Ich bin ein schreckliche Selbstpublizist: I've fallen into thinking of this virtual space as a place to confess to mutilating musical instruments, rather than advertising performances. So, to the latter:
Tonight, I will perform my Hundenschnarchenwiegenlied (2010) as a guest of Ensemble Pamplemousse, at Roulette in Brooklyn. Discounted presale tickets are available here.
You Will Believe a Bulldog Can Snore!
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Monday, May 23, 2016
You know you're a cute little heartbreaker ... Epoxy!
One of the joys (and dangers) of my neighborhood is the proximity of Rockler's Cambridge store; all too often, I walk by, see an interesting piece of hardwood displayed in their window, and start to fantasize about buying it and installing tuners, bridges, pickups, ...
Luckily, last week this placement played to my advantage: While searching for a wood filler better suited to this project, I found a post on the Rockler website that explained the different kinds of wood filler, and identified what I thought would be the right product for this job. But in the store, when I described the project to someone on the staff (identified by his name tag as — I kid you not! — "Woody"), he pointed me to something else even better: Mohawk Wood Epoxy Putty Sticks.
The Mohawk wood epoxy both filled the narrow cracks more effectively than the garden-variety filler I used three years ago, AND it's harder when cured. (Win-Win!) The main drawback in practice is that, for this application, you must quickly resign yourself to wasting at least 50% of what you mix: As with any epoxy product, you have a limited time to use what you mix ... but it's well-nigh impossible to mix only the amount you would use to fill a single fret slot. Heck, it's well-nigh impossible to mix only the amount you would use to fill two fret slots, and even that's a race against time — especially given the putty's tendency to stick to the X-acto knife, and the palette knife, and the latex gloves, and, now that you mention it, everything except the surfaces in the fret slot.
Here are photos of the slots filled (but not sanded):
If you look closely, you can see the difference between the five slots closest to the neck pickup (which I filled more precisely, using only an X-acto knife) and all the others (which I filled more quickly, using a palette knife). The latter group resulted in more stray putty on the fingerboard, but that's not a problem: the process of extracting the fretwire slightly raises the wood along the edges of each slot; when you sand those down to the level of the fretboard, you simultaneously remove the excess putty. But don't take my word for it; here are images of the fingerboard after sanding:
... and finally, here's the newly fretless instrument, restrung:
So, there you have it: Phase 1 (making the fingerboard fretless) is complete; now it's on to Phase 2 (finding a way to tie frets around the neck). I've procured an ample supply of artificial gut, in the form of 1.75 mm ABS nylon monofilament (normally fodder for 3D printers). The good news is that it definitely seems hard enough to work as fret material (in particular, it's harder than nylon cable ties), but it seems to require some persuasion (most likely, by a soldering iron) to attain a proper fit to the fingerboard. When I find a practical solution to this problem, I'll share the details here.
Friday, May 13, 2016
We can work it* out
* where "it" denotes any individual guitar fret
Another Friday, another step forward in converting my ESP LTD EC-256 guitar into a fretless model. As advertised last week, today I applied painter's tape on either side of each fret, heated the fret with a soldering iron, and then carefully extracted the fretwire from the slot. Lather, rinse, and repeat 21 more times ...
The curtain is lowered for 30 minutes to denote the lapse of a half-hour.
Adjusting the truss rod to bow the neck slightly backwards resulted in much, much less splintering than in my previous effort (mauling an Epiphone LP-100; I'll have to dig around to see if I still have a photo of those ragged slot edges). Here's a close-up of the empty EC-256 slots; you can see some ribs (un-ribs?) where the barbs on the fret tang took teensy bits of wood with them on their way out, but the damage is minimal:
In another refinement of the process, rather than remove the frets in consecutive order from nut to body (or vice versa) as I did on the LP-100, this time I first removed only the odd-numbered frets, resulting (briefly) in a custom whole-tone instrument:
Removing the frets in this sequence made the work on the upper frets much, much less claustrophobic, especially on the second pass (i.e., removing the even-numbered frets). If nothing else, it simplifies applying the painter's tape, because on that first pass you don't have to clear all frets; rather, the tape can overlap and cover the even-numbered frets.
Okay, now the asymmetric placement of the fingerboard inlays in the above photo is starting to unsettle me, so here's a photo of the completely emptied fingerboard:
Ahhhhh, much better. Next week (schedule permitting), I'll fill the empty slots. Maybe I'm imagining it, but the clean(er) edges make the slots look narrower than the aforementioned LP-100 slots, which in turn makes it seem as though it will be even more challenging to fill the EC-256 slots.
The last time around, I discovered the hard way that the wood filler I used didn't offer a sufficiently fine resolution to truly fill the LP-100 slots. I haven't ruled out using wood glue instead: 1) I'm not trying to fool anyone into thinking this fingerboard was never fretted, and 2) the 12-EDO slot lines will provide a handy 100-cent reference grid for placing the "gut" (actually nylon) frets ... so, with that in mind, filling the slots in a contrasting color becomes a feature, not a bug.
Another Friday, another step forward in converting my ESP LTD EC-256 guitar into a fretless model. As advertised last week, today I applied painter's tape on either side of each fret, heated the fret with a soldering iron, and then carefully extracted the fretwire from the slot. Lather, rinse, and repeat 21 more times ...
The curtain is lowered for 30 minutes to denote the lapse of a half-hour.
Adjusting the truss rod to bow the neck slightly backwards resulted in much, much less splintering than in my previous effort (mauling an Epiphone LP-100; I'll have to dig around to see if I still have a photo of those ragged slot edges). Here's a close-up of the empty EC-256 slots; you can see some ribs (un-ribs?) where the barbs on the fret tang took teensy bits of wood with them on their way out, but the damage is minimal:
In another refinement of the process, rather than remove the frets in consecutive order from nut to body (or vice versa) as I did on the LP-100, this time I first removed only the odd-numbered frets, resulting (briefly) in a custom whole-tone instrument:
Removing the frets in this sequence made the work on the upper frets much, much less claustrophobic, especially on the second pass (i.e., removing the even-numbered frets). If nothing else, it simplifies applying the painter's tape, because on that first pass you don't have to clear all frets; rather, the tape can overlap and cover the even-numbered frets.
Okay, now the asymmetric placement of the fingerboard inlays in the above photo is starting to unsettle me, so here's a photo of the completely emptied fingerboard:
Ahhhhh, much better. Next week (schedule permitting), I'll fill the empty slots. Maybe I'm imagining it, but the clean(er) edges make the slots look narrower than the aforementioned LP-100 slots, which in turn makes it seem as though it will be even more challenging to fill the EC-256 slots.
The last time around, I discovered the hard way that the wood filler I used didn't offer a sufficiently fine resolution to truly fill the LP-100 slots. I haven't ruled out using wood glue instead: 1) I'm not trying to fool anyone into thinking this fingerboard was never fretted, and 2) the 12-EDO slot lines will provide a handy 100-cent reference grid for placing the "gut" (actually nylon) frets ... so, with that in mind, filling the slots in a contrasting color becomes a feature, not a bug.
Friday, May 6, 2016
Where angels fear to tread
Spring is sprung, school is out, and a young man’s thoughts lightly turn to thoughts of guitar surgery.
A couple of years ago, I undertook a wildly overambitious project to re-fret a solidbody electric guitar in 31-tone equal temperament. I failed miserably, and was ready to swear off any and all such radical modifications. But then a funny thing happened on the way to abject surrender ...
A few weeks ago, it dawned on me that, yes, I had failed miserably, but not utterly. No, I don't have the skills to saw new fret slots and hammer in new fretwire ... but I did succeed in removing the old frets, and I almost succeeded in filling the old fret slots and making the fingerboard fretless. So although I can’t realistically plan to refret a guitar, I could convert one into a fretless instruement, and then play it microtonally with a slide, and/or tie gut frets (or something gut-like) onto the fingerboard. (Which, indeed, some older, wiser voices encouraged me to do with the previous guitar —but I was too headstrong to listen, as a callow youth of 50.)
So, here we go again ...
... this time with a nifty little gem of an inexpensive Les Paul copy that I stumbled onto in Rockin’ Bobs Guitars, Davis Square, Somerville. Here's the “before” photo:
It's an ESP LTD EC-256. Highlights include a carved maple top and the ability to split the pickup coils; alas, there’s only one tone knob, but at $225 used, this instrument was practically a steal. (The covered humbuckers aren’t my first choice, but if all goes well, I’ll swap them out for some Seymour Duncan open-coil models, and replace the ordinary nut with a compensated one by Earvana.)
After removing the strings (and stashing away the stopbar tailpiece and Tune-O-Matic-style bridge for safekeeping), I removed the cover plate to access the truss rod:
Next, I adjusted the truss rod, reversing the fore-bow (a.k.a. “relief,” which prevents strings from buzzing against frets during play) to achieve a slight backbow. This is a pro tip I didn’t know two years ago; this step should reduce damage to the fingerboard when removing the frets. (If the fingerboard is under compression, then it tends to grip the fretwire; if it’s under tension, then it’ll more readily release the fretwire.)
Okay, that’s enough fun for today. Nest week, I’ll apply painter’s tape on either side of each fret (to protect the fingerboard), and then extract them, with the aid of a soldering iron to melt any glue holding them in place. Wish me luck!
A couple of years ago, I undertook a wildly overambitious project to re-fret a solidbody electric guitar in 31-tone equal temperament. I failed miserably, and was ready to swear off any and all such radical modifications. But then a funny thing happened on the way to abject surrender ...
A few weeks ago, it dawned on me that, yes, I had failed miserably, but not utterly. No, I don't have the skills to saw new fret slots and hammer in new fretwire ... but I did succeed in removing the old frets, and I almost succeeded in filling the old fret slots and making the fingerboard fretless. So although I can’t realistically plan to refret a guitar, I could convert one into a fretless instruement, and then play it microtonally with a slide, and/or tie gut frets (or something gut-like) onto the fingerboard. (Which, indeed, some older, wiser voices encouraged me to do with the previous guitar —but I was too headstrong to listen, as a callow youth of 50.)
So, here we go again ...
... this time with a nifty little gem of an inexpensive Les Paul copy that I stumbled onto in Rockin’ Bobs Guitars, Davis Square, Somerville. Here's the “before” photo:
It's an ESP LTD EC-256. Highlights include a carved maple top and the ability to split the pickup coils; alas, there’s only one tone knob, but at $225 used, this instrument was practically a steal. (The covered humbuckers aren’t my first choice, but if all goes well, I’ll swap them out for some Seymour Duncan open-coil models, and replace the ordinary nut with a compensated one by Earvana.)
After removing the strings (and stashing away the stopbar tailpiece and Tune-O-Matic-style bridge for safekeeping), I removed the cover plate to access the truss rod:
Next, I adjusted the truss rod, reversing the fore-bow (a.k.a. “relief,” which prevents strings from buzzing against frets during play) to achieve a slight backbow. This is a pro tip I didn’t know two years ago; this step should reduce damage to the fingerboard when removing the frets. (If the fingerboard is under compression, then it tends to grip the fretwire; if it’s under tension, then it’ll more readily release the fretwire.)
Okay, that’s enough fun for today. Nest week, I’ll apply painter’s tape on either side of each fret (to protect the fingerboard), and then extract them, with the aid of a soldering iron to melt any glue holding them in place. Wish me luck!
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