mistermikev

not stupid at all... but i do see some potential for issues.  the p90 is a very fat sounding pickup... and even with moderate dcr they tend to sound 'louder'.  as such... in order to match well with a neck pickup... the p90 would have to be really low output while the neck pickup would need to be very high output - IMO.  otherwise... the p90 will just dominate the sound.  might put a sep vol for the p90 so you can back it off.

sm issue with splitting a humbucker with a p90.  a split humbucker tends to be pretty weak unless it's a super high output humbucker.  Further, combining a humbucker that isn't split with a p90... is gonna result in hum as it's an odd number of coils.  no big deal if you go in knowing that.

The other issue - is that when pickups are mismatched in output... they don't cancel hum as well.  again not the biggest of deals if you go in knowing that.  

If I had to make this work... I think either a vol pot specific for the p90, or a 3 way toggle to serve up a few different fav resistance values for the p90 should get you there.  

it is a lovely piece of mahog for sure... but if it were me... seems with the neck pocket issues a prime candidate for a lovely veneer over it.  I think you may have just surpassed a member or two if we consider this one the longest ongoing guitar project! 

looks like you got her going in the right direction - looking fwd to the finish line.

this is a lovely build... and I know your not asking for my o... but the neck transition is one of the things that really appeals to me.  it looks like it is kept as think as possible as high up as possible.  imo... it would use some scraping/sanding... but it's very close to something I'd be happy with. 

love this top.  love the idea of recessed pickup rings.  not overly crazy about the headstock shape... but again just looks like it could use some minor shaping.  You are too much of a perfectionist!!  in a good way tho.  rawk on.  looking fwd to seeing it alive!

Just now, curtisa said:

Any reason why you can't just make up one humbucker routing template, one single coil routing template and move them as and where you need them on the face of your guitar? Locking yourself in to a rigid pickup configuration means it will only work on one type of instrument, and if you need to change it you'll have to design and make a whole new template.

I don't know that he's not doing just that... I assumed he would.  I usually do my pickup templates individually then trasfter them to a full teplate.  probably don't need a full template at all... but IMO it's best to get the alignment perfect on mdf and make the entire transfer a no brainer. 

long story long... yeah - if I were you I'd make individual templates that will transfer to the body template.

6 minutes ago, KeysNGuitar said:

So I sort of took your advice but went a step further.  I took the .AI of the PRS that I have and I copied on top of it a Strat .pdf that was 1;1 scale and kept the middle and neck pickups, removing the PRS neck pickup.  I know you can't really be certain by a picture but does this image look feasible to you?  I lined up the front edge (closest to the fretboard) of the neck single coil with the front edge of the neck humbucker and kept the middle in the same spacing as it would be on the Strat.  Make sense?  Look like it would work?

Thanks!

Body Front With H-S-S Pickup Layout.pdf 235.86 kB · 1 download

looks pretty solid to me... but one concern I would have is where the prs fretboard ends... you need to ensure it ends b4 the neck pickup starts.  other than that... looks like a winner.

looks good biz.  nice job on the finish.

5 hours ago, curtisa said:

Agreed. There's actually a significant amount of scientific and formula-based work that has gone in to acoustic guitar design and construction in recent years (see Trevor Gore's and Gerard Gilet's work and publications on the subject). In that field it's no longer necessary to just rely on marrying a bunch of commonly-accepted wood combinations and paint-by-numbers construction techniques to get a good result. I often wonder if modern acoustic guitar builders look at how much solid-body guitar builders twist themselves up into knots trying to convince everyone that mahogany sounds like 'X' and ash sounds like 'Y', and just shake their heads at the apparent stagnation of evolution in our guitar building activities.

We're actually in a unique position as ameteur and semi-professional builders around here - we're not bound to the market norms of the conventional timber choices, nor are we aren't afraid to experiment with wood species that don't confrom to the commonly accepted 'standards' of guitar construction. Want to build a Strat or Les Paul out of bamboo, padauk, african blackwood or a reclaimed huon pine plank from a decomissioned fishing ketch? By jingo, you've got our attention - make that damn thing and show the world how a 'non-standard' guitar can sound!

now this I can totally agree with.  the idea that only certain woods CAN sound good.  all it would take is some high profile guitar player playing a guitar built from unsanctioned wood... and it's ordained.  vai/satch - basswood.  jimmy page - masonite/pine, bill kirchen - pine... etc.

really hope some celebrity picks up a sassafras guitar and makes it into tonewood cause I've been wanting to build a guitar out of it for a while!!  (that way it will sound good).

19 hours ago, Drak said:

OMG, I'm replying to a tonewood thread!

Must analyze self, must analyze self! Danger Will Robinson!

Right around 5 min. in he just gets right to the point of it all.

 

well I don't think that recording is really 'great' but it does sound pretty good considering.  I've seen this vid and a number of dylans' vids before and give him all sorts of credit for keeping it interesting (relic a strat by dragging behind truck comes to mind!).  that said... I agree and disagree with his summation.  on the one hand... people do take it way too seriously... on the other - who cares.  if that makes you happy knock yourself out.  we tend to get down on other folks for chasing 'tone wood' meanwhile we are all gear whores who are constantly tweaking our gear to sound better (I assume anyway... otherwise why have more than one guitar/amp/pedal/pick/strings choice?)  if pickups are your tonewood, great.  if amps are your tonewood - great.  that said, we must all remember that video of joe satriani making a $100 cheapo strat copy sound good.  he def doesn't sound quite as good as he typically does... but still sounds 100% better than I ever will!!

21 hours ago, Gogzs said:

So how do you know if you nailed it and they resonate and amplify each other, or they cancel each other out?And then there's the question if it's beneficial, do you lose some of the benefits by mounting the pickups onto pickup rings instead directly screwing them into the body? 

And the biggest question of all... DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY MATERIALS? What about tonecoffeebeans? Or toneepoxy? Hell, my current builds are like, 80% bamboo... can I coin the term tonegrass?

There are so many factors in this one, and I'd totally understand the discussion if this was about acoustic guitars, but electric... it's easier to EQ the difference out on a good amp, rather than chase tonewood benefits. 

you can make guesses at what wood might influence the sound more or less and in more or less of a positive way... but that is all guesswork.  I've said b4 and will say again... I don't think it matters what material you choose as ultimately you have to compensate for that choice in the end by listening and making choices about "yeah it works" or "no it doesn't work".  changing pickups or wrestling with it in other ways.  if a danelectro can sound good... almost anything can.  I think dano got lucky with his combinations.  that recipe will result in a decent sounding guitar.  my def of tonewood is so relaxed it really isn't a def at all.  I don't ascribe to the notion that it has to be a certain type because the dano proved to me it doesn't.  but the dano DOES sound a certain way.  I don't think you can quite capture that sound using elite tonewood.  I don't think I have golden ears or anything... I don't know that I could consistently pick it out of a recording... but when I play one I hear something that sounds dif than other guitars.  nothing wrong with chasing that.

saw this originally at mylespaul... thought someone might appreciate.  some decent looking ebony and in theory one could get 3 fretboards out of one piece.  cheers

8 hours ago, curtisa said:

What happens to the detected signal if the pickup is decoupled from the wood while the tuning fork is in motion?

honestly I don't think it's needs to go any further than the fact that something is being picked up thru the wood.  One way or another it proved the medium the pickup is mounted in has an influence.  he's not proving anything we didn't know... it's obvious to me - that if you build a hollowbody it's going to sound like a hollowbody to some degree.  vs a semi hollow, vs a solid body.  the 'why' do they have that characteristic sound is only described in more detail by his efforts - the medium does have some influence on the sound.  you take that hollowbody and play it thru a marshal at 11 and it really doesn't sound like a hollowbody anymore (rev horton heath).  i actually like the fact that he's not trying to prove mahog sounds dif than pine... it doesn't really matter in this context.  

the singer into the pickup - well that's an interesting one I hadn't thought of.  an experiment of it's own.  why DOES that work... well it def suggests to me that the idea that it is only the pickups that matter in a solidbody is not accurate.  the argument that the pickups are not microphones and they only pickup the disturbance in the field made by the metal strings.  are they still probably the biggest factor in determining the sound of a guitar - well yes.  but they are def not the only factor.

1 minute ago, curtisa said:

Extending that to a practical application, if someone played you 5 recordings of 5 different Strats playing the same thing do you think you could identify the one with the rosewood fretboard? How about if those Strats we're being played in a band setting?

I'd say 95% of the tonewood experiments I've seen are largely irrelevant. Not because they prove one way or the other that it makes a difference, but because the differences they aim to highlight get buried by the practical application of the outcomes. No-one plays their guitars by plucking one note or strumming an open-E major chord and listening to whether it sustains for 34 or 37 seconds. No-one plays a guitar direct into their recording equipment and looks at a sepctrum analyser to see where the frequency response starts to dip at 4kHz. Very few players play their instruments in the same way as each other. Sometimes the biggest variable in those experiments is the guy holding the guitar trying to illustrate that the body material alone makes a significant sonic difference.

 

I thought that was already an accepted behaviour of some pickups? - a microphonic pickup is one where the windings are loose enough for vibration to translate into sound...or squeal like a pig when the gain gets too high. The two questions in my mind from proving that the pickup can be vibrated and impart something to the sound is how can that be controlled and predicted to affect the outcome of building an instrument in a way that you plan it to, and how much impact can it have in comparison to the sound you want to pick up (ie, the strings). If the impact is tiny compared to the actual signal you want or the effect is unpredictable and uncontrollable, it's not that it doesn't make a difference to the sound but that it doesn't help lift the tonewood debate beyond the realms of pseudo-science. That's where the Facebook video experimenter should focus his work on.

If I stand on 15 sheets of paper I'm taller, right?

SHUT UP AND JUST ACCEPT MY TRUTH - hehe, just kidding! 

accepted... well it's accepted that the actual pickup wire can be vibrated in really high volume situations... true... but this is not that.  he's doing this at really low volume and amplifying the heck out of it.  also, showing it on a strobe.  literally shows tapping on the wood is being picked up by a magnetic pickup. 

controlled/predicted... i was trying to acknowledge that very point in the sentence regarding "at the end of the day... yada yada... too many variables... yada... impossible to predict...yada... so you just have to go with your intuition and develop your own recipe".  iow, building out of mahog and maple is a lot more established than concrete so it is predictable in the sense that the outcome is much more likely to sound good with the std pickups/strings/amps/etc available. 

I think he set out to prove that it does MATTER in a way that is less subjective -and on that mark he hit the spot.  as so many have eluded... most of these types of 'proof' videos can be easily refuted by so many variables... ie "that difference can be explained by how hard you hit the string here vs there" etc... and he really did a good job eliminating variables.  it is the only video of this type that I think I have ever seen where someone actually proved something.  what did he prove?  that the magnetic field of a pickup is in fact influenced by the vibration of the wood and subsequently the pickup itself.

41 minutes ago, yojoebro69 said:

thanks for your output, i found this website photopea its like a bad photoshop but its free. Also AI stands for adobe illustrator

hehe apparently everyone else figured out ai is adobe illustrator but me... proving again my comments that my intelligence is artificial!!

Just now, Bizman62 said:

Without a doubt it is. As you said, EVERYTHING matters. As Arnold says, "if it wiggles, it's fat" which in guitars means "if it's affected by the vibrations, it'll affect the thing that makes it vibrate".

well said.

Just now, Bizman62 said:

I tend to look at the mirror and keep saying "I'm smart." The guy on the other side of the glass seems to smile somewhat pityingly.

one can only be smart relative to the other people in the room!  if the other person in the room is you... and he is smarter... then you are probably doing allright!!

Just now, Bizman62 said:

Hmm... If the tuning fork is firmly mounted to the same piece with the pickup the effect is pretty much similar to a plucked string. That'd not be about measuring the vibrations of the pickup only as it would also measure the sustain of the tuning fork and the effect the wood has to it.

there is no microphone in the room.  the tuning fork is 3 feet away and on a dif axis.  the pickup is def not being influenced by the tuning fork.

6 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

It would be nice to see the methodology of that very test without having to sign on FB. On YouTube I've seen some "tests" that have a ton of other variables other than the body wood, and I've seen a couple that try to restrict the testing to the body wood only.

Looking at @Drak's recent posts I think I have a vague hunch about his opinion, looking at my builds same can be said about mine...

see above.  he's some sort of engineering student and this is his thesis.  Had a long conversation with him, nice guy.  Prior to seeing this I wouldn't have given much thought to the idea that the pickup itself vibrates... I've always thought the body influences the strings by bouncing sound back (reverb) and that in turn changes teh strings vibration... and in turn effects the change in magnetic field... but he's convinced me that the pickup vibration is yet another variable that def makes a dif. 

in summary - does tone wood matter?  well, yes, EVERYTHING matters.  how much?  doesn't make sense to answer that q for anyone else -as it's subjective.  it matters ENOUGH for me.  that said... i think 90% of wood is tone wood by my own def.  it is also a subjective term.  if you build a guitar out of wood and it sounds good - it's then tonewood.

11 hours ago, Drak said:

I will tell you what I think after reading tonewood threads for ~30 years.

I learned to psychologically diagnose and evaluate posters based on their answers for their various personality schisms.

Its a hella lot more fun than reading, or worse, responding to tonewood threads.

Its like a Rorschach ink-blot test thing, or a personality evaluation thing.

You can tell a lot about a person by how they answer 'the tonewood' question!

or any question really.  I think one of the smartest things you can say is "I'm a dumbass".  I keep saying it but it doesn't seem to make me smart.

12 hours ago, Crusader said:

Yes it seems you need to be a member

And by the way what I think about the whole thing is, of course the timber makes a difference and there's no need to go to great lengths to prove one way or the other. We know Strats with a RW fretboard sound different to Maple, A solid Mahogany Les Paul sounds different to one with a Maple cap, and an all-Maple guitar most definitely sounds different. So the experimenting has already been done

HOWEVER

I think its all a bit over-rated, its one of those things that people become too engrossed in. Like drag car racing, you have to spend ten times as much to shave another second off your time. Whenever I compare the guitars I've built with my Gibson 59 Reissue Les Paul they don't sound quite as good, but for goodness sake they still make a sound and what does it really matter? As long as the tone is reasonable and balanced. When you play accoustically then plug into an amp the electronics play a major role in the resulting sound, but to say the wood has no effect at all I think is ludicrous

well, the interesting thing about his post (at least for me) is that he is trying to prove scientifically that the pickup itself vibrates.  so... no string even being plucked... he's got a tuning fork mounted in a piece of wood with a pickup in it... and a string nearby... hitting the tuning fork is actually being picked up by his strobe. 

i agree... $10k will net you .0000001%.  more importantly, I don't think you are guaranteed a good sounding guitar if you use the best of the best woods... because there are so many variables and IMO it's the mixture that is the magic.  I don't think anyone can "KNOW" the right mixture... you just have your intuition and have to follow it.  it IS all a bit overrated because the mixture of masonite and lipstick tubes is EPIC to me!!  that said... I like good lookin' wood so wouldn't really want to build with something else.

anywho, for the record... not trying to prove anything... just admiring it.

kind of surprised you didn't go with your signature semihollow/steerhead with those... seems they would have been ripe for it given your comments about weight.  looks lovely... but my back hurts.  I know the pain of having a guitar I love... that weighs 10lbs!! 

10 hours ago, Drak said:

Thank You for the nice words, they are most appreciated.

I don't know if it shows well in the pics, but I knocked the finish down from the previous pics where it was glossed. I micro-meshed it with 1800, then hit it with a used 320 Abralon pad, that's the final finish level.

I'm really digging this 'distressed finish' thing lately. I have two more builds I made in the last few weeks I did the same thing on and am really liking both of them.

Not black over Mahogany tho, they're dyed Oak, then distressed, but basically in the same patterns I used on this.

Kind of a nice break from all the bursting business actually...

certainly a creative coolness to it.

that bridge really ties the whole thing together.  I like the "path less traveled" approach to electronics.

looking lovely. 

thing you have to be a member of The Electric Guitar Builders Resource to see this... but looks pretty interesting.  Haven't heard it yet... but I'm pretty sure he proved it.  tone wood is a thing.  (hehe).  always something new to consider anyway... good to keep an open mind.

https://www.facebook.com/820235642/videos/pcb.10158967814319508/10165846790340643

6 hours ago, yojoebro69 said:

I was definitely thinking about extending the neck into the first pocket it seems pretty sketchy not to do that. I will also look into the 6 bolts. What do you use for the drawings? Ai? Thank you all for responding much appreciated

what I use for drawings is typically photoshop... but there is gimp (free) and any number of other tools that can do that.  AI - not sure what you mean... but I often feel my own intelligence is artificial!!  lol.