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

[dubkitty]

i haven’t put the Hopf back together. i started physical therapy for my back this week and my time has been really scrambled. i hope to do it soon, but am not sure when.

i think i’ve found the hobby paint solution to the Jetstar. there’s a Japanese company called Mr. Hobby that makes among other things paint products which include small bottles of various primers. they all have Mister-themed names…there’s Mr. Surfacer, Mr. Finishing Surfacer, Mr. Aqueous Finishing Surfacer, Mr. Mahogany, Mr. Metal, and my choice Mr. Base White. i found an explanation of the different types and that sounds like the right one. if this actually works i’ll be a happy kitty. i’ll order it today and hopefully it’ll get here next week. at that point i’ll probably sand the body and headstock fixes so if necessary i can primer those as well and tint the color coat for all the areas at once. i sure do wish it didn’t take the color coats weeks to dry, but at this point i’m not going to start hunting for other paint solutions.

the Strat knobs are on the way, but won’t be here till Monday. if i run out of stuff to do i can work on the Galaxiemaster neck and/or do the (hopefully) last passes of polishing the body. though i’ll have to disassemble it for storage i really want to get the neck on because it’ll feel much more like a guitar then rather than a pile of parts. it won’t take a ton of work to do that. sometimes i think i’m overestimating how hard finishing the Galaxiemaster will be, but then i think about wiring an 8-position rotary pickup selector and the Schaller tone switch with a master volume that really needs to go out on the upper bout where the Jazzmaster pickup toggle is and it’s more nerve-racking. i guess i’ll have to run the wires from the selector to the tone switch, up to the upper bout for the volume knob, and then back out to the output jack. fortunately the body has wide enough routs for the wire placements.

everything with electrical needs is on indefinite hold other than the pickup mounts on the Double Jet. i’m going to order a Lido series Tele body from GFS to use for the Esquire Custom. it’s essentially the same as the Squier body, metric-spec poly-finished poplar with white binding, so it shouldn’t be a big problem if i decide to sell it. all the Esquire stuff will swap over except the output jack; the Lido bodies require an external plate. i don’t see that as a problem. i might end up capacitor-rolling because though the Arlo mod’s cap value makes it too quacky in the upper mids, my choice just sounded dulled though the modern weirdnesses of the wiring could be to blame. we’ll see when it’s back together with “vintage” wiring. if nothing else it should be easier to sell a whole guitar than a pile of Squier parts.

it’s kind of weird how some of my projects lead to multiple guitars, some of which i didn’t exactly want. i thought the Jetstar would be worse than it was and expected to harvest the pickups and chuck the rest, and i wasn’t looking for an Esquire at all. turns out that Esquires solve some—but not all—of my issues with Telecasters. the single hotter pickup is surprisingly good at doing the things i like on Tele, and i like the bridge switch position which bypasses the tone control because it gives you a 5th-gear bump for solos. if i was going to do country stuff i’d use it along with the Bigsby Supro and probably the Les Paul Special or the green Strat, though the Gemini Tele would also make sense. i still hate the 3-saddle bridges but don’t know that i care enough to change it. now that it’s settled, a horrible task that took a couple of hours going back and forth between intonation, string height, and literally pushing saddles sideways, it should be stable and is more in tune than the various stationary bridges on others of my guitars e.g. the Hopf, Kondor, Supro, and Tokai LP Special even though those bridges are all compensated. “cowboy compensated” maybe? i guess i’ll see if it remains stable over a longer period before deciding, assuming it stays for a longer period.

[dubkitty]

the Strat knobs are now in Richmond, and should be here Monday for sure barring some kind of postal weirdness.

[dubkitty]

i found these absolutely brilliant vintage Bakelite RCA radio knobs on eBay that i think i’ll get for the Galaxiemaster. i need something in a pointer stylie for the pickup selector and tone switch and these have a nice low profile that won’t harm my knuckles. i’ve seen other examples with white paint applied to the crevices which would be even better but may be a pain to do. black on a light background is much easier if you use India ink.

on this background pickguard color.

they want 1/4” D-shaft pots, which shouldn’t be a huge problem because i can file down round shafts which i’ve had to do before.

finishing the Hopf will be a bit protracted because i need to fill the holes from the old bridge inserts. i don’t have dowels anywhere near that big so i’ll use the rosewood filler i got thinking i’d use it on the Galaxiemaster fingerboard and then paint it black to blend in with the pickguard. that’ll add a day or 2 for it to dry. once again, “done” didn’t really mean done. and once again a problem i thought i’d dodged comes back to bite me in the ass. at least out of the vintage projects the Kondor is really, really done.

the Dyna Pro Jet, an old-school project from the 00s, is back on the list because i want Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Dynasonics. that’s way down the road, though, because they’re even more expensive than the Mojo Bigsby pickups. at well over $400 a pair they’ll be over $100 more than the original guitar cost. but they’re by far the best modern Dynas, better than the TV Jones and miles better than the stock Tokiwa Gretsch Dynas that are in there now. because of the cost that’s going at the very bottom of the list. i’m not made out of $300-400 purchases.

[dubkitty]

StewMac has been having a 20% off sale with the perk of a year’s free membership in their StewMAX program which gives you free shipping among other things, so i took a deep breath and ordered the soldering station along with a chisel tip bit for pots and the like and some solder since i used up the last coil. i’m still planning on taking time off from electrical work though i may have to do the M-77T pickups and the Esquire so they’re done. or done-ish at any rate. i’ve quite been enjoying not looking at the same group of guitars waiting to be done that were out for months. i really hope the new station helps me do better work and maybe even makes me not hate soldering with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

[dubkitty]

i got into the Hopf today and it turned out to not be too bad. the StewMac chisels did great at pushing back the edge of the rout so the bridge pickup clearance is sufficient. i mixed up some of the rosewood grain filler and taped off the open side of the bridge stud holes and packed them full of filler slightly above the level of the top since it’ll shrink when it dries. once it’s settled i’ll level it off and paint it black so it blends in with the pickguard.

to get it thick enough i had to mix more than was needed for the holes so i decided to fill the non-inlaid sections of the Höfner neck’s fingerboard because it’s by far the tiredest fingerboard i have. i think it’ll be an improvement once it’s sanded which it needed anyway.

[dubkitty]

a side note: i’ve long been curious about just what material the Hopf body was made of, and while chiseling out the rout pieces came off and then broke into smaller pieces in symmetrical layers indicating that it’s some kind of laminate in layers about 2 mm thick. i’ve seen claims on the internet that it’s the same material as the neck and is probably pine or linden. i can’t confirm or deny this, but the neck resembles the Framus laminate necks which i believe were maple. it also seems unlikely that a pine neck would work with the neck’s tiny truss rod and adjuster. at any rate, it seems like plywood was the postwar German material of choice.

lighter for scale.

the grain filler didn’t work well for filling the bridge stud holes. i think i’m going to clear it out and go get some proper filler at Home Depot. i’m tired of trying to make materials do things they weren’t meant to do. there’s holes in the apartment walls that could stand to be filled as well. it’s not entirely dry, so there’s still a chance it’ll work.

[dubkitty]

the Strat knobs were in fucking Charlottesville, but USPS somehow sent the package to Virginia Beach instead of delivering it. so that'll be another day, maybe 2. it's particularly galling because i'd rather wait to play it till it's really finished. that's life in the 21st, no-longer-American Century.

[dubkitty]

i gave up on the rosewood grain filler, which i think is like the colored Minwax fillers they had at Home Depot that say on the label “will not dry to a sandable surface.” it still wasn’t nearly dry so i dug and scraped it out and cleaned off the residue with a wet rag and a blade to get the glue from the tunomatic studs off. the normal Minwax filler i brought home is the same stuff i’ve used to fill holes in the concrete walls of my apartment, and i know how it works. it requests a clean, dry surface so i’ll let it sit overnight. i could do it now but i’m too pooped.

really hope that the aforementioned grain filler works well on the Höfner fretboard. it looks and feels pretty smooth for having only been scraped with an old credit card. if i could get away with only sanding to 1000 i’d be absolutely delighted, but i expect it’ll want the same 1600/2000 treatment as the other rosewood board work i’ve done. if it works well here i’ll take a look at the other guitars that could benefit, the most likely candidate being my weary Epiphone dreadnought. i’m not going to try to fill the trenches between the first few frets, though, unless i find some product currently unknown that does a better job of it. that would probably be biting off more than i could chew, especially since that would really need refretting as well which i absolutely am not going to mess with.

the Stratocaster knobs should be here tomorrow. i’m hoping they work with the pickguard. it’s possible i might decide that it needs faux tortoise knobs to match the switch tips. however, i would prefer not to. Bartleby, signing off.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

there’s Mr. Surfacer, Mr. Finishing Surfacer, Mr. Aqueous Finishing Surfacer, Mr. Mahogany, Mr. Metal, and my choice Mr. Base White.

Gentlemen, this is going to be the greatest heist of all time!

[dubkitty]

LOL!

[dubkitty]

the Strat knobs arrived. unfortunately one of the small barrel knobs was broken in transit, but Xentric was really nice about it and the new knob’s already in the mail.

they work really well…they’re big enough to grab and small enough not to snag anything, and they’re the right diameter to show almost all of the embossed design around the holes in the pickguard. they're also knurled with less abrasive relief than most barrel-style knobs. having seen them i like them better than ones that would match the tips. the tortoise knobs idea came from old British sport and racing cars which combined a British Racing Green finish and lovely burled wood paneling in the dash and interior. wood wouldn’t be practical because you wouldn’t get much pattern in pieces that small so tortoise was the next close thing. i think having all the knobs that material would be too dark. when viewed at a less oblique angle the marker dots on the knobs line up with the center line of their group of lines.

it's actually not altogether bad that the knob arrived broken because it gives me something to practice on before reaming out the aperture of the third knob so it'll fit a 1/4" shaft. the other two fit perfectly with no drama.

the soldering station arrived today, a day ahead of schedule. i'll bring it up, but i'm not even going to open the crate for now. when i do i'm going to watch soldering tutorials so maybe with good equipment and better information i can not suck at soldering. it could happen.

i can't spend much of anything right now because i have to pay off things i ordered on PayPal Credit and Pay Later so there's room for a sizeable monthly payment which will be part of paying for some expensive dental work that's coming up in November. i might squeeze the body for the Esquire in because that's less than $100, but i really shouldn't. if i order anything soon it should be components for the Galaxiemaster. i need to get an 8-way rotary switch and that set of Bakelite arrow knobs. if i do some kind of piezo plan i can use the 4th knob for the piezo. probably do a cowboy wiring setup in that case where rolling the magnetic and piezo volume knobs up and down would substitute for a dedicated blend control because there's not THAT much space in a Jazzmaster pickup layout and it'd be one less wiring problem to solve, but i could certainly redraw the pickguard with a more bulbous lower bout like some of the later Galaxies. once again i say "hmmmm..."

[dbarness]

i gave up on the rosewood grain filler, which i think is like the colored Minwax fillers they had at Home Depot that say on the label “will not dry to a sandable surface.” it still wasn’t nearly dry so i dug and scraped it out and cleaned off the residue with a wet rag and a blade to get the glue from the tunomatic studs off. the normal Minwax filler i brought home is the same stuff i’ve used to fill holes in the concrete walls of my apartment, and i know how it works. it requests a clean, dry surface so i’ll let it sit overnight. i could do it now but i’m too pooped.

really hope that the aforementioned grain filler works well on the Höfner fretboard. it looks and feels pretty smooth for having only been scraped with an old credit card. if i could get away with only sanding to 1000 i’d be absolutely delighted, but i expect it’ll want the same 1600/2000 treatment as the other rosewood board work i’ve done. if it works well here i’ll take a look at the other guitars that could benefit, the most likely candidate being my weary Epiphone dreadnought. i’m not going to try to fill the trenches between the first few frets, though, unless i find some product currently unknown that does a better job of it. that would probably be biting off more than i could chew, especially since that would really need refretting as well which i absolutely am not going to mess with.

the Stratocaster knobs should be here tomorrow. i’m hoping they work with the pickguard. it’s possible i might decide that it needs faux tortoise knobs to match the switch tips. however, i would prefer not to. Bartleby, signing off.

Man, I’ve fought that same Minwax battle before. It’s great once it behaves, but it’s finicky about humidity. Glad the Höfner’s feeling smooth though! I’m curious how the Strat knobs end up looking with the tortoise tips, could be a sweet combo.

[dubkitty]

the replacement Strat knob should be here Tuesday.

i felt like doing a bit of delayed stuff when i got home this morning so i filled the Hopf body’s bridge stud cutouts left over from early work versions. since i had the pot of filler out i also did some screw holes in my living room walls where previous tenants had mounted stuff. the guitar actually looks better than the walls at this point, though as the incomplete change from bright pink to beige shows it’s not completely dry yet. when it’s ready i’ll sand it down to be level with the top and paint over it. note the area between the holes where i removed wood so the bridge pick doesn’t snag on the wood.

i sanded the highest and lowest frets’ board area. results were mixed…the top fret looks and feels like glass, but the filler didn’t stick to the most relieved parts of the space on the bass side of the 1st fret and was only partially effective at filling a divot between the 2d and 3d frets (visible as a light spot in the photo). i’ll probably use CA to fill that, and sand the grainy bits more. i think overall it’s an improvement, but need to finish more of the fingerboard before saying for sure. note: the sanded areas were treated with lemon oil after sanding with 1500 grit only. i need more 2000 grit to really nice up the board which is what i used on the Alvarez.

whenever i notice it i’m struck by how much cooler the reproduction metal logo makes the neck. it’s great that enthusiasts keep this sort of thing alive. i say “enthusiasts” because nobody’s making a living off this sort of inexpensive doo-dad.

at some point in the process i’ll sand down the flat (or perhaps flat-ish) surfaces on the nut so it isn’t such a visual hodgepodge with its partially faded look. don’t need to fill the chipped bit because the string path isn’t affected. if it was a consistent color i’d leave it alone.

[dubkitty]

i’m seriously considering using a Graphtech tunomatic-style piezo bridge on the Galaxiemaster. i’d probably use a regular archtop base rather than the Goldo adjustable base because i think it would be better for the string vibrations. my main hesitancy, other than the inconsistent performance of Graphtech piezos in demos, is the additional cost and ass-pain potential in the installation, particularly when it comes to wiring this shit up. it seems to be a wash as far as whether the volume is sufficient to mix with the magnetic pickups, but i’d probably try it before splashing out more cash on a preamp. as previously noted, a preamp and battery would tuck nicely under the Bigsby in the Jazzmaster tremolo rout though that would require a larger hole for wiring than currently exists for the ground wire. i don’t know if doing it makes sense, but there’s time to consider options since it won’t be at that stage of the decision-making process for months. i would keep the leads on the bridge as long as possible so if i ever got a bug about my butt about MIDI guitar i could rewire it. or maybe i’d run them to a DIN output on a separate socket when installing the bridge. i’d definitely run the main output through a TRS jack so i’d have the option for split piezo and magnetic outputs though i don’t really see needing that unless i wanted separate effects chains.

[dubkitty]

when i was on Facebook this morning GFS posted a 20% off coupon valid on a metric fuckton of stuff including full guitars and various parts. i went ahead and ordered the Daphne Blue double-bound Lido Telecaster body i’ll brain-swap with the green Esquire so i have a working Esquire and can start assembling the Gemini Tele. i’m pretty excited about getting my other project Fender into the world. all that’s left to get other than the pickups is the control plate and wiring. i may order the whole assembly in one swell foop so i don’t have to fuck with it; there’s a seller on Reverb that offers prewired assemblies, but i need to get the recommended cap and pot values from Gemini. i want a Gibson-style switch…the blade switch is yet another Tele thing i don’t like. so it’s getting closer. i just couldn’t pass up that body for $65.

when i talked about the Höfner neck’s grain filler i forgot that the frets above 10-12 (closer to the nut) hadn’t been sanded at all. i went at the first fret with 800->1000 grit and it’s almost nice enough to skip the 1500 though i won’t. once i’ve dealt with the filled areas all that’s left will be leveling the other inlay bands. one more stop on the way to getting this Rube Goldberg plane off the ground.

the Strat knob is being Prepared For Delivery so barring problems getting the knob on the Tonestyler shaft the green Strat really should be done. Mr. Base was in Richmond days ago, but hasn’t made it up I-64 yet so it probably won’t arrive till tomorrow. i’m pretty excited about the potential to have the Jetstar largely done soon.

i’m continuing my boycott of electrical work for now. soon i’ll finish off the M-77T wiring and redo the Esquire switch, neither of which should be too protracted once i figure out the soldering station, but beyond that i’d just as soon let things rest. working with wood is much more appealing at present.