BeAR

Melbourne, Australia. Scorching 40 degrees C one day, rain and 18 the next. Beautiful women, great people, awesome place to live!!!!!!!!

Thanks John, looks good. Dont know why but I never imagined alder being that dark. Finish looks nice too. Ill definately give this a go.

Hey john, any pics????????????

Whats the best material to use when refinshing a maple neck? Polyurithane is an option, but I was wondering if anyone has use a clear finish from a spray can? I found some single part urithane in a spray pack, and it comes in matt, satin and gloss too. Basically nterior furniture finish. Would this work? If anyone has already done this, how's it look and feel.....pics would be nice.

Heres my latest Strat finished. Sandpaper - $8 Polyurathane Paint and labour - $70 Cutting compound - $5 Thats Australian dollars too. Works out to about $49 US.

Well done!

Great stuff, although I dont have the patience to follow your application method. I only had one night to use the spray booth, so I couldnt wait and rub down between coats. Still should look nice when its finished. Im now convinced that Im addicted to tinkering with guitars...............................................my name is Gary and its been 38 minutes since I last used a screwdriver on a guitar. Im so ashamed.

I bought another Strat last week. I started life as a Red and Black 89-90 Japanese reissue. Looked absolutely discusting. It was in poor condition, rusted strings, crud all the way up the fretboard 1mm thick. I stripped it down to the last screw. Ive ordered an aged plastic kit from Fender, new Fender/Fender vintage nickel saddles to replace the rusted out originals. I got the trem plate stripped and re chromed (cost $5). New pots and switch and thats it for parts. I asked around a few friends of mine that have painted a car or two in their time and managed to get the use of one of their spray booths after work hours. (Cost a case of beer). The finish was the easiest I have ever done. I rubbed back the original paint with 600 grit wet/dry paper to take off the shine. Once every blemish was gone and there was no gloss left i made a hanger for the guitar from 20mm plastic electrical conduit. Wiped the body down with thinners to remove fingerprints. My friend supplied and mixed the paint and clear for me. 2 coats of colour, 2 hours apart. 3 coats of clear 1 hour apart. Straight over the old finish as a base coat, painted in one night!!!!!!!!! The pics dont do it justice. The finish looks great with only 2 blemishes in the surface and a small amount of orange peel. Its been hanging in the corner if the paint oven for the last 2 days. Its ROCK hard! Ill leave it another day or so and then block back the front and back with 2000 grit wet/dry. Polish and re assemble. My mate said that if someone else brought him this to paint prepped and ready to go the cost would be around $70 AU for him to supply materials and paint. If you weren't fussy the finish straight from the gun would still pass for a top job without rubbing it back. Beats the hell out of buying $30 worh of spray cans and material, only to have to wait weeks for acrylic paint to cure/rub back/polish. And nothing is as tough as polyurathane car paint.

huh.......dont......like......Fender.............NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!! Im afraid I cant come here anymore. hehe.

Go and see it again and take down some details and post them here. Serial number? Type of machine heads? ...... be really specific. Type of strap buttons? ......rounded edges or vintage cone style? Type of String trees on the headstock?...and how many? 1 or 2? Type of logo on the headstock?........spaghetti style or newer modern silver logo? Where was the axe made......USA Or Mexico? Type of Tremelo............vintage or standard 2 post with cast matte silver saddles? Neck plate marking? The list goes on. Better still, take a digi cam into the shop and fire off a couple of pics while he's no looking.

Hi Keith, thanks for your input. Im unable to test the output of the raw piezo ATM as Im still waiting for my neck to get back from getting refretted. Hopefully tomorrow. I see your point about the piezo load and I figure your prolly right. For the sake of a few dollars worth of parts I might try out your design and see how it sounds. My main goal was getting an even sound across all string with a ballanced output, however large. Tailoring the sound wasnt primarily a big concern for me as I was only intending to use the guitar for recording DI'ed into my mixer. I was gonna EQ from there.

Whooo Hoooo. party

Beautiful mate! Im going to have to try my hand at this one day.......................now where's that Dremel???

check your email

Fantastic stuff Jehle, that looks great. I still cant believe I started something that actually works?!?!!?!?!?!?! hehe, Im still laughing my ass off at the Jellycaster.

My fault???????.........dont know what your talking about............... hehe.

Peavey made 'em, although I cant find a link ATM.

Id prolly stick with the regular acoustic bridge for a couple of reasons. Firstly you will need the guitar to reasonate as well as possible to make it playable acoustically, being such a small body shape. The edge trem is going to kill the string vibrations, seeing as they will only contact the body via the smallest of contact points on the knife edge trem posts. And secondly, just the plain COOL acoustic Jem factor. ........er........any pics............?!?!?!?!?!?!

What have I started?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Looks fantastic mate. Its not all that hard to do and looks professional too. Ive got a few other things to do so its going to be a while until I get to apply one with laquer. Hopefully you can do it soon and let us all know how it goes (with pics of course).

Yep, paralell wired. That would work also, I just wanted to get it installed for a trial. I might change the setup depending on how it sounds. ...............Im late for work, so I better go now. hehe.

Jeremy, the transducer came from an electronics store. It the element out of a piezo buzzer, only costs a dollar or two each. Ive also had a change of mind about the pre-amp. I finished installing the setup into the guitar running passively and the bridge is giving a very hot signal . Im not sure the preamp is necessary. I wont have the neck on the guitar until the weekend so Ill make a recording with it when I do. Heres what I did to wire it up. 1. Bought a 500k push/pull pot with DPDT contacts (double pole, double throw.) 2. Wired it in place of my existing volume pot. 3. Grounded the earth side of the piezo bridge to the volume pot case with the other pickup earths as per normal. 4. Here the clever part.....................remove the center pickup hot wire from the 5 way switch. 5. Wire the center pickup hot wire to one side of the Push/Pull pot switch. 6. Wire the piezo bridge hot wire to the other side of the Push/Pull pot switch. 7. Wire the push/pull pot common wire to the tag on the 5 way switch that used to have the center pickup wire. Now what happens is this. With the push pull pot in, the guitar acts just like a regular Strat. With it out, the center pickup no longer works but the piezo takes its place. Pos 1 is the bridge single coil, 2 is the bridge single coil and the piezo pickup, 3 is the piezo on its own, 4 is the piezo and the neck pickup, and 5 is the neck pickup. This should give some nice combinations of pickup tones. Good thing is the tone and volume controls will have an effect over the piezo sound aswell as the regular pickups. I'll report how it all works after the weekend.

This is the first coat of epoxy. and I soldered a shielded cable to the tiny transducer wires and sealed the soldered conections inside 2 more layers of epoxy. and Looks very neat if I do say so myself.

Ive been toying with the idea of a piezo type bridge in an electric guitar for a while now and Im starting my next project. It basically consists of 2 piezo transducers epoxied to the inner side of my Strat bridge. Running inside the main cavity to a small pre-amp (9volt), controlled by an independant volume knob which will replace on of the tone knobs on the Strat. The pre-amp is in the design stage ATM, but should be finished in a week or so. The output will consist of a stereo jack socket in place of the original mono one. I'll use a special tip ring sleave Y cable to split the regular output from the piezo output. The piezo's I used started life as $2 buzzers from a local electronics store. I simply took them out of the plasic housing they came in. Testing was done by literally taping the 2 piezo's to the body of one of my guitars and running the outputs straight into my amp. Simple. Sounds ok but kinda weak. Alot of vibration is lost between the strings and the timber, especially with the Floyd Rose on the particular axe I tried. Next I taped them to the cast block under the bridge......what a difference! Ballsier sound and quite nice too. Fixing them to the Strat bridge with epoxy will transfer the maximum string vibration to the transducers. A little EQing at the pre-amp stage should tailor the sound nicely. Looking at the guitar you wont be able to tell there is anything different about it which is cool. The best thing is Ill have a nice axe to record acoustic parts with, without the strain of trying to get my electrically spoilt fingers around an acoustic neck!!!! Or maybe I could wire it differently......................electric CRUNCH..........flip a switch..............acoustic bliss Ill post some pics when time permits.

Ive done this 2 ways. Fist way was at home with my bubblejet. You can actually buy Transparencys for bubblejet printers. The logo above was done with one. Just reverse the image so that when its prinded out, its on the underside of the plastic................this protects it from the laquer youll be spraying over the top. let it dry thaen draw in the silver on the underside with a silver paint pen. The second way involved taking the image to a local print shop with a hi res laser printer. Costs about the same as they supply the materials. I got 12 logos to a sheet and 5 sheets from the printers for the sum of $10 AU. The laser printed ones are totally waterproof too.

As above. Please find enclosed One Large Breasted Blonde to do with as you will. party