ToddW

Yeah, I was only cutting out pieces that would be turned into dots to start, so I was watching TV at the same time. If I let the blade/saw tilt while in the slot it broke the blade. Did it twice.

Well, the support board I was using was 5/4 and no hole, just a slot. So when I looked up to watch TV and tilted the saw . . . splinnnk. Dit it twice last night, so I'll change it to 1/4" plywood and drill a 1/4" hole too. Should have ordered more than 24 blades!

Todd

Hey, 2/0, that's what I'm using. Swiss Platinum blades. They seem to work well. I got distracted and broke the first one, but other than that, no problems so far.

Todd

Ahh, so you were planning to paint it. I didn't realize that. Looks good.

I'd go with the inline headstock but cut a curve from just past the high e tuner to the point next to the tip. Sort of a scalpel look. My kids bang the headstock into everything (including my guitar) so I think that'd be safer and still look really cool. I used a non adjustable steel truss rod in my son's short scale, but the string tension is so low, a carbon fiber rod would probably have worked fine.

Looking forward to seeing more progress pics

I'm going to be starting my first non-dot inlays tonight using a jeweler's saw with the blades they recommended on OLF, so I can't offer any advice on this, but are you using an electric scroll saw or a jeweler's saw?

Best,

Todd

but i have rolled down my volume control and noticed that it gets muddy. "muddy" not "thick" or "heavy". Simply cutting highs makes something sound muddy.

and even if there's not noticable difference, all those little things all over your sound combine to make a significant difference

even so, i personally don't think $50 is reasonable for any guitar cable, even a 0mF cable

Here you go Andrew,

Easiest fix around and it'll only cost you $0.50 or so:

http://www.bothner.co.za/articles/volumepot2.shtml

or

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/volpass.php

I like the first one, but the second also shows a 150k resistor has nothing to do with fixing the muddyness. It just changes the curve of the pot so the volume change is less extreme at the end so I put it up in case you felt like adding it at the same time. edit: I just realized that the guitarnuts person simply got confused. He probably meant to talk about putting the 150k in series with the capacitor, which is a good tweek to this, and does just what the first link says. But he added a resistor in parallel, and that does something completely different. I'm not sure that 150k would be the right value to use in parallel, because it depends on if you have a 250 or 500k volume pot. I'd use a higher value, but a search will find you more detail.

If you already knew about these, sorry for being redundant.

Best,

Todd

Glue another dot on top with CA and sand flush.

That'll only work if the entire edge of the dot is low, not if only the center is low. otherwise when he sands it to the board radius, the transition will show worse than what he's planning to try.

Hi Trey,

Nice work on the Steinberger. I like that better than basic black, and I'm impressed you could get it back together! We had a tiny water leak in a second floor bathroom just before Christmas that put just a few gallons of water into the walls. It got under the hardwood floors and even though they brought in salvage pumps and dryers after only 24 hours, the walls and hardwoods were done. Total repair bill for a few gallons on clean water is around 10k, so the fact that you could restore your guitar after it was in sewage tainted water for so long is AMAZING.

Hats off to ya!

Todd

PS) I'd send Gibson a note telling them you're trying to restore your 335 and asking if they'll let you purchase some of the parts you'll need. Given the cause, I think they'd might be willing to do that.

So did you write "thou" because you weren't sure how to spell thousandths? I wasn't either so I typed it into Word to make sure it was right.

Anyway, if it's only a few thousanths, can you sand the board down? Or, if you can't, I wouldn't drill it out, I'd disolve the CA glue, or use heat to get it to release. Guesss you may need to drill out the center to be able to do that, but at least it will leave your edges clean.

Andy DePaule of luthiersupply.com suggested I glue a toothpick across the top of my inlays with a touch of water soluble glue, so when I place them in the hole they don't sink down to far. Guess that was good advice, although I'm sorry it can't help you now.

Best,

Todd

KP,

Isn't the concern only with non-dewaxed shellac?

Todd

Thank you for sharing

Ilikes2shred had a good idea. Take a look at the adapter they give you when you change a trev wilkinson nut to an LSR roller nut. It does the same thing.

Or, if you still have wood on the fingerboard behind the nut, carve that into the shape of the LSR adapter after you glue in the nut, and inlay your initials there. It'll look slick!

Good luck!

Todd

Actually, I've found that you need to use a slightly heavier string. With a short scale, extra lights don't have enough tension at pitch to feel normal.

Todd

FriskIt also comes in sheet packs, so if you want to mail order a small supply, that might be the way to go. I'd completely forgotten about the stuff, but last night I was doing some post holiday clean up and found a roll tucked in a box with some airbrush paints. Even so, I probably wouldn't have thought to use it instead of masking tape if I hadn't read this. Thanks!

Impressive place. They have a few woods on their exotics list that I'd never even heard of.

The scale you chose isn't that much shorter than a Gibson, so it's not like the 22.5" scale on my daughters guitar, or the 22.75" boards that Erik made for me. Pretty sure he could do 24.25 for you.

Or, if you like, you could go here:

http://www.cncguitarparts.com/index.php?cP...824b64e3a20cfb3

and get a really slick faux bound board. I love that faux binding look! They're 24.6" but I'm pretty sure you'd never notice, it's only .2" more from nut to the 12th fret.

Have fun,

Todd

There are a lot of really experienced builders here who have posted on this topic before, so try searching for +tone +wood and +other . . .

Most people say harder woods will give a slightly brighter tone, so a maple neck/fingerboard may be brighter than a mahogany/rosewood neck/fingerboard. But the difference isn't going to be extreme, and if you add a couple of carbon fiber rods in the neck, then who can say. . . Same thing with the top, but probably to a lesser degree unless you're building a hollow body guitar.

Me, I'd use a harder wood for some added clarity with the short scale, even though I think it's partly voodoo. After that, I'd consider weight, stiffness, stability, and appearance. And since you have a lot of woodworking experience, I'd say laminate the neck because it looks cool and may be more stable.

Last piece of advise, worth exactly what you're paying for it, is build a bolt on neck guitar. I'm currently wrapping up a neck through and also working on a bolt on, and finishing the neck through is a PITA! In fact I have doubts I'll ever do one again given how nice some of the new bolt on joints can be and how much easier it is too build the neck and body separately.

Regards,

Todd

PS) Welcome to Project Guitar!

Hi Kenneth,

I don't have a good answer for you. I will be trying something similar and figured I'd put the inlay in after the burst and a couple of coats of clear, and then put on more clear after I sand any epoxy off.

Hoping someone more experienced chimes in!

Todd

Are you going to paint the wood, or just clear it?

Todd

I'm not sure of the site that says "revolutionary"...but you will find few revolutionary designs out there annd many that do push the boundaries (like a lot of the Lace patents) don't work out so well in practice or against the HB and strat formulas by which everything is generally compared.

pete

It's still nice that Lace and others pushing the boundaries some. I love some of the lace sensor single coils. I realize some people think they sound sterile, but I don't find that to be the case and I love the lack of noise. I haven't heard a lace dually or an Alumitone, and don't know that I see the point of a Lace dually. Bummer with the Alumitones is they won't work with other PUPS like the lace sensors will, so there's no way to try just one.

I'll be interested to see what people think of those Taylor's once they're out for a bit. They look beautiful.

I mistyped the UFC35 I think, I'd have to recheck the tech sheets.

You could tint the clear with the Kandy, I think, but Sg100 is much cheaper and you get better depth clearing over the kandy.

Hey Syxxstring,

I'm not arguing that UFC35 isn't better for a guitar than UC35. I really don't know. UC is supposed to be harder, and UFC more flexible, but that's only compared to each other and from what I understand, both are harder than nitro. I was just looking at both earlier today and wondering which would be better for a guitar. I'm clearly not too concerned with the finish being jet fuel resistant

On the Sg100, I actually did know that you'd put clear over the kandy, but I didn't realize that it'd be a lot cheaper to use the Sg100 for the kandy layers than to just use UFC35 for all the coats.

On a car, I can see how that'd make a huge cost difference. On a guitar, ignoring the few bucks difference, is there any advantage to using the Sg100 over the UC or UFC? For me it's a question of how many things I need to buy.

Thanks,

Todd

Clear the body with HOK UFC35, your basic clear, untill you have enough built up to level sand. Over maple probably 2 or 3 sessions. Level sand, don't polish wax or anything else.

Next would be color coats:

Maybe 1 coat with SG100 (intercoat clear, required for the HOK Kandy Koncentrates) mixed with a touch of Pagan Gold, if your center isn't dark enough for your tastes. I'd probably leave it.

Then mix sg100 with either magenta or violet. Depending on which color suits your taste better. I'd go magenta based on that picture. Fade your first coat evenly for the whole distance you want color. (oops forgot a K color) I'd choose a small HVLP gun like my LPH-80, or the Kustom TH Airbrush. A regular airbrush has about a 2 inch fan, for even coverage Kandies require about a 50% overlap. I have the equipment to do it more effiecently so I would.

Then keep fading more burst color until you have the depth and pattern you like. Maybe for the final pass on the edge just a touch of BC25(black) added to the mix to give it a little extra dark. It won't kill the kandy effect but will give you a "black" kandy.

Then UFC35 clear 2 sessions or more depending on your gun skills, cut buff and polish. If you tape off the Faux binding and base coat the back black like they have you might need another session to make sure your tape lines are burried.

Couple of questions syxxstring, if you read this.

Why UFC35 instead of UC35?

and

Why sg100 for the candy? Couldn't you just tint the UFC35?

Thanks,

Todd

I also wouldn't spend more on PUPs than the guitar cost. I'd call up Becky at Bill Lawrence. They make amazing PUPs and sell them for less than the big guys.

http://www.wildepickups.com/Wilde_Bill_s_Collection.html

Becky or Bill will be able to describe the differences between their PUPs and explain how the different inductance (how hot they wind them) will affect your tone.

I think I paid less than $70 per PUP for an L600 and an L609. They beautiful PUPs.

So more of an opinion question now... you think the sound difference would be enough if both value caps were used and a switch to choose one or the other used? Kinda like splitting coils on Humbucker. You know Im going to try it to see...

Not arguing with blackdog that you'll hear the difference, but if you want to put in the effort of having a push/pull pot wired in, I'd use if for something more than a subtle difference in the tone control. Going from .022 to .047uf is just changing the cut off frequency of your tone control.

Think of the cap as a drain to ground. The bigger the cap, the easier it is for lower frequencies to pass through it to ground. So 5000 hz passes to ground easier than 50 hertz. Meaning you'll cut more high notes than low notes. Make the cap bigger twice as big, and you cut more of each frequency, probably twice as much 5000 . . . but that's wide open. Add in a resistor with the .047, some of that pot you have wired in series with the cap, and you shrink the drain again.

If you go to the effort of wiring in a switch, I'd do something more creative, like make one choice a .033, and the other choice a .047 and a 1 henry inductor to make a notch filter. With the cap, your graph of how much of a given frequency you cut is a sloped line that says you cut more sound the higher the frequency. With an inductor going to ground, the slope is the opposite, you let more of the low frequencies down the drain. Put both in line, and you essentially overlap the graphs. Now you cut the most at the notch

With .047 and 1h, it's around 730hz. bigger inductor, or bigger capacitor, and the frequency of the notch, the place the filter cuts out the most volume, goes down. A series parallel switch or a coil tap would also be a bigger change.

Long post, sorry, but if you're putting in the effort of modding the tone control, I figured you should know there are lots of easy mods that will have a bigger sonic effect.

Best,

Todd

I was planning to bend and clamp it without gluing it in place. Figured I'd unwrap it after it cooled for an hour or so and let it dry completely again while clamped to see how it worked. If it didn't bend well, I thought I'd just heat it again or try a new piece.

The overlay is only 1 inch or an inch and a half longer than the headstock it's covering, so it won't overhang a lot, but hopefully it'll be enough.

Thanks,

Todd

I'm going to try to put a quilted maple laminate on the front of a fender style headstock. The curve near the nut is pretty tight, maybe a 2" radius (4"circumference). I cut a .085" thick layer off the front of a board, and sanded it to about .07-.08".

I have super-soft 2, and was going to use that, then, about 2 hours later, heat it in wet craft paper and tin foil with a heat gun and press it against the neck with a shaped caul.

Never tried to bend anything before, and quilted maple seems pretty stiff. Do I need to thin my laminate more? I'd rather not, but I don't have a heating blanket for bending or anything like that.

Thanks,

Todd