Oldskeptic wrote:We were playing an outdoor concert warming up for an up and coming band call Heart, and their female guitarist/vocalists just had to have my Strat. Her name was Nancy and some years later she was playing it in a video I saw on MTV.

I had such a crush on Nancy Wilson in my late teen years.

Nearest I can get to that is selling a refurbished shocking pink LP copy to an actor name of John Henshaw.

Shrunk wrote:
It's a pair of solid bodies for my girls. They're actually doing most of the work, with me supervising, so it has to fit around their school schedules, plus the many other projects they have going. I must confess, however, that there is a pattern in which the projects in which I am involved have a higher tendency to remain unfinished.

Well that sounds like a great project for all three of you. How about posting some work in progress pictures?

I like acoustic.... am I not allowed to play?

Spearthrower wrote:I like acoustic.... am I not allowed to play?

The "ect..." let's you in.

Thank god for electroconvulsive therapy!

I'll break our acoustic ...

This is my attempt at Martin pre-war styling with a few variations. Martin didn't make 14 fret 00s with rosewood back and sides so I decided to. I used a T bar truss rod like Martin did back in the say, which I salvaged from an old sleigh. Most of the abalone I harvested from raw shell. Brazilian Rosewood with Adirondack top.

That is an incredibly impressive work!

Spearthrower wrote:That is an incredibly impressive work!

Truly. I am in awe.

Shrunk wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:That is an incredibly impressive work!

Truly. I am in awe.

Thanks Spearthrower and Shrunk.

I took a lot of pictures while building an acoustic very similar to the one above, although it was less ornate. If there's any interest I could start a "how to build and acoustic guitar" thread.

Here's a short scale partially fretted partially fretless bass I built. It might not have been one of my better ideas.

John Platko wrote:

Shrunk wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:That is an incredibly impressive work!

Truly. I am in awe.

Thanks Spearthrower and Shrunk.

I took a lot of pictures while building an acoustic very similar to the one above, although it was less ornate. If there's any interest I could start a "how to build and acoustic guitar" thread.

I have the technical capacity of a paraplegic frog, but I'd be interested academically.

How's the acoustic sound? Any chance of some recording of you playing it?

hackenslash wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:We were playing an outdoor concert warming up for an up and coming band call Heart, and their female guitarist/vocalists just had to have my Strat. Her name was Nancy and some years later she was playing it in a video I saw on MTV.

I had such a crush on Nancy Wilson in my late teen years.

Look what I found.

Spearthrower wrote:I like acoustic.... am I not allowed to play?

That's what the ect... is for.

I've only owned two acoustics the first was a Yamaha nylon string that I threw in a campfire one night because I was too drunk to tune it. The next morning I was looking for my guitar and my friends told me I put it in the fire. I asked why one of them didn't pull it out, and they just shrugged.

Then I bought a nice Fender CD60 cut away.

Spearthrower wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Shrunk wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:That is an incredibly impressive work!

Truly. I am in awe.

Thanks Spearthrower and Shrunk.

I took a lot of pictures while building an acoustic very similar to the one above, although it was less ornate. If there's any interest I could start a "how to build and acoustic guitar" thread.

I have the technical capacity of a paraplegic frog, but I'd be interested academically.

How's the acoustic sound? Any chance of some recording of you playing it?

Well, it's a small body guitar so it doesn't have the big think bass of a bigger guitar. It has a resonance peak at about G so the second harmonic of the E is stronger than the fundamental - pretty standard for a small guitar. It's harmonically rich, a real buttery sound although with the wrong strings it can be a bit brittle with a pick, not so much fingerpicked. It has a huge dynamic range, it's hard to overdrive the Adi top. A lot of note separation. This guitar has the depth that Martin used back in the day but I built a few more of this body style and went with a bit more body depth on those - they weren't Brazilian rosewood though so it's not fair to compare - and they all sound very different. I'll work on recording something, that should be fun - not that I'm much of a musician. I'm not sure how much of the recorded sound will reflect what you hear in person though= but I'll give it a go.

The guitar building thread wouldn't really require any technical ability - just a curiosity of how one might go about building an acoustic guitar by hand. There is one thing I do that is technical. I spent about 6 years studying on Saturdays with a luthier who was trying to add science to his building craft. He studied with a luthier who is fairly famous for doing that with violins. But guitars are not violins and if you skip the technical part you'll mostly only be missing woo.

I'd be interested in such a thread, John.

OK, I feel like such a slacker, 'cuz someone else built these, but here are the two electrics I currently own:

Custom hollow-bodied Tele by John Suhr:




Guild X-150, with the stock pickup replaced with a Seymour Duncan Seth Lover:





Others I've owned (images not of my actual guitars)

My first electric was an Aria-Pro II, much like this one:



Followed by a 70's era Fender Telecaster. I also owned a black 1990's US Standard Strat (You all know what those look like, right? You don't need pictures.)


Guild X-500 Stuart (Miss that one. Great jazz tone):




Ibanez AS-80 (Never really got along with this one. Felt a little stiff):

Shrunk wrote:I'd be interested in such a thread, John.

Me too.Very interested indeed.

I've built a couple and repaired or restored a lot, but that's some standard of work there. I wish I were close enough to find out how they play. I have a very sensitive palate when it comes to guitar, as should become clear when I can dedicate a couple of hours to construct my guitar history which is voluminous, even if I can only remember half of it. I've tried almost everything out there, and then ended up designing my own and having it lovingly built by a genius luthier friend, because I couldn't find one, with any amount of setting up, that was entirely satisfactory.

Shrunk wrote:OK, I feel like such a slacker, 'cuz someone else built these, but here are the two electrics I currently own:

Custom hollow-bodied Tele by John Suhr:




Guild X-150, with the stock pickup replaced with a Seymour Duncan Seth Lover:





Others I've owned (images not of my actual guitars)

My first electric was an Aria-Pro II, much like this one:



Followed by a 70's era Fender Telecaster. I also owned a black 1990's US Standard Strat (You all know what those look like, right? You don't need pictures.)


Guild X-500 Stuart (Miss that one. Great jazz tone):




Ibanez AS-80 (Never really got along with this one. Felt a little stiff):

Did you like your 70s era Tele?

I had a 78 Stratocaster that I bought new for my first failed attempt at learning how to play. As I recall it certainly wasn't very good compared to what you can get from Fender today, but back then I wasn't in much position to tell the difference one way or another.

hackenslash wrote:

Shrunk wrote:I'd be interested in such a thread, John.

Me too.Very interested indeed.

Great. I'll start the thread shortly.

I've built a couple and repaired or restored a lot, but that's some standard of work there. I wish I were close enough to find out how they play. I have a very sensitive palate when it comes to guitar, as should become clear when I can dedicate a couple of hours to construct my guitar history which is voluminous, even if I can only remember half of it. I've tried almost everything out there, and then ended up designing my own and having it lovingly built by a genius luthier friend, because I couldn't find one, with any amount of setting up, that was entirely satisfactory.

All my guitars play a bit different. The 00 steel string has an old school non adjustable t bar truss rod so I went for a beefy neck. I also generally go for a wider neck - a little over 1.75". The guitar I'll show in the build thread has a more generally acceptable neck feel.

You're lucky you have a luthier friend that can accommodate what you want. What is the special sauce that goes into making a guitar that works for you?

Here's the first electric that I built. It's a pretty traditional strat but it has a mahogany body and it a tad thicker.







Under the hood it has a shielded pickup cavity.



And this is my pickup winder. There's about 8,000 turns of wire on a strat pickup. So at 78 RPM it takes while ... I use a bicycle odometer to count the winds but I've found that just measuring time is accurate enough.