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Geo

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Everything posted by Geo

  1. Geo
    Spokeshave, rasp and sandpaper will do the job for you. I also use a chisel for the tighter curves where the neck blends into the headstock and into the heel. I carve the neck, attach the fingerboard, and bring the fingerboard down to the neck profile with the same tools I used on the neck carve. It works for me.
  2. Geo
    A big branch fell from an American Cherry in the back yard. The branch is at least 6" in diameter. Should I bother trying to get something out of it? It might be just wide enough for one or two quartersawn neck blanks. I know you would usually get wood from a much thicker piece of tree , but I would like to use this if I can.
  3. Geo
    Actually, it's the resistance between signal and ground that matters (the "load"). W/pot at full up, the signal sees the maximum value of the pot between itself and ground. The lower this resistance, the more the high F's bleed to ground. This is why the guitar sounds darker as you turn its volume down (unless you have bright cap on the pot to counteract). It's also why electric guitars sound bad plugged into PA's etc., cuz the input is the wrong load for the pickup and all the high end is lost.
  4. Geo
    Looks good man, I LOVE the body design! I don't know what your plans are, but I would go with bridge pickup only. That's perfect for the body. For the headstock... The "visually heaviest" parts of the body are the round area behind the bass side of the bridge, and the long lower horn. Draw a line between these... I think the "visual weight" of the headstock should be the opposite of that. I.e., "weight" in the area of the D string tuner and also in the area of the thin E string tuner. However, it would also look good with the "same weight line" as the body, if that makes sense. I hope that's helpful and not too esoteric!
  5. Geo
    That's fabulous!!! I picked up something like that in a music store once. I tried for a few minutes and then played a guitar. So I'm impressed to see the way it balances on the strap!
  6. Geo
    That makes for some fun mental images. One question, though. I see alot of builders making wooden bridges, and I wanted to give it a shot; how would this affect the grounding situation. I'm using single coils on my bass, which are already known to be a little noisy, so I definitely want to do what I can to keep background crud to a minimum. Perhaps you could have a metal strip on the underside of your tailpiece, touching all the strings, and connect a ground wire to that.
  7. Geo
    As usual... 1) unsolder pickup leads and connect them directly to a jack. If the sound is normal, the problem is in the pots etc. 2) measure DC resistance between pickup leads. If there are only two leads, you should see about 8k or 9k or anything close. 0 ohms or infinite resistance is a problem. 3) check all parts in the control cavity. If any one of them is failing, you might have low or no output.
  8. Geo
    Spam... ?
  9. Geo
    Fabulous color on that thing!
  10. Geo
    Yeah, you probably ruined that pickup. You can get a roll of 42 gauge wire for $30 from Stewmac and you can rewind that pickup or coil. It's a lot cheaper and you'll learn a lot in the process.
  11. Geo
    Not as many as my guitars have! If the clearance is actually okay, I say just go for it.
  12. Geo
    FYI, it looks like all of your wood is slab sawn rather than quarter sawn. There's a reason people usually use quartersawn wood. It's comin' along. Keep up the good work.
  13. Geo
    Not to nag, but just make sure you have opposite magnetic polarities for each coil in a humbucking pair. I am not sure about flipping the coil. I'm trying to envision how that would create two coils that are electrically out of phase, which is what you need. The simplest thing is to wind them the same direction and wire them out of phase. You're probably right about that, but for some reason I'm not sure. I imagine a lot of the high freq buzz will disappear when you have everything wired in and shielded. I wouldn't worry about it right now. If you've spent this much time already building a prototype pickup, you might as well finish it and use it.
  14. Geo
    That's a very pretty guitar. I actually like the Ovation headstock, but I'm not sure it matches that body very well. Those pickups look interesting too.
  15. Geo
    Personally, I would rather avoid the tuning problems... so I might try filling those holes, trimming the headstock, and redrilling the top two holes. You might even be able to hide it under the washers and backs of the tuners. But I would rather have a guitar with a small visual flaw that doesn't have tuning problems. Just something to consider.
  16. Geo
    Like builder, like guitar? hehe Whoa now, time for me to log out.
  17. Geo
    Is that LP's voice as sexy as her looks? The bass looks great too, I really like the color of the finish on both the body and the neck. Nice amps too, I like Silverface Fenders.
  18. Geo
    I would not use a headstock like that. Unless those pegs have some kind of roller, I think that's going to cause tuning problems. I think it's best to let the strings get to the tuners in straight and almost-straight lines. It just looks better too, having the headstock slightly weighted (visually) towards the nut. The "Moderne" headstock in the link is heavily visually weighted towards the free end, which works for that particular design but doesn't usually look good to me.
  19. Geo
    Just FYI, as I've seen a lot of confusion about humbuckers... To get humbucking, you need the coils wired electrically out of phase. If you wind your coils in the same direction, this means you connect (e.g.) the start leads of the coils together and send the finish leads to the output jack. You also need the coils to be opposite magnetic polarity. These two kinds of out-of-phase add up to a signal that is in phase and hum that is out of phase. Also, if your coils are not balanced (say one coil is 3k and the other 4k), you won't get as much hum cancelling. However, in my experience, unbalanced coils can make for an interesting sounding pickup, so it's not a bad thing if you don't mind a little hum. At least, that's my understanding. It may be helpful to your project. Good luck.
  20. Geo
    Interesting... so these problems are only with those pedals and that amp? It really sounds like a problem with the pedals, since they affect the level of interference. My guess is that a small cap (47pf?) from a signal point to ground would kill the interference without affecting your signal too much. But I'm not sure, as I've never heard of a way to eliminate that kind of interference. Sorry... just guessing here.
  21. Geo
    Wow that picture looks even more like your guitar than I imagined! I was thinking of the dried eggs...
  22. Geo
    Looks cool. I like the color of the wood. I don't know if you've ever seen a picture of a shark's egg, but it reminds me of that... yeah, pretty random.
  23. Geo
    No prob. It would be a pain if that was all you needed to order. The project looks great.
  24. Geo
    Where are you located? I could send you a little piece of fretwire to finish that neck, if you pay for the shipping. Of course, I don't know if I have the same size as you would want.
  25. Geo
    Your frets are not level. You can probably search this forum for info, or read about it in a guitar building book. But basically, you need a perfectly flat abrasive surface (say sandpaper attached to a long flat block). Use this to level the frets and then use a fret file... http://www.lmii.com/CartTwo/thirdproducts....n%2D1+Fret+FILE .... to re-crown the frets. That's the nutshell version... you should find a more detailed source and read about it.
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