Mattia

What's a Variax 6? You mean 600? Variax guitars are modeling instruments, and all the hardware's built into the guitar. The software bit allows you to tweak/update various tone settings and the like and upload them to the guitar. It's all on the Line6 website.

Taylor makes really great quality instruments in my experience, and I'm quite partial to their sound. 9 times out of 10, cracking tops are due to users not taking proper care of their acoustic instruments; airconditioned and heated homes with temperatures and humidity flying all over the map will crack a top in no time flat, and that's the guitar owner's fault.

Finally... An actual answer... Cheers. That's just what i thought. Although i did enjoy reading through some of the more amusing comments. Except it's wrong regarding Titebond II. Killemall gave you the right one up top, ie: Titbeond Original. Hot hide is used extensively in the (custom) acoustic guitar world, epoxy and CA have their places, but for all the wood to wood joints, pretty much, Titebond original is the way to go.l

Remember to include cost of glue, finish, paper, your time, and the inevitable tooling up. I mean, I can build a guitar cheaper than I can buy an equivalent one for now, but I've dumped several tens of thousands of dollars into this game....

Titebond 1. Epoxy if you're comfortable with it and know what you're doing, but it's unnecessary in almost all cases.

Tip of the hat, sure, but it's still original work. Hell, when I was a teen I drew something damn similar to the upper horn on this, long before Jeremy (who far as I can tell isn't even building any more, and I always found his waffle about copyrighting his guitar design to be, well, excessive and overblown), but do I care? No. Guitars are guitar-shaped for a reason, and Ibanez shares plenty of features with other superstrat makers, BC rich has crazy pointy horns all over the place, etc. Make an original design that combines various aspects in a coherent, holistic fashion, and it is a new design. Everyone in the know will recognize where various design influences and elements come from; that's plenty. The original designers often as not built on what came before. I build guitars in the 'Gibson' tradition, mostly; mahogany-ish bodies, often carved maple tops, mostly set necks. And yet they are my designs. The outlines and contours are unique to me, albeit very obviously belonging to a certain 'family' of guitar designs. I combine carbon fibre reinforcements, chambering, sometimes even carved spruce tops with bracing, design ideas I've seen in various places and combined into a whole. Do I acknowledge what came before? Of course. But the whole, if coherent, becomes a new 'original' piece of work. And it's not stealing other people's ideas, it's being part of a creative community where ideas spread like memes.

Ouch....condolences! But like the others said, don't give up! Like Jonny said, though, this seems to be (in part) a technique issue. A few pointers for the future: 1) Routing basics: single pass at full body depth is possible, but only if you're really, really close to the finished outline alread. Like less than 1/16". Sometimes using rasps or a sanding drum (if your bandsaw isn't up to the task of cutting close) is a good way to start. 2) Route the body base (mahogany) first, then glue a top on slightly oversized and trim that back to shape (flush trim router bit). Much, much safer. 3) Direction of routing: the reason you blew out that horn, far as I can see, is that you routed from the waist up to the horn. Don't. ALWAYS start at the 'peaks' (ie widest points) and route 'downhill' into the narrower bits. This prevents the bit from grabbing the grain and pulling it outwards. The high-risk area then becomes the butt of the guitar, where the end-grain lives. Yes, this involves a little bit of climb cutting, which means you should practice this on scrap first to get a feel for the router, and finish off with a counterclockwise pass (remembering the golden rule: "Routers go left". Google the phrase for an explanation).

I'd personally be tempted to pair a top with a mahogany or limba back, and a mahogany or limba neck. The flame maple neck is very nice indeed, but I'd worry about the whole guitar getting just a touch too busy if you're not careful. I wouldn't really want an all-maple guitar (matched or not), and that's some really nice flamey spalt you've got there, which I would be tempted to use for more than a chambered solidbody block.

Good call on acclimating the wood, although ensureing airflow is the way to do that. Clamping it flat-ish between a few stiff boards might help a little, but you may just need to let it move around and settle. Simply stickering and weighting is the better way to go there. Re: scarf joint, grab a bit of scrap and practice on that. Do it once and it'll click again. You really don't need a bandsaw to do the joint, however; I mean, I'll be using mine from here on out, but to date every single one's been done by hand with a japanese saw, and that works just fine. I don't own a jointer (yet), but I'd be more than a little bit worried about using one for a short surface like the scarf. That's a job for a block plane (or a #3, #4, #5 is overkill and too big. The block is what gets used here the most).

Included should be a tool (wrench of some sort) that you can use to unscrew the nozzle. Ask the manufacturer otherwise. As for the needles, .2 mm is tiny, so while they look the same visually, I doubt they are.

It's always my choice to do quartered necks, but I always feel more 'iffy' with flatsawn maple than with flatsawn mahogany in terms of long-term stability...

What are the specs on the CF material you're laminating? Woven? Thickness? Sources? Are you carving the necks purely with abrasives or is the material not too evil to work with hand tools? The solid monodirectional layere sheet (stiff, not fabric) I've used for laminating braces is hell on chisels and the sanding dust isn't much less evil...

I´ve never had problems with any of my HotRod guitars, which is most the ones completed to date, but these days I use the allied rods. More power, and I can use a quarter inch bit.

I gotta ask...why? The african species are a little more finicky in terms of moving than honduran, but like most tropical woods they´re pretty damn stable dimensionally in both quartered and flatsawn directions. Can´t find any data on whether one direction is stiffer than the other (maple is stiffer flatsawn in most cases. Less stable, but stiffer). I mean, flatsawn mahogany necks look kind of nasty and I would rather do a two piece quartered any day of the week, but still...

Throw some in with that side lining tape you're sending me ;-)

Sanding sealer provides a heavier basecoat that the finish can adhere to without sinking into the wood first. I've tended to seal with Shellac so far, will be trying vinyl sealer on the next few (because I got some to go with the Behlen's nitro...)

...where do you live that a truss rod can't be there by monday if you order now? I mean, seriously?

Yes to both, and you can always flip and laminate if it's flatsawn. As for tone, I'd call it warm.

Fade resistant doesn't mean fade-proof, and blues seem to be a common culprit. Overall, I've had very good results with the Colortone stewmac stuff (ie rebranded TransTint metal acid dyes).

Cut the headstock face by hand and use a sanding drum (or end of a belt sander) to do the scoop. I have a bandsaw, and I still won't use it for this kind of cut.

See, that's precisely where I do use ROS; rough carve with an angle grinder, clean up with an ROS, recurve with planes and scrapers, finish sand with ROS and by hand. It's all about controlling the tool. I hand-sand for finishing, or use a soft foam interface pad.

I use poly to laminate things I don't want coming loose under heat. Like headblocks, and sometimes headplate laminates, but only if I can clamp really, really, really well. These days I actually prefer working with epoxy, however.

Seriously? At that point, get a good jigsaw. I wouldn't touch either of those with a ten foot bargepole. The bigger the better is pretty much the motto with bandsaws, but for a small (read: good enough for cutting bodies and necks, but not suitable for resawing tops and the like, which is the real strength of the things) Axminster has a sale going on their smallest saw: http://www.axminster.co.uk/axminster-axmin...saw-prod804528/ If you have the space and the cash, this might be a better deal: http://www.axminster.co.uk/axminster-axmin...saw-prod804525/ Has a resaw capacity of 200cm, which is enough for cutting your own tops from billets. Remember that the actual amount of floor space taken up by a bandsaw isn't that different between saws; I have a tiny shop and fairly a hefty (16") saw.

A good random orbital is what you want. I can heartily recommend the Festool 5" one. Worth every penny. On the wood itself I finish off by hand-sanding with the grain, 220 or 320 grit. Finish just gets the ROS treatment with high grits/abralon. And some hand sanding. And buffing.

You don't need to moisten titebond joints, but a little moisture is a good thing for polyurethane glues - kicks the cure. I'd say moistening won't help the glue wick in, more likely to prevent it wicking in (space is taken by the water).