davee5

Will CA bond acrylic? Yes, in fact very very well. CA, as in cyanoacrylate, is basically meant for bonding acrylic based polymers. Unfortunatley you are probably going to have a few small issues that might be easily addressed if you use CA. Cyanoacrylate is a humidity curing adhesive, it uses water in the air as a catalyst in the curing reaction. All commerically available CA's are made with an acid stabilizer which slows air curing, but the acid is dispersed and removed from acrylic solution by water via amine groups on the acid. Note that somehow, water mists will not work for this, it needs to be water vapor so do try to accelrate curing by dunking your guitar in the pool... not that you would. Wood, though, contains a lot more water than plastic. So what happens when you apply excess CA and put it in proximity with a high humidity environment or substrate is it cures in the air around it, falls back to teh surface, and adheres itself in a white powdery substance commonly called bloom or blooming. I would expect that when gluing a large amount of plastic to wood that you are going to see some serious blooming around the edges of your plastic. That said, many many bindings are applied with CA between wood and plastic (though usually celluloids, not acrylics) without too many adverse effects, and once the CA has fully cured you can sand off the bloom and your surface with be real nice and scuffed up until you buff it out to a high polish. Just expect it to look terrible when you first apply it, and also expect it to fill any pores on the wood around the bonding area, preventing stains from being applied. you may want to consider keeping the glue away from the edge if you plan on color staining the wood, just to make sure the CA doesn't seal the wood entirely to hinder finishing efforts. Generally epoxies are lousy on plastics for adhesion. You can wor around this as someone else suggested by drilling tons of holes in the plastic and bonding wood to wood while the epoxy in the holes holds the acyrlic in place because it's mechanically fixed rather than bonded. Acrylic adhesives, like the kind you seem to be making ar home, are generally considered plastic welders, for plastic to plastic only. They create chemical bonds by breaking down both plastics and linking the polymer chains between them. While wood could technically be calssified as an organic, non-crystalline polymer, it's a little too amorphous and stable to break down and bond the way acrylic does. CA is probably your best solution, it can do a combination of chemical and mechanical bonding and penetrates well if you get the thin stuff. Oh, and ignore Digidues' suggestion about letting the CA cure on the plastic and THEN glueing it with PVA, it's about the worst thing you could do. That would alter and damage the plastic at the bonding site, without creating anything that PVA can bond to anyhow, and would generally destroy your nice polished surface. Just apply a layer of cyanoacrylate (not too heavy) to the acrylic (it won't soak in like wood will) and clamp it firmly to the wood. Wait a long time, like 1-2 days, for full cure and you should have no problems. Still.... test this on scrap first, a confident as I am. -Dave

Been done by a handfull of people: http://www.jpstrings.com/armrest.htm http://www.janetdavismusic.com/guitarm.html I've seen others somewhere that were sutom fit for Taylors specifically, but I couldn't find them. Shouldn't be that tough a project, so go for it! -Dave

Brian, Agreed for this shape all you'd prbably need to do is hog out the outline and then select the carve surface with a ball endmill and a ridge height of around 0.005" to easily sand out, or set it to 0 if you have all the machine time in the world. Not too many clicks in CAM once you know the ropes, but most packages have a steep learning curve. Headstock fixturing... haven't thought about it since I don't have a VMC handy, but I think it depends on how you want to make the neck. If it's not angled but setback and remains parallel to the cutting plane like a Fender neck, no problem at all, just 2 operations. If you want to tilt that thing back 13 degrees or so it gets trickier for sure, especially for a one off. I imagine production houses, even small ones like Thorn, have production jigs to hold things tight and to the shapes and sizes they know they'll us in production. I think for a one off, and pro builders with CNC capabilities can sound off here, I'd do something like this, keeping in mind this is only to do this once without spending too many bills on custom tooling and fixture nests, etc.: 1. Hand scarf joint and glue up the headstock angle between properly thicknessed blanks 2. Operation 1: Clamp the blanks in a soft-jawed vise with plenty of stock over the jaws. Face the neck for the fret board lamping surface (face mill or 3/4" end mill), slot the truss rod cavity (properly sized router bit). If working for a full blank and not a scarf jointed headstock you can hog out and surface the headstock face (3/4" ball end mill) from the billet and sand surfaced headstock paddle flat flat flat. Don't cut the headstock outline here. Also here blind drill 2 shallow holes (really one hole and one slot) for reference datums. Then separately make an aluminum plate with dowel pins for later alignment using this pin and slot. 3. Operation 2: Carefully align and double-stick tape neck blank to the aligning aluminum plate. You could also use a strap clamp to hold the flat heel of the bolt-on or set neck for security. Use a ball endmill to carve the neck to an acceptable ridge height, any volute, and the back of the headstock surface if carving out of billet. Cut the outline for the neck with a hard right angle leaving a paddle for the headstock. This face marks the start of the headstock and will be used later as a datum. 3. Here's where you could get really creative if you wanted to. I suppose the simplest thing would be to take that aluminum plate with the dowels for the truss channel or blind alignment holes and clamp it in a vise over an angle block to match the headstock angle. Tape the neck to the plate again and use an edge finder on the face meachined as a reference datum in the last operation and set that as your machine zero in that axis. Use the neck edge as the other axis zero or, better yet, use the plate edge and the datum pins to find your true centerline. Then push the button and cross your fingers. Cut the profile and drill the tuning machine holes. I know to others out there in the machining or prototyping world that there are a whole lot of ways to skin a cat, but this method would probably work pretty well with some careful trammelling and only 1 semi-custom jig made of a plate with some alignment pins in a known location. -Dave

"How CNC-able" is an unfortunately enormous question. If you have access to a 5+ axis machine with exceptionally accurate servo controllers and a good CAM program, almost anything is "CNC-able." (Note to machinists, the following is simplified for the sake of some brevity and consumability, so be nice.) Now, CNC, as in Computer Numeric Controlled, merely means you have a machine that is taking code from a computer and translating it into moves in 3D space primarily as moves in lines and circular-arcs between eithe relative or absolute coordinates. That is, in laymans terms, a CNC controlled machine will do things like move the cutter from one spot to another by 2 inches if you tell it to. The most common CNC machines for guitar building, and probably the only ones you'll get access to, are 3-axis vertical milling centers. A 3-axis VMC has a spindle that spins various bits you chuck in there and moves them up and down in the Z-axis. Underneath is a table which moves sideways and front to back in teh X and Y axes respectively. Combining motion in the 3 axes allows the machine to make 3D cuts which, when combined over many passes, will result in sculpted surfaces. For woodwork most non-hobby (i.e. you didn't make it yourself and it sits on the corner of your workbench) CNC machines are primarily limited by the axes it has as the accuracy it can achieve and the power it can drive tools with are far less relevant for wood than metal. With a 3-axis machine you can only make cuts that you can see from above, namely that the bit can reach from it's vertical position. You can't make undercuts or carve underneath edges. Iit may seem obvious to some, but you clearly can't cut the back of a guitar for a body cut when it's behind the rest of the guitar, the tool would be hacking out the desired body to reach the material behind it. The reason I mention this is this goes from small overhanging features too. On one part of your carved top, near the horns, it looks like the carve goes vertical and maybe past it. Have to be carefull there. Now, once you have a 3D shape you can carve from above, it's pretty easy for most industrial CNC machines to cut them, but that's not the end of it. The CNC machine is driven by NC code, called G-code and composed of numbers and letters carefully constructed to tell the machine what to do and where to go. The creation of G-code is often the hard part of the machining operation. The CNC machine will dutifully do what it's told, but if you give it bad instructions to follow you will get back bad results. You can write G-code by hand (hard and tedious and nearly impossible for anything but the simplest 2D shapes) or you can generate it by computer on a CAM program. Rhino is a CAD program, Computer Aided Design or Computer Aided Drafting, and is used to create the digital shape. A CAM program is Computer Aided Machining, and it takes your file from Rhino and, with a whole lot of your help, figures out how to machine it using your CNC machine. When you're done telling it how you want to be cut, it writes the code for your CNC machine. This is where many people get stuck, CAM-work is an artform just like CAD-work. Machining is an artform just like hand-woodwork. (With CNC once you get it right, though, then it's button pushing and the art portion is finished.) It's not like a afile conversion, as easy as finishing the Rhino file and "saving as" a machinable file. You have to send it to a program like MasterCAM, choose and set-up your tools, set the speeds and feed, determine the cut type you want to use, the order of operations, debug the code for glitches, run tests on actual stock to make sure it works, and once it's ready for production work. A good machinist, can do that in a day or so, but they've got real experience and skills that you don't. Then, once your model is done and your CAM is done, only then can you hog out your nice piece of swamp-ash for your cool digitally created shape. Do not underestimate the challenges involved. Just because it is computer driven doe not mean is is mistake free or simple, just repeatable and with strong potential for accuracy. ALL THAT SAID: CNC-mills are great tools, they do amazing work that would be almost impossible to replicate by hand. If you have the time and resources and don't want to do hand-work, then by all means use them. -Dave

Two comments, one of which I anticipate will be skewered. (1) On accuracy of fret placement: I was working on a ridiculous project in college that required me to cut a fretboard into a couple pieces and reassemble them. Living in Palo Alto I went over to Gryphon Strings to consult with the legendary Frank Ford of Frets.com fame about the accuracy of fret placement. He assured me that for all intents and purposes fret placement could be off by as much as 1/32" and still sound fine to the vast majority of ears, and that an inaccurate placement of 1/64" (0.015") would be almost unnoticeable to anyone. Since I was doing machining work with a +/- 0.005" tolerance I figured I was fine. While I'm sure there are people out there who claim if their frets aren't aligned by lasers and their tuning done with $3000 rack-mounted units and 50:1 ratio tuning machines, I'm inclined to trust Frank. Though contentious, some people need to accept that variations in string pressure applied by your fingers will have more of an effect than misplacement of a fret by a 1/64 of an inch. So maybe, just maybe, a good steel-rule with 1/64" marks on one side is totally fine for fretboard layout. (2) On Calipers: Regarding calipers, digital vs. dial. Digital calipers are really handy for 2 things: converting between metric and english units (mm & in) with the push of a button, and easily checking "relative" distances (setting a zero point arbitrarily, rather than in dial calipers where zero is always the closed position). Let's say you have a neck you really like the taper of (not the fretboard, the neck for illustrative purposes) but you think it's too thick for your next project. You could take the thickness at the nut, set that dimension as zero, and then take measurements up the neck at various points to quantify exactly how the taper changes. Then you could make the neck next a thinner starting thickness at the nut and use your new, no subtration necessary, dimensions to recreate the feel you like. Maybe a lousy example, but the zero set can be very useful. Since dials are analog and only in one unit you will also have to do math to convert, but most digital calipers have a button that you can push to see that 1.267" is 32.18 mm. However digital calipers have their own issues. Excessive dust or almost any amount of liquid on the sliding surface can cause errors in reading. While I don't expect anyone in this forum to be checking tolerance on parts flooded with CNC coolant, it's worth noting. When dial calipers get junk in the gear track it's pretty obvious, whereas when digitals skip a beat it's impossible to detect. Digitals also need batteries, which last forever, but still... My personal biggest issue with digital calipers is flex and the use of discrete units. With dial calipers you can pretty easily tell when you are between lines, closer to 1.267" than to 1.266", but with digital you only get the number on the display to work with, it's quantum measurement. Likewise all calipers, or any precision measurement devices, can easiliy be used with excessive force which distorts the accuracy of the measurement. With dial calipers I find it much easier to watch the dial to determine when I'm pushing too hard and causing the needle to move because the caliper is flexing, not taking up a gap. With digital much less visual feedback is given so many people get readings that can be off by as much as 0.005" (big is engineering terms). Lastly a good dial indiciator or dial calipers is a finely-tuned mechanical device, like a fince watch, or maybe a good acoustic guitar. We all know there's something visceral about using a finely crafted and carefully tuned mechanical instrument, and it's a satisfaction I never get using digital calipers. But watching that needle spin and hearing the whir of zero-backlash gears inside that little dial housing is a wonderful thing. Well that turned into a real essay! Anyhow, my $0.02. -Dave

Many thanks for all the comments and encouragement, I look forward to eventually devastating the naysayers in a GOTM competition in a few months. My background is mechanical engineering, I am a professional stuff maker and my track record is strong, but this is my first instrument. I chose things like gold hardware because I honestly feel like the $100 is costs me now for the aesthetic I want will be worth it after playing it 200 times and paying $0.50/play (that math only gets cheaper). I tried to keep the tool list as narrow as possible, and I may very well opt to get a Stanley plane instead of a Veritas, but I believe that in carefull, even only "mostly skilled," hands quality begets quality. I know (so please feel free not reiterate for me) that a tool is only as good as it's user, but I also know as someone whos job it is to drive the cutting edge in manufacturing technology, hard, that a process eventually is only as capable as it's tools. As for the case: I'm planning on making that too. HA! That's right, I'm doing the whole thing. I mean I l'l get a nice gig bag in the meantime, but I have very well formed ideas about case design which I'll get into once there's a guitar to put in it. This is as much about making your own stuff and taking pride in it as it is about developing my skillsets as an engineer, product designer, and prototyper. I would rather have a carbon fiber case, albeit with some cosmetic issues, I made myself to learn the process and express my ideas about design and usability, and then to showcase the results later, than buy a TKL or even a Cedar Creek case off the shelf. You all rock, and I should note the guitar I'm building has been ridiculously planned out. I've posted the design here. Even the routing (Scott French style) has been planned and a template cut. Handiwork will not be easy, but this is not going to be a rush job. I've been working on this design for about a year, and it's finally time to make some shavings. -Dave

The fretboard includes the price of $30 for top-notch ebony and $9x2 for radiusing and fret slotting, plus I've heard StewMac's wood quality isn't near LMI's. I've done enough woodwork to feel like I can pull this off, and it's constant hobby, so I actually feel better playing $150 for a plane that can cut end grain and figured hardwoods well, and works better than a $30 Stanley. Maybe that's delusional and that is certainly one of the areas I'm not well versed enough in to know better. The plane is to be used for the scarf joint as well as shooting the bookmatched halves of the koa for joining. I know a block plane won't shoot as well as a jointer, but will a good setup and some care I think I'll manage fine. If it comes to it I can always take the halves over to a cabinet shop and get 'em jointed for a case of Fat Tire. As for the pickups I'm buying the parts from StewMac and will be winding my own. Otherwise I totally hear you about paying big money for nice wood and skimping on crap pups. As for bookeeping services, I'm not cheap, but I'm sure wecould figure something out. Maybe it'd be better for you to just download the sheet yourself and modify it as desired. Really this is as much a way for me to figure out my budget as it is to make sure I haven't fogotten anything. Between the accurate 3D CAD model (except neck shaping since I'm not using any computer help for that) and the detailed parts list I hope to not have too many snags. -Dave

While I'm sure I could make this easier or my wallet I believe whole heartedly in doing things right, and really right. Paying up front for good materials and good tools always wins in the long run. Projects I saved $50 on a few years ago now make me regret the couple of beers that I could have passed on for a much nicer product. Likewise projects I cut no corners on always fill me with far more pride. Yet this is my first guitar and one of my most expensive undertakings to date and I don't want to blow it or miss anything. Thus I humbly offer to teh experienced amongst you my master spreadsheet (engineer) of prices and places for the whole project. I've linked to the excel spreadsheet in case anybody wants their own copy to tweak for personal use. So here's the master list, please peruse and let me know if anything seems missing or unneccesary. You guys have been a great help already. I'm cutting templates this weekend and will be ponying up the credit card soon for this list, so now's the time for corrections. -Dave Note this was all very nicely formatted before I posted it, but it might come out fairly garbled. Dave's Flat-topped Koa & Mahogany Semi-Hollow Part.................Cost........From..............Details Strap Button..........$18.........Allparts..........Schaller locking - Gold Pickup Covers........$28.........Allparts..........Gold Pickup Rings..........$25.........Allparts..........Gold w/ Screws Neck Blank............$0..........(Got it)...........Mahogany, std LMI blank size Body Blank............$0..........(Got it)...........1 3/8" Mahogany Top Plate...............$0..........(Got it)...........1/4" Figured Koa Capacitors.............$0..........(Got it)...........0.001uF for volume, 0.043uF for tone Tuners..................$80.........LMI................Gotoh 510 18:1 full size - Gold Frewire.................$8...........LMI................SS - Std Size Nut.......................$5...........LMI................Bone Headplate..............$10.........LMI................Ebony (or Koa from top) Fingerboard...........$50.........LMI................Ebony 25.5" scale, 16" radiused & pre-slotted Bindings................$10.........LMI................4x 32" Bloodwood + Fine BWB Purf, .080 wood + 0.030 BWB Fret Markers..........$20.........LMI................Abalone Shell or Black MOP 5mm + silver outline Side Dots..............$20.........LMI................Abalone Shell or Black MOP 2mm + silver outline Knobs...................$10.........LMI................5x Ebony dome - inlay 2mm abalone dot afterwards Finish Kit...............$135.......LMI................Z-poxy filler, KTM-9 finish, binding cement, polish Thrd Inserts...........$9..........McMaster........1/4-20 SS inserts PN 90247A012 Mach Screws..........$8..........McMaster........1/4-20 SS Socket Head Cap Screws Bridge...................$150.......Musician's Friend.....Graphtech GHOST tunomatic gold Pre Amp................$90.........Musician's Friend.....Graphtech AcoustiPhonic Preamp Inlay Silver............$30.........Santa Fe Jewelry.....Tubing for Myka-Style dots, Ribbon for inlaying signature Truss Rod..............$15.........Stew-Mac........2-way 18" Hot Rod Ferrules.................$10.........Stew-Mac........Gold P'up -Neck.............$22.........Stew-Mac........Humbucker Kit P'up -Bridge...........$22.........Stew-Mac........Humbucker Kit Pickup Wire...........$25.........Stew-Mac.........42 AWG, poly insulated 1/2lb (25,000 feet =2.5 'buckers worth) P'up Screws...........$2..........Stew-Mac........Gold P'up Ring Screws....$2..........Stew-Mac........Gold 500K push/pull Pot..$18........Stew-Mac........2x mag tone/tap + 1x volume/mag kill 500K Blend Pot.......$7..........Stew-Mac........Mag blend 250K push/pull pot..$7..........Stew-Mac........Piezo/kill Popup Battery........$10.........Stew-Mac........Black plastic Sheilding...............$11.........Stew-Mac........Copper tape Sub Total...........$857 Tools................Cost........From..............Details Fret Hammer..........$15........LMI Fret File (crowning).$40........LMI Binding Router........$60........LMI................Bit + .110", .080" bearings Inlay dot drills........$15........LMI.................2mm & 5mm Flush Cut Router.....$25........Lee Valley........3/4 x 1" template Cabinet Scrapers....$45........Lee Valley........Set of 4 + burnisher Aliphatic Glue.........$5..........Lee Valley........Titebond III 6" Diamond Hone....$45........Lee Valley........For fret leveling & tool sharpening Low Angle Plane.....$150.......Lee Valley........w/ additional 50deg blade Ratchet Clamps......$15.........Lee Valley........10x On sale, good for clamping around perimeter of top Calculator..............$5..........Longs Drugs......Cheapo pickup winding counter Bar Clamps............$40........McMaster.........6x 12" light duty PN 6545A8 Flush Nippers.........$10.........Sears..............Craftsman diagonal cutters Trss Chnl Routr Bit..$20........Stew-Mac.........for Hot Rod Templates..............$20........Tap.................3/8" acrylic. Get laser cut at work from CAD Sub Total...........$510 Total...$1,367

I tried lots and lots of knob configurations and while the arrangement I have here is less than "traditional" or common in guitars (pretty common in custom bases) it does the best with 5 knobs. I plan on using 2 hand-wound (by me) 'buckers and a graphtech piezo TOM. The knobs, left to right from the player's perspective will be: 1. Mag pickups Master Volume 2. Neck Tone (push/pull coil split) 3. Bridge Tone (push/pull coil split) 4. Mag 'pups Blend 5. Piezo Volume (push/pull for piezo off/piezo blend) Considering using the stock switch for piezo off/blend/only but I can't imagine only using the piezos and if I did I would just blend it in and crank the piezo volume while cutting the mags. Any chinks in the electronics setup?

I believe I have finally nailed the design for my first guitar. I've got my work cut out for me, but I'm confident this will be great. Wanted to share and get some final feedback from the crowd. First suggested here. The final design has pushed back the string ferrules to give the right break angle over the TOM, the neck pocket is set to give good action w/ room for TOM adjustability without requiring a angled neck pocket, and everything EVERYTHING is to scale and modeled correctly in 3D (hooray for CAD, saved me a lot of headaches to be sure). I even modeled the small knot in the flamed-koa top-plate I'm using to keep it away from the edges and fits right in the waist while finishing the layout. So, what's the verdict? Time to get some templates laser-cut and start making chips? It's still easy to make changes, such is the beauty of computer modeling, so don't hold back. -Dave

Thanks for the feedback, all, I think you reinforced my thoughts about the body being a bit large. I just hate to cut off this wood, but in the end if the guitar looks funny the extra flame won't help it too much. I'm still going to keep the horns a bit larger than a strat or a PRS, but I reigned it in a bunch. You guys are great. So I made some tweaks to the model to shrink the horns a bit, though I need to rebuild it eventually as a continuous-curvature spline to get that real nice, water flowing look. The reason the neck looked like it was "pushed too far into the body" was not because the neck was too deep, but because the body was real long. I'm also considering keepin ght eoverall body size but moving the scale further up the guitar, putting the neck so it joins at a higher fret and pulling the pups and bridge further towards the middle of the body. Rich - It's to be a bolt-on neck, Fender 25.5 scale and everything is drawn in it's right place, with the neck pup right where where the 1st strat pickup would be (I want to get a similar sound if I split the coils, which I plan on doing using push/pull pots on the tone knobs). The fingerboard will be elevated above the body sufficiently to avoid needing to add any neck angle, though I will certianly do the numbers to make sure the break angle from the strings over the tom is sufficent to apply the right amount of pressure. As for the suggestion about using a hollow-body style tailpiece I think it woiuld look good from the front in this CAD generated view, but pretty silly in real life to with the flattop (I'd carve it if the koa wasn't only ~3/16" thick). I figure the ferrules will give a similar visual layout for the strings without breaking up the overall profile as much. Mick - Never seen the Harmony before, an interesting reference piece.The overall design is supposed to be sort of a fence-straddling, has it's own sound, redheaded love child of an ES-335 and a Strat. No pickguard or tailpiece, but with humbuckers, stylized f-holes, and some hollowness. We'll see how it comes out eventually. As far as the f-holes go, you're welcome to plagiarize anything. I'm not in the business of making guitars, so I'm not going to be particularly protective of my design. In fact if anyone wants a digital copy of the model, they're welcome to PM me and I'll ship off a DXF or even a solid model. Here's the latest iteration: http://web.mac.com/davee5/iWeb/Evans_Guita...all_fholes2.jpg

Ben, Thanks for the feedback, I've been waffling over making the horns smaller and thinning out the f-holes. The holes used to be even longer, so I'm slowly scaling it back to a reasonable size. The whole thing is about an inch wider than a strat and both horns about an inch and a half (upper) to an inch (lower) longer. The width in the upper horns is clearly much larger than a strat. I'm going to play around with those dimensions tonight and see if I can come up with an alternate I like better, even at the expense of a few square inches of koa flame! Rich, I have modeled the body quite accurately in 3D, including the internals, though I haven't bought the pots yet so they aren't represented in there (maybe I should do that just to cross all my t's and dot the i's). I haven't bound anything before, though frankly the routing scares me more than the bending. I have the patience to work carefully with the bends and miters, but I figure routing gouges are harder to deal with. As for the TOM model, it's not real accurate, mostly there to get a feel for aesthetics. The placement is correct and I will be using and adjustable model it to nail the intonation. I have a TOM sitting around I should model up more accurately to check the string angle, that's a great idea I definitely should have thought of before. Jack placement will be just a little further up from the last knob. The neck will be a bolt on and parallel to the body, so the TOM and pickup height adjustments will certainly be relied upon. Anything else you could think of? Please feel free to nitpick, I'm all about feedback. -Dave

Hi all, I've been lurking around here for a long while, picking up tips while I plan out my first luthiery project. Now the SolidWorks model is pretty close to done, the bulk woods are in house, and it's time to laser cut the template for routing this baby. Before I let this one loose, I'd love to get design feedback or have anyone spot potential issues. Current concerns are the placement of knobs so close to the edge of the guitar and if the throuhg-body ferrules will apply pressure properly across all the strings since I've arranged them in a parabola. I also think the upper horn and the F-holes might be a little large, bu tthe figure of the koa top-plate I've got in the horn region is killer and I'd hate to cut if off! Here are the specs: -Flat-top w/ heavily flamed Koa plate. -Chambered mahogany body (nice, broad flamey figure on that too!). -Mahogany neck -Ebony fingerboard and headstock veneer. -Curly maple binding around body, neck, headstock, and f-holes. -Black MOP markers (planning on imitating Myka's silver outline concept and using it on both side dots and fretboard dots). -Gold hardware. -Handwound (by me!) humbuckers. -Ghost tuneomatic-style bridge w/ preamp and 3-way switch for mag, mag +piezo, or piezo selection. -Knobs for: mag volume, mag blend, neck tone, bridge tone, piezo volume. -Knobs will be ebony with inlaid black MOP marker. What do you think? Any comments or thoughts? I'm excited to give this a go, but a bit nervous as I'm a sort of idealist (not exactly a perfectionsit, but dangerously close). -Dave http://web.mac.com/davee5/iWeb/Evans_Guita...low_closeup.jpg