Geo

Yes blackdog, keep building, your style rocks! And congrats on the rosewood. Just today I was in a department chairman's office for my job and saw an old box with solid rosewood panels! Aaaaah....

Use good ol' V=IR. Say you have 100v on your filter caps. With a 500ohm resistor, current=100/500=0.2A. So, P=IIR... if I did that right, your resistor would have to dissipate 20w safely! A 1/4W resistor will blow up. If you use something much higher (10k, 100k, 220k, whatever you have) current will be lower (and I think the discharge will take longer). It's safer to keep the current lower. Of course, this is all different if you only have 20v on your caps. I usually see values in this range, not 100v or more. That's my understanding anyway. An attenuator is usually some kind of dummy load that soaks up some of the output power. For example, you could probably use a lightbulb as an attenuator, or say a 10ohm 50w resistor, etc. Power scaling actually lowers the voltage which the power supply gives to the power tubes. Lower V=lower wattage. Hope that's helpful, someome correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think that's necessary. I would use one cable, either a stereo 1/4" or XLR. You would have to build some kind of power supply that you plug your guitar into. The power supply would do nothing but pass the guitar signal to a regular 1/4" and supply your DC to the other conductor to power your digital thing.

Caps in tube amps can "re-charge" too. I've watched, with a voltmeter, while the 20-something V on some PS caps crept up by tenths of a volt. A good way to drain most of it is leave the standby switch on but kill the main power switch and keep strumming until the amp is totally dead. This will drain most of it. You can also just unplug it from the wall while it's on and keep playing until the sound is gone. Whatever you do, check the power supply with a voltmeter before you touch anything. Drain the voltage off by clipping a resistor between the PS and ground. (I use 220k). UNPLUG THE AMP WHEN YOU OPEN IT. I lost count of the times I left an amp plugged in and then shocked myself by bumping a contact on the power switch.

Hey, that's unfair !! I put no less than 3 P90s in my first build alone !!! Counting these two new ones it's 4 P90s vs. 5 'buckers, pretty fair distribution I would think. Well all right, but you need at least one more P-90 to bring the balance back. All right, I'll stop with the stupid jokes.

Gaaah, details! Seriously, I think the power supply requirements will keep the whammy pedal out of the guitar. Unless you could put an XLR jack in your guitar and use an XLR cable? Then you could supply the power from an outboard source, like phantom power going into a condenser. You'd probably want to wire in a normal jack too so you can use the guitar with normal setups. (You'd have to build some custom thingie to supply the power to one conductor of the XLR cable).

Very cool, I love the LP double cut shape. And I'll cut you some slack since you have a P-90 in this one.

I'll be watching this one! You've got some great wood going there. (P.S.--P-90's instead of humbuckers! Sorry, I had to plug them...)

That's interesting. Just curious, why would you cut the Miniwax? Of course, I don't know why the Miniwax was included in the recipe, so maybe I'm farther behind than I thought. I'll test the mixture without the Miniwax and see how it works. Thanks for the replies. I appreciate any more input. For my first acoustic, I think I'm ok with using an oil finish even if it interferes with the sound a little. Mostly I am trying to get familiar with the construction, which is a bit different than a solidbody electric.

Doh, I just realized you're not talking about a WAH pedal. Ignore my comments... Might an actual whammy bar be simpler than wiring in a digital whammy circuit?

60hz is lower than the lowest guitar pitch (80 hz) so you should be able to use a large cap (0.1?) to dump all guitar frequencies while still passing 60hz... if that's what you're asking. This will kill the fundamental hum (60 hz) but NOT its overtones, which you hear as buzz. So, probably not effective.

Also, with a normal wah pedal, you have about a 4" control range with your foot, controlling 270 deg of pot rotation (through a rack and pinion setup, on the ones I've seen). So while it's easy to rock from one end to the other with your foot, to control the pot by hand, you'd have to flip it all the way, like flipping a volume control from zero to full. Just not worth it in my opinion. There's a reason the wah pedal is built the way it is.

Not typical in my experience. Sounds like the wrong taper. Are you sure they're audio?

You gotta place your bridge correctly or the guitar will be pointless. Take the distance from the front edge of the nut to the center of the twelfth fret (probably 12.25") and measure that from the 12th fret towards the bridge. This is the theoretical end of your scale length--line up the thin E string saddle with this point, but add about 1/8" for the bass side of the bridge, and you should have a usable range of intonation adjustment (assuming your saddles are well-adjusted to start with) Also check out Stewmac's bridge position calculator.

It's a Tel... wait, it's... wait, I'm confused! Honestly, I would keep the Tele control plate for the "real thing". I think it keeps the guitar evenly balanced between Tele and Strat, whereas a full Strat pickguard will make it a Strat with a Tele shape, you know? But it's cool whatever you do.

Very classy! If it was a girl, I'd introduce myself! The grain in the neck really compliments the shape too.

that's pretty cool. I might have to build something like that sometime.

Wow, what a classy design! Can't wait to see it restored. "I dont have the time or money to restore it to its original state.. that would invlove grafting on a new top horn and re doing all the binding as well as trying to source some very rare vintage parts for it.. its all possible but i really dont think its worth the effort" Oh, but the original top horn is so cool! It wouldn't be that hard, would it?

Definitely do the scarf joint and reinforce it with a hardwood plate. It'll be stronger than a 1-piece head with short grain going across it.

Thanks for the replies. I'll do a little more research. Here's what I was going to use. It's equal parts boiled linseed oil, clear gloss Miniwax, and turpentine. I've used it on two electric guitars. Someone on another forum shared the recipe with me. He used it on many guitars before he bought equipment to spray nitro. Any thoughts on that?

I remember reading a post on here... someone said that finishing an acoustic with oil was not a good idea because the top would soak up the oil and become "acoustically dead". Any thoughts on this? Any affordable alternatives if this is true? Thanks.

"I'm also looking for that not quite a strat and not quite a humbucker sound. You know, clear and twangy with some brightness while having a little more power and a little more full sounding. " It sounds like you want P-90's. Sorry, just have to plug my favorite pickup type!

That's beautiful! We'd all love to see some more pictures if you have any.

Personally, I would adjust the shape of the body, as it's pretty "horn-heavy" and the taper at the butt end (past the bridge) is pretty sharp. That's mostly an aesthetic thing, though it may contribute to balance problems depending on how hollow you make it. My suggestion... 1) tighten the waist 2) take the waist up including both horns and shrink it down I think you'll have to carve the top pretty thin for it to have much affect on the sound. I'm not sure about the "humbucker" with one coil wrapped around wood. The second coil will probably have minimal affect on the tone of the pickup, because there are no magnets in it to magnetize the strings directly above it. But I am not sure if it will buck hum? I never thought of something like that, so I am trying to think through how a humbucker works and how this might work. You may end up with a weaker signal, since the two coils will be in series (more DCR, thinking from that angle) but there is only one coil's amount of "string input". um... improvising... works good in jam sessions, not so well in guitarbuilding, in my experience! Any way, looks like you're on track. Good luck.

Fabulous looking!!! I wouldn't change the pickup rings. My first reaction was also that they're too large, but I think that's because I'm used to the smaller LP rings. Your headstock in particular looks amazing, like an old archtop or something.