Prostheta

(Huntin)doug certaining does do international work and certainly does do fantastic work. I'm in the UK so there's testament for you.

Sustain You'd only hear a difference on open notes, as fretting a string isolates the sound of that string from the nut (well, almost absolutely if you want to be pedantic!). If you want a more consistent tone between fretted and open, use a zero fret. If you want more sustain, use a compressor, feedback, a sustainer or just get your instrument set up better (fret level and dress, pickup height adjustment, saddle dress). Plastic mojo if you ask me!

I decided to stay with the RG shape Matt. I just need a template to work on really. Might snag a cheap RG on eBay to template from.

I'm on hold for the moment until I can get ahold of the right piece of wenge for the body. Will get back to this one soon!

I've not been able to make much progress the last couple of weeks, although the body blank is now glued up and ready to plane before I rough out the locations of the GHOST system, the pickups and the internal cavities. I'll post more this weekend.

Ah well. Six months down the line, us EMG users aren't grounding our bridges so at least the information is still correct in that respect. "Nice information, shame about the debate"!

In that case I apologise for not learning anything Wes. Lack of care and attention paid to "technicalities" are often the cause of people taking the wrong end of the stick and perhaps even misunderstanding the issue and/or the solution. Being concise and accurate removes doubt and makes information easier to understand. You do blow hot and cold Wes....

I agree about decisive fact as vagary can lead to confusion and misunderstanding amongst those who are unfamiliar with the subject material. Obviously both you guys know the crack with this one, but this thread is just going to look like another messy one for people who might refer to this in the future. To sum up what was lost: - it's not necessary to ground hardware in an active setup Greg is correct in that you do not ground the electronics to the bridge - you ground the bridge to the electronics (note the clarification there) as the bridge is not a grounding point unless it is already connected to ground. In this case it isn't. You are electrically connecting the hardware (via the bridge) to ground potential which is supplied via the sleeve connection on your jack socket. Now be happy and laugh at that :-D

Same here ;-) Better get back on topic I guess. So what was this about self-playing guitars and 70's musicals again?

When I see you type "blaaaast" (I was going to say "hear you say" but that's wrong) all I can imagine is Nathan Explosion growling BLLLAAAAASTT!!

Off "Grease"?

I used Forstner bits also, yes. I did need to sand around the recess to clean up the edges however but I wouldn't consider using a spade for the life of me. The tuners are Wilkinsons but are good for the price. You're right...they do look tall! The thinnest part of the headstock is just a little more than the minimum that the tuner bushes will allow so perhaps that and the recess is deceiving. I do tend to wrap thicker strings (especially with it being an eight) four or so times around the post (one over, three under) so once it's strung up (still on a wenge hunt for the body) it won't look as odd. I like the design of your headstock. It's like a nod in the direction of PRS and the ESP Horizon style all at once ;-)

I make my headstocks with a little more mass than necessary and recess the tuners mainly for aesthetic reasons. Here's some I made earlier: Vampyre bass recessed bushings Thunderbird bass recessed bushings I like a bit more interest on the headstock than a simple flat face. I love Hooglebug's latest build as it also breaks away from the norm.

+1 on Forstner bits. Just a little time and effort required, and remember to measure the size of the socket you'll use to tighten the tuner bushing too ;-)

Oh no....please say it's not so....I thought this was an invention for guitarists....

Hahahah ;-) The opinions are my own, and just the way I feel about this thing to be honest. I know that some people will get more use out of it in a practical sense, but i'm too stuck in my ways for somebody to invent me a new wheel. In fact, i'll be the first to dust of my pitchfork and light up the torch to chase these heretics off my garden path! Yo Crafty - this isn't bitching, it's just discourse tainted by my usual lowbrow brand of cynicism and sarcasm in the light of modern technology and advances in guitar doohickery. I hope that this system works out for some people. Shame it was Gibson, and shame they put it through the marketing machine.... Back to a practical question on this machine: if your strings are in Standard E and you get it to detune to Standard Eb, does it tune down past Eb and back up to tension the worm gears (which I presume the tuners will still use...) or will the strings stretch flat slightly as soon as you start playing? "Floyd Rose" *cough*

Sorry Greg - the second paragraph was more in the direction of "new guitar tech" trying to replace the wheel. Of course it shouldn't make guitars feel different....I do tend to stretch analogies to extremes a lot in order to illustrate points, as opposed to bringing to new ones to the fore! I guess it have it in my craw that another part of my instrument that I regard as something I feel (tuning up, stretching in and maintaining) is being taken away or reduced. For example, my Explorers are set up for different gauges, differents tunings. I bring strings up to tune and only very rarely do they ever go out of tune by more than a few cents once up to pitch, stretched in and played a little. My Ibanez S1670FM maintains pitch consistently if it's strung and stretched correctly. I can feel when a string is (whether really feeling it, or just confident via experience) stretched in and playing up to standard. I have a personal relationship with my instruments and each one is familiar with it's particular eccentricities and needs. I'd rather not introduce a device which would start to question my familiarity and touch with an instrument by taking tuning etc. into it's own hands.... The battery lasts for two hundred tunings apparently. That would be thirty-fifty sets of strings for me on average. I would only trust such a device to bring strings near to pitch when restringing, and then i'd maintain the instrument on a personal level myself, fine-tuning and all. Perhaps a retuning instrument would be useful as a one-off, but I can't see these changing the way people tune and maintain their instruments. Waverley's ain't going out of the door yet, and they're low-tech!! Maybe Gibbon should invest some money by integrating some PG technology!

I have doubts about self-tuning systems....I bet if a note is sharp, it doesn't loosen the string below the target tone, tension the string to take up slack and then tension the tuning against the resistance of the worm gear. Hence more tuning! Not that it matters because it's automagic. Really. All these "technological breakthroughs" and revolutionary ideas will never phase out the visceral feel of a planky Tele or a slinky LP. I am definitely on the cynical side of the fence here. Whatever next? Self-tuning strings whose molecular structure readjust to tension and pitch? No thanks. I'm happy tuning guitars myself, and if they go out of tune i'll spend at least twenty seconds of my day putting it back where it belongs. If I want an alternate tuning, i'll buy another instrument for it, which is probably cheaper than the price of buying a tuning system which is more likely to go wrong than a set of good quality tuners. Also - what about musicians who tune to attack and not the dwell? Nice in theory, and great that somebody has done a proof of concept. Perhaps it will help somebody feel better about themselves if they can't get their brains around tuning an instrument. I for one do not like constantly retuning an instrument from pitch to pitch, restretching strings from tension to tension and ignoring the setup the instrument has been given. Sorry about the rant. I think Gibson should spend more time and money on quality control instead of snakeoil "technology" like this crap.

I'm going to sleep on these two ideas rather than come up with an immediate solution. Larry had come up trumps with the ziricote but the execution is still a little way down the line. No need to rush anything as this project has already been a year in the making between me and Nina. Either suggestion applies to the same issue....let me sleep on this one!

Possible, but I think that the overall advantages and gains would be less than the potential for problems being caused either immediately or further down the line. I would personally press them in individually, but use the radius block to hold them in place whilst the glue dries. The sheet should protect your radius block from attaching itself to the frets if there is any squeezeout (which is not what you want!!).

That's been a worry of mine as well but acrylising the wood is always an option as you say. For the purposes of taking the workload off the truss rod, i've been playing with the idea of carbon reinforcement. Not to counteract tension from strings - more to keep the neck straight without having to force it back into line with the rod. If push comes to shove, I can always inlay a piece of wood into a straight fingerboard instead of having a sapwood central column.

I've emailed (or in my more blunt style, probably emauled) Larry at Gallery Hardwoods about some sappy ziricote. I'll see what comes of that one. Pretty excited about it, truth be known.

I think there might be an illusion caused by the planing, but I don't think there's any real figure popping. I wet the wood to check it and did a flash photo and it wasn't conclusive. I doubt there's any flaming. As for the fingerboard, I thought about taking a piece of ziricote with a sappy edge and doing a bookmatch cut but flipping so it's not symmetrical. The following image is the same piece of ziricote edge matched 180°: Then just taking a full inlay cut of the vine, and working the inlay around the natural shape of the sappy wood. The black line in the centre is for the purposes of demonstrating the centreline. I think in this case, using wood instead of acrylic would work nicely although in a perfect (and adequately skilled!) world I would love to use abalone or black pearl. Lots of large pieces and not enough skill and experience to pull it off to a standard I would be happy for, for my wife :-D

This is the design I made for the inlay: Curves made in CAD, fleshed out and filled in using Paintshop Pro to show it up more. Originally, this design was laminated to have a central column of purpleheart, two strips of flame maple (from Stewmac binding) and an ebony outer. Unfortunately, I refined the idea and took it one step further....!! ORIGINAL MOCKUP I would actually like to get ahold of some sappy ziricote which I can de-bookmatch (heh!) in as a fingerboard to create a wavey "central column" around which I can design and cut in the vine. I have to discuss this with Huntindoug as it might be a pain to do, but definitely worthwhile.

I'm using this monster piece....I don't have any smaller sets so there's wastage but that will go well towards a headplate perhaps.