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

[dubkitty]

i got into the Alvarez over the weekend. the first thing i discovered is that my arm won't fit through the soundhole to let me work on the end block. it's not chub, it's that there's no good angle in that wouldn't involve breaking my forearm. so i started cogitating on that while preparing to install the pickup. since i wasn't going to reuse the plastic endpin i went for brute force and wiggled it out with my ViseGrips. it wasn't glued in; the shank had diamond-shaped protrusions that got compressed inside the hole.

i see London, i see France, i see my sofa...

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now the worrisome bit started. i'm not a big fan of drilling into guitars because something often goes wrong. in this case i didn't have an intermediate bit to ease through between the 1/2" drill bit and the next smallest one and as a result the hole walked off a little right of center. i taped all around the drilling area to help prevent chipping of the finish.

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oops.

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[dubkitty]

it'll be OK when it's installed. a decorative washer covers a multitude of sins. the hole is bunged out to the right but is the same height so i can shove the jack over to the original path and bolt it down.

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the endpin jack is a neat little device. it can fit entirely through the hole in the end block when disassembled. i figured out that with this i can solder the jack onto the end of the pickup cable, pass it out through the hole in the end block with a nut in place where it'll contact the end block as seen in the photo, screw the washer, nut, and strap button on the outside end and voila. i'll pass a cable through the hole from outside, plug it into the jack, and winkle it out like an ice fisherman.

the strap button is really clever...it's larger than the retaining nut and has a groove hollowed out around the underside so it screws right down on the jack, rendering the nut invisible.

a very well-thought-out device.

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while i was working i noticed how rough the fingerboard was compared to my nicer guitars. the last time i worked on this guitar i sanded/polished the bridge so it looks good, but didn't feel up to tackling the fretboard because i knew from doing the Musima neck that it's a long, exacting process. but i have the strings off so i can install the pickup so they aren't in the way, and i figure this is the last time i'll work on this guitar in my lifetime because there's nothing left to do so i might as well make it as pleasant as possible to play and look at. i'm using the same process as before, 800 grit followed by 1200. i could go to 2000 but that seems pointless when there'll be strings scraping on it. one hangup was being able to keep things even near the frets, where the wood ends up less smooth. solution: wrap a bit of sandpaper around the blade of a butter knife with a straight top edge. once i saw the difference i knew doing the sanding was the right choice.

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i work each space until i can't feel any irregularities when i run my finger across it. yet another project thing where i tell lazy me that the end result will be worth the effort.

i'll finish the fingerboard before installing the pickup. if i put in the pickup first i'll want to restring it to test the pickup, and there goes my window of opportunity to nice things up. this should be done in a couple of days, but might be delayed...my girlfriend is in the hospital which is only 7 minutes from my apartment so i've been spending a lot of time there. having work to do has helped me not to stress, but having burned out after working on the Kondor for 14 hours and been fried for a couple of days subsequently i have to pace myself and not get obsessive. i really like the part in doing this stuff when it becomes clear my nefarious Rube Goldberg plots are actually going to work.

once this is done i'll fix up the Kondor so everything works well. i know exactly what to do now so i should be able to knock it off reasonably easily. i have to contact the people about the Duo Sonic pickguards, and really should order the new one soon because it's about the easiest mod i can do. even though i have to rout to correct the bridge pickup position, that Dremel cutting bit should go through basswood like Sherman through Georgia. it's possible that i'll start on the Gretsch after the Kondor if the DS pickguard hasn't arrived, but i'm putting it off because it'll be particularly complicated in that i gutted the electronics and have to rewire everything. and i may need to drop everything to take care of my girl. i'll update when there's something significant. and the Hopf parts have been sitting in US Customs for a week. <sings> someday my neck will come...</song>

[coldbrightsunlight]

Wow, really coming together. The difference in the sanded fingerboard is crazy. All my guitars look like the right hand side of that picture I've never done anything more than clean, bit of a go with fine steel wool and oil, maybe it's worth the time to really do this and make them look nice.

[dubkitty]

after an incredibly long wait, the Hopf parts finally arrived, but not without some drama...the Post Office tried to deliver them on Saturday but apparently the substitute driver didn't have the correct code for the lobby door so they just showed up as undeliverable on Informed Delivery. so i went to the PO yesterday morning to inquire. i was told the my packages--three in total--were "with the carrier" and to come back tomorrow if they didn't show up. we got no Monday delivery at all. so i went over this morning and bugged them till they found my stuff. it took a fucking month to get here. from Germany. what kind of non-First World shit is this? anyway, the boxes are in my car now, but i won't really get to them till tomorrow because i'm going straight from work to Becky's tonight.

i've been really busy and/or tired from being so busy so i haven't gotten any further up the fretboard of the 12-string than the third fret. i'll get back to it soon because i want to finish it so i'll have a new capability, but it's tedious, exacting work. wound up going up to 1500 with the sanding because the heavier grits tend to hollow out space next to the frets but 1500 can level them off. turns out i don't have to sand the Lead II's fretboard after all; despite years of using various fretboard conditioners i'd never actually used lemon oil because i never saw it in the shops, but picked some up the last time i got strings and it helped more than either of the preparations i'd tried before. it went from gritty to silky, which is still a bit more texture than i'd prefer but which is comfortable. two rounds of lemon oil > 8 or 10 rounds of normie product.

most of my guitars aren't as bad as the Alvy as far as i can tell, even the cheaper ones though i should do a survey. the Squier and Epiphone boards have never been a problem, and the cheap Gretsch boards are as good as a new Gibson, no joke. i really think they decided that nobody was going to play anything above the 10th fret on the Alvy because the board on the upper frets is just awful. but then, who plays that high on a 12-string other than me, Andy Bell, and Michael Hedges now that Croz is dead? it was never meant to be a nice guitar--it was remaindered for a bit over $300 on MF--but i'm making it into one.

once the 12er is sorted, i'll either do the Kondor or the Hopf. neither should be terribly complicated. i now understand what the Kondor needs, and most of the Hopf parts actually go with the Twisty II body without fiddling. i have the correct neck and bridge, and just need to swap over the electronics from the Telstar pickguard i picked up along with the neck. the only complication is that Schaller put the electronics in literal cans that may be a bitch to get off the aluminum pickguards to which they appear to be welded or super-soldered. it'll be an adventure. if i have to i'll just saw the fuckers off.

haven't dealt with the Duo Sonic pickguard situation yet. god knows i don't want to deal with the post office any more right now.

[dubkitty]

I unpacked the Hopf parts this morning when i got home. the neck is in really good condition; it has a bit of fret wear which must have happened in storage because the neck's never been drilled for its mounting bolts. the fingerboard is smooth and will probably be perfect after a round or 2 of lemon oil. tuners are stiff and have a bit of play but should be OK. i really like this style of West German neck made up of 2 mm strips of (assumedly) maple laminated lengthwise. one assumes it'll be as solid as a Bavarian rock.

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the pickguard/pickups are a bit more complicated. the new pickups are larger than the old ones, and the 3-screw mounting bracket pattern is also broader. i'll file the apertures out and drill new holes. i think i'm just going to swap the pickups...the electronics on the Telstar guard are laid out differently than the Twisty so the can isn't compatible with the body routing and it still has the multi-pin German connector. the switch paddles and knob are in much better condition so i'll move those over too.

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i'm still amazed not only that i found a correct neck, but that i found it years ago--what was that, 2020?--and it was still available when i looked in February, and has the tuners and logo and everything. i'm gonna assume that Musikkeller doesn't let Google bots crawl the site. i'm going to let it sit for awhile until i sort the Alvy and the Kondor; maybe i'll flip a coin to decide whether to do the Hopf or the Gretsch first. both have pickups i love and haven't had before. i played the Double Jet a bit before i disassembled it and the TV Jones Filtertrons are as good as people say they are.

[dubkitty]

i was getting ready to start this thread up again, having gotten caught up enough with other aspects of life that i have some wiggle room, when i came across what may just be my weirdest project yet.

you might recall that one of my long-term project wants was a guitar in the configuration of a Guild Aristocrat (smallish, mostly hollow) with Guild mini-humbuckers and a Guildsby. backstory: in the earlier Buffalo Springfield Stephen Stills played a Guild DE-400 Duane Eddy signature model with these pickups, and i believe they're a big part of their sound. you can see Stills playing the big blond Guild in the TV clip from Hollywood Palace. they have a unique kind of compressed POP to the pick attack that makes you sound like you're pumping a tube compressor. naturally the original Duane Eddy guitars are $5000 worth of rare, so the Aristocrat idea was a way to get that general sound in an affordable setup. i really didn't like the idea of chopping up an Aristocrat, though...they're really nice guitars, and deserve more respect than that. i won't even put a Bigsby on my Aristocrat...it wouldn't be dignified.

so i was browsing DeArmond guitars on Reverb hoping for a sighting of the extremely rare DeArmond DE-400 type when i came across this little guy. it's a DeArmond M-75T that came stock with the little-loved DeArmond 2K pickups, which tried more to look like Dynasonics than sound like them. i was taken by the extremely cool blue sparkle finish, which i've never seen on one of these before. but what's that huge plastic backplate concealing?

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[dubkitty]

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The DeArmond M-series guitars are notorious boat anchors, the sort of thing that makes 2000s Les Pauls seem light in comparison. so some intrepid madman with a home routing setup chambered huge areas out of the back of the body "for weight relief." i'm sure it helped; it certainly couldn't have made things worse. there may be enough resonating space in there to give it some acoustic qualities. i'm going to see how it feels, and may go even farther by removing the interstitial spaces in the lower bout so everything from the waist to the control cavity is one hollow chamber. that's how Aristocrats and Gretsch Duo Jets are traditionally built, a mahogany center slab that's mostly routed away except for a thicker piece that supports the pickup assemblies and bridge. Duo Jets rout the slab and then add a maple top; Aristocrats have a body rim with a thin mahogany sheet back perhaps twice the thickness of an acoustic guitar back.

[dubkitty]

so what about the pickups? original 60s Guild HB-1s--aka Anti-Hums, not to be confused with later HB-1 full-sized 'buckers--are sickeningly dear; like $600 a set and up. Guild was selling the modern version, the LB-1 "Little Bucker," on the parts page of their website as well as the B3/B5-style Guildsby i wanted for the Aristocrat conversion but stopped and now only sell the pickups and tailpieces appropriate for the later double-cutaway Starfires. OK. how about used pickups? not found. OK, they put these on the Jetstar, which is one of their low-end solidbodies...what does a used Jetstar go for? so i plonked around and found this on eBay for the princely sum of $315. LB-1s present and accounted for, a rather groovy MOTS pickguard, and some truly peculiar figuring in the fingerboard.

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why so cheap?

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well, mahogany necks do mahogany neck things, especially when the scarf joint gets hit just right. the seller is a Guild warranty repair shop, and swears the neck repair is solid. maybe. we'll see. but given that the modern LB-1s were going for over $200 a set from Guild, i figure i bought two pickups and what either may be a neat little death weapon or a $125 piece of firewood. the LB-1s definitely will go in the M-75T. if the Jetstar neck is sound i'll sand, fill if necessary, and repaint it. i have a Hagstrom-style tremolo from the failed Musima project in the parts box which is period-correct for funny-shaped Guild solidbodies and will only require a little Dremeling. the easiest thing would be using the DeArmond 2Ks, but as surface-mounts they're not really suited for the routs. on the other hand, Firebird pickups, which i love and don't have, would probably pretty much drop in. once i get that going i'll think about odd wiring ideas. if it works well, the JetFireStarBird could be every bit as utile, and every bit as dangerous, as the M-75T.

so i need to get busy before those guitars arrive and finish the 12-string and Kondor, and hopefully get the Double Jet put together as well. it's not that complicated with the prep work i did. and with the new soldering unit it's a lot easier to get a result.

[dubkitty]

the shape of the routed areas on the M-75T reminds me of the body/pickguard shape of the equally little-loved Gretsch Committee, which looks like a better guitar than it's reputed to be.

[dubkitty]

the Jetstar arrives via FedEx today, so we'll get a closer look at the neck situation.

remember the fretless Jazz Bass with the neck whose truss rod was maxed out and still was only barely playable? i thought i would have to get the neck steamed and pressed to make it playable but couldn't see a way then, so i put low-tension flats on it and put it away for a year. i got it out yesterday to see what was up and it's improved significantly. after twiddling the string height it now has almost as low action (~3 mm/12th fret) as the CV Mustang Bass which of course has frets. it's not super-slick, but IMO that's appropriate for a fretless JB which really wants to sound like a stand-up with Big Ugly Teeth. i'm incredibly happy that it apparently healed itself. it's not the right bass for a lot of what i do bass-wise--which is why i got the Mustang--but it's fabulous for faux upright and can edge into Rickenbacker territory with the bridge pickup emphasized and a flatpick.

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i'm getting the 12-string out today to work on because it doesn't involve electricity until i do the pickup. i really, really hate soldering. after that i'm going to finish the Kondor which only needs wiring and controls work. i'll test the Jetstar, but i'm not doing anything with it until after the M-75T arrives which is supposed to be tomorrow. these guitars will probably push in front of the Double Jet in the queue because Thrill Of The New. i'm dying to see how the M-75T works, and whether i think more chambering would be even better. all i really need to do to get it going is change the pickups, though, and that should be simple albeit with a little drill-and-Dremel action somewhere in there. so in a perfect world that'll be done this weekend.

i bought in town, and ordered online, a bunch of straps because there weren't even enough to go around for the electric guitars and basses (including projects) before the M-75T/Jetstar thing happened. now there's one per electric instrument, which has always been preferred practice because i never have to adjust anything once i put the guitar on. i still don't have enough for the 3 acoustics, but we'll cross that bridge at the point where i'm thinking of playing acoustic live, which i stand for. or used to...i might be too old and tired now.

[dubkitty]

when i got it it was a bog-standard Mexican fretless JB with a white pickguard and no covers. i added the tortoiseshell pickguard, covers, and thumbrest so it would be as much like the vintage fretless Jazz Bass i learned to play real bass on in the Jazz Improvisation ensemble at City College of San Francisco as possible because that's what i was used to, but it turns out that like most Fender ideas there's a bit of genius behind those covers. they cut EMF interference drastically without affecting the tone at all. they also make it so there's no rough, scratchy, or square-cornered surfaces for your picking arm/hand to encounter, which must have been particularly nice back when jazz musicians invariably wore suits. the Fender amp knobs were inspired by Muddy Waters' Telecaster, and are more practical because you can see the settings without a magnifying glass. not to mention seeing settings at all LOL. the first volume knob broke off of my old silverface Fender Twin in the 1980s, so it's a little connection to my olden days. someday i might go whole hog and get a 3-color sunburst body to make almost a perfect clone, but i'm not quite that vain.

i am, however, vain enough to sand the "SG" lettering off the truss rod cover of the Epiphone SG, which i did yesterday. wet sanding with 2000 grit, buffed in crafts-person tradition with forehead oil and a soft rag. it always bugged me because who needs to be told the damn thing's an SG?

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[dubkitty]

the Guild Jetstar arrived yesterday. i'm not going to do much with it for a little while because refinishing the neck will be a new level of thing for me. the DeArmond M-75T arrives today. i may pull the pickups from the Jetstar and put them in if i have time, but i'm trying to rest up for a vacation next weekend so i don't want to beat myself up too badly and i burn out quick on projects any more.

as part of the finishing-old-projects vibe i finished sanding the fingerboard of the Alvarez 12-string. it came out really nice, especially after it and the bridge got a lemon oil treatment. while i was about dealing with acoustic guitars i got out the Eastman OM, which desperately needed new strings, and gave it a dose of lemon oil and a general cleaning. i also polished the rosewood truss rod cover with 800/1200 per standard Bob practice. i love that little guitar.

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i'm really happy with how it came out.

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today i'll put the Acoustic Tube in the 12-string, clean it up, and restring it. that should be the end of doing stuff to it...there's really nothing else to improve. i'll also spruce up the Epiphone acoustic. i haven't used the acoustics much in the last couple of years so the strings on both 6-strings were deader than Rush Limbaugh.

it's possible that i'll go after the Kondor wiring after the pickup's in the Alvarez. the soldering gear will be out. i don't know if i want to work that much today, though.

[dubkitty]

i did delve into the Jetstar enough to answer a couple of necessary questions for my plans. Firebird pickups should be fine...the mounting rings are slightly smaller, but within a 1 to 2 mm range so the Firebird rings should cover the LB-1 rings' mounting holes. and the Musima/Hagstrom tremolo will just barely fit. it's 4 mm shallower than the body (34 mm/38 mm), and a modern Jetstar with a Hag trem was storyboarded in the late 10s but never appeared. i only have to sink a cylindrical hole big enough for the spring mechanism to fit, and i can do it if i'm careful. so the next things for the Jetstar will be refinishing the neck and deciding what pickups to get. for aftermarket shit i lean towards Duncan Antiquity, but that'd push that project $280 down the road. i have a feeling the JetFireStarBird is going to kill. the neck is a really comfortable shape, and i'll probably fine-tune it when i sand the neck which is necessary because there's big cracks in the finish that weren't filled and smoothed when it was repaired. it seems quite solid, though.

[dubkitty]

I spent a bunch of time over the weekend working with the M-75-T. I decided to give it a chance to make a case for itself as it is before starting to tear things up. it’s clear that the owner who did the work on it loved it a lot--you can see where the clear coat is worn away on the left upper bout where his forearm rubbed against the finish, and you don't do that kind of routing work 'cause you're bored of a weekend--so i thought if someone else thought that well of it i should give it a fair chance. after a great deal of the sort of endless fine-adjustments of pole pieces, pickup heights, etc. that’s both an incredible pain in the ass and the base of my sound (i always, always adjust the pickups in a very specific sequence starting from the high E on the bridge pickup and work till both pickups are optimized for string-to-pole interaction, the output is balanced across the pickup, and both pickups' output volume is roughly equal) I decided that I rather like the DeArmond 2K pickups. They’re surface-mounts designed by FMIC (Fender Musical Instrument Corporation) for the 1990s DeArmond guitars as a substitute for the vintage-era Dynasonics design FMIC, who produced the DeArmond and Gretsch brands then as well as Guild, was reserving for the high-end Gretsches. They were roundly despised when introduced, especially by vintage Guild enthusiasts, because they don’t sound much like Dynasonics at all. The design is different, purportedly more like a P-90 than a real Dyna, but I haven’t dissected one to verify. However, when dialed in precisely with my bat-like ears the 2Ks sound quite good. They’re odd…there’s a sort of hollow quality to the midrange and the bridge pickup’s bass notes CRACK more than BOOM. They don't sound much like Dynas, or the DeArmond 2000 surface-mount Dyna substitutes they used on some 00s-10s Gretsches (and sound much more like Dynas than the 2Ks), or like the P-90s they were derisively compared to (who insults a pickup by saying it sounds like a P-90? that's like complaining because a girl has nice hips). But they’re a valid voice and make me play different things than my standard shit, which is one thing I look for in pickups (and guitars). they have a kind of mutant cowboy sound, sort of like if Duane Eddy was Jon Langford. They also complement the LB-1/vintage HB-1/Anti-Hum mini-humbuckers in the Jetstar. and there's something Guild-ish about the 2K's sound in some way i can't quite put my finger on. they seem to fit in with the Dynas, weird single-coil pickups, Franz P-90s, and Anti-Hums i think of when i think of Guild. they should be good in spaghetti Western/gybe! territory.

So my archaeology in the M-75 will be limited to potentially doing more routing in the back…it’s lighter than a typical out-of-the-box M-series De Armond, but I don’t believe my scale when it says 8.5 pounds. I also need to crank it up and see what the resonance is like. I ordered a clear pickguard from Pickguardian…the factory ones were black, but I don’t want to cover the finish. there's some odd and interesting features of this and the Jetstar that i'll document as i go along.

I’m going to vintage-ize the Jetstar…the original 60’s versions had a Hagstrom tremolo and bridge. I have a Hagstrom-style tremolo that came from the failed East German junk guitars project from 2012-13 back when all this began, and though the vintage Hag bridges are dear GFS has a similar piece for, well, GFS prices. I’ll pull the stop tailpiece studs and dowel the holes. The trem disassembles by hand so I can do mounting templates by running it through the copier printing on card stock and be able to precisely place the screw holes and the rout for the spring post. The Fender/Kluson-style tuners are kind of crap--the posts are noticeably wobbly--so I may put reissue Kluson Firebird tuners in. they won’t be any worse than the stock tuners, and will be weird and different which I like. You may have noticed.

The work on this one will be patching dings, preparing the neck, and filling/sanding/painting stuff. I don’t have sufficient confidence in my spray painting skills to shoot a whole guitar (no confidence in my skills at all really) but figure I can mask off the neck only and do well enough that it’ll sand and polish out. The dings will get painted by hand using the rattlecan paint from the neck. i may not have spray can chops, but i can sure as hell sand things smooth and polish them.

I still need to finish off installing the Acoustic Tube pickup in the 12-string. I almost had the endpin jack soldered to the pickup, but then discovered that i'd forgotten to put the end cover on the cord before soldering so i had to take it back off, and decided at that point i was too stoned to do any more soldering Friday. i intend to do it today, but you know about intentions.

i took a couple of hours to spruce up my Epiphone FT-345 acoustic, which it struck me i've had for fifty years this year. the strings were horrible, so while taking them off i did a deep fingerboard cleaning that involved dissolving years of crud along the edges of the frets with rubbing alcohol, letting it dry, and then lots of lemon oil. the fingerboard has severe wear, but i'm not going to try to do anything about it because that's way beyond my pay grade. i fine-sanded some wear on the treble side of the neck near the fingerboard where the finish had worn away for most of the length of the neck clear of the body and the wood was a bit chewy in spots. 800->1500->2000. if i was rolling in dough i'd have it refretted...imagine how beat the frets are after 50 years.

intended upcoming project sequence: finish the 12-string, fix the Kondor wiring, maybe start on the Double Jet or the Hopf depending on what i feel like. nothing beyond the 12 and the Kondor is getting finished this week...i'm idling getting ready for a 4-day vacation away.

[dubkitty]

i finished up the 12-string yesterday evening. once i got the jack soldered the rest was fairly simple. i took a guitar cable with plugs the same diameter as the endpin jack, ran it up the guitar's arsehole, and plugged it into the pickup; i was then able to reel the jack through the endpin. getting the final depth placement was a bit tricky, and took 3 or 4 iterations of moving the retaining nut that stays inside the guitar slightly until the bottom of the bit with the smaller-diameter threads that the button screws onto was flush with the outer surface of the body. then i screwed on the outer retaining nut and washer, and the button over that.

it sounds really wonderful. i was almost late leaving the house this morning because i was playing it through the Princeton Reverb with the 'verb and tremolo on and started getting lost in the waves. this is going to really be fun with the pedalboards. but the bestest thing is being able to tune it using an electronic tuner. this alone makes it easily 400% more likely that i'll play the thing. tuning a 12-string acoustically is just horrible.

all told, i'm very happy with how the Alvy turned out. it's going to give me some great functionalities i didn't have before, and the wood work makes it look more like a $700-800 guitar than its actual cost of ~$215 remaindered. if the neck's scarf joint wasn't so obvious it'd be hard to tell.

i think the alternating-tuner-buttons thing is my best guitar idea ever. it really works to help differentiate the strings when tuning, which used to drive me crazy.

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there'll be one last task on the 12-string, adding a strap button on the neck heel. now that it's electrified i could use it in a band/live context. i have an ivoroid button coming from StewMac that'll coordinate with the binding and heel cap. i've tried strap buttons on the heel and the side of the upper bout above the heel, and think they work better on the heel where the orientation keeps the strap out of the way of my fretting hand and flush with the back of the guitar.

i'm going after the Kondor wiring problems next. as it currently stands the tone control needs a larger cap, and the volume knob doesn't work at all. i also need to reinforce the pickup selector switch so i can securely screw on the big synth knob i got for it (and the varitone). other than that it's pretty well ready to go. i'll probably un-logo it and look for a sticker of a California condor. after that i'm taking time off till after my vacation this weekend. i got out the Hopf neck and lemon-oiled the fingerboard, but unfortunately it's still too textured so i'm going to have to sand it. i'll do that soon while my muscle memory for doing fingerboards is still fresh, but the Double Jet is still getting completed first because most of the hard work has been done already and i know where i'm going. i also really want a Filtertron guitar. all i need to do is sort out the pickup mounts, wire in the harness with the tone switch, and put everything back together. he said with excessive confidence.

i'm hoping to get through the extant projects in house--Gretsch Double Jet with Filtertrons, Hopf Twisty II, and the Jetstar--by the end of the summer. the Jetstar is going to be the biggest job/problem/life experience. i'm not looking forward to painting stuff. i'm pretty good with wood, but finishes are largely beyond my level of expertise. after that we'll see what gets done next.