GregP

Reverse-engineering is definitely a no-no.

Marksound-- Cool beans. I wonder where one could find micarta for a fingerboard? (thinking future project) Godin SD-- I own a Godin LG. I briefly considered their technique and then realized that I would need a very precise jig in order to make those 6 very precise grooves. And if just one of them is off, the whole effect is ruined. Also, as frank mentioned, there's still a wee grommet or at least the lip of a brass tube. Actually now that frank's mentioned it, I think the tube idea WOULD be the best one for me. I'll go down to the local hobby shop this weekend to see if I can find some appropriate tubing. Greg

Hi all! I never knew about this thing until just today: Epiphone EZ Bender For $29, I'm sold! B-bender duties for what... a millionth the cost of Hipshot products? The drawback is that it's for stop-tailpiece bridges, which makes sense since it's by Epiphone, but strikes me as funny since a Telecaster is more the ideal weapon for faux pedal-steel duty! In any case, I'd like to try one out and possibly install one on a lap steel project some day. Has anybody seen any available anywhere? Does anybody know of a similar product? Am I just looking at the wrong Hipshot thing? I want it to be palm controlled, and I know that Hipshot does a palm-controlled version, but it cost several hundreds of dollars. Clues? Opinions? General comments about how cool it is? Greg

Myka's guitar was posted back when my guitar was in the concept stage, and his ebony strip is exactly what I had in mind for mine. The rivets aren't a bad plan at all, but I can't help but think that's an awful lot of work to go through in order to get them to look very similar to what some counter-sunk black ferrules will look like, no? I guess powder-coat would be more rugged than adonized (or whatever it's called!) the way the black ferrules are. Greg

True dat, true dat. Regarding their technique, is there any documentation behind those claims? I don't mean to sound contrary or anything like that, I just know that there's so much rumour and speculation about a lot of things. Mackie, the very company you mention as having been ripped off, has been accused on other forums of having dodgy business practice as well. I'm in contact with some guys from Mackie, and I can say that from what I've seen, the opposite is true. Mackie seems to have a lot of integrity. However, that didn't stop people from making unfavourable claims against them without quoting any actual facts. Because I DO like Behringer products, I'd be curious to know if it's rumour or fact. I mean, I will never buy a Monster Cables product again because of THEIR business practices, but I've seen documentation that supports that stance. I don't mind that a company would use blatant ripping-off as a strategy, as long as it's been done legally. I'm not super law-abiding guy, but there are lines to be drawn on what I consider to be fair competition or whatnot. Greg

Reason 3's feature list is already out, no? All they did is at a patch-creation unit (the Combinator) from what I can see, which is something I can already do in EnergyXT, a full-fledged host and modular environment costing 39 Euros! Drum machines, though-- I've been in touch with a guy lately that sells MIDI loops, and I've tested out the freebies he offers. While the price -seems- steep because the product is only a few kilobytes (MIDI files don't take much space), the obvious effort he's put into them reveal a lot of hard work. MIDI loops are ultimately more flexible because you can change drums, patterns, tempo, etc. Anyhow, if you're interested, check out: Groove Monkee Really good stuff, and potentially far better than any drum machine would be capable of. Greg

I just wet myself at the matching pickup covers. Greg

That's OK, I almost certainly use NONE of my software to full potential. The levels of "complication" I reach could probably be worked out in Microsoft Sound Recorder. Reason is a bit too synthy-looking for me, and it doesn't record live audio. Without recording audio tracks, I don't think I'd even bother recording a song at all. Greg

Fair enough, GM. I have to admit, I have not much pity for Boss, though. They've been gouging young guitarists for years with shoddy effects pedals. Sure, some of their stuff is classic, but other pedals? Overpriced pieces of die-cast junk. It could easily be stated that the V-Amp2 is a rip-off of a Pod, but at least for that one they were smart enough to change the colour and shape a bit more. The Boss-alike font is a bit TOO cheeky. I wonder if they've already researched the legality, though? Surely they wouldn't openly and brazenly describe a pedal as "Modeled after the Boss OD-1" or whatnot otherwise? Greg

See, that's what I need... I think I can more easily see myself doing 'sketch' motion and feeling comfortable doing it. I guess the only thing to do is get some scrap wood and give it a try. Not sure if my sleeves are aluminum oxide, but I'll check into it. Greg

I found Reason to be unfriendly, so I'm surprised you had such an easy time getting it up and running. I don't have a background in hardware synths and so forth, though, which is what Reason emulates. Live is groovy, but once you're getting surgical, there IS quality degradation depending on the material used. Still, it's a great program! Greg

I've never heard of either of those things. Are they woods or synthetics? Greg

Coulda swore I wrote on this thread already, but in case not: awesome guitar!! Greg

The top is maple-- was it your experience that the maple was hard enough that the strings didn't dig in? I usually use 'light' strings on my electrics, guaged .11 - ? which isn't an insane amount of tension, though some day I may decide that .12 is the way to go. I'm surprised that the ebony won't get 'slots' in it from the strings, but if that's the case then I may not bother with the ferrules. The next question in that case would be-- how would one go about mounting the ebony? For a variety of reasons, it seems to me that it'd be best to finish the guitar and THEN mount it, but using what? I should drop Myka a line to see how he did it. Greg

Yeah, I've certainly considered it. Greg

So, I'm back to probably (I'm waffling... gr... I hate waffling) using the TOM bridge on my guitar instead of the Hipshot. I've always planned to use string-through behind the bridge, instead of stop tailpiece. I want the holes to be more or less "invisible" (for lack of a better word), ie. I don't want them all chromey or gold. So I was planning on recessing some string-through ferrules on the top of the guitar as well as on the back. To maintain a reasonably 'invisible' appearance on the black finished top, I want to use black ferrules. Will the black finish eventually scrape off and get all shitty looking from string friction and other wear? If so, is there a way I should install them so that they'll be easy to swap? Is there a particular 'style' of ferrule that anybody would recommend over the others? Optionally, I was going to put a small strop of ebony just in front of the ferrules so that the main contact would be on the wood rather than the metal edge; however, I don't know how long it would take for the strings to bite through the wood or if there's something I can do to prevent said 'bite'. Opinions? Greg

As well it should! That's Ricky from "The Trailer Park Boys", a TV series based in Canada but being 'shipped' abroad. I'm sure they get it on one of the American cable networks. [edit: bah, ibreakem beat me to it! FYI, that's Bubbles in HIS avatar, from the same show] Regarding the Reb Beach guitar-- I love that thing. I think it's awesome, though I've never played one. Always loved the look. Then again, I also love Steinbergers, and I agree with the comparison. As for the inlays... I don't know that I'd get too upset about it. I think the PRS flying birds are awesome, but I don't want to rip them off. That makes me think, "Well, what else to put on there?" OK, some talented guy on a forum had this bad-ass shark pattern, I think I'll do that one instead of the birds. Now, while the PRS birds are copyrighted (I believe), I don't know that the sharks are. Perry? If anybody has an even better idea for an inlay other than sharks or birds (but something that looks to be in motion like the PRS birds do to me) I'd be all for it. Er... Sorry, no custom wild guitars to show.

Yes, but it sounds god-awful on vocals or guitar. I guess I'll post the link to BetaBugs on another thread so that we don't hijack this one. Greg

Since there are no soundclips for the SansAmp ripoff, I went to the SansAmp website. Woo-hah! If they're pretty close in their rip-offing, this will be the best $50 (CDN, even!) that I'll ever have spent! Actually, a bit more once I pay for the not-included power supply (drat!). Greg

Word. I'm friends with Paul of FXPansion (the makers of BFD), or at least as far as the online definition of friends goes (he lives in Germany, and we don't tend to talk about our personal lives much). We are actually both part of a freeware plug-in company ( BetabugsAudio ), should you wish to stop by. The interesting stuff happens in the Bughouse (the forum). I'm fairly confident he's not a drummer himself, though, but I do have a wee bit background insight into the program (not much as it rarely comes up), and from what I've been told, there's nothing that comes even close. Not a thing. Now if only I was good enough friends to ask him to send me out an NFR copy of BFD for myself, but I don't want to ask, you know? Seems tacky. Unfortunately! Greg

I have to admit... it takes a lot of balls to sell your first guitar. Frankly, I can't imagine... if I ever get my guitar done (eyes rolling) you'll have to pry it out of my cold dead hands. Greg

I have a scraper and a burnisher, but I can't turn a hook properly. Consequently, I feel like I'm just pulling a piece of tin across a piece of wood and not removing any wood whatsoever. I'm not looking for speed necessarily, but something that'll allow me to get the job done. The problem with going slow is that sometimes you go TOO slow and you loose consistency in the flow. Or at least, that's how *I* feel. I'd rather freehand sketch 'basically' what I want and then touch it up after than try to do it all perfectly in one pass. Of course, it's hangups like not knowing the right tools that's keeping me from finishing my guitar. Experience is everything. Greg

Yup, that's "General MIDI", and for most people it's actually built-in for Windows and not Cakewalk. Unless you put a virtual instrument into your MIDI track, it'll default to "Microsoft Wavetable Synth" which is just horrible sounding. I recommend using a computer rather than a drum machine. Any old sequencer will do if you want to put a wee bit of work into it, and some will do it more painlessly than others. If you already own the computer, it's going to be around the same price as buying a poor little old drum machine, but will sound way better. You can do things like load REAL loops of an actual drummer: Like THIS Nothing beats a real drummer. $30 for this one disc, or $50 for your choice of 3... that's real drum loops played by a real drummer on real kits. Granted it's not quite as flexible as programming your own, but some people (myself included) are better off letting a real drummer do that kind of work anyhow. And the flexibility is still huge. I have one of their discs (Drum Werks V) and I could make several albums worth of songs without sounding repetitive. Then if you want to program your own beats, you can always do it with about a bazillion different free plug-ins out there, or pay for something like Linplug RMIV. Not to sound like a shill or anything (I realize I DO sometimes, but I'm just an enthusiastic user), but when Tracktion 2 comes out next month, it'll include the RMIV (mentioned above) and 4 gigs of drum sounds, both 'real/live' and electronic. It'll also include Amplitube for your guitar and bass amp needs, and a slough of other stuff. Plus, well, Tracktion. Still, back to my original point-- any free or cheap sequencer will still do the job for you and do it better than the Boss unit. Greg

Cool, thanks for sharing. What kind of carving have you done with rotary tools, and what kind of bits did you use to do it? Or did you mostly do mini router-ish jobs? Greg

The picture clearly showed a big hunk of wood that had been contoured supposedly with this thing. In point of fact, though, I'd actually be using a SpinSaw with a flex-shaft attachment rather than an actual Dremel, if I bought the disc at all (which is unlikely... I was mainly curious). Greg