Geo

Cool, I think it looks great! There's a cool vid on Youtube of Cream playing Sunshine of Your Love in a dirty little club... it's a great performance, very "small gig" feel, and this guitar always makes me think of that.

Your neck is great. The oversized headstock + offset dot markers + small body = very classy look. How does it sound with that neck humbucker?

Agreed. Why go through the trouble of adding all those frets if you can't reach them? But maybe that's just me... I find all aspects of fretting very tedious. If you design your neck pocket carefully, you could cut out some of that body and make the frets reachable. Extending the tenon a long ways into the body (under the maple) would be an easy way to make the neck joint strong enough with a massive cutaway, so it sounds like you're on the right track with that. I don't think cocobolo ever looks bad. I like it better than plain ol' ebony.

Is that guitar thicker on one side, or is that an optical illusion? Looks beautiful!

Wow, great job! I was groaning along with Supernova until I saw your finished product. It's beautiful.

I know you don't want to buy online, but here's two good places: LMI is a good company and I've bought a lot of stuff from them. http://www.lmii.com/ I bought a mahogany body blank from Mammoth Guitars once. It was perfectly machined and flat, totally ready to be used. He's a member here too I think. http://mammothguitars.com/bodyblanks.php

Agreed. Give me tenths of a millimeter any day, I can't deal with fractions! But I use inches for long measurements (scale lengths, what have you). How dare I?

Same here, that's what I did. I drilled the headblock holes wider, as suggested, because these woodscrews have a bare portion up near the head that is the diameter of the threads. So I don't think there's any thread biting in the headblock. But I'm going to find some hanger bolts and try that. Somehow, the idea of nuts/washers tightened down seems better than woodscrews. Thanks to all who've given their input.

Good, that will make my life so much easier! I would question that too... well on second thought, I wouldn't want to know anything about it. Rich, yes, they're wood screws. This sounds good to me: How does one install this kind of bolt? I'm afraid pliers would mar the machine-screw thread that the nut is going to go on. Thanks again to everyone.

@ Setch: off the top of my head (I'm at work), the neck pocket depth/tenon thickness is 22mm. The external heel thickness is about the same. So, there is ~40mm of wood in the heel. I don't know the exact length of the screws I used, but I checked them against the total depth provided by the heel while it was sitting in the headblock, and the screws were long enough while not going so deep that they would poke out of the heel. @pariah: thanks for posting that. Let me see if I understood the advice correctly: the warning is about un-tapered braces with no kerfing above them? The problem is that, being untapered, they won't flex, and without kerfing holding them down, they may pop off. I am not sure if this will be a problem with mine. I tapered the braces to ~3mm or so I think, but I'll look at this when I get home. If I'm careful I can still taper the braces some. Thanks again.

Buy that one!!! If you don't like it, I'm sure you can sell it for more than $500 if it's a 40 yr old Gibson!

Thank you for the replies and for not mocking my ignorance! Here's a picture just for the record... there are three woodscrews going through the headblock into the heel. The neck tenon is about 20mm deep, laid into a pocket in the headblock. I attached the neck to make sure everything lined up, and it's not an issue to remove the neck right now. I think my trouble comes from this. To drill the holes for the screws, I used a bit that was the diameter of the "center" of the screw where the thread attaches, i.e., the full diameter of the screw thread had to cut through the wood. So it needed some elbow grease to get them in. Perhaps I should remove the screws and run the next-size-up bit through the holes? I just thought I should leave enough wood for the threads to grab since the neck must withstand so much tension. But this... ... makes me think I made the holes too small in diameter. If it takes effort to tighten/untighten the screws, I must be compressing the wood. "Hanger bolts" sounds like a better alternative. I'll look into that, although it may be difficult to adapt, as the guitar wasn't planned that way. Thank you all very much! I'm learning just how much I don't know.

THAT'S what I was trying to say. And you're absolutely right that that "logic" is informed by the musical culture from which we come. Thanks for illuminating my idea. Yes, that's a terrifying sound! As I think about it, I'd like to build a simple fretless guitar just to mess around. I've heard microtonal guitar music and it is very bizarre to a tonal ear. It made some of the people in my class feel sick! I liked it though, as I'm pretty open-minded. PSW, your degree sounds very interesting. It sounds like they took you in the exact opposite direction that my program takes me. We start with Bach and classical for a grounding, Rennaissance to Romantic the next school year, and then 20th and 21st centuries. Oh, I don't like that! But then again, I don't care for atonality or twelve-tone music. I tend to prefer "well-veiled tonality", if you will. Ives and Debussy are two of my favorites.

Building a flattop: I don't see how anyone could attach the neck, close the box and THEN route for binding. The fingerboard and heel will be in the way. Do you guys close the box, route, and then attach the neck? I'm in a bit of a quandary. My neck is bolted on with screws through the headblock into the heel. Currently I have my neck bolted on but the back is not yet attached. Technically I should be able to attach/remove the neck once the box is closed by maneuvering a short screwdriver inside the box. But I'm very worried about this; I'm afraid I'll strip the heads of the screws because of the trickiness of using a screwdriver inside the box. Any advice? Should I clarify the question?

Hm, that's true. I suppose I was thinking of "typical" western music (say a classical symphony, a romantic piano piece, a good rock n' roll tune). I suppose my statement came from this feeling... the EASIEST way to create accessible music is to create a good melody. The masters can do it with other mediums perhaps. And I don't discount the place of a good groove or good texture... You're right though, Bach's lines imply so much more than the plain old notes themselves! I think when I said "melody is intuitive not intellectual", I meant what creates a good melody and what listens to it. The part that creates and appreciates melody is intuitive. Of course any melody can be analyzed based on scales and/or harmony beneath it, but the ear doesn't really care if something is a "non-harmonic-tone" or "appogiatura" or "passing tone". The ear looks for contour and the ebb and flow of tension. That's what I think anyway. Theory is certainly a crucial tool for most people. I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have the grasp of theory that I do. It helps me everyday. BUT... think of the Beatles. Allegedly, they couldn't even read music! And thinking of Bach again... (I've heard or read) that he wrote his melodies melodically; that is, he wasn't thinking tonally, wasn't thinking "my progression will go I IV ii V V/vi vi" or something. In chorales for example, he wrote each voice according to his rules of voice-leading and within a key: he wrote linearly, not vertically. So theory is a tool, but it's math. Music is not math but expression. That's why blue notes work. I don't know if you could mathematically analyze the shifting frequencies of a blue note. But it grabs your ear. Absolutely. If an intellectual/spiritual approach to music is what turns you on, then that's what you should do. Just beware that only the music eggheads will find it accessible. The trouble is, the concept of "avant garde" is no longer avant garde, if you see what I mean. It's no longer special to be special--no longer different to be different. This is why, for me personally, I search for simplicity (sometimes) and a clear melodic contour. Of course I like to write new colors "underneath", but I try not to sound too high-brow. And I try not to write static music, or music that develops and develops with lots of dissonance but never reaches SOME kind of resolution. There is nothing more exciting than a harmonically unexpected cadence or resolution. Obtuse music has been written, and it's difficult to listen to. Music has to go somewhere. As my chorale director said, "music is always becoming more dot dot dot..." (insert adjective) Anyway, this is getting rather off-topic... but it was off topic to begin with!

No, that's lovely! The simplicity of that body is really beautiful.

That's surprising to me. I have it as the fingerboard on a guitar and a bass. The bass is almost a year old now I guess and still that lovely bloodwood color. The guitar is newer (half a year?) but hasn't changed. I read on the LMI site that bloodwood "doesn't oxidize over time" or something like that. Has it changed color for anyone else?

Hey Ben, I do a lot of composing (mostly for piano), so I'll offer some thoughts on what I hear. "Bump": very cool riff, great dissonance... I would not play it more than four times. You build on it in "Boom", but I would make that the fifth measure of the first song. Then it's developing and going somewhere. By the time we get to "Bang", I hear what the first two tracks should be--a development of that main riff/theme. I would love to hear some jazz soloing (on any instrument) over that riff. Those are just MY thoughts, I don't want to tell you that your vision is wrong, as I'm an artist too and I know it's frustrating when people don't get it. I don't deny that there is a deeply intellectual side to music. That's a very exciting pursuit for us music eggheads. BUT... remember that the common folk love music too. In my opinion, the best music speaks not only to the music geeks, but to the average non-musical person too. As much as I love "complex" music, I'm finding more and more that I think the best music is beautifully simple. Take a 2-voice fugue by Bach: the interaction of the voices is complex I suppose, but if you listen to one voice, it's just a melody roving too and fro, with an ebb and flow of tension. Now take Debussy. You don't always have a singable one-line melody... but often the movement of the texture (with ebb and flow of tension) replaces the melody and you still hear a story being told. Music is about cadence... that is, growing tension coming to resolution... which is why bad jams get boring, when the group doesn't follow each other with dynamics and color... music is never stable until the cadence point. For myself, I love music with a good texture or a good groove, and I don't need anything else. But I think MELODY is what makes music. Melody is intuitive, not intellectual. I'm not criticizing you or trying to be condescending... just offering some thoughts about the accessibility of music. I'm sure you've thought through all this already. Good luck.

But it would be so overpriced.

I agree, spokeshaves are awesome! Personally, I clamp the neck out from the workbench with a support under the headstock. I mostly carve from the heel towards the head, pulling the blade towards me.

If you want brightness, try a 500k volume pot and no tone pot. You can even use a 1Meg pot if you want. The higher the resistance of the pot, the greater resistance between signal and ground when the pot is full up, thus fewer high frequencies bled off (as highs bleed to ground thru the pot more easily than lower frequencies.)

Bloodwood smells beautiful too, like chocolate, I think.

Hm... if there's only one clamp, the wood can rotate on you. But you probably know that. Wow, I would want a heavier-than-normal string since the scale is shorter! :-? Try taking bar chords (Emaj form, Am form, etc.) and moving them around the neck. If you drop some notes out, you have a finger or two to play little riffs within the chord shape... this idea really expanded my abilities, just passing it on. The body looks lovely!

Try wiring it straight to the output jack. Also, try measuring the DC resistance with a multimeter. Also, a diagram would help. Pots are always depicted from the back. So if you're saying "left lug of pot" when looking at the FRONT, you would have the pot wired backwards and that might be a problem. But try it wired straight to the jack. That will tell you if the pickup is bad.

Thinking along those lines... A local music shop went out of business a few years ago. They were the best store in the area, with employees who didn't hover, didn't dash over if you reached for a guitar... they sold D'Addario electric strings for $2.99/pack. At one point they had five stores in the general area I think. Eventually Sweetwater forced them out of business. Places like Sweetwater, Music 123 etc. offer free shipping and have so much in stock... in the internet age, I don't see how a local store can compete with that. Also... there's another local store that's still in business. The guy runs a lesson program (instructors give lessons on various instruments), and he also rents instruments to beginners. He has some Fender guitars but the rest are no-name Asian imports priced for the beginners. He usually has a good Fender reissue amp or two in the store but the rest are cheapo digital things. So, he seems to have found a niche. Just something else for you to consider.