Bizman62

Another vote for any sort of burst, the wood is quite pretty!

That was what I was first thinking of as well but as I'm not too experienced with binding, I thought that getting some finish over the seams might not be too bad of an idea. Following that thought applying shellac over the binding only might help hiding the barrier. The order might then be: Apply the matte to the bottom and sides including the binding, carefully tape along the side seam of the binding, apply shellac over the binding, apply the glossy to the top and binding, rip off the tape. That raises the question, how to scrape off the ridge where the glossy has met the tape. Then again, if the binding doesn't have to be shiny, the easiest way would be to apply the glossy lacquer on the top first as @Drak said and when it's perfect, apply the wiping varnish on the bottom and sides. That would put the barrier right at the very edge of the binding which may or may not start chipping. Rounding the binding slightly and applying shellac on it might again help, who knows...

Nothing against shiny and matte here, I suppose your plan will bring the best out of both woods. The nitro may or may not stick to the varnish, a layer of shellac between them should take care of that. If you apply the shellac on the binding only, it might even add some natural yellowish patina to the Mother of Toilet Seat. No experience here either, but the shellac trick has been verified on so many forums including this that it must be true.

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!

Is that more about how it feels on your body or the actual sound? I mean, isn't a recorded sound similar to the sound coming out of a speaker? Is it possible to actually hear the sound in a gigging situation?

Exactly that! The looks is what always has made me drool over a guitar, the price tag having been the limiting factor. Wasn't it Muddy Waters who said that he may not be the best blues player but he's got the nicest suit so at least there's something pleasant for the eyes...?

Ouch! Didn't remember the three strings! Of course all three would give more perspective regarding the tonal range of a guitar but in order not to stress you too much, would the wound D string be a good compromise?

@Ronkirn, I just had to illustrate what you said. The brown and grey are the tight fit made in fresh wood. The red and pink represent the way wood shrinks mostly sideways when it dries. Highly exaggerated!

Definitely that! I just prepared a chicken for the oven, it looked a lot like the clearcoat version and I expect it to get a similar Pecan burst with some Koa darkness at the wingtips. Roasted and baked to deliciousness instead of raw...

Your English is better than mine, that was what I was thinking of. I reckon you'd lose perspective with so many choices at your disposal, and the relevance to the sound produced when plugged in seems somewhat tenuous. Guess so... Then again, having the sounds in pairs as either one single long file or five separate duos might help getting the idea of the acoustic differences. Clicking separate files include the mouse click and the time needed for that which might be enough to forget part of the sound. My idea was a ten pair file containing one time pairs as follows: Tas Oak-Radiata Pine - pause Tas Oak-Celery Top Pine - pause Tas Oak-Blackwood - pause Tas Oak-Kauri Pine - pause Radiata Pine-Celery Top Pine - pause Radiata Pine-Blackwood - pause Radiata Pine-Kauri Pine - pause Celery Top Pine-Blackwood - pause Celery Top Pine-Kauri Pine - pause Blackwood-Kauri Pine That list would cover all variations, the rest would be same woods in different order which may not be relevant

Well, my wife seemed not so happy that the workshop is open until July compared to that the course would already have ended, as she would like me to join her with the gardening. Today I got lucky: It has been raining all day so any outdoor activities would have been out of question anyway So it was time to do something to the runs which were plenty. A fellow builder had advised to cut them with a blade while the lacquer was still wet but I never had the time to do that. To my surprise the runs were still soft after two weeks in the semi-cold porch. They cut easily with a razor blade and the cuts were still a bit tacky. And of course things happened... On the front one cut was too deep and on the edge I sanded through in a couple of places. I'm hesitant about the front: Should I just fix the cut or sand bare and use some dark filler to enhance the pores?

Thanks, the little pause really helped, it made analyzing the attack much easier. After having really concentrated in listening to all the samples I couldn't hear the tiniest difference! At some point I thought there might have been something but it seemed more like a fraction of a second out of tune than actual difference in the shape of the sound. The whole listening process felt like double checking the tuning of well tuned guitars... No sound samples needed, but after not having heard any difference in the sound samples I'd like to know if there's any difference in the length of the sound i.e. does the sound go beyond a certain level in the same time. Images of the graphs, maybe? Another interesting comparison would also hear the acoustic sound of each wood in pairs... Five species would make - what - ten different pairs? Would that be too much to ask?

If that's not too much of an effort, it would be nice to compare to the current ones. As for the fade-outs, would the length of the samples grow much if you let the sound die naturally, or fade/cut it when it's barely audible?

I tried to listen to them again for double checking that I had understood the instructions right which I seemingly had. The biggest issue to me is that the first sound of each pair seems to be still ringing when the second sound comes in, and the second one ends with an 'oomph' like you had faded it in a split second. That's most prominent with the amped low E but it can be heard with both amped and plain. Like 'PlingggggggPlingggmph'.

The Koa parts all are slick! And the super light burst just adds depth to the carving - like a good makeup it looks like there's none. I had to take a quick look to find out how G. Dead sounds and that guitar really matches with what I heard! Country and Western with some pointy edges...

As long as there's physical difference in them, all is good. I believe more in the properties of the wood than in the species, with the side note that the difference in cell construction can affect tone as well. There's many "tonewoods" that carry the same name despite being of totally different species. The Wood Database lists several mahoganies and rosewoods plus dozens of woods that are related but don't carry the name, or which are sometimes called by those names but aren't related, or look and behave like the famous ones. Your Tasmanian equivalents are as good as the "real" ones.

The main reason I asked for it is to see how much difference there might be when unplugged and compare it to how little of that difference is left with a magnetic pickup. I agree. It's hard to tell when the sound really ends. I may have seen some testing where they cut the recording at a certain level of the meter, but it can be affected by just nudging the table so it would not be accurate.

Ask me how I know... Or rather don't, that was not fun.

By the theories of "tonewood" I don't believe the sound of your woods would be similar. Given that one weighs half of the other and by Janka is only half as hard (guess your pine is as soft as ours) there should be enough difference to affect the tone - acoustically! Can you do a similar test using an acoustic microphone for comparison? That would tell if the magnetic pickup only catches the vibration of the strings. - Measuring the sustain with various woods would be the next thing to test after the actual "sound" test which seems to tell no audible difference. Didn't you also say that the rig stands on rubber feet to eliminate feedback from the table? Your system really is built to eliminate all extra variables!

I changed the nut from a 1984 Fender Am. Std trussrod. Got the replacement nut from our local guitar store which isn't big. Getting the plug out was a bit clumsy, I simply drilled it away with a cordless hand drill. Agreed, I managed to break some wood behind the nut as well but the chips went easily back in with some super glue. And finally I "turned" a new plug out of a died branch of our plum tree. First I drilled a 6 mm hole into the piece, then put a long enough 6 mm bolt through it and fastened with a nut. Cut some excess off to be closer to the final dimensions. And then I just attached my powered hand drill to the rail of our porch and used various sandpapers to get the size right. Glued the plug in and shaped the outside with a carving knife and voilà! - You can see the thread marks from this angle

It seems one of those cylindrical routers is slowly making its way on my shopping list. The channels look very nice! Do I see right, will there be some fine adjusting needed with a chisel near the lower f-hole?

Visit your local hardware store. There's all kinds of ceramic tiles, even larger than a square foot. For a pickguard you may do with a broken one so the price should be no issue. For shaping them there's inexpensive coping saws and drill bits - mine has both in one tool! There's also diamond blades and sanding pads for both hand and power tools. I guess the thickness is the biggest problem with tiles, they tend to be rather 1/4" than 1/8". In our house there was some very thin ~8x8" tiling from the 1950's on the wall above the herd but since both the thickness and exact dimension didn't match with what was available I changed all of them.

If you said all samples were from one single setup I'd believe you. Wooden ears... Or limited headphones which they should not be.

In that price range it's hit and miss, you can find good ones like the sets of MusicLilly but lemons are also common in the that price range. Wobbly cylinders is the most common issue, off-center gear makes the tuner unusable. Korean made ones are usually of better quality than Chinese.

Congratulations, the win was well earned.