mistermikev

well if you have it calibrated right... could be backlash... (barely understand that concept myself because I haven't experienced it).  could be an issue with your machine losing steps - many causes but one I'm told is unshielded wire.  some say that putting ferrite beads on your cables can help.  another possible issue is your couplers (another thing mikro schooled me on).  I'm not sure if you have ball screws on all axis like i do... but if so then there is a coupler that connects the ball screws to the stepper motor... these can get damaged over time or loosened over time and there is a set screw to tighten them.  I've never actually had problems with mine afa I know but then who knows what awaits me down the road.  the mech side of cnc is not a strong point for me, so barring responses from the great @curtisa or great @mikro... you might try cnczone or perhaps some of the facebook cnc groups if none of the above pan out.

fantastic work.  this hat is delicious and yes, I will be building out of pine from here on out.

the flying v is a standout for me.  just so much natural beauty there.  you could add literally anything to that and it will look great.  the purple is just a fantastic color... lots of depth.  the explorer - goo goo ga ga.  setting the bar as usual.  nice work.

On 5/11/2021 at 6:39 PM, Charlie H 72 said:

Hm I am running into some CNC problems-and maybe some of you good people here could help.

I’m using an x-carve, with a Dremel router set to medium speed, .035” passes at 75”/min

Im cutting different parts on different days and getting different dimensions.. what’s that about? I think I ruined my body blank today but I may try to work with it. Neck pocket and bridge pocket are too small (even with a .01 offset) and the overall shape is about 1/4” narrower and 1/8” shorter than it should be. And halfway through the cut the x axis band snapped. It must have been at the end of its service life. It looked pretty worn out. I stopped the cut in time but the last few passes were drifting which made the wonky dimensions even worse.

Is the only way to work with this machine to cut a bunch of templates on the same day from the same material? At this point I want to get off this machine sooner rather than later. Any advice would be appreciated. 

no cnc expert... in fact I've only been doing it for a couple months so keep that in mind.   idk what software you use to run g-code... but if I was having this issue I'd first suspect that my steps weren't set correctly.  Mikro actually showed me that in mach3 there is a config that does all the work for you.  you need a very accurate dial guage.  you pick and axis... tell it to move say .85", then measure how far it moved with the dial indicator.  it will set proper steps based on your feeding it back the amount it moved.  I found that if I did this three times (since measuring over such a small length - my indicator only has about 1" of movement) I would repeatedly get the same measurement after... then I knew it was right.  hope that helps.

2 minutes ago, mattharris75 said:

If everything had been square it would have been a breeze. Unfortunately, post-carving, that was not the case...

router sled?

14 minutes ago, ScottR said:

In spite of all (or perhaps because of) this looks really nice.

That really is an aggressive arch--I like it! Mine are usually a little shy of an inch. It does pay to plan for a flat spot for the bridge. And the pickups have to be planned for as well. Recessed mounting rings work well on an arch.

SR

thank you for the reply. 

the severe arch - well with my prior teles... one of the things that bothered me is that in most pictures you can't even tell it is arched.  I guess I am sort of vein if that's the only reason I did it, but also I just wanted to challenge myself to see how far I could take it.  thanks for the vote of "it's good".  

the pickups... well... since the neck is body mount... and the bridge is bridge mount... wasn't planning on doing anything special there.  they do end up exposed a hair more at the edges... but the worst part of that is when adjusting them you keep thinking they are higher than they actually are!  

looks lovely.  really great.  i will 3rd the heel - looks comfy.  

afa bit... well if it was hitting your template... and you had the top cut... would seem like you should be able to put some tape on the guitar, remove your template and gain the width of your template in depth.  

lovely couple pieces of flame there.  bravo.

1 hour ago, curtisa said:

For exactly one note. And its octave if you really want to stretch the theory a bit more. As soon as you fret an F, F#, G etc, placing the pickup at the 24th fret location to specifically chase that one harmonic node ceases to have any relevance to the note you've just fretted.

@Bizman62s graphic simplifies the motion of a plucked string to make it easy to visualise how a sinusoidal waveform can be broken down into its harmonic components, but that's not how a plucked string moves in real life. It's true that moving the pickup closer to the 24th allows more of the lower-order harmonics to be captured which in turn translates to a warmer sound, but don't fall into the trap of assuming that the 24th position is the harmonically optimal spot to place it. It's physically and practically meaningless in a fretted instrument.

You put the pickup where you want it because you like the sound of the result, not because it is mathematically correct.

brought a lot of clarity to that argument.  thanks for that.  not to beat a dead horse... but the other thing I was thinking... is that we know that when volume is lowered the perception of bass freq drops off faster than others hence the treble bleed circuits and the common 'more bass' option for amps like my marshal.  so by chasing vol we are in turn chasing bass it would seem.  that said.... I wonder at what fret would be "too much bass".

3 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Wouldn't that mean that the loudest location for a pickup would be at the 12th fret? As it shows in the image, there's a spot where half of the string length is at the largest while at the same time a quarter of the same string is standing still. Which one is node and which antinode, I can't remember. Anyhow, the point is that in such a place one harmonic is strong and another harmonic is muted which explains why the neck pickup on a 22 fret guitar sounds different to that pushed one inch towards the bridge on a 24 fret one.

yes,

"If a stretched wire fixed at both ends, or the string of a musical instrument, is plucked at the centre, it will vibrate in the mode shown in Fig. 90. This is the simplest form of vibration, and consists of a single loop" ... "The mid-point of the wire vibrates through the greatest distance; such a point is called an antinode"

now the if here says if it is plucked at center.  who knows how it is effected if we pluck somewhere else... but the one thing we do know is it is most pliable at center.  and this is why we put in relief. The harmonic 'cancelation' is likely also a factor... I'm not trying to argue which factor contributes more to the the 'tone' of the 24th fret... but if you look at bass guitars it complicates this further.  Bass players have long preferred the position of the 'p bass' ie "the sweet spot" which doesn't appear to match up to those harmonic hot spots.  further bass players tend to pluck in that spot.  So... perhaps it's a bit more complicated than just the harmonics... perhaps I've opened a can of worms... we can dig in.  on a les paul there is a humbucker in that position... while the dominent coil is approx at the 24 one could argue that the best placement would then be somewhere just beyond the 24th dependent on where the pickup is going to pickup the most amount of sound(one would think somewhere between the two coils but closer to the neck coil).  further, pickups were designed to 'amplify' the sound... it would make sense that they are after the most volume but perhaps not.  

this one was done b4 I got cnc and I did a less aggressive radius of 30" on it... I just sanded it flat in that area... and it just starts to break away from the tele plate at the edges...

7 minutes ago, Charlie H 72 said:

Just read about the bridge plate-I hadn’t even thought of that! Just mill a curved bridge hahaha. The flat spot sounds good actually. How will the front edge of the bridge meet the curve? Maybe a heftier bridge plate would allow it to be a simple drop-in thing? 

well... I planned to mill out a 1/16" area that is flat and fits the bridge exactly.  in my original design work it seemed like that would be just enough (I've actually tested in 3d software).  looking at it... I have my doubts.  If I glue a piece onto the body... 1/16+ thick... then mill out all around it to reveal the orig top, and mill out a flat spot... should def be enough to keep the bridge plate from 'floating' at the edges.  I guess I'll know once I mill out the flat spot if it will work with just 1/16.

thank you for the reply btw.

in retrospect... I think you are asking - yes, the wood radius will come up over the hight of the bridge in front just a hair.  I can always feather that out... but I don't even think it would be noticeable once the pickup is there and it won't interfere with the strings at all so... perhaps just break the edge a bit.

19 minutes ago, Charlie H 72 said:

Whew 35 steps but they are all worth it!! That curve looks absolutely awesome. What a great way to make a tele comfy and modern without the sort of afterthought look a forearm contour can bring. 

hehe - get out of my head!!  I never cared for the look of the forearm cut on strats or teles.  radius has a lot of cool benefits really... 1.125" carve which is more than you can even do on a les paul... controlls fall way from hands so you won't hit them.  but has been a difficult road.  

so this is the final stages of my practice run with a body and top that aren't the one's kev chose.  decided I needed practice so went ahead with this top despite making a small mistake (hole visable at bottom) thinking I'd probably put an inlay over it.  well a number of things i will change with what I learned here...

1) should not have cut off my bottom 'edges'.  on this one I didn't have enough material to get a mount on either side, but on my next two I will so... note to self: need to cut that area away so I can effectively sand the millmarks out of the radius... but leave enough material to maintain a mount on either bottom side.  

2) this curve is pretty aggressive!  need to do a flat spot for the bridge and am already having thoughts of gluing a 1/8" piece on that mirrors the bridge plate so that I won't have the edges of the bridge 'floating' once I cut the flat spot.  looks like I'll have to go deeper than I wanted.

3) I did a dry fit when gluing up the top... but then somehow managed to put a stress fracture in the top during glue up.  I think the problem is I was going straight across the body as opposed to tapering to center towards the neck (to follow the compound radius).

well mike v... you wanted to get experimental so... you should have known there was going to be some refining!  man this was a LOT of work.  "just follow my simple 35 step program and you too can have a tele"!  seriously... 35 literal steps in cutting this body.  could put it in one file and my machine would stop for tool changes but that would only bring me down to 24 steps by my calculations.  

anywho... feeling a little overwhelmed but I know I just need to chin up and charge.

Antiguq would look really great on that.  if not that... sunburst.  I love sparkle but on a semi hollow it just feels "out of place" to not have a finish that shows the grain (unless it's ANTIGUA!!!!!!)

have often thought about a pickup that would be part of the fretboard at the 22nd fret or perhaps a pickup that had frets built into it (obviously they'd have to be adjustable to work).  I love 24 fret guitars... but there is no question the sound difference from a guitar with the pickup positioned right where that would be.  guitars w 24 frets don't get that bass sweetness you hear in a les paul or strat on the neck pos.  Not a bad sound on a 24... just different and maybe "not as different" from the bridge when on a 24 fret.  that said, it's not a difference that would keep me from doing 24 frets if the guitar called for it.  

I think bizmans' pick above can be simplified even more: string rings the most at it's halfway point... the closer you are to that... the louder it's going to be.

well... idk what controls you have available... but my suggestion would be this: wire up as two completely separate guitars but don't wire either to the jack.  temporarily hook each to a jack and get it working... once you've got that... then you just need a spdt on/on to select between the guitar or the bass.  middle lug to output jack... one side to live gtr, one side to live bass.  both grounds should connect together at the output jack.  

for the record wasn't necc saying it needs to be redone... just passing along a piece of advice i've found useful.  that said... I've found that doing multiple sand backs with dif colors can really pop.  also just using alcohol to draw off the top layer of color a little bit... works for me anyway. 

back looks lovely.  wouldn't touch that.  edges are a bit dark for my taste but a nice contrast.  rawk on.

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

I mean, can you hear-hear the guitar during a gig, not just from the speaker but also through your bones or whatever it is? As you said, the ES sounded great on its own but not in the mix which might tell that within the solo sound you were 'hearing' more than just the electric sound while in the mix it was more similar to a 'recorded' sound if the band distorted your physical connection to the instrument.

After reading the above I'm not sure if you can understand a word I'm saying. I'm not sure if I understand it myself!

i think there is a lot of truth to that.  I've made recording with a 335 that looking back I would have sworn was a strat... but it was somewhat inspiring while I was playing it... that said... if you play at break neck volumes all that goes out the window.

38 minutes ago, nakedzen said:

Yeah I guess it's obvious a tele is my favorite guitar shape.  Also very simple guitar to practise my skills on.

def among my favs.  have 3 or 4 on hand... working on another.  

regarding your build... I think it was prostheta or perhaps scottr who I first heard "don't use black for sandback" from... something you might consider.  black tends to get a bit splotchy and bleed into other colors while a really dark blue or brown (almost black) will actually reveal more figure.  looks lovely, just a thought.

tele - can't go wrong there.  nice progress.

7 hours ago, curtisa said:

Would that be so bad if that were the case?

Realistically we'll continue to build our guitars out of whatever we feel like. Even if the stats suggest that tonally it makes no difference, that completely disregards what we or the paying customer may want aesthetically. A slab of pine will never be a substitute for the appearance and/or feel in the hands of spalted maple.

And the other side of the 'wood matters' debate that this experimental test rig cannot solve is that the knowledge that you are playing a piece of mahogany, either by being able to see it, feel it or be reliably informed that it is in the guitar by some other means, may influence how you play the guitar, which in turn could change the tonal output.

 

That was primarily why I didn't want to provide screenshots of spectrum analysis and instead only focus on the sounds. There's no real advantage in trying to see the difference if you can't hear it, or trying to find the visual reason why sound A does sound more bassy than sound B. We don't play guitars by looking at the output jack.

The other way I think we should all be approaching it is asking ourselves, 'how likely would I be able to have heard the difference if I didn't have the comparison handy in such a clinical and controlled fashion?' If the answer is 'pretty unlikely' then perhaps the argument raised by some people that wood matters almost insignificantly holds more water than we give it credit.

 

I would probably use the qualifier 'detectable' to any assessment of a guitar's output based on these recordings, rather than 'big' or 'small'. Most players know what a 12-month old set of strings sound like and don't need to hear something to compare it with to know the strings sound worn out. You probably couldn't say the same thing if you were asked to assess a set of strings 24 hours old and say whether they're 'brand spanking new' or '1 day old'. To me this is where wood A vs wood B sits - I think the difference needs to be much bigger than what's in these recordings to be able to categorically say that a choice in timber based on species alone can make or break an electric guitar from a sonic point of view. If all the differences are really tiny they'll get lost in the noise, even if they do stand out when played side-by-side through the magic of audio editing. In reality it takes us 15 seconds to unplug the alder Tele and plug the pine one in - how much of our memory of what the first one sounded like 15 seconds ago can we rely upon?

"would that be so bad" well... no, of course not.  I thought about my own comment quite a bit tho... and it def depends on the pine... but most pine doesn't hold a screw or take stain well.  iow there are a lot of good reasons to use 'tonewoods' that seldom get considered.  I would liken it to the 'great capacitor debate'.  some folks are adamant that you should never use anything but 'little greenies'.  In my own mind (i use a lot of wima) I think there are a lot of good reasons other than tone to use fancy caps.  how long they last, resistance to temp, consistency (ie not having to measure each cap)... and then look.  I don't see anything wrong with using mojo parts if for no other reason than to have a cool 'look'.  

how likely to hear... well... I have to assume there are folks out there that can hear much better than me.  fully acknowledge that I highly doubt I could tell you what sort of wood some guitar was based on a recording - esp after we add overdrive/eq/fx.  that said, and speaking to your placebo point, it might only matter that the player feels some difference.  ie, lets say that wood does make a difference, but it is not detected by the pickup... I think that would ultimately influence the player.

detectable - well said.  I do agree... that thinking you can predict the sound based on wood is silly.  That said I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to factor in wood choice and make some assumptions about the effect it might have on overall sound.  I think the shame comes when you start thinking "this guitar can't sound good because it has pine in it".  or "this guitar won't sound good because it doesn't have mahog".  that said... I think going fwd I'll have to fight the urge to think a concrete guitar isn't going to sound great.

alder vs pine tele.  both have made awesome teles... "hot rod lincoln".  pine really should be accepted into the hall of tonewood fame!

also of note: I think one-day-old strings of mine might be discernable.  I have long had the super power of being able to corrode strings very quickly.  I am crazy fanatic about wiping my strings down and keeping my hands clean... but between a few guitar playing friends it is quite documented... if I touch a string - come back a day later - black spot.  i kid you not!  my band mates always half-joked that they didn't want me playing their instruments - esp the bass player.  

that said... can we calculate the amount of days old where strings sound bad? no... so we all make the assumption that new strings will sound better.  I don't think that is all that different from the 'error on the wise side' we do in choosing a 'tonewood'.  that said... again, I would not subscribe to the tonewood nazzi prescription that only maple/alder/mahog/walnut sound good.  my def of tonewood includes just about everything. maybe not bulsa (hehe).

well some days you eat the bar and some days the bar eats you... always thought this referred to slot machines but apparently bears... well a bear ate me several times this weekend but I'm not too proud to admit it... graphical evidence to follow...

so in trying to bend my top over my form, due to the tighter 7/9" radius, I realized this wasn't going to work without either steam bending or perhaps bending relief.

so in doing the bending relief I was using an extra long 1/8" bit I bought and didn't feel like changing... must be an up cut bit because it sucked my top up 1/16" off the table and that was just 'nuff to wreck it.  was thinking it might actually look kind of cool to go all the way through... but not for this one!  might just set it aside and do some sort of inlay fix and use it later... 

so re-configured my gcode to take a lighter pass in addition to using my regular 1/8" bits... but in the process of creating the output code I somehow had checked the box to also compile the g-code for my battery cavity magnets... so while rounding 3rd base on this one F&#%!!  Old smell... fortunately I got lots of tops.  this one is minor enough that I could do a ribbon inlay to cover it... but I don't believe I have enough recon turq for it.  Either way I need to leave it sit for a few days before I go and do something stupid.  was really pushing to do my glue up, and finish out my 'test build' so I could move on but alas - one step fwd and two back.  

my body is coming right along and looking like it is going to be comfy...

25 minutes ago, curtisa said:

By and large I agree, but the results I seem to be pulling out of this experiment may suggest that the wood used makes such little difference in and of itself that it could be completey disregarded as a contributing factor.

It may raise the possibility that people who claim to have swapped a rosewood neck for a maple neck on their Strat, noticed a change in the sound and attributed it to the rosewood are incorrect. That given it takes them 30+ minutes to do the swap, unless they go to the trouble of making recordings before and after and comparing the results in a very clinical manner they may be imagining they're hearing a change. Or, if there is indeed a measureable change that perhaps they should be looking at something else other than the rosewood as the reason why it is different.

Same may also apply to people who are building a guitar and chosing timber expecting it to sound a certain way. Chosing alder due to the expectation the result will be 'snappier' may be false. Chosing mahogany becuase the result is expected to be 'warmer' may be false. That chosing a piece of wood based on how it sounds when struck may be pointless.

i suppose then all your future builds will be out of pine then?  you are convinced?  hehe.  

my interpretation of the results is a little dif.  I think what I saw there in those two waves either suggests that your testing equip was introducing a variance that would render the test results somewhat invalid, or it has shown that there is some amount of difference. I suppose I could spend a bunch of time looking for patterns of that anomaly in other waves... but I'm not entirely motivated since I think even if it were proven to me -beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is zero dif between maple and mahog... it would make a very small difference to me in terms of what I would choose to build with.

attaching things like "little" or "big" to that difference are sort of subjective and meaningless imo because little to you may be big to someone else.  IMO the best we MAY be able to say is there is or is not a difference, again, imo. 

like many of the other tests I've seen... by themselves they don't say too much - I haven't seen one that has PROVEN to me one way or another.  you have to keep adding them together and take the leap of faith that is siding on one summary or another.  For the record either side is reasonable.

I think afa luthiers go... even tho I don't believe necc that maple is def going to be brighter... I think you have to make some judgements about the wood.  making a guitar out of mdf with a steel neck - I've made the judgement that that combo probably doesn't have a lot of probability of sounding good.  making an entirely maple guitar?  sure, I'd do that... but I think I'd probably have some backup plan for the pickups.  would I expect an all mahog guitar to sound warmer than an all maple guitar - I would... but then I wouldn't be surprised if it was the opposite.

8 hours ago, curtisa said:

Personally I can hear really subtle differences between some of the timber pairs when they're played back to back. But they're super-borderline, to the point where if I went out of the room for 20 seconds to put the kettle on and came back, if I started playing one sample at random I'd never be able to tell what I was listening to. They're certainly not the earth-shattering differences some people claim to be able to hear when comparing identical guitars made from different timbers.

well for the record... my comments... wasn't trying to say that indicates a 'qed'.  that said... differences that are small can be insignificant to some but everything to others... just a matter of perspective.  further... I think little differences can accumulate on a guitar build.  every component makes some difference and I think folks often will conflate the summary of those differences with one single difference.  I've done it myself... put a pickup in two guitars and hear a difference and try to point to one single difference (wood type) between those two guitars as the culprit.  

hearing sm thing in celery top vs tas... first few hits... I don't know that it is necc desireable or undesireable but the front of the note is varying quite a bit on the low e.

first one ramps up... second one has lots of vol right away.  it is possible that if you trimmed them you perhaps trimmed off the front of the note. 

looked at them in edison and they are indeed very different.  the downward spike on the first one is neutered... and the volume tapers off the maximum spike fairly linearly(if that IS a word) whereas the second one sort of holds for two spikes and then drops off.  doesn't look like they were truncated at the front like I was thinking.  no idea what this means... just observed.