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

[dubkitty]

i would do more Electromatic Jets if i didn’t have other guitars with the pickups that would fit them…i already have hot and cold running P-90s, Firebird pickups, and Guild mini-hums and am sorted for Filtertrons and Dynasonics. i suppose i could do one with HiLoTrons but i’m not into them despite loving the Jesus and Mary Chain. i really like the light weight and mostly-hollow construction but they’re not suited for everything. i wouldn’t want to do the amount of woodworking necessary to put PAF-sized humbuckers in one. i guess three Jets is enough.

[dubkitty]

i ordered a set of Spertzl locking mini tuners for the Tele neck. people on the Gretsch Pages were potty for Spertzl tuners because Brian Setzer used them and i’ve never seen them in real life. one more brand of tuners tried. i also got a Mad Cat-style speckled yellow/brown tortoise pickguard. i wanted a fire stripe guard like the Oriole, but apparently that material is near-unobtanium and this coordinates with the Sherwood Green better. once the body is available i’ll only need a control plate drilled for a toggle switch, a modern Tele bridge, the pickups and electronics, and a jack plate that mounts outside like god intended. fuck that jammed-into-the-hole business. oh, and strap buttons…i can use the ones from the batch of Epiphone Bonamassa 335 parts.

[dubkitty]

i decided to change things up a bit and polished the whole front of the Galaxiemaster body with Meguiars’ Ultimate. it’s visibly better than the untouched back, but still not fantastic. given the amount of improvement from one pass i’m hoping going over the whole thing twice will give me a pretty decent result. probably do a pass with the Turtle Wax compound after because it cuts less and presumably polishes more. if i really, really cared i’d sand it before polishing, but i’m afraid it would require more sanding than i’m willing to do to get a really smooth surface when i have multiple guitars with factory finishes with serious orange-peeling, e.g. the Double Jet and M-75. i feel good because polishing the whole thing out twice is a day’s work, maybe two if i give myself breaks. if i can get this sorted and the rest of the fingerboard sanded that’ll be a huge leap forward that would give me a husk that just needs to be populated once i do the mods necessary for the Hofner neck to work. once the neck’s on it’s a long, complicated process of filling in the blanks.

in other news i found and ordered a used 2025 Fender Player II Stratocaster in British Racing Green with a rosewood fingerboard for $529, best price i’ve seen by $120. it’ll get the CS 69 Strat pickups i already ordered and a Stellartone Tonestyler tone switch. i could have gotten under $500 if i was willing to take an Aquamarine one with finish damage and a factory-second serial number, but i wanted green and in good shape. so that’s a huge part of the Want List on its way to being done. when i get the Telecaster body that’ll leap ahead because the pickups are less than $300 and the hardware is cheap as chips. i even have a neck plate waiting.

if i can squeeze in any other guitar stuff this weekend it’ll be painting the Jetstar bits. i’m hopeful that one more round will, if not get everything marvelous, at least get it good enough that i can declare victory and withdraw. here’s hoping.

i need to get the living room and coffee table cleaned up better before i do the wood work on the Double Jet. still waiting on the Firebird pickups for the M-77T, and the Bigsby pickups for the Supro aren’t supposed to be ready for another month.

[Gone Fission]

Be careful about fully unscrewing the lock thumb-wheel in Sperzels—there’s a rod that goes up the inside of the shaft to lock the string and it’ll fall out on a dark stage, into a shag carpet, or into an AC grate or drain.

[dubkitty]

i saw something about that when Googling trying to find them. in any case i haven’t totally removed a locking knob in years. but i appreciate the warning.

[dubkitty]

this morning i was wool-gathering and made a list of major purchases left to settle all my projects and my guitar want list and it made me wonder what it will be like to not have to fuck with the guitars any more other than maintenance. there are still a few upgrade-y things i could do with non-project guitars, but i’m running that stuff down too as i finish things as background tasks. i expect i’ll play more…i haven’t played much other than testing guitars since i got rolling on projects in February/March. there’s an entire layer of pedalboard changes i haven’t completely worked into my brain. also the rackmount upgrades and potential synth stuff. most of all i need to get my dead amps repaired: there’s a Laney VC30 which is a wonderful workhorse stage amp, a Kalamazoo Bass 30 that desperately needs to be re-capped, and my ace in the hole, an Epiphone Electar Tube 10 with 1 preamp tube and one 6V6 that’ll drive a 2x12 and make it holler. life would be easier with an amp with a 8” Jensen that probably weighs less than 20 pounds. but it’s strange to consider the notion that my Project Guitars Era may end before too long. i wonder what it would be like if ILF and me are still around in 10 years looking back at all this.

[dubkitty]

a batch of parts came in today’s mail including the alternate switch tip for the Wandré, the Fender Custom Shop ‘69 Strat pickups, and the Mad Cat-style Tele pickguard. the guard is nicer than expected, with a translucent yellowish cast that should be good on the green body. i’ve been hunting all over for other bound Sherwood Green bodies and they just aren’t there. what’s irritating is that every other color of GFS bound Tele body i considered is in stock. unfortunately the pickguard wouldn’t work as well on a Sonic Blue body or the slightly bilious forest green shade they call British Racing Green. i’ll see how long it takes, and whether any of those Susan Tedeschi signature Tele bodies get parted out.

nice wide bevel on the edges.

the BRG Strat is supposed to be here Friday, and the Spertzl tuners for the Tele neck arrive tomorrow which ain’t bad from Italy.

i finally found the neck bolt hole covers for the Supro…i noticed that one of my returns on a Google search was labeled among other things as an “end cap.” so i searched “1/2” end cap” and Home Depot had them. i had to have a worker help me find them because i currently have limited vision. she was nice. i also picked up a couple of smaller sizes because they’re handy for things like plugging unused holes in pickguards. i think it looks much better with the plugs in.

i’m also very happy with the new knobs and switch tip on the Wandré. the old ones were boring though the cylindrical black plastic knobs were fairly accurate to the Wandrés i’ve seen. the OG guitars’ huge pickup selector console buttons had a visual impact the Eastwood lacks that needed to be made up for. i had to ream out the aperture in the switch tip to get it to screw onto the switch. improvise. adapt. overcome.

[dubkitty]

parenthetically, it pisses me off that i’ve seen at least 5 or 6 different, inaccurate shades of green referred to/sold as “British Racing Green” which is a very specific, almost black shade of dark green. Fender’s got like 3 different Sherwood Greens now too. do none of these companies have a graphics intern with a Pantone swatch set? thankfully the Player II guitars got it right.

[dubkitty]

i have to chill tonight because i’m the kind of tired it’s hard to bounce back from. tomorrow i intend to do a second pass at polishing the top of the Galaxiemaster body…it has problems i can’t fix due to grain showing up in ridges on the flat surfaces. i don’t know if they could be sanded down without sanding through the finish so i can’t get anywhere close to excellent but it is noticeably better after one pass than the untouched back. i’m hoping the extreme visual busyness of the finished product, with its wild pickguard, 3 Höfner staple minihums, odd synth pointer knobs, and Goldo JM tremolo will distract from the finish. probably nobody would even notice it but me.

i also mean to clear off the coffee table so i can use it as a work surface to rewire the Kondor so the signal goes pickup selector->varitone->volume knob which apparently is the preferred option. people online claim that having other controls that shunt to ground before a varitone negatively affects performance. it couldn’t make the varitone’s performance any more disappointing than it is so i may as well have one more go. i’ve read that varitones don’t work as well with lower-impedance pickups which would explain the lackluster performance. if it still sucks i might just put in a Schaller-style tone switch like the Hopf which has fewer options but sounds less hollow and attenuated. that’s one of the few remaining small fixes that need to be done and hopefully it won’t take long. the unaltered sound of the Japanese pickups is so delicate that they need additional options to dial in.

i should also get the Hopf out and see how it’s doing and whether i might be able to take shims out of the neck and/or bridge. if not i’m OK with it because it works the way it is, but it’s clearly not optimal.

[dubkitty]

if GFS drags things out with the Telecaster body so long that i have everything else ready i can always get a Squier Telecaster Custom alder body in 3-color sunburst which actually is my favorite bound Tele color. there’s loads of them on eBay. i think the 3-color burst’s lighter tones would work with my pickguard. it’s tempting to just do that so i don’t have to think about it any more, but it wouldn’t be green.

[dubkitty]

i finished two rounds of polishing the entire Galaxiemaster body this afternoon. it’s still not great, but it’s waaaaay better, enough so that i’m OK with it. i guess the next thing there will be finishing up the Höfner neck’s fretboard.

i might do the Kondor wiring this evening after dinner. it’s simpler than any of the other guitar tasks on hand and doing that should finish it off.

Spertzl tuners for the Tele neck were delayed and are now expected here tomorrow. i’m seriously considering ordering a Chinese copy of a Tedeschi Telecaster which would be less than $200 delivered and get here from California in a week…i would chuck everything else and just use the body. “wouldn’t you want to sell that stuff?” no. i don’t want to have to make excuses for crap parts.

[dubkitty]

working on the Galaxiemaster body has really improved my attitude about this project. i had fallen into thinking of the body and neck as both being worse than they actually were, which understandably lessened my enthusiasm. combine that with the fairly complex wiring required and the need to make precise measurements of everything that goes on or through the pickguard and it felt pretty daunting. but in reality the body is now acceptable (though more polishing wouldn’t hurt it’s close to diminishing returns), the fingerboard might take a week or so, and a decent set of digital calipers would make the pickguard layout simpler. i used to think of this guitar-to-be as an endless succession of struggles; now it’s just another thing, like the Double Jet became once i could deal with it again. i will be absolutely delighted when i bring those 2 projects home since they’re certainly the hardest ones on deck.

[dubkitty]

i should have posted a pic of the Galaxiemaster body.

looking deceptively good here.

[dubkitty]

i realized that since the CS69 pickups are here ahead of the British Racing Green Strat the only other thing it needs is the Tonestyler so i ordered one. the guitar is supposed to be here on Friday so i won’t be able to crack it open until the Tonestyler gets here, but i guess i can wait a few days and can set up the tremolo while waiting.

didn’t get anything else done yesterday. i’m hoping to get to the Kondor today. i don’t see myself taking chisels to the Double Jet quite yet. if there’s energy for anything else i’ll work on the Höfner fingerboard.

[dubkitty]

the Spertzl tuners for the Telecaster finally arrived after a weird delay where UPS had them Out For Delivery and then postponed with a notice that “extreme weather or some other emergency” had forced postponement. of course i immediately installed them on the Tele neck. with the exception that i haven’t used them yet i like them a lot. the brushed aluminum, blocky buttons, and larger-than-usual lock wheels lend a sort of industrial vibe. they seem super solid; i couldn’t detect any play in the mechanisms at all. the aluminum construction also makes them lighter than typical locking tuners. i can see why they were popular with the Gretsch crowd, many of whom played fully hollow archtops that would be harder to handle with heavy tuners. i like how the Tele is already gathering its own vibe.