Doing Things Wrong

Recent Edits


This really puts a dent in the whole tonewood argument.

I doubt there is anything very special about those piezos. My experience is that you need the right mounting and electronics to make a piezo sound good, and it has very little to do with the sensor itself, which is just a little bit of semiconductor.


21" neck, adjustable bridge with piezo saddle, active electronics. EBay body. Now has metal-wound strings.


This is another factory guitar, vintage 1960s, made by Danelectro and sold exclusively through Sears. The 1448 was one of the cheapest electric guitars in the Sears catalog, but it came with something special - it's own amplifier built into the hardshell case. There is almost no wear on this guitar, I don't think it was played much.


Danelectro Companion Guitar
Danelectro Longhorn Guitar
Danelectro Pro-1 Guitar
Danelectro Pro-1 Bass
Danelectro Silvertone 1443 Bass
Danelectro Silvertone U-1 Guitar
Danelectro Silvertone 1448 Guitar
Danelectro Silvertone 1457 Rescue Guitar
Danelectro Silvertone 1457 Guitar
Danelectro '63 Guitar
Danelectro "Super-63" Guitar
Danelectro Silvertone 1450 Guitar
Danelectro Silvertone 1472 Amplifier
Danelectro '67 Hornet Guitar
Danelectro Longhorn Bass

Danelectro is my favorite type of guitar, simply for the genius of their unorthodox, inexpensive, yet highly effective designs. I love the tone of old-growth masonite. If you are looking for details, the Pro-1 Bass is the most complete build documentation.



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:



#1. Single-tier guitar rack

The smaller single-tier guitar racks (above) were a modification of a standard sort of stackable little bookshelf that I have built quite a few of. The larger two-tier racks (below) were based on a similar sort of construction. Unfortunately, I never saved any plans for these things, in fact I never had more than rough sketches to start with, and improvised the rest. Once I worked-out all the dimensions and details for the first one, I just copied it. These racks are now a decade old, and have stood up to humid summers and dry winters perfectly. Nothing has pulled-apart or cracked.


There is a lot of nonsense that gets floated through the guitar industry about neck mountings, mostly invented by marketing departments to justify outlandish prices. 'Set' and 'through' necks are simply luthiery baggage from the middle ages, literally, as in 500 years ago before screws had been invented, or at least were in common use. Any difference in tone or sustain is purely imaginary on the part of the sucker who paid an extra thousand dollars for it, and has no choice but to believe the BS or admit he was had.