Southpa

Hiya Frankie. Here is a good site with some descriptions of wood properties. You read and decide. http://www.rampartguitars.com/Contents.htm

What kind of amp? tube? SS? combo? does it have reverb, tremolo? 2 channels? and if so, make sure all those features work ie. bass/middle/treble knobs, tremolo and reverb intensity/speed. If you can't find any burnt wires/connections I would still take it in for a checkup and describe what happened to the tech. Maybe a bug flew onto a tube and got fried.

Back again, things are so unpredictable in this business. The fish were caught too quickly IMO. So they closed the fishery on the 3rd day. We got some work done and they plan on reopening on the 15th. I sure don't see a career in the works here, but I'll go out again anyway. Worked in the pouring rain, and saw a few nice fish. Its nice to get out of town anyway. So its back to work on my SG!

My last guitar is a tracing of the treble side of my Hagstrom III, flipped the guitar over and traced again to get a mirror image. My current guitar is from a printout of a Gibson SG CAD drawing. As far as "unique" designs, I would use drafting tools, to maintain symmetry and balance where required. That is, using protractor to draw radiuses (radii?), all on a large piece of paper. When the overall shape is drawn I would cut it out and trace it onto the wood I plan to use.

Smoke usually means something was getting cooked. You have to take a close look inside for fried wires, maybe your transformer was about to melt down, who knows? Every part of the amp works fine?

Put the screws back into the studs, just need a few threads in, and pull them out. You might have to do a little bit of gentle rocking. If they are really tight and won't budge, put a piece of wood with a piece of soft cloth under it right beside the post. Then slowly lever the stud out with a claw hammer.

1 -3 degrees is pretty much ballpark for the adjustment range for a TOM bridge. Regardless what you are using, unless you are building an unusual guitar with a really high fretboard or a sunken bridge, you can't go wrong with that range of neck angle. Your bridge adjustment should be able to compensate to get your action where you want it. I took measurements from a carved top LP copy and found the angle to be 3 degrees. Flat top guitar can go with 1 or 2 degrees. But DO follow Setch's advice. Make some drawings with your proposed neck/scale length and your bridge range adjustments (lowest to highest) to figure out your optimum neck angle. I prefer to figure it with the bridge set around the middle. And who said I would never use my high school math again? I'm glad I kept my old trigonometry text! VERY handy for this kinda thing!

Hey, looks like I don't have to leave for work 'til tomorrow morning, so i can keep up with things for the time being. The original '57's were sprayed with the oldstyle nitrocellulose laquer that contained celluloid binders. The early nitro was very prone to checking after some years, that is why they switched over to laquer containing acrylic binders. I can't think of what kind of finish, material or treatment you could use that will cause checking over night. I remember stripping a 60's vintage EKO archtop that had a real thick coat of varnish all over. Every square inch of the finish on that guitar was yellowed and checked.

I hadn't been working in the fisheries field in a few years now and am resuming some contacts from those days. I only learned today that a good friend of mine out in Ucluelet BC passed away a little over a year ago. Hume Eyford was a damn good guitar player and knew his way around a fret job. His best years were in the 60's 70's and 80's, touring around the Island with bands and generally sitting in for studio and stage work. He collaborated with Colin James before Colin James' even began his ride to fame and fortune. Hume didn't take care of himself very well, he liked his beer and let his teeth go bad. He left behind a beautiful daughter, Elise, who I hired for one season, and he put his son through university. Any money left over he drank. I still have the Musicman amp and roadcase I bought from him back in 1997, I can only guess why he needed the money so badly. I also have the Fender Newporter acoustic, badly broken at the time, that I bought off him for 50 bucks. At least he got to see how I repaired it and got to play it again. He was in his early 50's and I heard his heart finally gave out. If you were in a jam he wouldn't hesitate to pitch in and help you out. I can still remember him showing me how to replace a U-joint on my truck. I'm only mentioning this because folks can change over the years. Near the end of Hume's life he was sinking into a "town drunk" reputation. I've seen it happen many times in many places. But everyone has that wide eyed, "innocent" past full of hopes and dreams. I'll miss his raspy, cackly laugh that I heard so often. He always managed to keep his sense of humor, right to the very end. For that matter, I can't recall when I've ever seen him get angry. Heres to you Bud.

I can't seem to say anything nice here. Don't want to start a S**t storm but does it really matter? I can see choice of wood being really crucial for building acoustics, and any other hollow bodied stringed instruments. Guy is going to spend all kinds of money on expensive woods for his solidbody electric and then plug in a bunch of pedals. hey you metalheads! after you plug in all that electronic stuff 99% of your so called "tone" is now in the pedals, pickups and likely, your head! Maybe a little bit in the fingers if you can make the magic. You would get the same sound by mounting pickups on a 2X4. And what the hell is a "creamy" sound anyway? I envision someone noisily milking a lactating woman. I don't care, I'm going away for 2 weeks, so just cool your heels and keep churning out those guitars.

Just when I was losing faith in our federal government, they turn around and ask me to work for them. I'll be heading out tomorrow morning to a small town on west coast Vancouver Island called Zeballos, BC. Its quaint, its picturesque and its wild! gonna be a paid vacation. I'll be running a crew to examine commercial troll caught salmon for coded wire tags (hatchery origin) and collect biological samples (DNA, scales etc.) while they offload fishing boats. This is the same seasonal job I've done for the past 12 years while working for a consulting firm that used to run the contracts. Since DFO (Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans) took the contracts over I was told there was little budget to hire me, they only wanted locals etc. can't pay for accomodation, mileage etc. etc. Now they suddenly have a need to check EVERY commercially caught salmon during the month of May. Sort of an inventory/stock assessment. All of a sudden all this money shows up, huh! They've realized that you just can't do this work without the proper training. I was told they are having problems with some of the local "hippies" they hired in a few areas. Some guys don't know the difference between a sockeye and a shoe! I might even consider making a proposal to them to offer a training program for dockside monitoring of commercial salmon. I managed to wrangle a little more money that what I was paid before. They will provide accomodation and a rental truck for me and hopefully a meal allowance. TAC (total allowable catch) is 35,000 chinook salmon and they figure that might be caught by mid month, so I'll be seeing you guys in a couple weeks!

Most of the CAD files are drawn to scale, ie. 1" in the drawing should print out as 1" on the plotter. Your best bet is to find someone who has access to a plotter. Maybe at a college or university (geography, engineering etc. faculties) or do you know someone who works at an engineering/architectural firm? If you approach the right people and just ask them to run off a copy of this or that file, even offer to pay them for the paper and ink you might get some help. The CAD files are small enough to fit on a 3 1/2" floppy disc.

Welcome to the board! VERY NICE work! I tried cutting 5-pointed stars the olde fashioned way, w/ a jeweller's saw, and none came out looking like yours. I still need lots of practice. Looking forward to seeing more of your work in the future.

And You And I - Yes Hotel California - Eagles

In the event that you do replace the fretboard here is a link that will help for some aspects of the job. Its no big deal, this is after all, a guitar building forum. http://www.dbeweb.com/guitar/

The American series strats have a satin polyurethane finish on the necks. Older models used gloss poly. http://www.allthingsstrat.com/strattable.htm

I was trying to identify the bridge pickup in my strat a few years ago. I sure wish there was an archive somewhere for pups that are now out of production, with pics and specs. I later found out it was a really early red SD Hotstack, blade style.

Its always nice to work with a smooth surface as much as possible. If you keep spraying then your lumps will just get bigger. Yes, I would sand things smooth before continuing. Have you determined what was causing the lumps in the first place? How long were you waiting between coats? And how much laid down for each coat? Spray a little less and wait a little longer and you can avoid any slumping or other buildup. The way I do it works best for me and I'll bet my curing conditions are quite different than yours. I do all my shooting in the back yard on a calm day with rattle cans. Also the positioning of the piece you are working on is important. If you are just shooting the face of the headstock then your best results will be to lay the piece flat and level. Laquer is very fluid, too much at once and you will certainly see things go wrong. But otherwise, its more forgiving than stuff like polyurethane. With poly there is a smaller time window for applying the next coat. That is, wait too soon and you might get runs, slumping etc. If you wait too long and shoot when the previous layer has lost its tackiness then it won't bond as well. Thats why they recommend waiting 24 hrs, scuffing and then reshooting. On a side note, I don't think I'll use poly anymore. I didn't use grain filler on my last guitar and figured on filling the grain with clear poly. I can't tell you how many coats it took to bring everything above the grain and then some for wetsanding. I did this over 6 months ago and now I find that the poly is still settling in and likely shrinking, yes, the grain pattern is starting to show on the surface again. Maybe one day I'll disassemble, scuff and shoot a few more coats. Then its hours of wetsanding all over again. Ya live and ya learn, .

I usually give a light scuffing before spraying so the next coat sticks better. I've had good results by spraying 2 or 3 coats over a 2 hr period each day until I figure I have enough thickness to begin wetsanding. Make a tiny block sander and work around your logo to get rid of the lumps. If you are spraying the whole thing, logo and all, then your logo area will always be "proud" to the rest of the surface. Tape (blue masking tape) over the logo and shoot until the nitro level reaches that of the logo. Then lightly cut around/ peel off the tape, lightly sand and continue spraying.

Can he play more than one string at a time?

Did you only cut the sides or did you carve the curve on the back as well? Either way, here is what I would do. Clamp the neck onto a table and make sure it is level across the face, all the way down. If you carved the back of the neck and it is off the table you should support it with the right sized piece of wood. Mark your centerline on the neck face and determine the length of your slot. Measure off how much you need for a fence to guide your router at either end of the slot, that is, it should be the same distance as the center of your bit to the edge of the router base. Clamp another piece of very straight wood (higher than the neck) alongside the neck at the distance you measured from your centerline. There will be a gap between your fence and your neck so you need to fill that gap with another piece of wood that is equal to the height of the neck face. This should give you a stable surface to run the router on without accidentally tilting. Before routing you need a starting hole to insert your bit. I usually measure off the depth I need (7/16" in this case) on a 1/4" drill bit and wrap a piece of masking tape around the bit, 7/16" from the tip. Drill in to the edge of the tape at the starting end of your rout. Here is a trick to make sure you are on track. Insert a pencil stub in the chuck of the router and set it so its just protruding past the router base. Make a trial run along the fence (router turned off, of course ) and see if the pencil line is on center.

Everytime someone tells me you can use "this" or "that" tool supplied by UNOHOO guitar suppliers, I can think of something around the house that can do the same job. 6 bucks here and 5 bucks there certainly adds up in the long run. Its all part of cutting costs and making do with what you have. I'd feel like a sucker otherwise. It gives me a little more satisfaction from knowing I can do the job equally as well with a more versatile tool than shelling out X number of dollars for a specialized tool that I will only be using 3X a year at the most. You can cut your slot just as well with a 1/4" bit . The only areas that count are where the truss rod blocks sit. Its easy enough to shim them in, once the freboard is glued on, it will not move.

Thats possible, but the sides on the Gibson style are straight. I would get more length to play with using an angled style headstock. Anyway, I'll deal with that problem when I get to it, . The funny part is, the MM has a strat side profile whereas I plan on using a Gibson profile. My last guitar was a 3/3 arrangement but has a strat profile, go figure.

Wow, 22Kohm? Thats awesome! You using 1 lb magnets? I'm using the Golden Age overwound 'buckers from Stewmac (12 Kohms) and am happy with the results, as far as the price goes. I'd like to get into winding my own pups one day, but have no clue of where to order the right supplies, ie. magnets, thin gauge wire, etc. As far as "muddiness" goes, can it be cured with the right capacitor?

The headstock is too SHORT, its not a thickness issue, I still have about 1" thickness to play with. The reason why its short is because I'm going for a 24 fret neck. I see that nobody around town has Grover tuners to trade in their spare parts drawers. Who wants to break up a set of good machined tuners like Grovers anyway? I like the Musicman headstock idea, thanks Marcel! I guess I'll scavenge one off my Fender Newporter and then replace the rest with a set of cheaper ones. They never fit right on that guitar anyway.