The Hub

Greetings fellow Looths! I recently received a request from a customer to replicate Kurt Cobains 59 Martin, starting with a Sigma DM3. I have pasted the customers email to me below. While I have been a looth hobbyist for many years, I just recently opened my official business, Finger Lakes Guitar Works, and am just getting off the ground and a good flow of repair work is already coming in. While I feel 100% confident in my abilities to…

I have a 74' D-28 im working on, just curious what you guys do in terms of process steps. Right now, im setting the angle, without frets(I reinforced the square tube rod with carbon fiber and will need to refret once put back together.) Do you guys shoot for the straight edge hitting the top of the bridge with, or without frets? Im wondering if I should undershoot my bridge just a touch so that then I can fret and have a good saddle hei…

can anyone help me determine the neck angle on a 12 fret to the body neck Robbie Obrien says the gap betwwen the plane of a 14fret neck and the top of the soundboard at the bridge should be3.5 mm. does that hold true for 12 fret necks

Just wondering, anyone doing Ken Parker finishing on an acoustic with the bridge glued on? I've been using the finish for a while but I'd like to start glueing the bridge on before I finish so I can acoustic test everything in its final state. I can't see a reason why I couldn't wipe the epoxy and oil up into the bridge joint and then remove it by rubbing but I was wondering if anyone has done it already. It would mean finishing the…

Hi everyone - I recently ran into trouble making new nut for one of my necks that needed to be trued and re-fretted. I roughed in the nut as usual and then, with the bass guitar fully assembled and strung up, I started cutting the slots to depth. I use the StewMac digital nut slot depth gauge and have had good results in the past. I marked the nut's lowest points (radiused) using the guitar nut scribe tool (first time using this!) and c…

Hello all, A customer dropped a recent American Professional II Strat to have a Double-tap humbucker installed at the bridge. I rewired the guitar following Fender's schematic (see below) and installed a stacked 250 and 500k volume pot, treble bleed PCBs and push-push coil split/tap for this pickup. All went very well, until I tried it at switch position 2. Sure enough, the new unit does not play well with the others and combining delive…

In Michael Baskin's on-line video, he uses a frequency test of a guitar in the white to determine whether to thin the lower bout before finishing. The guitar in the video has a bridge attached. I'm wondering if this is the final bridge or something temporary. If the latter, how do the results compare to the final frequency analysis? I've used a bolt-on bridge to do the same, but don't have enough data points to draw a firm conclusion…

Hello friends - I am a bass guitar builder who is considering building a neck-through Flying V-style guitar with a 25.5" scale length and a Floyd Rose tremolo bridge. I have not built any neck-through instruments and would appreciate any guidance on where to begin with respect to laying out the design, in particular, getting the neck angle right and the headstock angled properly. Any resources are welcomed and if someone has any interes…

Ok, I'm a new builder and I've only done solidbody electrics so far, so this question is related to only those. In my opinion, these are the things that have the most impact on tone, listed in order from most influential to least. Have at it! Pickup/electronics, neck joint type, neck construction (including fret size/material), scale length, bridge type, bridge saddle material, tone wood Of course, this only takes into account the guitar.…

I dyed an East Indian Rosewood bridge black to match the Blackwood fretboard before gluing it on*. The bridge is now glued to the top. What are some ways to "fix" that dye into the wood. I'm not crazy about TruOil - up to 40% mystery oil..... *I did a sample on rosewood with 4 different "dyes" and they were all stable, would not rub off with paper towel, naptha or mineral spirt. I went with the TransTInt. I did not however test with…