zyonsdream

If you want maple shades and tones and a good grain find a nice piece of bocote. This board has an oil finish and it reminds me of the older telecaster maple boards that were hardcoated with an amber tint to it.

I'd use boiled linseed oil as the curing time is much less than plain linseed. Am I he only one that likes the patina look a board gets with age?

Your argument about wasting wood and trashing the bit is nonsense. A 1/2" bit would remove less than 1" of additional wood total and less than 1/2 inch on each side. Drilling holes is just more needless work and in fact would make the use of the router less smooth as you hit empty pockets and find your router more likely to jump when you have the change in operational force. This may add to the possibility of making the operation harder not easier. Secondly there is no way to use a standard hand saw to cut out the body unless it is a square body , you might as well ask him to buy a chisel and chop it out. A deep coping saw is the only hand saw which can do that sort of work or a very expensive bow saw. Besides the question was can he use just a router and I think all the additional nonsensical responses about buying and using other tools didn't address the question. CNC machines do the same thing using a router day in and day out commercially,the only difference is they don't need a guide bearing or template. In order to hold the body on a CNC router table you cannot precut the entire body, and why would you because there would be no place to clamp it up inside of the body outline. Think about how many holes go all the way through a guitar body? Bah Humbug For one I made no argument and second I wasn’t comparing the process of routing a line around the template and drilling out the body shape. I was stating that I hate to see people waste wood by routing it ALL away! Both the drill method and the routing method can be affective ways to route the body out of the blank with minimal waste. As for the router bit being wasted, if you cut an entire blank down (like the poster was suggesting) then you would wear your bit down quickly and by the time you got to do the final template cut, the bit would be dull. It interesting on how many times you used nonsense in your statement to me! The fact that you think it’s lutherie to put a body blank into a CNC machine and then download or write a cad program and let a machine cut out a guitar shape is nonsense to me. A CNC has its place in the industry but to me its place is at Fender, Gibson and Aria Pro, not in a Luthier’s shop! I spent 7 years working a CNC and manual vertical knee mill and I would never even consider using them for guitar building. I also understand using a motion controlled CNC causes less wear on a bit than free handing on a router. A controlled cut will always improve tool wear. So I’m not sure why you attacked me but seriously, I really don’t care how you cut out the body. I guess that’s why I went out and bought a $900.00 band saw; so I don’t have to worry about it.

I just hate to see wood wasted like that. In most cases I can use the scraps for other projects or for color matching future projects. I have a whole room with scrap wood which has been a super valuable resource for me in the past. Routing the wood away is very time consuming and once you get to the point where you can use your template to route the final edge you’ll be doing it with a dull bit which will cause more tear out and grabbing. I’m not a big fan of using a hand saw due to the damage they can cause on the face but for $20.00 is a good resort because it’s cheaper than buying a new router bit. If you have a small band saw you could relief cut out the excess. The idea about drilling holes is also a good one too because it would help to minimize waste.

erikbojerik - V8 Eight String - GBO Edition I’m not a fan of fanned frets but this build really is just a show case of innovation for me. It has everything that’s new in the guitar building world. I absolutely love the knobs on the side and the limba back. Just a gorgeous build from the ground up! It has character and I’d be happy to learn how to play a fanned fret using this guitar. Blackdog – Clotilde Your choice of wood was interesting. It’s not every day you see a PRS with a maple board and an oil finish. The inlay was really nice on this one too. I’m also a huge fan of the three P90s. This was a strong build with excellent and sexy PRS linage. My only thing is the headstock. It didn’t have the same linage as the body and looked a bit Aria Pro to me. digi2t – Gigi I would need to have better pictures of this one to really make a solid assessment about it. The top looks nice but the glare from the flash made some of the swirl marks show up. You also don’t make mention of the inlay which looks like those you find on EBay. Given the stiff competition I’d have to give my vote to someone who constructed their own neck from the ground up. It looks nice and the color is a good choice given the back wood you chose to use. Daniel Sorbera - the SA-1 Again with limba! I love this stuff with no end. This looks like a top shelf build and is far better than I could ever hope to get when building an acoustic guitar. Might be why I stay in the electric world. For me this month the word of choice is innovation. I’ve got to toss my had to the V8 Eight String for all the reasons I listed above. If I had the cash I’d make an offer!

Dude I absolutely love you!

I’m having a killer time finding anyone who sells ceramic magnets for pickup building. Can anyone help?

For one, your logo shouldn’t be on a guitar you didn’t build. Sorry, but putting your logo on theirs or their logo on yours is in the same category for me. Just put your signature on the back so people know you modified it or take the logo off completely and leave the headstock blank. Scalloping the neck can be fun, just watch how close you get to the frets. I’ve seen many a ruined neck with the frets barely hanging on due to excessive scalloping.

The Hexbuckers are good for metal

I just had the same thing happen on a bolt on I’m building right now. I was planning on hard coating the neck so I left the appropriate amount of slop in the pocket to accommodate the finish. Next thing I know; plans change and we are going with an oil finish. Now I have a neck that’s way too sloppy for its home! I cut a Padauk veneer and glued it onto both sides of the pocket and used a nice file and some sand paper to bring everything back into a nice fitting and aligned neck pocket! Snug as a big in a rug!

A lot of people don't like ceramic caps. I only use Drop Orange caps in my builds. When I used to use the ceramic caps I could never hear much tonal difference. They just seem blah to me. I know that there are better caps out there besides the drop orange. I've just been able to get a good tonal change out of them.

It's goes fast enough for me. Much faster than a hand drill and you'd snap the wire on it before bogging the motor on it. I've wound a lot of pickups with it and it's already paid for itself. I really like the optical counter. Using the click counters will not be accurate at the speed I wind. I burnt through one in a matter of minutes with my hand drill counter. To each there own! I'm all about making things to save money but after two lack luster winders I felt the StewMac one was best for me and it's proven to be an excellent money maker.

When doing a three humbucker set up how do you like to orientate the poles? I’m going to wire each pickup to their own volume/tone (stacked pots) with the bridge and neck going to a 3 way toggle and the middle pup set to it’s own mini switch.

It looks good. My second one was a hand drill version. I ended up forking over the cash for the stewmac one and you'd have to pry it out of my cold dead hands to get it away from me.

Someone on the shredder reminded me of guitar parts resource! they had one.

SD Custom/custom! I got one and jeesh it's awesome.

make sure you measure that board until they will label a board 25.5 (or what ever) but it’s off. They have an extra fret at the nut end. Use the stewmac fret calculator before you start hacking on that board to verify this. I lost one to that. I cut it to length and realized that they add to both ends of the board to they could list the same board under multiple scales. All of the boards I got from them (5 in total) have been like that. It's actually what got me into making my own. I got tried of dealing with it. I'll never buy another board again! Their stuff is nice but just watch that. They don’t tell you that when you buy them.

I thought the actives had a much more genuine tone that EMG. They don’t have that sizzle that’s common with EMG. They almost seem to have a PAF sound. I think they are a good ‘tween pickup right in the middle of Emg and SD’s blackouts. As we know though, tone is an absolute personal preference!

I’ve done it. I used an EMG humbucker in the bridge and a single coil tele pickup in the neck. Problematic was the word of the day. I ran the EMG into 25K pots and the single into 250K pots. Problem 1: avoid connecting them to a shared toggle. Hook each pickup to their own on-off switch so they can maintain their independent signal path straight to output. I used the shared toggle and had a mess of a time with it. Problem 2: without using a pre-amp on the passive you can’t avoid this one. Signal level. You will have a very significant drop in level when you switch from the bridge to the neck. When running both pickups at once the active will over power the passive. You can adjust for this by lowering the volume on the active but that tends to weaken the sound and degrade the over quality of the signal.

I’m looking for a gold flush mount ¼” jack. I can find them in chrome, nickel and black but not gold. Can anyone help?

I've used several of the guitar heads pickups. I absolutely love their active humbuckers and I use one in my every day plaing guitar. Much better than EMG, hands down. the passive pups are great too. I've used 4 sets of them in the past.

Do you honestly believe Gibson recieves $5K for a guitar that retails for $5K? How many one man custom shops put out 50 guitars consistently per. year(this is the 40hr. custom instrument)? What do you believe a fair living wage is for a skilled luthier , and lets say this is the luthier putting out said 50 customs per. year? If a person wants a custom hand made instrument, why should it cost the same as an "off the rack" production guitar? Should a middle class individual pay a skilled craftsman lower class wages so they can have their custom instrument? I think I understand you believe you want to charge less to make custom guitars than what companies who do this for a living. Given you don't have to make a living doing this, you probably could charge less(you don't need to make a dime doing it). You are not compairing apples to apples. Don't forget a professional luthier pays taxes just like the next guy, does a hobbiest who makes a guitar for his buddy pay taxes? I am not going to get into debating quality, or experience of luthiers who can charge $5K for a custom guitar regularly vs a hobbiest who makes a few guitars a year. You can't deny the difference in resale value of these two different instruments(unknown hobbiest to established company). Peace,Rich Well, You might have misunderstood what I was saying and yes I've seen custom shop Gibson's and PRS going in the 5K range. I'd also say that Moser custom shop is pumping out 50 guitars a year but he has a few builders working for him. I'm not saying that a skilled luthier shouldn't charge 5k for a guitar especially if it is there only source of income. What I am saying is, most skilled luthier's tend to price themselves out of clients. Everyone knows they will pay more for a well crafted custom built guitar but in some cases builders value their work too high and price themselves out of the market. Allow the middle class the ability to purchase a guitar in the 3-4K range and you'll see everyone getting more work. I look at building as a labor of love not a means to pay my bills so my outlook is different than the full time builder. I'd love to build the client base to afford me the ability to do this full time and if that was the case, my outlook could change but right now, I'd rather see people who really want and will use a custom built guitar get one, even if I only mark the guitar up to 2K.

I've been building for over 10 years and I feel that a 500% mark up is just ridiculous but I also understand supply and demand and comparing standard building process over the custom build process. I personally don't make my primary living by building so I don't have the overhead that some do. I can see why the occasional builder makes 5K on their builds but I also understand that you can get the SAME quality from someone who chooses to offer their builds at a competitive price. In honestly if you charge 5K for a guitar and lets say you have 1K invested in supplies to build it. It took you 40 hours to build you've basically charged $100.00 per hour to build. That's not much more than a good tattoo artist. It all comes down to what the consumer is willing to pay and in a lot of cases they are willing to pay for a name when the quality can be the same else where. It's a personal choice but I just don't think middle class should be excluded from the custom guitar market just because they can't shell out 5-7K for a guitar.

I think we all started building guitars because we weren't happy with the alternatives. That's why I started. I didn't want to pay 5k for a custom shop Gibson when I knew it only took them less than 1K to build it. We all have our processes too. Every one of us make a guitar differently with no one way being the best.

I always wanted the ability to make a fret board with only 9 frets! I'd like to know the tang size because those blades look to be about 1/8 thick. No variable cordless drill is going to have the torque to cit 9 slots into ebony without crapping on you. I sill do my boards with a miter box and a hand saw. God, it only takes me 10 minutes to make a 24 fret ebony board.