curtisa

Welcome to the madhouse. I can feel another 'Are You Being Served' moment just around the corner...

I dig And totally agree about guitars being lighter. Having made a couple of bantam-weight instruments in the last couple of years I can't imagine going back to the big heavies anymore.

Well, there you go. Learn a new thing every day. Oregon the ship, carrying Oregon the wood, from Oregon the state.

Ha! I 'm guessing our 'Aussie-ism' of Douglas Fir is just another example of our inability to identify timbers by anything other than what might look a bit similar back in mother England, or where they came from when they were imported. I suspect (as you also suspect) it's called Oregon because of where it was originally exported from. Isn't it also known as 'Oregon Pine' over in your part of the world? Could also be that over the years we just dropped the 'Pine' bit from the title for economy of speech and brain power And yes, we're having quite a nice summer, thankyou

In Australia, Oregon = Douglas Fir. Commonly used for building frames and railway sleepers. Would probably make a respectable body. Googling 'douglas fir guitar' brings back plenty of hits for builds using Oregon as a timber for guitar making.

Have you gone off the original idea of the selectable tone caps? Could still be done quite easily if it was still on your list of things to do; just need to tweak your diagram a bit. Other easy options for the 2nd switch: bridge pickup 'add' function (enables neck+bridge or all 3 pickups on) boost switch (bypasses all controls and sends selected pickups direct to output jack)

Wax usually comes in a few different shades. I reckon wax labelled as 'clear' should allow the natural colour of the wenge to remain without getting too murky. I've got a tin of Liberon Black Bison clear wax that worked really well on some bandsaw boxes I made as Christmas presents. The darkening effect is less intense than wetting the timber with water.

Easiest way to fix is use a short pattern-following bit (bearing above the cutter) and use your existing pocket edges as the template. To get the router to stay level after the body has been shaped should be just a case of adding some flat surfaces for the router to sit on without wobbling. Plywood, MDF offcuts or perspex sheeting is ideal. You may have to chock up the edges of the flatwork to keep it level as it passes over the edge of the body, as the weight of the router will want to make the unsupported areas sag. The hardest bit is ensuring the pocket edges follow the shape of the neck properly. The best thing I ever did was build up an adjustable jig specifically for the job. I pinched the idea from an article I saw in issue #1 of Sustain Magazine. The only difference that I do from the article text is add a single layer of thin masking tape to the treble and bass sides of the template edges. This makes the template just a hair narrower to allow the neck to seat a bit more snugly in the finalised pocket. Only other advice I'd suggest is that routing the treble side of the pocket on a Strat/Tele style guitar needs to be done gently, as the pocket edge where the cutaway meets the neck is extremely fragile and can easily be snapped off. Actually, just noticed that all 8 issues of Sustain are legitimately available to download for free over here. Grab them all; there's bound to be loads of useful information in them.

Hi Barry, Good to see another tinkerer around these parts. Glad to have you on board. Sadly, Pete (PSW) passed away a few years back. His Sustainer thread remains in the Electronics subforum in case anyone wants to try extracting any information to attempt to bulld their own. It should be pointed out that as much as the DIY Sustainer was a popular project around here for some time, the final product is likely to be quite temperamental. A more recent (and brief) synopsis of the DIY Sustainer can be found here:

Thanks. Good to see I'm on the right track.

Always meant to ask you - how do you deal with mounting of the string clamps for the D/G strings with respect to the truss rod access hole at the top of the neck? It seems that with the truss rod hole right underneath the D/G string clamps, there isn't much wood for the mounting screws to go in to. The situation is even worse with a seven string, as the D string clamp is directly over the hole. The only solution I could come up with was to either use a truss rod that is adjustable at the heel or make up an adaptor plate to allow the mounting screws sufficient distance either side of the truss rod:

Great to see your builds around these parts again. I've always been impressed with your hardware. I must try one of your tremolos out one day.

Yes, a 510 ohm resistor perform the same as a piece of wire with 510 ohms resistance.

Sorry - meant to say: Shape the neck after performing the fretting. That way you have as many flat, square sections on the neck to use as 'backers' for your hammering as possible, and you can carve the neck to shape to remove the flat sections afterwards.

Shape the neck after the fretboard is on? That way you have as many flat, square sections on the neck for your clamps as possible, and you can carve the neck to shape to remove the flat sections afterwards.

In what way? Difficulty in fretting/crowning/dressing due to the un-removeable neck-thru construction? Wellllll, it's the way acoustic builders do it. I've tried it thrice and got OK results, certainly no worse than fit first then fret later. The biggest issue is lining the finalised fretboard up onto the neck and clamping the lumpy, radiused board while the glue dries. It's definitely easier to glue a flat board to a flat surface. Then again, thus far I've only done bolt-ons. ...Oooooerrr, I said 'lumpy'...

Now, Andy. We have to talk about all these little double entendres you leave lying around in your threads. Sometimes I look at some of your comments and I think you're baiting us to see who will make the first 'Are You Being Served?' reference. Or is that just me? I can feel a thread derailment coming on...

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so that's what it looks like. It shines, it plays, it sings, it dances, it slices, it dices. There's even video proof of it firing in anger. That's going straight to the pool room. Nice work, Nozz. She's a beauty.

When you find yourself sleeping in the car, I reckon you'll know how much of a good idea it is.

More to the point, ebonisng timber works best if the original wood has high natural tannin content to begin with. Oak, merbau, walnut, redwood, cedar will ebonise quite strongly when exposed to the treatment, the most common of which consists of a solution made from soaking steel wool in vinegar. Adding black tea can also intensify the effect even further. Other timbers (maple, birch) that have low tannin content will not ebonise as intensely, so it's possible you may end up with a brown or grey-ish look instead of jet black. Ideally you'd need to know what kind of wood your acoustic is made from to make a guess at how it would react, and whether it's worth risking. Ebonising also relies on the solution penetrating the top surface of the timber in order to react fully, so you'd need to be absolutely certain you can get every last bit of the old finish off the guitar first, otherwise it may end up looking blotchy. Could you try ebonising a small unfinished patch inside the guitar first? Try a spot behind the soundhole, underneath the bridge perhaps, somewhere where it can't be seen under normal circumstances. Use a small mirror inside the guitar to see what you're doing and see how it looks. If it goes black enough for you, then you can make the decision whether or not it's worth the effort to do the whole process to the full instrument. Beyond that, it's possible to buy jet black dyes that have a similar look (sometimes called 'Japan Black'). Again, you'll have to completely strip the existing finish to ensure consistent application of the dye without blotching.

Some more useful discussion here:

One version of your design is a custom build. Two versions is practically a production run. You've sold out, man I say get your headstock rough cut to shape and hold up your nominated headplate over the top to see how it looks one way or t'other.

Or perhaps even when in use. Complete with wind machine, flames and a cliff-top performance.

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