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

[dubkitty]

this one here:

i like the semi-industrial finish better here than on the bouzouki. the completely flat surfaces of the solid body really show fingerprints. in general i try to avoid black guitars for this reason, but if you wanted a Gretsch Jet before the mid-00s when they started making other colors consistently you got black. at least you could get white Les Paul Customs.

[dubkitty]

the knobs arrived. i like them a lot more than the standard knobs as shown on the mandolin. i reckon i’ll get another set if i get the mandolin.

IMG_6455.jpeg (73.08 KiB) Viewed 2607 times

[dubkitty]

i’m halfway done with the Hopf fingerboard. it’s coming along quite nicely. interestingly, the lower frets go more quickly than the small ones at the high end. maybe it’s easier to get a consistent surface when there’s more room to work. there’s seven frets left, so everything should be ready this weekend at which point i’ll mount the neck to the body. i could string it up at that point and try to
adjust the truss rod and intonate it, at least to the extent possible with a bridge with no individual saddles to adjust . when i need to do the electronics i’ll just have to loosen the strings enough to pop them out of the tailpiece. i think. if not i’ll wait to string it until the pickguard is finished. i admit that i’m really hot to see it as a whole guitar rather than parts and pieces.

[coldbrightsunlight]

and autoharp strings are $125 a set of 36.

Looks like a great selection of instruments for that recording you're talking about though. I have two friends whose house is like that, full of great interesting instruments.

[dubkitty]

i would get all kinds of odd stringed instruments, but at 68 i don’t really have time to learn things i’m totally unfamiliar with. if i was 30 i’d totally get a saz or a sarod…back then i could barely afford strings for the (3) guitars i had. i feel OK with mandolin-family instruments because i was a decent mando player, but i’m no longer interested in banjo because i can’t think of anything i’d want to play on one given my total disinterest in country and bluegrass forms. i used to love the precursors to “Americana,” but nowadays that kind of thing has me diving for the radio knob. America ruined Americana for me.

if given the opportunity to pick something to acquire it’d be a lap steel or pedal steel. i did OK on pedal steel, but a passable (3 pedals/1 or 2 knee levers) single-neck PS is well over $2000 used, so a lap steel is more likely. National/Valco steels with the Ry Cooder pickup are around $400-500 which could be possible later this year.

the silver lining to the cost of autoharp strings is that given that they’re not noted for bright tone—in fact, standard practice apparently is to use felt picks, no doubt to de-emphasize the sound of the deadened strings still being struck—i probably won’t have to change them again (or only once if i survive that long) for the rest of my life.

autoharp strings are odd…the wound strings, like piano strings, are only wound on the part of the string that resonates. the ball end and tuner post end are both bare core wire.

[dubkitty]

i finished the Hopf neck. i'm happy with the result. next i'm going to do the Höfner neck while i have my chops up, alternating with changing the autoharp strings. i'm really pleased that i got it done before i intended to. tomorrow i'll mount the neck to the body so we can see it as a whole guitar.

[dubkitty]

been working on the Höfner neck. it’s more challenging than the Hopf for a couple of reasons…the fingerboard is much more radiused than the fairly flat Hopf board, and it’s also been played on quite a bit, meaning that the surface is more pitted, dinged and cracked and thus more difficult to get entirely smooth. the frets are also more “jumbo” (tall/fat) so they tend to be more challenging to tape off with masking tape. i don’t have any good ideas about how to fill the pits etc. so for now i’m just getting it as smooth as i can. i’m dubious about using grain filler because it’s not going to improve that much.

i reworked the first (19th fret) set of stripey celluloid pearloid/tortoise/pearloid binding strips. getting the markers flat ends up with the plastic strips being lower to the surface than the wood. when i went over it again i was able to make the transition more gentle. still looks a bit odd close-up, but nobody’s ever gonna put their snoot that close to the neck. hopefully the slight differences in fingerboard level won’t make it play out of tune.

while thinking about the Galaxiemaster and trying to find a better tremolo solution than the $29 Chinese JM trem, it struck me that the Bigsby B50 that came off the Double Jet will kind of cover the JM trem rout. it’ll have a mysterious cavity underneath, which it strikes me could be a spiffing spot for the electronics for a piezo pickup which i’ve always wanted to try. the Kondor would also be nice with a piezo, but i don’t know if there’s room to fit the necessary doodads (battery, amplifier module) in the JM trem rout. i’d rather have a different trem because i already have 5 guitars with Bigsbys on and i’m intrigued by oddball 60s overseas trems, but there’s an argument to be made that the simplicity and stability of the B50 would be a familiar aspect of what in many ways will be an odd guitar to get accustomed to.

Pickguardian has some pretty creative solutions for pickguard material that could go well with the GXM, especially if the color of the body deepens due to polishing. some materials you’d expect to see on 60s Italian guitars, and i mean that in the nicest way possible.

it’s really exciting to have both of these closer to working. the Galaxiemaster will still be a lot more work than i’d prefer, but hopefully at the end it’s a Graveyard Smash. the more i consider it, the better the Bigsby solution seems to work.

[dubkitty]

on reflection i’m going to do the rosewood grain filler thing with the Höfner neck…StewMac represents that it’ll work, and they have 2 different shades. i’ll get the more reddish option because this board is much redder than the Hopf board. it really needs the help. can’t order the filler until next weekend but i might work on flattening the remaining plastic inlay strips. the imbalance is much less severe at the middle positions than at the top of the neck, so a bit of filing and some sanding should be adequate. anyway, this is my cue to put the Hopf neck and body together and figure out how to do the pickguard mods to swap in the later style of Hopf/Schaller pickups, which are slightly larger than the old ones.

started restringing the autoharp and the new wound strings sound really pretty plucked like a zither, another use for it besides folk strumming. i have a Pearl marching-band chimes/glockenspiel thingy that came with hard mallets which might be a thing for the autoharp. (i’ll have to try them (the chimes and the mallets on the auroharp) on the BoC thing. autoharp tuning posts aren’t exactly precise. i’m just going by ear for now and will dial it in with an electronic tuner once the new strings are on.

at some point tomorrow i’m going to plug the bouzouki, and perhaps a guitar, into the AC15 and see if i still like it enough to keep.

[dubkitty]

i went back over this thread and i did a lot in the past year:

1. a couple of rounds of work on the Kondor including routing in the control cavity, rewiring and adding a 6-position tone switch, changing the tuner buttons, and a sticker for the headstock
2. replacing the bridge on the Jazzmaster
3. installing the pickup in the acoustic 12-string and sanding/polishing the fingerboard
4. ordered all the parts for the Hopf; sanded the fingerboard
5. polished out the finish on the DeArmond M-75T (the blue sparkly guitar) and added clear aftermarket pickguard
6. installed Stetsbar tremolo on Guild Jetstar
7. small cosmetic changes to Epiphone SG
8. new pickguard for Duo Sonic; pickup cavity routs to suit to correct pickup position to vintage-correct
9. ordered body for Galaxiemaster; worked on Höfner fingerboard, cleaned tuners
10. replaced bridge on Gretsch Pro Jet
11. fixed bridge position on Stratocaster
12. changed tuners on electric bouzouki

[dubkitty]

results:
8 finished guitars
bouzouki finished
3 projects advanced

[dubkitty]

Hopf with the neck on. the original mount was a 3-bolt design, which i filled and redrilled for a standard Fender-sized 4-bolt neck plate when i had the Höfner neck on. in retrospect the reason i couldn’t kludge by with that neck wasn’t just scale, it was that the Hopf is a 20-fret neck while the Höfner is 22 frets. there was absolutely no ambiguity about the neck position, with a straight edge on the pickguard that the flat butt of the neck rests against. you can see scratches in the pickguard where the neck was adjusted via a hex key in the heel. next the guard comes off and i figure out how to transfer over the Jupiter 62 pickups. removed the bad photo; a better one appears below.

[dubkitty]

currently restringing the autoharp, which is a whole other adventure.

[dubkitty]

as promised, here's a better view of the Hopf made back into a guitar. i'd forgotten how utterly trashed the hammertone metallic blue finish is. i'm ordering brush-on clear coat from StewMac to tip into the big scrapes. it's an odd feeling, holding a guitar with a body that's apparently been to the Ostfront and a neck that's NOS. is this what those over-thought Fender and Fender-esque relic guitar jobs feel like?

the bridge studs for the tunomatic i put on are still there. they're countersunk to the top surface so they won't interfere with placing the correct bridge. they stuck out like a sore thumb, though, due to the BRIGHT chrome finish so i dug deep in the parts box and found some enamel hobbyist paints i'd bought in 2013 as part of early Kondor fun. surprisingly, 10 years in storage doesn't seem to have affected the paint in any way, and they pretty much blend into the pickguard which is also black now that they're painted.

i swapped the paddle switch selectors from the Jupiter 62 guard which are in much better condition that the ones on the Twisty. the volume knob will be a bit tricky...the one from the Jupiter is design correct while the one on the Twisty is so wrong that the numbers around the edge run anti-clockwise to the labelling on the guard. i assume a previous owner put a Framus knob on because it was available. the problem is that the Jupiter knob accepts D-shaped shafts, but the volume control on the Twisty has a round shaft so i'll need to file a flat side onto that shaft to accept the knob. aluminum, no big whoop.

the tricky part will be replacing the pickups since the barkier Schaller pickups from the Planets series are a good bit larger (well, a few mm anyway) so some judicious filing is in the works. i believe these guards use a typical German pickup-wiring approach with a single hot conductor from each pickup inside a shielded braid that shunts signal to ground, so it should be simple to splice the control harness from the Twisty to the Jupiter pickups. "should be." write that on my fuckin' urn.

but given the amount left to do and the fact that i can't order finishing supplies until Friday, the rest could very well be done by the end of the weekend, though there's a Valentines' festivity and picking up Becky's adorable new bulldog puppy that will eat some of my "free" time. i have to balance my need to Have Stuff Finished with the need to take care with all this. waiting for the clear coat to dry will drive me batshit.

having checked because it seems so small, the Twisty will not fit the Mustang/Jaguar flat cases only because the upper horn is too long and i'd have to take out a piece of the divider. so Strat case it is! an important milestone in the life of a guitar project is when it's put together enough to get its own hard case.

fan note: yes, that is the quilt from the 2012-13 photos. the present-day artist refuses to needlessly replace stuff!

i finished restringing the autoharp yesterday. i highly recommend not doing this...it's incredibly time-consuming, and tuning and re-tuning and RE-tuning is a bitch because autoharp tuning pegs are about as hard to get on pitch as violin pegs. friction is not my friend in this, and 3-in-1 oil just made bank over me having to lubricate 36, count 'em, 36 tuning posts. the living room finally quit reeking of light oil this morning. seriously, if you have an autoharp with old/dead/missing strings just go buy a newer one. they go for $150-200 in the used market, and new strings as noted are $120-130 a set. after going through the tuning procedure (did i mention how horrible that is?) 3 or 4 times, it's settling in but not at a steady state. LOTS of fine tuning involved. the lowest and highest strings seem to cause the most drama. the new strings are brass- or bronze-wound in the lower courses (the old ones were nickel or steel-wound far as i could tell through the crust of corrosion), adding warmth to the tinkle. yes, i did do the strings first singly and then in groups of 4 to 6 going up the scale and preliminarily tuned each string when installed. i don't think it's a good idea to vary the string tension so radically by taking all the strings off at once. at some point i'll have to get a pickup because this thing NEEDS to be run through the BlueSky infinite reverb patch (OmniChords for the poor!). probably just get an Oyster-style contact mic because the two systems available for autoharp are (1) an internal transducer i'm not sure would install well in my harp, which is a cheapie 12-chord version called the Educator, and (2) an external mic with a 6" stalk that i expect would pick up extraneous noise on the strings because it reads from the soundhole. it'll be nice in a couple of days when the strings have stretched and settled in. i've said before but will reiterate that my favorite thing about doing guitar/instrument projects is when i finish one it's like getting gifted a whole new instrument. the improvements in the Squier CVJM made it nicer and work better, and the autoharp is now useable.

i'll tell you what saved my ass tuning the autoharp: the clip-on tuner i bought when i went shopping for Animals Pedal boxes a few weeks back. clips onto the structure that supports the chord bars. i would have died trying to tune it by ear, and pulling out one of the boards just to use the tuner with a mic running into it would be astronomically annoying.

next up: pickguard mods. be there...aloha.

that's two 60s/70s dialogue references in 24 hours. sorry for the late-boomer shit.

[dubkitty]

today will be a quiet projects day. i plan to try unsoldering the brass can that shields the electronics on the Jupiter 62 guard, partially to see if i could do that on the Twisty guard if needed and partially because i want to steal the Schaller tone switch for use in the Galaxiemaster. i'm not sure if my iron will get hot enough to do the job without overheating. if it's a lost cause i'll just fabricate a different tone switch with a four-position rotary switch. it's a pretty simple circuit:

position 1 (T-): 1nF cap
position 2 (T- B-) 1nF cap + 470k resistor
position 3: (T+ B+): BYP
position 4 (T+): 22uF resistor

so it won't be a horrible loss if it doesn't work. in the best of all possible worlds i could yank the entire harness from the Jupiter guard and put it in the Twisty guard, but i don't think that will work because the control placement is different. i may be able to graft the volume knob from the Twisty, which is way out of position for the Jupiter harness, onto the rest of the Jupiter guts. we'll see.

i'll also file the shaft on the Twisty's volume control so it works with the (correct) knob from the Jupiter guard. other than that i'm taking a little time to rest and formulate, thinking about how to accomplish the Galaxiemaster wiring. at the moment i'm leaning towards individual on/off slide switches for the 3 pickups rather than individual roller-pot volume controls, which are a cool idea but kind of useless to me because i never blend the pickups using their volume controls and which would be tricky to adapt. if the Jupiter tone switch works that'll be a leap forward. i enjoy watching the blanks on these projects gradually fill in as i find answers and parts.

[dubkitty]

i managed to get the can off the Jupiter controls. it wasn't easy, and required that i run the soldering iron as hot as it will go (it overheats at 900°F) to make a dent in the solder. i don't know what kind of solder they were using in West Germany in the 60s, but it frightens me. it should be fairly simple to move the tone switch to the Galaxiemaster...there's a big cap in the circuit that's wired between the pickup selector (center) and the tone switch (at top), which can probably just sit in the cavity with the tone switch. still thinking about moving the pickups and switches in one swell foop, but i'd have to take the Twisty guard off and remove that can, too, so it might be simpler just to graft the pickups onto the existing Twisty harness. yes, it's that much of a pain removing the can.

the pickguards compared, for reference.

pickups.jpg (135.39 KiB) Viewed 725 times

you can see that the harness with switches from the Jupiter will fit the Twisty guard, but i'd have to wire the volume knob. maybe that could stay in the Twisty and splice into the rest of the harnesses.

i would be a much happier guy if i didn't have to deal with the electrical side of guitar work. woodworking can be enjoyable; soldering never is.