erikbojerik

You have to start with excellent finish sanding right at the beginning - any scratches that are visible in the wood won't be fixed by clear coat. With wet sanding, the purpose of the next-finer grit level is to remove the scratches from the previous grit. The bigger the steps you take (like - say from 600 straight to 3000) the longer you will have to spend on each one. Small steps are preferred. A light touch is preferred (don't dig in). It is extremely important to thoroughly clean the piece well in between grits, to completely remove any residual grit (screw holes, routs, etc) before moving on to the next grit. If you're dipping sandpaper, change the water between grits too so you don't cross-contaminate different grit sizes. If you have a few chips of 600 rolling around with your 3000, you'll make new 600 scratches that more wet sanding will never get rid of. Also don't contaminate your buffer with different grades of polishing paste - one buffer for each (I have 2 StewMac foam pads, one for 3M fine cut and one for Meguiars swirl remover). Wet sanding & buffing quality is directly related to how much time and fussiness you put into it.

Folks do it with acoustic guitars, with woods that can be difficult or impossible to find in the right widths and grain orientation. Done right, with bookmatched and/or slip-matched pieces, you can hardly tell where the joints are. So with solidbody instruments, why not? If you're using 3 random pieces - then yeah, you'll see the joints. People like to get all exercised about 1-piece vs multipiece, etc - until they're asked to pick out a 1-piece body in a blind test. There is a long way to go in glue/wood ratio from a 3-piece body to plywood...if it works for what you're building and the materials you have at hand, just go with it and don't think twice about it.

And you might find it hard to get your pickups close enough to the strings if they are really high off the deck.....

OK, I get it now, the drawings help - it will work if those pins are at the center of radius of the end templates. A downcut spiral cutter would be great for that.

Those are called "witness lines". You have sanded through many of the layers of TO that you applied. You applied the Tru Oil correctly, but the layers go on very thin and it is not intended as a clear coat over paint. It is really more for a natural wood finish.

Yeah but don't forget NASA spent billions on shipping! <pros: specifically this much>

No no no no no no no. No! The Brunner jig will NOT allow you to cut a compound radius, because the swivel axis is not the same as the axis of the cone whose section you are trying to mill. The geometry is all wrong. It is a fine jig for roughing out the back of a neck, but even trying to mill a constant 12" radius on that thing you would need an arm with 12" of throw, and a really tall bit on your shaper. EDIT: My bad - I did not catch this the first time around, that the pins around which the arm rotates are not fixed, they are actually allowed to slide.

Thanks J Oh, and by the way - if you're thinking of building a Corvus with that board, I'm going to send you a bill for an extra $100

Not sure - but you could ask this guy. http://stores.ebay.com/Luxe-Guitars

We've only had 1 or 2 days above 68°F - but the warmer weather isn't far behind. I may wait though until I've got 4-5 instruments to shoot at once.

I've been in and out of the house so much this week, I'm not actually sure if its here yet - I'll give it a test drive when I get ti.

Not to mention that buckeye burl is hella expensive. I think this will turn out nice.

You're not "corrected" Spoke - as Maiden said, there's no "right" way, that's just my way and my rationale for doing it that way. I learned it from reading and making necks different ways, it works for the order in which I do things - no more than that. Anyone can try it. For gluing frets in, after slotting I bevel the edges of the slots slightly with a triangular file, then put glue in ~4-5 slots, wipe off the excess with a damp paper towel, press those frets in, then wipe off the excess again - repeat. After the neck is fretted, I'll just bend it gently against the backbow so the tangs bite in - a little at a time - until its worked out. Often I'll also be using a bound fretboard, which doesn't bow back nearly as much as an unbound one.

Good advice - I think CF bars in a neck can only help, especially with stability over time.

Thank you!

My preference is to fret with the fretboard off the neck, for that very reason - easier to fret onto a flat surface (I press). I glue mine in with Titebond, and flex the board (before the glue is dry) so that it has NO backbow after fretting. For the neck, I plane the fretboard surface flat, thin the back to final thickness, then rough out the back contour and just *barely* shave the fretboard surface again so that it is perfectly flat. See where I'm going - fretboard and neck are both now flat and stress-free. Then I attach the board to the neck with epoxy - no moisture to soak into the wood fibers and induce flexure in the neck (I've seen it several times with Titebond) - you have to rest the fretted neck in a specially made caul when you clamp, but they are easy to make. End result - straight, stress-free neck that needs almost no fret levelling. The only levelling I have to do is upper fret fallaway - and I am now thinking about actually milling that fallaway into the board before fretting.

I once saw a government auction for 200,000 board feet of honduran mahogany that was seized by customs - it went for something like $1/bf but you had to pay either by cash or certified check. The wife wasn't too crazy about taking out a second mortgage on the house In hindsight, she was right!

For a given material, the resonant frequency of a solid object depends only on dimensions and density. If it "rings" you may change its "ring tone", but you won't change the fact that it rings. But glue on a drop top, or a fretboard, and yes you may (or may not) lose the ring. But its still better than the piece that doesn't ring.

Will do, thanks!

There used to be a REALLY good, very complete tutorial from a guy who made a replica 1951 Nocaster - it has since disappeared into the ether.

I will bet that there are plenty of folks who would like to build an acoustic instrument but haven't yet - and have never heard what a top sounds like. I've been interviewed by NPR before - their intention with a piece like this is not for it to be a tutorial, but rather to give the uninitiated a taste - a rough idea - of what goes into an acoustic instrument. I think it does that.

I'm not too sure you're going to find those exact blueprints - but StewMac does sell a Floyd Rose template that you can use on any guitar body (provided you know how to calculate where it goes).

Temporary insanity on my part (forgot to upload the new form) - it is fixed now. If you still have problems, email me through PG.

Bass pickups do not have any less capacity for picking up higher frequencies than guitar pickups do - it would be natural to assume this, but it is not true. Same for guitar pickups and low freqs. Both pickups are, after all, wire wound around a bobbin with magnets in the middle - the devil is in the details. If anything, a higher resonant frequency would give you MORE highs than a low one. The EMG 45TWs I used in my 8 have a resonant freq of 2.65k in humbucker mode, and 4.5k in single coil mode. A pickup's resonant frequency is just the particular frequency where its output is maximized - think of it sort of like a frequency response curve - but a pickup's output response is very smooth and gentle, not with wiggles and spikes like a freq response curve you'd see for a speaker cabinet (for instance). And the curve is very wide and broad - in other words, the Q is very large (very wide broad peak). The resonant frequency lends something to the tone color of the pickup, but your guitar's and amp's EQ lends more. In EMGs in particular, the output curve is relatively flat - much more flat than a passive pickup because of the low inductance - and this is where the "hi fi" character comes from. Once in the guitar, it provides a more flat freq response than a passive pickup will. Some like it, some find it "sterile" compared to passive pickups because they are used to the typical output response of guitar humbuckers which have a higher Q than EMGs (so the tonal difference is more apparent). It's different strokes - if you prefer the sound of passives, there are plenty of passive 6-string bass pickups as well (Bartolini for instance, or Delano, Norstrand, etc etc). If you don't want to go custom, it is best to select a pickup with blades instead of individual pole pieces (Bartolini uses blades), to accommodate the different string spacings and number of strings with an 8-string guitar.