News And Updates

As mentioned, I visited SweComposite for research purposes a while back. They focus primarily on carbon fibre parts for motorcycles but also do marine work as well has healthcare jobs. Kenneth Holmberg, pictured below, was very helpful and gave lots of friendly advice as well as sold me some of the items I was missing. I just wish I had asked him about what to use as release lubricant for the mould…

I wouldn’t be surprised if I contact him for advice soon.

Good news and bad news. The good news is that there is a mould! It is far from perfect, but pretty much on par with my expectations for a first try.

The bad news is that my “plug”, i.e. the positive mould was all but ruined. For one reason or other, the car wax did not work. At all. Every single bit of filler used on the plug sat in the mould when it was done. I have had to spend several hours sanding it away from the mould.

As the images above show, the plug is in pretty bad shape. I do still need it to make the other part of the mould, so I’m working on fixing it again now. I’m not sure what went wrong. Either the car wax didn’t work because I heated everything up, or the filler got messed up from the heat. Pretty sure it is not the latter though, but it could be that I was misinformed about using car wax. I will make sure I do the right thing for the next job.

Anyway , looking back, the rest worked pretty much according to plan. The peel-ply came off like a dream and there were no problems on that end. I noticed yesterday as I was applying the vacuum that I had made the bag a little too small/tight in one spot around the heel but was not sure how much it would impact the results. I did impact quite a bit, so will have to fix that in the mould before I can use it.

Peel-ply coming off:

I didn’t dare leave my “oven” on over night, so it is curing again now as I am trying to repair the plug. More progress will follow…

So, it’s under way. I have roughly 15 more very nervous hours to go before I know how it turned out…

Since I had made a complete model neck, but I will have to create the final necks in two steps (back and fretboard) I first had to “convert” my model into a mould for the back. The neck will rest on the below seat:

To not make the epoxi stick to the mould, I sealed it with latex sealer and then polished the whole thing with… Car wax.

I was nervous about this step but I think it might work as you might see in one of the following pictures - the epoxi does not stick at all, just like water on a newly waxed car. I then put double-stick tape around the edges to make the vacuum bag to stick to.

And then for the tricky part. I covered the mould in epoxi and as can  be seen, the wax seems to have done its job.

Next step way laying on the fiberglass, saturating it with more epoxi.

I put on three layers all in all. Then came peel-ply and pillow foam and finally the bag itself. Plenty of duct tape later:

With vacuum applied, I could work on sealing some more leaks with duct tape and the vacuum started doing its job.

Here is the complete setup:

To speed up the curing process as well as making the mould more resistant to high temperatures, I created a makeshift “oven” to bake it in.

It’s set for 60 degrees centigrade and 15 hours. Not sure how I will sleep tonight…

As advertised previously, I have also created a new MDF mould for the neck. To learn working with carbon fiber, I decided to make it a bolt-on neck mould. Then I realized that this is a perfect component for the Ergonomic Guitar System, so I made the dimensions the “standard” dimensions, which meet the body at the 21st fret. With this, it will be possible to purchase a neck and a bridge to get a truly ergonomic instrument from almost any bolt-on instrument.

I started by laminating three 19 mm  pieces of MDF:

and then I butchered a (yes, you guessed it) an ironing board to create a routing jig for the neck twist:

Once I had completed the passes with the router, I ended up with this:

and with plenty more work:

The plan is that tomorrow, I will start to create the negative mould (out of fiberglass and epoxi) that I will then do the final carbon fiber neck in. I visited a custom carbon fiber shop yesterday for research purposes, which was interesting. Will report soon.

I ordered some swamp ash and had it shipped to a colleague in the US. When I asked him if had “got wood”, he had a good laugh and enlightened me as to the dual meaning of this in English…. For those of you who don’t know what it is, suffice it to say that it involves a certain part of the reproductive system.

Anyway - I have started on a new mould made out of MDF. Here are a few pictures:

I have since refined them a bit and made a neck as well, but more about that another day.

If you haven’t done so already, check out Building the Ergonomic Guitar. I’m thrilled to have been the subject of a couple of posts over there. Robert Irizarry has gathered a wealth of resources and provides an excellent community for all of us that are interested in ergonomic guitar building. As I mention in my first ever posts, it’s what got me started again.In a couple of weeks, I am taking a few weeks vacation, so expect a little more progress soon.

I am thrilled to have some comparative sound samples of the Floyd-Rose(tm) drop-in replacement tremolo. First off: I put it on a guitar that is not the greatest instrument the world has seen, but the objective of the exercise was to note the differences in sound after replacing the tremolo unit. Secondly: the recordings were made through a Line6 TonePort(tm) using Cubase 4 software that was graciously provided by 4Sound Uppsala. The guitarist’s name is Peter Hansson - thanks Peter!

So, what were the results? Actually, the difference was more noticeable than what I would have guessed. It is not more than the difference from listening through your speakers and mine, the difference between an EMG and a Seymor Duncan pickup, or even a difference that could be compensated for by equalization. But the tone of the Floyd-Rose had more lows and highs and the “Strandberger” (had to name it that…) had a more pronounced mid range. But, I’m digressing. Here are the sound samples:

.neckSingle Coil Clean, Floyd-Rose*

.neckSingle Coil Clean, Strandberger*

.bridgeHumbucker Crunch, Floyd-Rose*

.bridgeHumbucker Crunch, Strandberger*

.neckSingle Coil Chorus, Floyd-Rose*

.neckSingle Coil Chorus, Strandberger*

Acoustically, Peter found that the sound was more pleasing with the Strandberger tremolo compared to the Floyd-Rose! Being that many think that Floyds sound “bad”, the difference in sound might be a good thing, but I will leave that up to you. It should be noted that the Floyd-Rose in question is the original, circa 1980, all weapon-grade metal version.

Other learnings:

• The edges of the base plate had been slightly deformed, i.e. the hard anodization, which is harder than hardened steel, had broken. This means that I will look into using hardened steel inserts like the ones on the Floyds themselves nowadays. It also means that I don’t have to use this surface treatment, which opens up for many more color choices.
• The height of the unit, the measurement between the tremolo edge and the string support, is higher on the Strandberger. This means that one will have to lower the posts to allow for the same neck setting. I will look into reducing this height. The difference was drastic enough that I had to insert an extra spring to resist the pull from the extra leverage.
• The string supports that I hand ground with my Dremel would sometimes twist and affect the sustain negatively. Will look into making the geometry a little bit different to counteract this possibility.

But all in all, a huge success. I am very pleased that it worked out as well as it did. My advice is: Watch this space for more sound samples when I have addressed the above issues.

It’s done! The first bridge is completed! I will have more input by the weekend, but until then: here are a few pictures.

I put it on an old guitar of mine in place of a Floyd Rose trem. The weight reduction was massive! It seems to sound very well. I will prepare some sound samples eventually.

Weight before: about 600 grams for bridge and tuners.

Weight after: about 140 grams…

I have received my finished pieces finally! Supposedly, although they are made from aluminum (hardened), the finishing technique renders them more durable than steel. In addition, the surface is impregnated with teflon, making them even more resistant to scratches, etc. and feeling “plastic like”. The result feels and looks very high tech!

Unfortunately, I have run out of the glide bearings I use, so I can’t assemble a complete bridge. As soon as I get a new shipment, I will assemble one and create some sound samples of “before” and “after” on a Floyd Rose replacement. 

“Stall” is the Swedish word for bridge. It is also the state in which my guitar endeavors have been in for the past couple of weeks, due to a very heavy workload and a skiing-trip. Nonetheless, my Floyd Rose drop-in replacement is taking shape.

I just have to drill the holes for the small screws that will stop the plunger from rotating and make the threads and then I am ready to send the whole thing off to finishing. I’m just hoping that they will let me tag along with someone else’s order since they have a quite hefty minimum charge.