Rat Mods

A local guitarist recently asked me to perform the “Ruetz Mod” on his Rat pedal. It’s basically just the removal of one resistor, which smooths out the frequency response and lowers the gain slightly. While I was in there, I swapped out the terrible sounding TI OP07DP opamps for a couple of NOS LM308H’s. Of course, normal plastic DIP LM308’s sound the same, but the metal can package adds some undeniable mojo.

Don’t Let The Smoke Out

The Carlsbro PM12 is about the cheapest powered monitor wedge you can buy in China. If you play in a band here, you’ve probably used them in clubs and practice spaces … and if you own one, you’re probably used to lugging it to the repair shop every couple of weeks.

Last week a customer brought in his PM12 that had been blowing fuses nearly every day. Instead of taking it in for repair, he just kept putting in bigger and bigger fuses until they stopped blowing. Not only did the chip-amp (pictured below) explode, but the power transformer burned out as well. The fuse was still intact, though.

DC-30 Clone Complete

I finished wiring up the DC-30 clone amp today, and after a little tweaking it’s sounding good. I’ll test it for a couple more days before letting it go, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to take some video.

DC-30 Clone Chassis

I’m working on a clone of the Matchless DC-30 for a friend. The 1U aluminum chassis just arrived this morning, and I drilled out the top this afternoon. Using the CNC router to drill a few holes was probably overkill, but it’s nice to have everything line up perfectly on the first try.

I also soldered up the main turret board:

Another Bamboocaster Demo

Here’s my brother playing the bamboocaster at my parents’ house in Nashville:

Bamboo Guitar Pics

Bamboocaster First Demo

Andrew Cunningham of Tonerider tries out the bamboocaster with his Vintage Plus pickups:

Bamboo Guitar (Part 2)

The guitar project was on hold for the past week, but today I finally had a chance to get a little more work done. First, we mounted the routing templates on the rough-cut bodies and cleaned up the outlines. The big pin router made short work of the first body, but halfway through the second one the bit started to chatter and tore a huge chunk out of the side. I was worried, but after gluing it back on and re-routing the body (with a new bit) I can’t even find the damaged spot. Somehow I didn’t get any pictures of the bodies in this state. Next, we drilled out the pickup cavities and neck pockets before cleaning them up on the router as well.

With the bodies basically done, we moved on to necks. Last week we’d ripped some pieces of the horizontally laminated board and glued them together to make the bamboo strips vertical, which I think looks better. Today we cut out the necks on the band saw, then ran them through the pressure planer until they came out at 21mm. The fingerboards will be the same 5mm thick bamboo board I used for the tops and backs of the bodies.

We didn’t have time to finish routing the necks today, so I had to use a spare maple/rosewood neck to test out the body. Starting to look like a guitar…

Bamboo Guitar

For the past couple of years I’ve been telling anyone who’d listen that I want to build a guitar out of bamboo. Well, I finally got around to starting the project. I’d already done some research into the manufacturing processes involved in making bamboo boards, and knew what I wanted for body and neck blanks, so I contacted several bamboo flooring factories around Anji in Zhejiang. Eventually I found one that makes boards to the appropriate specifications and were willing to provide me with small quantities. There are a few different ways bamboo is made into boards, but the kind I’m using is made up of long strips with a rectangular cross section laminated together. I ordered pieces of both vertical and horizontal lamination, and prefer the more “wood-like” grain of the vertical type. Stranded bamboo boards look even more wood-like, but weigh nearly twice as much as the already heavy laminated boards.

My friend Wang Qin, a luthier who makes basses under the name KuanChi7, offered to let me use his workshop and walk me through the process of making a guitar. He had templates for several guitars, but I wanted a Tele — its utilitarian simplicity makes it the perfect platform for testing different woods and hardware — plus I just like them. I downloaded Terry Downs’ drawing from TDPRI and modified it slightly, then had routing templates laser cut from 15mm acrylic. Anticipating possible weight issues, I made an additional template for routing Thinline-style chambers as well.

I decided to use 5mm thick vertically laminated pieces for the top and back, with a center section of 35mm thick horizontally laminated board. The picture above shows the body parts after being rough cut on the band saw. Next, we hollowed out the center section with a jigsaw:

Then, the jigsaw cuts were cleaned up on the pin router (sorry, no pictures), and the top and back were glued on.

To be continued …