Guitarfrenzy

Is there a way you can take a picture of the cracked area? That's about the only way we can help.

I hope it's a only a playful little kick, because that's still a beautiful guitar. What don't you like about the badass? First off, thanks for the vote of confidence... We'll, the thing I hate is that the wood grain pattern doesn't show up as good as it does on my previous work (with Swamp Ash), and assumed that the black epoxy method didn't really help out as much as I thought. I found out why I had been doing it in the first place, and it was a very helpful reminder.. lol Actually, I like the guitar, but you know how it is when you feel like you could have done something that would have made it better, but didn't. So, let's just say I regret that decision a lot. There is nothing wrong with the Leo Quan bridge except I don't think it looks as good on this guitar as I expected it to. It's actually a very good bridge and has a wide range of adjustability. I just don't like the look of the bridge on the guitar though, simple as that. I think a standard TOM would have been better. Jehle, you've almost got me convinced bro, and I do appreciate your advice. Who knows what's in store for the future, and I do have some plans along that lines later on in the year. Again, thanks for the encouragement!!

Just remember this quote... The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. (Edward Phelps)

Great to hear from you again. That inlay is simply unreal!!!!! Very, very well executed, as always... Just one question, how long did it take you for that one?

Here's the thread Mickguard was talking about. LINK I started using laser levels after having a brainstorm one day when I was trying to find something that was a perfect straightedge for aligning a bridge. I had one in the shop and ironically never thought about using it for guitar building, but I found it worked great and it won't lie to you. If you use it during all stages of your build, you'll be assured that everything will work out great when you get ready to setup your guitar.

LMI does have good truss rods, but check out Allied Lutherie's truss rods which I find a great value, made like LMI's, and are well built. Stew Mac's Hot Rod truss rod is great if your going to build a medium to fat thick neck. All of them make good truss rods though. Since your making a bass I'd definitely recommend using a truss rod, and not only that, I'd use carbon fiber rods to make the neck even more stable. So, definitely a yes from me on the use of a truss rod!!

Oak isn't really considered tonewood by most builders, plus like was already mentioned, it weighs a lot compared to other wood. You could chamber the body to reduce weight though, and I'm not saying you can't use it, but to me there are so many other better choices than oak, for tone and weight.

The hot rod from Stew Mac are great but like others have said, aren't for thinner necks. I found this out the hard way!! I personally like the truss rods that come from alliedlutherie.com, they are like the LMI ones but cheaper on price and just as good, we'll so far I haven't had any problems. I've had LMI truss rods also and they are great, but again I think overpriced. The great thing about both of them over the Stew Mac one is they only take a 3/8" deep slot, which like someone said is 1/16" less than they have to be routed for. That might not seem like a lot, but believe you me, it is when your going for a 19mm and less neck thickness size. The safe amount of wood you must have between the bottom the the truss slot and the back of the neck is 1/8" minimum. So if you have a 1/4" (.250) thick fingerboard, which is the standard, add the 1/8" (.125) that you need to leave, plus the 7/16"(.4375) for the slot (Stew Mac) will give you the minimum thickness you can have. .250 --- fingerboard .125 --- wood thickness between bottom of truss slot and back of neck + .4375 -- Slot depth for Stew Mac Hot Rod ---------total 0.8125 -- how thin the neck can be made!! (20.6 mm) If you subsituted 3/8" for the other truss rod slot, you'd end up with 3/4" (.75) or appox. 19mm. So you need to really decide how thick the neck is going to be before deciding which one you want. Always plan ahead bro.

A router is the most important tool you can have in guitar building. It's used for so many things, that if your really wanting to get into building you'll need at least one. Save up and buy a router, you won't be sorry.

Thanks for the tip marksound, and mattia. I've downloaded it and have just started to figure out the batch conversion process that you guys are talking about. Very nice. For right now I just let the picture sizes go back to normal, until I have time to get it right. Actually it didn't look bad after I removed the resizing from the html, thanks Setch, I was in such a hurry I never noticed that it really messed up the pictures pretty badly. Again, thanks for all the advice. I already edited the html file and everything is ok now, but I'm still going to use IrfanView to get the sizes correctly when I get time. Thanks bro, my wifes idea on the painting the burst all the way up the neck. The only things I regret in this build was using the wraparound bridge, and not using my old black epoxy method. If you look at the earlier pictures before it was painted, the grain pattern was really, really great. We'll if I'd taken the time to at least stain the grain black and sand back, even if I didn't use black epoxy, it would have really shown through. After that I built a machine to kick me in the butt everyday.. lol

I did it real quickly last night with Frontpage 2003, and I do notice what your talking about. Thanks for the heads up. I wanted the picutures to be approximately the same width, and didn't have time to photoshop them. I'll photoshop the pictures and update it tomorrow. Again, thanks for pointing that out, I totally overlooked that!! And thanks Kammo1, the finish is poly, the same used to paint cars, etc.

I've gotten some emails about how I made the JV-1 and I decided to take the time to compile them all together for future reference. Here's the link if anyone is interested. JV-1 Construction 2005

This warping or cupping of the wood is exactly why most people who have quite a bit of guitar wood buy them in billet sizes. If you resaw them to 1" or under your taking the chance that your wood won't stay level after a couple of weeks. That's why when you buy wood at that thickness, you need to go ahead and use it before you have problems. If your going to keep the wood around for a while before you use it, it's best to buy in billet sizes to eliminate this problem. Sounds like your on the right track and are going to get this guitar started before it's too late though. Good luck with your project.

Looking great Russ, I wonder what it would look like with abalone between each section of the tang top wood. Might be interesting look, or might not.. oh well,.. lol Anyway, nice job bro.

Nice links Mattia. On Buzz Feiten tuning moded acoustic guitars, yes your going to have to move the bridge, but from what I understand, most electric guitar bridges should be fine and only need adjusting at the saddles for "Stretch Tuning". Dan Erlewine's "How to Make Your Electric Guitar Play Great", has alternative methods for tuning, which work very well in just itself, just like your showing in that RyanGuitars.com link. I still highly recommend that book, it's probably the best out there on guitar setup! Okay, let me get this straight...essentially, this enut IS a zero fret (at least the metal version), right? So what's to stop us from taking a fret, filing off the tang and doing pretty much the same thing? That would cost, let's see, slightly less than $16... Nothings stopping you. In fact, that's what Soapbar was getting at when he mentioned leaving the nut alone and adding the zero nut in front of it. Next question though, how far exactly? Well now we let the cat out of the bag and everyone knows the proper distance. lol...

What I mean about the "feitenizing" thing (and GF already knows) is that for a "Buzz Feiten" mod, they move the nut location to enhance the tuning. Well, I was thinking : Leave the nut, then find the location where the feiten nut would be moved to, then cut a fret-slot there, and install a fret. The original nut then becomes a string spacer right behind the new zero fret in the feiten position. Kind of like a gizmo called enut (look that up if curious). Exactly, but like we both know, you must use different tuning offsets known as "Stretch Tuning", instead of the old way of intonating a guitar if using this method. The lower frets 1-4 when fretted are slightly sharp, so if you move the nut up approx. 2mm, you eliminate this problem. Read this link on eNut like Soapbar already mentioned to get a better understanding of what I'm talking about. Actually you can see that one of the methods is exactly what you want, a zero fret right in front of the nut. As far as I know all Buzz Feiten guitars have the nut moved forward appoximately 2mm toward the bridge, that means both sides equally. You still have to "Stretch Tune" the bridge, which will give you a very well playing guitar. You may have been thinking of PRS guitars, which has been moving the bass side forward at a slight angle, not the treble side, to compensate, for years now. They just don't advertise it, but I read an article where he explained it. Basically though, the nut isn't parallel with the first fret the way they do it.

Approximately 2mm, and I do know what your thinking.. lol

This is odd, but I've only had to deal with this problem one time and it was with a from scratch build neck. What happened was, after it was finished (painted too) about 3 months later, you could see a light streak of blue between on one side of the neck wood where it meets the rosewood. It spread out almost an inch wide and about 3 inches long from about the 1st fret to 3rd. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what had happened. After days of thinking about it, I finally came upon a conclusion. When I was building the neck, I gouged the edge of the fingerboard beyond repair.. yeah I know, I know, it was back in the day.. lol Anyway, I used the iron steam trick to remove the fingerboard, and my conclusion was that since the wood wasn't streaked before, it came from not letting the wood dry out again, before finishing it. So, my lesson learned was that if I ever had to reintroduce moisture to wood, always let it dry out back to the correct moisture level before I continue to use it in a build.

Thanks guys, I'm certainly honored to be a moderator, and I will do my best. Please take it easy on me at first though, because I'm totally new to this and will have to learn. lol I appreciate everyone who voted for me and later on, if you feel like I'm not doing a good enough job, vote me off.. I also want to help make this site even better than what it is. Brian and the team have a great thing going here and I'd love to see it continue to grow with more information, more tutorials, and basically more of everything valuable to learning the trade of guitar building. Again, thanks everyone, and I'll do my best to not you down. Matt Vinson

+1 What Hunter said. You can't change the scale length of the fret board without moving the bridge. +2 Yes, the bridge will have to be moved in order for the guitar to intonate correctly. ps. I finally got to use the add (+) sign with a number behind it... lol

I ran into this same problem when I was first starting out. It's a very good question you bring up. From reading articles like this one, you will find it best to insert the shank into the collet all the way, then pull it back out about 1/16", and that's your optimal router bit position. Some others might suggest similar ways, but whatever works for you. It's really not safe to let only a small portion of the shank be held by the collet, for a number of reasons. - Your introduce warble into the rotation of the bit and it won't work as accurately. - It's dangerous because the bit can fly out harming someone. - Tightening up the collet with only a part of the shank inserted will damage the collet over time. Believe you me, it's much better to just buy another bit that's longer. I basically use three cut lengths for flush trim pattern bits, which is a 1/2" cut, 1" cut, and 1-1/4" cut. You can never have enough router bits, and using a router bit in an improper manner can get you in trouble, I consider myself lucky when the bit flew right over top of my head. Never again did I take chances with trying to get more cutting length out of a bit. It's designed for that amount of cut, so be safe and buy the appropriate sizes. Good luck.. Matt Vinson

Rhino 3D seems to be a good program that a lot of builders are using nowdays. You can download an Evaluation Period Version here at their site. I've tried it out and it was fun working with, although I have no CNC machine, so I went no further with it. Nice HAAS system you have access to!! I think there are quite a few guitar builders who use them, including Joe Driskill. Not only is it used to cut out the necks and body, but he uses it for cutting his fretslots, inlays, cavities, etc. etc. He even uses his to cut out the his bridges for him, although he has to completely retool the HAAS for metal working. Must be nice to have a HAAS though, very cool.

My personal preference is the lighter the better. The only thing is that it must balance good and not be too neck heavy or anything. There are a lot of things to consider when building a guitar, and the weight is just another issue you must decide upon.

Here's an interesting article I found today. MSN Article on Astronomical Vintage Guitar Prices Just wanted to pass that one along.

Interesting conversation here. I had just always assumed that quartersawn was stronger, might have to do some testing on my own now.. lol I do know from my own experience that CF rods strengthens the neck considerably. Two necks that was made from the same flatsawn maple blank, one without the rods can be pushed at the headstock end to make the strings go flat in pitch, the CF rod one takes way more force to accomplish the same result. Don't take my word for it though, try it yourself. Now to do some flatsawn, quartersawn testing... haha