GregP

The larger chambers on the lower bout could have been better. They look fine, but they were tricky to rout because they were "just" big enough that my router didn't have proper support the whole time. In the future, I'd probably sub-divide it into 2 smaller chambers merely for the sake of having 'support' as I routed them out. Greg

A warmer welcome would certainly be nice. As for images, I've said almost all I can say on the subject, but if we're going to compare forum environments, I can say the following: - None of the other forums I'm on have 'picture rules' and yet none of them have problems related to this issue. If there were a laissez-fair attitude around here, I find it unlikely that we'd suddenly be flooded by every thread containing huge pictures. When people spam a thread with a too-wide image, the other members quickly say, "***?" and the original poster cleans it up him/herself. - Regardless, speaking as a veteran of a few different boards, none of them still maintain the sense of focus (we STILL mainly talk about guitars around here) and community that this one does. A little bit of bullshnizzle from time to time is par for the course, and I believe that PG has less of it, and is overall a much stronger and better place than most. Greg

Well, in all fairness to reality, the nomenclature IS out of date. I could be wrong, but I think the naming convention comes not in relation to other instruments, but rather in comparison to tradition... dating back to when they couldn't even MAKE ultra-light guages, and therefore .11 WAS the lightest being made. Apparently they have a hard time changing with the times! I still don't consider .11s to be heavy, though, I consider them to be medium and .13s to be heavy. I also know that it was the heavier strings being referred to. When I was referring to ".11"s, I was referring to a set of strings starting with .11 and then having the guages scaled normally from there. Such a set of strings will NOT ruin the neck of your Les Paul. Greg

Bah, you could have at least thumbnailed that! Greg

I don't know about the frets or Abalone, but MOP sands really well and quite easily. Greg

I'd love to see him. Wonder if he's appearing at Bluesfest... haven't heard anything.

Come on guys. 11s are hardly a heavy guage. Don't get me wrong-- I don't use 11s on my electrics anymore (though I once did-- I use light-top-heavy-bottom which is what... .10 to .52? now) but 11s are what string manufacturers consider a "light" string. Even though WE call .9 and .10 "light" and .11 "heavy", that's our own personal reference point compared to our own personal experience. Anything but the crappiest of guitars can still handle .11s. When I decided to switch to .12s on my acoustic instead of .13s, that's when I made the switch down on my electric, too. I have to admit, these days I'm only willing to sacrifice "so" much for tone. I can't bend .12s properly for extended periods of time. Sure, the occasional bend is fine and I never have problems on my acoustic; however, on the electric I bend a lot more and I like having moved to the .10. Greg

lovekraft, I don't know why you're so against it! I'm with Gorecki-- the 'text-labelled link' is still blind-loading (and if we're curious, we'll do it no matter the description) and the newbies are even less prone to do properly annotated links than they would be to follow a blanket thumbnailing rules. I can't remember the last time I saw a text description that either made me think, "Yeah, gotta check that out!" or "Nah, not interested" because a description simply cannot tell you what the usefulness will be. Even 150 X 150 seems too large, but I guess I'd rather have the rules accomodate larger so that they'll have a longer shelf-life before requiring an update to policy. I think the thumbnailing idea is a step in the right direction. I'd go for maximum of 4 per post, too, as a compromise and so that I don't seem ungrateful, but to be completely honest: at 4K each (less than some of my text-only posts!!!) I don't know why there should be such a small limit. Some math, to put things into perspective: - A 56kps connection (dial-up) can download 2 of those thumbnails per second. - loading a page with 8 such thumbnails would only take a dial-up user 4 seconds, which is likely a much better savings of time for dial-up users than text links, which we will STILL follow out of curiousity. - Having cached browsing means that they may end up only loading the first time you read the thread, depending on how much permission you give your browser to keep stuff cached. For non-techie people, it is usually defaulted "on" and allows for a considerable cache size. - As a frame of reference, Kevan's avatar is what I would consider a good 'thumbnail' amount at 3.7K, while lovekraft's is a bit large at 9-ish K. Mine is a svelte 2.7K. - Dial-up users are already accustomed to compromise. Either they don't mind a slightly slower waiting time (in order to pay substantially less for internet!), or in the event that they have no choice (rural location, older technology) they have already optimized their experience and wouldn't cringe at a 4X8 = 32K download. The girlie pictures they download are a lot bigger than that. - the current policy of 1 pic (the size of which can range from 80K - 600K or more) is still taking them twice as long to load as a whole set of thumbnails. - since many users will follow some of those blink text-based links, the amount of time and bandwith used goes up arithmatically with each new link clicked, as opposed to the thumbnailing in which there is a more informed choice. I'm just trying to project here, and as a broadband user size doesn't actually matter to me. But thinking as a dial-up user, I'd much rather be able to see 8 thumbs and pick and choose than see 4 and then have the remaining 4 as blind links that I'll likely load, which at the end of the day will take more time and effort. I don't mean to seem pushy or ungrateful since Kevan's already offered a compromise, but I really think that thumbnailing is the way to solve all the problems about images at once, and I'd rather see a full solution than something half-done that people may eventually bring up again. It strikes me as easier to say to complainers about a thumbnail policy in general: "Sorry, that's the way it is. We use thumbnails." Than it is to direct them to the rules, "1 large picture and then a maximum of 4 thumbnails, with the rest being text-description links." I think that a fully thumbnailed solution (excepting GOTM entries) across the board is the way to go. Makes moderating easy, makes forum hacks at least a little bit easier to accomplish (assuming that you can make a different rule for sub-forums and give GOTM entries their own dedicated forum), makes enforcement easier, saves people bandwidth, and I'm sure there are other benefits I haven't mentioned. Sorry that I've repeated some points twice, but I'm not sure that I worded it very well the first time around. Greg

In theory, I'd like to build one of those some day. In practice, I'm not likely to ever produce high enough volumes of guitars for one to be handy. I don't intend to ever get into the business. Still, you just never know. Greg

Ah there it is. I had seen that button before, but for some reason I just thought it would produce a window with the text for the existing 3 link types. D'oh. Since that's at least 3 picture hosts with automatic thumbnailing, I don't know why it would be such a big deal to not allow users to post a few more pics per post if they're just thumbnails. Greg

Once again: It's not a rotozip or a dremel. It has a flex-shaft attachment that allows it to be used much like a dremel. It has a router base and can be used as a router. It has an angle grinder attachment, and though you can use it as an angle grinder it doesn't have a standard-sized bolt, so I haven't been that pleased with finding discs. I have one, I have used it as a router on one project so far. Is that enough to predict whether or not it will stand up to several years' use? Nope. But I can tell you that I'm more confident in this thing as a router than I am in my 'dedicated' plunge router, which I have since retired. This thing accepts a 1/4" shaft (not 1/8" like Dremels) and is clearly designed with routing as a primary function not an afterthought. The last time this tool was mentioned, a few people also claimed to have had good success with it. I don't know what further convincing is needed. If you're not confident in it, you simply don't buy it. Otherwise, several people have already indicated in this thread and others that they have used it and quite like it. Just in case your question was a related question, a dremel tool is certainly NOT suitable as a router, beyond inlay work or light-duty work like purflings and bindings. I doubt a single-function RotoZip is, either; however, I've not specced one out in order to actually try it or see what kinds of attachments and what level of power it produces. Greg

I have both, and overall I think I prefer the Koch. The version I got could use sharper pictures, but that's about it. Greg

31 Here. Regarding tinnitus-- I was fortunate enough to have read an interview with Townsend at a very early age and I took what he said to heart. Sure, I've been to loud concerts before without earplugs (who wants to look like a dork at a Metallica show?) but I make it a point to not be directly in front of the speakers and all that stuff. Since I've never been in a gigging band, I haven't had to worry about that being an effect on my hearing. Greg

I don't see a thumbnail option in Photobucket... are you an upgraded customer rather than a free user, perchance? I'm mostly with thegarehanman-- newbies who don't read the rules are already effing it up, but some newbies (like tgm himself!) are savvy enough to not piss off the users with a stream of huge pics. Newbies are only newbies for a little while. Either they learn to do it right or they leave. Either way, I don't believe it's more of a workload generated for the mods than they already have. Also, Feylya's suggestion works out perfectly-- a thumbnail would HAVE to be less than, say 10K, and if it's not it just gets turned automatically into a URL link. Ideal! Greg

I don't think that it takes any effort at all to say, "OK, if you know what you're doing, use thumbnails. G'head." I mean, we're not running the United Nations. You're already fighting threads in which people don't read, follow, or understand the rules, so there'd be no new work added to the moderator workload. At some point in time, you have to give the user base a little credit for being more than schoolchildren, whether some of us ARE just that or not. I can definitely see how other things might be a priority over this; however, I actually thought it came up at the right time... we just upgraded the board, so I didn't think there were other major forum maintenance tasks that needed addressing right now. Greg

Update: I found the fourth dimension here: Tetraspace (still a theory) AND, I found the fifth dimension here: ------- If length, width, and depth confuse ME? You're the one confused, son.

monkey, It's already been explained. X, Y, and Z are the 3 dimensions. Objects are in 3D. You can't make an object that's in 4D. The fourth dimension is still a matter of debate but it's generally accepted that it is TIME. Perhaps the fifth dimension is love. JK. Greg

What the HECK are you talking about with the dimensions, monkey? The 4th dimension is a lathe? I can barely believe that you're not joking. Also, I'd love to be at your school. What school has 15k to throw around at the robotics club? Either you're at a private school or you're getting your hopes up. A principal would rather use that money to buy books, computers, and paper for the photocopier than buy a CNC machine for the robotics club. If you have a heavy industrial arts component to your school's delivery of curriculum, I could imagine POSSIBLY they'd invest in one for the entire school (mostly used by the tech students), but beyond that, not a chance.

Ayup, but that was written before thegarehanman's clever thumbnails idea or the fact that it actually uses less bandwidth. Also, at the end of the day it makes things a LOT easier for the user because we don't have to follow blind links and hope that it's a shot that we want to see. I think it's great, and to not at least -consider- the possibility would be missing out on a great opportunity. The thumbnails idea would work fine in conjunction with PhotoBucket. When you're in your paint program, you just save an extra copy reduced by a bunch and upload both to photobucket. Then you use forum jiggery-trickery to link them all up. Pretend that the curly brackets below are the square brackets that you use for forum code: {url=http://img.photobucket.com/GregP/mytestphoto.jpg}{img}http://img.photobucket.com/GregP/mytestphotosmall.jpg{/img}{/url} The first URL is just cut and pasted from the "http" line of your Photobucket picture the same way you'd cut and paste your IMG tag line. Then the next URL actually includes the "IMG" tag and is cut and pasted from the IMG tag line of the small version in your photobucket album. Then the small picture becomes the link to the big picture. Easily done, will save bandwidth, and will make revealing new works and tutorials a pleasant experience again, instead of the unfriendliness of the plain URL tags. Keep in mind that PG's bandwidth wouldn't be affected at all, AND the users would likely save bandwidth, too. Consider: - User posts one photo at 200K, and then links to the rest. * Reader must download 200K, and then if his curiousity is piqued, another 200K (or whatever) per photo that he decides to check without the benefit of a thumbnail (some of the pics might not be of any interest to him) End result is that the user has downloaded a minimum of 200K, and probably 400K or more because I don't know a single person whose curiousity is satisfied by looking at only one photo. Generally, I'll check out at least 3 or 4 before deciding I'd seen enough (for a guitar that doesn't interest me) or I'll check ALL of them for an intriguing guitar, despite the fact that some of them are just the back of the headstock, which doesn't normally interest me. OR - User posts 4 thumbnails at 5K each for a total of 20K * User decides to only check out 2 of the big photos, for 400 extra K End result is that the user has downloaded a minimum of a mere 20K, MAY end up downloading 200K or 420K but stop there. That's with the confidence of knowing that the other photos don't interest him, and having seen the small photos to at least get a more complete view of the project. It sounds like a winner to me. It's the solution we've all been needing and wanting, so I don't see why it would be unreasonable to implement it. Greg

I'd be very very careful about the inlay if there is one. If it's been scratched or otherwise has a non-polished surface exposed, the dye could get right in there. Even if it's polished-looking and shiny, I wouldn't take the risk myself with a 'blanket' stain over the whole area. I guess you could try it on the 22nd fret if you don't mind it possibly getting messed up. I don't know enough about such things to say for sure, but I've been researching inlay, and one of the techniques used is to get dye/particles (ie. epoxy and dust mixture) into scratches and wipe off the excess. That to me implies that on perfect inlays, you could in theory wipe off the dye without negative repurcussions. Still a risk, though, for the paranoid. If you're not particularly paranoid, you could just go for it, but I assume no responsibility. Greg

Dang, tgm beat me to the 4th dimension quip. 'Twas a better joke than what I would have come up with anyhow! Greg

None taken; however, he DID mention the grit used, it LOOKS like gritty sandpaper, and it bears a striking similarity to this: Click me for Grizzly Flap Disc I could be wrong, though. How could I be offended by someone wanting to be sure so that they could try it on their own? Greg

Aha! Does that explain the mini-cavities on the back, too? Greg

That's my dilemna, too. I prefer single coil sound at the neck, but a split 'normal' humbucker's still not quite the same. I'm going to do just that with my current project anyhow, but it's not my usual 'ideal' sound. I suppose if the guitar turns out well enough I could get a Swineshead AMP (AMF? I can't remember!) and see if that gives a better 'single coil' sound. In the meantime, I already have a Jazz waiting to be plunked in. Greg

Awesome. Am I dumb or just stupid? How does he hold that sucker in place? Using traditional posture but with the 'extensions' wrapped around his neck? Greg