davee5

I bound my f-holes and it was a pain in the arse, totally worth the effort in the long run, but not easy. Depending on how you shape them you have some sharp curves to deal with. However the detail is lovely and shows how much effort you've put into your work. As for finishing it is quite customary NOT to finish the inside of the guitar. I confess I had guitar professionally finished by the incomparable Addam Staark, and when I posed the same question he kindly informed me that the insides of semi-hollows and their f-holes are not to be finished, if one follows traditional aesthetics. Good luck, and keep at it. I broke a whole lotta wood sticks before mine came out, but the results of my hard-headedness have made me quite happy. -Dave

Oh man, I am completely torn this month. Verhoevenc - love the wood selection and the inlay motif is fabulous. Personally I'd prefer a gloss coat and I think the upper regions of the body are a bit small proportionally. A very strong build and boy is it a good thing you left the blue alone. Alan - the hard black lines for contrast look tight, especially on that tummy carve. Control cover is lovely, but that top wood is both too busy and too plain for me (not sure how to explain that better). Another great build, but I have decided to stop voting for the pros... sorry. Hooglebug - what a carve, it's uniqueness is outstanding. Matching headstock carve is a simply fantastic addition. The green works well enough for me, though I don't really dig on the back stain. That said the subtle touch of the abalone knobs matching the top is an excellent touch. Sweet inlay at the 12th to boot. Never been a big fan of "fake" binding, though you pull it off quite well. I do wonder abot playability though, how does that carve feel when strumming? All in all an ambitious undertaking, one I would not have conceived myself. M2Wood - Me loves me some figured redwood and that is one clean clean, sharp build. Very nice execution. Stu - stunning first pass, as others have noted. Very good worksmanship and attention to detail, lovely craftsmanship. The native aspect is very appealing (I've been mulling over a California native guitar for a while now) and the wood selection for color and figure are superb.. However the body is a bit "blocky" for my taste. If it was a little more feminine, softer corners and all that sexiness, I think it'd be a sure winner. So thus I must mull a while longer. This is a very strong month despite the small number of entrants. Well done all! -Dave

Duh-aaaaamm that's pretty. I'm not usually one for stains, but I believe blue guitars have their own special place in guitars (there was that one book, I recall). Even so I've always thought it's hard to pull off, but that... that... that is exceptional.

If you can manage to get the strings under the fingerboard to be equal and opposite in angle/tension to the strings above it, then you really won't have any need for a truss rod because they will implicitly counter the over-the-fingerboard stings tension exactly right. The carbon might still be wise for keeping stiffness in the face of tension or angle errors, but my real concern would be about compression on the neck wood, rather than off-axis tension pulling it out of line and bending it. Sure seems like a lot of work to me, but you seem determined enough that I'm willing to say "I want to see how this thing turns out" without being sarcastic. -Dave

Ditto to MiKro's comments. I rewired and rewired my recently completed guitar with the same results. Old house, crappy 2-prong wiring, lots-o-buzz. But when I gigged it for the first time last week (rock!) I had a 3-prong ground for the amp and, lo and behold, no buzz. Definitely the house for me. Oddly enough, if the buzz really bugs me at home I plug an extra cable into the line out jack of my amp and then plug the other end into my socks. It sounds stupid, but all the grounds are the same on the amp so it kills the buzz without me hanving to conciously touch the pickup covers the whole time I'm playing. It's just a different way of grounding to my body. After a few minutes I don't even notice that I have a cord running out of my shoe. My roommates, however, think it's kind of odd. I just tell them it colors the tone ever so subtlely. FYI: Argyles in particular have a particularly warm but surprisingly bell-like quality to the tonal coloration they add. Atheltic socks tend to be too brassy, and if you just put the cable under your foot (like if you're wearing sandals) you get a nice open tone but it tends to be too muddy and sloppy. Basic white tube socks do absolutely nothing for your tone and generally will not match your pants, so don't even try them. -Dave

I think SwedishLuthier wins. it does look like it's just a broken up version of a slotted plate. As for the other ideas proffered, here's my take on some innovative ideas. - GuitarGuy's balls-wedeged-in-comparably-sized-holes: this might work, but I think it would be really unstable, with teh threat of the ball end popping out at any time, especially when finally getting them up to tension. - Cherokee6's bridge-pins-for-an-electric: this is an interesting idea. You could create a slightly oversized hole in the body, slip the ferrule over the string like a necklace bead, and then use the same wedging principle from GuitarGuy's thoughts to hold the ferrule in place. This would probably be relatively stable, but hell on the wood. If you could locally harden it up, or were using pretty dense/hard woods in ferrule/locking bead region that would be pretty slick. Especially cool woiuld be if you made it of the same wood as the body, with small string openings. Then, if you pulled it off, it would look like the strings are just randomly coming out of the body with no distinct anchor point. If I wasn't 7000 miles from home and my tools right now I would totally protoype that with some maple. Anyone wanna try this for me? I could sketch up what I mean if you like, but I get half of the royalties! -Dave

Greg: Yeah, and even more so the designer is an ID guy. In my experience too many ID "designers" creat a single prototpye, take lots o pretty pictures, and then make a pretty website aroiund it with crappy info about the development process and materials. This site fits that MO exactly. However if they really have developed the mass production technique, it might be simple to make a bunch more. That said, their necks are still of the traditional variety so it's not all that unique in the end. Bertbart: agreed, and this guy claims he wanted to create the epitome of guitar design. Quoting his "artist's statement" Really, though, I'm just interested in those string-anchors. If those are off-the-shelf I'd love to get me some of that. -Dave

Check this guy's stuff out. I really doubt it's going to take off as that guitar (in my opinon) is ugly as sin and the fit and finish is pretty poor. Anyhow, I have one specific question about it. In this picture you can see the string anchors/ferrules, but I've never seen these before. They aren't true "string-thru" ferrules as they clearly (from other shots) are installed from the top. Perhaps a clever new design? Anyone seen these before? -Dave

Here's my experience, but note that with all of these programs if you're not stealing it, they're not cheap. - SolidEdge: Cheap for schools so it was ubiquitous for a while. OK interface, crashes too easily, hard to get complex parts down easily. - SolidWorks: Most user-friendly CAD package. Very powerful once you learn how to use it. Decent surfacing capabilities, not great for parametric based models if you need mathematical flexibility. This is my usual go-to. Built in FEA tools, decent drawing tool, and assemblies that can easily handle moving parts are all very nice and accessible features. Probably also has the easiest learning curve of most CAD packages. - AutoDesk Inventor: CRAP. Sorry, but I hated it. Cheap, and more like a kid's drawing tool with it's snap-to-grid setup. Renders very well, but the drawing, modeling, and analysis tools are all very underpowered and not very versatile. The fastener library, though, is very nice. - PRO/Engineer: Depends on what you're using. Wildfire is slick and tries very hard to keep the raw power of PRO/E while gainig a SW-like interface. Older versions are terrible from a UI perspective, but this is a very capable program. Very difficult to do surfacing work, but the parametric kernel makes for a very flexible model once you learn to set it up well. - UniGraphics: Powerful tool, horrible interface. Unix based versions are the most common and the hardest to use to boot. I know some people who love this and can do great thigns with it, but these are invariably people whohave not used other packages much. - Rhino: limited experience with this, but it seems to be more of a 3D modeler's program for making pretty swoopy surfaces than making precision engineered parts. There is a definite market for this, though, and guitars may overlap Rhino better than SW. That said, only real serious CAD monkeys can make SolidWorks do the surfaces that Rhino lets even rookies pull-off, so if you want to setup some surfacing for carvetops this is the easiest way to start. - Cattia: heavily used in automotive, so it must have the chops. Only used it for a few hours, didn't feel super-simple to me, but half a day is not a reasonable amount of time for an evaluation. As for grids, don't ever use grids for final layout so forget you even asked. You absolutely MUST use dimensions and constraints to fully define your parts if you want to have any kind of accuracy in the final product. That means if you use the grid for a quick layout immediately afterwards you use dimensions to set the actual down-to-the-thousandths spacing of your frets. A quick note on CNC machine selection. Envelope will probably be the most relevant feature for you as accuracy and speed aren't nearly so critical in woodwork as they are in machining titanium and aluminum alloys for aerospace. HAAS and Fadal have a very strong presence in the job-shop market across the US, and seem to be in a lot of schools (excellent marketing) so many people are familiar with them, but widen your search and there are a significant number of VMC manufacturers to consider. -Dave

I have a very similar issue with the one I just installed myself. I did some digging and it seems this can also be the result of using the wrong leads for in & out. This seems logical to me now since the audio/log taper of the pots would not be terribly friendly to being used backwards. This also seems logical because I wired ALL my pots backwards. Tonight I hope to rewire them and I'll let you knkow if reversing the blend output/input leads helps. -Dave

The sound the nickel wounds will make is different from the phosphor bronzes your acoustic is used to. Howver most of the "floppy" style arguments are probably more about the fact that so many of you WUSSES out there run 09-10 guage strings on your electrics. I push round-wound 13s on my gibson es-135 and round-wound 12s on my homegrown semi-hollow, which are heavier and equl in gauge to light acoustic strings respectively. Waaaaay better tone out of a heavier string and once you learn to bend 'em and get your finger strength/callouses up you're that much cooler. What did SRV run, like 15s? Anyhow if your strings are the same gauge they will feel about eh smae under your fingers, but the metallurgy will give you a slightly different sound. Your guitar will, though explode if you try to play stairway on the acoustic. -Dave

I did it the way you've outlined it and it works just fine, thank you. It will make the fretbaord much harder to remove in the future if it becomes necessary for some reason, but there's no given "right" way to do it. That said, I think the "correct" hereafter the "Setch" method is easier and I wish I had done it for my own sake. I did it my way because I routed everything to one template and didn't want to deal with another size I was running short on time. It worked out just dandy, but I think the fully-finished fingerboard is easier to handle. Just be difficult, though, I will argue that the way you descibed and I did will result in a slightly stronger joint since there are more surfaces covereing more weak spots. It also will more effectively hide any gaps in your gluing between fingerboard and neck stock if there were gouges, chipout during routing, or you did a less than perfect job of gluing. Choose whatever works the best for you, or what you have tools for, and just do a good job without worrying too much about which way is right or wrong. Build and be happy! -Dave

Yeah, I should note that freehanding it was not at all easy. It took many many passes, lots of stress, and if you can avoid using rotary tools in favor of more controllable cutters you should do so. I would have loved to use a coping saw, but I went rather backwards about it all and cut the cover out dead-last on the body, after gluing on the top. Plan ahead people! (I was hoping I would magically be able to get the pots in from the f-holes, but since they're all push-pull pots, they're way too tall for that.)

Well if you're unsure of your abilities with a scroll saw, like I was, you can use my hack too. I used a very small bit on a dremel tool to freehand rout, like an inlay, through the back of my guitar. Then I cleaned up all the edges with needle files on both the cut--off piece and the body, then to fill the gap I bound the cavity juts like the rest of the guitar. Here are the results, a close fit and a consistent overall appearance w. the rest of the guitar. The grain lines match just right, but it'ts not nearly as slick or ingenious as Setch's method. The Control Cover, freehanded with a dremel, then bound and put back in place: I should note that my technique worked exclusively because I had hollowed out the whole body and could cut through the last 0.25 inches in a few dremel passes (read: like 10, it's slow work to keep accuracy, but worth it in the long run to me). If you have a solidbody this probably won't work. Just another concept/solution. -Dave

So it's been a while since my last update, but it's about 3 hours of work from done done done. Unfortunately for all of you I left my camera in Japan on my last business trip and won't have it back for a months or so (leaving in a week for a looooong trip). Anyhow, here's a little teaser, I won't reveal the whole deal until the first GOTM when I'm in the country and have pics (probably May competition, maybe April). No pictures of the neck fretted as my roomie, who'se camera I borrowed, is out on his own business trip with said Canon. But I will say this: it looks real real good. I get giddy everytime I look at it. I'm ridiculously happy that my first build has gone well. On to the pictures! The Back Headstock mid-finishing The "Evans" inlay detail The hands inlay detail note the little patch of bloodwood on one of the knuckles on the lower hand? Well it's a nod to the fact that during one of my tool setups on the desktop mill a tool slipped and took off a sizeable portion of my left-index knuckle. It's got 8 sutures in there, and here's proof for those who don't get queasy (graphic stitches shot, but not too close-up for general audiences). The neck's slight volute The upper f-hole and horn More pics of the neck, fretted, bound, and with black MOP fingerboard dots + black mop outlined in silver ala-Myka side-dotts later. But the whole shebang you'll have to wait for, so enjoy the teasers! -Dave

Yeah, well I was trying to make a point about slurs and since you're from Oz I thought I'd try and localize it a bit, but being an ignorant American myself I did a Google search for something like "Australian slur" which yeilded mostly nasty titles for Aborigines and only those other two for Australians in general. I have no idea is "skippy" really offends anyone over there, but I found a few news postings to imply at least a few people are put off by the phrase. I probaby should have quit while I was ahead, but I was tired after flying back from China for work and then working another full day after the 10 hour flight (25 hours of consecutive work should not be performed on anything other than guitars). Perry, I'll try to use smaller words and sentences next time Spread the love, people. -Dave

Monsieur Tim, Let me play it real straight this time around, no pun intended at all. When you use the word "homo" in the same context that your other 16 year old friends might interchangeably use the word "gay" as a derogatory term, that is bigoted by definition. Homosexuals, gays, lesbians, transgendered people, bisexuals, etc, may not be a race, but they are class of people who are too easily categorized and grouped by ignorant people who do not realize they almost certainly are in the midst of such individuals on a regular basis. Using such a term to cast a disparaging remark is equivalent, in the eyes of those who are more aware of their fellow people, of using a racial slur to describe a guitar as ugly. So allow me to push your boundaries a bit, if you're willing to pay attention without passing early judgment on this minor tome. You're young, that fine, we all were and according to the latest polls a lot of us are quite young. When I was your age, not all that long ago, I said the same sort of stupid things that you probably do now, such as "that's hella gay" and the like. Then, over time, I went to college. Afterwards, ahving graduated I got jobs. If your life's immediate future includes goals of education and later employment, like mine, I expect suddenly you'll find that as you get older the people around you being to figure out who they are and what they care about. More importantly they begin to take pride in who they are and start living their own lives, rather than stick to the sort of collective pack-like mentality most held in some degree during the days of their youthful indiscretions. You may begin to notice that there are, in fact, gays all around you. Maybe not en masse, but you will know a few, and chances are (if you truly aren't a bigot, which I don't really think you are at the core) you will like a few as friends and maybe even good friends. You may even have a family member, perhaps a cousin, who comes out of the closet after hiding a significant portion of their identity from their family for years, even decades. So here's one of the big questions you need to ask yourself, do you know why they hide? Do you know why many homosexuals find "coming out" so difficult? Because their entire lives, from the day they began to know they thought differently on the playground in elementary school, or in middle school around puberty, or later in life, they noticed that the thing they associate part of their very identity with was used as a put down indiscriminately by much of the male populous. Their friends, family, bosses, teachers, and coworkers seemed to despise them to varying degrees. You want to find out what it's like to shoot the breeze with your cousin, calling things "gay" all the time only to find out years later that you were the last in the family to know that he came out of the closet because he thought you would hate him for it? I'll tell you what. It hurts for both of you, and I know this personally. I wasn't the kid who said it all too often, but I saw my own cousin's struggle to share the things about his sexuality which he had wrestled with for his entire waking life with his conservative family. They still love him, that's never changed or was even in danger, but it's hard for a group that's repeatedly marginalized in our culture by what I have called "youthful ignorance and bigotry." Your actions now have significant potential to follow you the rest of your life, and it's an important lesson to learn early if possible. Frankly, Tim, I don't care what you want to call it because using "youthful language" doesn't excuse using hurtful language. You're 16, and in the US that's when one of the real privileges of adulthood are bestowed upon you, and the rest of adulthood's legal privileges are close behind. It's a sign you're supposed to be maturing, rather than falling back on tired and thoughtless colloquialisms in lieu of recognizing there are myriad things you hadn't understood before. It's a call to realize that everyday is an opportunity to be learning from past mistakes or new things pointed out to you by others or experiences. My earlier, more concise message was a warning shot high across the bow for you, to try and laert you to the fact that the words you chose to use for communication are often far more relevant than you might think. Just because I know the gist of what you are trying to say, does not mean the way in which you did so was appropriate. So consider this a warning shot a little lower, and I hope it at least gets your attention and cgives you pause. I certainly can't change you, it's not remotely my responsibility anyhow. You're only responsible to yourself and your fellow man, "homo" or not. If you want to ridicule me for having a number of gays I keep in my good company, in my very close family, it's your prerogative, but I would hope that somewhere in you there's a spark of recognition that it would be an incredibly immature thing to resort to. As a parting note, I truly hope you consider this note a constructive criticism rather than a flame. As I see it, my picture is already pretty big on this matter, and I would just like to show you a little more of it so yours can grow too. Please, prove me wrong about your youthful ignorance, prove yourself as a person of superior character and fortitude by avoiding insinuations that I myself am bigoted for pointing out your use of low-grade and probably unintended hate-language. Prove me wrong by demonstrating your compassion and even a little remorse. Prove me wrong by beginning to change the way you use your words. You see, even if hate is not the message you intended to deliver, even if you are merely using youthful language because it is the lexicon from which your peers chose to select their diction and syntax, the content of your words and it's roots in fear and hate-mongering are no less real and no less hurtful to those who are sensitive to the subtle barbs attached to your calloused phrases. Describing something or someone as "gay" or "retarded" with intent to slander is just a few decades away from calling someone a "ni**er" or perhaps my calling you a "roof**ker" or "skippy." So I'll say it to you again: watch yourself and your language, or someone might just misinterpret what you're trying to say. Cheers to you as well, and good day, Dave P.S. I don't know if roofu**er and skippy are actual, hateful slurs for Australians, I had to Google a slur database and most of it contents are pretty obstuse. Perhaps my parting example is, in fact pretty weak and comical, but I don't actually know. I ought to heed my own advice on this matter I suppose...

I bought torch tip cleaners and one double-sided nut file: the small strings (12 & 16). I fgure I can easily use teh good file to get accurate placement and depth on all 6 strings, properly size the small ones, and then widen up the fatter slots with the tip cleaners. total cost is about $25, and I'll let you know how it goes in a few days. -Dave

So "homo" huh? I'll give the extreme benefit of doubt that you're not displaying your youthful ignorance and bigotry but rather using "homo" in the original Greek for "same," thereby underscoring your point about all the "same old" designs being recycled Fenders. Watch yourself and your lanugage, or someone just might misinterpret what you're trying to say. Or maybe they won't, which might even be worse. -Dave

To add to Russ' comments. For this application clear polycarbonate would probably be better to work with. It's easier to machine and tougher than acrylic, so it will last longer too. However it should be noted that acrylic is much harder than pc. While it cracks & crazes more easily as a result, it also scratches less easily. If you aren't careful with that polycarb base you might ding it up easily and then inadvertently scratch your wood when using it to route with as a result of the burrs. You ever see a PC nalgene bottle owned by someone who really loves the outdoors? They look terrible, absolutely beat to hell, but they take abuse. But while they still hold water you'd never want to drag that dinged & scratched up bottle over your nice wood. Just food for thought. If you decide you'd like to stick to acrylinc the answer to your problems is to use a drill press, sharp tools, and fast cutting speeds (low chipload). If you drill by hand, especially with an old & dull jobbers-twist bit, you'll almost certainly cause the bit to bind and catch a chip, which will crack the acrylic. Using a drill press keeps the depth much steadier and prevents the gouging you are at much higher risk for when drilling freehand. Often drill presses will also run much faster spindle speeds, which will also help. If you must drill by hand, don't push so hard, use a new or recently sharpened bit, and keep it spinning real real fast. Acrylic, like PC, actually drills pretty easily if you're nice to it. Lastly if you really want to do it right, use a bit of coolant like rubbing alcohol right on the dutting surface. Just dab some on teh plastic before you cut, then occasionally as you "peck" the bit through the material put a bit more in the drilled hole. Better resultant surface finish, happier tools with longer lives, and less chance of binding due to thermal expansion. -Dave

First off, that's a D'Angelico NYSD-9. I was at the Monterey jazz festival a while back and went to an interview with Dave Brubeck, right after his kids played. (By his kids I mean the band that he is teaching, he is very involved in jazz music education and now dedicates most of his time to a band of exceptionally talented youth who rotate in and out with age.) Someone asked him what it's like to teach such talent. "It makes you want to break their little fingers." Then he laughed and talked about how amazed and humbled he us by the quality of the music these 12 year olds are playing. Not reciting, mind you, these kids are doing real improvisation and showing real soul, young sooul, but it's there anyhow. Amazing playing, makes me look like a fool and I think I'm pretty good, you know, if I'm in the groove. The other great quote from the night was: "I'm a musician, which means I can't dance." -Dave (not Brubeck)

This is fast getting hijacked into an ME/designer thread, but just as a note if you REALLY want to get pissed off by people who consider themselves God's gift to mankind and the only true designers or innovators head over to the core77 industrial design forums. I've personally worked with some of the world's best ID guys and I like nearly all of them, but the idiots over on those forums (none of whom are anywhere near legendary status) manage to make me never ever want to come back. Unforuntaley 2-3% of them have really cool ideas and pretty pictures that I find inspiring so I keep going back. Though now i stay away from the forums. -Dave

exactly why I'm trying to go back to product design, it's literally a fusion of the ME tech stuff and the art stuff. But yeah, good point. Now if only those artists knew how to actually build anything that didn't fall apart under load...

Dude, no crap on that first point. Really not to toot my own horn but when in undergrad at Stanford, theoretically one of the top engineering schools in the nation, I was appalled at how many of my peers can't hold a damn hammer, let alone design a linkage, mill it, troubleshoot, etc. Now granted the real problem might be schools like Stanford, MIT, CalTech, etc are all very theoretical now, with usually only a few hands-on courses required and none that make a "real" engineer out of any of them. If I was going to hire fresh-out-of-school ME I'd hire CalPoly SLO, best hands-on schooling/legitimate engineering school I know of. Maybe Harvey Mudd, but they're more research oriented. PD is, by design and intent, very broad. Machinery design is far far away from what PD does, so no offense taken there. It's about the intersection of the human and the technical, where you are working on understanding what makes products (not machines so much) excellent for real people. Classic example is the iPod, clean design, intuitive, useful, and revolutionary in its simplicity and usability. It would take waaaaay too much time to get into teh nuances of what I mean in text, but check out the PD website and you'll get a decent idea of what I mean. Many people in the program are stronger in art than in engineering, I'm much more technically oriented. If you want to give me any tips on makign a case out of carbon I'd love to hear them, as I've never done CF or glass work. If you're up for it I've got plans/sketches of what I'm planning on doing (and WILL do, good prep or not) that you could give me some much needed feedback on. Before you sign up for the PhD thing, find a bunch of phuds and talk to them... not a lot of real normal people make it past year 6 or 7 of grad school, let alone year 12 of friggin college. But to each their own. -Dave

russ Well, I've already put in my app to Stanford's Product Design program, so in the fall I may be getting my own MS:E (note, it's not technically an accredited program, so while I'll be chilling with the MSME's I'd graduate a BSME and a "Master of Science in Engineering: Product Design" which is tough to sell to those who don't know what it is, but I'm getting ahead of myself, gotta get in first!) What are all you MSME's specializing in? Automotive, aero/astro, thermo, etc? I figure theres a disproportionate number of ME's on this board, since amongst college-types we're the most likely to actually make stuff. -Dave