avengers63

My name is John. But I'm not addicted to Andy's wood.

I tend to lump them in with hair metal even though they're clearly better. THANK YOU! That's all I was really trying to get at.

Louisville (pronounced Lou-a-vuhl)) is only about 4 hours from my place. We can make some noise, then take an afternoon road trip to get some wood. That sounds kinda gay, huh.

The seller's ID is chitswood. He's in St. Peters, an outlying town just NW of St. Louis. When I pick up my stuff he lets me look through his racks to see if there's anything else I might want. The first time I was there, he gave me a big chunk of ash burl for $1, and a piece of cocobolo the size of a computer mouse for free. When I picked up this last batch, I gave him a desk clock.

And I was talking about the harder edge stuff. With the exception of System of a down & Killswitch Engage, all of the bands you mentioned were in the era of Hair Metal. Most of that genre could be had with a Boss DS-1, which will still allow a LOT of the guitar to come through. Metallica & Anthrax, for example, are more in the category I'm talking about. A lot of the screamo bands are as well. Crank the distortion of the HM-1 and scoop it all out and there goes the tone. I'll admit fault in that I wasn't as specific as maybe I should have been. And Randy Rhoads had a horrible guitar sound. Great player, bad sound.

It's hard to tell from the pics, but that top looks like it might be ply. Whatever the top is, I personally don't like it having that space under the arch. On a better note, I've bought parts from that seller before. He's really a great seller to do business with. If you asked him about whatever concerns you might have, I'm confident he'd be 100% honest with you.

I'd say wait and see what the quality of it all is before buying anything. Don't hold your breath on it all being worth keeping, but some of it may be OK. I'd give the pups a whirl as well. Sometimes a cheap pup (Atrec/GFS) can sound OK. If they don't sound any good, oh well, nothing lost.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were capable of hearing things through my ears. So obviously you have no idea what you are talking about. See, the way I hear some of the harder metal guitars, it's all washed out by the overdone distortion. Believe it or not, you can be as condescending as you want, I'll still have my opinions, and it's OK if they differ from yours. I have all the respect in the world for you, but please don't imply that either I don't know what I hear or that I can't have my own opinion.

If you're going to play metal and have it so distorted you can't get the wood tone to come through anyway, what's it matter? I don't know what rjhalsey wants plays or anything. I'm just sayin. In any event, a kit of any reasonable quality is a great way to learn some of the basics of guitar building and finishing before going into the deep end of the pool. Ramp up slowly and the learning curve is less painful.

There's an eBay seller that lives about 45 minutes away. He has a ton of exotic pieces, but none of them very big. About every other month I spend a week bidding on a bunch of stuff. Most of it goes for less than 1/2 of retail because most folks have to factor in shipping, which would add +/- $10 to the piece. I end up spending about $100 and an afternoon's driving for $200-$250 worth of small craft pieces. Recently purchased: $24 worth of Brazilian redwood for $4 5 Spanish cedar thins (36 x 4 1/2 x 1/4) for $1 3 pieces of mayan walnut totaling 1BF for $1 Bocote for about $4-$5/BF 7 pieces of 1/2" thick x 4 1/2 wide S4S bloodwood totaling 4.42BF for $21.25. On the trip I made a couple months ago, I stopped at the Rockler store that's over near his place. They had in a palate S4S lumber they considered to be shorts. All of it was 48"-72" x 3"-4" x 1". The whole thing was unsorted, and ALL of it was $2/BF. I went through it and picked out probably 10 mahogany boards, 5 walnut, and 5 maple. The bill was only about $25. I just ordered 10BF of chechen for a series of frames my wife wants me to make. I had permission to get the chechen. I tacked on an extra 5BF of purpleheart that she'll not know about for a while. I have so much wood in my workroom I can just about divide it up by geographical region of origin: North America, South America, and Africa. Is it enough? HELL NO!!! I need more! I'm taking a break from guitar making for a while. I'll be finishing up the ones I have in various stages of incompletion and stopping for a while. I'll be doing small woodworking items while ramping up for a pair of end tables. Ya know - the hardest part is picking put which woods to use. I look at the woods and I want to save them all for "something special". Some of them just look too pretty to cut up, but too pretty not to use. Then the ash, mahogany, and maple look too plain to use. I really wrestle with the woods I have when planning an item. It's a great problem to have.

Butthole. You beat me to it.

Why a trem instead of a hardtail?

Mmmmmm... burl. Is the body solid or is it a top? That should be a good looking neck too.

Now THAT is high praise indeed. Thanks!!!

I'm working my way up to the All Access Neck Joint. I had to look that one up. In reality, my hands are so big I don't have ANY issues with a thick neck heel. I can't argue that it'd look better, but I just don't need it. And I'm hoping you're meaning For The Win, not F*ck The World.

fairly sure i inlcuded a soundclip too dude, let me know if it doesnt work http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cf...p;content=music anyway, i wouldnt criticise doug for using cnc - it still comes down to having some vision and pulling it alltogther which is why i think i will be voting for doug once we see more of his current work... this one seems more like a stepping stone, as cool as it is we know better is coming!!... and lets not forget that paduak disc logo on my guitar is straight from dougs laser cutter I must have missed the clip. I haven't been as active here lately as I'd like to be. Don't get me wrong - I'm 100% in favor of using whatever tools are available to get the job done. I know it's a little hypocritical to go both ways on the exact same subject, but.... I don't know. I can't put it into words exactly. It just isn't as impressive to me to CNC an intricate design like that as it would be to do it by hand. you're right though - he had the vision, tools, and ability to pull it all together. Had I the same resources available to me I'd do the same thing, so in that regard who am I to judge. I hope I don't sound like an overcritical hypocrite. I just really can't put it all into words properly. Oh, but to be Pete for 5 minutes.

Well, poop. I was hoping to get in on the action for January. Oh well - that's me... a day late. We'll call this the PRAsh. Ash body - 1.5" thick Basic PRS shape, but with a belly cut, forearm contour, and severely rounded sides reminiscent of an Ibanez S. Westone neck - 25.5 scale Khaler flyer trem 2 Gibson P-90 pups. 3-position toggle 1 volume, 1 tone, abalone capped knobs The control cavity cover is a piece of bookmatched ash made from the cutoff. The input jack is a recessed electrosocket. The body was stained black, then sanded back, stained green, then sanded back again. The end result (discovered completely by accident!) is a very dark green in the grain with the remainder being slightly darkened. It was finished with shellac, then hand buffed. For your amusement, the build thread. http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f01.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f02.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f04.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f07.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f09.jpg

All done! :D http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f01.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f02.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f03.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f04.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f06.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f07.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f08.jpg http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...inished/f09.jpg

WIX: The body shape.... it doesn't do it for me. It's the trebel horn. There's a whoooooole lotta horn there. BLUSEY: I relaay dig it. Tone on tone is hard to pull off, but the white pearl works very well. I'm not a fan of mixing the metals - chrome & gold together - and the ring on the neck pup on top of the p/g is really odd. Other than that it looks really nice. SCOTTYD: Like every month, your basses are realy nice, but there's nothing that jumps out at me. Were I to nit-pick, I'd say the face looks a bit monotone with the top, pup covers, and knobs all having virtually the same color. DAVO: Normally I don't like 7 & 8 string guitars. However... you get my vote this month. It's the strong, simple elegance of the whole thing. The acoustic-like binding around the neck join is what pushed it over the top for me. HUNTINDOUG: If this were done by hand, I'd be a lot more impressed. That you have a CNC machine really takes some of it away for me. That's not to say it isn't pretty cool - it is. But for a home-made guitar contest..... it'd take something really over the top to get my attention. I sincerely hope this comes over the right way. WEZ: I LOVE the body shape. The carve/bevels came out great. Maybe it's the pics, but it just looks too dark for me. I wanted to vote for you, but since we only have pics to go from, you had to come in 2nd for me. Sorry dude. BIGDGUITARS: Yep. Thaaaaat's a Les Paul. I don't know what else to say. It looks really authentic. PETERBROWN: That's some nice inlay & engraving work there. I like the color contrast in the wood, too. BOGGS: The woods are beautiful. But... I'm not sold on a strat headstock with the body, and the body shape around the butt isn't doing it for me.

The "dirty" fretboard is pretty firring for the toxic waste theme. It is reminiscent of a rusty barrel.

I got the sound issue figured out. The hot post on the jack was touching some shielding. Once I dug it out everything came to life. Thanks. Yea, it's an electrosocket. Recessing the jack was a total mistake. After I rounded the edges, I drilled for the jack hole. When I drilled it out, the edge was thinner than the diameter of the hole. Once it was done... Well crap. Too late now! All that was left was to smooth it out and make the jack fit and look as good as possible.

The best flutes are made from gold. Second to those are silver. Based on that, those would be the most musically resonant metals. Coming back to an economically feasable solution... I've seen aluminum used for bodies here & there. IIRC, the dude from INXS used one, I think by Tokai. They were completely hollow. How that would translate to a fretboard, who can say. So... were it a bass, I could understand why you might want to go fretless. But on a guitar? Care to elaborate?

That's very kind, and very encouraging. I HATE doing the wiring. I don't feel that I'm good at it and I don't understand electronics as well as I'd like. All I'm doing is following the diagram and using as little wire as possible. It's good to know that I appear to be doing it right.

I don't have anything productive to add, but this is a VERY cool project.

FOUND IT!!! You mentioned grounding out a number of times, possibly a hot wire touching the shielding. The jack hole is pretty tight. I have a habit of shielding the poo out of the cavity, including the jack hole. Some foil was wedged between the hot lead to the jack and the wall of the hole. After digging that out, presto - sound. Thanks for the help. It might not have been what you were meaning, but your words helped anyway.