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A 10-String MIDI Tapper for Me

Luke Sheridan

Luke Sheridan

Commercial User
Dec 30, 2004
637
51
57
Yonkers, NY
www.sheridanguitars.com
Disclosures
I build guitars and sell them. Strings, too
#1
So i've been pretty infatuated with Tapp players for a while now and building one has always been a goal, so here we go.

I'm not yet settled on the tuning, but it'll be five bass and five melody with MIDI on the melody side.

I'm going with the GraphTech Hexpander pre and a custom set of Nordstrand Humbuckers. Haven't decided on whether it'll have an onboard pre for the Nordys or passive.

String spacing will be .350 with an overall width of 3 and 5/8th.

I'm fabricating the bridge myself with some Wilkinsen saddles and a brass plate.

Woods are Wenge/Blood/Maple for the neck with Brazilian rosewood fretboard. 35-inch with two carbon rods and a truss.
Stainless frets. (Dreading that after all I've read, but I had to try them out.

Body is Myrtle, Butternut and Padouk.
I'm doing the headstock last this time as I ran the whole neck through the thickness sander. Its dead flat. Cracked a dot inlay, but that can be easily fixed.

Luke

Some progress shots:

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#5
Looks good, nice woods, Luke! I'm an ex-Chapman owner myself, was always too busy with double bass to pull it together to any degree.

When you finish it, make sure you post it at the Musical Instrument Maker's Forum (they don't generally allow pics of works in progress), it's mimf.com. There haven't been many tap instruments over there, I think there would be some interest.

edit....Ahh.. I'm sure you already know about mimf. That was embarassing, sorta like someone telling me about Mingus. :o Oh well, post it over there anyway.
 
#7
Nice fretboard!

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Really interesting body shape too. Almost violin-bass-esque...but still not (that's a good thing).
 
#9
So I've been working at this instrument quite a bit lately. A lot of progress (and disaster) has been made. I have no camera as my kids lost it, so even though there's no pics yet, it does exist.

Anyway, i had it of a problem with the first neck. Too thin and it cupped.

New neck is 9-piece maple/bloodwood/bubinga laminate. Bubinga fretboard and turquoise inlays, EVO gold frets. I purchased a pin router and have been using it a lot on this tapper. Made a big difference on a lot of operations.

I should (better) have a camera soon and will post pics.
 
#10
Luke Sheridan said:
....Bubinga fretboard....
Click to expand...

:crying::crying::crying:....but bubinga is nice too.

I don't know if this has any relevance to the cupping, but I've gone entirely to using epoxy for gluing fingerboards to neck blanks. On every build I've done using Titebond to glue down the fingerboard, I get a little swelling of the wood fibers on the neck-blank side of the glue joint, which always results it a little back bow in the neck....and it was always a coin flip as to whether or not the string tension pulled it back to straight.

No such issues with epoxy, so long as you have good clamping caul.
 
#11
Think that makes some difference? I never had this happen before. But than again, I never went so thin. It was 3/4 overall including the fretboard.
A buddy of mine I've been working with uses CA for everything. He uses a lot of Rockwood in his necks, but he's come to use CA or epoxy for body lams and veneers. Its pretty much set in an hour with CA and clamps. May try one or the other next time around.

Drilled 44 holes in it this weekend. Even drilled one in my finger. Also had a four inch piece of brass spin on the drill press and slice into my thumb pad, or whatever the soft area below the knuckle on your hand is.

One more rout for truss rod access and then sanding.
Must buy camera, must buy camera.
 
#12
So i still need to round over the pickup covers, but the rest is ready for oil.

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Coop made some nice pickups. Two five-string coils in one unit.

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Other shots:
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#14
Pickup covers are no big deal, really. You just need to rout out the shape on the inside and then go wider on the outside. It's not much harder than routing out a channel.

This instrument will have two outputs. Well, three actually, the midi will carry the treble signal if needed. One less cord.
The bass side has a Z-Mode pre and the Treble will have a Paul Reed Smith style wiring, V/T/5-Way with a hexpander preamp for Midi. One pot for Midi Volume. Two Switches: One for choosing the mix of signals and the other for paging through the Midi setup.
 
#15
Luke Sheridan said:
I never had this happen before. But than again, I never went so thin. It was 3/4 overall including the fretboard.
Click to expand...

3-5/8" wide and 35" scale, that's no wider than a wide-5....3/4" is on the thin side, but probably no big deal if you've got good CF reinforcement. At that thickness I would have expected more neck bow issues (with 10 strings worth of tension) than cupping.
 
#16
So were getting close here. I strung it up today. B-String is a little off so I'll need to cut a new nut. I'll need some new brass for that so its still a ways off. The Audere pre is installed. I just need to wire in the pups.
Melody side is next. Five-way Paul Reed Smith with a fourth pot for the Midi Volume, plus two switches for pup selection and Midi page.

As for style of tuning? I really like what Trey has been doing and King Crimson is my all-time favorite, so Crafty may be where I'm going, but standard tuning is the alternative - or vice versa. I've been searching for setup guides and am weeding through the soup, but if anyone knows of one, I'd appreciate it. It sits really nicely on my calves right now with my feet crossed, and I think I may go with the Warr Strap. Anyway... The pics:

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#19
eleonn said:
I guess Im still a bit hangover yet cause I dont get why the controls holes and cavity on both sides :hiding: Is each preamp going to have its own set of controls?
Click to expand...

check out the pickups, first. Everything is separate. The bass goes from the B to G as you go “up” (towards the player’s head)…The melody goes “down” like a 5-string guitar as you move towards the player’s feet…

It’s a cool design, IMO…because you can work effects and different tonalities on the melody and put the bass through a separate rig…
 

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