Now comes the moment of truth, stringing the guitar and hoping it sounds ok. (Note that all of the accents are in the same places.). I decided to use Behlen stringed instrument lacquer in aerosol spray cans. This is a tough one, because you may think you're funny when you're not. This project is a learning experience. If you’re doing a genre conversion (see above), then make sure you’re intro is authentic to that genre. I also added some small vertical bracing strips to the side. 1a, a straightforward groove played with alternating down/up pick strokes. Not my forte. The next task, which was the source of some consternation, was to select the wood to use for the body of the guitar. BA1 1UA. The writers' in-the-round setup has proven successful at many of the nation's top acoustic venues such as Nashville's Bluebird Cafe and Eddie's Attic in Decatur, GA, among many others. Even when talented people are performing, there's a sense of sameness to the them. There are some subtleties that won’t make a lot of difference, but if you have a huge number of coils on the headstock that are all overlapping and messy, that can make your tuning unstable, because the metal is always compressing and won’t want to stay in tune. Bring a throw rug from home to stand on, put up pictures of your dog, whatever it takes to help you own the space you stand in. I used my B&D rotary tool with a 1/8" router bit to carve an inlay channel. I'm building 2 more now and have found it is going much faster. Right now, my setup is Seagull S6 and a Rode NT1-A plugged directly into a Lexicon Lambda (instrument and MIC 2 inputs). What Kind of Impact Does Our Music Really Make on Society? I decided to make my own wider accent strips from Mulberry that I cut from my own trees a few years ago. :), Great work. After wiping the water from the top I used Turtle wax rubbing compound from an auto supply store to polish the finish. Discover the best acoustic guitar strings for your budget and playing style, including top picks from D’Addario, Martin, Elixir and more, “Something like our standard 928 SP wire will give a bit of extra brilliance. I checked all the stings down to the body, no buzzing. Flubbing a chord or forgetting a lyric is always tough. Even with the rhythmic variety that accents can provide, strumming lots of eighth notes may be too heavy-handed in a full-band context. Downside: you'll have to split the money a few ways. These four pieces were glued then clamped in the mold. I then marked its thickness on the back of the fret board and use a plane to remove additional rosewood to make room for the binding. For each piece of fret wire I cut the length with a 1/8” to spare on each side of the fret board. I could have made my own but I decided to purchase them from Stewart-MacDonald since they were relatively inexpensive($3.20 a piece for a 15 inch strip, I needed four). Cheers! There are some steps you can do in parallel to save some time: working on the fretting and finger board while the body is glued up and drying, working on the top and back at the same time, bending the sides while the top and back board glues are drying, making the mould while top and back glues are drying. Its higher register may help keep your guitar from getting buried in the mix. So it's up to you to spice things up and make them want to see you again... and again. Not so much fretting about the things I've never tried before...no pun intended, actually it was intended. Instead of doing a solo show, make it an in-the-round with two or three other solo acts. I now had something resembling a guitar body. I applied 4 coats of Behlen vinyl sealer first with light sanding after the first two coats. I then cut away the bracing at the marks so it would fit inside of the guitar body and also cut away the kerfing where the bracing would contact it. Thank you for signing up to Musicradar. They were held in place with clothes pins clamped on about every 1/2 inch or so. “If it’s buzzing open and you’re not touching anything, chances are that the nut slots are low, and the string is just sitting on the 1st fret. Clamping an gluing the bracing on the top required a menagerie of creative clamping methods and extensions and wedges. It happens to pros all the time – the only difference is pros have enough experience to make a seamless transition from the snafu back into the song, often without the audience realizing there was a mistake. (0 members and 1 guests), ... is there a way with the setup I have to make the. • Add more interest to chords through the use of inversions and substitutions. The advantage with home is you can work on it anytime you want, in small increments of time or all night long if you wish. “If you spend a couple of hundred dollars on a good electronics system, it doesn’t matter what the guitar sounds like acoustically. I used sand paper, clamped to a flat surface with a long right angle block of wood also clamped to that surface to complete this job. Like I mentioned earlier, the tension adjustment for the truss rod on my guitar is located on the peg head....so it needs a cover. The saddle is set at an angle for compensation and it’s distance from the nut should be 2mm longer than the scale length(25.4) on the high e string and 6mm on the low E string. Bottom line: treat a solo gig like you would a first date with a person you've had a huge crush on for months. First I had to trim the overlap left on the top and back. I am just about to finish up my first electric guitar restoration and due to the success I have had with that I was nursing ideas of building myself an acoustic next. Many of the images do not show. By the way the radius on the surface is supposed to make the guitar a little easier to play, so a flat fret board probably would have worked. A guide to buying your next acoustic guitar. I also used a small piece of aluminum flashing between the wood pressing jig and the fret wire. I don't really know what that means but that didn't seem like a bad thing to me. I had a piece of scrap walnut with interesting figure in the grain so I used that. “It’s ‘just a piece of plastic’, but that piece of plastic is what you’re using as a tactile connection to articulate the string. It is a yellowish color. I think these protect the edge of the guitar from dents and also add some decoration. Andy: “It can actually matter. playing self composed music on a self constructed guitar. First I laid the bridge on the sound board with the saddle in place and held a string from the nut to the saddle to check the action height (distance the string set above the frets). I decided to purchase. I laid out the pieces on a sheet of card stock then glued them in place, making sure to use plenty of glue where the pieces met. You could put a Fishman Gold Plus in a 2x4, and it’s still going to sound like that system!”, Don't miss the latest deals, news, reviews, features and tutorials. Another thing to save time is to purchase prebaricated parts, like the neck(bolt on), the bridge, rosette, bracing, kerfed linings, preslotted fret board, purfling. That thing needs to be set up correctly, and if you have real low-quality material, you’re going to hear it. 4b is essentially the same, but with the arpeggios rolling low to high instead of high to low. Ex. It is desirable to minimize the visibility of the glue line, so the edge of the wood needed to be trimmed flat and even to make them fit tightly together. The book includes lots of photos and even full scale plans, which are handy, but, while sufficient, lacks information I need. Receive news and offers from our other brands? And only used those for the inside edging of the basswood. A step-by-step guide to DIY'ing … I purchased a pre-carved neck from Penta Guitar Works on e-bay. Attaching the bridge is probably one of the most important steps to get right in the entire build. Next I drilled clearance holes for 2-1/2" long drywall screws about an 2 inches apart all the way around it about an inch outside the line. I filled the cracks with epoxy and moved on. But, you are correct, by the time you purchase the wood and components you could have also purchased a fairly decent production guitar for a similar price. Ex. I first placed a piece of blue painters tape on the sound board where the bridge would sit, and laid the bridge on top of it. Play corresponding scale (s). I now had the inlay shaped like a star, or cross if you prefer, and I traced its outline on the peg head. • Create more interesting chord progressions. I did have to use my small drill press with the base turned backwards to get things to lined up, and to ensure my holes were square with the neck. It came with the maple neck I purchased. The next day I trimmed the strips that protruded slightly so they were flat and flush with the edges of the sides. I overlaid the paper plans on the top cedar sound board and marked the sound hole center by pressing a tack into the wood.