Geo

Yeah. I imagine I could also use the 3-pos control from a box fan. I actually found a hillbilly way to control the temperature... just dribble about a teaspoon or two of water on the iron when it's too hot. The steam-off cools the pipe down and there's a window of oppurtunity as the pipe heats up when you can bend. I know, what a ridiculous hassle, but it works and I don't have to spend any more money! I bent one side and left it clamped up to shape while it cools/dries. It will need touch-up I'm sure, because the bend at the waist was ornery and kept relaxing a little. edit: here's some pictures. Don't laugh. http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...ar/IMG_0712.jpg http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...ar/IMG_0713.jpg

Ooh, that looks amazing! Love the mahogany! I've never seen that kind of color on a Tele shape, it looks great!

RW would look much better of course. Perhaps you could inlay a strip of metal or put some small screws in for the grub screws to rest on. Hopefully someone else will chime in; perhaps the wood alone won't be an issue, it just sounds like a problem to me. As to the neck shape... you can always put some carbon fiber in if you're worried about the stiffness. Remember, too, the different string gauges have different amounts of tension when tuned to pitch, so I think any neck is already dealing with that. Also, I don't think it should affect your truss rod. I used a rod from LMI which needed a 3/8" deep channel, so there's a lot to work with there. The asymmetry of the carve isn't that pronounced. FWIW, I'm pretty sure Tobias basses have an assymetric neck carve.

That's what I gathered from the Cumpiano book. After I had it running for about five minutes, water was disappearing immediately when flicked onto it. Way too hot. But this was with the can blocking the end. Maybe I should install a SPST switch so I can easily turn it on/off? @Inisheer: thanks for the compliments! I hope you'll be inspired to try it some day. Hopefully, I'll try bending the sides tonight.

Not quite sure I understand, but it sounds like you should use a metal plate rather than rosewood, if you're afraid of something burrowing into it. This is a totally cool guitar! I agree, the thick neck looks cool. My suggestion (just a personal preference)... carve it into a V, but offset the center of the V from the neck centerline so that it's somewhere under the bass side of the neck. This makes for a very comfortable neck that fits in the crook of your hand easily. I did this on my last electric and it's my favorite guitar just because the neck is so comfortable.

Doh, I didn't think of that! Another lesson learned, heh heh. This top is actually left over from the first time I tried to build an acoustic, so the soundhole was cut out a long time ago, and very badly. Yeah, I stuck a can in the pipe. This might work better without a cap, because the pipe got too hot within three minutes or so. If I can't get the temperature down, I may try a lower wattage lightbulb. Thanks for the reply. I've saved some of your posts about acoustic guitars; very informative!

This isn't a particularly remarkable guitar, but it's a big project for me, quite a challenge... Top, back, and plan from LMI neck http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...ar/IMG_0708.jpg back of neck http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...ar/IMG_0709.jpg headstock closeup http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...ar/IMG_0700.jpg my side-bender http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...ar/IMG_0710.jpg I just built the side-bender tonight after finally finding a suitable piece of pipe. It's heated by a 150w lightbulb. It gets hot pretty quickly, so that's going to be tricky.

The grainfill looks amazing!!!

I'll be watching your project! It looks pretty cool! A 12-string with P-90's should be awesome!

Thanks for answering my question, guys. Sorry for the short hijack.

My suggestion... cut it out with a jigsaw. You can follow the line exactly if you take it slow and watch it closely. Just clean it up with a sanding block.

I'm sure you can find what you're looking for on one of these pages. http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bridges,_tailp...em_bridges.html http://www.allparts.com/store/guitar-bridg...rs,Category.asp http://www.lmii.com/CartTwo/Secondproducth...ectric+Hardware I think the reason someone said "hand-holding" is because, based on the criteria you gave, most of us would go straight to a non-trem Strat-style bridge such as the ones in the links. It might seem obvious to us. There's no shame in it "not seeming obvious" to you. This is actually a very friendly forum. For myself, I always take the rebuke of the experts the best way I can. There's no need to get offended, and you'll learn a lot here if you stick around. And, certainly, keep asking questions!

If you do it like that picture, I can't imagine the body would feedback. The pickups, neck, and bridge are still attached to a solid hunk of wood, so structurally, that's a solid body guitar. I suppose the chambers on the sides might influence something, but I doubt it. The top wood above the sides is what's vibrating. I doubt that that can impart much in the way of vibrations to the bridge. In a fully hollow archtop, the vibrations are feeding straight back into the bridge. Just my take on it.

Just a few more thoughts on this subject... If you have a good electric guitar with good pickups, you already have a pretty unique and harmonically rich signal coming out of the guitar. Now you need an amp that won't interfere with that too much and will only add good coloration. Most classic tube amp designs do just that. To my mind, a graphic EQ is more suited to bass or setting a permanent EQ for a sound system in a room (where you want to adjust certain frequencies to balance out the peculiar "room sound"). I guess it's also useful for recording, when you're trying to get each instrument to fit into its "frequency shelf" so you can produce a clear, loud, realistic mix. (For example, rolling off 100 hz on guitar tracks so you hear seperation between the 6-string and 4-string) For playing live, I don't see the need for a graphic EQ, but that's just me. Rather than say, "I'd like my 5k dropped by about 2 decibels", I might just turn the treble down a little (5k is treble, right? )

Ah, too bad, I think that would look cool! Perhaps a solid purpleheart neck/FB, or one laminated from purple heart and ebony.

My suggestion... keep the top pretty thick (1/4" or more?), and it shouldn't contribute to feedback. I don't have any answers for your second question.

"Make sure you use hard woods (not hardwoods, but hard hardwoods) if it's going to be fretless. Bass string are very abrasive." A fretless rosewood neck/integral fingerboard would be pretty cool! Maybe RW-maple-RW lamination?

Well, what kind of amps are you generally playing? In my own experience, a good amp needs very little tone adjustment because it sounds good when you plug it in. I have a 5w Plexi-style amp where I never touch the tone controls because almost any setting (aside from turning the treble all the way up) sounds amazing. This is also my experience with old Fender amps. I just adjust the treble control to even out the sound (depends on the kind of pickup I'm playing) and then play, no more adjustment needed.

But for someone on a budget, who can't find pipe with a 3" diameter... ? Any more opinions on this idea?

Perhaps a foolish question... is there any reason this wouldn't work for guitar sides?

That sounds good to me, but I don't have much experience in that area. Since you say it's not really a structural issue, that would probably work fine.

This almost sounds like there's DC on the speaker. If you put a 9v battery on a speaker (to get several speakers in phase when wiring up multi-speaker cab), you hear a pop. You could test this by setting your meter to DC (say 20v range) and measuring the speaker. If there's DC on the speaker, something is seriously wrong with your output transformer. Just another thought. Perhaps if there was DC there, it would have already blown the speaker, so this may be beside the point. And if you're hearing more than one noise, the DC would have to be changing, which seems unlikely, but I'm just throwing it out there... your OT may be bad.

I have to agree with Xanthus... I like it better in the shop, where it looks "baby blue". And... I also like the yellowed pickguard! I would have kept it. Oh well. Looks like you did a great job, congrats!

Maybe it was a new blade with some kind of black paint on it? I've had that with hacksaw blades, where they're painted blue and the paint comes off on the first few cuts, probably cuz it's cheap crap!

Yeah, that's REALLY thick!!! 1/4" is about the thickest I have seen/would ever want. Perhaps since it's so thick, you should give it a pretty small radius so it's more comfortable to play? For neck thickness, I go with 1/2" under the first few frets. When you add the fingerboard, it's a total thickness of 3/4", which feels good to me. I would say you could make your actual neck thinner, since your FB will be thicker and thus make up the difference in strength; but with insufficient wood under the truss rod (carving the neck way thin), your rod might force its way out the back! Alternatively: perhaps you could cut most of the truss rod channel in the neck and some of it in the underside of the fingerboard. Then you could carve the neck thinner and the truss rod would still have plenty of wood behind it.