Jehle

Waxing the pickups keeps the wires steady in the coils. It prevents that microphonic feedback (the high picthed unwanted kind) from being such a problem. I had to dip a DiMarzio one time for this reason. It's quick to do, and the results are instant.

I have an old spool of 1/4 lb magnet wire that I've held onto for the last 13 years. I always thought that I would wind it into a pickup one of these days. From the looks of it, this stuff is probably from the 60's or 70's. I dug it out of a trash bin in the science building back in college.

If you still have this, I'm interested. I'm about to cut out my next guitar body and I'd like to have a decent neck to try it out with before I start making my own neck. Got that? ------------ [08.11.03] Got the neck in the mail. It's in great shape. I think it's going to look pretty cool on the body that I'm making now. My plans are to match the veneer on the headstock to the body. I've never done that before, so I'll have to experiment on that now too.

I can understand that maybe there's a rule-of-thumb about pickup placement with open strings. But, once you fret the string somewhere, all the nodal points are going to change. There can't be any "best place" for a pickup for that one reason.

The only rule that I've ever heard is that neck pickups a typically placed so that the closest edge of the coil is right where the 24th fret is. You can see the problem there, if you have 24 frets, you have to move the pickup back a bit. But, it's true for all 22 fret guitars that I've seen. So, I don't really think that there's any magic numbers for pickup placement. If it sounds good, do it I say.

Right, I suppose the same would also apply to guitar bodies as well. I had thought about making a slab out of 3 thin slabs. It would be "fancy plywood" basically. The upper and lower sheets would be horizontal grain, and the center would be vertical grain. It wouldn't warp or "cup" like some that I've seen, but I'm not sure how that would effect the tone.

There's a new measureing straight edge from StewMac... String Action Gauge I simply can't say enough about this little thing. It's already paid for itself in the first day. I had no idea just how badly set up all my electric gutiars where until I got this. I've been able to tweak and lower the action on all my guitars and I am gob smacked! It made fast guitars even faster. Oh, and it can also be used to measure the depth of a router. Not bad, and really cool if you want to be dead on for your depth. And now the obligitory emoticon...

Probably because the glue is stronger than the wood itself. It would act similar to a reinforcement rod, but it's just the fact that the glue join is stronger than the wood, so it wont bend as much.

Thanks for the link Brian, and for all the reply's everyone. So, I'm not completely crazy for the idea afterall. I think it makes more sense to glue first and then route the channel. There would be a natural center line to work from and any tear out would be hidden when the fretboard goes on.

I'm working on my latest project now. It feels good to be back in the shop and making sawdust again. No pictures yet, but they will come. Anyway, I was looking at a friends G&L bass the other day and really liked the way the neck was made. It was a 3 piece neck. I'm not sure of the order here, but I imagine that it goes something like this: The back was two pieces of maple which had been routed for the truss rod (1/2 the channel on each piece), and then glued together. The truss rod is dropped in, and then the finger board is put on top as normal. Shape the neck as usuall... The effect is the feel of a one piece maple neck with no skunk stripe. Really nice feel, a clean look, and it seems like it would be a breeze to set up a simple fence to do the route. Any opinions?

I've been thinking about this one for a while. There are basically two set ups that I can envision. A Fender type setup where the fretboard is parallel to the body, and a Gibson type setup where the bridge is taller, and the neck tilts back a little. I don't know about all the measurements and stuff, but it seems like you have an option to set the bridge high on the body (floating and all without the recess), and tilt the neck back slightly. You could do it "the old way" which is to route the neck pocket flat (Fender style). And during a test setup with the bridge in place determine if you need to tilt the neck back. Fender used to correct the neck angle with strips of sand paper, but you could route the neck pocket with a tiny angle to get the same effect. The advantage (even with the trial and error approach) is that you would get good contact between the neck and body and more sustain. I could also be full of it, and you can ignore all of this babble.

Cigarette burns! Cigarette burns! Cigarette burns! Oh sorry.

That would be a HFO, or high-frequency ocillator. It's just one note, and you could change the pitch in a number of ways. But, are you thinking about notes from the strings and frets? That would involve putting wires to every fret (inside the neck) and having each string issolated so that when they make contact, they tell the HFO what note to produce. Oh yeah, they made this already back in the 70's. The Guitorgan, I think, and legend has it that Edgar Winter used one to play Frankenstein! da-da-da-dah, da-da-dah-daaaaaaah, da-da-dah-do-dah.

My first thought is, you b@stard. That's a fantastic deal. I used to go pawn shopping all the time for little treasures like that. That's where I got my DiMarzio Distortions from.

I think there is one actually. What's it called... The Slider or something. Ah yeah. Here it is. http://www.slider-straps.com/

From what I know about Yew, they grow very slowly. I've seen some many 100's of years old in England (The Wookie Hole, anyone?). Yew should be a really hard wood and dense because of it. I'm still new at this game so please get someone elses comments before you dig in.

Ditto Brians comments about the veneer. It might be really thin and you wouldn't want to sand through. That would be a nightmare. Lacewood is a nice choice. From the scale length, it sounds like it's going to be a barritone, or maybe tuned low like D to D.

Nice work BeAR. I'm going to have to use the water slide decal technique. The results are much cleaner (and flatter) than the transparency technique that we first tried. The only problem is that I've never seen water slide decal paper here in the States. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, just that I need to look around a little more. Be sure to record the new Femme Gris guitar for us when it's done.

I can't browse to ebay on this computer, but it's probably more likely a diode used for clipping. Early fuzz boxes used them to get a squared off wave and that nasty fuzz sound. And yes, you would have to have a higher output pickup to use them correctly. I'm not sure why they would be so expensive. You can buy a pack of 10 diodes from radio shack for about 49 cents.

Gesso on a guitar body. That's probably a first. For those that don't know, Gesso is used to prep artist canvas and it has ground up marble in it. I would think that you would have to prep the guitar body first, sanding it right down. Then I would add a primer coat to give the gesso something to hold on to. I figure that you will paint something on top of that, but with the primer, why use gesso at all? You might be able to get away with painting your original artwork right on the primer. I've only worked with gesso and that kind of paint in a few cases. So, you probably know more about what you are aiming for than me. A clear coat could be a number of things. First it could be a simple clear spray lacquer (not rustoleum... long story). But there are some other alternatives that everyone else works with. I would stongly suggest experimenting with a scap piece of wood, gesso, paint, and clear coats to make sure that the paints don't react with each other. You don't want any big surprises as you are working on the guitar. And now... over to Brian...

Thanks guys. As you can imagine I'm pretty gutted about it. I have no fear of messing things up and fixing them, but this one really took the cake. Oddly enough, the front of the guitar with the planarian paper and the Deft clear lacquer is fine. It's tough as nails. I would like to salvage that if I can. I'll pay attention to more sanding, a primer coat, and then proceed slowly with another lacquer. Rustoleum is cursed as far as I'm concerned. I'm off to the reranch!

Remember that scene in the Batman movie where he's putting the moves on Cat woman? Then the both rip their masks off... Remember how batmans mask ripped off in one big rubbery sheet? Well, that's about what the paint did on my kit guitar. Every bit of black lacquer on the back of the guitar peeled off. Or rather, everywhere there was sanding sealer. I'm pretty confused about it. First of all, what the heck happened? Why did the lacquer not cure and stay in this rubbery state? It's been since January! Is this the mark of Rustoleum lacquer Brian? I know that you talk about it as if Rustoleum is the scurge of the earth. Is this why? Second, I have to redo it, obviously. How can I be sure to not have the same problem on this guitar and any future guitar? I figure I need to take down the sealer to the wood, respray and repolish. But, I don't want to wait for months this time. I need options. Meanwhile, I'll be crying in my beer over here. :<

Thanks guys. I saw the stuff on StewMac, but I need the thick 3mm type stuff. I had thought about the lexan at places like Lowes or HomeDepot, but I kept thinking, "Nah, surely there must be some special guitar stuff out there." Works for me.

Well, my 2nd project is under way. Since this one will have a figured top, but I plan on loading the electronics from the top... I want to put a clear scratch plate on the guitar. I've seen guitars with clear scratch plates on them, but where do you get the material from ? Any links or suggestions?

I like the look of this body shape on that page. It's a Tele mixed with a Les Paul. Hmmm.