The problem…

Probably every guitar player knows the problem, especially on jam sessions or on jobs with non-professional musicians: You are standing on a small stage or in your practicing room, the band plays well and as loud as they can, the mood and the feeling of the song reaches heavenly highs. The volume knob of your electric guitar is already on 10 and the pedal of your volume pedal is pushed to its maximum already. The speakers of your amp are almost bleeding sweat and tears. You’re not able to control your tone nor the feeling of your notes anymore, playing gets harder and harder and your hands are turning to stone. All you can hear is a wild mess of way too much drum, along whit some misty basslines and your guitar solo disappears into the background of a bad sound mix. Frustration pure for guitar players. Could it be that you have placed your amp in the wrong spot?

Another problem…

Another problem with amps (especially with Fender style amps) are certain high frequencies. They cut through almost everything like a knife cuts through butter. When you’re on stage and you have put your amp against the crowd, people sitting or standing directly in front of your speaker will suffer an unforgettable highs experience that drops out of your amp. Don’t need to mention the problems of the sound engineer to mix a smooth, fine sound out of a band, when certain units/frequencies on stage are louder than the P.A., especially on smaller gigs.

One solution…

Of course, I have seen different amp stands in music stores before. But for bigger ams (like my Fender Bassman), I could not find anything that was sturdy enough or easy to transport. I did not wanted to change the look of my priceless amp by putting some amp holders on it’s sides, which means to drill holes in the side of the amp. I wanted a system I could use with different amps without having the problem of the size or weight of the amp. It had to be sturdy, even on the sometimes unstable stages of small outdoor concerts.

Another solution…

My solution was an easy to build, self-made amp stand. It’s made out of 3 wooden boards and 4 movable angles. Since I use this construction, I always can hear myself properly, which makes playing much easier of course. My engineer (on live gigs) does not have troubles anymore with the sometimes extreme highs, because the speakers look upwards now. And, most important, I can use any of the three amps I own, without changing the look or diminish the worth of my amps by drilling holes.

Homemade Amp Stand

Homemade Amp Stand

Homemade Amp Stand

Homemade Amp Stand

Homemade Amp Stand

Homemade Amp Stand

Homemade Amp Stand

Homemade Amp Stand

The pictures show you how to construct this easy, sturdy amp stand.

Greetings from twangy Switzerland

Post by: Dano, the Catman

Making an Amp Stand from MyRareGuitars.com

Custom Longhorn Guitar by Bill Wagoner (Plymouth, IN)

Here is one of my solutions to the problem. I bought a 1968 Coral Longhorn Body off of EBAY for 65 bucks. It had never been used, no neck, not even a neck pocket, no routing for pickups, no wiring, no pickguard, nothing but a body. Enclose is a pic of the body as I got it and the guitar I made out of it. I did all the wiring, inlays, designed and made the pickguards by hand, assembly, set up, everything.

My inspiration for this project was the old BIGSBY guitars made by Paul Bigsby back in the late 40’s and early 50’s and also the gaudy Cool Italian guitars of the 1960’s. Also I was thinking of the original handmade Mosrite stuff where Semie Mosley would include a fancy pickguard, arm rest and so forth.

My first step was to decide on pickguard material. I went with the white pearloid, or what I call Mother of Toilet Seat, in other words, fake pearl. My pickguard material came from ALL PARTS. I sell their stuff in my store and it is great quality. I knew that I wanted to cover the entire headstock with it but that presented a problem. The neck is basicaly a generic strat type neck but since you cannot bend the thick pearloid I had to make it two pieces. I decided to make the second piece double as my truss rod cover. The neck came from a low priced strat style guitar called a Palmer. Great neck for almost no cost and it plays like a dream.

Next was attaching the neck and body. Since this body had never had a neck, there was no neck pocket. After observing what I call the First rule of guitar repair, I routed out an area to attach the neck about an inch of so deep and also removed part of the material under the fingerboard to get the proper slant to the neck in relation to the body. Due to the fact that I was going to use a rosewood archtop bridge I did not need to worry about where I placed the neck since I could position the bridge anywhere I wanted after the guitar was together.

What is “The First rule of guitar repair?” For every minute you DO something to your guitar, you THINK ABOUT IT for 20 minutes FIRST. If you take your time and approach guitar repairs this way you will make a lot less mistakes in the long run! After attaching the neck, I started on my Inlays. All it had when I started was the boring and traditional plastic dots. I drilled those out of the neck and replace them with real abalone dots. Next I used diamond shaped abalone pieces that I bought from RESCUE PEARL Company and cut them into triangles. Then I routed the fingerboard and added them to make the pattern you see now. You can do a search and find Rescue Pearl on the net, nice folks and very helpful and reasonable prices too. I then started to design the pickguard. I wanted it to follow the lines of the F-hole rather than hide the F-hole as they do on so many hollow body guitars. I used old file folders and cut the patterns from them with scissors after drawing them free hand and then copied them in pearloid. The arm rests and the control plate were done the same way. I used an old Seymor Rail pickup I had laying around and kept the electronics simple since there is a limited amount of space on the body anyway. I also made sure to position all the electronics where they can be worked on easily from the F-holes in the future.

Finally I strung her up and added the ALLPARTS Rosewood bridge. Incredibly, the intonation on this guitar is perfect, no need for tune-o-matic bridge saddles at all. It has a wonderful warm woody tone that is different than any of my other guitars and I just love it. Add to that the fun of making it myself and I have a guitar that will never leave my collection.

Post by: Bill Wagoner (Plymouth, IN)

Frankenstein Longhorn Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com