guitar2005

Anyone know where I can find this, or a similar product? I'm also looking for a gun to shoot the stuff. Please help me. I'd like to buy locally if possible. I'm in the National Capital region. F.M.

Yuck. MDF? You can't be serious. Sell the thing and start with a proper body.

Basically, I say "inspired" because there never was a production Mahogany Jem, or one with a Lacewood top. Also, The neck on this thing will be killer. I like the black/purple idea. I think I'll go for that.

Actaully, there is a technique to fix a stain job on a sand through. I've done it before and its invisible. Its described in one of the stew mac tutorials. I'll update this post when I get a chance.

All, I'm working on a 2nd Jem project and need help on the color. This one will have a mahogany body with lacewood veneer top, a super nice birdseye maple/cherry neck with an ebony board with pyramid inlays (any other ideas? pyramids sound kinda lame... ) I'm not too sure on the color. I want to cover the mahogany in black, either a stain or solid. The lacewood is kinda pinkish so I know that I want to stain it but I have no idea which color to choose. I'll probably use water based dyes, grain fill, dye again, seal then clear coat with nitro. Any suggestions and/or links to other projects? Thanks

http://www.landryswoodworking.ca/gallery/l.../Projects/Larry

I have an extra un-finished, un-routed body I can let go. I can route the pickup combo you want. It is made of Honduran mahogany, 3 pieces. PM me for details.

Turpentine.

I personally feel that a direct mounted pickup has more definition and sustained notes have more harmonics. Depending on the sound you use, you could hear some of the subtleties. Its more than just a look thing. Its a small part of the tone equation, just like using good quality electrical wires, connectors, jacks etc...

Why is that? i like my TOM's more than these low floyds, more distance between the string and body. ← I prefer the strings closer to the body for 3 reasons: 1- Picking hand position. When picking the strings, my hand can rest on the body without having to turn the wrist up towards the strings. My wrist can be more in line with my forearm. This makes for a more relaxed hand and therefore, better speed and control. 2- Resonance. On a solid body, I'm not sure if this really makes a big difference but having the strings closer to the body is one of those things that intuitively, you would think that it would transmit more energy to the body and there fore, to the pickups. 3- Pickup rings. Because the pickups can be positioned more deeply in the body, they can be mounted on the wood, not on a pickup ring. Believe it or not, electro magnetic pickups are sensitive to the vibration of the wood. decoupling the pickups and body doesn't make sense to me. In saying that, I love the sound of my strat but on a pickguarded guitar, the strings will make the plastic guard resonate somewhat (pickguard material makes a difference in sound in my experience) which contributes to the overall sound.

One thought... with the floyd rose on there, recessed and all, there is no longer a need for an angled neck. It would be fun to see one in real life to see what they did in that department. I'd like to see a recessed tune-o-matic on a Gibson. Just another one of those things that Gibson should have done a long time ago.

Gibson should have done that years ago. The heel is great. Back in '97, I was in the market for a Les Paul and I didn't buy one because of the heel, the lack of quality and price/quality ratio. As for the rest of the guitar, I really dislike the pickup colors - looks like a cheaply modded Les Paul. The inlays make it look like a copy and the little switches are retarded. I don't mind the floyd though.

For the neck joint, I like it because its the way Gibson does it BUT in saying that, I agree with you. I'll build mine with a contoured joint to allow for better access, especially on a 24 fret neck. I may also go for a tenon that goes the entire width of the fretboard. F.M.

Thanks a million! I can finally start! For the tenon, on your plan, it looks like its not the entire width of the fretboard. I guess you simply set the neck in such a way that the end of the fretboard is flush with the top of the guitar?

I would love to build an explorer but don't have any plans for the body. Do you have anything you could email me? The guitar is fabulous. Definitely one of the nicer guitars I've seen here. Very classy. I like the ebony board with the single inlay. One thing though - why mount the pickups on rings? I see a lot of projects done this way in this forum. Why not simply screw the pickups directly onto the body?

... I was going to comment on the finish but since its not completely done... The shape kinda reminds me of that guitar Prince uses. I personally think that the color might look really good on stage. As for the choice of poplar, kinda unusual for a bass. How does it sound? Are the low/sub lows easy to control? Do you have enough top end? Poplar should sound close to Basswood. On a guitar, I like the sound (see Ibanez, the EVH Wolfgang and Music Man) The neck looks like it could use a little more shaping towards the heel though. Is that intentional? Did you re-inforce the neck? Is this for your own personal use? Are you going to build more? Nice job!

For the inlay, could you tell us what you used to fill the fretboard? Is it an epoxy mix? I've been thinking of using epoxy on my next project for the inlays.

I think that the picture exagerates the dimensions a little. I was able to shave off the back of the neck for more of a C shaped carve and it still feels like there's a lot of wood in there. Don't forget, there's also wood on either side of the rod. Take a look at this link: http://www.trekerguitars.com/Necks/How_The...neck_works.html It sounds like this system allows to build better necks without dead spots more easily and consistenly than with a conventional rod. What's really cool about the system is that the range of the truss rod can be changed with a simple adjustement at the heel (requires to remove the neck though). The guitar does seem a little livelier than most maple neck/mahogany bodied guitars I've tried in the past. Its an interesting concept and I'm glad I tried it out. Having said that, I plan on building my next guitar necks using a conventional Hot Rod truss rod from Stew Mac.

There's a hole in the last dot inlay for the truss rod adjustment. This is part of a patented truss rod which is called the tension free system. It works really well. The truss rod doesn't compress the wood like in normal necks. Its is meant to let the wood vibrate freely, avoid dead spots anywhere on the neck.

Pics are included via a link in the first post.

The Edge and LoPro edge are interchangeable.

... Continued ... Ok - So I had the white dots over the black. Great. I cleaned off the painted body and decided to sand back with 800 grit a little more to minimize the level differences between the black and white. I also cleaned it a little more with a small rag. As I was rubbing the guitar with the rag, I noticed that the rag was getting black and when I went over the white dots, the black dirtied some of the white dots I decided to stop rubbing as I was doing more harm than good. Some of the dots were now not white enough to my taste. I took some white lacquer and tried to touch up using a brush but little did I know, the brush applied lacquer pulled the black from underneath - Damn! I wans't happy and my wanting to rub the guitar too much before the clear caused me more problems than anthing else. I identified the worst dots and re-sprayed those with two coats, trying to make sure that the rest of the guitar was properly masked. Ok - now I know not to touch the guitar more than I have to before the clear is applied and I also know to keep a light touch when cleaning to prepare for the next phase. Now on to the clear. I cleared this thing outdoors in my shed making sure that there were no bugs flying around. I sprayed a 3-4 cans worth of Dupli-Color Clear Lacquer. This went great for the first couple of coats. I used the same technique as for the black. Halfway through the jobs, a bug got caught in the clear as I was spraying, right in front of the guitar. Damn! Again, I going to have to fix something. I waited 3-4 days for the clear to dry a littlle and sanded out the bug. At this point, I also proceeded to level the finish. Things were looking good but there was a little dip in the finish where the bug got caught. I continued with the clear until I had used up all the lacquer I had. I waited maybe a month before buffing the guitar. This is where another problem popped up. I sanded the guitar with 600 then 800 then 1000 grit. Then I buffed the guitar on my homemade buffing station and then a final polish with Turtle Wax scratch and polish remover. The guitar was looking great! While buffing, I had a couple of "buff throughs" I had to fix but that was mostly dues to inexperience using the buffing station. I could still see the dip in the finish where the bug got stuck in the finish but hey, that's just a friendly reminder to be extra caution when spraying outdoors. Ok, so the guitar looks great for a first paint job BUT the lacquer isn't curing. My jeans are leaving imprints in the finish. Ok, let the thing dry another couple of days, weeks - still not cured. What's going on? The black Kramer re-finish I just did with dupli-color turned out great and cured quickly. Why is this project not working out? After a little research, I found out that Dupli-Color clear is notorious for not curing properly - Great! Why didn't I see this info before I sprayed the guitar with Clear Dupli-Color? Oh well. To speed up things, I decided to follow some people's advice and put a heat lamp on the guitar to speed up the curing process. So I go to the local depot store and get a heat lamp. Assemble everything and put it on the back of the guitar, 12" away. Walk upstairs and think, maybe I should put a fan on the guitar along with the heat lamp. Run back downstairs and to my dis-belief, the finish had bubbled. Arghghghghgh! luckily this was on the back of the guitar. What a nightmare. So I re-did the back but I never got the exact same shade of black and filling the paint where it had bubbled was very time consuming. There are still a couple of minor pin holes and the color blending worked as well as it could I guess. I tought that it would serve as another remider as to what NOT to do. I continued to use the heat lamp on the guitar but always with a fan close by. I did this for 2-3 hours a day for a month. The finish was still soft. The Dupli-Color clear had 2-3 months to cure but still wasn't hard. I started to used the guitar at band rehearsal, adjusted the nut height and misc other things. I was happy to use the guitar even though the finish was a little sticky. To this day, 5-6 months later, my jeans still leave an imprint on the guitar. I only play it standing up. The finish is a little harder than 5 months ago and hopefully, it will be hard enough in 6 months. At that point, I'll just re-buff it. The guitar is very "middy" and has a lot of definition. Sounds very close to Randy's original, with a little more bass. Stays in tune well, now that the nut is properly cut. I had to level the frets to get rid of some fretting out during bends. It could use a little more levelling tough. String action is 1/16" on the treble side and 3/32 on the bass side. I get some buzzing on the bass side in the middle of the neck which is why I think I should level the frets a little more. Relief is set at around 0.8 mm. Overall I'm happy with the way it turned out. The neck pocket is super tight which makes for great sustain. The pickups are mounted right into the body which in my opinion, contributes to a more solid tone and add to the responsiveness. When I build another one, (which I have started) it will be better because I now know what to avoid. The next one will be set neck (started on the neck already) with a single bowtie inlay at the 12th fret (not a huge fan of bowties) for which I will build not only the body but also the neck.

OK- This is my second build, first post of a finished guitar, so be gentle. PICS HERE: http://www.mrtinkertrain.com/images/VGuitarWeb/index.htm This is a Randy Rhoads "inspired" guitar because I wanted some specific features that are different from Randy's guitar. I'm a big Randy Rhoads fan but I also have my own personal tastes. I built the body from scratch using Honduran Mahogany. I made all templates myself using 1:1 scale printouts of frontal pictures of Randy's guitar. I believe that my particular guitar is smaller than most V's and that's a good thing because I'm a small build (no pun) guitarist. I decided to go with a bolt on neck for ease of construction for my first "real" project. Also, I wanted a tung oiled neck as I prefer them over painted necks. It has dunlop 6100 frets, 25" scale and a 12" radius. I decided to have someone build me a neck so that I could finish the project within 6-8 months. The neck is from Dave Bunker. He built me a custom maple neck with his patented Tension Free truss rod. I shaped the headstock to match Randy's guitar and re-shaped the neck contour to a flatter C carve ala Ibanez Jem (the older, thicker necked Jems). The headstock on my guitar is, I believe, nicer than Randy's because of its smaller size. The neck/body joint is around the 17th fret. Upper register access is similar to a Fender Strat. The neck heel is rounded and the neck is attached with 4 bolts and washers from Stew Mac, no plate. The body is made up of two pieces of Mahogany. I sealed the body with several coats for Bin Sealer. The base coat is black Dupli Color. I applied 12 coats, 2 coats at a time, waiting 20 min between them and then another 2 coats 3-4 days later and so on. The black was sanded back before applying the white dots. The dots were sprayed on with White Dupli-Color using a paint mask stick on template I had custom made using an Adobe Illustrator document to mark the cutouts. I sprayed three coats of the white and then sanded back slightly using 800 grit paper. Until now, every thing worked great except that the laquer made some kind of reaction with the paint mask glue. I had to clean that off with goo gone and that worked out great. The guitar was coming along nicely. I was now ready for the clear ... To be continued ...

Yuck! I prefer the way it is now. Awesome job! I'm in the process of building one from scratch. I've got some nice maple/walnut for a skunk stripe neck and some birdseye for the fretboard.