erikbojerik

Tape is off and bindings scraped/sanded clean. The top purfling routs were quite shallow, because they extend out to the ends of the kerfed linings and I didn't want to (accidentally) rout the top off for a second time. In one place I ended up sanding through one of the ebony layers, but that was fixed up with some strategic Sharpie work. I've also taken a first cut at sanding the conversion varnish off the top (this thing was literally ready for wet sanding and buff-out when the catastrophe happened), but I think I have a little more work to do to even out the finish removal. The cracks in the top show through a bit (impact point was lower-right) but they are tight. It turns out that the pore filling fiasco on the back & sides was due mostly to the fact that I was using a really strong epoxy adhesive rather than an epoxy "finishing resin" which sands much more easily. Now I know.

Man - two in one day! Congrats! Like I said to Strat-o-Master - as soon as the tyke hits 6 months, get him/her in the water. Babies can learn to swim in water over their head almost before they can learn to walk, and drowning is the 2nd leading cause of death in kids age 2-14. Then again, the kid might turn into a competition swimmer and THEN you're on the hook for a food bill like ours - $1400/month (we have 3 of them...)

Congrats! As soon as the tyke hits 6 months, get him/her in the water. Babies can learn to swim in water over their head almost before they can learn to walk, and drowning is the 2nd leading cause of death in kids age 2-14. Then again, the kid might turn into a competition swimmer and THEN you're on the hook for a food bill like ours - $1400/month (we have 3 of them...).

If you're 10% different, you're good. Defining a "10% difference" that will stand up in court, however, is probably more difficult than building the instrument.

Robert is right on - the pickup outputs will be too weak to send down the long 13-pin cable without some kind of preamp.

Authenticity for the intended build. That's pretty much it.

Cool use of the marquetry. Have you ever seen Howard Klepper's "Dovetail Madness" acoustic? He also has a DM2 that is even more over-the-top.

Lumber is a musical instrument in its most optimistic state.

Gotta love those mother of pear position markers...

On the Tru Oil - make sure you have done a GREAT finish-sanding job before you start, go down to 600 grit and then start with the TO.

Yeah, it turned into one of those "making lemonade" deals - I decided to turn it into an opportunity to expand my repair skills.

CA to the rescue - the separated pieces of the rims fit together quite nicely, and glued up with CA with only a little bit of splinter-gap at the impact point near the treble-side of the tailblock. No pics for this, but the spliter gaps were filled with epoxy, and walnut side braces were epoxied to the inside of the rims. A few days ago I reattached the top after re-sanding the rims in the radius dish - the tear-out of the spruce at the neck and tail blocks were patched up with epoxy and sanded flush with the rest of the top, and the cracks in the tail-end of the top were fixed with watered-down Titebond and a few cleats. I also took some time to scallop and thin the braces, as it was originally way over-braced. The upper ends of the X are let into the linings, while the lower ends of the X, and the finger and tone bars, are feathered down to nearly nothing at the rims. Yesterday, I re-did the ebony-maple-ebony purflings and walnut binding strips, a little wider and deeper than originally to take up the slack from removing the top. Stuck on with CA and taped - clean-up today.

Trickiest part was the big honkin' neck block, there was a bit of spruce tear-out here and on the overly-thick tailblock as well.

Using a seam separation knife heated between a couple of mini silicone blankets, I managed to separate the top from the rims.

OK - remember this one? I've kept it hanging around my shop, so I get a reminder every day - it finally got the better of me over the holiday break, so here we go again! First - as a reminder to where we were over a year ago, it had an unfortunate interaction with the concrete floor of the shop: First step back to playability - rout off a little of the binding in preparation for removing the top.

Looks great! I dunno about the super strat characterization - maybe that's true for the kind of "pointy-horned" strat body like Kenny is using. But sound-wise, I'm coming around to the idea of having the versatility of either a humbucker or a single coil (split) in the bridge position of a 3-pickup strat. In a lot of the music I play, I don't find myself using a neck-position humbucker hardly at all, but I do find myself sometimes wanting a bit more output than you typically get from a standard 3-SC strat. Kenny's is a different beast altogether though - I'll predict a fairly rounded LP-style tone sort of like the all-mahogany 50s LP customs. Like an LP masquerading as a super strat. Go Tru Oil - with the gloss knocked down, I think you'll like it.

Imagine each string being 1-1/2 times further apart than they are on a normal guitar - that's what you're looking at with 15mm spacing. I suppose you could get used to it after a time, but if not then you're looking at buying the ABM bridges anyway, and trying to fill the holes from the bass bridges on either side of the new bridges - AND altering the neck taper after the fact - etc etc. Or turn it into a bass. Just go with ABM, they're twice as much, but hey - you have to pay if you want exactly what you want.

Along the lines of the tube idea - you could try using these tiny 6021 tubes that are a feature of the ZVex Nano Heads. mini-tubes

I made an 8-string with a black limba neck & body - I love the stuff and will use it again.

I would just radius the neck and then thin the rosewood to a very slightly thicker than 1/8" and glue it on, allowing it to bend over the maple. You will need a good radiused caul to do the clamping, or a vacuum bag arrangement. You will still have to do levelling after that, then cut the slots (with a hand saw if you want slots with curved bottoms). By the time you finish making a router radiusing jig, you could have done it by hand the way you started (hand-sanding the radii 3 times).

The questions you're asking I think are really difficult to answer if you haven't tried to shoot that color combo - I think you just need to do a lot of testing on scrap first, then make sure you have a good base on the guitar in case you need to sand back to it at any point. I also don't see why you couldn't do this with nitro - HOK poly is great stuff, but if you're already comfortable shooting nitro and haven't shot poly before, I would stick with nitro.

I'm working on repairing a 6-string bass right now that has those bridges, they are fine - if you're looking to build a bass. The minimum string spacing is 15mm and typically for guitar you're looking for 10.5mm. A guitar with 15mm spacing would be really awkward to play. The ABM bridges are the only ones I know of for guitar. The other way to go - what I and others have done - is to get yo bad self some individual bridge saddles (strat, tele, wilkinson, whatever) and fabricate your own bridge plate to hold them. I made a wood bridge that holds 8 strat saddles for a multiscale on the GBO 8-string, but my design has only a limited amount of room for intonation adjustment. Check out WezV's multiscale in the Jan GOTM, he used what look like Wilkinson saddles and made an ebony bridge plate to hold them, looks really snazzy.

Guitar Jones

You could also try putting the heavies on and tuning it to D. Watch out that your nut slots are wide enough (they probably are).

I personally like higher string tension for the lower strings on a baritone, so for tuning in A I'd go with something at 0.060 to 0.065" on a 27" or 28" scale. Most regular guitar strings are long enough, but get above about 0.056 or so and you're starting to look for bass strings. OT - but a few weeks ago my son turned me on to Dream Theater with "These Walls" - played in A on a baritone. I'm totally hooked now - don't know why I didn't discover these guys sooner, I'm a huge Rush fan and they came around just about when Rush started overindulging in synths.