Jalien21

okay, so i just started my second guitar project! it's to be a neck-through semi-hollow, as the title states. at least i think it's semi-hollow, i don't know what defines that, exactly. does the bridge have to be above a hollow part for it to be semi-hollow? is this merely chambered? i guess it dosen't really matter. ANYWAY specs: neck is gonna be five laminates of maple/pau-lope/walnut/pau-lope/maple with veneers of anigre between the pau-lope and maple. body is going to be walnut/ash/walnut with the ash hollowed out, so the walnut acts as a cap on the top and bottom. 24 1/16 scale (25.5 inch scale compound radius fretboard from stewmac with the first fret cut off and converted to a 0-fret) t-bridge piezo pickup with the blend knob preamp i'll probably try to do a simple inlay on the headstock too i haven't really decided on pickups yet. if anyone has any suggestions/advice about them or anything else, please, please tell me. you guys all know more about this sort of stuff than i do, so i trust you. anyway. i'll post pictures of it as i do stuff. enough words! here are the plans: http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/guitar/guitarplans.jpg (if the link appears broken, reload or something. for some reason, it's being weird here) okay, so, this is the neck prior to gluing http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/guitar/AUT_6701.jpg and this is it being glued. i made a mess, heh. http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/guitar/AUT_6702.jpg and the body woods... http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/guitar/AUT_6703.jpg and i got some random veneer that i thought was attractive. i may try to do an inlay with it. is that impossible? http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/guitar/AUT_6703.jpg Right. well. that's that. any questions/more info i should give/suggestions/comments?

anyway. allow me to show my ignorance. i honestly feel that when you're playing metal and all that high-distortion stuff, it dosen't much matter what kind of pickups you use. it seems to me that at that point, any unique tone that the guitar once had has been covered up by all the distortion and the harmonics that come out. and the type of music itself inherently makes it difficult to hear any specific tones alot of the time. i realize that i'm probably completely wrong. but i'd like to know how

sorry, i have very little knowledge on the building of acoustics (or, anything else, really) but you've peaked my interest with that last comment. what, exactly, is a tap tone? or a mainresonance or anything like that. i'm in wonder.

i did alot of stuff with chisles on my other guitar. it wasn't that bad. i had started the pickup cavaties with fostner bits in a drill press, but i had to chisel out the corners. came out looking pretty good! i also did alot of work on my neck pocket with them. that took a while because i kept on going back to fitting the neck in to check and make sure the angle was right and straight and everything. i don't really have any tips or anything (heh) because i didn't know what i was doing, myself, really. but i thought i'd offer a little piece of mind. it's nice working with hand tools, anyway...

hey, man. i pm'd you the other day. i'd totally like to buy that wood now that we discussed last week or so. i don't have a paypal account... but i do live in the us! hahaha... hit me with a pm with details on how to pay you and whatever else

i feel like there probably is an audible difference between a pickup mounted to the wood and one suspended from a ring or pickguard or whatever. the plastic bits that a suspended pickup is connected to are gonna resonate differently than the wood will. so, the pickup itself is actually vibrating differently in each case. i don't know. i don't know much about this stuff, but i always considered the way that a pickup is connected to a guitar is one of the few things that really matters to the sound.

waitwaitwait. how does moving the nut do anything except put the guitar out of tune? how does that enhance it?

oh, wow. thanks for those pages from the magazine. i was wondering about the size fret i should get for it. a .010 difference is what i'm looking for, i guess. thanks for the article, though. very useful. consider it bookmarked. i don't know what feitenizing means. and i would be interested to see what you've done, miss uglo. but, in whatever time.

hahahaha. this thread is godin by odin. haaa...

my reason for putting in a zero fret is mainly... i think it looks cool. heh. they're sort of rare to see on a guitar, so if someone sees you playing with a zero-fret, they'll go "hey! that's a neat idea, tell me about your guitar" which is cool because then you get to brag about how you made it and everything. heh. i guess, when you get down to it, it's just another unique aspect to a guitar. i don't really do open chords so much, anyway

hey, yeah! i thought it would work. i mean, it's essentially like putting a capo on the first fret and tuning down a half-step, right? you can do that. sweet. oh, and yeah, i'm only going to have like an eighth of an inch between the nut anf 0-fret. i'm excited. thanks for the piece of mind. heh. i just got finished reading through all 15 or whatever pages of your thread on building the through neck semi-hollowbody thing. just thought i'd share.

So, i really want to put a zero fret on my next guitar. i think it's a really good idea that's not really done much (and i have no idea why not. it makes perfect sense.) but i really don't want to make a fretboard. i did that with my last guitar and it came out okay but, eh. not as perfect as i'd like. so anyway. i'm gonna get one from stewmac. and i'm thinking i want a compound radius fretboard because they sound like a good idea too. so. i'm thinking about getting one of these and chopping off the end with the nut slot. then i'd put a higher guage fretwire in the first slot, use a gibson nut right behind it, and then put lower fretwire in for all the other frets. so, instead of having a 25.5 inch scale, i'd have 24.something. um. does that sound like it would work? any problems with that? i can draw a picture if that'd help.. and how much higher guage fretwire do you think i'd need? thanks.

i made a slot for my guitar's five way switch. yeah dremmel. i had trouble routing the body down to the thickness to mount in the cavity, so i cut out an oval of the front of the body and made a matching piece out of another piece of wood. um. i'd show you, but i don't have any pictures. bah. i'm no good at explaining what i mean. yes. dremel out the slot and whatever

well... um. i'm not sure. i figured that pedals have a battery in them, so i should too. heh. wait, so, this thing isn't really a good idea? i'm not really gonna be able to change the sound of stuff by running the signal through random components in my basement?

i wonder if there's some way you can bend the pickup.... radius the whole thing... heh. heat it up and bend it over a radius board or something... do it, you wont

so, i was thinking about making some sort of a circuit with which i could test various coils or resistors or whatever else i can find to see how stuff changes the sound of a guitar. it'd basically just be audio-in to a 9-volt battery and... stuff to audio-out. is that a really bad idea? could i mess up my amp or guitar if i end up sending the 9-volts there instead? (i have only really basic knowledge about electronics and stuff... but this is how i like to learn things ) um. thanks, have a nice day

you're really bent down. but... yeah, i know.. the sanding was done poorly, but i managed to fix my error by sanding down the upper frets some. it's much better now, and the buzz is almost gone. needs a little more. the stripes only go in like a half inch because i was worried that putting that many different pieces of wood together would weaken it. the serial number... is because it looks more professional. i don't know. shut up. i mean that in a good way. annndd... what's sound clip? it's brighter than my other guitar which is a fender showmaster. *shrug* not a huge pool of refrence, here.

So, i just finished my first guitar. i was making it along with another, my friend's fake les paul. we made them both from scratch, and i'm loving the way it sounds. i'll post pictures of the construction and of his guitar later. for now, here's a couple pictures of it. it's got a maple bolt-on neck and a maple body with mahogany and ipe stripes. the fretboard is also ipe because i didn't want to drop a whole lot of cash on ebony or something when we had this ipe stuff lying around. works pretty well. the pickups are both DiMarzio and i have a PAF Joe in the neck and a Fred in the bridge position. i got the tuners and bridge on ebay, and the rest of the parts on stewmac. spent about 200$ in total (half of that was from pickups... my friend used cheap ebay ones in his, so he spent considerably less). quite worth it if you ask me. a hard maple body makes the tone very bright and gives it a nice sustain... and the pickups just make it sing... it's wonderful. all that remains is to finish filing down a couple of the frets (i get some buzz from about 19-24) and to fix up the inotation. i'm open to comments, questions, and suggestions. http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/images/g.../frontclose.jpg http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/images/guitar/back.jpg http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/images/guitar/head.jpg http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/images/guitar/neck.jpg http://home.comcast.net/~jalien21/images/guitar/angle.jpg rock out! one pic per post please....