Inisheer

Back again......still no word of that multimeter from my friend, but I took a closer look inside of the guitar and I might have found the problem. Right at one of the potentiometers there is a wire soldered to it and there are some loose strands of the wire that are sticking out. It doesn't look like they are touching the ground though, could this be the problem? Sorry I don't have any pics. And thanks for all the help, especially Mickguard.

btw...RIP Major TOM

RIP?

Sounds like he's still alive to me.

High maybe... but alive.

Sorry, guess I didn't understand what Drak said.

you threw out Tom? I could of gave him a nice home, room and bored

Then when someone said this that confused me even more. Sorry I misunderstood. And sorry for getting confused about the spalted/ burled thing.... I guess I'm doing a lot of misunderstanding today. Just ignore my posts.

By the way Drak will you be filling the burl excursions with clear epoxy or tinited? It would be great if we got pictures off the process, I have always wanted to work with burls but i didn't really fully understand the filling process enough to try.

That looks really great Drak, I think I'll have to try some burl eventually. But I agree with guitarchump, it looks like a difficult wood to work with. How do you go through the finishing process?

btw...RIP Major TOM

Nice. I can't say I'm a big fan of teles, but it looks like you've done lots of work and it looks great. Can't wait to see it when it's done. And of those two choices you're debating for finishing, I'd go for that greenish burst one.

I recently painted my first guitar too, and found this to help me- click (there's a timeline about half way down the page). It uses krylon instead of duplicolor but I assume they are pretty much the same (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I'd let it dry a little longer just to make sure, but it should work. Good luck.

Sorry for the confusion. I guess your not to impress now

No prob. I am still very impressed, that stuff is amazing. I've never seen truss rod covers this fancy before. I think someday I'll have to do some shopping from you. My personal favorite from the site is this wolf. Great work!

I'm sure that half-hour doesn't include design, layout, cutting and fitting.

And cSuttle's a professional (unlike us amateur hacks ).

Ah, didn't think about the cutting and other steps, stupid me. And yep, I'm definitely and amateur. Hopefully someday I can call myself a professional too, but for now I'm just a wannabe.

edit: I just checked out his site, and he is very professional. Wow!

Only half an hour to make that thing?! I'm impressed. ...And after all that work you're going to send it off to someone else?

what is the MIMForum?

MIMF or the Musical Instrument Makers Forum. Another pretty good site for guitar related info. I use both mimf and PG to learn as much as I can about building guitars.

By the way, that truss rod cover looks really cool. Must've been hard to do.

My guess though is that a tiny piece of wire from the leads is touching a ground...that'll cut out your sound. I speaketh from experience.

Sorry, but these terms are a little vague to me. What exactly do you mean by the leads touching the ground? Sorry if I sound ignorant, but I have no experience with wiring and uh....I guess I am ignorant. But this might be the actual problem, so thanks for the help.

I've seen some of your work before....truly amazing. Looking forward to seeing more of your paintings maybe along with a tutorial. For those of you who don't know him yet, here is just one of his designs. Celtic Cross

(Crap! Another expert on this site that makes me feel like an amateur/loser.)

Darn....thought grounding it might be the problem, but if that's not it then maybe it is a bad potentiometer or something. Later in the week I'll try talking to a friend to see if he has a multimeter I can use. Until then I will continue to sit here upset.

Not grounding the bridge seems to be a pretty common wiring mistake.

hmmm....maybe this could be the problem? The poor instructions said to take this one wire and wrap it around the tailpiece bushing and then push it into its place. But the hole wasn't big enough to do this so i just put the wire under the bushing. Does that ground it too, or does that keep everything from working? I'm pretty sure I did the wiring correctly, so do you think this would be the problem? How would I fix this....if it is indeed the problem? Thanks for all the help by the way.

It was color coded. I finished all the wiring, but there is still no sound. And yes, I did check to see if the volume wasn't on 0. I still don't know what I did wrong....

^Are you all talking about it while it is still in "paint" form? While it is still liquidy, it may come off with water. My problem was after it had dried. It became powdery and came off onto the guitar. I tried water but it wouldn't come clean. Eventually I used some Lysol spray to get it mostly clean. Thanks for the help though.

Before building my own guitars I thought I would get a saga kit for practice. So I got the LP version, painted it, and started wiring it. The instructions were horrible, but I tried my best. I thought I had done a good job and finished putting it together. But when I plugged it into my amp....nothing happened. Turned my amp up loud, but no sound came out at all. Does anybody have any suggestions as to why this happened? I'm pretty sure all the connections were ok, so I don't know where to look to fix the problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I just got done finishing my guitar and started putting it together. It had shielding paint in the cavities, and when I was putting in the pots/switches then it got on the outside of the body and smeared it everywhere. Now there are black smudges all over the white guitar. Does anybody know how to clean shielding paint off the body without ruining the paint? Thanks in advance for the help.

Thanks. So if the slot is flat in the stewmac board then would this nut work better? It is flat bottomed so it might be easier to work with.

Sorry this is probably a basic question, but does the radius of the fingerboard have to be the same as the radius of the nut?

I was looking at these fingerboards from stew-mac that have a 12" radius. They have a 1/8" slot for a nut. Then I was looking at this nut (#1866). It looks like it is the right size so it should fit in that slot nicely, but it has a 7-1/4" radius. Can anyone recommend a nut that will fit in without having to do any modifications?

In my first post I agreed that ash looks very nice stained. This is probably what I will use since I've seen it dyed blue many times before. And thanks for that link, those prices for the flamed maple tops are a little better than others I've seen (the quilted is still a bit much for me though). If I use a 1/4" top, then the binding plan should work, and that's definitely a good thing.

And I also agree that if I did use veneer (though I decided not to use it for this project) it would be mostly practice. I realize that veneer doesn't always work for newbies, but if we don't try it at all, how can we become better? You people have helped me greatly, thanks again for all the advice.

I would enjoy two seperate sections, "In Progress Work" and "Finished Work"

I never thought of that, I think it's a good idea. And about the "this is what im gonna build" thread complaint....I might have to plead guilty. Although mine are usually about design ideas and research, I don't have any actual pics of my progress (although hopefully next week I'll have a finished project). But all the threads I have posted about "going to build" projects hopefully will take place, though maybe not soon. I am still young, and don't have unlimited money, so my projects have to wait until I have adequate funds (college takes up most of my money ). But I have done plenty of research on everything from wood to hardware and as soon as I do have money, I am ready to start my project.

I'm planning on using the 1/40" veneer. Trust me, if I had the money I would definitely prefer a 1/4" maple top, but that's out of my price range right now. And if the natural binding plan doesn't work out then I won't mind having no binding either. I know that dyeing veneer doesn't work for everyone, but if it does mess up, it will be a little easier to remove than a maple top.

And I agree, that pen does look like maple. But the site said it was made from poplar so hopefully all will work well.

Hey, no problem. I just had a series of threads and found out that basswood isn't all that great for dye/natural finishes, so I was a little disappointed too. So any ideas of what kind of paint job you're going to do? Perhaps a cool graphic or something......

I've done some off site research and found that poplar can take dye. This wood pen was apparently made from a piece of poplar and was dyed blue. If a pen looks that good, then a guitar should too, right?

I agree with every one of you. I enjoy looking at people's projects and seeing how they come along. I was just curious to see if everyone else feels this way. Apparently they do.