Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

I recently visited a luthier who used hard shellac on a guitar he made ten years ago...the finish is crazed badly-something going on with the finish or the way it was applied. Has anyone had experience with this issue?

On Selmer style guitars, one of the main issues is the type of strings that are used.In particular, the G string on the copper plated silver wound strings is the most troublesome...it is usually the first string to suffer from the windings wearing through on frets and from breakages. In fact I have ...

"Wolves are never very far away on high mobility guitars."
A good luthier is surrounded by wolves!

Thanks Trevor!I am reluctant to shave the braces to lower those resonances because, apart from the wolf notes, the guitar sounds great, and the bracing is pretty light. I have been mucking around with ladder braced Selmeroid builds for some time now, but this is my first X braced guitar...so risky t...

Follows the notes not the frets.G2 + G#2 still a problem.Any comments re my speculations? BTW it's an OM size guitar, sounds fantastic to me except for the wolf notes, CF rio neck very light bracing tapered not scalloped, sitka spruce top, ebony mahogany neck, 2deg bridge rotation, non live walnut b...

I have managed to get my t1(1) frequency to around the mid point between G2 and G#2 (102Hz) and my T1(2) to 192Hz which is close to the mid point between F#3 and G3. I am getting the very clunky note on G# and pretty much a similar clunk on G. But only really a hassle on the 3rd and 4th frets 6th st...

Thanks Jeffhigh! All my questions basically answered, along with the understanding I came to re changing the deflection figure. As I said, I'm a bit slow with maths...thanks for your very clear thinking.Great and concise practical answer fro you. Only question left at this point, what is the effect ...

Well I think it's a silicone coating of sorts. Trying to google more info. Does anybody have an opinion regarding the best way to apply a clear pickguard and what material to use?

Yes...using a deflection jig with a 1.25kg weight. maybe a heavier weight would give better results with a larger deflection? BTW I meant to say 180Hz would be my best target as 185 is bang on F# which I know is wrong. But for the purposes of my calc I wanted to see what effect it would have on spec...

I am trying to understand more about the specific mobility calculations in the Gore/Gilet books. It seems to me, with my terribly disfunctional mathematical skills, that if the top resonance is dropped, the specific mobility drops with it. Eg if a top resonating at 203Hz (Craig Bumgarner figures for...

I have found out that the Klingon guards are a product called PEK (Polyetherketone) with a silicone coating on the adhesive side-so they should be inert. I suspect that the iPad ones are the same technology, but haven't been able to research yet.Off gassing and any moisture breathing out through a t...

The only problem with them are the bubbles that are hard to smooth out, but from a distance you don't notice them.The advantage is you can cut custom shapes from the iPad ones. If you have ever removed a stuck pick guard from a guitar there is always discoloration, or the wood/finish underneath is l...

A friend visited me overnight and had an interesting pickguard. LMI among others sell these, but by the time one gets one from the US here to Aus, the cost is high. These style pick guards are removable, and it is not recommended that they be left on Nitrocellulose finishes, but rather be removed an...

Re cutting aluminium on a bandsaw. I find that after cutting aluminium, I have had to use a wire brush to get the aluminium shards out of the rubber on the wheels. Maybe the machines with deeper throats don't have the same issue, but on mine, the aluminium gets embedded in the rubber on the wheels.

If checking out second hand bandsaws, I have the following suggestions: The nice old school machines are solid and heavy. They don't vibrate. The wheels also have weight in them, aluminium alloy doesn't seem to cut it in the cheaper models. When the wheels have weight they have torque. Check the bea...

Thanks for that Martin. Fret2find has been bookmarked!A handy, convenient resource.

I did a banjo mandolin recently. These old instruments are not exactly standard sizes. There are some calf skin heads pre formed around wire hoop of different sizes available from places like Lamberties in Melbourne, or maybe Paytons in Sydney. Also Australis music, perhaps... The instrument I worke...

You may be interested in "Fret Calc" if you have an iPhone...it's free and you just enter the scale length you want and it spits out all the fret distances.

Single action truss rod? No CF reinforcement in the neck? What is your opinion re these things? I have found that the CF and dual action directs a lot of the energy that would otherwise be lost from the neck into the soundboard and also allows for finer neck profiles ( if the client wants that ),as ...

Yes, the floating bridge/archtop design, is probably more akin to a loudspeaker. On the Djangobooks forum there are interesting posts by a luthier Bob Holo who was an experienced loudspeaker designer before tackling the Selmeroids...he has some interesting opinions and has several tonal variations i...

What is the consensus regarding the topic of soundboard brace tuning? There seem to be many schools of thought, for instance, the idea that, apart from the structural issues to support string load, the soundboard should function as a single diaphragm in a similar way to the cone of a loudspeaker. Lo...

I have added over 100g side mass for only a couple of Hz drop in top frequency. The sides are walnut with solid beechwood top liners and kerfed maple back liners.Is the reason for such small changes,7Hz drop,due to the fact that the sides are pretty solid already and the mass loading is not so effec...

Peace be with all of you and I sincerely hope that the missing very rare special and useful luthiers tool that is missing from your kit magically turns up!