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I just took the plunge on this routing jig. I intend to use it mainly for routing the channels of archtop guitars. And as some of you know, routing the channel for an archtop can be a pretty frightening experience! I bought this jig with the purpose of diminishing some of that fright. I just received it but I haven't opened the box yet. BTW, I bought it with the set of routing bits Stew Mac sells.

I was told that the laminate trimmer pictured on the SM website is a Makita (forgot model # right now). The Makita costs something like $200, more or less. Needless to say, with the cost of the holiday season + some new tools I am pretty strapped. That's why I tried to look for a lam trimmer with excellent ratings but at a lower price point. That's where the Bosch PR10E comes in. It pretty much has the same specs, power wise as the Makita but it cost me about $65 at Amazon. Here's the page with specs:
http://www.amazon.com/Bosch-PR10E-Singl ... B000ANT91S
I contacted Stew Mac and was told I'll probably have to drill my own holes to mount this lam trimmer. The rep at SM said that they made the holes compatible with the top 5 selling lam trimmers at Amazon when they were designing the TrueChannel.

So! What I'd like to know is if anyone has experience with the Bosch mentioned here, and I'd really love to know if anyone has modded their TrueChannel to accept other lam trimmers, and how you did it. Was it a stupid move to get the Bosch? It received so many glowing reviews. With my extreme love for hand tools, I've found that I'm very power tool naive. So any words of wisdom are welcomed. Thanks!
-John

That's a good price for the Colt. I just went and bought another one. That tells you what I think of the tool.

John my friend congrats on the new jig and router.

I don't have a Bosch Colt yet but I plan on purchasing one the next time I need an additional laminate trimmer. The Colt has gotten great reviews from OLFers - good choice!

Thanks guys. Hesh, the great reviews I read definitely helped push me in that direction. So there's gotta be something good going on with it!

I'm just mainly curious about having to mod the TrueChannel jig if the Colt doesn't fit directly into the slots. I wonder if I'm the first one here that's bought the TrueChannel? I still haven't had time to take it out of the box and examine it better. Then I'll have a better idea of what needs to be cut/modded so I can fit the Bosch to it. So if anyone out there has this jig and has made some modifications so their laminate trimmer fits, please let me know what you did.
-John

I now have 3 Bosh Colts (just got them over Christmas), two will be dedicated to a specific use and the third will be for various other tasks. I have owned a Makita too. Great router, but mine was older and the depth control was pretty much nil.

Odd though on the price you've been quoted (I assume it was a quote somewhere) on the Makita. Up here in Canada, I can buy the Makita 3709 for about $110



The bases between the Bosh and the Makita are very similar so you may not have much if any adjusting to do on the TrueChannel jig.

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