Digideus

I have a B.C.Rich Warlock Bronze here and measured the width of the material at the headstock which comes in at 15mm and not 10. Perhaps thats a reason why yours broke?

B&Q sell them for around £99. My brother in law got one in their sale for £79!!! As for how much has been spent on his workshop, dont ask!

I expect they deliver/mail stuff out. Mind you, Kent isnt that big. If youve got a car or a friend with a car, you could collect. They are very happy to have visitors come and look around too. Im going this week, so anyone whos interested, let me know and Ill report back to you

Seconded! The guy off New Yanky Workshop (discovery H&L) has loadsa fancy tools and he always put boards through his surface planer or jointer. How do these differ? Is it that the jointer will make 2 sides a square and the planer will only do one side but take off more material...or....no i'm guessing, i have no idea Chris The guy from the New Yankee Workshop is Norm Abrham! Master Carpenter and inspiration of Millions of Lumberjack Shirted Woodworkers the world over! hehe Norm is brilliant. The tools that have been refered to are as follows. Jointer - Allows a single surface to be planed dead flat at 90 degrees to the sides of the material so that the wood will be squared to the sides. Useful for preparing boards for gluing together so that you know the surfaces are dead flat and exact. Surface Planer/thicknesser - Allows the exact sanding of a surface of material across its entire width, so for example, you would use this to sand the face of a board to make it flat and remove material to get exact thicknessess of the board. Norms stuff is expensive and industrial. Smaller versions exist and can be purchased from most big DIY stores, like B&Q in the UK .

Guys and Gals, Further to my question on where to find hardwoods in Kent in the UK, I thought it only fair to share what i've discovered. Morgan & Co Ltd are very friendly, helpful and knowlageable. I called them and explained what I was looking for and they told me they can supply Mahogany, Maple, Ash, Wenge, Oak, walnut, etc... by the board. All materials are sold by thickness (I was Quoted 1 to 4 inch sizes over the phone), usually sold in 10/12ft long boards and most are from stock. An example was a 10ft x 2ft x 2" mahogany board costing somewhere in the region of £45! They also have offcuts available by the pallet-truck load for £100-150. Morgan & Co (Strood) Ltd. Knight Rd Strood Rochester Kent ME2 2BA UK 01634 290909 Contact Paul in sales for details of species available and prices. Hope this helps someone out there.

looking forward to that

Unless youre REALLY stuck for cash, Jointers arent that expensive. UK DIY chain stores carry stuff like this (Link to Jointer) and surface planers for not too much money. Perhaps those of you with the necessary experience with these tools can check to see if this one is suitable for the sizes of material you'd use for building guitars cos I was thinking of investing in one for my own workshop.

Im interested in this. I had a Marlin Randy Rhodes copy as my first guitar back in the 80s. It had a Plywood body and a maple neck with a maple board. I used it in the studio a few times and it screamed horribly when not being played. Back then, my friend who was working in a guitar shop told me that changing the pickups would definately help. He suggested EMGs as the 81/85 combo would prevent the feedback and sound great, even on a plank of wood. Dunno if there is much truth in this. Anyone know?

you mean the FREE ones, lol

UGGGG, Licenced. WE HATES IT MY PRESCIOUS!

Or leave them on A-La Kerry King style. Just dont leave them TOO long cos they can hurt when you walk into a guitarist swinging his axe around and 6 ball ends lump you in the face!

Hey, so many of us are new! Hi by the way. Im pretty new myself. I got a randy on my list of things to build as well, but mine will be neck thru with strings through body (the one Kirk Hammet had back in Ride The Lightning days). Mr Ormsby used home made clamps on his PRS ish guitar from last month. Im sure youll find his address on the site if you look. He used threaded bars with lumps of wood and a cushion of cork between the two clamping faces. He seems to have done well. Im told bags of sand are good as well, but have never tried them. Looking forward to the finished article.

The Charvel is a 3A I think , I can never remember which is which. It was metallic blue with a floyd in when I got it. The next plate has the Fort Worth details on it. Unfortunately it got stepped on and managed to break off the end of the headstock and put a massive hole through the electrics cavity. Ive sanded it back, filled any nocks and dings, filled the pickup holes except the bridge, filled the trem rout, recut the headstock and moved one machine head. Next up is the fixed bridge, which may be a hipshot bridge then painting matt black and silver speckled finish under tons of matt varnish and finally adding shiny shiny metal to it to cover the cavity hole If thats not metal, I dont know what is!!! I havent seen many Charvels for sale in the UK recently. Perhaps they are becomming a bit of a classic. I got mine in a bargin buy with two ORIGINAL floyd rose trems (the guy liked gold but it had a black one as well!) a hard case and a combination of pickups, Including a DiMarzio humbucker that is white and black. Dont know what it is but im putting it in there till I get an EMG.

Me too. All looks grande from here. Cant wait to see it! I only ever saw one 31 fret guitar and that wasnt a real 31 fret guitar. Anyone remember the Washburn strat with the fretboard that ended in an arc shape? It had 27 REAL frets on all strings, but ended on 31 on the high e string because of the shape. I seem to remember it had a crackle finish.

How about Black with Aluminum/Aluminium checkerplate cut to size and screwed onto the body. Give it that Industrial look! Its what im doing with my old Charvel

..and you could spray the guitar up against the wall to decorate as well!

If you want to shread Metal, look at the EMG range. They are the *BEST* metal pickup ever and im pretty sure that the one they developed for Dino from Fear Factory (a 7 string active) would suffice. A friend who biulds guitars once told me that Bridge Pickups are placed at an angle to improve bass response in the pickup. I only ever saw this configuration used on Kramer guitars.

If youre building a guitar, build what you want. Ive always looked at it like this, theres no reason to build something cos its simple. Build something because you want to. You could make a flat top bolt on Les Paul exactly the same way as the telecaster. It would be almost identical to build as the Tele except that you would make all the decisions about the finished article, such as woods, bridge, pickup, scale length, You said you have a Strat and a Jem. Unless they are specifically built of outrageous woods, you will probably find them built of Maple or basswood or something of simular tone. The decision of woods is important to the final tone of the instrument. Unless youre a die hard fan of the fender twang, id suggest you go back a stage and decide what you want the guitar to do and sound like before you commit to a shape.

Ever seen a suspension bridge? Those cables are his bass strings! An 8 String fixed bridge must be the best invention for Detuning Metal ever! Id go Low B and High A. Someone give Trey Azagthoth a call and tell him. imagine the sweeps!!!!

I agree. I played a new Jackson Pro Soloist custom for a while with a Floyd and it wouldnt stay in tune (the shop claimed it had been set up by their tech guy), then I played a second hand £300 Charvel 3 with a REAL floyd in it set up the the nines. and it ruled! Ive never touched licenced floyds since. They just wont cut the mustard with me. Mind you, I never use the buggers anyway, and I just retro fit the Charvel with a fixed bridge (pics when its finished and not before!)

Thanks for all your replies. Although Im greatful, I do detect some distain in some of the replies. I felt it best to reply just to be blatently honest with you.... Believe me, I've done MOST of what you guys suggested already with little or no luck. I've looked in yellow pages, done search engine searches, spoken to local timber companies and what have you but frankly to no avail. Cabinet makers is a great idea and one I will follow up this week. YES, David Dyke, Craft supplies and Touchstone Tonewoods are superb companies im sure but buying over the net or even mail order is, in my opinion, a little restrictive in the choices you can get by personal business. Drak, yes im sure you spent a lot of time looking. Mind you, if there was this thing called the internet where you could go somewhere and ask someone to point you in the right direction, im sure you would have done it, or are you the sort of person who doesnt look at maps when travelling long distance? Seems a shame to waste the experience and knowledge of others reinventing the wheel over and over again when a simple "Go here" would suffice, wouldnt you agree? I thought the purpose of this forum and the Project Guitar website was specifically to SHARE INFORMATION ABOUT THE FABRICATION OF GUITARS. Sadly, there is little or no information that is specific to the UK, and thats not a failing but is something that should be addressed to help others like me who want to try and do something unique, and It would be nice to feel that I did the right thing by asking your opinions first rather than feel belittled due to lack of knowledge. Still, no harm done this time and Thanks to you all for taking the time to reply. Im sure ill be around for a while to try your paitence again. Cheers

Apologies in advance for the sheer stupidity of this question and the obvious reaction of "oh no, not another one" by most of you , buuuuuuuuuuut...... I need some wood, well, rather I need to know where to get Tonewood. Yes, I have looked at the supplier list on projectguitar.com. yes I have their catalog. No, I dont think thats enough. There isnt a great selection and Id rather have a LOCAL(ish) supplier rather than someone either 100+ miles away or in another country. I live in North West Kent in the UK and would(wood?) love to find someone close by, so for all you Kent based people or just people who know where, can you please tell me where to find that wood I seek? No, I dont know which particular species I want, but anywhere is a start. Thanks in advance for you lovely people who are so fabulous, that one day someone will write songs about you!