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My own hand built Barchetta Valve Amp 30 watt tube Top Brass.

+441rider Thanks, the muffler hahahaha. Its a condenser from a automotive air conditioner. It just has a specific sized hole on exit and the pipe is length tuned for a somewhat optimum short track bike. The Mikuni is round slide and has a pvc intake manifold that is longer than stock. The carb is resting on a rubber shock mount, I haven't had any trouble with it. Knock on wood.

Had one quite similar in the mid 70's.Shake a bit is an understatement.

Casey Van Ok. Sounds like a great experiment. Being an amp builder I can say that the tube preamp inside the guitar is a long walk, not that it can't happen, but I take it that you'll use a separate cord coming from a wall transformer to supply the 200 to 300 volts of DC needed to run the tube and also contain a small rectifier circuit to run the filament in the tube (heaters). Also having that kind of voltage near the pickups may cause a little noise problem, I'm not sure. Venting shouldn't be a problem for one 12ax7 preamp tube or something smaller. Remember 300 VDC is not something to hold in your hand. I don't know your experience with amps but I'll suspect you have enough. All I can say for the guitar is use as high grade of plywood you can get. 1/8 '' ply is not much to work with a solid piece of wood for the pick guard area might be better. Really if I wanted to make a very light guitar with a fairly large solid body I would use Bass wood. Urethane finish and clear coat, your good to go. Neck through design is quickest and easiest to assemble. You might have to sink the bridge into the top a little bit to get the right height with the neck through design, but that works great.Now, I know you've heard many things about tone and sound but the ''hollowness'' of the guitar will not transfer through the pickups if they are magnetic. You might hear some slight feedback with a hollow body that will add to the attack of the amp. That really depends on how ''loose'' the pickup is wound. Use good pickups and the sound will be great. I want to see this when its done.

BlackLocustMusic Thanks for the info. I don't want to make a neck through because I don't want to deal with the frets and all that. This is experimental, so it will be some cheap guitar neck. Yeah mainly the top and the bottom will be thin like a thick pickguard, and the bottom too with access. I'm mainly focused on just the structure of the guitar first, then if it works I'll add gismos as a go. I want to build it as "open" as possible for modification, possibly like a Moog Modular where you can manually switch things around. Good for just banging around, or studio recording, but not for gigs, or jams where you switch between lead and rhythm so much. Kind of rocket science to make changes.

Vadim Taranov The wood and type of guitar has nothing to do with the sound. The string, pickups and amp are the only things to adjust. I'm not sure what ''loosy'' means. Do you mean it needs more distortion or the tightness of the low end of the amp ? The pickups are Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates.

Oh really? What about energy feedback between wood and strings? It needs more tightness and dynamics.

Well, it really does, but not as much not to hear the difference.

Vadim Taranov Im not saying the wood dosnt effect the guitar. There's too many other variable involved. I can simply change the capacitor to alter the tone out put of it. I was very careful to not mount the rear pick up too close to the bridge. I used aluminum tape as a shim for reasons..... I also made it a hollow body for other reasons...it feed back. I also hybrid pick when I play. I get those rattie sounds easy on this guitar when I do double stops or bend with one sting as Im holding the other. As far as DAW goes. I have different input and output options as final mix down. Trust me the files I uploaded on to you tube dosnt have the same mix down setting as the files I have of the same songs in my PC or mp3 player.... if you up load onto sound clouds..it's even brighter or has to much treble ...oki doki. Plus everyone are going to have different speakers with different range...oki doki.

+Vadim Taranov That does not happen. This is why : the guitar material can only receive frequencies and resonation from the strings and it is ONLY a depleting absorber of resonance. Vibrations can go into the body and neck but they NEVER come back out louder than the strings at that moment. It is explained with physics. Frequencies cannot be ADDED together they practically pass through each other (ex. 10hz + 100hz does not equal 110hz). So the bridge material will decide how long and fast the response is back into the strings. Electric guitars using magnetic pickups or inductors use a transverse wave down the string back and forth from nut to bridge. Acoustic guitars use a compression wave because basically it IS it's own speaker and the thin guitar top moves up and down like a speaker cone moving air towards your ear. The strings are the only source of the frequencies that will interrupt the magnetic flux field of the pickup causing an AC voltage to appear at the front of the amplifier. Go see WillsEasyguitar page for full ''tone wood'' explanation with physics and math to back it up. Thank you.

***** The pine plywood is really the worst to use because of the many gaps in the plies. The birch ply has much tighter plies. This won't cause any serious problems because they can be filled when finishing. For a neck you need to make sure the stiffest alignment of the 'grain' is placed perpendicular to the fretboard plane, as in the guitar above. If I were building a guitar I would try and find a furniture grade plywood that has smaller plies and much tighter laminates. If you just want to see if pine ply works, go ahead, but don't expect the best performance. Just because you can build a guitar from just about anything doesn't mean the build quality can be ignored. Check out my other video on this guitar on my page. Thanks.

severalpaperclips I used a large flat rasp to shape the neck at first, then as the neck became ''C'' shaped I used very heavy sand paper by hand. You can use a pneumatic sander if you're good with it, and stay away from the fretboard edge of the neck until using sandpaper. I filled a few holes with wood dust and filler. I noticed no stiffness problems with the plywood neck probably because it is stronger because of the glued layers. I did add one layer of silk fiberglass and resin on the back just in case, but I will not use it on the next neck I build. Its not needed. The neck is very light in weight and resonates way more than a normal solid maple neck. I was shocked by that. The higher quality of plywood is going to help, but if it costs as much as solid wood, it would be unnecessary. Furniture grade ply might be useful.

BlackLocustMusic Excellent. Looking forward to seeing your next project.

Thank you. I think the furniture grade ply should be much better. I figured since most guitarists love those old Marshall ''Baltic Birch cabinets'' that supposedly have lots of tone, why not make the guitar out of the same thing. Even though that doesn't really matter for the guitar.

+DKGCustom WTF! ARE YOU FUCKING EVERYWHERE?

+BlackLocustMusic Brilliant!

+Ed Dana I have my pies in lots of fingers!!!

DKGCustom hehe... this is some guitar isn't it! I love it!

I used Birch plywood from Lowes. The wood on the body is two parts top and back, its two pieces of 3/4''. The neck is the same wood turned on edge to keep the neck stiff. I added 3 pieces of 1/4'' ply in the middle of the neck, the one in the center is cut before hand to make the truss rod channel. Rosewood fretboard. I did use a very thin layer of fiberglass and resin on the back of the neck to give a little more stiffness and fill in the small gaps in the plywood that sometimes happens when using low grade plywood. My next guitar will be higher furniture grade plywood. The finish was satin Polycrylic brushed on and finish sanded. I wasn't worried about finish as much as playability. The back of the guitar has a blind pocket where the neck thru fits all the way to the bridge, the front shows the neck thru. The front could also be routed to hide the neck thru if needed. To keep from having to set a neck angle I just countersunk the bridge a little in the guitar top. Now realize this, the Paul Reed Smith is there just to show what a well built guitar sounds like its not a comparison, both guitars use different pickups and that is not a useful comparison. Professional recordings coming soon. '' If it sounds good, it IS good '' - Duke Ellington

Thanks for the inform...I think you solved neck weakness problems by adding fiberglass and raisin to the back of the neck. I don't think guitar manufactures wll go for it,, extra process and materials.lol Especially where the body/neck joint area are. This allows for thinner neck profile at the neck joint area,..better access to the higher notes.... Brilliant with the counter sunk of the bridge. I personally like of sound of your homemade guitar better. It has the type of tone I prefer and like to hear.

kim young actually talking with Ken Parker of then Parker Guitars, said he used fiberglass and resin across the necks and backs of Parker Fly guitars so they wouldn't bend throughout there length and it worked very well since the body of a Fly is so thin. So yeah, guitar manufacturers have gone for it, used it and still use it. The next one I build will not need glass the quality of the laminates will be higher grade.

kim young Yeah it sounds pretty good. Ply is better than chipboard or some other stuff obviously because there's some continuity. Way more bite than the PRS though, even through shitty laptop speakers. The PRS has more mids and smoother tops, which is typical of mahogany.

Neil Pincus I was sort of motivate by this video.lol I recently built a bass body using 1/4 ply....expensive stuff. It has mahogany on oneside and splatter maple on the other. I just to have some laying around. Probably stuff guitar makers use to laminate on top of bodies. I found other wood laying around the house. Old furniture. 1 1/4 x 12" wide X 8'. it's probably pine. I used it mainly because it was flush so I didn't have to use a jointer. Cutted the 1/4 ply to the body shape. than laminate the pine to it. Then just used a hack saw to cut the rest of the wood to the ply shape...I don't have a woodshop or proper tools...I even had to use a chisel to cut out the pickup pocket, neck joint and electronic area. I angle the neck pocket to around 2% offset. I counld tell you if it's exactly 2 degree. I use a hack saw to cut the line I drew. Then chisel out the rest. So far so good...don't have any problem adjusting the action. It's actually on the low side or to Fender specs...I just eyeballed it. Slight neck release... I only complaint I have is...the damn set screws for string height were scratching my palm. I just have piece of rubber on top of it. I though about using 3 layers of 1/2 ply.. it's mostly weight I was looking at...and just a cool explorer bass body. I suck at painting and sanding..Mostly sanding.lmao The ply helped lots because it was smooth already. The neck is currently just mounted to the pine with recess screws. No back plate. No glue to harden it, I also shaved the back of the neck for better comfort. There's just a coat of paint on it so that I can monitor the neck joint for cracks..so I'll know if the pine is holding up. So far the neck joint is holding up..... I even used white Elmer's glue becase that was what I had. The point to project was....I would built that bass with what I had...tools and materials.lmao The sanding and painting took longest.lmao Pine is softer..so I didn't dis assembly the neck too many time. However I remounted the bridge several time for testing and repainting.... The smaller bridge hold down screws were being yank out by strings tension. I simply replaced those screws with the same size screws as the neck joint....So far so good. The bass also resonate well. On a single note at 120 bpm , it'll ring 6-8 bars. That's plenty good for me..... The guitar is light. Around the same weight as my 1420 hollow body silvertone. The 1420 too is made of 1/4 ply. it has mohogany top on it. I wish I have some decent wood working tools. I'd build all kinds of guitars out of whatever just to see.lol

BlackLocustMusic Sweet looking and sounding guitar! People place far too much emphasis on using expensive or exotic woods. If it's hard enough with decent grain orientation it will give you usable tones.