No More Top Or Rear Rout

[Rashin]

Has anyone ever thought of getting rid of the ugly rear and front electronics cavities? Possibly a small recess for each pot, and then a tiny wood plate over it? Small channels could then be drilled to connect the other pockets (i.e. jack, pickups, trem, etc).

[rhoads56]

Has anyone ever thought of getting rid of the ugly rear and front electronics cavities? Possibly a small recess for each pot, and then a tiny wood plate over it? Small channels could then be drilled to connect the other pockets (i.e. jack, pickups, trem, etc).

So instead of one big plate, you want a plate for each component, eg: one for the tone, one for the volume, one for the switch, etc etc etc.

Just build a hollowbody.

[Prostheta]

Easy - just cheat. Rout a cavity for a battery box (I use a lot of EMGs) at the bottom of the side of the guitar but rout it a bit deeper and fan it outwards into the body. Drill your pot mounting into this "side cavity" and wire up as normal. Insert battery box and get ready to confuse people. Either that or rout your cavity into the side of a two-piece or three-piece blank bringing the pup wires out roughly where the cavities will go (remembering to mark it out on top) and wire up your electronics before you glue up. You'll never get to service the electronics, but at least you won't get dust ingress if you seal up the wiring holes.

Or as Perry says, build a hollowbody :-D

[Drak]

Has anyone ever thought of getting rid of the ugly rear and front electronics cavities?

I don't think they're ugly, and I have no good reason to try and get rid of them.

[Rashin]

I meant more of a like a small plug that would easily hide the pot (it would have to be a mini one). It would not be a pickguard. It would look exactly like it would with a rear rout. And yes, I think many would agree that electronics cavities are ugly.

[Rashin]

granted I am just proposing this idea. It may not work...

[Robert Irizarry]

Interesting enough idea but how do you "connect the dots"? That is, how do you drill the holes needed to run wiring among the components?

Wow, eleventuple post. I don't know how you did it Robert, but for my continued sanity, try not to do it again!

Edited September 29, 2006 by Setch

[Rashin]

With deep enough holes a long drill bit may work.

something like this.....

Edited September 29, 2006 by Rashin

[Setch]

You'd then have to wire each pot individually, in situ, and find a way to tighten it without torquing the shaft of the pot (you can't hold the body of the pot to tighten it because it's hidden).

Sounds like a massive PITA for relatively little benefit. IMO there are already ways to minimise the cosmetic impact of cavity covers, without having to sacrifice practicality.

Eg:

[Logical Frank]

If you have a sepereate top, you could rout all the control cavities into the body and just drill holes in the top for the shafts of the controls. Then you'd install the electronics in the top before you put it on almost like you would into a strat pickguard. Of course, you'd have a hell of a time making any changes once it was glued together.

[al heeley]

Aww, setch, your work is just gobsmacking. Even the back, it's beautiful.

Sigh.

[Setch]

Trust me Al, my 1st didn't look like that It'll come with time.

[Prostheta]

Let's hope your first lock looks like that Cowboy :-)

[Desopolis]

that back is awesome...

one thing you could allways try is rout the cavity in the body, then put the top onto it. drill through.. have a wire on the pot, fish it through and there you go..

hard as hell to do, and if a pot ever went out the guitar is ruined.

I did somthing similar with my inlayed pickguard, but I made a pamel removable...

[spazzyone]

To Hell with all this hidden info i want that guitar setch

ill trade you my perfectly healthy beutiful blonde haired kids for that guitar

or i can wash your toilet with half a toothbrush for a liftime choice is yours

Edited September 30, 2006 by spazzyone

[psw]

I like the idea of hidden pots and stuff on a custom guitar...and I like the idea of hiding the thing under the knob some how. There would be a way of doing this and there are some really nice, completely sealed miniture square pots about now that don't cost that much and are smaller than most knobs and would do the job nicely...

One catch though...no room for the sustainer circuit if you did it this way...or add on switches and such...very important I'm sure you'd agree.

Interesting idea though Rashin and thanks for posting it...anything that stimulates thought, is a good thought! pete

[Prostheta]

I agree. Luthiers and most "creative artisans" in general tend to be creative thinkers. Anything from radius routing jigs to bits of masking tape on drill bits as depth stops.

Once the free-thought ban comes into place however, we'll all be forced to play Telecasters. People will line up at the rallies to throw their bells and whistles on the fire. :-D

Back on topic, here's an idea:

If you fashion a piece of wood say, 1/4" thick which the pot screws onto and that the knob can hide, you could possibly secure that wood to the body using small countersunk screws at 45° "fanning outwards" into the guitar body.

Even sillier, how about routing a recess for the pot into the body and epoxying a rare earth magnet into the bottom which keeps the pot from falling out? I'm sure pots have a much bigger body footprint than most knobs though.

[oz tradie]

There would be a way of doing this and there are some really nice, completely sealed miniture square pots about now that don't cost that much and are smaller than most knobs and would do the job nicely...

Is there any more info on these, Pete ? ( availability, sizes, Bueller?)

This may well end up not being a worthwhile proposition when all is said and done, but that doesn't mean ideas such as this should be dismissed without some further thought and brainstorming to come up with a conclusion.

It's off the wall ideas like this that have the propensity to bring about change in the way that things can be done. And that's what excites me about this forum.

cheers, Stu

[Rashin]

Thanks for all the creative input, and I take back my comment on ugly control cavities after seeing that last guitar posted. I am waiting on finishing a guitar I am working on until I figure this one out. I know it can be done! I like the idea of countersunk screws which are angled into the body.

[psw]

I was thinking of these...I was using them for something on the sustainer project...I needed something small.

Unfortunately, I now see that the standard values available from Jaycar (aust) did not include 250 or 500k values!!! They do have 1-10-100-1M values like this though in dual and single gang...

Jaycar 1M sealed pots

I am sure you could get them somewhere in those values, but it may be a little trickier. They also take "metric" knobs (though I recall pushing a strat knob on?!) but you could use a screw knob on them anyway

They are pretty cool, about 1/2 inch square and completely sealed so no dust or anything is going to get into them. They are ideal if you wanted to do some kind of active electronics that required a small board inside the guitar, for which these values are typical.

There is a way of adjucting pot values with resistors too I think, not sure, and that may make them more adaptable.

They may also be of benefit for hollowbody or tricky insertions of controls through battery boxes, output plates, side plates, or something of that sort.

Anyway...maybe that will help complete the thread a little more, give people another option and provide a future resource when or if the time comes to use something this small!!!

Best luck... pete

[spazzyone]

this may sound retarted

but say you drilled a 7/8" hole for the output jack like on a tele

but add a bit extension and drilled to your desired pot location (a tunnel)

then drilled your mounting hole through the top into the tunnel

and "fished" a mini pot trough the tunnel and into

the mounting hole?

a pain in the ass but im sure (someone) could do it easily

say Perry or Setch maybe ?

Edited October 3, 2006 by spazzyone

[Xanthus]

Wow. Forever impressed, Setch.

While we're on the topic, what DID your first guitar look like?

And I LOVE how people like you can make cavity covers out of the same wood, matching up grain and everything! How does that happen, do you just order the wood bigger than needed and take a slice off the back, like a veneer?

::EDIT::

Ever since my control cavity and wiring experience/mishap, I've been thinking not really of ways to hide the control cavities, but the controls. I LOVE minimalistic-looking guitar faces. So I've been toying with the idea or, ere I were to make a Vai-style guitar, to route the monkey-grip out 3/4 of the way, starting from the back. I personally don't like the grip, but I thought it could be a cool place to mount a switch or knob or something, no?

Haha, probably not

Edited October 3, 2006 by Xanthus

[Xanthus]

GOT IT!

Ok, so you'd want to take a body and a cap or a two-piece body, and route out the top and bottom where you want the cavity to be. You would drill the holes down through the top, where you'd want the knobs and whatnot to go. Then, wire up the whole thing onto a board like this. Not on a silicon wafer, but a piece of whatever you think would be sturdy. wire the pickup wires, feed them through to the pickups, and tie like a piece of string or something to the pots or switch so you can manouver it when you glue the top on. Stick the necessary wires going to the pickup jack out the side, then glue the top on. Paint/stain as needed, watch out for the wires sticking out, then pull the pots and switches through the top of the guitar with the strings you attached, tighten up the screws, sort the pickups out, and wire the output jack on.

Of course, hope to god your wiring is correct the first time.

Convoluted, yes, practical, no, but it's what I came up with.

Ok, I'm done now. Seriously.

[Prostheta]

Umm. Yeah. That would do it.

Practical? Nah. You need to buy mechanical gear that *WILL NOT* screw up in the short term.

Go Alps!

[Rashin]

Ok I think I got it. I'll see if I can possibly get this done tonight and I can upload some pictures. I think the trick is to get a nice tight fit on the plug so it can be tapped in, and it will come out with some considerable force if needed. You could also use some long flathead screws if you wanted to hold it in with a press fit. Is there an american distributor for those Jaycar Pots? Mini pots (round body) would also work, but you would have to make a circular bore on the inside of the plug, and accomodate the solder eyes. Let me know what you guys think.