curtisa

Mainly because any oil finish doesn't provide a hard-wearing, moisture-resistant finish to any type of wood. The lack of effectiveness of an oil finish on maple are compounded by the fact that maple has extremely small pores that won't allow deep penetration of an oil finish, and as a surface coat it is extremely thin and relatively fragile. Sweaty finger tips pressing against nickel steel strings imparts tarnish on to timber, which also happens to show up more plainly on pale wood like maple, so you're likely to end up with some discolouration on an oil-finished maple fretboard after a few months of playing. Nitro or poly are significantly thicker and more durable, so any grime and muck tends to sit above the surface of the finish, which allows an opportunity for the user to wipe it off when it becomes too unsightly and (hopefully) restore the look of the original finish if required. Discolouration on an oil-finished neck itself will still be apparent but will take longer to appear, simply because the palm of your hand isn't in simultaneous contact with any metal surfaces while playing, and the tarnishing effect of steel-on-sweat isn't able to develop. I believe the most common method is to install all your frets and the spray clear on the whole neck. The clear won't adhere to the frets, so it's relatively easy to remove the finish from the frets by scraping or careful sanding/scrubbing with steel wool. Obviously with the frets installed you won't be able to sand the finish between coats, in which case you just polish the fretboard on a buffing wheel to achieve the desired level of gloss. Bearing in mind it won't be a particularly hard-wearing or long-lasting finish that may require some restoration every so often if the eventual blackening becomes too much, as many coats as you feel comfortable with. Assuming you're finishing the fretboard before inserting the frets, maybe 4-6 coats as a minimum with a light sand between coats as directed by the application instructions of the finish you're using.

I didn't watch the whole thing, but he could be drawing it out in its entirety at 1:1 scale on MDF simply because he doesn't have any paper available large enough for him to demonstrate his processes. I suppose creating the template for the body can begin using the actual piece of MDF he started his design on rather than trying to transfer it from paper to MDF. But unless I'm missing something, any template he's hoping to create from the same piece of MDF for the neck will be wasted. Everyone's design preferences will be different. I personally don't see the need to plot the whole thing out in so much detail as he does. The neck could be represented by two tapering lines, plus a handful of perpendicular strokes to represent the nut, the last fret, the end of the fretboard and perhaps the fret where it meets the body. But each to their own.

I have no experience specifically with that amp but you might want to consider a few things generically that may apply to your situation. From this you may get some ideas as to what you're looking for in any amp: When the coffee house does the open mic nights, do they provide a PA or is it meant to be an unplugged event? The last restaurant I went to had a solo singer/acoustic guitar artist from midday to about 2pm, no PA, totally unplugged. From where I was seated at the back of a room about 30ft x 70ft it was about equivalent to the in-house music if they decided to run the CD player, which was comfortable for casual dining. But I could tell that diners sitting closer to her were finding it a bit too overwhelming, even with her only relying on her unamplified voice and guitar. What kind of atmosphere and music is the shop going for at these events? Unplugged? Duos? Full bands? Laid back Jazz? Are you essentially providing mood music or is it a proper gig event? A half-stack might look and sound the biz for a blues rock outfit, but if you can't run the master volume past 1 then it's just a wasted asset. Do you get a designated stage area or are you effectively on the floor amongst the patrons? Is the playing area limited in size? Do you need to be able to get your stuff on and off stage quickly or will you have ample time to set up and pack up? Is transportation to and from the venue a problem for you? Back in the bad old days when I was first gigging I initially got away with a 65W Peavey Express combo plus pedals, which could just keep up with an unamplified drum kit in a medium sized room. For anything bigger, where I had the opportunity, I'd mike it up on the PA. It wasn't the greatest sounding set up, but it was quick to move around - maybe two trips to and from the car to get it in and out of the room. I didn't have mountains of volume on tap without some kind of leg-up from a PA, but I could turn it down if I needed to for gigs where loud wasn't on the cards. Later on I moved up to more powerful and better sounding setups, but the time taken to handle it and the space required on stage also grew. These days given the wide variety of modeling options out there, I'd almost be tempted to ditch the amp altogether and just run a pedal setup direct to the PA and monitor through foldback wedges or with in-ears. That potentially simplifies things to a point where you can turn up with a guitar in one hand and a pedal board plus a couple of leads in the other, find a single power outlet on stage, plug in and go. Plus, low- or zero-volume practice at home with the actual sound of the rig becomes possible with headphones or through just about any stereo system with an aux input.

I think the OP is specifically talking about an Irongear rail style pickup, in which case Seymour Duncan colour coding is not equivalent. Irongear have wiring diagrams on their website that get you close, but not exactly what you want. The nearest I could find was 3x Jailhouse Rails in a standard 5-way Strat configuration: The easiest way to transplant a solitary Jailhouse Rail into a Strat-type guitar would be to swap by substitution and disregard anything else in the wiring. Any regular single coil will only have two connections to worry about - the hot (aka 'signal', 'output', 'live' etc) and ground wires. Just make a note of where the two connections from the existing bridge pickup goes to, disconnect them and substitute the equivalent two connections from the Jailhouse Rail. The Irongear diagram above indicates that the equivalent subsitution would be to use red as hot, and black+screen as ground. The two 'extra' wires on the Jailhouse Rail (green and white) as shown just get joined together, taped up and tucked out of the way.

You want all that on a belt pack before going wireless? That's one hell of a set up. As a DIY project that sounds more like you'd need a backpack to fit it all in. What about a non-DIY option and running it through a small mixer? You could make up a single multicore cable that accepts all three pickup signals at the guitar end and splits them into separate connectors at the mixer end. That'd save you having three separate cable runs out of the guitar. The mixer could even be positioned on a stand at a convenient height to make quick adjustments on the fly. It'd also take care of individual level, EQ, switching options and multiple separate outputs to different destinations.

Yep, many names for the same thing. Quite possibly regionalised too. I noticed as I was walking down the aisles at the hardware store today that they're also called 'cup head bolts'.

Carriage bolt or coach bolt.

The one and only time I glued an acoustic bridge I just used three F-clamps with enough throat capacity to reach from across the soundhole. Some rubber padding on the clamping faces is enough to keep things from getting damaged. You can always use F-clamps to secure all sorts of things that need gluing or holding down. A specialised clamping system for an acoustic bridge can only do one thing.

The 'Epiphone' logo is more likely to be a decal. It should sand off once you get through the clear coat layers. Epiphone are unlikely to have invested time and labour on an inlay job for the logo on the headstock.

That headstock was never a Fender shape. There's not enough timber in it to fit the Fender profile in there in the first place. The pale section just below the tuners almost looks like something was sanded off (the old logo perhaps?) and Fender decals re-applied over the top. The 'original contour body' logo looks to be in completely the wrong spot too - too far past the High-E tuner. Hard to tell from the pics if the tuners are installed squarely, but you're missing a bushing on the A-string tuner, and the uneven wear on the backs of the tuners almost makes them look like they've been sourced from different guitars (the 'Fender' stamp on the back of the high E tuner looks much rougher than the stamp on the B tuner, for example). Almost certainly not the genuine article. Most likely a partscaster dressed up to look like something it's not. Switching system could be a per-pickup on/off with per-pickup phase reverse which would account for 6 switches in total, but without looking at it in person and trying it out we'd all only be guessing. It's an interesting curio with some eye-catching details and a pretty fancy switching system, but as a guitar where there may be an ongoing issue with sound dropouts and seemingly fitted with a knock-off neck of dubious origin and a few fit and finish problems, I'd guess it's worth a hundred or two. You certainly couldn't sell or value it as a genuine Fender product.

What about taking the pickguard to a signwriting firm who has access to a UV printer and getting them to print the design direct to the pickguard?

True story: we've named our cat Mr Stevens, so that when someone asks why we called our Cat Stevens, they'd already have the answer.

I concur. How did he do it? Nanyo business. *ahem*

Ooo. Behave, Mrs Slocombe.

Bugger me! That reaction was quick! Stalker

Showoff

There are a few CNC-capable builders here on the forum, but it will help if you can let us know where you're located. Be aware that unless your inlay consists of basic shapes (circles, squares, rectangles etc) it may be quite labour-intensive ($$$) to reverse-engineer the pockets to match the the inlay shapes. CNC inlay is normally done when the original design patterns and files for both the pocket and inlay shapes are available to the CNC operator. This is probably a reason why it might be hard to find a service on Google that will do it for you. If you just took delivery of a pre-fab custom inlay set the normal expectation would be that you'd freehand the pockets to match each piece. In that respect you may have better luck finding a luthier with a good reputation for inlay work who could do it for you.

OK, I had assumed you were accessing the GOTM section of the forum rather than the GOTM section on the main page. I suspect it's to do with our migrating between forum software versions. Will see if our resident IT masterminds have anything to say about the issue.

Are you still having issues with this? There has been a gradual roll-out of some upgrades to the forum software which may have impacted certain areas of the forum, but I can't see any issues with the GOTM pages myself.

Fair enough. Can't say I agree with the logic behind what's going on, but if it works for you then all good. Now, the tonal differences due to left-hand thread pickup slugs in the southern hemisphere vs northern. That's an easy one

So judging by your video, you're still seeing at least the D and G strings go sharp, and perhaps the B a hair flat after some pretty serious bar usage. That's about on par with what I experienced with all my non-locking trem-equipped guitars, claw angled or not. I'd still be curious to see what difference it makes with the claw straight in your case. That should just be a case of putting a few turns on the treble side and taking a few off the bass. You could even do something totally heretical and angle the claw the opposite way Carl advocates and see what that does too. I'm still struggling to see what angling the claw does to improve tuning on what appears to be individual strings. In your case you seem to be getting tuning issues on a couple of strings (which is what I would have expected for a non-locking trem). If you were having tuning problems due to overall spring vs string tension I would've thought it would affect the whole bridge, not certain strings. The other thing that struck me last night while nodding off to sleep is that CVs angling technique actually doesn't equalise the pressure exerted on the outer fulrum points at all; it actually does the opposite. The bass strings exert the most tension and his logic is to put more spring tension on the bass-side to compensate. But this also makes the bass-side fulcrum screw see more pressure than the treble. So I've got no idea what's going on.

Here's some more food for thought. I found this quoted on another forum that was supposedly by the man himself. I've emphasised certain parts to highlight what's probably the missing information from his video, namely there's a lot more to his method than merely setting an angle in the trem claw for maintaining tuning stability: Step 1 in his method, above actually makes no sense to me whatsoever. You can distribute the spring tension any which way you like, but as soon as you have enough float in the bridge to give you that minor 3rd pitch rise on the G, then the B and E strings cannot do anything other than rise by a whole tone and semi-tone respsectively. The implication that you will naturally end up with the claw at an angle to target specific intervals on three strings is a red herring. Step 2 only further highlights how the strings behave when bent by equal amounts. On all trem'ed guitars the D and A strings will rise at roughly equal rates. The spring tension has no bearing on this behaviour. The fact that they rise a whole tone by the time the trem bottoms out is just a happy accident, same as the B and E strings relative to the G. The video that is missing from the above quote can be found here. Curiously he goes through the whole springs vs strings spiel that he espouses on the video at the top of this thread, but he actually contradicts himself (2:10 - 3:10) with regards to which strings have the most tension and his subsequent justification for setting the claw angle. Out of interest I tried setting up my Wilkinson VS100 trem with an angled claw and I honestly can't tell the difference in terms of stability. In fact, in order to get the proposed angle while maintaining the G string minor 3rd clearance, the treble-side spring is loose enough to go completely slack on the up-pull and threatens to come off the block altogether The tuning survives a few divebombs moderately OK, but then again so does the PRS with a straight claw. Returning the VS100 to a straight claw - no difference. Maybe my guitars are set up such they don't benefit from an angled claw, but the more I think about it, experiment with it and explore the technicalities the less I'm convinced. Carl's explainations and contradicting video statements don't do much to support his theory either.