GregP

Heh! Well, it depends on the VST. Most of them will download as a .zip with documentation and a .dll file. (ex. drumatic.dll) Some come with an installer, in which case you're set-- but don't forget that you need to re-scan plugins (or just restart the program) before Cubase will notice them. If there's no installer, move the .dll file into your VST folder. (usually called "vst plugins" though not always found in your Cubase folder). I don't use Cubase SX, so you'll have to check your documentation. But if you look at your mixer channel, there should be a button for "FX" "Insert" and "Send", depending on how you want to use the VST. If it's an instrument you're using, you'll have to assign it using the set of controls to the left (or find it in a drop-down menu). There's also a drop-down menu that lets you open your VST plugins window, from whence you can add new VST. Or, you can save all your menu hell by buying Tracktion instead. ;-) JK, but not totally kidding. Greg

Very unfair, that.

Holy crap this is a great forum. That's all I gotta say. Ok, no it's not-- Would it help matters at all to clamp more of a sandwich? Ie. instead of just clamping the neck and the fingerboard, clamp something sturdy and straight on either side? Some sort of caul would be needed for the fingerboard, too, I guess. Or is it a matter of nature overcoming brute force? Ie. would the neck be just as prone to backbow, even with extra 'reinforcement'? Also, does it matter which way the grain is cut? Would quartersawn be less prone to backbow, or do the physics have basically the same effect no matter which direction the grain runs? Along the same lines, do necks made from laminated pieces stay truer? Cheers, Greg

Without anyone telling me any better, I defaulted to the Steve Morse way. Unfortunately when I wanted to do some hybrid picking, it felt pretty odd. Eventually I just did away with picks for 50% of my playing. There are things for which a pick is necessary, but for the most part I can play fairly fast runs with just my forefinger, holding the tip as though it's a pick. <laff> Either up or down "picking", I go with: If I need to drag through a chord (semi-sweep, but not really): Even with my nails cut short, there is very little flesh at the tip to interfere with getting a 'hard' sound out of my down-picks: And it's butt-simple to get pinch harmonics. Sorry about the semi-fuzzy pictures. It was hard to get a good focus without being too far away. Greg.

Cheers for that! Since TonePros can be direct retrofit, I don't see why the dimensions wouldn't work for me. Merci Beaucoup. Greg

Just the routing template, I believe. I need it for the height. Thanks for the reply, though! Greg

I believe he's just going to put down some pearl, and then "mask" over it with the Gibson logo cut out of some sort of black material before clear-coating over the whole shebang.

P-90 in the neck and humbucker in the bridge is an EXCELLENT choice! With a bit of mucking about, you can find out what the polarity of the P-90 is, and do some fancy wiring so that you can get a hum-cancelling blend with one of the coils from the humbucker. If anybody's really concerned about the different 'looks' and want their guitar to be perfect by having similar-looking pickups, there's always the Kent Armstrong P-90 in a humbucker-size option as seen HERE. Personally, I'd be inclined to go the opposite way and use the P-90 look with a P-90 sized humbucker, which I know are available but I can't find them off hand... I believe they were DiMarzios. Greg.

Thanks for the link! Hopefully as the site grows, more parts will be added. What I REALLY needed was a TOM bridge.

The KING of all VST sites is KVR. There's a highly active forum if you should choose to discuss them, as well. From the main page, look at the menu selections on the left. One of them will be "Instruments, Effects, etc." or something like that. Click on that, which will bring up a page that looks like an "advanced search" type page. Select the appropriate criteria, and you're off to the races. Alternatively, join the forum and do a 'search' for the type of VST you're after and you're likely to turn up a few threads. Before you know it, you will be swimming in more VST than you know what to do with, and you will neglect your guitar for a while. But have no fear, you will return. Oh yes, you will return.

Naw, I knew EXACTLY what you meant. Your description was bang-on. Greg

No, you chose correctly. The rest of the measurements and so forth that we've referred to would still be necessary with an angled headstock... that part of it is mostly unimportant for measuring the rest of the neck. I'm waiting for my fingerboard to come in, because I need to do most of my measurements "hands on" with all the stuff in front of me, or I don't trust the math. Disclaimer: what follows is theory that I've pulled out of my ass. I'm not posting it to be a know-it-all or try to pretend I'm something I'm not! By reading the original post, it made me wonder how I would do it if and when I get to this point in time, so I've come up with the following theory-- I'd appreciate knowing if it's workable or not, for when I build my own guitar. You could find out how wide the fretboard is at the nut, and again how wide it is at the 21st fret (or whatever, I'm not sure which fret guitar-makers use for reference). Draw a line down your neck blank perfectly in half lengthwise, and measure OUT from the center line to find where the edges of your fretboard would be. For example: if your fretboard should be 2" at the nut (I'm just using round numbers cause I'm lazy to look up the actual ones!), measure (at a perfect 90 degree angle!) 1 inch out from either side of the centre line, at where you want the end of the fretboard/your nut to be. Put dots at these points. Using THIS fret calculator, I found out that the 21st fret of a Fender-scale neck is 17.919 inches away from the 'zero fret' (the nut, depending on construction). Put a dot here (yeah, like I could put a dot to the thousanth of an inch), on the centre line. Assuming your neck should be tapered out to 2.5" wide at this point (again, exaggerating the numbers), at that dot you would measure out 1.25" from the centre line, in either direction again. Connect the dots, and you're off to the races! I wouldn't make any cuts until somebody steers you in a better direction-- for the record, I'm likely to try to hunt down a template or use one of my own guitars, rather than go by this method. SO, that's your fretboard, though-- as for the rest, you can basically decide yourself how much wood you want to use for the headstock, and how much wood (and in what shape) you need at the body end of things, for connecting them. That's all stuff that needs to be planned out, though. Before you make any cuts, you should already be aware of how/where your neck will attach, and then where the bridge should be, in relation to the nut. You could do much worse than track down a CAD template of a telecaster as a starting point. Even if you don't end up actually USING it, it'll help to see one, for the visualizing process. Do a forum search for "template" or "telecaster template" and see what comes up. Greg

A gate is normally based on level/volume, rather than frequency. The reason gate pedals help to reduce hum in a setup is that if you set it so that it cuts off the signal when it's "only" the hum (the volume produced by playing even a light note is usually greater than the volume of the hum). When you're not playing notes, blissful silence. If you're using a distorted tone, the hum gets lost in the distortion. But if you listen carefully enough (or if you do it with a clean tone) you'll still hear the hum in there, while you're playing. What you've described could theoretically be accomplished with some sort of gate, but I don't know of any gates that respond to frequency. That doesn't mean they don't exist! I just haven't encountered any in my amateur meanderings. What you're describing is usually accomplished with a high-pass EQ setting. That said, it IS a gating effect he's looking for, but rather than an auto-gate set to close/open depending on volume, he wants one that will just open and close automatically, at variable rates which he wants to set with a knob. Greg.

Rhoads, you have mail.

Hey, if it's any consolation, I'm doing the same thing. I have a 15" radius fingerboard on its way. I also ordered a 12" for a different project, but if I get frustrated..... As it turns out, I was talking to one of our local respected guitar wizards, and he offered to file the bridge for me. If I elect to get it fretted, though, that'll cost.

Excellent advice, that! Hadn't thought of the mounting! Greg

Looks great!... too bad about the mishaps, but it looks like you're getting it sorted OK. Any particular reason you chose to shape the wings before gluing them on? Or is that normally the way it's done? Definitely not meant as a criticism-- I'm about as ignorant as it gets about most building-related things. Greg

P-90s are my favourite pickups. They kick extreme amounts of ass! They are, indeed, single-coils, which means you'll get a nice sharp response and a lot of bite; however they're wound a lot fatter, so you'll get more output and the bite is more of a pronounced higher-mid than an actual 'tele-treble' bitel. The output is hotter than a typical single-coil, as well, but will not push your amp the same way most humbuckers will. They don't buck the hum. What else to say? I'm not a huge fan of the clean sound of most P90's, but you'll get some fabulous 'barely overdriven' sounds if you dial them in. P-90s... they'll be your favourite, soon, too. WAIT... What am I DOING? P-90s... they suck. I'll take them off your hands for the cost of the shipping. You don't want them, honest. I'll be doing you a favour.

Sometimes a different program will open it in the right size, I've discovered. If not, you'll have to get the dimensions of the real deal, and resize it (with 'keep scale' locked in) manually. I did this with a 335 drawing (which, incidentally, opened to the right scale in another program)-- knowing that the guitar was X width (can't remember offhand), I used the rulers on the side and resized. I admit, it's probably off by a few fractions of an inch, but for my purposes that was close enough. Greg.

That's a very involved question. I haven't built one yet, so I'm not the guy to answer it properly for you, but I CAN warn you that some people are going to get tired just THINKING about how to answer that, as a whole book could be written! You said you had books, but if you don't have Martin Koch's Building Electric Guitars or Melvyn Hiscock's Make Your Own Electric Guitar, at least one or both of those would help you tremendously. Beyond that, another thing I'd tell you is that you should probably base your neck on an accurate drawing rather than a traced one. Nothing wrong with tracing for starters, but many people will keep as many sides 'square' as long as they can until all the routing, gluing, etc. is done (easier to use guide rails, clamps, etc); and in the end, you will want to have 2 measurements more accurate than a traced neck will be able to give you: the width of the fingerboard at the nut, and the width at the last fret (or whatever reference fret you have). I wouldn't dream of actually giving a tutorial, as I look at my own wood and think, "Now what the hell do I do?" but I hope that gives you a bit of a push along. Greg

I asked a similar question lately-- the censensus was that you'll likely have to file the saddles down to size, using a radius guage as a guideline. Keep the outside 'E' strings where they are, as your reference point, and lower the remaining 4 strings by the appropriate amounts by filing the slots deeper. Not having done it, but speaking from common sense, you'll have to make sure you also smooth out the slots so that the strings don't break at the saddle. I'm not sure what would be the best way to go, but if you use a fine file to begin with, and then a few grades of increasingly fine sandpaper (a few strokes each, maybe more with the finer grits since you won't have to worry about taking off too much) that should do the trick. Any pros, feel free to confirm or refute this info.

Potting definitely changes the sound of the pickup-- it makes them squeal less. Scientifically speaking, the actual magnetic response of the pickup won't change at all... in other words, your fundamental tone will be unaltered. If there ARE subtle variations in tone from a potted to an unpotted one, it will have to do with microphonic effects, which is feasible. It's funny, because in a lot of ways it's one of those 'faith' things-- although there's no scientific reason for the sound of the pickup to change, some people swear that it does, and who am I, after all? Greg

I've been watching the videos. Very cool stuff, especially for those who have only been getting their hands on 'print' (or internet text) information. One thing I missed-- when did he rout the neck pocket? And would it have been fair to assume he could have done it when he was routing the pickup cavities? Greg

I wish I knew how to joint, join, and plane. That's some nice-looking wood. I'm really keen on the grain of Limba right now.

MKG, that's sweet. Damn sweet! What's the overall thickness of the body at the thickest part? Ie., you have a 7/8" top, but how thick is the bottom piece? Greg