ryema22

My family is replacing the kitchen and dining room tables. The kitchen table is 1 3/4" Oak and the dining room table is 1 1/4" thick and made up of a bunch of maple boards laminated together, some of which have some nice flame to them. Obviously I need to build some guitars out of these. There's probably enough oak for about 6 guitar body's, maybe 7. I figure I can try some different variations on chambering with the oak to reduce the weight. I definately want to try making a hollowbody LP style guitar with the oak as a base and the maple cap, but beyond that I'm entirely open to ideas. This seems like a great chance to try a whole bunch of unique or new design ideas and get some practice without wasting a ton of money on materials - what else would you build?

I was in a GC a few weeks ago helping a beginner pick out their first guitar. Long story short, the salesman kept trying to push the bottom of the line Epi Les Paul Special package on her and was insisting that it was made of solid mahogany (one solid piece!). It was very clearly not made of mahogany and the finish looked like some kind of plastic-y painted on wood grain and the salesman rudely told me I had no idea what I was talking about. I told him I'd hand built several guitars and I could tell what mahogany was and he looked at me like it was completely impossible for anyone outside of the Gibson and Fender factories to make a guitar. The epi site later confirmed that the guitar is, in fact, made out of laminated alder. Score = PG: 987,534 GC: O

Your everyday run-of-the-mill Strat or an Epiphone Casino w/ P-90's

+1 to what Greg said you could alyways just tie your left arm behind your back for a week or two instead

http://www.manchesterguitartech.co.uk/lacquer.html I haven't personally used this guy, I just found the site a while ago. Good luck.

I'm turning my attention from building buitars towards other projects. High on the list are some effects pedals and a new speaker cabinet. Does anyone have a link to a good flanger schematic? There's also a million variants of the Tube Screamer schematic floating around. Does anyone have a schematic for one they've built and been pleased with?

How many pedals are on the board? If you're looking to save space and still have effects it might be a decent idea to sell/trade all of the pedals and get a decent combo amp with modeling (something like a line 6).

Yes. There's a tutorial on the projectguitar main site that covers exactly how to do this. The thickness of the decal will determine how many coats you need to spray to blend the edges into the finish.

Just a word of advice... by all means, if you want to convert to four-conductor go ahead, but i'd suggest picking up a really cheap and crappy pickup to practice on first. It's really easy to break one of the fine wires wound around the bobbins and make a mess of things. I'm also a fan of messing around with as many cheap pickups as possible, you never know when you'll stumble across something with some mojo

I tried the KX Project drivers with my Soundblaster Audigy MP3+... no luck. After first attempting to update the drivers and then completely uninstalling the card and starting from scratch I couldn't get them to work. Oh well, I'm building a new rig in late July when Intel cuts the price on their quad cores, I'll upgrade to a recording-oriented sound card then.

There are threads somewhere on here discussing the use of Bondo to create templates. I did this once myself with moderate success... I will take some practice with the stuff to make it work for you. Basically I cut an oversized neck pocket into my body template, filled the edges with bondo, and then positioned a neck template correctly in the slot. I used wax paper between the neck template and the bondo so that it could be removed easily after the bondo hardened. After it hardens you can sand the bondo to fix any imperfections. It was a lot of work and I didn't think it came out any better than just cutting a regular template out of ply or mdf. ymmv

The latency problem with my soundblaster card is probably the biggest problem with my current setup. I can't monitor the input without a good 1 second delay between what I'm playing and what I'm hearing. Where did you get your 3rd party drivers from and did they have any adverse effects on the card's other operations?

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Good stuff. My previous recording experience has just been taking backing tracks and recording solos directly into my SoundBlaster card's mic input, which leaves something to be desired. I'm getting a mac this summer and I'm super excited about messing around with Garage Band. I may continue to record direct and get a small M-Box unit but I'm also considering trying to mic my amp. Are SM57's pretty much the consensus pick or does someone have another pick? (without going well past the budget of an SM57)

What is everyone's favorite setup for recording their guitar? -Mic-ing the amp? What mic, and how are you placing it? -Direct to a soundcard? What preamps and settings? I'm more interested in the "getting the sound into the computer / recording equipment" half of the equation than the actual recording software and hardware.

Thanks for the response. I'm in no way qualified to replace the output transformer on a tube amp but I might try the headphone output.

Use google and try to find a picture that is as straight-on as possible (not at a slight angle like that one appears to be). Then blow it up so that a known measurement (i would use the scale length) is accurate and make your tracing from that. Only use this method to get the shape right, don't rely on it for any crucial measurements (scale length, width at nut, width at bridge, etc.) Squier's website may have records of those or you may be able to find them elsewhere. As far as the neck goes - If this is your first attempt at something like this, buying the neck might not be a bad idea. You might be able to find a Mighty Mite neck for less than the Warmoth one. That said, if you're willing to invest the time learning, building a neck is not as difficult as it may first seem. It will be a rewarding experience, although with the money you'll invest in materials and tools for the job it will likely cost more than just buying a pre-fabbed neck. It all depends on whether you intend to make building a regular hobby.

I've done some googling but I can't seem to find what I have in mind. I have a Blues Junior amp. I love it, but one of the shortcomings is that it only has a single 8 Ohm speaker output. I'd like to know if there are any available schematics for an impedance selector? Ideally I'd like to put something in a seperate box (rather than modding the amp's board) and mount it to the bottom of the cabinet next to the reverb tank. Headphone output would be awesome too. Does anything like this exist?

I wasn't suggesting the original poster be "lazy". He said what he wanted was essentially an ESP Alexi with a different pickup configuration and he never responded as to whether he was actually interested in making the investment of time and money to actually learn how to build a quality guitar from the ground up or not. I love this hobby but it's definately not for everyone either. Modifying a factory guitar to suit the player's preferences instead of building from scratch is nothing to be ashamed of, it's just being practical.

If your biggest goal was simply to get an ESP Alexi with two active pickups, why not buy the ESP Alexi, rout a new cavity in the body, and add the pickup configuration you want? That's still a challenging project for a beginner but it's a lot less work than starting entirely from scratch. That's also a project that has a much higher probability of success than building from scratch if your goal is to have a factory quality guitar on the first try.

I had a Crate GX 212 for a while. The "Flex-wave" stuff Crate advertises works pretty well - I think that was about the closest to a real tube amp I've heard without actually buying a tube amp. I also really liked the sound of the built in reverb unit. I liked the first clean and "dirty" channels, never really used the heavy distortion channel I’m playing out of a blues jr. right now and I love it.

I should have phrased the question a little bit differently. I don't have any problem with how the guitar sounds as-is, I was mostly curious as to whether changing to bone would produce enough of a noticeable difference to be worth the effort. I was also curious to see if anyone had enough experience with the material to make some general comments on its qualities relative to the more traditional nut and saddle materials. Like Mattia said, I can always replace the old ones in the end. Anyways, I think I'm going to look for that tutorial that was up the other week about processing your own blanks from cow bone and do a little experimentation.

My brother just bought an Ibanez acoustic. It sounds nice and it seems like a pretty good guitar for the price with some nice features (solid woods, Grover tuners, Fishman electronics) but the nut, saddle, and bridge pins are all hard plastic. Ibanez claims this "Ivorex II" material is harder/more durable than bone. Has anyone had experience with this material to comment and/or replaced it with bone or ivory? I'm finding it hard to believe Ibanez's claims, since the stuff looks and feels just like hard grey plastic. I might replace them anyways as an excuse to practice, but I thought I'd seek out some opinions first.

A hipshot tremsetter largely solved the problem for me, and I didn't have to alter any of the visible hardware on the guitar.

If it's any comfort, e-copies of your book don't appear to be circulating through any bittorrent search engines i know of or usenet groups. So hopefully it isn't being downloaded en-masse. If I come across it I'll be sure to report back. I also echo the previous sentiments. Your book was a great aid in getting me started, and I would hope anyone legitimately interested in picking up the craft would take the time to buy the book and absorb what it has to teach.