curtisa

Boom boom.

Are you sure it was the rottenstone polishing compound doing the work, or was it whatever foot fungus is growing inside your old sock? Maybe there's an opening for a new polishing material in there "Nothing shines better than ScottRs Toejam tm"

Arrrr. There be pirates on tham thar waves, or I be a salty sea dog if my name's not ol' Snuffy Blackbeard. Come wi' me, lads and we'll sail the seas of cheese!

Welcome aboard! Jump right in and get involved with the discussions going on. If you've got a build or three you'd like to share there are plenty of us here who enjoy a good story in picture form.

Yes, I believe aluminium was used on the originals. I believe the metal tongue used in the Pacificas was located immediately underneath the neck pickup, which was exposed by the pickup cavity. While this doesn't create much of a neck pocket that encloses the sides and back of the neck in the traditional sense, I don't think the Pacifica was ever labelled as a guitar with an apparent lack of sustain due to minimal coupling between the neck and body. Take from that whatever tone voodoo you will I'm having trouble visualising what you're describing, but I would've thought you need enough meat surrounding the threaded insert to prevent the sides of the neck from being split outwards by the insert itself. Is there any particular reason why you are using inserts over common woodthread screws? Based on your COA1-3 diagrams above, the only option of the three that is practical is to use the first. Any option that has you grafting on a heel extension made from timber will not be suitable as there is no easy way to extend the endgrain of the neck in a way that is strong enough to act as the primary neck attachment point. The drawings also indicate that the pocket sides are extended upwards towards the nut as a thin sliver of timber, which will likely snap away leaving the neck sides exposed. The problem is not helped by the shape of the PRS body itself. The area in between the cutaways is significantly less than the area and shape of a traditional Strat for which your bolt-on neck is intended. On a Strat (and its derivatives) the heel itself has enough real estate for a pocket to naturally exist in the body. The PRS has pretty much nothing underneath the point at which the neck meets the body and relies on the neck attachment point being naturally much deeper into the body, which also relies on the neck blank being much longer past the end of the fretboard I suspect that if a Pacifica-esque metal extension tongue is not used the only real way of making a prefab bolt-on neck work with the PRS body style at such a small scale is to have the heel footprint the same size and shape as the neck itself, and simply bolt the neck to the flat ledge created by this extension to the body (a la, COA#1 minus the pocket sidewall extensions you have drawn). It will unfortunately look a bit clumsy, but it will stand up to the stresses involved without risking coming apart under string tension.

The original discussion was regarding balance of the instrument. Why would the method of construction of a guitar (and yes, when talking holistically about balance you have to consider all aspects of the way the guitar was put together, including the materials used, it's shape and the distribution of weight due to hollows, voids and curves actively created by the builder) not take into account the above items? Your original statement was: AFAICT the response provided doesn't seem unreasonable given the topic at hand. It's a novel suggestion, but I doubt many people would consider it a practical solution. I would argue that a guitar that's almost as long to the right of the body with an attached counterweight as it is to the left with the neck is creating far more problems than it solves,

I'd also add that using CA as a method of securing a locknut is a poor substitute to installing it as it was intended (ie, with the screws or bolts it was designed for). Expecting CA to hold a metal item to wood that is exposed to significant stress under normal conditions is asking for the nut to come loose. I wouldn't imagine a CA'ed locknut to withstand being divebombed without the tension of the strings behind the nut pulling it free. Even breaking a string might be enough to dislodge it.

At the expense of OT-ing the thread once more (which I'm sure you'll forgive - it's Jazz, isn't it? ), here's my re-interpretation of the any-angle fret slotting jig from the archives:

If you're not afraid of a little metal work, what about something like the bolt-on neck joint used by Yamaha for some of their 90s-era Pacifica models?:

I consider it the Jazz approach to luthiery. Jazz musicians don't steal ideas from each other - they 'pay homage'. I did have pics of my 'homage' to the mutliscale fret slotter in one of my previous build threads, but I see they were nuked by Photobucket. I'll see if I have offline copies floating around....

Looks a little bit like the multiscale slotting jig I built some years back. I stole the original idea from here. You weren't able to print the FretFind2D template at 1:1 scale and stick the printout directly on the ebony blank? The other option is to use Polymaker's Fretboard Design Tool, which may have a few extra tricks to help manually mark each fret location. Windows only, but it's got a lot more useful features than FretFind2D.

I can't answer that. Unless someone here knows of a retailer near you that stocks it, or you can find someone privately who has one to try, you may need to change the target you're aiming for. You'd have to pose the question to the builder of your choice. You're effectively asking them to make a guitar-shaped object that doesn't play; an ornamental prototype. Maybe they could make it from throw-away materials like plywood or MDF. The cost of materials might be low, but you'd still be paying their hourly rate to make it plus any time associated with consultancy (eg, discussions regarding what you want, measurements and drawings, follow-ups with you regarding how it feels, subsequent tweaks to the design, multiple iterations if required etc). Obviously you'd then have to pay again for them to build the working instrument from that prototype. If it truly is a bespoke one-of-a-kind instrument built from quality materials and components, with a round or two of prototyping and development I wouldn't expect much change from $10-15K as a starting point. It's easier for both the builder and customer if you can approach them and say, "here's a design that gets me 90% there - can you help me make the last 10%?" If you can get to that 90% point by either making your own mockup out of cardboard/polystyrene/MDF/plywood/an old coffee table/your bedroom door, or you can point out a model that you've tried that you know was really close, the builder is more likely to be able to get you there in one go and be able to provide you with a reasonable quote for doing so. You said earlier you got close with a Vee body shape. Maybe focus your attention on other guitars which have the elongated body shape such as the Gibson Explorer (and variants), Gibson Firebird, Ibanez Destroyer, Ibanez Xiphos or Dean Dimebag.

Which makes it tricky. All I can suggest is that you need to try as many different instruments as you can lay your hands on and take note of what features do and do not work for you. You can then work those ideas into a mockup to help evaluate whether they fit your expectations and requirements. From there you could take the mockup to a builder and discuss your options with regards to implementing it into an instrument. I still wouldn't disregard changing the way you play and hold your existing instruments though. Subtle changes in the way you approach the guitar can have drastic differences in how you operate with it, and the cost is nothing other the time taken to experiment.

OK, how about chambering? Laminating a neck or body with a mixture of different timber species? Adding carves and cutouts to an otherwise flat piece of timber that changes the way the instrument fits around the curves and contours of the player? What about if the body is made from alternative materials - aluminium, perspex, Kevlar? There's plenty of things that affect the balance of an instrument other than it just being 'pretty much all wood'.

It's complicated So I had a look through the thread you linked to over at the Troy Grady website, and I can see the issue you're facing with regards to the length of your left forearm when standing with your upper arm vertical and relaxed. TBH it's not something that I would have considered myself as a builder or as a player and is more one of the various ergonomic foibles of the guitar in general, but I can make the following observations: In the first video your left hand thumb position when standing has a tendency to overhang the top of the neck quite a bit. When doing 3-notes-per-string runs, because your thumb tends to hook over a lot your hand is quite tense. It's the kind of shape your fingers and hand forms if you were trying to crush a tennis ball in one hand. It looks like a very tense grip and can't be doing the muscles in your fingers and forearms any good. I'd actually suggest you need to play with the strap much shorter and the guitar higher up and more horizontal, which would help relax your wrist and allow the thumb to come back around more towards the back of the neck. When you play in a seated position (third video) you can see how much higher the guitar sits on your torso, but also how much more relaxed your left hand is and how much further away your thumb rests from the edge of the fret board (further towards the back of the neck). I personally try to adjust my straps so that the instrument hangs roughly at the same height and angle as it would when seated. It doesn't look particualrly rock 'n roll, but it's a damn sight more comfortable than playing with the instrument in the Jimmy Page position. Placing the rear strap button on the front of the guitar clearly doesn't work for you. In your second video it's quite easy to see how uncomfortable it is, and how much the strap is forced to pinch your body as it snakes around your lower-right torso to the front of the instrument. However placing the front strap button behind the upper horn will help angle the neck away from your body and should be considered a good thing for you ergonomically, as it allows a little more length for your forearm to fit behind the neck when reaching for the upper frets. In my builds I have noticed that the shape of the rear comfort carve can make a difference in the way the guitar hangs on the body. Strandberg's Boden model has a comfort carve that is deeper towards the right side than it is towards the left. The red line highlights this angle: I have started incorporate a similar shape to the comfort carve in my own builds and can confirm it tilts the neck further away from the body and allows the left forearm a little bit more length to fit in behind the neck. It's been a few years since I've owned an Ibanez RG, but I'm pretty sure the angle of the comfort carve is more horizontal, which would tend to make the guitar to hang more square-on to your torso. This may be something you'd like to consider if you decide to chase a custom guitar with a builder. I would pesonally shy away from blocky guitars in an attempt to be ergonomic. The inherent shape of them does not lend themselves well to being comfortable players, either on the strap or seated. The fact that you cannot find the Billy Bo locally, and that it is a special order item with no returns makes it an expensive way to try a guitar if there's a risk it doesn't fit your requirements. Overly thick-bodied guitars are likely to give similar issues, either with weight or position fatigue. You mention that your ideal playing position is with the guitar held away from the body by a couple of inches - my gut feel from watching your videos you've posted on the Troy Grady forums is that you more need to optimise the angles the instument hangs on your body.

A setar is a relatively small instrument with quite fine strings at low tension. I'm going to suggest that bracing isn't actually used. This document indicates that the most common tuning used is C4-G3-C4-C3. This page suggests that common strings for the setar are 0.16mm-0.2mm-0.16mm-0.35mm. Using the values provided you can plug the tunings and string sizes into a string tension calculator to get an idea of the tensions involved. Assuming a scale length similar to a Fender Strat (65cm), with those values each string appears to exert only 4 or 5 pounds of tension, or a couple of kilos each. That's pretty low and unlikely to require bracing the top given that the sound board area of the setar also appears to be quite small.

Cheers chaps. We're our own worst judges of our abilities. Yeah, but that's your own fault for building guitars that are too slick and shiny for their own good

I assume that when you say you have the PDF templates you're referring to the ones provided here on ProjectGuitar.com. The suggestion to use 9mm MDF as detailed in the plans isn't prescriptive. Because the templates rely on up to two layers being stacked on top of each other in order to build up the full templates, 9mm was suggested as a way of ensuring that the templates don't become too bulky and necessitate the use of extremely long router bits in order to make the cuts. That said, if you want to perform a non-recessed Floyd Rose installation using those templates it's perfectly acceptable to use 12mm MDF (or even 6mm) and just utilise the two templates shown on pages 2 and 5; the remainder can be omitted. A non-recessed FR has the advantage of simplifying the install process, but has the drawback of leaving the action of the strings much higher than normal. A FR is a relatively tall bridge. Recessing the FR is only required where you either want the ability to pull the bar upwards by significant amounts, or the guitar is constructed in a way that prevents you from counteracting the side effect of high action caused by installing the FR flush to the top of the guitar (eg set neck or neck-through guitars with low or no neck angle). If the guitar it is being installed on has a bolt-on neck this can be circumvented by removing the neck and installing a shim in the neck pocket to either raise the neck by an overall fixed amount, or tilt the neck backwards by a couple of degrees.

This has actually been finished for some time now, but I've only just gotten around to taking some shots of it. Sadly the lighting is a bit off today so there's a few shadows I wish weren't so visible, but I needed to just get in there and finalise it. Thar she blows!

That's an oversimplification of what will actually happen in real life, and doesn't take into account the materials used, how it's constructed or the hardware installed. It's unreasonable to assume cardboard is exactly x times less weighty than wood (pine? ebony? wenge? balsa?). Even the bridge and pickups can be a significant proportion of a guitar body's weight, which is entirely unaccounted for at this stage. Are you wanting to know how your particular custom requirements will balance on the strap, or how it feels to play? I think those are two separate issues. The former you will unlikely be able to tell without actually making the object and/or with guidance of an experienced builder. The latter is where the idea has been suggested about making a full scale mock-up out of cheap materials has come from.

Something in the region of 25-40W should be plenty. If you're only going to be installing humbuckers I'd suggest it probably isn't really necessary, but it doesn't hurt to do so if you're feeling up to it or if you're also installing single coil pickups. Shielded wire is more effective than shielding tape, so if you have the option of using that instead it would make more difference, although the wiring complexity and effort starts to become more significant. Generally it's easier to use something else that is already grounded to make the connection to the shielding tape, and rely on the constant contact that item has with the shielding to be grounded. For example, most people will solder their grounds to the case of one or several pots. The pot(s) would then be bolted on to the scratchplate, so any shielding applied to the rear of the scratchplate would then be grounded via the pot's case, saving you having to run a dedicated wire to the shielding. The scratchplate would then be screwed to the body, which in turn would make contact with any shielding tape or coating you may have applied to the cavity, automatically grounding that shielding and saving another dedicated wire. All you need to do is plan your shielding to always overlap at least one point where it will be guaranteed to be in contact when secured.

The info that's floating around out there seems to indicate that the reissue Fender Wide Range Humbuckers are nothing more than a regular humbucker installed into an oversized case. This differs from the original wide range humbucker in that the construction necessitated the larger case. To that end I'd suggest treat them electrically as the standard humbuckers that they appear to be. Bog standard Strat components will work, but you may find that the tone is a little on the dark side, in which case you can exchange the volume and tone pots from 250K to 500K as used in most other humbucker-equipped instruments. Of course, that's over and above the requirement to modify the scratchplate to fit the physically larger pickups (and possibly the pickup cavities in the guitar body too) that you've already noted.

Just checking

Just to clarify, I believe the suggestions being offered with regards to making a cardboard guitar are about making a mock-up for evaluation and experimentation purposes only, rather than a fully-functional guitar made from cardboard.

Generally, yes. Aasuming the same size wire is used on the two pickups, higher ohms indicates that more turns of wire is on the bobbin, which corresponds to more output.