GregP

Gotta admit-- accident or no-- that looks great on your bass.

I know that it's an accepted way of doing a heel on a set neck, but I've never seen one on a neckthrough. Then again, I haven't seen all the guitars in the world. As for contour, yup, that part of it is great. Nice and smooth here.

I just had another look (to double-check my thoughts on the heel) and I have to say that I like it even more than I liked it yesterday. Some of the details are extremely well-executed. The faux binding... the light matte finish... the unique but not whacked-out design.... But I still think that-- conscious decision or not-- that heel looks too much like an afterthought. The colours aren't echoed elsewhere in the guitar's design. No matter, since it was a conscious decision, that means HE likes it, which is what matters. Primal-- I thought one of the hallmarks of neckthroughs was that you DON'T see anything going on in the heel area? The "you mostly see that on neckthroughs" or "...make it look like a neckthrough" threw me off, because I'm accustomed to the heel of a neckthrough being seamless between neck and body. No contrasting wood or additional heel blocks, usually. Greg

That's almost exactly like my SpinSaw. Probably the same OEM. Does yours have the angle-grinder attachment, too? Drawback with the angle grinder attachment is that it's proven annoying to find discs for it. BUT, the flex shaft and router functionality have been great. I actually much prefer it to the dedicated plunge router that I was using. She'll handle plunge router duties no problem, mate. As for inlaying-- I was all gung-ho to use the flex-shaft attachment for doing inlays, but I found that I really needed/wanted a mini router base to go with it... and there are none available commercially so you have to buy one. Instead, I went back to a borrowed Dremel when I was practicing my inlaying. It'd be more than adequate for cutting the MOP itself, but it might get a bit tricky doing the mortise part of the inlay by hand unless you're hella steady-handed. Great tool, though, especially for the money and everything it comes with! Greg

I really like that body style... I just can't imagine making myself a guitar that I couldn't play sitting down. I guess I'm just stodgy that way. Greg

It'll definitely cost you more in terms of the money of the soul, at least. I don't even want to contemplate the frustration of measuring and adjusting neck pocket, filling in/re-drilling mounting holes, moving bridge, etc.-- not to mention refinishing the whole shebang. If the neck is lovely, why not try making a new body to go with it, instead? Greg

The carve is looking spectacular, and the Baby Grand is looking like the right choice of bridge! I love the Baby Grand, but I could never picture what kind of guitar it would look good on. I think this is it. Greg

Sounds dodgy. Seems to me that SD is very good about replacing pickups for you, though, if you find the tone to be dissatisfactory. I could be wrong, but I believe I read about it one time. Greg

Nice axe! I can't tell what's going on at the neck joint, though. Not that I think it looks 'wrong', just that I don't understand all of what's going on there. Greg

There's a hobby shop not too far away; I'll give'er a peek. Cheers! Greg

IF you don't need a trem cavity, I'd personally be tempted to go with 1" to keep it nice and thin overall. Just make sure you have enough depth to install all your electronics, too. Greg

Could work. The table saw jig would be easier and sturdier. Greg

Exactly right. FWIW (not much), my Godin LG is a 3-pc mahogany body, and I quite like it.

Just for giggles, here's a far off shot. It's also cropped, but I decided to keep the entire hunk of wood intact. You can see my first attempt at the "T" off to the right, and the second attempt just to the left of the final one. Greg

Most mitre saws won't give you the angle you need unless you put the wood perpendicular to the...er... is it still called a fence on a mitre saw? And then, since the wood is perpendicular, you can't go deep enough with it, not by a long shot. Also, home-sized mitre saws don't always have the height to do it. So, you'd end up having to make a jig of some sort anyhow, just to keep the wood stable as you brought the mitre saw down. I considered it when doing my guitar, and no matter how I looked at it with my home mitre saw, it wasn't going to happen. Greg

not a bad idea, actually!

I've seen that one before, and it's simply awesome. Also worth considering, though if you're an absolute perfectionist you might want to retrofit it so that it can ride along the...er... slot... thingy... Lee Valley taper jig You'd obviously have to stack a piece of scrap behind the piece being scarfed, and the jig itself isn't particularly tall, so you'd have to take precautions for consistency; however, it seems like a useful bit of kit for tapering necks, too, depending on the order in which you do your steps. I suppose if nothing else, it could be used to make a tapered 'template' neck and then you could use your router on the template, if that's the way you need to do it. Anyhow, Kathy's jig is superior for the specific task, but I thought I'd throw that taper jig out there, in case people hadn't seen it. Greg

Just to add a quick note of support, I think unclej's got it bang-on. It's out of phase. Greg

I've yet to encounter a guitar library that will respond to information generated by false harmonics or any sort of nuanced playing. Most of the time audio-to-MIDI you have to be very careful to play monophonically and you're lucky to find a library that has decent normal notes, never mind bent, slid, pinched, or even vibratoed notes. I can't help but feel that your clients are barking up the wrong tree, David. If they're looking for a way to sound like another guitar, MIDI itself (never mind the audio-to-MIDI conversion) isn't up to the task without extensive hand-tweaking offline. The guitar synths are not MIDI, as you indicate. It seems to me that you can add an extra component, though, no? Taking the information from the synth and converting it to MIDI? Sort of like the audio-to-MIDI thing, but synth-to-MIDI instead. I'd be curious to know which audio-to-MIDI converters they're using, though, because I know a bunch of people who would be curious to get their hands on something that works fairly well. Greg

The new build is intonatable with the ABM bridge. The old build was fretless, so an acoustic bridge is fine. You intonate each note individually on a fretless by touch and ear anyhow... the bridge is only relevant insofar as it should be in the right spot according to scale length and have a teeny bit of 'compensation' so that your imaginary fret lines more or less line up... but even then, you're playing by ear and feel. Looks awesome. I love the Pickup covers. How do they sound? Greg

monkey, I think you'll find that the reason people buy those is to NOT sound like a guitar. Sheesh. Greg

I suspect I'm not fully addressing the specific question, but a general response: The reason a different scale neck has a tricky time working is that there's a third factor. If it was just the nut and bridge, you could theoretically put any neck on any body. But you can't. Why? The third factor is the neck pocket. Because the neck pocket creates a constant and unchangeable distance from the bridge to the 'end' of the fretboard, changing scales means that something has to give. The nut's not going anywhere, which means you MUST modify either the pocket or the bridge location. An example to illustrate: You have a 25.5" scale guitar, with 22 frets. Let's say the end of your neck is where fret 23 is in "theory" but of course there's no actual fret there. After calculating, you discover that the end of the neck is exactly 6.75" away from the bridge (well, the high E saddle of the bridge). You want to switch to 24.75" instead, and you figure, "Hey, this should work. After all, it's only the distance from the nut to the bridge that's changing." HOWEVER, you haven't modified the neck pocket or moved the bridge. That means that from the end of the neck to the bridge, you STILL have 6.75", right? Trouble is, when you calculate a 24.75" scale, the end of the neck WANTS to be 6.55" away from the bridge, instead. 0.2" (a fifth of an inch!) is a lot, when it comes to intonation. A whole lot. Most guitars won't let you adjust the bridge that much forward in the first place. If you were lucky enough to squeak it in (I highly doubt it), you would screw up your trem's action, or might end up bumping into your bridge pickup. I just don't see any way it would be possible. ---- Now, going in reverse and not bothering to do the math: if you go for a longer scale length instead, your bridge wants to be FURTHER away from the neck pocket. Most of us already back up that low E string almost as much as it will go when intonating. ---- OK, so that's why a body DOES have a scale. I'm sure there are some ways to work around this, though. If you calculated all 3 of the factors and custom-made a neck, you could find a way to work around it. It's just math, after all. Seems like a lot of work, though, and probably for an unsatisfactory end result. Greg

That one IS far off. I cropped it to size, though. Even FURTHER off and there wouldn't be enough detail to see the flaws, which I wanted to at least comment on. Thanks for the positive comments, though! Greg

It is velocity-sensitive, I know that much. I've heard somebody playing piano with it as well as some orchestral instruments. With Synful that could be quite interesting. To me, it's still not the 'perfect' MIDI guitar, though. The perfect MIDI guitar won't happen until it's an actual guitar that's able to track efficiently and send the correct messages... like a guitar synth-to-MIDI thing that can be installed on a real guitar. Greg

I've seen one being played and it looked quite fun. It's not exactly like playing a real guitar, but it bridges the gap between guitar and keyboard for those of us who are more comfortable with a guitar-like interface.