Gogzs

I'd go for a sane job that will eventually drive you insane, and then you balance it out with filing, sanding and routing through wood until you have a guitar. As folks here said, working in a huge factory isn't as romantic as you imagine it. As a student (12 years ago) I worked in an ice cream factory. To this day I am an ice cream addict, but that job almost killed the love I have for ice cream haha. I also used to ride and compete professionally at some of the most amazing skateparks across Europe, had sponsors... did that for two years, and the day I quit my sponsors and went back to college, is the day I remember as the day when riding was fun again. 

Now I do software engineering form 8-16 and I love my job, but what I love even more is taking a break from it and go to the skatepark to ride for myself, or go to the attic and bring some new guitar ideas to life. I can not imagine riding or guitar building as a full time job, I think it would suffocate the passion I have for those, but as a hobby, they are just the perfect thing to have next to software engineering.  

EDIT: but then there is also this:
Ergonomic Guitar Build - In Progress and Finished Work - ProjectGuitar.com

I think these are the beginings of Stranberg Guitars, one of our own. And Look where he is now  but he doesn't produce them by himself now, it's a huge operation... so again, probably not the romantic path you have in your head. 

I like this video when it comes to tonewood:

Do Heavier Guitars *REALLY* Sustain Longer? - Let's Find Out!! - YouTube

But I might be biased since I really love thin bodied guitars that are on the lighter and more ergonomic side. Also, bare in mind that PRS built a rather thin guitar for Herman Li (along the Ibanez S-series that Herman Li usually plays)

(2) Watch | Facebook

So this gets us to the "if you have a stake in it...". In Croatia, we have a saying that goes like: "para vrti di burgija ne moze", translated it would be like "Money keeps drilling where a drill bit fails".

EDIT: Also, when it comes to the tone of an electric guitar, I'd rather plug in a cheap guitar into an expensive amp and EQ out the shortcomings of the guitar, than play a PRS on some cheap shitty chinese amp with poor loudspeakers. As long as the pickups are okayish, a good amp will bring it to life.

18 hours ago, mistermikev said:

the fact that you created that in paint... kind of bumps it up a notch for me!  lol.  nice work.  i hope those purple areas are meant to be purpleheart reveals.

think you might want to mock up your tuners because it looks (to my untrained eye) like you'd need a bit more real estate to get the machines on there w/o issues but i could have no idea what I'm talking about (full disclaimer)

nice job on the design.

Yeah, the purple areas are where the purpleheart reveals itself (arm rest contour, belly cut out etc...)

As far as the headstock goes, I absolutely love the looks of the headstock on my first build, and I'll do exactly the same, so everything will fit, might tweak it a little, but to the naked eye, it should be like this:

@Bizman62 ah I grew up on those cartoons even tho I grew up in the 90s. The kind of cartoon where all the "actionable" stuff is slightly differently colored to the static stuff... if there's a closet with 4 drawers, you know what drawer the character will open because that drawer has a bit different outline and color  

Here is the roughest plan of the black/purple build with golden hardware, created entirely in paint, so excuse that haha. It will be a necktrough, and the core will be made from 5 laminated strips of dark bamboo with purpleheart veneer in-between the bamboo stripes. 

The "wings" will be a purpleheart core laminated in-between two dark bamboo pieces. I suck at designing stuff, so the shape will be finalized once I start using tools on solid wood, but the drawing is pretty close to what I have in my head. And it makes complete sense in my head haha, we will see how that will work out  

Finish will be satin all around, no shiny surfaces besides the gold hardware. Pickups will be black. And I plan to use that gold evo fretwire.  

Since I have a limited amount of clamps, I have to get this glued up first, so I'm not in a rush to sketch out the second one. But it will be more among the lines of the first build, and less glam rock ballades. I have to sort out the work area, didn't have time today, but sometimes next week I shall start cutting the bamboo and assembling the necktrough core. 

The wood (and grass) finally arrived. I still have to tweak things in my working area, some stuff during my first build was super impractical, so it made me work even slower than I would have anyway. I will sort that out on sunday, and start cutting and gluing on monday. 

First build for scale comparison... and from left to right:
Longest boards (one light and two dark boards) are bamboo. The one on the right is purpleheart, and the pieces in front are olive tree. I also have purpleheart veneer that is not in the picture.

I plan to build one dark bamboo/purpleheart with golden hardware, and one light bamboo, purpleheart and olive with black hardware.

Rough plans: thin body, specially around the edges like last time. Dark one will be with a floyd rose, HSS pickup arrangement, light one will have a fixed bridge also HSS configuration, but probably active pickups. 

I plan to use bamboo for the fretboards as well  will upload some rough design plans by sunday. This will be one slow thread with the potential for both, real awesomeness or complete havoc. We will se if the first "Prcknow RS" was just beginners luck, or if there is real potential in me  whatever it ends up being, I plan to have just as much fun as last time!

On 12/12/2020 at 4:33 AM, killemall8 said:

Definitely not the strings themselves. Tried multiple brands, gauges and core types. its definitely fret buzz from the frets, because the last fret doesnt buzz.

This thread is such a hard read, I'm really a huge fan, specially when you go crazy with the colors (pink/blue/toxic green). Just curious, do you always use the same fret wire? And did anything significant change in your process... new blade for cutting the fret slots etc? I can not accept that this is an issue that can not be solved... wish you were from Europe, I'd pick up one of the problematic ones just to satisfy my curiosity trying to solve this.

Oh also, when you knock on the guitar body/neck with your knuckles, do you hear any rattling/buzzing?

Late to the thread, but... can you pull the frets from one of those buzzing guitars and try to play it fretless and see if it'll buzz? I know it sounds silly, but could it be the strings themselves?

I love this body shape, can't wait to see your take on it. Looks like it'll be a fun thread  

Yeah, I searched the forums for "bamboo" but didn't see any mentioning of glue. It also doesn't make sense for me to go to IKEA and buy a bamboo cutting board and try gluing it, the boards I'll be ordering from designholtz could be manufactured in a completely different manner and not react the same as the cutting board from IKEA. 

I guess sometimes next week we will find out how rosewood glues to bamboo and we'll go from there  

@Workingman I'm mentioning bamboo boards from IKEA specifically because they feel pretty raw and not epoxy filled. They even sell oil for keeping the board conditioned, so I assume there are open pores and it's not just bamboo submerged in epoxy.

6 hours ago, killemall8 said:

Can I call dibs on this one? Don't care, calling it, dibs!  impressive work, hope you're doing as well as those guitars look. Take care and keep up this awesomeness!

On 10/15/2020 at 10:15 AM, Bizman62 said:

Did you find this: https://www.woodworkersjournal.com/glue-bamboo/

To me that makes sense.

Many other bamboo gluing questions I found were about gluing it on concrete as a flooring material in which case flexibility is required.

Found exactly that and it made the most sense, yeah. Some did suggest epoxy, and yeah, most answers were gluing bamboo to concrete I'll go with wood glue and yolo it.

The only change since my initial plan is that the core will be purpleheart, sandwiched between two dark bamboo boards. So when I contour it the purpleheart will be sticking out on places. Neck will be laminated bamboo with sheets of purpleheart veneer inbetween, going for the "racing stripes along the whole body" look again.

@mistermikev and @curtisa that story sounds a bit fishy, but I'll believe you  

To bump this a little, as I'm about to pull the trigger on a few bamboo boards and some purpleheart (it'll be that dark roasted bamboo + purpleheart + golden hardware). 

Anyway, question is, does anyone know if I can use normal wood glue with bamboo, and how well it'll bond to wood? Technically it's grass and not wood, but the same fibers are at play basically, so I don't see why wood glue wouldn't work. But if anyone has some experience or more knowledge, I'd be thankful, info online is a bit contradicting. 

Coming along really nice, love the headstock carving. Glad the parts arrived so we can see this get done, such a nice piece of wood

Very well deserved, awesome craftmanship + this thread taught me a lot about finishes

I think the strings from the top tuners will barely miss the middle ones. You can always go with string trees or:

https://www.thomann.de/gb/dietrich_parts_string_butler_v3_full_black.htm

I think this would fit in nicely and sort everything out, perhaps a bit over the top solution to a rather simple problem.

As for the rest, I'd love to see a Bigbsy on it for the bridge, but I think any trem system would be a pain to use since the arm would be directly over the knobs, so a nice clean fixed bridge will have to do. Nice guitar tho

Damn it I hate these threads, no matter if 10 entrants or 2, it's always a hard choice...

I was wondering if you ever finished this. Glad to see it plays and you're happy... GOTM this thing haha, I f*ing love it

3 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Yes, I found this also. Since we don't process payments or store/retain personal info, HTTPS hasn't become much of a priority. I'll revisit this, @Gogzs. Thanks!

Otherwise, everything seems to be okay now. 

Yup, looks good now.

On a sidenote, as long as users log into a website with a username/email and password combo, I like the site to be secure. Most people use the same email/password combo everywhere, so if someone reads your unsecure traffic and picks out email/password combos, no one is preventing them to try the same combos on PayPal etc... so yeah, even tho you don't have payments here, a leaked username/password combo is still valuable

If you force the site to https instead http, it says the cert is not valid, but once you accept the risk it loads FontAwesome and all the goodies and it looks normal. But the issue is that all the links are http so once you click onto something (thread, forum secion etc.) you're again on a http site so fonts won't load (mixed content bla bla).

Just a question, is there any place in the forum software where you set the site URL? Can you change it from http to https? :) 

Been following this one closely the whole time. What a lovely instrument, great job Andy! And the sound awesome  

For some reason I feel like this is to a guitar what a harpsichord is to a piano. Sounds really renaissance, love it!

The top turned out so nice, wow. Can't wait to see it all put together, great job!

3 hours ago, komodo said:

I hate this part, but it is the single greatest thing you can do for your guitar.

I agree completely. You dress one fret, polish it, make it look and feel all nice and shiny... only 23 to go, uhhhh... 

Turned out really great, can't wait to see it all set up and played.

This thread is such a pleasure to follow. I watched some master builder videos on youtube and the amount of job specific high precision tooling they have and use to get some stuff done, and then there's you. 

The tooling you "built" and use, and the results you achieve with them... so low tech, but so efficient. Absolutely love every documented step in this thread

Interesting process, looks stunning in that raw black... what a crazy threat from the beginning. 

I got asked by some friends if I would ever attempt an acoustic build, and seeing threads like this, I'm fairly sure I won't  

Insane craftsmanship on display here, can't wait to see it done and hear it played. Very interesting instrument