curtisa

Hiya Andy. Yes, all parties are now correctly accounted for on their home turf. Just coming to grips with the jetlag. I make it until 7:30pm and then I crash. Rest of the trip was fantastic, only a couple of days of wet weather throughout the whole journey. The soldering iron is the easy bit - it has the hotty-ouchy thing at one end and the handley-wandley bit at the other. You only mix up which end does what once Hope you're enjoying Scotland!

What about taking a pickup with an inherent wide range voicing, say Lace Alumitones, and then tailoring the tone with external components (resistors, capacitors, inductors)? The wiki page on the Fender Widerange pickup doesn't make it sound like there's anything magical going on inside other than the particular magnets used in the polepieces. Assuming the data is correct, 6800 turns per coil, 10K DC resistance, resonant frequency 7.135KHz is nothing spectacular. Many modern production pickups can be found with near identical specs. So if there's something special going on it's likely to be largely due to the magnet choice. Should be noted that the wiki page also mentions that the original pickups were installed with 1Meg volume and tone pots, which will load down the pickups less than the more conventional 250K - 500K pots used nowadays. This will translate to a brighter sound and is possibly a further key to the pickups' perceived characteristic.

Maybe the forum has caught @Prostheta's chest infection?

I have no experience with archtop guitars, but I don't see why the straightedge method wouldn't be valid as it is with flat top acoustic guitars. So yes, In my head the straightedge should rest on top of the saddle when laid on the fretboard. If not, then the same faults that cause this issue in acoustic guitars would need to be addressed - warped neck, truss rod needs adjusting, failing neck joint, neck reset, top warped/bellied etc

You should call that colour, "Titanic Cherry Porter" Correct. Only suggestion I have is that the two volume pots will cross-load each other. Turning one down with the other full up will mute both pickups in position 2. That could be "vintage accurate" for all I know, but if that's not desirable you can change the volume pot connections to match a Fender Jazz Bass, which will allow you to get independent volume operation of both pickups.

It's good to see that the same mad, rabid beaver that nibbles away the back of the headstock is trained to do the "SR" logo too. What do you use to train him up? Acorns? Cheese? IPA?

Sounds like the Woodstock Hendrix tribute set will be at @MiKro's place this year.

Acrylic/Perspex shavings become statically charged as they fly off the cutter, so you end up with the world's worst case of dandruff after a few minutes working the stuff. Trying to catch up with the goings on here on the forum after a six week holiday - you've definitely ramped up the progress in the workshop, @KnightroExpress in the interim. May I ask where the bridge and pickups for the multi-8 came from? Almost looks like the bridge is a slanted Hipshot (non-production)?

No time to comment on all the entries at the moment unfortunately, but it's great to see such a big collection of fine looking submissions this month. Well done to all invloved.

I'm not really in a position to help at the moment, sorry, but perhaps someone like @Prostheta can steer you in the right direction. FWIW I can see all your pictures in your threads. I know that certain versions of Internet Explorer will play havoc with the display of particular pages here. Android Safari is problematic too. Have you tried using a different browser? I'm currently using Chrome on Android which displays things fine. I know that Firefox on the PC works well too. The most recent version of MS Internet Explorer should be OK with the compatibilty display modes set to "off" (which should be the default anyway).

Thanks everyone. VST plugins. There's lots of stuff out there that sounds really good for little or no money. The 5150 emulation I use is "X50" by TSE, which used to be free but looks like it's now a paid plugin. They also used to do free versions of the Ibanez Tube Screamer, ProCo RAT and Tech21 Bass Driver pedals. The freeware plugins might still be floating around out there somewhere. Other stuff that's good is LePou plugins (Bogner Extacy, JCM-ish clone, Mesa Dual Rectifier, couple of others that escape me) and Ignite Amps (mostly software versions of their physical amp products). All of them also require the use of an IR convolver plugin to simulate the speaker cab, but there's plenty of free ones around and zillions of cab impulses to try out all over the place. Bass stuff is thin on the ground, but most of the time I'll run the Ignite Amps SHB-1 plugin in parallel with one the other high gain amp plugins and blend the two channels together to get various degrees of grit. It's been years since I've been able to crank up an amp and stick a mike in front of it.

Afterimage Guitars - HM7 "Wychwood" Continuing my self-imposed mantra of "try something new every time", this is now my maiden foray into headless instruments. In addition to the obvious missing headstock, a number of other minor new (for me, at least) features have worked their way into this build; a softer-contoured body shape with a gentle cylindrical top carve, the use of the baby CNC mill for laying out the fretboard and inlays, and installation of the Fishman Fluence active pickup system. Once again, extensive use has been made of Tasmanian native timbers to complete the ergonomically-friendly construction. Specs: Scale length - 25" / 26" Neck - 5 piece Tasmanian Cheesewood/Tasmanian Blackwood construction with carbon fibre reinforcement Fretboard - Cheesewood with Gidgee inlays Frets - Jumbo nickel silver Body - 3 piece Tasmanian Blackheart Sassafras with figured Tasmanian Myrtle top. Headless hardware - Technology For Musicians, 7x independent bridge tuners, 7x independent nut string locks in black Pickups - Fishman Fluence Modern Ceramic 7 (bridge), Modern Alnico 7 (neck) Electronics - 1x volume with push/pull to select the two voicing options for the Fishman pickups, 1x 3 way toggle switch. Build thread here Audio demo of the guitar here - Clean guitars utilised the bridge and neck pickups in voice 1 mode, distorted rhythm guitars were bridge pickup set to voice 2, and other melody/lead tracks were bridge or neck on voice 1.

You were "told" to get up on stage or you were invited? Either way that's pretty freaking cool. I got into Devin after the cool guy in the music class at high school loaned me his Infinity CD. The rhythm guitar tracks on that demo are software emulations of the 5150. They're excellent go-to amps for that kind of stuff.

Crumbs. Who is that Strapping Young Lad, stage left (see what I did there)? I would think the Free-way switch has more than enough switchery magic to allow for per-position boosts if you want it. The Fishmans are good in that it just takes grounding one pin on each pickup in order to engage each function, whether it be voice 1/2, gain normal/cut or HF normal/cut.

Thanks Carl, old bean. No one does big like Hevy Devy does, although for the demo I was aiming more along the lines of an Australian solo artist (and co-incidentally a headless Strandberg endorsee) by the name of Plini. Check him out and throw a few sheckles his way. No Freeway on this one, just a standard toggle and push/pull volume pot. But there's a second one in the works that will hopefully get the Freeway treatment. Lace X-bars going in that one, so there's scope for doing some coil tapping along with the usual dual humbucker shenanigans.

Quite different, by the looks of it. Guess that comes from us living in a place where the native trees were named after what they looked like back home in Mother England, rather than their actual botannical genus. We've got "Oaks", "Myrtles", "Pines", "Maples" and "Blackwoods" here too, but they bear no relation with the trees they were originally named after.

Jury's out on the Blackheart Sassafras though. I like the look of it on the body, but it smells vaguelly like dog crap while it's being worked

Cheers folks, Don't discount them till you've tried them, I reckon. It's surprising how differently they balance compared to headed instruments. You don't realise how much extra weight at the end of the neck is levering the headstock towards the floor until it's suddenly not there, and the lower cutaway makes playing the guitar seated pseudo-classical style with the neck pointed upwards quite comfortable

Nothing like keeping us guessing, Scott. How myrtle is this myrtle of yours? A different version/misnomer of the stuff that grows down here, I assume?

Over and out: And for @KnightroExpress 's benefit, some obligatory roxxorz: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24052640/HM7 Test.mp3 Regarding the Fishmans, cleans were neck + bridge on voicing 1, distorted rhythm guitars were bridge pickup on voicing 2 and the various leads/melodies were either neck or bridge on voicing 1. Ended up redoing the nut. Despite the fact the strings were unlikley to pop out of the shallow slots I wasn't happy with the way it looked. In hindsight, if I'd planned it better I think I would have tried a zero fret with these string locks. Their proximity to the back of the nut makes fettling the nut slots quite time consuming, as you can't just slacken off the string and pop it off to one side to fine tune the slot with a file. Every time you have to tweak the slot depth the string has to come off altogether and then the string lock needs to be removed from the headstock to give you enough room to use a slotting file.

Could also be something along the lines of a Fender Jazzmaster tremolo, but again it's missing the little tab route on the forward edge..

PIW PIW! Lasers! Looks like a nice, clean and spacious setup. Now get building something. Cheap future upgrade ideas - you might want to consider replacing those long straight duct runs with rigid PVC pipe as big as your dust collector inlet can handle (probably 5" or 6" if you remove that Y-splitter inlet). You'll get far better suction at the end of the longer run to the drum sander, and you'll be able to take better advantage of the dual 4" ports on the bandsaw. Stormwater PVC pipe can be had cheaply from all sorts of places - agricultural supplies, plumbers, hardware store, even junk yard sales.

Moved to General Topics -> Players Corner area of forum.

As little timber to remove as I can get away with, which is how the router should be used anyway. Given that the bodies I make are sandwiched, the tallest cut I do is far less than the height of the cutter. I'll usually do the back half of the body, which is usually 30mm or less, rough cut the top wood (somewhere around 12-16mm thick) and glue it to the back, and then route the top using the pre-routed back as the template. I'm not game to do a full 40-50mm cut in one go though. On the plus side I've never had catastrophic blowout since I switched to that method, even when trying to get the router to go around the flimsiest of corners.

That's pretty much the reason I use a double bearing (one bearing on top of the cutter, one at the bottom) flush trim bit for that operation. For the first 50% of curves you can cut with the template on top. For the other 50% flip the body upside down, raise the cutter so that the bottom bearing follows the template and finish off the rest. That way you never violate the "route uphill into the grain" rule