Geo

I'm thinking a "warm" color... amber, brown, red? LP's look great that way. This is a way cool guitar, whatever you choose.

I could answer your questions if this was a tube amp... sorry man. I don't understand transistors.

I would put any modulation effect (chorus, wah) after a distortion pedal. Modulation effects emphasize a certain harmonic (I think), and sending the signal with this accented harmonic thru a distortion pedal sounds nasty (to me). But, I don't use distortion pedals any more, so...

He had more pics; one showed a "Jackson" headstock.

"wait, i diddnt try to sell it as a jackson. i clearly stated on the first line on the listing that this was in no way a jackson guitar, it was purley for cosmetics. i did not attempt to commit fraud or anything."

Time for some comments to be withdrawn?

Kudos for challenging the status quo. The one true criticism I think is the fret access. Personally, I would have made the straight lines in the f-holes curved. But obviously, the main thing is that you like the design and build it well.

I think the neck works fine with the body. And the fingerboard wood is sweet.

Uh... what did he do wrong?

I must not have read the rules... I didn't know there were rules.

Huh, so it's single ended? Sounds cool!

No, you couldn't get 36 watts out of a single EL34.

I vote for the pointy-butt. It is REALLY cool looking, especially the way the f-holes "interact" with the whole thing. It will be one KILLER semi-hollow!!!

A little bit about the amp:

Self biasing EL34 (36 watts) or 6L6 (22 watts)

12ax7 preamp tubes, but another five different types can easily be substituted for different tones/less gain/etc

Custom wound transformers, all point to point wiring.

Do you have to change cathode resistors?

after this, im problably not going to have time to do any more projects like a guitar, so i want to plan out everything before hand to get it right. My body keeps staying small, no matter how big it looks on paper. Could someone get some deminsions of of a les paul for me? I know they feel good, and they are really tiny compared to a fender. My parts should be in wednesday, so things should take off at that point.

You got to make the time, dude! Don't give up on building guitars.

BTW, Les Paul never struck me as significantly smaller than a Fender. Unfortunately, I don't have a Paul, can't help you with the dimensions.

Im only 13, gimmie a break

I guessed something like that... hey, when I was 13, I didn't even play guitar. Don't be discouraged--when you've finished this project, you will have learned tons of things about building a guitar, and your guitar builds will only get better and better.

Cherry smells so nice. I could smell it all day.

Yall arent going to believe this and will problably kill me. I forgot to measure my body LENGTH, so when i cut it out (on posterboard) it was way small. Pics will come eventually.....

im just glad i saw this now, and not on wood, and im glad its just a small problem like this, and not something too severe.

Dude, you are out of control. I guess you're learning though! I hope your project turns out well.

Keep guessin'....

Okay, good point on the "Dynamo 36"... I'm guessing 36 watts. But to make an original 36w design, I'm going to guess that he used 72 12AT7's in push-pull, cathode-biased. That's the only way I can think of to make an original amp any more...

I own some birds and all the avian vets I have spoken with suggest having a number of different sized branches for the birds. This is so they do not have muscle problems from being stuck with one grip. Obviously, with people playing guitar it is not as important as we don't sleep with a guitar in our hands(well not always at least ), but having multiple shaped and sized necks would have some benefit to muscle use and grip, possibly even a noticeble difference. By using different guitar necks you build muscles or areas of muscles that you would not, using one neck. It also helps to prevent injuries or problems as greg mentioned. I think we should name it "guitar wrist/fingers/elbow/shoulder", similar to how people say tennis elbow.

Interesting. But I find it's difficult to play differently shaped necks--takes some adjusting, and seems to impede your playing. I guess it would be something to get used to.

An even bigger factor might be your actual fretting technique... are your fingers tense? It's hard, but sometimes if focus on playing a scale super-relaxed-ly, I find I play it better... not sure if that's relevant...

Wow! I wasn't too keen on the design when I first saw it, but man, the finished product looks great. To my eyes, it's "aesthetically balanced" (pardon the artistic snobbishness ), where I personally didn't see that in the first progress pics.

Very cool.

"Well, if you're just getting into amps, I'd say heavily moddifying proven designs is probably the way to go. I can't imagine it being very easy to design an amp from scratch without a very strong electronics background. A decent amp background will have you modding the daylights out of an older design in no time though."

But if you design an amp from scratch... it'll end up looking like a design that's already been marketed, I would think. There's only so many ways to make tube circuits.

Can you at least tell us what kind of power tubes it uses? How many channels it has? What the approx. wattage is? I swear... I won't copy your amp, because I'd rather build the ones I design. You're certainly generating plenty of hype with all this secrecy... but few of us can afford a hand-built amp either way, so...

I'm curious as to why you're being secretive about the amp? I have seen a lot of tube amp schematics (and built a few), there doesn't seem (to me) to be THAT much room left for originality, beyond the tonestack. I.e., preamps end up pretty similar, there are only so many kinds of phase inverters, and there are two kinds of power sections, fixed- or cathode-biased (single-ended falling under the latter)...

I "designed" my own amp, but I'm not hiding it... I'll tell everybody. It's a plexi preamp going into a 5w power section.

BTW, I am not trying to be negative/combative... I'm just kind of puzzled. But if you're able to market your own amp design, that's pretty cool.

For gluing the scarf joint... remember that the headstock piece will want to slide "up" the head, i.e. away from the nut. It can also rotate. So, you will want to provide a stop both at the body end of the neck and at the end of the headstock.

I don't know about titebond... someone else will have to answer that.

That's way more switches than I would ever need... but sweet nonetheless.

Is this an amp you're developing? Tube or solid state? I can't tell because of my crappy sound card... okay... I might not be able to tell anyway... Sounds good though, nice smooth distortion, good compression/sustain.

One thing to consider... if, like me, you don't have access to a bandsaw, you may want to do a scarf-style head. I don't know how you would cut out a Strat headstock without a bandsaw. I have cut three scarf joints by hand, each one better than the last, but all needing serious cleanup with planes and sandpaper. It's actually not that hard; I just clamp the blank down flat and hold the saw at a very shallow angle and start cutting, trying to follow the line I've drawn on the side of the blank.

Just some thoughts.

It sounds like you may not have done enough research to start the project? You should already have a drawing of how the neck will attach to the body.

I'm sure you could figure out a way to do a bolt-on neck with an angle... but doing it well might be the problem. For your first project... it might be better to do Strat-style neck attachment (i.e., no neck angle, bolted on).

You should probably get Melvyn Hyscock's book first and read it. It will explain everything.

So, it looks like you're doing a scarf joint? This is going to be one sweet guitar. I'm keeping my eyes on this one!

The design doesn't do it for me... at all... but it looks like you did a professional job.

Sweet.