Bizman62

Whoa!

Your mumbling wasn't too bad, I could easily follow what you said. That said, you should seriously concentrate more on the sound/noise levels. Apparently your microphone has some pretty effective automatic recording level system since even the hiss of your pencil came out as loud as your speech. All those bangs, scratches, screeches, tingelings etc. not to mention the sudden music made listening with headphones miserable. The structure-borne sound felt like having an ear against your workbench!

Bolting the camera to the wall using thick rubber washers might help, a lapel mic or voice over even more.

Other than the sound issues it was pretty decent. I especially liked the lighting from the workbench camera.

I once was at a concert/inside festival with several bands in a large restaurant. The last band only had those tiny Gorilla amps miked to the PA. They were the loudest band of the evening! Not the best sounding, though...

The small amps of today often have a speaker emulating output for street credible guitar amp sounds from the PA. That would allow for cranking up the amp's volume to a level where it sounds good without breaking anyone's ears.

My playing hours increased tremendously with the 3 watt Blackstar Fly. It provides a good sound at radio listening level.

10 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

like some sort of angry alien

Had to look twice to find him! That's the beauty of wood, there's so many hidden figures. Plus it takes somewhat of an artistic eye to see them. Good choice by Andy, nice find by Ash!

That looks like an interesting project, thru neck and all that jazz! The body looks both traditional and original at the same time, and comfortable as well.

What caught my eye is the high e side of the headstock. Are you sure the bulge doesn't get in the way in some open chords like D7, even more so if you use a movable fingering omitting your index finger?

5 hours ago, Urumiko said:

if i was going to do it direct on the body as opposed to a template it would have to be a ruddy big saw.

Not at all, the only "big" thing is the depth of the throat. Similar to a jeweler's saw but longer. And cheap as soap! Even the crooked blade I had to use did the job on ovangkol which is quite hard. Remember that the top is quite thin!

IronGear have quite a many diagrams by themselves as well: http://www.irongear.co.uk/irongear_pickups_027.htm

I suppose the two HSS versions in the Hybrid and Misc. section are closest to your needs since the HotRail one is a humbucker. It's pretty similar to the Seymour Duncan version.

Funny that neither of those provide a schema with the humbucker being at the neck and the singles towards the bridge...

Anyhow, re pickups if you can fit it into the place it can be wired.

As the title says. Every time I log in there's the green bar announcing the June 2019 GOTM vote being open. Clicking on it tells that the voting time has already passed as it should since we're fast reaching mid July.

There's no contest for July either, nor has the June winner been publicly announced.

Twisting the symmetry has always been one of my favourites, it makes the viewer's brain work a little to figure out what's happening there.

Somehow that reminds me of a rag rug I designed for my mother in my teens; just a couple of circles and lines drawn in perspective, but overlapped systematically the opposite way. If that made any sense...

5 hours ago, Urumiko said:

What tools did you guys use for cuting?

For the first one I drilled some holes and used a scroll saw for cutting the shape.

For the current one the scroll saw was broken so I did it the old fashioned way with a fret saw.

I'm not good with any saw so I had to leave quite a large margin to be filed off. Files are nice but a piece of sandpaper either rolled or folded can take you a long way.

2 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

it’s really not difficult to cut it by hand after sticking the print out to the top

Or, as you've found out to be handy, lay some masking tape on the top and draw on it. For my current build I made a template out of a piece of cardboard and used it for drawing the outlines of the f-holes, obviously flipping the template upside down on the other side. The first f-hole I ever made was designed right on the maple top of the thinline T-type.

The most difficult thing with f-holes isn't the shape, it's locating. Drawing lines in an 90 deg angle to the center line marking the ends helps some, but the distance from the edge and the angle of the hole can be fiddly to get symmetrical. Again, the center line comes in handy: Using a protractor draw boxes where your f-holes will reside, including some margins. Then make a template to fit the boxes and you'll get them easily into the right place.

17 hours ago, ScottR said:

Your English skills are light years beyond my Spanish skills.

Thanks for your kind words. Bear in mind though that I had English at school for 12 years or so alongside and after which I've listened to Anglo-American music, watched Anglo-American movies and TV series and for the last couple of decades read and written on a couple of forums like this.

English is hard to avoid here, to that extent that my mom who never had a single lesson of English learned to understand it so well that she could follow a TV series by ear in the next room and come to watch the finale only having to ask which face belongs to whom...

Back to the subject, I don't know if I envy more your skills or the materials and facilities you have.

To me it looks fine, after all the glue lines are longer than the gap lines. The most important place to have a perfect glue joint is the bottom where you have the largest gluing surface. Just think about the scarf joint in the upper neck, there's no side support yet it stands the same string tension as the rest of the guitar.

Use a syringe or whatever you can to drive some glue to fill the gaps and call it done.

Adding an extra pickup is no rocket science. For it to work as a PJ you'd have to change the wiring as well, adding a pot or two. As a result you'd get the P sound from the neck pickup and the J sound from the bridge, and a blend of the two using both. Since the P and J wiring/pots are different in their functions, you might also be interested in the various other wiring options there. The first that comes into my mind would be having one volume, one tone and one blender pot instead of a three way switch.

3 hours ago, Prostheta said:

are those glued up with the grain in opposing directions?

On 5/31/2019 at 9:36 PM, Stu. said:

Yep! The maple and ebony are running perpendicular to the wenge beneath. I tried to make the sides a little wider too, hoping that would add strength. 

8 hours ago, Stu. said:

the ebony is causing the wenge to warp pretty badly

Hmm... The rings I made using the same design are still intact somewhere in a scrap box. One difference, though: I only used two species of wood, walnut slats with a 0.5 mm birch veneer in between identically to those you made. They all had been cut to thickness a long time ago so they were perfectly stabile. For what I've seen especially ebony fretboard blanks can be dripping moist when they come from a wood supplier.

13 hours ago, ScottR said:

Are you sure this is your second language?

Yes, pretty sure. When I was very small and just learned to talk, Finnish was the language to use with my mother and German the one to be used with dad and his relatives. Mom and dad spoke Swedish with each other since it was their only common language. English came along at school when I was nine, unless you count reading subtexts as a language learning method.

Some men get all the best women. Some men have the best wood ever... And the skills to rub it right!

I both drool and want to quit building after seeing such stunning masterpieces! Isn't that normal?

If you love it and if it encourages you to play more it's the best instrument ever built.

If blue is what he wants, give him blue flames. You've certainly seen the blue, almost invisible flames on glowing ember, fading into deep dark blue.

Like this:

Have you studied the Rosa String Works YouTube channel? There's plenty of information about fixing acoustic instruments. And he speaks so loud that even a Non English Speaker like myself can understand.

I'll definitely need to learn to carve the way you do. Maybe seeing such well carved one in flesh might help. Could you send that one to me? I'd bring it back next time I visit England...

Nice start! To me it looks like there was a rim of finish under the bridge. Take the bridge area to bare wood before gluing since glue won't stick to the finish and any rim will lift the bridge from a perfect wood to wood contact.

As I've noticed elsewhere, words can mean different things. By one sided razor blade I meant the classic Gillette type with a protecting folded metal sheet on the other side. The type you have goes by the name of carpet knife blade in my books.

As you say fire can easily be too aggressive so let's leave that for a future project when you've learned the basics. A dark filler can be used but you don't have to buy it, simply mix dark wood dust with glue and sand it back. Stain won't stick to glue but it doesn't matter if the glue is of a desired colour. The wood dust mix may also take the stain a little better than any plastic based filler.

Any stain can be oiled, that's a common way to do even professionally. Note that the oil will change the colour of the stain somewhat.

@ScottR has a very good grain study including getting the blue right: