PeteBuchan

I'm progressing nicely just now. I got the fibre board stuck onto the headstock last night and it is now cut flush with the outline of the headstock. I got the fretboard glued to earlier. It's clamped just now, waiting for the glue to dry. I'm going to try find the bridge screws again, and when I find them, the bridge is getting screwed down and i'm going to get some strings on so I can see what it sounds like. I just want to play it before the frets go on so I can say i've played a fretless guitar After this weekend, I'm not going to be gettign any work done for a week or so due to exams and the like. But once they are all clear, I'll get this thing finished and playing. Can't wait! Pete

Ideally I'd like a vintage feel to it. Like something that was built years ago, but at the time looked quite modern. Can't really think of how to describe it. I'm also undecided on whether or not i should add a slight sunburst?

I'm heading towards leaving the top as it is, then dying the sides and back brown. Maybe putting a slight tint onto the top. This has been the only guitar I haven't really had a good idea of how I want it to look right from the start. It's also the guitar I've been most eager to play Pete

Had some spare time today so got the inlays sanded flush with the fretboard, got the pickup mounting ring holes drilled and the output socket screwed in. I still need some insperation for the final colour. Any ideas? Pete

Inisheer, The top is simply planed with a slight bevel right round, and the concaved sections are filed and sanded. The inside has a matching carve, achieved by routing the inside in a series of steps, then tidied up with a chisel and sandpaper. The thickness is around 4mm. My calculations were slightly off as I was aiming for 3mm, but I'd rather it was too thick than too thin. I'm going to mask off the edges of the f-holes so that when i dye it, those sections will remain light and so accent the shape of the fhole against the darker body colour. I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of the inside, but its just the same on the inside as on the outside so you can probably picture what it looks like. Pete

I have a gotoh 12 string bridge - its the same one used on the fender 12 string strat. Since I'm using this bridge, there is no neck angle. Pete

The sycamore is indeed from scottish hardwoods. Cost me no more than £20 for the whole lot - and I managed to save enough for a bolt on neck too! The second bit has some really nice rippling. The stripes were only there because I left the neck out in the garage overnight and it ended up bending slightly and when I glued the body on, there wasn't a nice join so I thought I'd cover it all up with some rosewood - but I think it looks like it's supposed to be there. I should have strings on it pretty soon - i have the fretboard radiused, and once I'm finished at uni for the year, I'll have time to fret it. Pete

I've been working on a hollow 12 string les paul with a through body neck. Both the body and neck are made from rippled sycamore, and the accent stripes are made from rosewood offcuts I saved from the side of my fretboard. I'm using a Gotoh 12 string bridge (same one used on the fender 12 string strat) and so the neck has no angle. This is what it looks like just now. I'm not too sure what I'm doing for a finish, but it's definately goign to be a tinted lacquer to allow the stripes to show through. I had originally decided to dye it amber and sunburst it with black round the edges, but I'm not so sure about that now. Any suggestions would be good. Here are some more photos showing some progress shots. Body Tone Chambers Body Pete

Feedback shouldn't be an issue unless you go for a complete hollow, as in no centre block under the bridge. Certainly my hollow tele has no issues. It, like yours, has no f-holes and i have some pretty hot pickups in there (10.5k fender texas specials). I left 15mm around the edge for gluing, and routed the top and bottom to be 5mm thick which I find to be perfectly strong. I really like the fullness of the hollowed tone so my current project is a hollow 12 string les paul. Again I left 15mm for gluing round the edges, but this time routed the top and bottom to 4mm thick. As for number of chambers, the tele had one big one on the left, and a small one between the bridge and the strap button at the bridge end. I didn't put one on the right hand side for some reason? Can't remember why?! The les paul however has a lerge chamber either side. Hope that's of help... Pete

Well - I might aswell let you know the actual order since nobody got it right (not completely anyway) Clean: Les Paul - Chipboard - Explorer Dirty: Explorer - Chipboard - Les Paul Interesting to see that there were quite a few people favouring the chipboard 'tone bringer' over the more traditional models. Maybe there's something in the name afterall Pete

Go ahead and post it - copy and paste or what ever... report back with results Pete

One of my friends has this thing he says when ever someone has bad tone. ''You might as well be playing a chipboard guitar!'' - refering to the chipboard guitar having aweful tone. So.....One night, we were bored, and decided to actually make a guitar out of chipboard. We intended on making some recordings of it, along with some other guitars using the same pickup, same amp settings and same microphone position etc. Then we would compare the recordings to see if the material/quality of material used to construct a body had a big difference in the overall sound of the guitar, or if the choice of pickup played a greater role in colouring the sound. I'm sure you will find the results quite interesting. Chipboard is the brittish name for particle board btw. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_board This is the stuff we used. The stuff you use for kitchen work tops. We doubled it up to get a body around 6cm think. Anyway, on with the test! This fine specimen of a guitar is the chipboard 'Tone Bringer' as it is known to us. It features a squire neck, hardtail bridge and a Seymour Duncan JB. The 5-way switch and f-hole are marker pen... Other guitars in the test include an Epiphone Les paul standard with Seymour Duncan JB, and an Epiphone Gothic Explorer with Seymour Duncan JB. The amp used was a Vox AC30 CC1, and the mic of choice was a Shure SM57. The only thing being changed during the test was the guitar. We make a clean and dirty recording: Clean Recording Dirty Recording The three guitars appear in a random order, and a different order in both recordings. See if you can guess the order in both recordings, and say which you think sounds best from each recording. I'll post the correct order later on. I think you might agree that the recordings sound pretty similar. Certainly a lot more similar than we expected. Does this suggest that the choice of wood has little effect on the tone of the guitar, or is it just that the pickup has a greater influence? I'll let you decide.

Look to see which ones have the largest centre holes. Find a metal rod which will fit into this hole - something like a thin screwdriver. Push down at a slight angle until you engage the tip of the rod with the ferrel at the opposite side. Try pushing. This might not work since the ferrels will probably be pretty tight. If that doesn't work, try hammering gently on the end of the rod until the ferrel comes out. Do this for all 6 and once they are removed, you can find a thicker screwdriver and push those at the other side out. Only thing that could possibly go wrong is that the ferrel might take a small chip from the lacquer, but if you have a decent finish and you work carefully, this shouldnt happen. They are just held by friction, not glue, so should come out without too much effort. Pete

That's the method I used last time I removed ferrels.... Worked fine with me. Pete

I really like the sound of a semi hollow guitar. Acoustically they are much louder. Amplified they have a much fuller, warmer tone. Since I made my first hollow tele, all my guitars have been hollow. I allow a 5mm thickness of wood. Seems to hold up nicely on my guitars. I'm not sure if a template would be too necessary if you are any good at freehand routing. Just mark where you want to cut and route it. Just make sure you leave enough wood to glue the top on. It doesnt really matter if it looks a little messy since it will be covered up anyway. Pete

I had a strat with 22 different pickup combinations and the problem with it i found was that you take for ever to select the sound you want. I had a 5-way, an on/on/on, and 2 on/on toggle switches on it. In the end I found the sounds I liked, and use them on my other guitars. The main one I put on all my strat style guitars is the ability to add the neck pickup to what ever is selected on the 5-way. This means you can get neck and bridge and all 3 pickups selected at the same time. Neck and bridge sounds really good. Another one I liked was the ability to reverse the phase on the neck pickup so that you can get bridge and neck (with neck out of phase). This is sort of like neck and middle, or middle and bridge, but a sort of in between them tonally. I like it. Neck out of phase and middle sounds aweful! Don't use it! If I were you, I'd have a look at www.axesrus.com - They have a big page of scratchplates of all different configurations. I've not been on the page in a while so not sure if they have blank ones, but they certainly sell pickguard sheets so you could cut your own plate from scratch. They have free postage and the stuff is usually with you the next day. I've never had any problems with them at all. Pete

Little progress today: I hollowed out the base halves with a bit of freehand router action. The top halves are sort of hollowed out, but more in the centre where the carved top will be higher than round the edges. There has been more than 50% reduction in body mass since I hollowed it - just out of interest. Pete

I made a hollow bodied tele - similar to the fender thinline series. They are a lot lighter than a solid body for a start. I find mine to have excellent sustain, and it is much louder when played with no amp. I find it has a fuller tone. I think they sound better - provided you make the tone chambers big and not just a small one somewhere. I'm making a les paul just now which I'm going to hollow out. This time I'm going to put f-holes in it. I didnt do that with the tele. Pete

Pleased to hear the bridge is a good one. I was planning on using a 12 string t-o-m, but when i saw that one, it looked pretty cool so i ordered it. By using that bridge over the t-o-m means that from my neck blank I can cut the neck for this guitar and have enough left for a strat neck too I got all the wood there for less than 20 quid. Not bad at all for 2 necks and a body! I'll hopefully make a start on hollowing out the wings tomorrow. I'm planning on just routing out the wood for the bottom piece, leaving a 15mm section round the circumference, and around 5mm for what will become the back of the guitar. On the top half of the wing, I plan on leaving the same surround, but not routing out as much in the centre as before until I can decide on the carve shaping. I would like to carve the top first and then route the inside to suit the top, but I feel it would be difficult to get the wood to sit properly for the rest of the routing if the top is routed. It'l roll about etc. Whats the general technique for this sort of thing? Route the inside in steps of varying depth towards the centre then sand smooth? I might have to do some thinking here before I fire up the router. Pete

I've just started making a 12 string les paul. I got the body shape cut yesterday afternoon using a template and router. Had a few issues keeping the template and wood clamped together as I had to keep moving the clamps to allow the router to cut right round. Nothing a belt sander won't fix. Here's the spec list Body: Rippled sycamore (hollowed out) Neck: Through body - rippled sycamore Fretboard: Rosewood Bridge: Gotoh GTC12 (hardtail bridge used on the fender 12string strats) Pickups: Probably seymour duncan '59 Tuners: Wilkinson grover copies Each wing of the body is made from 2 pieces of 28mm thick sycamore which will be stuck together to create a 56mm thick body. I'm going to hollow them out using a router. I'll put a couple of f-holes on the body and put a slight carve on the top. The bridge I'm using isnt as tall as the more traditional tune o matic so the neck will be parallel to the body. Picture of Gotoh 12 string bridge For electronics, I intend on installing a couple of SD '59s. Not sure if I'll use the traditional individual tone and volume for each pickup, or go for a master tone and volume. I'll see what I think later on. As for finish, I plan to dye the body an amber colour and sunburst a black tinted lacquer round the edges. I might dye the body with a brown colour first and sand back to see if i can lift any ripples out, but since there arent too many, I might just go for the amber first then cover it with a fair few layers of clear cellulose. This is the first neck i've built so should be interesting to see how it turns out. I've got the body building, finishing and setup sussed so far, but necks have always put me off until now. Pete

http://www.ampmaker.com/index.asp This place has kits for making amps - one based on the 18w plexi - which looks pretty cool. That might be of interest. Pete

Melvyn Hiscock's book says the SG is 1 1/2 inches thick. Pete

You'll have to watch if you put a tune o matic on a bolt on neck - those necks tend to be parallel with the body and those bridges are talled than the standard fixed bridges/vintage trems. You could of course sink the tune o matic... Pete

Is epoxy not the matrix in fibreglass composites? I was always under the impression that this was the case anyway... Pete

http://scottish-hardwoods.com/ This is where I get my body woods from. He doesn't have any exotic hardwoods, but for good quality standard body wood at a good price he'll probably have something to suit. To order, just email him with your dimensions and requirements and he'll pick out a nice piece for you. Let him know it's for a guitar too and he'll select pieces without knots etc. He sells his boards kiln dried to 10% and if you need them planed etc, he'll do that for £2 extra or something. Pete