I like to experiment with materials, designs, and techniques outside of conventional luthiery to build low-cost, high-quality, fully-functional, and attractive electric guitars and basses. What I am not interested in is doing the same old thing the same old way it has been done for decades.
Projects contains details on all the instruments I have built, and some other related subjects.
Laboratory contains tools, techniques, and designs used in my projects.
Blog - anything else I feel like writing about: carpentry, programming, music, etc
This site is aimed at the home hobbyist, and particularly the first-time builder. So welcome to the lab. See what's on the slab. I hope you find this site interesting and informative.
Navigating This Site
Main navigation is at the rightleft around here somewhere. First there is a "breadcrumb trail" showing where you are, with "up-links". This is followed by a list of child pages, or "down-links". Around that is a list of sibling pages, or "side-links". There is also an overall
Site Map
, as well as indexes for each major section. Finally, the search box works surprisingly well, or just hit the Random link.
If you are on a small 'mobile' device like a phone or tablet, the main navigation collapses to a button at the upper-right, with the rest at the bottom. The button opens a condensed popup menu. The mysterious unlabeled checkbox in the menu is a 'pin' that holds it open as you navigate between pages. You can force 'mobile' mode on a larger device by making the browser window narrow. In any case, the layout is optimized to make the best use of the available screen space.
This site was assembled from a mass of material I had previously posted on Talk_ass. This is seven years of material - over 200 pages and a gigabyte of images, and ongoing. Just getting it all back up was a huge task.
When two pickups are wired in series, the output of one is connected to the ground of the other. The outputs are directly additive, there is no loading effect as with parallel wiring. You get noticeably more output, and usually a much fuller sound. Two pickups may be wired in series with a standard [ON-OFF-ON] switch, available at any hardware store.
my cheap little drill press that does 90% of my drilling
For drilling precisely spaced holes, like guitar tuners, make ( or buy ) a template. I make mine out of scrap maple. If you mess it up, throw it away, NBD. Eventually, you'll get it right, and then forevermore.
This is one of the funniest things on the whole internets. Mark Twain, a mad scientist, and it ends with a great Steely Dan tune. What else could you want? How about the rest of that song:
A woodshop is a dangerous place, sometimes your tools turn on you. For a nice clean cut, Crazy Glue is perfect, I use it all the time. Think of it as an artificial scab. When it comes off, make a new one, as long as you need to. Crazy Glue is extremely acidic and probably has a sterilizing effect as well. I have sealed up cuts and gone swimming when otherwise wetness would have been a problem for weeks. Crazy Glued cuts also heal much faster, with much less scarring.