Yes, in this case, the ladders were most likely actually provided by the besieged. A fairly brilliant bit of strategy, really.

I'm fond of the retractable Things With Spikes On Them. Especially the square one. I mean, really, that's not much different than a 4x4 sheet of plywood with some big-ass nails in it. Functional simplicity.



None of this solves the Chisel Party gameplay question, though, does it?

No, but maybe we need some time to think about that one.

I mean, the basic structure of most young children's board games is about the same. You spin the spinner, you move the piece either the number or color of spaces indicated.

The real trick i suppose, is how we incorporate the chisels into the gameplay. Are they the game pieces? Is the game played by Jamming the chisels into the board(and likely the tabletop under it - these are *sharp* chisels)?

Is there a way that we can encourage everyone to frantically be stabbing at the board with their chisel at the same time? Think something along the lines of the spirited chaos of a Hungry Hungry Hippos session. Only: with very sharp chisels.

Perhaps, the spinner indicates a color or target that the players need to lay first "claim" to by stabbing the chisel into the spot, but the spot is only big enough for one chisel, so everyone has to jab at the same spot at the same time, wildly? Really, i think it might be best if we could figure out a game mechanic by which players have both hands kind of on the board, or rather, one hand on the board, and one grasping the chisel?

Hmm.

I should also mention, that i am beginning to feel a bit that we should actually like, do up some box art, a board and spinner design, and an instruction/rule sheet for this game.

As in, i think that this game should exist, In Real Life.

Once we figure out how it like... works.

I say cross up Chisel Party with some real life Wizardry like Jumanji where lives and continents can be lost and i say we have a winning idea.

I know that these are made out of shit, but they are sooooo temptingly inexpensive:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Black-Floyd ... 3f1ae87e66

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Black-Floyd-Ros ... 2574dd9361

I will have to think about it, but if i can be reasonably sure that they are standard Floyd dimensions and mounting points, i *might* consider using one of these just to get the thing built, while fully expecting to have to replace it at some probably-not-as-much-later-as-i-think date.

that is super cheap. How bad could it be? I played some bad Floyds, but I think it always depends on the pivot point. For that price I would go for it.

Yarr, there seem to be two major types that are available in the cheapos, i think i poasted one of each.

One type is a stamped piece of steel. The main thing i notice is that all of the pieces are considerably thinner metal than real floyds. The stamping is sloppier too, and in some of them, it looks a little like the metal might split or already be splitting at some of the bends. The other thing is the sharp edges where it mounts, they are not very sharp. Real floyds harden that edge and machine it pretty sharp. These certainly don't seem to be hardened, and i don't think they are machined at all or if they are, it is just roughly.

The other type is a cast body, but otherwise a pretty similar looking set of features.

Mainly, where real Floyds use hardened steel, which generally has to be shaped by machining, which makes all of the edges cleaner and sharper, these bridges are made out of that cheapo mystery metal potmetal shit that cheap junk gets made out of. It is like a combination of steel and lead, soft, and super easy to punch shapes into and out of, which makes it totally ideal for mass mass producing something. Less so, for that thing actually working as intended.

I would guess that worst case scenario, the whole bridge in the stamped style, would flex on use and potentially crack/break at the thinner pressure points. And that it might just crack and fall apart at those points on the cast style. I would also guess that the studs and mounting knife edges would round out right quick, and probably unevenly, throwing the intonation completely out of whack and fucking with the bridge's ability to return to pitch.

All of that said, i suspect that i might get a few weeks to a few months worth of decent enough Floyd action from them, before the strings started to cut ridges in the saddles and the knife edges started to round out and deform. Between the hundreds of eBay sources for them, they generally work out to be around $20-30 with shipping.

It still might very well be what i end up doing as a stopgap.

Cheap as it they all look, i must say that there is a certain allure to piece of guitar gear emblazoned with the text "overlord of music":

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... IF:US:1123

It does actually say that. I can't say I'm not amused. If only it didn't have so much zinc.

On the potential upside, at least this one appears to have the knife edges as separate pieces. In a perfect world, this would mean that they were hardened steel.

Saddles look like crap though.

It is funny how the real Floyd Roses, just LOOK so much higher quality, right off the bat, compared to these cheepies. The ghettofloyds all look like they have been assembled, then spraypainted in nasty glossblack krylon.

I noticed that. They really do look spraypainted.

I had to replace a saddle on an Jackson licensed Floyd once. It annoyed me. And those cheapshit zinc screws strip if you look at them funny.

Just out of curiosity, I looked on the Guitarfetish site, and they have nice steel-and-brass Floyds. Unfortunately they're IIRC around eighty bucks. (As an aside: I like the Tele trem thing they have!)

Yarr, the GFS $80-something one actually looks like it might be decently solid. And really, it should be, because $80 is right around the pricepoint that you start seeing real floyds go for, especially random used ones pulled out of 80's guitars.

I like the looks of the other GFS one though, the "fastloader" for like $67. Seems a pleasant in-the-middle option, and a little nicer looking than the eBay offerings in the $40-70 bracket.

I will probably end up going with one of these shitmetal ones for the time being though. I am leaning towards either the one labeled for "Kramer" or the overlord of music one, as i have seen those for a little less than the one i linked above also.

My poking around Ebay turned up the "overlord of music" ones for supercheap too. Zinc or not, it'll wind up costing a hella lot less, and that's probably the deciding factor at the moment.

The GFS ones do look like they're actually, y'know, well-made, and out of real metal, and they've not been yanked out of a 20-30 year old guitar, either.

Well, still waiting for my GhettoFloyd to arrive from china.

So to keep myself busy in between closing my grandmother's camp for the winter last week, and driving my mom's new-ish car from MA to IL for her sometime in the coming weeks, i have been reading about woods stuff and building hobo stoves:



Which of course is just the classic alcohol fueled ministove that one makes out of beer cans. Also very popular with lightweight backpacker/camper types. I don't have the denatured alcohol required to light them at the moment, so i am just going to build a few different styles to test out when i do.

As an aside, there is an interesting half&half split in woodcraft/survival folks, almost roughly split between whether the folks are american or european. The europeans seem generally to be more like campers and hobbyists, while a seemingly large majority of the americans seem quite certain that they need to learn and train in these things because of a coming battle with the US government in which, evidently they will be forced to live in the woods? Kind of a strange angle to take.

What are the tonal characteristics of the wood/what's it good for? You used it with buckers much, or any other non tele shiz? The look of that wood is super gnarly.

Ghetto Floyd Rose is now im das haus. I am pleased to be able to repoart that it appears to be a slightly finer quality than expected. It also seems to have hardened inserts for the bridge mounting points.

Now i have to figure out how the fuck i am going to make it go together with the Charvette bits. I really wish that i hadn't murdered this guitar back in the day. Had i not, i suspect that the ghettofloyd might very well have bolted right in to the old mounting points from the original single locker charvel trem.

I have also been kicking around the idea of doing some ghetto shit to the neck so that i can use the OFR-style locking nut in place of the original Charvette setup which was basically a normal strat-style nut with a kind of kahler-style locking jobber behind it. Much better tuning stability to be had with the OFR-style, but this neck was never made for it, so in order to make it go i think i might have to get just a little sketchy/punkrock about the whole thing. Looks like i would also need to shim it up almost a millimeter, as the shelf that is in place is a bit low for what they sent with the bridge.

Hmm.

Which wood? The Charvette? Is basswood. It is very lightweight, sounds good with the Jackson J50BC pickup that it came with, also pretty good with a Dimarzio Norton i had in it for a while. Sounded really terrible with a Duncan JB though, way harsh and ugly-in-a-bad-way. I really like the sound of the JB in an LP-style/mahogany body, but it was way too much yuck in this basswood body. Really sounds swell with some more normal PAF-style low-to-medium output humbuckers though.

The plug i made for it is just pine from Lowes. Not a great substitute(the grain stucture is pretty different and will probably make drilling for the bridge posts a bit of a pain), but closer to the basswood than my other choice of some super heavy hard maple i have here.

It seems I thought you had only just posted the pine tele from the OP. A combination of drugs and sketchy phone internetz navigation.

Yeah, that shit is actually Hemlock. That wound up being kind of a cool guitar. Quirky to play, but a nice sound.