That's gorgeous, thanks Jordan!
Type: Posts; User: John Morton
That's gorgeous, thanks Jordan!
Greg is right on this. Plating shops that offer anything less than high gloss will have some way of degrading the finish after plating. Plating over sandblast works well, also sandblast over...
Check the cone assembly One way to chase down a buzz in a resonator instrument is to remove the coverplate and string it back up with the resonator assembly exposed. Then while plucking the...
Vibes have a limited sustain that reminds me of the mandolin, so I think they are worthy of study. Try this one from a Rosenberg Trio album that features vibes: ...
A guitarist friend complained that his .012" high E was occasionally and unpredictably dropping in pitch. I checked the tuner capstan and gears, and the ball-end tailpiece attachment - nothing...
In practice I always return to these exciting pieces:
Gostosinho
Bole Bole
Murmurando
Just the place for Frank Ford's Spanish heel reset scheme. Saw it off and rebolt it, using the same bolts.
a bit of a surprise to see what's beneath the cone of the modern National mandolin:
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good choice of a Joplin piece, gorgeous at that tempo
I did a dreadful thing yesterday. I was trying several old tape players on a setup to digitize two cassette tapes of Tony Flores and Billy Packard. My player had crapped out, so I was back and...
The most complete story of the 6 7/8 is the liner note essays from a 1956 Folkways LP that Paul cites in a 2008 post. The liner notes can be downloaded from this page:...
Tone balls! The first one I saw was about the size of a golf ball, and had that same compound structure. It reminded me of an image of a uranium atom from an old physics book. Awhile ago I heard a...
anybody ever see these inside a mandolin?
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Having fallen behind on my clarinet practice and being caught unawares a few times, I recently hit on an exercise for visiting all the keys: I play Body and Soul a couple times in Db, then again in...
Carbon paper is dark blue, as I remember, and sort of crinkly. The stuff I saw was very black and looked to be stiffer than carbon paper, which wouldn't withstand much tugging I suspect.
I have seen video of someone using a black paper strip to pull through the heel/body joint, marking the high spots. I use cloth-backed sandpaper in this way, but I'd rather make that the last step,...
Sure, Halden Wofford and the Hi Beams, out of the Colorado Front Range. Greg Schochet on double neck.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHhPw0GX3kw
Off topic, but interesting and apropos of the goatskin/vellum head:
I'm reading a biography of Thomas Edison, whose projects were important in the sequence of devices that led from his phonograph...
You probably mean .4mm, not .04mm, which is thinner than a human hair!
Autodesk's Fusion 360 is a cloud-based CAD/CAM package that offers a free "startup license" for any business making <$100K/yr. It is very powerful, and well supported by a user forum hosted by the...
The problem with feeler gauges is that they must be held perfectly parallel to the string and perfectly tangent to the fret. A better choice is a wire gauge, e.g. a piece of (unwound) piano wire. ...
Credit where credit is due:
The transducer that converts diaphragm vibration to sound waves in air goes back to Edison, I believe. The diaphragm of the "reproducer" that is linked to the needle of...
I believe Eddie Condon played mostly plectrum guitar and banjo: 26" scale, tuned CGBD. Mike's original impression of a very long scale in that first video seems right. In the suitcase quartet it's...
I made a steel strung resonator octave guitar at the behest of a guy in Panama. Don't know what kind of music he plays.
I was skeptical about the project - he wanted a dark finish (on brass) and...
I vote for solder on the underside. You could try soft solder (~350-450 deg.F). Scratch away the plating around the posts, and flow it over and around the ends. But the heat you'll need even for...