ElysianGuitars

you really don't want to butt the bridge pup right up against the bridge, you generally want 3/4" space or more between the bridge pickup and the bridge, its gonna probably not have much volume, and be trebly as hell... in my opinion, you got ahead of yourself when you routed the pickup routes, its a good idea to have your bridge already laid out, drilled etc, before routing pickups and the likes... and to lay out your bridge, its always a good idea to actually have the neck....

seems like a lot of space between the pickups... how did you measure out your scale length without a neck or a drawing?

Funny you say that, I once strung up my MIM strat B-B and loved the sound. How do the pole piece positions work out? Do the strings sit exactly between the N-S poles (in which case you'd need a slightly more narrow string spacing)? Or did you have them custom-spaced? i did the opposite slant on my 7 string V, put the bass side of the pickup closer to the bridge, trebly side further away, it produced nice results, playing on the upper strings was a bit smoother, while the lower strings were way crunchy, with a dimarzio x2n-7

Not really, IMO the harmonic nodes should be at about the same spot because you are extending the scale both ways! If you look at most of the builders that have made slanted boards, Novax(his design), Conklin, there are very few, if any models available with slanted pups, it looks as they are only dont aesthetically. think about it, its not about the harmonic nodes, because that changes anyways as soon as you push a fret. its about sound, consistent sound. i'm sure you, as well as many others, know this, the closer the pickup is to the bridge, the more trebly it is, the further away the bassier... for someone who's gonna play a fanned fret 7, generally they'd play some variant of metal, and wouldn't want the flubby low string that they'd get if the pickup were straight and therefore further from the bridge. i could understand not slanting the neck pickup, but the bridge pickup, in my very honest opinion, should be slanted, if anything to get the same consistency you'd get from a bridge pickup on a non fanned fret guitar... unless strats are your thing, and you like the slanted bridge pickup on non-fanned guitars...

yeah, but looking better wouldn't make them sound better... slanting them makes a lot of sense with fanned frets, irregardless of looks...

looks like a scarf joint to me...

i find i don't agree with ed's views on stainless steel frets, i did them on the last guitar i did, and i definately do not hear the same things ed hears in them. the only thing i might agree with is they are definately harder on tools

pretty please don't use back ferules for top ferules, imo they look so silly, use the smaller top ferules, they rule, and you can definately get them closer

how is it tuned? 5ths? fanned fret 6's look so odd to me, design isn't bad though

how wide is your neck pocket? it looks pretty narrow to me...

that body looks too awesome, what might be neat is the half set neck idea, and have it stop at the bridge pickup route, so below the bridge pickup would still be walnut, and above would be your neck wood...

that gotoh bridge is a good one, a guy in my class at roberto-venn made a 12 string baritone guitar with one.

wrong, fanned frets were invented in 1562... http://tkinstruments.com/id128.htm

nothing looks cooler to me than a string through tune-o-matic setup

I will use OFR-7 on this guitar (but similar issue as with LoPro you mention). I mostly play my guitars without the trem-bar, so don't see an issue there. Thanks for the suggestion though.....haven't thought of it before. Think because I never had to tighten trem bar up. (Still could do this when changing strings, I suppose). I left lip I guess to leave as much wood in/around guitar as possible, thinking it wood improve the resonanse (and so the sound of the guitar). if you don't use the bar then why have a trem? would make more sense to get something like a tone pros tune-o-matic and string through, especially if you are worried about resonance...

so, quick question about your trem cavity... i didn't read the whole thread, but i'm assuming you're using a Lo Pro 7 trem? why did you not route all the way through for the trem arm? i see you left a shelf, but on a lo pro 7, i think its a good idea to leave it open, unless you want to take off the trem every time you have to tighten the bar up...

Alright, I'll ditch the trem, it's especially senseless on a fretless I'd think. I kinda just wanted to see if I could render it well in SketchUp. I'll redo the render and have it up in a bit Yea, I'm being a bit overzealouos talking about the 3rd guitar so early, but I figure you get so much teaching for the first two instruments, and their structure is so set in stone that their completion is pretty much guaranteed, so long as you're driven. Thanks for the info about Bart, I'll definitely discuss it with him. you'd be surprised, if you look at my class, there are some who don't have pics of their acoustic, its because they didn't finish them till basically the last day... they had them "finished" enough to have them graded, but then they had issues such as the bridge popping off, or just poorly done in general, so they didn't have them finished enough to take a picture... even i had my bridge pop off, and after i had gotten mine graded, i noticed a spot where i had sanded through my BWB purfling on my top, so i routed all my binding off, redid it, and even added a BWB purfling on the back, but i still got mine done in time, and got 3 electrics done, as well as many extra things in the repair course... its all about how you manage time. a bunch of people started 3rd's, but never finished them... but you do have a prior build, as i saw in another thread of yours, so you might have a leg up, but you're probably going to find that a lot of how you have done things is very different from how R-V do things... a guy who is a staff member there now, but was in my class, jason kostal, found that out, basically all the way through, he had already built some 30 acoustics, pretty much knew what he was doing, so he was constantly annoyed at having to do things the roberto-venn way.

the volute doesn't seem like it would do much, as its not under the nut, in other words not at the point where the angle is, so its not at the weak point in the neck... and i understand this is your design, but i feel the body is way way too small, it looks like a travel guitar, only not, because the fretboard is so huge and the scale so long...

you'll wind up doing a full, to scale drawing of it, before you ever discuss it with kris... you also won't even talk about 3rd instruments until about 6 weeks in, when you have your first ready for lacquer... you might also talk a bit with bart, he likes to make pretty crazy basses...

are you at roberto-venn currently? or planning to go? i was in the spring 06 class... anyways, about your design... it doesn't look like it would be very comfortable to play sitting down, one thing you could do if you haven't already considered it is what i did on the back of my 2 pointy guitars... heres a pic of it it also doesn't look like it would balance really well sitting, but if its mainly meant to be played standing up i'm sure it would balance quite optimally... on the radiusing the fingerboard for a bow, how do you plan on achieving that? i know that roberto-venn's radius blocks are pretty limited, so the only option you'd really have would be to do it on the belt sander, and hand sand it to final sanding... and the belt sanders there definately aren't long enough for that ginormous fretboard you've put in the pic, not to mention, good luck getting a fingerboard that long from reuter, i doubt he has one like that. and can the bridge be adjusted to compensate for a small radius? all these are things you have to think about. and they will let you do neck through, 2 of my 4 guitars were neck through, but you have to figure it all out basically on your own, which i think this forum is an excellent resource, if you look around, and see what everyone else has done themselves... i know this forum has given me plenty of ideas. i'm going to assume you aren't there yet, its not a bad idea to plan for your 3rd before you go, but you have to do fairly well to even get to do a 3rd, there were some people who didn't get to. you have to maintain a certain average, and show the instructors you can handle doing it, while still getting your other work done. hell i was building my 4th during the repair course, talk about juggling, doing the 3rd while still working on my 1st and and acoustic wasn't so bad...

i would highly recommend using a heat gun to strip the finish off that thing, that poly finish can be a real pain in the ass to sand, i've stripped a couple using a heat gun, it goes way faster.

unless someone else made the body, its basswood...

or you could mix the epoxy with ebony dust, works really well.

that came out so amazingly, great work. how much room is there between the tip of the lower horn and the fingerboard? the first guitar i built has a lower horn very similar to that, and an issue i used to run into was when playing up high i'd hit the horn, cause it was too close, but maybe on a bass thats not an issue, as technique up high probably varies dramatically... course i just now actually measured mine, and its 2 3/4", yours looks a bit wider than that...

that thing is gonna be great when you finish it, nice work. is that thing laying on the hood of your car? lol