughed out with a cylindrical block and finishing it with a straight block is not that time consuming. Complete accuracy (in terms of your radii) should not be your goal; completely level and playable frets should be. I think you're really approacing this from the wrong angle, at least as far as a hobbiest is concerned. Also, for what it's worth, I've heard plenty of people needing to relevel warmoth's frets as well as frets on necks from other neck companies. If that's not a testiment to the accuracy of their methods, I don't know what is.

I don't have any links for you, but the dimensions are all pretty self-explanatory. With a double-action type rod (I prefer LMII.com's 3/8" thick double action rod), you need about 1/8" of wood minimum behind it. So you have 1/8" of wood, 3/8" of rod, leaving you with 1/4" thickness for the fretboard. Now I personally like to have a little bit more material behind my truss rods, so I go with a 3/16" thick fretboard and that gives me 3/16" of wood behind the truss rod. If you want to route a slot in the fretboard to accomodate some of the truss rod, then just fiddle with those dimensions. However, the same principle applies, don't venture below 1/8" of fretboard where your truss rod lies or you may tear through the fretboard when adjusting the truss rod. Actually, because of fret slots, I wouldn't go thinner than 3/16" on the fretboard where the truss rod is.

peace,

russ

Mpeg2, glad you joined the conversation. A materials engineer, now that's hard to beat in a thread like this. You know, tonemonkey, I had the same concern as you regarding the magnets, but I'm not sure it would be a problem if (like you said) temperature changes were gradual and as long as you didn't reach the magnet's max operating temp. or its curie point. I realize you can still lose magnetism, but that sort of thing has to be planned for based on magnet shape and what not to fully avoid it. However, despite my hunch that you won't see an appreciable improvement after putting a pickup through this process, what about the bobbin?! A bobbin would long have melted in most heat treatment processes. Plus, bobbins might even fracture if you shock freeze them in LN! Flickoflash, I'm sure we're all willing to debate this with you, but we want you to defend your side of the debate with your own words, not some youtube videos and other random links.

peace,

russ

0000 steel wool will work perfectly for this application. However, I'd advise you to remove your pickups (or at least put tape over the magnets) before hitting the finish with steel wool. If you don't, the pickup polepieces will get covered in dust from the steel wool.

peace,

russ

I dunno rich, voodoo just gets me all riled up. Let me tell you, I had the internals on a motor for a formula car LN tempered and that motors tone did not improve one bit. What a waste!

Plus, that acoustic I just finished is sitting in an art gallery just begging for me to play it. I can't take it anymore!

Great way to back up your arguments.

No, the common way is to use a straight block and to sand the board along the lines the strings would follow. This produces a conical fretboard (ie compound radius).

I noticed! This GOTM will be one for the books.

Well, I'm no acoustic pro, so this is just what I'm thinking, but I think the choice comes from several factors. The bridge has to be able to take the wear from wound strings and the forces from string tension without getting grooves worn into it too quickly or being torn apart under the forces. Also, the weight of the bridge does color the tone of an instrument to a pretty decent extent. However, I think that if you used acrylicized maple or something similar, you'd have a light colored wood with both the weight and durability of something along the lines of ebony or rosewood. Check out gallery hardwoods; they have a pretty good selection of acrylacized woods and I think they can even accommodate custom orders.

peace,

russ

Actually, most people level frets, be them constant or varying radius with flat bottomed sanding blocks. I use an 18" surface ground steel bar from stewmac. Some people use long files and some do use radius blocks, but I can't attest to how well they work. I'm pretty sure that a compound radius sanding block would not work very well.

peace,

russ

Did you use dye or stain? It looks like the blue blotted out the figuring and grain on the top a bit. Other than that, you've applied the color pretty evenly, so kudos!

I'm not interested in every word in every link you provide; what I do know is that you have a thread, the contents of your "tesla..." thread (hold links and other filler) have suggestions on how to replicate the sound of PAFs by prematurely aging parts. I'm not trying to discredit you entirely or whatever you'd like to think; I'm merely showing you what could be considered holes in your arguments and other ways that may compel people to listen to what you have to say. However, it seems the both of us are just a tad bit incorrigible, and for that reason, I see little point in me playing any further role in this discussion.

I find that with 2-way rods, there's potential for buzz when you have anything less than a perfect fit. Also, you can sometimes eliminate t-rod buzz by just ever so lightly tightening the rod...not enough to move the neck, but enough to take out any slack in the rod.

peace,

russ

Sorry, didn't read all the tech sheets, I don't click on tons of random links without a compelling paragraph or two to do so. . I did see that there was some heat treatment involved. However, it seemed like you were more concerned with the cryogenic tempering than the heat treatment. What I was saying was, how much does the cryogenic tempering add that just heat treatment doesn't? Don't think for a second that I'm stuck in a rut as far as materials and hardware goes (although I would ask you the same question with your obsession with genuine sounding PAF pickups!). Actually, I'm very interested in the application of composites in instruments...within reason. The truth is, you don't need extra strength in guitar hardware, and if you do for some reason, than metals are probably not the right direction. Can you tell us what treating a metal with LN does to the resonant frequency of metals and how that would be favorable? Honestly, it seems that your enthusiasm in these ideas has completely colored your opinions on the results, and I question your objectivity.

peace,

russ

...You wouldnt remove it from the system, just decrease its influence because it wouldnt be as close to the node (where the note is fretted). For example, condsider what would happen if you removed a lot of the wood from underneath the bridge, and then condsider what would happen if you removed the same amount of wood from somewhere a distance behind the bridge. The further that 'distance' was, the less it would alter the sound. Same concept.

Thats how it makes sense in my head at least.

if you were playing on (say) the 7th fret, the wood around and between the 7th fret and the bridge would be what would matter most...

Ben, I think your thinking is a bit backwards here. Your analogy of how in the case of the body, the further away from the bridge the wood is, the less it plays a role in the sound of the instrument, is correct. I think you can treat the body as a discrete particle that has ossilations within it, but does not ossilate as a whole, if that makes sense. The neck, however, does ossilate as a unit. Thus, force from the strings is being sapped away to cause these ossilations. The farther the force is from the headstock, the more of a moment arm exists to allow the headstock to vibrate with less force. Thus, the farther you move from the nut, the easier it should become to vibrate the headstock. Now, there are some holes in that idea. One, is that the closer you get to the body, the more vibrations will go through the neck to the body and less to the headstock. Also, typically, as you get closer to the body, the neck gets wider and thicker, making it harder to deform. So my idea is 100% valid, but really the best any of us can do at the moment are close approximations.

Anyhow, that's my logic; it could very well be off base, who knows.

peace,

russ

And another point to be made is this: if it would in fact have an application in guitar parts, would it yield better results (how much better?) and be comparably priced to heat treatment? Or would it be more economical to replace knige edges with other metals all together such as carbide or something along those lines?

what if this process was applied to guitar hardware & pickups ?

You'd find a grand new way of wasting money on improvements you'll never need or hear. Of course, some joe is going to say he hears a difference, and then he's going to convince everyone else of it, and charge them tons of money to have it done to their guitars.

http://www.nwcryo.com/pricelist_master.html

looks rather cheap to me

Than by all means, go for it. Tell use the wonders you discover. Keep in mind you're talking to a mechanical engineering student who studies this stuff on a daily basis and understands the applications. You're wasting your time here; I'm not saying that to burst your bubble. I'm just trying to save you time and money.

peace,

russ

You could buy some black/white pickguard material from stewmac.com and cut it out yourself. You should be able to do a fine job of it with very few tools, given enough time.

peace,

russ

Oh, darn. I was looking at the wrong thread. I bet that left you pretty confused. lol. Sorry!

Let me see if I can answer this one correctly! Jon, a member here has a slotting service. You can send him the fretboard and he'll slot it for you for a very reasonable fee. I don't believe he radiuses boards, but you don't really want to radius the board until it's glued to the neck anyhow, to insure it's level. A radius block costs only about $10-$15 and all you need to do is use it like a sanding block. Once you've got the board radiused, you'll want to use a longer (perfectly) straight sanding stick to even out the board so that it's as close to perfectly level as possible before installing frets.

Ok, so is that a bit more usefull? Sorry about that confusion.

peace,

russ

EDIT: looking at the wrong thread entirely. why you ask? because i'm an idiot.