Dub's Wacky Project Guitars Thread--we're baaaaaack

[dubkitty]

the Telecaster will be built around a double-bound Sonic Blue body from GFS. at this point i'm leaning to a rosewood-board mahogany neck which should help, along with the pickups, in attenuating some of the shrillness i always draw out of Teles. Gemini Suprocaster bridge and Hershey neck pickups...the guy who fixed my ES-335 turned me on to these. they're larger than life. check out his website. i want the Modern Tele bridge that's a Fender part for 80s-90s Teles with the flat chromed steel plate and the aluminum bridge saddles like on my Lead II. theoretically this should give me a Tele that doesn't shriek but howls and has a denser, broader-spectrum sound. the fact that Jonny Greenwood's favorite Tele uses that bridge has not escaped me, but that's not why i chose it. the project also appeals because i could put it all together over a weekend once i had all the parts.

[dubkitty]

all the parts have now been ordered for the Kondor, Hopf, and Gretsch projects. i also ordered the Duo Sonic pickguard and found a Höfner staple pickup for only $100 on Reverb to match the two out of a Kapa guitar that i've had for some time now so i'll be able to do the 3-pickup setup a la the Galaxie. they're usually twice that so i'm pretty pleased. it'd sure be nice if i could find a Galaxie body because that would be right for the Galaxie neck that's currently on the Hopf. there's a 173 body on Reverb, but it's Antigua burst which i absolutely despise and refinishing is way above my pay grade. the Kondor stuff will arrive first, a DeLisle Varitone and the knobs above. it'll be interesting to see whether the Duo Sonic guard arrives before or after the Gretsch parts. i think the Gretsch stuff will be here first. the Hopf parts are coming from Germany so they'll be last.

[dubkitty]

the parts have begun to arrive. the Varitone is here, but i'm not going to deal with it till next week after the knobs arrive. the threaded Jazzmaster saddles also arrived and i swapped out the Mustang saddles that were on there. it's an improvement in every way other than that i'm getting some sympathetic vibration behind the bridge on some notes due to a shallower break angle. i was surprised to find that the insides of the Mustang saddles and a few spots on the bridge base were actually rusty. how do you get that much water in a Jazzmaster bridge? i swear that the guy who owned this before me was a fucking caveman. but the thing is that the Mustang saddles have very deep grooves which require raising the saddles too high to work with the geometry...that's why i had to Dremel off the ends of the old screws because they contacted the strings when the string height and intonation were done. when intonated the threaded saddles line up in an almost perfect horizontal line, which i think proves that's the right design, and that's when done with a Peterson tuner with =/- .01 cent accuracy. it also affects the tone of the guitar; there's a crispness in the highs that wasn't there before. i should have done this years ago because i was always iffy on the Mustang bridge, but everybody said the Mustang saddles were better. nope.so far i've improved 2 guitars in ways that make them easier to use. the Jazzmaster will be a lot more fun with more high end and the tremolo/harp effect. i think it's going well. next week's matinee: the sequel to The Return Of The Kondor, Kondor vs. Varitone. evening session: Duo Sonic Salad Surgery.

i don't remember ever having an electric guitar bridge's saddles line up this close to consistency.

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[dubkitty]

as of today the parts will be in for everything except the Hopf parts which still haven't left Germany and the Höfner 511 staple pickup i got for next to nothing. i'm too burned out to work on anything today. when i get going i'll do the Kondor first because it should involve the least hassle: pickguard off, move tone control, stick Varitone where the tone knob was, connect 3 wires, new knobs, clean the fretboard and it's over. the Duo Sonic comes after that because it's just chipping away at a pickup rout, which is almost occupational therapy. i'll get an inexpensive set of woodcarving tools like i did when i put Dynasonics in my Pro Jet. the DS will be a breeze comparatively...i'm working on the outside of the instrument on a flat surface. the Double Jet will be a bitch to wire, and i'm going to have to reduce the walls of the pickup routs a bit so everything goes in straight. i'm also a bit leery of working on it because that was when i burned out during this program's second or third season...thinking of it generates an involuntary "oh, no." giving a guitar extended cavity searches is not my idea of a good time. i think i will install the Seymour Duncan Acoustic Tube in the Alvarez 12-string, though...it's a nothing job and i'm just going to tape the output cord down like Ira Kaplan until i decide whether to bung out the endpin and install a 1/4" jack. honestly, what appeals about this most is being able to tune the 12er with the Strobostomp. tuning a 12-string is never, ever a good time. as previously noted, this is an attempt to end-around buying an electric 12 that would get as little use as the acoustic does. i think if i just run it through the right mild dirt and modulation it'll be close enough for ambient. if you use enough chorus, nobody knows you're acoustic.

[dubkitty]

i got the Tube working, but it was tricky. because it's a magnetic pickup without a preamp translating bronze-wound strings which aren't very magnetically active, you have to get it right up against the strings to pick up much signal. i thought it was DOA until i plugged it into a fuzzbox and got a subdued but present signal. it's good for an acoustic pickup, without any of the annoying aspects pickups usually have. it doesn't quack, and it's not that metallic. it could pass more bass for my taste, but that's what amplifier knobs are for and amplified acoustics are notorious for emitting bass-range feedback so it's better to have the bass attenuated like that. i have to run it through at least two effects boxes before it's not obviously an acoustic guitar. but when you hit it with fuzz and chorus it's instant Ride. so i'm calling that a success and will look into a 1/4" endpin jack. if i start playing acoustic outside the house again i'll get 2 more for the other 2 acoustics. for now i'll just let the cord flop...no sense in taping it to the top if it won't be there long. perhaps a Rangemaster or similar device would be good.

unobtrusive and effective

SD Tube.jpg (96.71 KiB) Viewed 596 times

the Duo Sonic pickguard and Gretsch parts and the Tiny Two-Way Crossover for the looping board arrive today. still waiting on the guy to shop the Hopf parts from Germany after a week. i'm calling it a day for projects...i wasn't well this weekend and am still not at my best.

[dubkitty]

update: the guy in Germany forgot to send me the tracking number for the package, and then sent a number that didn't work. i finally got a good one and the package has left Germany, assumedly heading for the customs station in New York. so that's a load off my mind. in order to mount a endpin jack i'll have to unsolder the rather groovy jack that's on there which wouldn't work for this at all. i can always put it back on. it was hard to figure out because they encased the entire jack assembly in heatshrink tubing, but once that was off it's like any other jack if a bit larger and more 30s-industrial looking. i don't love the idea of drilling out the endpin to install it, but that's how it goes.

[dubkitty]

stuck my phone down the soundhole of the 12-string to see what the endpin jack situation might look like. happily it looks like the end block is less than 3/4" deep so all i'll need to do is tap the endpin out from inside, drill out the hole, and run the pickup cable out to solder the leads. i was worried the end block would be like an inch and a half deep...this guitar has been rock-solid since i got it in the mid-00s and has been tuned to concert pitch the entire time so i kind of expected it'd look like the Maginot Line in there. only 12-string i've ever seen that shrugs off that 1600 lbs. of tension or whatever it is like nothing. i think i've adjusted the truss rod once. bog-standard light-gauge acoustic strings. the endpin jacks are made with a flange on the outside so it shouldn't require more than a nut and washer inside to secure it. i have no idea why there's a hole drilled in the brace with what looks like a piece of string looped through it, but it'll be handy for securing the cable inside the body so it doesn't rattle around. perhaps that's the intention.

the site won't let me do more then 3 attachments a post, so see below for Kondor progress, such as it is.

[dubkitty]

so i decided to open up the Kondor and was immediately confronted with a couple of problems related to installing the Varitone. the control layout was configured thus:

top to bottom: rotary pickup selector, volume, tone

Kondor_1.jpg (116.68 KiB) Viewed 580 times

the only way to fit the Varitone and the rotary pickup selector, which are approximately the same diameter, in the pickguard's hole pattern was to move the tone control to the outside bottom. but even after doing that there really isn't enough room for the two rotaries and two standard-sized pots to coexist:

not really a safe situation

Kondor_2.jpg (123.24 KiB) Viewed 580 times

and since the depth of the control cavity isn't consistent, but rather shallow other than the original location of the pickup switch and jack, it's not deep enough for the Varitone which needs the same depth as the switch area.

how deep is my valley? not fucking deep enough

Kondor_3.jpg (100.82 KiB) Viewed 580 times

thus, i'm going to have to order mini pots and carve out at least part of the control cavity so it's deep enough that the Varitone will fit. i'm still concerned about where the inductor for the Varitone is going to go, and it's made with a super-tall shaft length so it's possible it may not work here at all. i'm not going to fuck with trying to cut down the Varitone's shaft and threaded collar, and i can't have the knob sitting 20mm higher than the rest of the controls. if if it just can't fit i'll save it for some upcoming project...it'd probably lend itself well to the Starcaster with real WRHBs or 70s Strat projects i have storyboarded though i don't think it'd work in the Ubertele, and a Varitone plus the tone switch in the Double Jet would just be too many choices. the Hopf already has a Schaller tone switch.

i thought i'd lost the aluminum-base archtop Bigsby bridge which i sanded down so it fits a flat top, but found it yesterday so i'll go ahead and order the modern saddle that's not compensated for a wound G. i definitely liked the sound better with the aluminum bridge...these pickups are pretty delicate and i think the steel Teisco bridge sapped some of their chimey character.

so the next logical step is to order the endpin jack for the Alvy, mini pots for the Kondor, and get some hobbyist woodworking tools at a big box or hobby shop. while waiting for the parts i'll rout out the pickup location on the Duo Sonic so the bridge pickup position is correct. that's all it requires other than swapping the electronics over to the new guard, which is nicely aged to go along with the DS's general gently aged look. i do admire the creativity of the guy who put it together...it's not "reliced," it just looks old as fuck. and putting the DS body and Mini Strat neck together was a fucking stroke of genius. i'm tempted to get one of the Fender Player DS in the Desert Sand/anodized pickguard OG finish and convert it to 22.5" as well. i love that scale length more and more with each year i age. so i'll need to go to Michael's or Lowe's or summat for tools before i start. Becky gave me a Dremel kit, but i trust the steadiness of my hand for the beginnings of this kind of major surgery over a rotatey Dremel bit that tends to jump around, though i do use it for drilling and finishing work. but anyway, at least that should be minimally complicated. i'm pretty sure there are no other issues with the Duo Sonic other than needing a good cleaning. the fingerboard is pretty grotty.

[dubkitty]

this is the proposed control layout with the Varitone in the bottom left spot and the volume and tone controls to the outside. the Varitone and tone knob are rather crammed together, but i think the tone knob would still be useable since its most likely use case would be to lop off the high end altogether rather than for subtle adjustments. it would make a certain amount of sense to remove the tone control and just use the Varitone like the way the Hopf (like many other Schaller-equipped German guitars of the time) is set up, but i really like being able to kill the high end with the knob when the fuzz gets unruly--the Tone Bender MKIII is particularly fizzy--and i'm not a fan of removing possible functions unless i have to. i'll have to think about this a bit more.

ordered 2x 550k mini potentiometers, Bigsby bridge saddle, and some Hipshot pearloid tuner buttons in a shape nicer than the Schaller trapezoids or the current Grover mini-beans. i got the 550k pots because with these pickups the more high end i pass the more personality they'll have. maybe this will be ready to happen next week, but i have to figure out how to work the Varitone into the rats' nest of wiring that's already there. my brain hurts when i contemplate the fact that i figured out how to wire the rotary pickup selector. i may still have the drawings i did with the different paths limned out in colored pencil. not looking forward to going all Albrecht Durer on the pickup cavity. it's another of those things i can do when necessary but really don't like doing at all. if i was incredibly dedicated i'd rewire the rotary so position 1 is to the far left and so on with the positions facing out--i cleverly wired it backwards back in whatever it was, 2012, 2013?--but i really don't care that much and it's not an encumbrance to remember that the switch rotates anticlockwise.

is this too cramped for a city boy?

Kondor_4.jpg (71.01 KiB) Viewed 577 times

[dubkitty]

i didn't feel like going out and shopping for hand carving tools last night so i decided to go ahead and attack the control cavity problem with the Dremel and a metal high-speed cutting bit i bought sometime after i stopped working on stuff last time. starting from the cavity photo above, this was after about 15 minutes of work:

Kondor_5.jpg (98.61 KiB) Viewed 525 times

i was pleased and surprised at how easy it was physically and how quickly it went. i used my vacuum cleaner's hand hose to periodically suck up the remarkable amount of mahogany dust i generated because otherwise the cavity would have been half-full of detritus. it took about 45 minutes to get to a good stopping point.

i'll be damned, it worked.

Kondor_6.jpg (84.98 KiB) Viewed 525 times

the whole cavity is now slightly deeper than the deep parts were when i started. there's still about 6mm-8mm of solid wood left. if i'd had a way to hold it steady i could have routed the cavity with a perfectly flat bottom, but you can only do so much with 2 hands on the Dremel. i checked and there's now enough room for the Varitone to fit. so now i wait till next week for the pots, Bigsby aluminum saddle, and tuner buttons to arrive. that stuff's all coming in one package so there'll be minimum delay.

i'm extremely happy that the Dremel works so well. i feel much better about working on the Duo Sonic now, and will probably extend the neck pickup cavity on the Double Jet as well...due to the design of the mini-Gretschbuckers installing a Filtertron in that rout requires notching the pickup ring about 3mm to clear the end of the fingerboard. i was going to just live with it, but since the Dremel works so well i think it'll be fine and will definitely look correct when it's all done. if i wasn't so tired i'd go after the DS today, but i really don't feel like spending another couple of hours hunched over the coffee table. i'd rather test the Hammond AO-35 amp with the Yellowjacket solid-state rectifier i got in with some of the Kondor parts. when i go to order something for a project i always check the website/listings for other utility bits i may need. i haven't even switched it on yet. assuming i get through the Duo Sonic before the Kondor and Alvy parts arrive i'm going to go over the bass setup, re-adjusting the Mustang Bass which currently is set up really stiff because i tend to overplay with my right hand and make things rattle on the fretboard, and that's only exascerbated by the short scale. the Jazz Bass takes pounding much better. there's also more effects testing to do...i have a BEZ FX Street Sweeper foot-controlled phaser i haven't used in ages which i need to evaluate for possible use, and i'm probably getting a Seppuku Memory Loss to feed my jones for weird distorted delays. i'm thinking about some sort of stand or rack that would let me get certain pedals, particularly the SMMH, up off the floor where i can reach them because i tweak with the SMMH a lot. problem is, that makes it hard to use the SMMH's loop function which is really fun to combine with layers of reverse echo. i also need to evaluate the Snazzy FX suite to see if any of them are able to be integrated into the setup and decide if i'm keeping the Alesis MidiVerb II, but those tests require more space and hassle than i feel like dealing with at the moment. i don't want to cover the coffee table with modules or get out/deal with/pull apart the FX rack which hasn't been touched since 2015.

the Hopf parts are still somewhere between Dortmund and North America, with no projection as to delivery. the third Höfner 511 pickup for the putative Höfnermeister project arrives today. i feel good about using a JM body because i now am fairly confident i can rout the fuck out of it to fit the controls i want (ON/OFF slide switches for each pickup, master volume and tone, maybe a Varitone if i like how it works in the Kondor). i like the idea of starting with pickups that are out of the ordinary and then creating options for additional tonal fuckery. cool sounds nobody else has would be optimal. i'd sort of like to use the Hagstrom-knockoff tremolo i have with the Musima parts i saved because it's more Höfner-coded but am not sure how well it'd fit the JM trem rout. i may also use one of the Musima bridges. guess i'm going for a German theme. but that's not coming for a good little while yet...i don't see starting new guitar projects till after the current crop are sorted for a few months. i'm trying to get the stuff that's been hanging around for years done before i have to pay for $6000 of dental crowns via a medical loan i have 12 months to kill @ $400+/mo. so i'm in a race with time to finish stuff before they start the crowns on 3/12; the first payment will be somewhere between 3/15 and 4/15. i should be able to get the current guitar projects in-house all done and would like to get a proper cabinet for the AO-35 head, but i can live with the DIY cab it came in. anything after that is sheer conjecture and will require careful planning. i'm not in the place i was in 10 years ago where i would just buy stuff to see if it'd fit together, and the used parts market is ruined compared to then. everything that used to be forty bucks is $120-200 now. if you're LUCKY. and with my economics things will have to happen slowly and logically. the Höfnermeister will probably be the first new thing up because i already have the Galaxie neck, pickups, and Musima hardware and will just need to design a pickguard and make it/have it made. ideally i'd like to have a separate metal control plate like a Jaguar or Jazz Bass so i could get at the wiring without having to pull the strings. but that'll require the least as far as acquisitions.

[dubkitty]

i could polish the pickguard, but that would require disassembling everything and wouldn't really look that great since much of the chrome plating in the trafficked areas is pitted and dulled. and do i really want to shoot mirror bolts everywhere should i ever be in a spotlight?

[dubkitty]

i got the Hopf with the Höfner Galaxie neck and my Jazzmaster out to do some preliminary measurements to see whether the Galaxie neck would be compatible with a JM body. turns out the scale length is 25.5 in both cases and the heel width and depth are quite close. i'll have to cut a notch for the neck's heel-mounted truss rod nut which sticks out 9mm from the fingerboard but otherwise things look good. there's a black anodized aluminum Thurston Moore JM pickguard on Reverb that has the separate control plate, but i'm not sure how hard it'd be to place the pickups in there. might be more efficient to make a separate plate, probably plastic for simplicity's sake, that covers the usual JM routs which i could cut to fit the 511s. i'll look for other JM pickguard options, but the black anodized would be nice because it's quite common on old German-adjacent guitars. i should also look into a custom guard though that gets kind of out of my parts guitar wheelhouse. i'd forgotten how light the Hopf is...it's probably the lightest electric guitar i own and can't be over 6 pounds. it'll be nice to have it in its intended trim with the Hopf 62-style Schaller single-coils which are quite zippy.

[dubkitty]

got the Duo Sonic out and pulled all the electronics from the pickguard only to find that it doesn't fit. the new guard was from someone on Reverb and supposedly fits 1st generation Duos, but it doesn't match the old guard from WD Music much at all and doesn't even cover all the screw holes. so on the one hand i take the day off, on the other i have to try to return the new guard and get a substitute from WD with the correct pickup placement. it looks like the person who put the Duo Sonic together must have sent them a tracing of the Squier CVDS pickguard so it's the right material for a Sonic Blue DS but non-vintage-Fender dimensions. so i'll do a tracing and move the bridge PU 3/4" closer to the bridge like god and nature intended. nothing is simple or easy any more. if this works out i'll get them to do a modified JM pickguard for the Höfnermeister.

Kondor parts and Alvy endpin jack in today, so i'm going to have to start soldering soon. yuck. i'll do the Alvy first because it should be simple, just take out the endpin, bung out the hole, solder the jack to the pickup cable, and Bob's your uncle. but a lot of this stuff was meant to be simple, and little of it actually is.

[dubkitty]

the acoustic pickup was delayed, so i started working on the Köndor. the first thing it needed was indicator dots on the ivoroid Tele-style control knobs i bought because they had a small enough outside diameter to fit the guard. i couldn't use the Dremel because the bit jumped around on the smooth surface, so i took a drill bit and used it to hand-drill concavities in the knobs which i filled with black enamel paint.

that came out nicely.

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and so it was time to work on the wiring. there's a number of weird anomalies about setting up a guitar with selector, volume, tone, and the Varitone. the first time i tried it didn't pass signal when i hooked it up; i researched an alternative circuit diagram, but with this one the volume and tone controls don't work and the Varitone effect is very muted compared to demos. naturally i discovered this after putting everything back together. at least i didn't put new strings on as i'd intended.

neater than it could have been, but i really want to do a bathtub-route Fender that's less of an asspain. this is just not enough space.

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i have an alternative circuit diagram that should work. i literally worked on wiring for 14 hours yesterday, and am well sick of soldering so i'm letting it sit for a bit. since the selectors work i can play it in the meantime. the Bigsby bridge is as i expected a great improvement over the Teisco steel bridge, so i'm pleased about that. one of the cool pointer knobs' set screw socket stripped out so i ordered two replacement knobs so there's a spare. the thing that irks is that it's improving continually and becoming more useable, but it's so fucking slow. i may not get back to it until late in the week...i'll be at Becky's tomorrow night and seeing This Is The Kit on Thursday so i need to cool it. i don't want to burn myself out like i did with my first go at the Double Jet which is in the queue.

soldering still sucks, but the temperature-controlled unit i have now is way better...i only cooked one capacitor, and i had 3 spares. it's still uncomfortable no matter where i set up or what kind of seating i use, and i can't afford one of those Mr. Hands devices that holds the work for you. poor vision doesn't help.

the Acoustic Tube pickup arrives today, so if i'm feeling lively i'll install the endpin jack and wire it up. at least i only have to solder 2 points.

Hopf parts are finally with Customs in the USA. incredibly dilatory shipping, not the soul of German efficiency. but it probably isn't a bad thing to have the brakes applied.

[dubkitty]

upon further examination the only thing that's not functioning is the volume knob. the tone control needs a bigger capacitor; the .022 that's in there isn't nearly enough high cut. happily i have a bunch of different caps in the parts box so that won't be a problem. it probably wouldn't hurt to go higher than the typical .047 value. the Varitone works fine, it's just more subtle than anticipated. i presume the rather quiet, woody pickups may contribute to that since they they're very upper mids/treble-heavy and don't have a load of bass content that stands out when the treble is cut. i think i know what else to do to get everything working properly...i played with it last night and it was wonderful even though i need a screwdriver to turn the pickup selector switch. i'm hoping the rewiring will make both tone cuts more apparent. i think there's some kind of weird feedback thing happening where the way something's grounded counteracts the tone cuts.

i came up with a new project concept...one of the things i have storyboarded is a Strat with 60s-style grey bobbin pickups and a rosewood fingerboard. i have a bunch of different pickup types i want to try and i really don't want six more guitars on top of the ones i already have and the ones i'm working on--i'm already kind of overwhelmed dealing with what will be 14 electric guitars--so i thought of modularizing it and having pickguard modules with different pickup sets + appropriate switch on a separate plate from the (single) volume and tone controls with a plug-in connector so i could change pickups without taking the entire wiring harness apart/out. the single Strat could wind up also hosting Tri-Sonics, Firebird pickups, gold foils, the Simeto pickups from the Musima project i gave up on, and the Goldo clones of the single-coil Davoli pickups as used in Wandre guitars. probably won't do three pickups for everything because the Davolis are $200 a pop, but the rest of the ideas should be reasonably affordable and i see no reason to settle for two pickups when i'm doing the layout if it's affordable. this could also sub for the Starcaster with WRHBs i have on my list, though again cunife WRHBs are also pretty dear so that'd be a 2-pickup thing. the gold foils and Davolis are particularly tempting. check this out.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb3_rjKjM0c

this concept could also work with a Jazzmaster and be added to the Höfner 511s guitar that's in the concept queue. with locking tuners i could swap out pickups in ten minutes. i might want to look into machine screws with threaded anchors for the pickguard screws to avoid stripping and doweling the holes repeatedly. i plan to have an altered pickguard design for the Jazzmaster with the area with the bridge post holes removed so i have options and the left upper bout removed so it feels more like a Galaxie. it seems subjectively that a Jazzmaster would be a more stable or perhaps more pickup-focused platform since it'd be heavier and inherently less resonant due to the size, the JM tremolo, and the strings being top-mounted rather than string-through. i'd still want a Strat for the Abby-style PUs though.