PeteBuchan

Sounds good! I know my way around solidworks pretty well, I've just never played about with surfaces but I'm sure I could translate the proengineer method into solidworks format. I'm lead to believe that pro eng is much the same as solidworks these days anyway. When I last used pro eng (5 or 6 years ago at university) it was quite different.

I wouldn't mind seeing some tutorials of how to do carved tops etc on solidworks too. I use solidworks every day at work but tend to use it mainly for designing sub sea equipment and taut wire systems etc. I've wanted to learn how to learn how to do surfacing as I want to start trying to design a car body (to make from fiber glass) as I'm in the process of designing a custom chassis. Anyway, I've got a few of my guitars modelled, and most of the hardware I have lying around but I still haven't a clue how to do carved tops. I'd like to learn! Pete

I'm having some difficulties getting the video up. I'll have to wait till my friend uploads it to youtube or something. Pete

I've been building a thunderbird bass for one of my friends for almost two years now. Progress has been slow, but it's getting there now. The bass features a sycamore neck and body centre block, scottish ash wings, and a AAA grade flamed maple top. It's going to have schaller hardware, a pair of kent armstrong soapbars and LED inlays with a programable chaser circuit. This is what the bass looks like just now. I dyed the wood black, sanded back then applied a number of layers of tinted cellulose until I obtained the correct level of transparency. I then used my body template positioned parallel to the body, but raised up slightly from the top face in order to create a nice tight, yet subtle sunburst. I applied a further couple of coats and flat sanded the surface. Since then, ten more layers have been applied and I'm waiting for them to harden before flat sanding and polishing. As you might be able to tell from the picture, It's going to have a 3-way toggle switch in the lower horn, 2 volumes, 2 tones, and two three-way mini toggle switches (positioned near the vols) to switch between parallel, series and single coil. The kent armstrong wiring diagrams recommend this so I decided to give it a go. Here are a couple of progress shots: http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1218560285 http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1218560349 http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1218560392 http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1218560421 Now onto the feature that people will probably be most interested in: the LED inlays The guy I'm making this for asked if I could do LED inlays. I said that I'd never done them before, but I had an idea how to go about installing them. That was good enough for him so I went ahead and fitted them. Here are a couple of photos: http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1218560462 http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1218560492 You'll notice that there is part of an old ribbon cable acquired from an even older computer used along with a single core cable. The single is the common ground cable and the ribbon carries the signal to the various LEDs. The reason that I needed so many cables was that I cleverly mentioned that I could install a chaser circuit into the bass to liven things up a bit. Of course, the guy immediately wanted it, so I soldered up a small, simple chaser circuit to control the LEDs. It, along with the battery and controls, is to be housed in the cavity on the back towards the heel. Anyone from the UK who's had any dealings with Maplin may not be surprised to hear that I ordered 'blue' LEDs but was given 'green' ones instead and they were installed before I had the chance to test them. At least they were all the same colour anyway. I'll get a video of the LEDs in action up int he next few days. Pete

I suspect you'll find the guitar will be incredibly heavy unless you get some decent sized chambers in there, assuming your template is the same size as a gibson 335. Pete

The modern 12 string strats use the gotoh bridge which can be found here, in gold: http://www.allparts.com/store/guitar-bridg...002,Product.asp I have one of these in chrome. Really cool bridge. I was going to be putting on a hollow 12 string les paul, but the guitar got damaged before I finished it and I'm in the process of converting to 6 string which means I have a set of 12 string hardware which I need to make a new guitar for Pete

Blackdog, take as much insperation from it as you want. Afterall, I took my insperation for it from various other guitars I've seen including some I've seen on here On to the width issue, it won't be too wide for 6 string as the 12 string nut I was going to use is cut into a standard sized blank so it was going to be a narrow necked 12 string. Pete

If you are still going along the seymour duncan jazz neck route, may I suggest you try out the duncan '59 neck instead? I used to have a jazz in my main guitar, but swapped it out for a '59 just recently. Far nicer pickup in my opinion. Alternatively, have you thought about putting a p-90 in there? I'm making a semi-hollow tele 12 string just now which I plan on using a couple of vintage wound duncan p-90s I have. As a simple description, they sort of sound in between a humbucker and a single coil so you get the brightness and definition of the single, but with the warmth and body of the hummer. Just some more options to think over Pete

I'll get round to it in a couple of weeks after I'm finished my uni thesis and exams and get graduated. When the time comes, I'll probably spray a very fine amber coat just to add a little warmth, followed by a few clear coats. Johnson, are you planning on putting f-holes on this? It would look pretty cool. I made a semi hollow telecaster once and didn't put f-holes in it. I regretted not doing that afterwards. Pete

I'm in the process of making a similar guitar just now. Have been for over a year but keep getting side tracked. As Xanthus says, the heel looks a little 'sharp' to my eye. Here's what I did with mine.... http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1208747628 I'm not sure if you've left enough wood to be able to convert. The size of the chamber seems as though it might be a little big to allow for a carved heel. If you reckon you can fit it in, I definately recommend doing it as it's far more comfortable than the standard les paul heel. Another thing.... What colour are you planning for this thing? I've stripped my one down for about the 5th time and am currently confused as to how I want it finished? Here's a picture of what it looks like just now...what do you reckon? http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1208747938 Pete

I'm from Aberdeen - home of the aberdeen angus! That's about 60 miles north of dundee. I know many a wallace, but i suspect none of which are related to your grandmother. Pete

The wood on the 12 string is scottish sycamore. I made each wing in two equal halves of roughly 25mm depth each. The body is therefore 50mm deep with both halves glued together. I routed the chamber into the lower piece on each side to a consistant depth of 21mm and the top was routed in a series of steps in order to follow the top carve and maintain a consistent thickness. I tidied this up later with a chisel and sandpaper. I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of the inside (of the top at least). http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1207936252 In this picture, there are a number of holes around the right hand f-hole. The series of 4 holes following the shape of the f-hole are for volumes and tone controls, and the 5th hole at the opposite side of the f-hole is for the toggle switch. Hope that's of help. Pete

Cheers for the kind words. I'd like to keep it as a 12 string, and infact it will probably always be known as 'the 12 string' but I'm afraid it has to be converted. I've just routed out one of my old 'test rig' guitars for some seymour duncan p90s i bought but didn't have anything to test them on. They sound awesome and i think would be perfect for a 12 string which is why I think I'll convert my plans to make a p90 hollow tele into a p90 hollow tele 12 string.... We'll see... At my building rate, I'll probably never get this thing finished but I've got my router at work so should be able to get some progress made soon! Pete

Here's a little update. The guitar has been resprayed a number of times since then due to poor finishes and poor spraying conditions. It is also looking rather sorry for itself just now as my house was broken into a few weeks ago and it got smashed up! It's fixable, but a bit annoying. Anyway, I'm going to convert this from a 12 string to a 6 string as I really like the sound of it, but I don't think I'll use it much unless it's in 6 string form. I'll use all the 12 string hardware on a p90 hollow tele i'm making just now. The next thing is to decide what colour I should spray it now! Here are some pictures of my previous attempts! Natural http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/clear.jpg Natural plus black burst and sandpapered binding http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...an/Image009.jpg Orange plus black burst http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/12str.jpg Cherry sunburst http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...gColoured-1.jpg And finally the current 'smashed up' state http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...an/Image013.jpg Which one should I go for?! As for how I go about bursts, the 'cherry' burst was done by eye with my paint gun and all the others were done using the body template technique. That's the one where you take a thin piece of ply or card or something and cut it with the outline of the body. Place small blocks of wood in the pickup routes and line up the template with the profile of the body below. I put a weight on the template to keep it from moving with the blast of air from the gun. Now, you just spray onto the body at an angle. You can adjust the width and strength of the burst by raising/lowering the template from the body, or by adjusting the angle of spray ie if you point the gun directly down onto the body you will get a very small dark burst, but if you spray inbetween the template and body the burst will be softer and wider. I find this technique to be much better than the 'by eye' approach. It may not look it in the picutres, but I chose that picture as it looked best in it. The other pictures are on a camera phone. Pete

Do the links work now? I've changed them. My through neck was solid, but only beacause I never work from plans and do stuff by eye so wasn't sure where the hole should be. I'm sure it would be easy to line up a hole through the neck wood if a plan were to be followed. Pete

I mainly make hollow bodied guitars and have made/am in the process of making everything which you have mentioned. I'll show you some photos of what I have done. They might give you some ideas. http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1206025032 Here's a semi hollow p90 tele I'm making. Instead of the traditional thick body piece and thin top, I opted for two 'half thickness' halves with equally deep chambers in each. In this body I have chambers in the right and left sides, but in my first chambered body (another tele made from the same plank of wood as this one) I only had a chamber in the left side and traditional controls and no f holes. http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1206025068 This is the finished guitar (with one chamber) http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1206025117 http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1206025159 http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1206025186 http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1206025206 This is my 12 string hollow bodied les paul. It's made from sycamore (which is the same family as maple) and features a rippled sycamore through neck. The third link shows how I constructed the body. Each wing is made up of two halves (just like my tele) and both are hollowed and glued together, then glued to the neck. The 4th link shows the extent of the chambering. I'm in the process of building a 6 string version of this guitar but using a one piece body, thin quilted maple top and set neck. The chambers will be much the same as the 12 string, but I may join them behind the bridge. That's not been decided yet. Anyway, I'm sure everything you were thinking about has been covered in those photos but I have loads of other pictures of these guitars if you want to see more. Pete

Don't soak it in tea! That will just lead to the wood warping and pickup up moisture. You'll take ages to dry it out - as in months - and it probably won't be playable. What I'd do is just put some amber dye in with the lacquer (very low concentration) and spray a layer onto the neck. If you like the colour, move onto clear lacquer, however, if you want it more aged, add another layer of the amber. Continue until you have the correct colour, then finish as usual with clear. Alternatively, if you're spraying with canned lacquer, just apply the dye to the wood and lacquer over the top. Pete

Along the same lines as the pear mentioned earlier, apple is pretty much the same colour and texture as maple with very tight grain and really nice to work with. But, it does have much the same appearance as plain maple so might be a bit too boring for you? I wouldn't fancy using ash for a fretboard. It is too soft and may need some form of finish. Olive ash has pretty cool grain. Here's a picture of a tele I made with some Scottish olive ash. Got that body blank for £10 which I suspect would be around $20. Bargain! Pete

I personally think that the 'U' shaped cavity will sound better than the twin cavity approach. My reasoning: Depending on how thin you leave the top and bottom (mine are all roughly 3 to 5mm depending on the type of wood) the sound will be altered more or less. If you think about trying to bend a thick piece of wood and a thin piece and comparing the degree of deflection, the thin piece will deflect more for any given force applied. The same would go for sound vibrations resonating the wood. A thinner piece will vibrate more and therefore be more resonant. With larger cavities, theres going to be more thin wood to resonate. In addition to this, when the U is introduced, the lengths of the thin sections of wood increase. Now think about how easy it is to bend a long piece of wood versus a short piece (of the same cross section)....the long piece is easier therefore on a guitar body the combination of larger and longer cavities are producing maximum resonance. Now you could argue that the sustain will suffer dramatically by removing mass, but think about strumming a solid bodied electric guitar (with no amp) and an acoustic guitar. The acoustic will always beat the solidbody. The first few guitars I built were solid bodied, the next one had one side hollowed and since then the rest have had either both sides hollowed or the U shaped cavity. From my experience, the larger the cavity is, the better the guitar sounds and the more sustain it has. Since I tried using the U shape technique, I've never gone back to twin, single or solid. U shaped just adds so much character to the guitar's tone. To my ears, it just sounds better. Pete

I use that method. I find it so much easier to do it that way than freehand. I never practiced it and I've always got the burst I'm looking for. I do however use quite a low concentrated dye in my lacquer so I can check after each coat how it looks, altering either the spraying angle or height of the template to suit. Much more successful than all my failed freehand techniques Pete

No - it will always look dull after sanding, even with wet paper. I usually use 1000 or 1200 grade paper, and I soak it, but I've never seen the need to soak overnight. I just soak it for a few minutes beforehand and keep pouring water on the surface to keep it wet. The water is just used to lubricate the paper and extend its life. I find it gives a much smoother finish too with less scratching. If you put a drop of detergent in with the water, that helps lubricate and keeps the paper from clogging. Keep an eye on the paper - if it starts to clog, the finish might get stratched. Pete

I had forgotten about this thread! The 'Tone Bringer' still gets taken out at parties just for the comical value! If only it were lighter, stayed in tune, and didn't have those incredibly sharp edges where the laminate finish joins the chipboard, I would play it more often.... I'd also say that by choosing to keep the amp settings the same isn't going to be perfect, although gives a direct comparison. Had we adjusted the EQ settings for each guitar to optimise the sound, we would probably have a better idea about which sounded better, but then it wouldn't have been a comparison of the guitar on its own, but a combination of guitar and amp. To compensate for this we tried to set the amp so that all three guitars sounded pretty good. As for epiphones, I can only speak for my les paul, but it definately isn't made from chipboard and the maple top is full thickness, not laminated as often thought about epiphones. When you have the pickups out and look through the lacquer, you can see the wood type - same for inside the electronics cavities so it's definately mahogony. Anyway, good to see some folks like the thread - we had a good laugh making the guitar!

I finished an ash body without filling the pores once. Similarly, I thought about 20 coats would fill them, but it didn't. What i did was just take a block of plastic with a perfectly flat base, wrap some wet n dry paper round it (quite fine grade) and level sand the lacquer surface. When you do this, you can see the low spots, ie the pores, as they remain shiney and are obvious against the dull higher spots. I then washed the dust/water paste from the surface and dried with a lint free cloth. Spray another couple of layers and repeat until all the pores are full, or at least most of them. My guitar ended up looking like a sheet of glass when it was finished. That might give you the result you want without having to completely start from scratch, although with time, if the wood moves, the pores might become noticable again. So I'd do that if you don't want to start from scratch, but if you want a proper finish which will last, start from scratch and use grain filler.

I made a hollow through neck les paul: So it's definately possible.

I've finally got round to buying a new spray gun after breaking my old one. I've done the colour coats and will get the majority of the clear coats done tomorrow. Here are some pictures of it so far.... ....and some pictures of the back: http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...ouredBack-2.jpg http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...ouredBack-3.jpg I'm quite happy with the result. I think the back came out more how I wanted the front to look like but it's all good. Pete