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12/7/2009
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Long Beach, CA
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borg
1/29/2018 7:01am
1/29/2018 7:01am
Edited Date/Time
2/15/2018 11:09am
I call it the Les G. Les Paul body design with SG double cutaway and flat top. Also using a bolt on neck with the Fender scale. It's a bit longer than the Gibson scale and gives a little more room at the upper end. (For fat fingers). Body is basically done but needs another 5 or 6 coats of Lacquer. The neck needs a bit more shaping before finishing.
When I am a retired old man with more time to piddle, I wanna to learn how to put together an acoustic guitar.
Where did you get the dimensions for the cutouts and hole size/placement? or did you start with an existing body?
I was going to have a custom body built, but then i got a cheap fender strat by squire for $20. I decided when i get time i will strip the finish off and put new pick ups, pots, & tuning pegs on it and probably a new bridge.
The Shop
FiendzCC, It's amazing how cheap some of the kits are. I also wonder how good the stuff really is. I went from scratch because I enjoy the building process. I am also going with the better electronics. The only thing I cheated on was the fretboard. For Indian Rosewood it was only $10 more to have them cut in the fret slots. I'm not set up for that yet.
George, I traced out the body from my Les Paul onto the mahogany blank and added the other cutaway. All the cutout dimensions are just taken from the Les Paul and my Strat for the neck. A few variations.
Can't wait to see your finished product.
Foghorn, That's a good idea. I have a CAD program that will print out the fret layout dead on to scale. Trying to measure and mark on the fretboard could lead to error. CAD comes in handy for other stuff too. I made radius gauges for shaping the neck back that worked really well. I also made a big gauge for pre bending the fretwire. It helps having a background in building machinery and working in thousands.
I just glued up some mahogany for another body and had enough left for a neck. It will be a tiltback style headstock. The body will be pretty much an SG. My son will be doing 90% of the work since it's his guitar.
Pit Row
Anyway, since I haven't been a strat guy for long, I have not heard of this issue, so I do not know what overtone you're talking about. Is it anything similar to general overtones you can get on most guitars? Like high pitched ringing? I know that when playing live, this can be fixed by completely cutting one or two very specific frequencies. That might be something to consider if you start to have this issue.
Stratitis
There are many others but this one offers a more scientific explanation of what may be causing it.
Interesting. I read through a lot of that forum. I would have to hear it still (like a lot of things with guitar), but this sounds like the sort of overtones I tend to find in some of my guitars sometimes. That includes my Strat, Tele, Jaguar, Starplayer TV and Les Paul.
I first started noticing it about 3 or 4 years ago. At first I thought it was something wrong in my signal chain. The more I researched about it, the more common I found "ringing overtones" to be for all guitarists. It isn't necessarily a certain guitar or type of guitar that does it (even though its more common it strat/tele type guitars).
If you play live into a PA, a professional audio engineer can pinpoint which frequencies they are and cut them (no more than one or two or you start to lose fullness to your sound). This is incredibly common in the professional industry and the most common fix is altering the EQ.
Depending on what combination of gear I'm using to play live, I will recommend for the engineer to listen in on my guitar and find the ringing and cut it in the EQ. This is a very non-evasive fix and actually helps your guitar to sound more full in a mix because you're getting rid of a piercing overtone dominating your signal. Obviously, when playing in a room/bar with just an amp, that isn't a reasonable fix. I choose to just ignore the overtones when practicing, or Mic myself and practice with IEM's and cut the frequencies myself.
All this being said, I would try the build as you're doing it now. Being that it is hand built, you might not even come close to having the same issue. If you do, try some of the easy onboard fixes people recommended in the link you sent. You could also try Graphtech saddles and see if that helps at all. Not sure if it would make a difference.
Sorry for the book. I'm a guitar nerd.
BTW,,, Hey FolkLoar, have you been to one of the last Tuesday of the month jams at my buddy Dana's house?
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