Prostheta

The secret of life, the universe and everything is 1.414, not 42 as previously estimated.

The biggest disadvantage is when you're playing live and come around to laying your guitar against an amp/wall/monitor whilst still plugged in, and the jack gets stressed....at least, that's what I'd perceive the biggest problem to be ;-)

I cringed last night at the Cryptopsy gig when one of the sound guys leant one of Gore Rotted's Caparisons jack first on the floor prior to time.

Three months to complete huh? Patience in getting results proves itself here!! You could churn out twenty crap boards in three months, but one GOOD one in three outweighs the twenty by far.

I hope I can spend that long doing my wife's inlay, except I don't want to spend that long doing it, but I know I should, but...etc...

Great work man - it will look totally awesome when fretted and guitared up!!

That's what I was trying to remember TBH - whether the voltage at the cathode remains at 0.7v or not. Now you mention it, of course it would else you'd end up with some crazy non-linear circuits!!

Apologies for going off half cocked there....!!! I've not seen distortion done at a "passive" level like that. I was more used to making fuzz boxes using a complemented pair of diodes in the negative feedback loop of an op-amp or transistor circuit. It seems I need to brush up on my fundamentals.

I would try perspex to be honest. It usually comes in sheet or extruded forms and is pretty tough, consistent looking stuff. I believe it still laminates with acetone nicely, and can be buffed back to an awesome shine if you need to.

It's probably just an alcohol or water based dye made to be thicker in gel form for ease of application. Did you specifically want a gel so you can follow the books instructions easily (was there a specific reason in the book for using a gel?) or are you just after staining the mahogany green?

Personally I would grain fill the mahogany black or dark green, sand back and go the usual route of sealing, clearcoating etc.

As a sidenote, Perspex is available with reactive flourescent edges although this works better if the illumination is internally derived, as light gathers at the small edges. I'm using this material in 2mm to produce a glowing edge line around a guitar under the top cap ;-) Not exactly the info you required, but still....

This is UV reactive - it comes as rod, but can easily be cut to shape....

http://www.uvgear.co.uk/product/product84.htm

I think you meant blacklight reactive material right? Neon is not the term you should be searching for as it's just the gas used in lighting tubes....if it's not blacklight reactive stuff you're after, try fluorescent (although this also covers blacklight reactives funnily enough).

Apologies for my UK spelling correctness ;-)

Don't heat gun it - the neck probably wouldn't appreciate the heat treatment. I would try a chemical stripper (Nitromors in the UK) or just plain sanding using 60/80 grit paper. Keep a damp cloth handy to wipe the neck down so you can differentiate between scuffed lacquer and wood mid-sand.

Ohwait, you've removed the finish. Most awesome. Disregard that then.

Sand the maple to say, maybe 800 grit so it's free of lower grit scratches and apply a sanding sealer. At this stage I'd plump for plain old clear gloss Plasticote in a can, although to get a glassy shine you might want to consider nitro lacquer. Harder to apply for good results (in my limited experience) but better when buffed out. Wait and see what the more experienced members post on this one.

I would be tempted to ask you whether the glassy finish idea would be worth rethinking, as a gloss finish could be slower playing than a satin one. YMMV, I find my ESP Explorers slower (except my natural mahogany EXP) but my satin Ibanez S1640FM is swift as hell.

A tone pot is a tap which dumps high frequencies to ground, so using a diode clipper on that type of circuit seems a little odd. Distortion/clipping adds mostly odd order harmonics as you're turning the signal into something more resembling a square wave. A tone control does the opposite by removing higher frequencies so in theory it would be pointless. I stand to be corrected on this as ever of course.

I think the circuit you've displayed would dump signals higher than 0.7v or lower than -0.7v to ground. The tone pot just reduces the high frequency components from the pickups which the saturation pot would "add back in" as odd order harmonics. A better circuit would be to add a 9v battery running a small op-amp circuit with the diodes in the amplification feedback (negative feedback?) loop of the op-amp. That way you can increase the "saturation" effect greatly. Just your standard fuzzbox type of distortion.

For reference, I would recommend using germanium diodes instead of silicon diodes as the forward voltage before conductance is "fuzzy" typically between 0.6v and 0.7v and gives you a smoother sound.

Duh. Locked my keys in the workshop and I now have to wait until my wife gets home from work to unlock it....GAH!!!

I'll try these today and post results tonight. Thanks guys!

Diodes are (as a bad analogy) a discrete electronic version of a one-way valve. They will conduct one way and not the other. That said, they only START conducting at around 0.7v on average, dependant on the material the diode of constructed from. Silicon diodes (1N4148 for example) conduct forward at around 0.7v bang on. Germanium diodes (0A48?) are "fuzzy" around the threshold, and have a softer forward conductive threshold.

Basically, if you GROUND the forward end of a diode (anode) to earth as you explain, then as soon as your guitar signal exceeds the forward conductance threshold (avalanche point) then the signal is dumped to earth, read: no signal. A sine wave like that would look something like this:

This will give you a horrible pseudo-crossover distortion which is unmusical and unrelated harmonically to your original signal. The usual way of using diodes to clip a signal is to cap it at the diode threshold voltage, not just to conduct it to earth. I may be slightly wrong here in that the diode may actually maintain the 0.7v on the cathode side but I'm sure it conducts everything to earth here.

The one thing I haven't pointed out is that a guitar signal is AC with reference to ground (0v) so you would need to add two opposing diodes to conduct one the positive and negative going excursions for conductance at 0.7v and -0.7v

Thanks guys - this is all a learning process of course, so doing things wrong only helps to accelerate the process a little more ;-)

Now I've bound the top successfully (only a couple of minor defects which I can remedy easily) I'm going to veneer and bind the back today. Any quick pointers on pre-bending plastic binding? I've heard hair dryers don't budge it, and I don't own (or want to go to the expense of) a heat gun.

Sorry Mike, I haven't gotten around to it yet. I need to saw some wood down to make a few neck blanks, plus my purpleheart is in big old 3' x 4' planks at the moment so I need to work out how I'm cutting it down before nibbling away small bits. My current project is a set neck Explorer to be finished in white, so I'm only working with mahogany and maple right now. I think I'll save the purpleheart for my Dinky.

Sound good do you have any pics of your work in progress?

have a good one and I'll talk to you later.

Mike

Thanks Mike - I'll post pictures once I'm further into the build.

I would have used masking tape, but the binding I'm using is .09" x .25" (2.29mm x 6.35mm) which requires a lot of pressure to keep set in tighter corners!

Two methods for not getting your fingers glued to the binding if you have excess.

1 - Keep your finger moving as though you are "smoothing" your binding. This doesn't keep constant pressure on the binding however, if it wants to pop off.

2 - Use some old coarse grit sandpaper as a barrier between your fingers and the binding. The glue doesn't stick to the paper as it can't fill the voids between the grits - unless you flood the binding in which case it won't glue anyway!

Yes, I did learn this by glueing myself to my new Ash/Koa Telecaster. More than once.

picture1

picture2

picture3

picture4

Here's a spanner in the works:

Maybe it's because the existence of a "Warwick sound" has been perpetuated by popular artists who have more money than us to spend on nice amps, recording techniques and engineers. Hell, I made a cheap Encore bass sound awesome when I played in a lofi pop band years ago by recording at a professional studio!! For example: DOWNLOAD

I think that instruments only have a characterful sound to a degree but as we know, wood and instrument materials are mainly a subtractive influence on sound - whereas the amp adds colour and interest.

I would say, look at pickups, pre-amps, compressors and amps - ie. downstream of the physical instrument.

YMMV, I'm usually wrong but graceful about it nonetheless.

+1: oscillating spindle sander - don't leave home without it!

+1: black hardware on natural pale woods - the only thing that can make a J-bass nice!

Awesome build man. I only hope my second build has results as satisfying as that.

Damnit, that means I'm going to have to buy more tools.

Heh. I'm so jealous of people who have a thickness sander/planer big enough to take a glued up body....mine takes halves so it's out with the plane and sanding afterwards!

Similarly, how feasible is it to use a Dremel tool with a fine (1mm-2mm) bit in a home-made miniature table router jig for fine cutting of shell? Would it be better and/or easier to use a handsaw instead? Just thinking about speeding up the process without losing the results.

Sorry Mike, I haven't gotten around to it yet. I need to saw some wood down to make a few neck blanks, plus my purpleheart is in big old 3' x 4' planks at the moment so I need to work out how I'm cutting it down before nibbling away small bits. My current project is a set neck Explorer to be finished in white, so I'm only working with mahogany and maple right now. I think I'll save the purpleheart for my Dinky.

I cheat slightly sometimes. The jointer gives as true a perpendicular planed edge as it's setup allows (readjust with set-square every time I pop it back on the bench) but even a 100th of a degree can cause (I forget the true word for this) hydroplaning of surfaces under the pressure exerted by clamping for glue. I find you get it less if you lightly rough edges with 80 grit, dampen with a cloth, rough with 120 and then lightly apply glue to both edges, spreading with a credit card for consistency. Waiting a minute before applying both edges and clamping seems to cause a little less shifting when bringing up to pressure.

I have no scientific proof of why I do this, or any evidence to say it's better than any other method. It works for me on porous wood like mahogany, and it doesn't seem to cause excessive buildup of glue line. As with anything, your mileage may vary!

I bought a jointer today, and given that I'd rather spend what time I have doing the real handiwork it was worth every penny. All three sets of mahogany blanks I bought from Simo are glued and curing in the workshop right now. Awesome awesome awesome.

Totally the same as thegarehanman. Two sash cramps, and four F-screw clamps. The greaseproof paper is a must also. Much better than chiselling MDF caul scraps off your glue seepage lines!

The best thing is that the sash cramps I have are so large, you can pick up the glued piece by the bars and lean it against a wall whilst it's curing. Then you can get on with the next set :-)