The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Bass player's job, mate.

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MAA Member since June 29th 2009, taking one baby step at a time..... and failing miserably!

Nice job Pete. I followed this thread from TB and then I also saw it linked at Blogspot. Great job on the modifications and nice solo in that avi file. I also listened to the mp3 archives from the blues club. I was just down the road from that club when I recorded at AIR Studios Lyndhurst a while back. I love the city and hope to be back soon.

Cheers

Zuma

http://zumaz.com
http://myspace.com/zumazmusic
http://www.youtube.com/zumazmusic

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Zuma

http://zumaz.com
http://myspace.com/zumazmusic
http://www.youtube.com/zumazmusic

Thanks. If you're back in town at any point & are at a loose end on a Wednesday night, drop me a PM. It's always nice to meet fellow forumites (forumistas?).

Same goes for the rest of you.

P.

Thanks, man!!

Mind you, whenever I've hit London in the past - earlier this year for example - I didn't seem to have any time to do the really important stuff like hook up with like-minded guitar nuts.... I mean, enthusiasts! I tried to make it into Paris to meet another forumista from the Westone site who was on vacay - colt - but the Gods were not smiling that week and I wound up in bloody Guernsey, meeting up with some "enthusiasts" who make us seem normal; this would be the German WW2 bunker guys. Now, they're hard-core nutters, I tell you....

Just going back over this thread again, and I am of the opinion that you need to lock me into that woodworking shop with a pallet of seasoned QS Maple, flamed flatsawn Ash, a bunch of QS Gaboon Ebony, landscaped Ziricote, and Cocobolo fingerboards with a few Pao Ferro for the vanilla instruments. Add to that a veritable feast of ribbon Sapele and some fallback Alder and you've got a bunch of vintage Aria tributes on the boil.

We want the finest wines available to humanity. And we want them here, and we want them now!

Seriously though, that is just a dirty picture to have posted to a person like me. You wouldn't see me for dust.

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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use" - Søren Kierkegaard
"It looks just like a Telefunken U47" - Frank Zappa

We grub along with it

It's not bad, in addition to the 4-cutter thicknesser (power-adjustable ± 0.1mm increments) we have to make do with:

30" Wadkin rip saw;
Ancient 'Crossley' 10" Cross-cut with a 15' bench either side which also feeds a
4-cutter Wadkin spindle moulder with traction feed;
Wadkin Tenoner (quite capable of doing 10" x 3" tenons)
Chisel Morticer (bit of a toy as it struggles when it has a length of 10 x 3 clamped to it - really wants replacing with a big chain morticer);
4-cutter Wadkin Overhand Planer with 4' adjustable feed tables;
Tilt-table Bandsaw that'll go up to a 2" blade;
and an ancient belt-driven pillar drill that was rescued from the Cooperage at Brakspeare's Brewery in Henley-On-Thames (now sadly closed & the site redeveloped as posh houses).

The muck is removed by an impressive amount of ducting feeding a rather loud 4-bag extraction unit that lives outside next to the 20' x 10' timber store.

Most of that little list was got for nothing or next to nowt by luck. We were in the right place at the right time when a local joinery company closed after a fire, & one of our guys used to work for British Rail at Guildford depot, so when they closed their woodbutchery shop we got a few nice bits of kit at scrap value (I think we paid £50 for the ripsaw).

Makes life a bit easier when faced with this kind of thing:



That used to be a 3x3 oak pillar.

When I'm next down there with the camera I'll furnish you with some machine pr0n.

P.

Sounds like fun! What's in the yard? General vanilla lumber or anything nice? Still deciding on where to source lumber for my own project. Will likely buy from the guys at Amfisound in Oulu. I could do with some white Oak for a potential Red Special sometime though....tammi is not common here.

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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use" - Søren Kierkegaard
"It looks just like a Telefunken U47" - Frank Zappa

Bit of both. I have a small amount of 1/4" Honduras Mahogany that came from an Edwardian fireplace surround - that's reserved for some fancy internal stuff like picture frames. We mainly try to get reclaimed stuff for hardwood framing - anything from Oak to Iroko via Sapele & even Keruing; just depends on what turfs up & if the price is nice. If it's softwood for planking & floors we tend towards Yellow Pine but get it in rough-sawn & oversize, let it season for at least 6 months & then machine it to whatever profile.

The rancid doorpost above now looks as new with a few coats of paint hiding the big lump of something-that-looked-like-a-sort-of-mahogany that was spliced in & a bucketload of pine vee'd T&G boarding over the rest of the framing. That was a nice christening for the Spindle Moulder - we can now turn out proper Imperial 7/16" T&G in large quantities as well as the fancier stuff for window mouldings etc.

Facing-up all the framing was fun... not. Modern chisels (and planes) are rubbish - the edge just folds up & runs away crying for its mum at the merest hint of 110 year old Baltic Oak Cue Ebay & a few pre-war W↑D blades that the collectors didn't want - probably Swedish steel (& there's not much tool steel that's better than that).

P.

Whoa whoa whoa! I've been on the hunt for old growth Swietenia Mahoganii for quite some time to complete my Brian May Red Special! In fact I have a website dedicated to this project http://www.redspecial.fi, which is on short term holiday thanks to my current projects The neck of the original RS came from a colonial-era fireplace also, which sounds like providence. Make some "unreserved", Pete! Apologies for going off-topic.


Seriously though - Honduran is nigh on impossible to source, and other species such as "Brazilian", Swietenia Macrophyla are nowhere near the same density or possess the same attributes. Modern use of the word "Mahogany" is now even broader, covering species like African Sapele, Khaya, etc. which are even further from the mark.

I'm actually very surprised that you didn't have any Mahogany available for your rebuild of the laminations, and even more surprised that the original Mat design incorporated woods occupying two different ends of the wood spectrum! Walnut is a more common lamination choice, in addition to other tonally interesting and structurally desirable woods. Mahogany is a strange choice (whichever species it was) as it isn't a very stiff wood as per most woods in laminations, and isn't very contributive to tone in small thicknesses. Very odd! I won't bang on about the pepsin characteristics of the respective species, but it is nonetheless very perplexing.

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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use" - Søren Kierkegaard
"It looks just like a Telefunken U47" - Frank Zappa