GregP

I don't care what anybody says, Eric Johnson's a fool if that's his recipe for tone. As **** as he is about tone, I think his sucks. Do NOT take any of his advice if you want good tone. The simplest recipe: plug your guitar into an amp that DOES have some colour to it and forget about a chain of effects, each of which will progressively rob you of tone. the amp needn't be transparent. The reason amps like the AC30 or the Fender Twin are classics is because they are NOT transparent, and sound great when a guitar drives them a bit. Eric Johnson... what a knob. Now, if only I could afford a twin or an AC30, I'd be able to have some good tone, too. Greg

I'm a total amateur, so my opinion and perspective count for very little when it comes to this sort of thing; however, something sounds a bit 'off' with what they've told you. OK, fine, they won't make you a mahogany neck with a maple fretboard, but it's likely simply because they're not set up for it and it's too specialized a request. Probably the most popular combination of body woods that I can think of is mahogany body with a maple cap, though, so clearly they don't mind "sticking" together! Greg

My thought is that you'll get a fairly baseline P90 sound but with snappier attack instead of the "bloom" that more porous woods can give you. This guitar will likely (who knows??) have a lot of bite. P90s bite like a pitbull as it is, and then the maple neck will give you snap. It will be a tricky guitar to "tame", but not impossible. I say go for it. There's no way at all of predicting exactly what it'll sound like because even the P90s will be different from set-to-set. Greg

That no is hideous! Gorgeous yes is!

Awesome. And as an added bonus, you get to live in the lovely city of Kingston! Just re-noticed that; I had forgotten for a while. Greg

Slick work so far!

Great stuff. I didn't have the know-how or guts to try a real 335, but my project is based on the shape. I have to confess, I'm not likely to ever get around to making a semi-hollowbody guitar, but I sure love them. Nice sneaker, btw! Greg

Awesome! Nice to have you aboard. Depending on what I decide to do with some roller saddles Frank's sending me (some day ) I may need your advice on fabricating a bridge for them. ! Have fun, and be sure to build a guitar sometime. Greg

When I said "shop", I didn't just mean guys hucking around ninja stars that they fabricated during metal shop class. Though, that was fun, too. "Shop" to me includes manufacturing technology, including CAD/drafting classes, and equipment like that you're mentioning would certainly fall into that domain. Or, if that's going to cause further discussion, the most important thing I meant was: "It would be used in classes, not just a club." Period. Of course, there are exceptions, depending on the focus of the school. Yours was lucky enough to have had a sponsorship of sorts, but most schools aren't that lucky. Equipment donated by an outside source isn't the same as a principal allocating $15K to an extra-curricular activity. It's not even the principal's choice in most cases, but the parents'. And unless all of them had kids in the robotics club, it's not likely they'd approve it in place of field trips, library books, computers, and other resources that a school needs. Greg

Seems to me that both are mentioned as being thick. Alex wasn't answering the question, "How do I make something have a thick sound," because that wasn't the thread's question; rather, he was enumerating some of the things that contribute to a fat tone on a Les Paul, which was the questin posed. I'm sure Alex would be one of the first people to say that there are no hard and fast rules, and that to have a fat tone, you don't need a thick neck, though. I think it's mainly this: 1. Humbuckers 2. Fixed bridge 3. The fact that many people who play Les Pauls will send them through a fat amp. I mean, when you think "Fat Les Paul," you're usually thinking something with a decent amount of drive. The amp has more to do with the fatness than the guitar, IMO. If you hear a Les Paul played through a Fender Twin with a 'country' EQ setting and some twangy reverb, the first word you think of isn't going to be "FAT", so I personally feel it's more to do with the fact that the musicians you associate with playing "fat-sounding" Les Pauls probably have "fat-sounding" setups; this means primarily their amp. Greg

Agreed, but it'd be part of a shop class-- actually, multiple shop classes. Not just the domain of a robotics club. Greg

I didn't see the thread in question, but from what's been said in this one, it must've been done on purpose, no? Re-quoting a whole picture when quoting? Anyone who does that should get a warning and then a vacation. I agree on that one. I also agree that with thumbnails, people will still break the rules. And when they do, they should be given a warning-- but I suspect that it wouldn't take long before the regulars would be the ones to say, "Hey, farknut567, you need to read the rules for picture posting and fix your post." When I started talking about the thumbnails, I didn't imply and WOULDN'T try to imply that the rules wouldn't continue to get broken. But since the same thing would apply to the rule-breakers (warning then vacation) regardless of the picture posting rules, I think that changing those rules in general could have been an improvement to the forum's way of doing things. My first post on the subject was simply, "Hey, it gives me an opportunity to talk about thumbnails," not "Thumbnails would fix this." Greg

I never thought of using the sends. That might work, too. They seem very limited on this mixer, though, almost like an afterthought. There's a single 1/4" send out, and then you set the level of send for each individual channel, but they all go to the same send. As long as that 1/4" out is stereo, it should work! I use the tape out because I can then just use a standard RCA cable. As a hobbyist, I've never noticed a degradation in sound quality, as this mixer's "tape out" is actually using the same bus as the "Main Out". They're the same out, but with different connectors. Dunno why they label it the way they do. Greg

That's exactly what I do. I have an "audio recording" soundcard, which means that I can just send the RCA outputs from the "tape out" (they still use the word "tape" but they should have just used "aux" because it's the same thing) of the mixer to the RCA inputs of my soundcard. If yours is on-board or more like a SoundBlaster type thing, you just need to make sure both ends terminate properly, either with a cable made for the job, or by using adapters. One end should be an RCA pair, and the other end should be a 1/8" stereo plug. Since the 802 produces a "line-level" output, you will plug it into the "line in" instead of the "mic in" of your soundcard. That mixer's pre-amps are not absolutely amazing; however, they'll be better than your soundcard's pre. Plus, the mixer can supply phantom power to condenser mics. Greg

Noted and revised in the current Webster's Standard GregP English Dictionary, 1st rev. Greg

I don't mean to contradict you when you're agreeing with me, Frank; however, sympathetic feedback IS primarily a function of the strings, not the body. My point was that body design can affect how rapidly the strings' vibration matches that of the sound source (the speaker). With a more resonant body, more energy will be transferred to the strings along with the energy hitting the strings directly from the sound source. However, it doesn't mean that there are additional strings whose purpose is to resonate with sympathetic feedback the way some folk instruments have. I don't recall dulcimers having sympathetic strings, but I'm definitely not an expert. Greg

All well and good, Drak, and I actually agree-- but a few of the recent debates (ie. picture posting rules) directly relate to the ease and effectiveness with which we talk about and demonstrate building guitars. As far as OTHER kinds of flames go, though, I agree. Greg

I think I stole that one from someone else in this very same thread! It's a good one, though. Greg

The only way for the PG forum to limit picture size itself is to completely forbid the picture to be posted when you try. It can't re-size the pic for us, because it would have to have the full-sized pic to begin with. And that would mean using PG's bandwidth instead of your picture host's. It CAN in theory pre-fetch a picture size without downloading the whole thing, though, and if Pic > limit, then an error message could be generated. That would involve a code hack, though, and I'm certainly not knowledgable enough in the practice of it to say whether or not it's realistic. I can say that it's "doable" but since the people in charge are doing this for free, it'd be unfair to expect it from them if it turns out to be a difficult task. Greg

My amateur take on chambering and F-holes: Chambering like the one in my pic or the honeycomb chambers like some of the Warmoth products, will primarily affect weight. In turn, this may have a minor effect on tone due to the overall reduction of mass, that is noticeable to someone with golden ears but which would be undetectable to me. With very thin walls, the wood will be less restricted and will be prone to vibrate more, I would guess; however, by the time you go that thin, you're better off going with semi-hollowbody construction IMUE (a new one-- In My Uneducated Opinion). With a semi-hollowbody guitar, my experience is that there is a huge tonal difference, plugged or otherwise. To understand an F-hole's role on feedback, first you need to understand feedback itself. Feedback can be microphonic or sympathetic. Without going into details, microphonic feedback happens when the electronics (ie. a microphone! or for guitars, pickups that have vibration-sensitive coils which act like a microphone) re-amplify the sound signal coming back at them from the speaker. Sympathetic feedback happens when the instrument's strings (or whatever-- a drum's skin can receive sympathetic feedback) are hit by the soundwave coming from the speaker. If the string is at a the same pitch as the sound source, or shares similar fundamental harmonics, it will be more prone to vibrate. So, it's almost as if the speakers are 'playing' the guitar, which puts it into a feedback loop. Now, where does the F-hole come in? Well, without the F-hole, the soundwaves are hitting only the string itself and the solid hunk of wood that is your guitar. The lack of an F-hole 'shields' the chambers from the soundwaves. Think of an empty room with a closed door. If you yell at the door, I bet SOME of your voice will make it into that empty room, but not a whole lot. Now open the door and yell again. The empty room will reverberate and echo. Adding the F-hole is like opening the door. So, if the chamber is tuned and you are using a resonant wood, an F-hole will assist your guitar in vibrating sympathetically to the soundwaves. These vibrations transfer to the bridge and headstock, where they join up with the strings (which are already beginning to vibrate sympathetically on their own) and therefore add energy to their motion, creating feedback more easily. On a guitar like the one in MY pic, I don't think an F-hole would make a lot of difference, but it WILL make "some". On other guitars with different construction and different materials, the effect will be greater or lesser, and the effect on the tone will therefore be greater or lesser. Greg

That's funny, because every Guitar Player article I read, when it was made, kept referring to it as "the big brother of the Les Paul" and went on about how it had more in common with an LP than with a 335. Either BB himself was misinformed and passed along the misinformation, or they've changed the design. Greg

The 335 is a semi-hollowbody, though, not a chambered solidbody. A different beast. Lucille is a solidbody, not just a semi-hollow with no F-hole. Greg

Well-spotted. Oops! The good news-- I'll know for next time that I was out by a whole decimal place! Greg

Cheers, Drak. The built-in ledges would probably work, much like the ones that some people use when doing a "topographical map" -style carving of a top, using a router and "steps". Since the photo doesn't show the whole process, I'll describe it a bit: - I used an MDF template for the cavities: I already had a spare one around from when I did the body (I ended up making 2). Then I drew the desired cavity shape onto this MDF 'body template'. Next, I used a scroll saw to cut out the "cavity" areas in the template. Finally, I used a Microplane rasp to shape the template out to final size. - Then I screwed it to the body using screw-holes where the pickup cavities will be - To save wear-and tear on my router, I put a piece of tape on the biggest spiral drill bit I had (not very big-- wish I had a proper Forstner bit) and patiently made "swiss cheese" out of the area of wood that was to be removed - That done, I used the template and a flush-trim/pattern router bit to make my initial rout - I then took off the template and used the initial routing as my new "template" since it was now just deep enough that the ball-bearing of the template/flush-trim bit could ride along the body wood instead of the original MDF template. Greg

I'd need to digest it all before I could even think of what I truly needed, but I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the sound clips. You're getting some wicked stuff outta the latest creation! Greg