Acousticraft

Hi folks out there, I am looking at building some solid body guitars with some High School students. Guitarfetish prices are quite a bit cheaper than Stewart MacDonald which is where I have bought all my axe parts from to date. Has anyone from the far flung parts of the world like me in New Zealand bought stuff from them and been pleased at the products and service? I give the thumbs up! to Stewart Macdonald for an awesome website, quality stuff and fast, reasonably priced shipping. Greatful for any feedback on this. P.S I have been really enjoying jammin on my recently finished semi-hollow 335. Man it was made to play the blues. Really sings thru my Valvetronic VT50.

Stick with your Humbucker sound. I am not that fussed with the coil cut sound on my LP style axe. It does not make it sound like a single coil only an approximation.

Try a Google search for wiring diagram for Washburnxxxxxxx.

IMHO having lots of pickup combinations is a waste of time. Its like having 100 television channels, you keep flicking thru but cant settle on one. I have a LP style Axe that I can coil cut each humbucker but usually I prefer the fuller sound of the bucker as the coil cut does not sound like, or is as good as a single coil. When I built my latest 335 style semi-hollow I thought about coil cuts and quickly flagged the idea. My motto is the KISS principle. Keep it simple stupid.

Generally single coil pups use 250ohm pots while humbuckers are 500ohm. If you are just having two pickups it would be easy to have a 250 ohm volume and tone for the single coil and have a 500 ohm volume and tone for the bucker. That would give options for a nice clean neck sound if needed and a down and dirty bridge sound. There are options to have a 3 way switch or coil cut the humbucker as well with a 5 way or multi switch. Have a look at Stew Macdonald site as they have different wiring diagrams available.

The Spider is an amazing example of someone thinking outside the square and not just cloning what already exists. The way the strings are anchored and the neck is height adjustable is impressive. I have read good reviews of them in other guitar forums. The important factor in any purchase is the feel, action and ease of playing before considering price. If all those are right then the tone is the next consideration. Price should not be the deciding factor but unfortunately is in reality in many cases.

Have a look on Youtube and you will see most guitar factories hammer them in. I have always used a nylon faced hammer to tap them in without marking them. Bound fingerboard fret ends need to be glued with super glue to stop them lifting and moving. I have never had to glue unbound fretboards so far.

More detail required. What are you trying to wire up. Is it an active pickup?

Look at Stewart Macdonald website. They have good wiring diagrams and probably one for that pickup. Copy the diagram and paste into a Word document and you can enlarge it to make it easier to read.

ON my 335 semi-hollow I built I originally used 10's and I then changed to 11's. I must say I prefer the lighter feel of 10's. It does break into overdrive easier with larger strings at the same gain setting.

Have a look at this one from Fender http://www.fender.com/products/search.php?partno=0262000520

As far as fret buzz goes if it has quite a bit of fret wear it would pay to relevel and profile the frets so they are all level. Then you should be able to get a nice low action. As far as going out of tune, every electric I have played goes out of tune especially if there is a temperature change. I often find a guitar is sharp first thing in the morning and as the temperature warms up then it goes flat. I guess this is due to contraction and expansion of the strings.

I put Grover Rotomatics on my semi hollow body I built recently and was less than impressed as they seem to have a lot of backlash (play) when tuning up. Previously I have just used sealed unbranded cheapies and they have been fine. Maybe I will use Gotoh next time.

Tell me, how do you file a nut with a plain steel string?

Practice on some offcuts before starting on your dream guitar to get the feel for it and to save costly stuff ups. Once you are confident then go for it. Mark out some shapes with a sharp pencil and see how accurately you can shape them.

Once it is glued to a neck it wouldn't be too difficult to sand it straight with a long straight and radius sanding block. Use a glue stick designed for paper to fasten sandpaper to straight edges. It works great and is easy to remove for replacement.

I use oxy cutting torch tip cleaners while not perfect are a cost effective way of cutting string slots. I have been thinking of making a holder so they can be clamped and tensioned to make them easier to use. They do seem to go blunt fairly quickly but hey they are cheap compared to nut files. I cant justify outlaying that price for the small amont of guitars I turn out. I use my fret saw to initially cut the slots then file deeper from there as most of the nut will be filed back flush to the strings once the correct height is obtained. Melvyn Hiscocks method of calculating the proper string height at the nut is a foolproof way to go. That is, fret the string at the 3rd fret or first marker and the string should just be clear of the 1st fret. This way you will have the lowest action possible at the nut.

I have tried various methods for dressing frets. An oil stone is pretty coarse and too short for my liking even on the fine side but they are great for dressing the fret ends flush at 45 degrees. For my latest build I bought a long radius block and glued on 400 paper but that didn't work that well either. In the end I found a thick 2" wide MDF off cut slightly longer than the fingerboard that was dead flat and glued on 400 grit paper with a paper glue stick that is good as it is easy to remove if you need to put on some fresh sand paper. Using permanent marker pen on the frets I could soon see when all frets were leveled off. I then re-profiled them using my fret file which is a must if you want evenly shaped frets. I just left a faint line on the tops which I polished with 1500 grit paper then used metal polish to get them gleaming. Of course I first masked up the fret board to prevent scratches and dirt on the fingerboard. This method worked well and my frets are nice and even with no buzzes.

I used to break a lot of strings when I first played guitars through incorrect tuning. By that I mean if you don't use an electronic tuner it easier to tune the guitar higher than concert pitch and most strings don't like being tuned more than a semi-tone above pitch as it stretches the string too much and makes them prone to breakage. This is even worse if you really thrash your strings. Aso dont overdo the pre-stretching when fitting new strings as this can weaken them. The other point that has already been mentioned is having a sharp saddle edge and extreme angle over to bridge pin holes.

You will need to put packers under the top edge of the neck, under fingerboard, to see what thickness a tapered shim would need to be. I guess without a neck angle it has a high action? The easiest way to check the action is to put on the High and low E strings and pack the top edge of the neck until it has an acceptable action of approximately 2mm between string and fret for high E and 3mm for low E at the twelfth fret. Once you have worked out the needed thickness of a shim you can make a pattern of the neck heel and make a wooden shim and taper it down at the bottom of the heel. Hope this helps but without seeing exactly what is involved I may be guessing here.

The closer you have the pickup to the bridge the more trebly sound you will get. I love that sound coupled with overdrive / distortion. Harmonics are from the strings so the pickup position wont make any difference as far as that is concerned.

Are you saying the neck was bowed but gave it some neck angle. Now you have straightened it there is no neck angle? Does it not have a adjustable truss rod? My thought would be to make up a thin tapered shim to put between the body and neck heel to create some neck angle. I have found you always need more neck angle than needed on an acoustic due to the distortion of the body by string tension which pulls down at the sound hole and tilts the bridge forward.

Guitars dont like heat or low humidity. If you have a sudden rise in heat and low humidity the moisture loss from the fingerboard will cause it to shrink , and as it cant shrink easily because it is glued to the neck it will stress the weakest points such as fret slots. It is always good to store and stabilise construction timbers so they settle to the same ambient humidity before gluing. I know a local luthier who makes resonator guitars and sells them around the world and he told me he sent one with an ebony fingerboard from NZ to Australia and the fingerboard cracked badly due to change of humidity and probably heat. If you laquer the fingerboard it will chip off in high wear areas because of the grinding action of the strings. I know this from personal experience as my acoustic with a rosewood fingerboard has done just that.

The first acoustic I made had a really thick neck. After a couple of years I decided to make it thinner. I first drilled a tiny hole in the center of the back of the neck to find how deep the truss rod was. I calculated how much I could remove which would leave 3-4mm covering the rod and clamped the guitar and neck so it sat flat on my bench. I found some pieces of MDF to make up rails either side of the neck and ran my router along as far as I could get before the headstock and neck heel were in the way. I then reshaped the neck with my spokesave and sanded it with sandpaper. I used a rasp on the very first neck I made,but the spoke shave is far better and requires less sanding to get a perfect finish. It made the guitar feel so much better and nicer to play. At the same time I stripped the finish, sanded it and laquered it then sold it for a good price on Trademe which helped finance a new Vox AD50VT amp which rocks.

No as the tuners are a really snug fit at the headstock end due to not allowing for them when I drew the case out. The strap pin also sits snug against the end of the case so no it wont move around. The lid also just touches the strings when closed.