johnuk

It goes to show, even an expensive guitar has to fall to it's enviroment! I don't usually play standing up, but, just recently, while I was sitting down, the rear strap lock's screw just slide straight out of the body of my Ibanez JS10th. This seems to be a continuing problem with Ibanez's Luthite guitars, I think they need to have a look at the drill sizes they're choosing. There was almost no grip on the threads of the screw. It looks like the guy's who chose the drill sizes haven't cleared the holes out before testing the screw's fit, as there was a bit of machining dust in the screw's thread. I wanted to know what the best idea would be to resurface the screw thread again; I need to repack the hole. The guitar is made from Luthite, a type of plastic. So I REALLY don't want to risk using any form of Cyno glue, as it'll probably haze or blemish the plastic surrounding it. I also doubt that packing wood into the hole using PVC to bind it will stick to the surface either. My only thought is to put a few drops of slow curing epoxy into the hole and then reinsert the screw, letting it set in place. I have enough trouble using a screw driver around the guitar, so a hand drill armed with a razor sharp bit spinning 3000 times a minute would be asking for it. So, I could really use any advice from the guys here who've had to do this themselves! Best wishes, John

I remember see something on a Trade Secrets program about this. The guy mixed Talcum powdered with something, Naptha perhaps, to form a really thick goo. Then he painted it all over the stained area and let it dry solid. The stuff just brakes away like a powder once it's dry, but it seemed to work really well. I think the Talcum powder helps soak up the oil. Putting a bit of gentle pressure on it probably wouldn't hurt. You can buy Talc from almost superstore. It's in the section where all the girly stuff is usually. Not that I er... spend... erm... much time around there...

I have a Peterson VS-2 Strobe tuner for sale in the UK or Europe. The tuner is brand new and still in it's crispy clean box, unused. Please email me if you're be interested. My best wishes, John johnhe-uk@supanet.com

Thanks for the ideas. I'll give it a go!

Well, yeah! I shouldn't have touched the guitar... but I did anyway! I have a Fender Squire lying around which is not only third hand, but has been thru a number of modifications and was looking for sad about it's self. So I am fitting a brand new original FR I've had lying around for months and some other new bits I have spare to make it a fun guitar to play about the house. I'm not trying to create a work of art by any means. I am am trying to think of a way I can fill the horrible cavities. I remember seeing a thread similar to this on here some time last year. I don't want to have a pickguard, so I need to fill in the electronics cavity and leave a space where I want the bridge pickup to go. A bit like EVH first home made Kramer guitars - I can think of a way to do this but I thought I'd ask you to make sure I wasn't doing anything seriously unnecessary. Although I have new parts lying around to put in the guitar, I don't want to spend a lot of time with it or any particularly large amount of money - it's destiny is as a beta guitar. My first idea was to mix up some two part resin and just pour it into the cavity, perhaps adding some lumps of spare mahogany to remove some of the volume, and save cost. Then I began wondering if perhaps there was something else I could use. Epoxy never seems to dry past being rubbery, so that's not going to work. But I read something about cement / plaster based moulding materials. Like I say, it's nothing major, it's a cheap guitar and I'm only fixing it up because I have the parts spare. I have to say though, whatever the answer is, I'd really prefer it didn't involve any routing. The pourable resin has the beautiful aspect to it that I can just mix it, pour it and leave it to set up, then sand it flat. But it's about $25 for a bottle each of the parts, and it's tricky to find in the UK. Any ideas? Many thanks! John

That's sounds like such an easier idea! I fully understand what you're describing. The main problem was the rate I could join the boards, so the simplicity of the wedge idea is an ultimate extra. I really appreciate your help! John

This isn't strictly guitar related, but it's close enough... I wanted to use some wide Mahogany boards for something but the widest the planks come is 6". After machine planing they end up at about 145mm wide and 18mm thick. I would be using roughly 800mm lengths of this timber to form boards around 435mm wide; so about three of the planks would be lying side by side. I understand how to glue using Titeboard but I am kind of stuck on how I should go about joining the piece together. Sash clamping is the most obvious option. But I may need to produce a number of these boards within a certain time frame and buying tens and tens of sash clamps that can open over 400mm is going to cost quite a lot in itself. Also, this method is far too time consuming and labour intensive for the number of boards that will need clamping. Can anyone think of an ingenious method for clamping, or squeezing the boards, on mass? I thought that one idea might be to produce something similar to a mitre box with a removable side. It could even be put together from metal I guess. Some sort of grill would support the boards to keep them level; this would stop them gluing themselves to the jig. I also thought it would help if another system applies pressure to their other sides to keep them level with each other and ensure none have caught on something and stuck slightly out of alignment. The box would have an internal width of something just under 435mm so when the side was closed it would squeeze the pieces together. That's just an idea anyway. Is there anything already available for doing this kind of thing? I know it is, or at least was, quite common place for carpenters who were laying floors from such planks to do something similar. Surely out of all those carpenters, one must have already thought of a solution to it other than sash clamps? Ideally the clamp would be able to hold two or three boards at a time. I figured I could achieve that by using machined spacers between each board, since, by the time they're glued, they're not going to fit back thru the automatic plane. Thanks for any help with this! John

I used to weld gates and railings together for this guy I ended up working with after my work experience at school. We were MIG welding it so we had the amps up fairly high and I recall a number of times watching gates I could barely lift, jump off the supports as I started to weld. We would connect the earths to metal stands and then rest the gate lying down on them. I also found out very quickly they would tack weld themselves onto the supports. Soon after I opted to loosen them with a hammer before trying to pick them up. When I left that place I had a sun tan to die for and a burn in my leg that's taken the last year to heal over. Welding... such fun!

He he he he. That would be quite nasty. I think Francium is actually radioactive as well! So the guitar would probably glow in the dark too. Believe it or not, which I bet many of you won't, you can actually weld things like magnesium castings. They have such a big mass and high thermal conductivity that the heat is spread out all over them very easily, before it can cause it to ignite. Group 1 metals burn in water beautifully, Magnesium's extra electron means you need to use steam to make it react, again, thermal conductivity and mass come into play.

We have a video about how to make your own bows. It's been a while since I watched it, but I think I remember seeing them steaming the timber so they could form it into a compound shape. I'm pretty sure it was bows, but it might have been something else. The steaming thing they did it in was an all over method, rather than applied at a point. They left it in there steaming for hours and then bent it by applying some pressure to it, rather than the wood just bending with human force alone. I think they might have also used pressurised steam... do you have a pressure cooker? See if there's anything around your house you could put the top it while it is steamed, like a water tank. A big polysytrene box off a Hi-Fi or something like that would work great I would guess. The heat from the steam would be contained very well. I think in the US they even sell big polysytrene boxes like this as coolers for drinks at things like BBQ's. I've never seen them like that here in the UK, we have them lined in plastic instead, which is probably the same as in the US now as well.

I asked a similar question a while back. A lot of guitars have something in the region of a 2 - 3mm gap at the body where the neck looks as if it's sitting out of the body. I must stress, 1 - 3mm of neck material, not including the finger board, this adds a bit more on as well. The neck can be practically level in this case because most floating bridges, like the Floyd Rose, can be lowered right down into their cavities. Due to the very way in which something like a Tune-o-matic is designed, to sit on top of the body, that no longer is the case. Although... now I'm wondering if you could perhaps route a pocket and recess a fixed bridge into the body as well...

That's a cool idea Derek, and I thought about it earlier. But really it's going to be far so much work that it probably outweighs the cost of just buying a new piece, since I haven't done too much work on it so far. I can always use this wood to test my hand out at things before doing them on the next piece. I've heard of a few guitar companies making parts from aluminium. Fender made some Tele and Strat models with cast hollow bodies and them had them anodised, I think in some fairly compex patterns like flags, but I might be wrong. They had problems with them because the necks would expand too much as they warmed up and pull the guitar slightly out of tune. That's something I'd like to check up on though, I'm sure there must be some way to over come it; other than just detuning your guitar slightly to start with. I would love to make a guitar from metal because I'm so much better with it than I am with wood!!! I found a type of aluminium which is blown into a foam. I thought it would be an interesting material to fill the cavity inside the body of a guitar with as it's about the only form of metal which recreates the cellular nature of wood in some way. A solid chunk of magnesium the same size as a guitar body is somewhere between 400 - 700 pounds, but it's also incredibly light. A shell would cost much less I would assume.

Thanks Derek & Danno, I'm going to take a guess now, you were using Tite Bond Derek? Now I'm going to have to spend five weeks finding somewhere that sells this stuff locally! Danno, I think you may also have a point! How many of you guys building guitar necks have had to plane twists or bows out of your timber before? I always pictured making the neck as being more founded in cutting the profile and shaving it down to shape rather than hand planing out 1mm worth fo twist, curve or bow. I still think instrument building seems to belong in the realms of accuracy used in metal working! If only I could find a light weight metal that that doesn't expand or contract with heat changes and is also tonally beautiful... hmmmm... John

Having a longer neck also makes it easier to make a positioning error in moving your hands. Plus he has the neck at waist level where he can't see his finger on it too clearly. I just thought it was funkier than watching Vai tap some scale for 3 minutes.

I think he's been playing for something like 12 years using a fretless neck. He was the support act for Satriani when he played in Manchester here in the UK last year if I remember rightly. Keeping chords in tune I could imagine would be quite tricky. Like I said, not only are there no frets, there are also no fret markers, so he's trying to play using his ear alone to judge the notes. I thought it was quite impressive since most people consider violinists to be the best stringed instrument players for their intonation skill, and Ned is playing on 2 extra strings with a neck at least twice as long, and is also attempting to play chords. Besides, I kind of like the way it sounds slightly out of tune sometimes. It has a really weird winding sound similar to the way Eastern music uses quater tones. The solo half way thru definitly wins points for the weird sound of it, purely since it's somewhat unique and not just a tapping run.

Thanks, The wood was African Mahogany, Sapele. The sides being glued where machine planed flat by the wood supplier for me. I glued them using Evostick branded wood glue, Tight Bond is trickier to find in the UK. The surfaces where both lightly sanded with a few hundreds grit paper before hand to take off any keying, which I know is important with PVA based glues. I clamped them with sash clamps for a few days during drying. I broke the joint a few weeks later, so it should have easily been fully cured by them. The joint was 1" thick by about 6" long (It was a piece off the end of the body's blank after I'd glued it). It didn't snap the minute I put pressure on it, I had to raise it a foot or two off the floor and swing it with the join parallel to the floor. I was worried about warping because I had a piece of 2" thick Mahogany, 6" wide, I decided to use for the neck. I took it to have it planed down to size and on returning I could see it had a twist thru it's length, bowed back slightly and was also ever so slightly concaved along it's length. While the bow I could have fixed with the truss rod, I did not fancy hand planing out the twist or concave. I am now beginning to wonder if perhaps the person who machine planed it for me actually forced these into the wood because his plane seemed of a remarkably poor quality. It looked more like it was used for roughing out things that didn't require much accuracy. He told me it 'follows the lines in the wood already there', which is now making me wonder if he was perhaps trying to explain himself out of the equation. I am seriously unhappy with the current join because the number of router passes I had to take has left it very uneven, and I don't want to risk joining it just to have it snap off in my hand at a later date. The surface area of the join is far to big to have tried with a router really and I think I'm going to have to count it as my first mistake and write off the timber as practice wood. Which really pisses me off but... it's an experience! Of coarse, I would really enjoy hearing any stories any of you have about times you've made incredibly dumb mistake similar to my own! The place I initially bought the timber from has stocked hardwoods for literally as long as I can remember, the last 15 years easily, so I think their plane may be a lot more accurate than the on in the place I took it to afterwards. So to that end, I am wondering if I should buy some new timber and use a smaller pocket to set the neck in, or if I should simply bind the neck to the two body halves as is done with most other neck thru's I've seen. All the best, John

I have a lot of questions I'd like to ask about necks and rather than clog the board up with loads of posts, I thought I'd ask them in one go. I'll number them so it's easier for you to give any answers. 1.) When you make your guitar necks, do you buy the timber in the size of the neck or do you buy it larger then work it down? I am concerned here about warping if I buy it close to the final size. 2.) I did a bit of quality testing with a joint I glued for a body by hitting it on the floor. While it was difficult to brake, it did eventually go with not a huge amount of effort. If I build a neck thru in which the neck is the same thickness as the body, and not in a pocket, isn't the extra leverage of the neck a great risk? 3.) Has anyone seen any fretless guitars using a wooden fret board? I just saw a video of Ned Evett playing Slacker Jazz. http://www.nedevett.com/ Then I thought, hey... why not just miss out all the trouble of putting frets in? I really love the way in the video he is able to produce such smooth and extended slides without audioble intersections. He is using a glass fret board... with no markers... playing live... with 6 strings... I like the dance he does to time the slides mid solo! Since I've only been playing roughly two years I thought it might actually be a bit easier if I wanted to try fretless guitars now, rather than in another ten years when I'll be more used to having the frets there. I'm having sexually exciting dreams about being able slide and drop out chords perfectly in tune. I am asking about the neck because I've had a huge amount of trouble with setting the neck using the design I chose earlier, with such a wide pocket in the body. Having to take tens and tens of passes with the router has proven far too inaccurate and I'm not willing to accept the degree of error it has produced. I would like to just glue the neck between the two body sections but I'm very worried about it braking. 29.) Is this usually over come by putting a thick, 1/4", front and a back on the body? Thanks for any help with all this! And thanks to those of you who answers my questions about the intonation tool. John I'm getting a Peterson Strobe!!!! YAY!

Does anyone know what those stupidly priced tools are called for setting the intonation on a Floyd Rose? They look like a nut threaded through a piece of bent metal if that helps! The Intonation Master, Master Of Intonation, Very Expensive Bit Of Metal or something like that? Kind regards, John

say... erm... could I see that .doc file also please...? er... I think... not because i'm a 'tard or anything... johnhe-uk@supanet.com thanks! Johhn

From what I understand the idea of this is that it slightly alters the string length and alters the tuning a tiny fraction so that when you press down a string, and so bend it away from what it was when you tuned it using the open strings, it is not slightly sharp. But I think that is perhaps just a very simplified view of it. Right? Doesn't that mean when you play a open string chord, or something similar, that the open strings will now be slightly sharp? Couldn't you just tune you guitar by fretting at the 12 fret and using that instead to acheive a similar effect? I think the nut of the guitar is usually changed so I would guess I've made a mistake somewhere? Almost everywhere on the net simply says... 'Whoa! An incredible new tuning method! Buy it now or you WILL die!'. And nothing else. Can anyone explain how it works for me? Thanks! John

Looks like you may soon have an amp! I bet you could make most Marshalls sound twice as good if you ripped off one of their schematics and then fitted higher quality parts to it. Something to perhaps look into if you're able to have one made for you. Higher quality parts usually mean better reproduction of what you're actually inputting and better filtering or efficiency. I just posted this on another thread but you might not have seen it. http://www.gerhartamps.com/gilmorejr/build...jr_builders.htm I have had people tell me their neighbours have asked them to turn down home made amps running on a 9v battery. I don't know if this amp is you thing but it's something I've thought about trying. As I said in the other thread, I really like the clip labeled SD1/808, but there is a guy on there who's modified his for a Marshall Plexi / Van Halen type sound. Cool clip: http://www.gerhartamps.com/gilmorejr/build...ric_nelson2.mp3 Van Halen like clip: http://members.cox.net/musicfiles/modfullvol2.mp3 Kind regards! John

http://www.gerhartamps.com/gilmorejr/build...jr_builders.htm Scroll down to the clip named SD1/808, click play... begin drueling!

I have a JS10th Chrome Dudette, Satriani's signature guitar. Most of the time he plays using a JS2 which is a JS10th made from Basswood. Ibanez first tried out the chroming idea on the Basswood. I believe now that this is due to the wood expanding and contracting. Whatever happened, it didn't stick anyway. That's why all of Satriani's guitars are missing patches of chrome. Satriani has a couple of these prototype models; last time I heard three of his guitars had been stolen. From what I can make out, he has at least two of the JS2's. I expect he also has a few of the JS10th's in case anymore of his other guitars are stolen. Ibanez solved the problem, for the production model, by making the body from a kind of yellow acrylic resin (Luthite) which was much easier to plate. From what I know of mine, I think the PAF Pro is actually in the neck position and the FRED is in the bridge. I also know that one of Satriani's main guitars, one of the JS2's, doesn't actually use the FRED at all but actually uses the Pearly Gates pickup by Seymour Duncan. He used to call the guitar 'Pearly' because of it's pickup. This guitar was stolen; so watch out for any Pearly Gates equipped chrome guitars! I play the JS10th I have thru a JCM 800 (2210, the 100 watt dual channel model). Like others have said, the FRED would seem to have a mid to high output. It has a smoother, mellow sound to it. It is very responsive and can go from crunchy and braking up to a nice warm clean even through my amp's lead channel. Harmonics are okay when played through it but the pickup is definitly towards the mid to low range of the frequencies in comparison to the PAF Pro. I like to use the FRED for rhythm type playing or when I want the sound to be warmer and thicker. To capture how I think it feels, you would want to watch the beginning of Satriani's live version of 'Cool 9' (My number / hash key is broken). I don't know if he is using the FRED in this version but the mellow jazz like sound he is using is similar to the feel of the FRED. The PAF Pro is incredibly bright and sparkly. If you think harmonics screach with the FRED, you obviously AIN'T tried a PAF Pro! I would guess that harmonics are about a half to twice as clear with the PAF Pro. The PAF Pro is much clear higher up and twangy sounding. It's good to cut cleanly through when playing a lead section, but I find it perhaps a bit too bright when playing rhythm. I dislike Dimarzio's approach to making sound clips since they use totally different tunes, different guitars, different processing and all the rest on the sound files they give you. I know that Satriani actually uses a number of processors for recorded work, like Eventides, which very few guitarists can actually afford to buy; they appear on Ebay every now and again marked as being from his studio gear. I would even go as far as to say the clip from Dimarzio of Satriani playing Flying In A Blue Dream may even have been played using the JS2 with the Pearly Gates pickup in it!!! EMG and Seymour Duncan come the closest but I'm still not very happy with there's either. These multi-million pound companies need to buy one guitar and one amp, and then play the same combination with the same solos and riffs changing only it's pickups... otherwise you have no hope of telling what you are actually going to get. It's like buying coloured painted that has a black and white label on it. I use a Boss OD-1 between my guitar and the amp to boost the output of the pickups a bit and help clean up the muddy sound of the JCM 800 when it's turned down to non-ear bleed volumes. I turn the level up to full and the drive to zero, then set the tone to however I feel that day; usually half way or all the way to full. If I had to choose between the PAF Pro and FRED I'd probably go for the FRED but I'd miss the evil harmonics from the PAF Pro. Hugs and kisses, John

Feylya, does you dad know much about electronics already? I wanted to try building my own tube amp from scratch and if you want anything of a decent quality it's suprisingly tricky! At first I thought... "It's electronics right!? It must follow a simple set of rules!"... but tube circuits seem to decide otherwise and a lot of the things I read felt more like "Add this because it needs this here, but not there, or here because that would make such and such go to here and then there". It seemed to remind me of a famous clock builder who built clocks by layering fixes to problems he encouted on top of each other, rather than fixing the problems before they became serious enough to need it. Everything seems to effect everything else in some way or another. Undoubtedly your dad could build one cheaper than Marshall if he really wanted to, but finding all the parts and putting all the effort into it may outweigh paying Marshall to do it for you. Marshall, after all, have suppliers shipping them boxes full of resistors and capacitors for hundred of amps at a time. Sometimes buying individual components can be a lot more effort. There is quite a drastic step up in component cost for their relative quality as well. A normal audio component, say a filter capacitor, might cost you 5 pounds. But the next stage up is audiophile grade which will cost more like 50 or 100 pounds, for one capacitor. Black Gate capacitors are an example. As well as these dudes... http://www.audionote.co.uk/ Vastly expensive, but absolutely beautifully made components and systems. If your dad goes for it out of fun I'd suggest picking up an old Marshall schematic from here: http://www.marshallschematics.com/ I have the 2210 and love it. But you can buy them for about 250 - 450 pounds so making one new for less may be tricky. Building an amp is something I've always wanted to do though so I can see why he wants to! All the best and good luck! John