Official Luthiers Forum!

Comments and suggestions welcome as always.

The Good:
Neck: maple
Fretboard: ebony
Truss rod: 2x carbon fiber spar only
Neck joint: bolt-on butt joint
Back and sides: magnetic pine
Top: Spruce
Electronics: Radio shack piezo buzzer
Scale lengths: 23.5" and 25"
Binding: rosewood
Finsh: wipe on poly

The bad:
1 Somehow the sides shifted in the mold when gluing the top which ended up slightly altering the shape and also altering the angle of the tuner slots at the bottom. I suppose I should have kept bending the sides until they sat in the mold without any spring.

2 It seems the sound hole corner was a little too much of an angle for the 1/8 inch rosewood binding, and it split.

3 A part of the binding moved while I was gluing it, so it dried sitting 1/8 over the bottom of the slot.

4 Both the top and bottom have a small crack. On the top this is due to the headless tuner section being a hair too tall I think. On the back, as soon as I planed the glued pine slats, they started cupping on me. I wrestled them down and glued them to the brace, but I think it eventually caused the crack.

Since I am working under a lot of limitations (no bandsaw, no thickness sandler) these pine slats are really handy. They come around 2.25" x .25
" x however long, which is kind of cool, if I ever wanted to build something big. I just glue the slats side by side, taking care to keep the correct orientation. I will say that these glued pieces are extremely hard for me to plane. Not sure why. Seems difficult to find a good direction for planing.

The Ugly:
I don't need no stinkin' transverse brace.
Uh, maybe I do.

Once I brought the strings up to tension I let it sit for a day. I noticed the neck move, about 4mm forward at the nut. I re-shimmed the neck and went thru this cycle several times. The top is definitely caving a little near the neck. Since I made some generous access panels on the back, I am hoping to add a brace. I don't mind compromising on a lot of things. But the action has to be low for my personal taste. I like it when people pick up my creations and say "At least the action is great."

Making an 8 string travel guitar is kind of a contradiction. A small body is going to be light, which will be a problem when you stick 8 tuning machines way out there on the headstock. This is one case where being headless definitely helps.

I definitely have some artifacts due to break angle, I can hear that phasing sound.

Most of the video was recorded with the mic, not the pickup.

Video and sound clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJsLYHssxYI

From the "How Different Is It"? file....
Well done.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Man, that is one of the coolest things I've seen!
It sounds great, and I really enjoyed the video.
I like your dowel form!
You have a gift for designing and building with available materials and tools.
Well done!

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Very nicely done! I'm glad to see that the fear of being different has not affected this community...

Sounds great

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Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Great sounding guitar, lactose!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker