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

[dubkitty]

one thing i'm looking forward to in the next couple of projects is not having to deal with floating bridges, which can be a huge pain when you just want to intonate and go home. the Jetstar bridge is incorporated in the Stetsbar assembly, and the Double Jet has bridge posts that fit ABR-1 bridges and Gretsch bar bridge saddles. i was thinking of buying or making bridge feet for the Double Jet--you can allegedly order Guild Aristocrat bridge feet from Guild customer service though they're not on the website--but the gain vs. pain ratio didn't pencil out. that could be a possible solution for the Musima bridge i'm using on the Galaxiemaster, but i'm not sure that's compatible with the tremolos i'm looking at. the only other thing coming up that entails dealing with a floating bridge is the Supro/Bigsby thing. i do have a Gretsch rosewood archtop bridge base that could make bridge feet if i cut it up.

[dubkitty]

the tailpiece anchors for the Jetstar arrived. since it was made in Asia i figured it would take metric anchors, but nooooo. they’re too small for the holes and the Stetsbar bolts don’t fit. so i ordered a set of SAE-threaded anchors after checking the diameter. time to sit back and wait some more. i may try to file/sand down the 2d fret as long as the strings are off. i was startled by how easily the anchors came out…i loosened the bolts enough to get my fingertips under the bridge plate and they pulled right out. i’ll put shims in the holes to keep them more solidly connected.

[dubkitty]

today’s thing was adjusting the top 2 strings’ poles on each pickup of the (non-“project”) White Falcon…FilterTrons are weird in that they have two rows of adjustable polepieces that are equally active and are mounted quite close to the strings…if either is too loud or soft it makes that string sound off. i’ll have to remember that when i get to the Double Jet.

but what was nice was that i checked the nut on the Hopf figuring it would need to go a little lower, but it’s fine as is now. i compared it to the Falcon and Wandré and it’s right in there regarding string height above the first fret. i’m always surprised when something is less work than i expected. and when i got it right the first time. this whole discussion is almost all fuck-it-up-and-then-fix-it. Fripp had a line about how failure is to be encouraged if you use it as a learning experience.

now to adjust the pickup heights on the Kondor…when i reset them i think i cranked them up a little too far trying to raise the output level to the norm for my guitars and lost some of the wispy, crystalline feel that i love it for. i have the clean boost on the FEB to lift it up.

[dubkitty]

that did the proverbial trick. half a turn of the screws down on the bridge pickup, around a quarter of a turn on the others. i also reworked the nut a bit because a couple of strings were playing sharp on the first couple of frets. i played through the varitone in all its positions and they’re all useable except the most extreme one (position 6). they’re a bit quieter than with it off, but there are ways to make up for that. still thinking about the Tonestyler which i recall being much more utile, but i have several other places to spend on guitar-ish pursuits. the fucking tints for cyanoacrylate are $20 each! it might cost almost as much to fix the Jetstar as it did to buy it in the first place. especially since i need black, white, and amber to mix in tiny quantities with white to match the Jetstar’s shade of slightly yellowed white.

i also have to get new pickup rings and tuners for the Double Jet. i'll get a set of the open-back tuners from Fox Music that came on my Kalamazoo Oriole replica. they're high-ratio, work really well, come with chrome buttons to fit the Gretsch aesthetic, and are like $20 a set. open-nack tuners are a vintage Gretsch thing. i'm also stalking a deal on a Supro Belmont (the sparkly white one) on eBay if i can get it for less than the $389 Sahara (the blue one) on Reverb. i briefly considered getting a Black Holiday, which is the same body in black with two pickups, but i don't have anywhere to put a second pickup and like the guitar in black less than either the white or blue ones. which brings me to the idea i had of getting a cheapazoid lap steel and putting the leftover Supro pickup in there. it sounds better on slide than when played standard so it could be just the ticket. i insist it have tuners with the knobs facing up like a proper steel, though. but when perfectly serviceable National and Supro lap steels abound for $500 or less, how much would i really save by buying a $150 lap steel and probably changing out most of the components.

as you can see i have other fish to fry before changing out a tone circuit that's less than optimal with a better one. i generally haven't even used the varitone much. i reckon it’s just above working on the Galaxiemaster in priority since the Kondor is perfectly useable as is. right now i’m really hot to get the Jetstar working, and i’d put the Bigsby Supro ahead of the Double Jet simply because i have the White Falcon…its pickups are a bit cooler than the TV Jones Classic/Classic Plus in the Double Jet but they represent the type.

[dubkitty]

i've talked about my Epiphone '61 SG with the Vibrola, so i guess this belongs here. i've been looking for a replacement for the current Vibrola because it's not in great shape. as originally purchased there was an irregularity in the notch for the high E string that snapped strings until i filed it with needle files that weren't very good and thus the result is a little unsightly. i also fucked up the big scribed plate trying to sand out some scratches on the lower corner. i went through the plating to the base which looks like brass. so for cosmetic and functional reasons i wanted to replace it. for a long time i never saw engraved Vibrolas at all online, and the few that showed up were vintage and hella expensive. just recently a Reverb listing showed up for the Epiphone vibrola @ $147.50, but i beat that...someone put up a full set of hardware from the Epi Joe Bonamassa ES-335 for $99 which includes the vibrola, a pickguard i could use on my 335 (the old one is a bit ratty), tuners, knobs, pickup rings, the whole wiring harness, bridge with posts, nut, truss rod cover, that dopey "CUSTOM MADE" plaque they used when converting stop tailpiece models to vibratos or trapeze tailpiece, strap buttons, and ancillary hardware. the seller used every part of the carcass like they used to do with buffalo. i assume that if i dug a bit i'd find listings for the pickups and the husk with the broken neck. AND i got it via PayPal Credit (don't worry, i'll kill it off before interest is due) which gave me another $20 off for applying. not too bad. i'm sure some of that stuff will go straight in the bin, but i'm also sure i'll recycle the pots and switch at least. so that's my equivalent to the thrift store/swap meet snags. i'm hoping the new arm has a different bend than the old one, which sits a bit high for me. but in any case to all appearances it's a better part. surprisingly, prices for parts and guitars seem to be going down, not up as you'd expect in the current economy. one of the Supros i'm stalking just went down like $100, and Atomic Music, the big buy/sell in Maryland, just put over 800 items on 15% off sale on Reverb because they’d been there for over 6 months.

i believe this is the last thing to do with the SG. i'm happy with the pickups--it sounds just like an SG--and unless i get a bug up my butt to rewire it i've been over everything else. and why would i do that considering the asspain vs. sonic gain dialectic?

gutted it like a fish.

[dubkitty]

you know, all this futzing about really makes me appreciate the guitars than never need messed with but just keep on truckin'. i've never had to do a thing to my Tokai Les Paul Special other than changing the speed knobs out for the correct top hat knobs except tune it and maybe adjust the polepieces a little. similarly, my parts-o-'56 Strat is solid as a rock, and the '68 335 got any kind of settling out of its system decades ago. and i never expected it of the Squier CV Jazzmaster, but once i got the right bridge and tailpiece it's a regular Dodge Power Wagon. i'm tempted to get another for altered tunings, but god knows i don't need more guitars on the list or crammed into this place. but back in the day i was all about altered tunings.

[dubkitty]

turns out the seller of that batch of parts also has a Epiphone ES-345 harness with a real Varitone, so cheap that it's extremely tempting to try in the Kondor.

[dubkitty]

in other prospective project news, it turns out that all the Supro Americana guitars are not the same size…i suspected this from looking at photos, but old online listings for cases showed that the Belmont and Holiday take the Small case while the Sahara takes the Large size that fits the Martinique. so i have to decide whether ‘tis nobler to get the one with the bigger body (my gut preference) or the one that has two pickup mounts and a switch in place. i’m not sure what to do, and the case info is no help because both sizes of case have the same outside dimensions. fortunately there’s no rush, in fact just the opposite. but ideas are coming together. i’ve listened to enough demos to be reasonably sure the Supro pickups aren’t right for me, but it would be funny if this wound up like the DeArmond which i expected to swap out the pickups but wound up liking them.

i’m really getting a bug up my butt about those semi-affordable B-bender Telecaster bodies. i used to really want one in my country rockin’ days but it was never within ICBM range of affordable. but a $750-850 body…that’s getting closer. i’d probably do it as the base for my Weird Tele with the Gemini pickups and mahogany neck. it’s a totally daft thing to even consider, but it’s also quite tempting. it would be nice if i could order a bespoke body in a color i like and without pickups.

the new tailpiece anchors for the Jetstar arrived, and just to keep the comedy of errors going their outside diameter is wider than the holes. i hope i have a drill bit large enough to do the job, and that if i do it’ll fit in the drill chuck. i’ll probably do the 2d fret first. i propose to tape off not just the fingerboard on either side but the 1st and 3d frets as well, using damage to the fret tape as a warning sign and using the sanding block like i did when leveling the frets on the Kondor. it should work.

[dubkitty]

i’ve been staying off project work on the other things in the pipeline in favor of dialing in and figuring out 5 guitars: the newly sorted Kondor and Hopf, the Eastwood Wandré Soloist, the Guild Aristocrat, and the White Falcon. i’ve been fine-tuning pickup height, string-to-string balance, and levels of the various pickups. i’m pretty happy with how everything is. there were some surprises: when i cranked up the polepieces on the Aristocrat’s bridge pickup to get it level with the neck pickup, which sounds so sweet that i didn’t want to crank it down and lose that sound, it turns out to be a lot snappier and more aggressive than before, genuinely startling and hard to get used to, not at all what i expected out of a Guild/Franz P90. it and the Hopf are unusual in that each sounds like the other looks like it should sound, so that’s a bit confusing. the Hopf looks all space-age but is a bit quieter and more staid, while the Guild looks like your cool grandpa’s jazz guitar but snarls. the Hopf and Kondor are now in their final field trials and will be unleashed in the looping environment soon. paradoxically i improved the Wandré by backing down the pickups which don’t have adjustable polepieces; it arrived with the bridge pickup cranked way up and the neck pickup, which couldn’t keep up, was up so high the adjustment screws wouldn’t turn any more. even with that, they didn’t really sound like they belonged together but lowering both pickups gave the bridge PU a bit more BOING and a bit less SNAP, fitting better with the very unusual sound of the neck pickup. the Falcon only needed the top 2 strings in each pickup adjusted so the tone and level of the strings was consistent. Filtertrons are extremely fiddly to tune in. another thing to look forward to about doing the Double Jet!

i haven’t felt ready to work on the Jetstar yet, but did some prep. i do have a drill bit that should do for enlarging the holes. happily the original holes are actually well deeper than the new anchors (and the old ones for that matter!) so i’m not worried about the drilling. i need to find ways to secure them, though. if the drill is a bit too big it’ll be shims, shims, shims; if it’s too small unpleasant reamage can be anticipated. either way, i’ll make it work. at that point i’ll put the strings back on and do intonation.

then comes sanding the 2d fret so it’s not so bloody high. i think the old technique of using a sanding block should work. then i’ll need the cyanoacrylate and tints from StewMac to repair problems in the paint. i also decided to swap the bridge and treble pickup positions so the bridge is higher output. people on the Guild forum were like “the polepieces and the strings won’t line up” but as far an string spacing goes the two pickups appear identical. if life is kind to me i’ll have enough slack in the wiring to do it without soldering. wouldn’t that be nice?

there’s also some weird paint damage along the bass-side edge of the fingerboard where the poly got turned milky white. that’ll have to come out. i’ll likely do a long stretch of that side of the board and then brush on clear poly.

and that would make it pretty well done, which is encouraging. i really like the Jetstar and am looking forward to it joining my cadre of Odd Little Guitars.

[dubkitty]

BTW the Epi varitone got sold. helps focus when your alternatives are what you have and one other thing. i can more or less use the first 3 notches on the DiPinto varitone, 4 on certain pickup settings. that’s not as bad as it first seemed. i’ll mess around with it and the 6 pickup variations (1, 2, 3, 1+2, 2+3, 1+3) and find things that sound like me. i really wonder if the reason the varitone isn’t entirely satisfying is because the pickups have such a low output level. i think the hottest pickup in the Kondor is no higher than maybe 3.5kOhms.

[dubkitty]

i didn’t mention that the Epiphone parts arrived yesterday. i haven’t even had the energy to open the bag yet. assuming the replacement vibrola is OK it should be a 15-minute job. i’ll do that later today.

[dubkitty]

i unpacked the 335 parts and i'm pleased. the vibrola is made much better than the one that came with the SG, cleaner contours and better plating as well. the rest of the stuff, which i could think of as stuff i got with the vibrola i bought for 1/3 off, is also good. the harness has full-sized CTS pots, the bridge is well made though it has the larger Nashville posts, and the Kluson-style tuners seem good. makes sense because the Bonamassa guitars are high up the Epi pecking order. at least some of this stuff will get used in future projects.

[dubkitty]

the new vibrola is a serious upgrade from the original. as i hoped, the arm (foreground) is configured differently than on the original 2005 vibrola (back). it bends more steeply at the start, but flattens back out when you get close to the tip so the plastic tip tucks comfortably into the palm of my hand. it also starts out lower, and has only the handle's bushing while the old one had a smaller bushing with a spacer beneath. it also secures with a nut on the underside of the comb while the old one only had the bolt which screwed right into the comb. the fit and finish on the new comb is also much better.

the scribed plate is also higher quality than the original. if you look closely at the engraving you can see that the old plate on the left is less precise, especially on the curves.

i also swapped out the knobs for the 335 knobs because they're also just better quality. check the printed numbers on the knobs. new knob installed on left.

knobs.jpg (35.38 KiB) Viewed 53 times

replacing the vibrola was a bit more fiddly than i anticipated, especially securing the scribed plate which is secured by 4 teeny weenie screws that fit equally tiny holes in the frame. if my small screwdriver wasn't magnetized i might still be at it now.

i'm really pleased with the result. the new vibrola is more responsive, and the handle fits my hand like i remember the ones did which i played in the 70s. it's striking, though, how much better the new parts are. i'm generally happy with my SG after the minimal mods i've done, but i suspect i'd like the new Inspired By Gibson Custom even more. this should be everything i need to do to the SG.

i'll start working on the Jetstar today or tomorrow. i ordered tinted cyanoacrylate from StewMac in black, white, and amber, the latter of which i'll mix in small quantities with the white glue to try and match the vintage white finish. i'll do the fret and the remounting of the Stetsbar before that, which should be early next week.

[dubkitty]

most tremolos have some degree of what i'll refer to as latency, i.e. the time/amount of bar movement required before the pitch changes. what i love about a well-tuned vibrola is that there's almost no latency at all. this means that i have to adapt by shaking the bar less...the amount of waffle needed for a Bigsby to work well would result in wild pitch variations on this tailpiece. the thing is, apparently nobody really knows how to set them up any more. i think most people just treat it as a decorative object, like the vibrato-free scribed plate on the Derek Trucks signature SG which i think looks dorky as hell. it took time, research, and luck to learn how to make them work.

i almost forgot to post a photo, not that there's a whole lot of visible difference other than that the nickel plating on the new tailpiece matches the bridge though the pickup covers are still the odd men out. no, i'm not nearly anal enough to change the fucking covers.

i considered recycling the wiring harness from the 335 parts, but i had a hard time fitting the oversized silver-mica capacitors i used here (and in the Dynasonic Pro Jet) in the available space with the existing wiring so it didn't seem worth the trouble.

i replaced the first photo because the lighting was terrible.

[dubkitty]

when i ordered the tinted cyanoacrylate for the Jetstar i also got a 5-piece set of luthier's chisels that were 50% off for something like $24. i they'll be useful when i revamp the bridge pickup cavity on the Dyna Pro Jet. more on that later. the Jet was my first real project guitar; the Strat was more of a case of trying to make it not suck. mission accomplished there.