mistermikev

4 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

You may well be right there. If so, the contact area of such in a flat bottom slot would be much smaller than with a flat base nut. Which in turns would affect sustain not to mention that the material might give in under string pressure and start causing buzz and intonance issues. Most likely not as dramatic as the previous sentence sounds, though.

yes... an air gap under the nut would seem like a bad idea to me.  that said... not sure anyone's picking that out of a lineup.  I think this nub is there because all sorts of folks just buy a nut w/o much thought to whether they need a radius bottom or not... and graph tech probably is combating returns in such an event that someone buys this to find out it's a flat bottom... also could just be due to an unknown radius and a need to easily match it.    sand down on the fretboard and then toss it in the slot.  I'll stick to flat bottom nuts for me lol.

i always do flat bottom because it is easy.  I believe there is an argument out there that the advantage of a curved slot nut is that the material under the string is more consistent... but I'm certain this is just legend that sprang up after the fact.  I don't believe fender ever did them curved out of a belief that it sounded dif... as curtisa mentioned it's more of a product of the mfg process for early fender.  

"hole needed for the notch in the nut"  If I'm not mistaken... you are referring to the notch that folks like graph tech put in their curved nuts... I think this is just meant for folks who want to use a rounded nut in a flat slot if I'm not mistaken.  I think the fender radius nut slots have no center slot/hole.  If I'm wrong here... would love to know.

graph tech nut

fender p bass nut

something like this.... you really need to take several pictures.  better shots of the connections on the 3 way and the pot.  

i assume red is the live to jack (to middle lug on vol pot), then lug 3 on vol goes to middle on 3 way (yellow)... and yellow and white are to your pickups... so if that's the case right there you should hear something assuming the jack is wired right and not grounding out on the cavity (common).

1 hour ago, ScottR said:

Thanks man! I guess that was a bit of a tease......a what if....

SR

altho I'm sure it wasn't specifically for me... I appreciated seeing it!!

oh man... epoxy with some leaves embedded in it... being able to look through in some places and see the tree limbs... would be cool.   I'm sure what you've got planned will be just as lovely.  looks great!

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

On the Crimson board one guy made something similar out of pieces of various colours for a sunset effect. If memory serves me right there was some sort of landscape. He had other puzzle ideas too, unfortunately he hasn't found his way to this forum.

I guess it is a an age old woodworking technique... nothing new.  come to think of it my grandfather had this figured walnut end table that had that exact design for the top.  It never even occurred to me to use that on a guitar... but it looks great.

saw this and thought y'all might appreciate some cools details here...

https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=3468057386793920

hope the link translates (it's komarproject on facebook... for a guy who's never built a guitar... pretty good and a lot of other interesting ideas on that page)

specifically I liked the idea of taking a bunch of thin boards and cutting into triangles and glueing back together for the back... might have to try that some time.  also a few other cool ideas like the skull on back.

1 hour ago, henrim said:

Pretty much the way I do it too. Although a few years ago I bought a Veritas variable burnisher which is handy for getting consistent edges. Goes from 0-15 degree angle. 

i was actually looking at the "butterfly burnisher" which is only like $15 and there's a lot of buzz about them... but I like the idea of having less specialized tools - especially with so many folks getting good results from just a nail set or as biz is using... just a screwdriver!

15 minutes ago, curtisa said:

If you watch the 'making of' video on the Lignum Youtube channel, they make their own truss rod from scratch. There's also no extra reinforcement being added to the neck, so it appears that the neck is probably OK with the long scale length. I'd be suspicious that it is pretty 'bendy' though, but maybe when you're dealing with such low pitches the amount of pitch variance when flexing the neck is generally undetectable.

I didn't see that vid... and if you have a great piece of maple perhaps it'd be fine... either way... could be great today... tomorrow... I wouldn't wager my fur lined bathtub on that one!  

7 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Thanks! Aside from what I learned back at school i.e. squaring the edge against a single cut file I've also studied various videos for a method that works for me.

Simply put, I start by un-burring the edge with a couple of strokes along the slab side, all edges. If needed, I then run the edge perpendicular along a file to square it, Unburring again with an easy hand. Then I clamp the scraper to a vise and burnish the edges to a slight angle. As you said, anything round and hard works. I've been using a screwdriver.

right on.  seems like a good method.  will give that a go.

looks like you put a hellish good burnish on that scraper... what do you use to burnish?  I've been reading about it and some guys say just use anything round and hard while some swear by the specific purpose burnishers.

something on my mind as I post this moch up... keep making a mental note that I should do my finish sanding way ahead of time and let my wood sit and age... because it brings out the flame better than anything else I know!  this flame hardly shows at all right after it's sanded... and I'm doing a osmo poly x raw finish on this so I can't darken the wood at all prior... I just hope I can retain this much pop!

6 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

That's insane!

And your photo shooting skills have improved.

thank you biz, really appreciate it.  have been practicing with the manual focus... works so much better but still a bit hard to see on the screen... I'll get there yet!!

so literally working on this in my spare time for the last 2 weeks... milled oak, purpleheart, mahog and maple down to .22 thick for the dome... milled purpleheart, maple and ebony down to .88+- for the letters... several issues with trying to mill two letters at a time and how close they are to each other so had to rework... then the inevitable snap of a letter or two while I try to get them into the pocket using giant sausage fingers... then wearing out my hands sanding them down to flush... it's a real trial but I feel like I'm getting slightly better at it anyway!

bass (acoustic), treble (acoustic), volume (acoustic), tone (magnetic), volume (magnetic)... p or z for piezo was too big!

On 1/14/2023 at 5:27 AM, henrim said:

Have you already seen this video of a 42” scale length sub octave bass that was posted yesterday?

 

I immediately was thinking of this too.  is a cool video.  my initial impression was that - on the one hand... very cool... on the other - that low string is literally so low I can't really hear it and my ears are attuned to 5 string bass so... it's too low imo.  You see in the video he doesn't spend much time w the stuff below a normal basses range.  all this... just my observations... ymmv.

a standup bass is typically 42" as well and the lowest note is a B.  I can see going a little lower than that but not quite as low as this bass in order to make the lower range more useable.

all that said a 42 scale is fine... just not sure I'd tune it that low.  

assuming a 42" scale... I see some unique challenges here.  that is one long stick that is unsupported.  I'm thinking you'd want some carbin fiber reinforcement or at the least some rock maple and a fairly thick profile... or perhaps a single cut with more support on the lower range of that neck... maybe a multi lam neck with some wenge or other super rigid wood in there.

the other consideration is truss rod.  24" truss rod is going to be about the max you'll find for std truss rods.  this type of neck is probably going to require a custom rod in the 28"+ range.  lots of folks will make those (lmii or allied luthier for ex) but it is probably going to be expensive for a truss rod ($50?)... just something to consider.  

Also going to require some seriously long range strings and likely some thick guages which may present issues with the tuning machine holes (idk).  getting long scale strings for my current 35" scale basses opened my eyes to the idea that getting strings for 36" scale is expensive and only a few sources.  something to think about.

the other day I saw a thread about ibanez and the new "electric stand up" they came out with... it instantly made me think about a long range bass altho the ibanez is only 35" scale.  Carl Thompson does 36" scale as the standard if I'm not mistaken and swears by it.   Def adding a 37-40" scale to my 'someday' build bucket list.

interesting take on a hybrid bolt/neck-thru - had not noticed that before.    

nothing like scoring some wood for celebrations!  sometimes I go to the local lumber yard at lunch just to soak up the smells and sights and reset my inner self... wood therapy is the best therapy.  

inlay is coming along really nice.  great work.

33 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

it's so flecky it's almost metallic 

more flecky than bella fleck and the flecktones' first album... quote from Beck: "wholly beef cake pantyhose that's a lotta fleck!"... Shreck? "last time I saw that much fleck I was lookin at the stars during the intro to star trek!"... Richard Speck: "I'd stab someone in the neck for that much fleck"... in summary: "more handsome than Gregory Peck"

(I could go on)

so.... qtr sawn...vnice.

well if chasing low action is silly.... well then I don't want to be not silly?  <1mm would be incredibly good... about as good as it gets.  nice work.

congrats on a well earned win.

so I have tons of these but the way I build them out is with hundreds of layers and so most of them would take some doing to render so... just thought I'd share a few that I haven't built out.  Full size body/headstock trace of a few guitars I haven't seen elsewhere... thought they might be helpful to someone/somewhere.

CarvinVS220 copy.pdf

CharvelSurfcaster copy.pdf

Ibanez_Sabre copy 2.pdf

14 hours ago, henrim said:

Decission making is hard sometimes. I’ve been through this binding thing a few times now. After all I decided to use cream binding. I took a length of 2 mm  ABS binding and milled it down to 1 mm. 

Now I’m tempted to bind the top of the body too  I’m thinking it would be nice with ebonized top, cream binding and ash back. But I’ll try to talk myself out of it because I liked so much the original idea of having a birch neck combined with ebonized ash back. And the original body shaping plan would have to be changed too as I’m not sure I could bind the curves I had in my head. But I’ll think about it.

i freq change my mind while a build evolves... and am faced with similar questions... wondering if I am straying farther from my initial vision or moving closer to something better.

I've decided that as a rule I should never go one direction over another based only on perceived difficulty... because often times it is only more difficult in my head.  Not sure if this has served me well or not, other than the fact that I don't end up regretting not having given enough to a build.

some struggle with binding... and I certainly struggle with many things that others seem to find to be easy... but binding tight curves has come fairly easy for me... this headstock for instance, was a single piece of binding.  All this is just to say: I believe you can do it.

3 hours ago, ScottR said:

I don't know if I never picked up on the fact that there are two of these in progress, or if I used to know and forgot while it was on the shelf. Either way, doubly impressive.

SR

I've sort of resolved myself to needing to build a prototype... one that can live or die w/o too much pain afa spensive wood... I try out all my stuff first on that one so that if it goes really south I can chalk it up to experience.

so the oak one - I almost gave up on it a few times because the carve needed a lot of work and the top was thinner so I burned through it - hence the creative carve on the bottom edge.  I've somehow managed a guitar despite an awful lot of "never done it before"... and it turns out it's gonna look pretty noice so I'm very lucky!

thank you for noticing!

54 minutes ago, henrim said:

Immaculate work. Those truss rod covers are so sweet!  

thank you sir. wasn't sure if that detail was going to come across... and it's a simple little thing... but it turned out better than I hoped.  thanks for noticing.