Recent content by rmmottola

Yes. I generally use inexpensive conventional solid carbide 2 flute down cut end mills. Keep Z-axis plunges to a minimum depth and slow feed, particularly in the first cuts into the surface. I have some 3 and four flute cutters supposedly designed specifically for pearl but have not found these...

This question of how this shape came to be was asked and answered in the context of guitars in the "Questions Column" appearing in American Lutherie #136. Answers in that column were provided by Walter Carter, Ken Warmoth, and Jim Buckland. Jim is a music professor with particular expertise in...

The file has that number of lines. If you've never seen inside a .dxf file before, it will certainly look like gibberish. The test is to see if your CAD software can load the file. I'm testing with AutoDesk TrueView.

A .dxf fileis generally a plain text file. I've taken a .dxf file named DC.dxf (sorry - not a bass) and renamed it DC.dxf.txt, then attached it to this post as an experiment. Assuming it gets through, the attachment can be copied to the local filesystem (Save link as ...) and renamed back to...

This is a complex area of instrument design, and my general suggestion is that a basic understanding of the fundamental physics involved in instrument sound production would be a good place to start. The research documentation (and the textbooks that summarize it) is not accessible by everyone...

For folks interested in the background here. This material is based on work done by Jianwei Song et al at the University of Maryland in 2018. A paper describing the research was published in Nature: Processing bulk natural wood into a high-performance structural material J Song, C Chen, S Zhu...

Scrap of any size goes in the scrap bin and eventually gets turned into all sorts of stuff. But one thing I bang out in batches are wooden whistles. Kids visit my shop regularly. Seems every parent that finds out what I do for a living wants their kids to see the shop. Of course I would love...

The main design issue with shorter-than-conventional scale instruments is inharmonicity, the amount the partials of the vibrating string skew sharp. All strings have some inharmonicity, but increased amounts tend to make it more difficult for our hearing system to detect pitch. At really high...

Experienced woodworkers that visit my cramped shop almost always make a comment of the form: "You have some of the nicest tools I've ever seen, right next to some of the most crappy tools I have ever seen." This is absolutely true, and the explanation is that pretty much all of the really nice...

One place is Bartolini. The pickup halves are configured so one of them covers three strings and the other cover the other two. They have nice graphics which show how this is done on their site here: 5-String P-Bass® Shapes - Bartolini Pickups & Electronics

My $0.02 - For fret placement work I recommend a precision ruler with engraved marks at hundreds of an inch. Such a ruler costs about $50. I would never use any measuring instrument that has painted markers for critical fine measurement. It is not just an issue of how wide the paint lines need...

Cool thread! Here is a very simple jig I use to drill a pocket in the end of a bridge pin for a large pearl dot: The tapered hole for the pin is centered around a straight hole, which is used to center the jig on the drill press.

All excellent suggestions. (And I really want a bass like maplego's Hello Kitty bass!) As a general rule of thumb, for Fender-style basses using typical body and neck materials and typical-for-Fender tuning machines, the upper horn should end near the 12th fret. This provides appropriate...

Kids visit my shop regularly. I would love for them all to be able to leave with an instrument but that is just not realistic. But I always have a box of these whistles made from offcuts to hand out.

I'm with Matt on the ID. Here's a little teaser for you: They may have only made one custom lefty version of this instrument - for Jimi Hendrix. The original printing of the book Guitars from Neptune by Bechtolat and Tulloch (great book about Danelectro, unfortunately out of print) featured a...