OT: Grey wears a different, different hat...

[GRollins]

I think most people know by now that I am primarily a string player, not keyboards. However, I not only play stringed instruments, I build them...from raw sawmill planks all the way through to something that you can pick up and play; I'm a luthier.

 

So, one morning I woke up with this fantastical (as in fantasy), silly (as in bone-headed stupid), unshakeable (as in obsessive, to the point of madness) notion that I wanted a Les Paul with a full length neck. For those who are keyboard players, the phrase "full length neck" may not mean anything--it means the neck is continuous for the entire length of the guitar. 99% of the guitars out there have necks that are formed separately from the bodies and either glued or screwed into place. Full length necks are not generally found in guitars and basses because, frankly, they're a pain in the ass to make. Well, I...being me...wasn't content to just build a guitar in a Les Paul-ish body style with a full length neck and wings. Nooooo...not yours truly...I went off the deep end. Nothing would do but to build the guitar with a closed, book-matched face, thus turning the whole project into a 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

 

What.

 

An.

 

Idiot.

 

Well, I got the bloody thing done, in spite of changing my mind on a number of things in mid-process (just to make life more difficult, natch) and, although there are a few touch-up things still to be attended to, I'm calling it finished as a slightly early birthday present to myself.

 

So there...

 

Grey

[GRollins]

Sigh...so why aren't the confounded pictures showing up? They're less than 1M and the Attachment Manager says that there are two pictures.

 

Okay, just use your imagination. Picture a guitar. The kind you'd buy in a dime store. The ugly kind.

 

I don't have time to argue with the Attachment Manager at the moment. Maybe later.

 

Grey

[Old No7]

I don't build instruments, but do enjoy woodworking and other hands-on tasks, so I do admire your tenacity to take on that project.

 

Too bad the images don't show...

 

I keep imaging "a guitar" -- but all I see is a Hammond B3 with 2 stacked Leslies!

 

Old No7

[Dave Bryce]

Sigh...so why aren't the confounded pictures showing up? They're less than 1M and the Attachment Manager says that there are two pictures.

I believe it may be picky about the file type. File extension may have to be in the name as well.

 

dB

[Doerfler]

You might want to post this in the Guitar Forum, might get more traction there

 

 

https://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/forums/19/1/guitar-forum

[GRollins]

Sigh...so why aren't the confounded pictures showing up? They're less than 1M and the Attachment Manager says that there are two pictures.

I believe it may be picky about the file type. File extension may have to be in the name as well.

 

dB

 

The same thing happened when I posted about my daughter's death. I tried to post a picture. It said it was there. No error messages or anything, but it refused to show. Less than the 1M limit. Later I fiddled the image a little in Irfanview and saved it. It was somewhat smaller and posted okay (at least I could see it finally).

 

The pictures I'm trying to post are JPGs, nothing weird. One's 520kb, the other's 435kb...neither's anywhere near the 1M limit. If I use the Select option to choose the file, it goes to a white popup box--no text, no nuthin'--just a white box with an X in the corner. If I hit X it goes away and it appears that the file is there, but it does not show in the post. If I use the Drag-and-drop option, again, it appears to load. It shows as a little icon at the bottom. Does not show in the post. The Attachment Manager says that it's there. When I look at the thread out on the main page, it says that there are attachments. Well, then where the hell are they? If I post two pictures, it says there are two. Neither shows. I can't add another because it already knows that I've reached my two picture limit, even though the pictures do not show. I can delete them and reload. They still don't show. I tried posting just one, thinking that maybe the total of the two pictures might be too close to the 1M limit. No dice. The JPG extension is there when I put the file in. I don't see any way to edit the file name, per se. This should be a really simple process, but it's not working and it's pissing me off. It would help if there was an error message or something to tell me in what way I have angered the gods, but they, as usual, sit in inscrutable silence.

 

Yes, I've already resaved the images in Irfanview after my accidental success in posting my daughter's picture--figured it might change something in the metadata that made the file more acceptable to KC. Didn't work this time.

 

There's no point in posting in the guitar part of the forum...it'll only put me through the same wringer...same code, right?

 

Grey

[GRollins]

For what it's worth, I just tried posting using Chrome instead of Firefox (my usual). That didn't work either.

 

It would help if there was even a tiny hint as to what was wrong, but I guess that's too much to ask for.

 

Grey

[Rod S]

I upload to imgur (free account) and then hyperlink to the forum, works every time.

 

Attachment has been hit or miss for me.

[NKB4691]

Hope you get it figured out because I want to see the pics ð

[GRollins]

Look me up on FB. The pictures went up first time over there with no bullshit...nyah, nyah, nyah...

 

I may not trust Zuckerberg, but his code works fairly well.

 

Grey

[KuruPrionz]

I've given up on this website being functional.

A Flickr account is free and you can put photos there and link to them. Not as cool but at least it works.

 

I look at Facebook the way a blind amoeba looks at an invisible maggot.

 

Sounds like a cool guitar, it's been decades but I built a couple of neck-through (the other common term) guitars that somebody else owns now.

I just play screwdriver guitars, a frankenstrat and a tele.

 

[Tom Williams]

You might want to post this in the Guitar Forum, might get more traction there

Disagree. I'd never look for it there, and I'm interested. Even if he can't load pictures....

[GRollins]

If I can think of something else to try regarding pictures I'll do it, but for the time being I've kinda run out of patience with a certain recalcitrant website.

 

 

Maybe dB can load the pictures from the side if I send them to him. I don't know. But this is seriously annoying.

 

There are a number of pictures on FB. Look me up: Grey Rollins. There ain't too many guys with that name wandering the planet. For all I can tell, I'm the only one in all of human history, though there was a woman in VA with a hyphenated last name sort of thing that I ran into one time. Hint--if you start seeing stuff about plants, it's her, not me. The only plants I talk about are the trees I use for wood.

 

Grey

[GRollins]

What the frack? I just tried to load a picture to the original post again (being both stupid and stubborn), and the site decided to put HTML at the beginning of my post.

 

What's that all about?

 

I swear this site makes no sense to me. It won't even do the same thing twice.

 

Grey

[NKB4691]

Checked it out on FB. That is very cool.

[GRollins]

There's still a paperclip on this thread indicating that there are attachments. There are still no pictures (at least I can't see them, maybe you folks can). At least I was finally able to get my daughter's picture up; the guitar's not important in the great scheme of things.

 

NKB4691,

Thanks.

 

I won't lie. It was a booger of a project. I've got it in mind to build a double neck next, six and four. For that one I think I'll just keep things nice and simple. Full length necks with wings. Something I can do with my eyes closed. None of this 3-D jigsaw crap I set myself to this time. Flat top and back, not carved. It'll be a cakewalk after this one. The guitar after that...Katie bar the door...probably another like this, but applying what I learned on this one (mainly what not to do). I have a habit of overdoing it and learning from my mistakes as I go. Makes for a steep learning curve, but the lessons tend to stick better if I learn them the hard way.

 

For what it's worth, I've got scads of pictures and notes. I could potentially do an entire build thread. However, given that the pictures won't show there's no point in messing with it, either here or in the guitar forum. I'd rather put the time and effort into the next instrument. Life's too short to argue with inanimate objects. Sometimes life's just too short, period.

 

For that matter, some here might recall that I built a keyboard a while back, using red oak and black cherry. That might, in theory, be of interest. I don't remember how many pictures I took while building that, but it was fun to do and it works great for my purposes.

 

Grey

[Tom Williams]

Okay, I've grabbed, scaled, hosted, and posted (with Grey's permission) 10 pics from his FB page. I'll include one here, and links to the others below.

http://www.airnetworking.com/images/GR10S.jpg

 

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

[nursers]

I'm no guitar player but nowhere in the definition of ugly does that guitar fit. Amazing work

[GRollins]

SERIOUS heartfelt thanks to Tom for doing this.

 

Grey

[ProfD]

D8mn brotha Grey, I'm not a guitar player but I'm totally impressed with your craftsmanship. That guitar looks great.

[GRollins]

Thanks.

 

A table saw works wonders on a plank of wood.

 

And a planer and a band saw and a router and a drill press and a...

 

And a lot of time and fiddle factor, but I love woodworking.so it's really kinda a cool way to pass the time. Beats working on the bathroom or back deck or whatever, right?

 

Grey

[CraigT]

Beautiful work. How does neck through sound compared to traditional glued in LP necks?

[GRollins]

Beautiful work. How does neck through sound compared to traditional glued in LP necks?

 

Oi! This could be a long, potentially boring, conversation. I'll try to keep it brief, because I have reasoned all these things through and have points of view which may or may not be controversial.

 

Put on your physics hat.

 

Sound is energy. Mechanical energy. Now, in the case of my Korg, for instance, the mechanical construction of the keyboard is of little consequence. All the sounds are synthetic. In the case of a Steinway, however, the mechanical sound is real and immediate; it starts as soon as you strike a key.

 

But...

 

You're in a bind. If you want the maximum sustain possible, you absolutely must go for maximum rigidity. The ultimate sustain would be to have something like two ten-ton granite boulders with eyelets holding the string stretched between them. The problem then is that you have no volume. To have usable acoustic output, you have to have a soundboard and that soundboard must be connected to the string so that it can draw energy from the string. However, the very act of drawing energy from the string begins to deplete the energy that you need for sustaining the note. In other words, it's a tradeoff. You can have sustain or you can have volume, but it's a balancing act. You have to give up some of one in order to get the other.

 

So far, this is not particularly controversial.

 

Full length necks on a guitar connect the bridge directly to the nut. The energy of a plucked string remains within the same piece of wood. In principle, this increases sustain and changes the tonality, but when you ask people why, they suddenly start mumbling. At this point, things begin to get a little wiggy.

 

This is my take. I've never found anyone else who espouses this line of reasoning, so be prepared for all kinds of yik-yak if you repeat this to someone else.

 

Consider sound in a room. Doesn't matter where the sound came from or what the frequency is or anything--all we're interested in is what happens when the sound wave hits a boundary. If the boundary is hard, like a wall, the sound reflects. If the boundary is soft, like the upholstery on a seat or the flesh of a human body, the sound is absorbed. If the boundary is exactly the same density as the air, the sound behaves as though there's no boundary and it continues transmission. (We're going to ignore for the moment the fact that sound is also absorbed by the air it travels through.) So...what we're looking for is any change in density. Higher density reflects. Lower density absorbs.

 

Are you with me so far?

 

Okay, consider a set neck, meaning one which is glued in place (e.g Gibson). Consider the density of the glue used to attach the neck to the body. Hide glues (think Gibson) are hard as nails. Great glue. Works wonderfully. But...uh...it's hard as nails. See above. A hard glue, no matter how thin the glue joint, will reflect energy. What about, say, an aliphatic resin? Soft. See above. Being soft, it will absorb sound.

 

Hmmm... According to The Philosophy of Sound According to Grey, either of those alternatives are Bad. I want the sound to travel freely between the nut and the bridge.

 

What if you were to magically manage to match (notice the alliteration...I love alliteration) the density of the glue to that of the wood? Promising...promising...but the thing about wood is that it's the product of a living thing--a tree. The density of the wood varies from tree to tree and even within the same tree, depending on what part of the tree and how you cut your boards. At this point you're going to have to reformulate your glue on the fly, depending on tests that you perform on each individual board. Ugh. Not practical.

 

Welllll...what about bolt-on necks (e.g. Fender)? You're kidding, right? Okay, Fender uses maple for their necks. Good choice. Good tone wood. But then the sound coming down the neck hits the lacquer coating the heel of the neck, then the lacquer in the neck pocket...and that's assuming that there are no shims, which I've seen anything from wood (not so bad), to a scrap of sandpaper (there's actually a whole line of reasoning that the grit of a piece of sandpaper helps the body grip the neck better), to a folded matchbook cover (WTF??? This was from the factory, mind you!). See above. And don't get me started on variations in how tight the neck bolts are.

 

A full length neck provides an unimpeded path for the energy traveling from the nut to the bridge. No big changes in density. No change in the mechanical impedance. Etc. A whole raft of variables are removed. Much more predicable.

 

Given that I have been known to get long winded about this, I will stop here. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to break down the above into both sustain and tonal arguments.

 

Quiz on Friday.

 

Grey

 

P.S.: Yes, if you analyze the construction of the guitar I built, you will find that there are glue joints in the way. The neck goes down the back of the guitar, but not the front, which is where the bridge is. There's a book matched maple top glued to the top surface of the neck. So, yes, there's a glue joint in the way. This particular instrument is not a perfect example of my philosophy. But it's pretty to look at and I've been known to forgive a pretty face any number of crimes. (Details not important here...fill in from your own experiences...) If you're buying the next round of beer, we can go into the the interface between the metal supports for the bridge and the wood. Or the frets to the wood. No, the nut doesn't really factor into the tonality or sustain of this guitar--note the zero fret. Like I said, I can go on about this stuff in excruciating detail. You have been warned.