Drak Build: Althea (Spruce Scarab)

[Bizman62]

3 hours ago, Drak said:

Shooting that light Pecan burst really paid off, so thanks @komodo

Definitely that! I just prepared a chicken for the oven, it looked a lot like the clearcoat version and I expect it to get a similar Pecan burst with some Koa darkness at the wingtips. Roasted and baked to deliciousness instead of raw...

[Drak]

7 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

I just prepared a chicken for the oven.

It looked a lot like the clearcoat version and I expect it to get a similar Pecan burst with some Koa darkness at the wingtips.

Roasted and baked to deliciousness instead of raw...

Yes, all you extrapolated on there are varying shades of brown.

It's nice to give the 'Cowboy Sunset' palette of reds/yellows/browns a break now and then.

[Drak]

So the Dead Machine and Angkor Wat are running neck and neck to the finish line.

Both have had the finish finished and are all super glossed now.

Both are completely done and wrapped, all I have to do is mount the necks and put strings on them.

But...P-90's are funny animals. There's really not a lot of pickup height adjustment available, which I'm used to having loads of adjustment via regular pickup mounting screws. So I put the neck in place and ran a 4' rule down the beam with the bridge in place to check available heights and see if I was even within range of normal. The neck came in right on target, the bridge needed a 3/16" riser made for it, so I just did that. The difference between the height of the pickup and the additional screw length is 1/2". And the screw needs a little bit of something to bit into, so take away another 1/8", which leaves me with a total of 3/8" adjustment total. That's it, 3/8" of adjustment, so they absolutely must be within range starting out before you even get that much adjustment.

But...its looking awfully sweet, the next pics you see will be done and strung.

This guitar, really, is a tribute to the Scott Walker 'ethic' and Neal Casal's guitar.

It's certainly not a copy, not even close, (I don't do copies and I don't even like copies) but Neal's guitar, via Scott Walker, 'sprang' from the 'Jerry scene'.

And I got the idea for the Koa centerpiece from Walker's Neal Casal guitar and that whole 'Garcia guitar' scene.

Which, in my eyes, blew this build up to a far greater guitar than it would have been otherwise.

And...that's how inspiration should work, after all. Not by copying, but by being inspired.

(Truth be known, I like mine better...but it should be that way, in my view).

So it's heritage is: Garcia>Cripes>Walker>Casal>, with my Drak 'twist' on things, of course.

[Gogzs]

That looks pretty damn sweet. 

[ScottR]

16 hours ago, Drak said:

(Truth be known, I like mine better...but it should be that way, in my view).

Exactly.

SR

[Georg_Figel]

absolutely incredible pieces of koa, and you finished it so well, very good finishing around the edges of all these parts.

[Drak]

OK kiddos, both the Dead Machine and Angkor Wat are hardwared, wired, working, glossed, and finished.

Except I'm waiting on an order of strings so I can mount and adjust the necks and do the setup and birth these things for real.

So, here's the Dead Machine, done, waiting on strings.

Here are the specs:

Core Wood: 1-Piece Mahogany

Top Wood: 1/2" Bookmatched Spruce

Accent Wood: Pickup cover, rear Control cover, Headstock veneer, Truss Rod cover. Figured Koa

Hardware: Sperzel brushed gold locking tuners, Gotoh fine-tuning tailpiece, Harmonica bridge, gold dome knobs, neck plate, and strap bushings

Pickups: Late 70's Bill Lawrence L-560 set. 8k neck, 12k bridge

Passive Electronics: Schaller 5-way 'E' model Megaswitch (wired for 2 HB's), passive 500k volume, passive 250k tone, .01uF tone cap

Active Electronics: EMG Afterburner preamp, EMG EXG tone pot, EMG SPC tone pot

 

[Drak]

I want to see how close tonally I can get to Wolf on Althea.

Love the tune, love the tone.

John Mayer on Wolf giving Althea a Shot

And here's Neal Casal giving it a little what fer.

Big difference in tone, Wolf certainly has a special something going for it.

Neal Casal and his Scott Walker giving Althea a Shot

 

 

[Drak]

[ScottR]

That's a stunner Drak!

And the finish is brilliant as always. How many coats of clear did you spray?

SR

[Drak]

1 hour ago, ScottR said:

How many coats of clear did you spray?

Honestly, I don't know, I have so many going at the same time I don't really keep track, I just kind of 'know'.

Tho, I don't use as many as I use to, once I can tell its done, I stop.

So figure on average from a dead-stop w/ a filled finish (CA glue here) with level-sands in-between, 7-9-ish.

 

I learned the basic chord structures and jam box for Althea today, haha!

[Drak]

Another thread closure post, the Dead Machine is strung and done.

Can you hear me Jerry, can you hear me playing Althea?

I think I'm going to re-name this one Althea, no offense to Robin Trower, better than the Dead Machine I think.

Two down, two more in the corral, ready to go.

 

 

 

[Drak]

So, the thread is not quite 'dead' yet <get it?> I changed the thread title to Althea, as it has formally been re-named now.

A few things after setup and playing it in has caused me to once again rip it down to fix/adjust a few things. Which is not abnormal, really. The cool thing is all I had to do was loosen the strings, pull the neck screws, and remove the tailpiece and that whole 'assembly' came off as one, saving the strings. So the neck, strings, and tailpiece are all sitting off to the side for the moment, still together.

There was a severe buzz in the TOM area when the high E was played, anywhere along the path. So I removed all four studs (TOM and tailpiece) and teflon taped them with a few wraps. I have a feeling it was the bridge side TOM stud vibrating inside the insert, but I did all four of them anyway.

Also, I wasn't comfortable with the pickup height adjustment (as I stated earlier, you only get 3/8" travel, that's IT with P90's) And they were a little too close to barely being screwed in at proper playing height. So I made a pair of 1/8" spacers and glued them to the bottom of the pickup cavities which should be within a comfortable range now.

Next, the pickups just weren't hitting 'The Jerry' tone, which I have really zeroed in on in the past few weeks, watching Mayer playing various guitars including Wolf, and learning Althea. My ears are really dialed into that tone now. So I looked through the drawer to find something more to the point. The neck was a bit too big, fat, and warm (even at 8k) and the bridge didn't have enough top and bottom clarity, it sounded all mids-y.

The neck pickup I now chose is nearly the same resistance of the neck pickup in Angkor (7.3k) but a totally different pickup by design. Its another Vintage Vibe pickup, but this one is a P-90 sized pickup (obviously), but designed far more like a single coil, as it has a double row of alnico rod magnets, like a standard SC has. But its a HB pickup. So that should bring the clarity with depth and warmth I'm looking for.

I did a little 'pickup rehab' job on the VV neck, as years previously I had sprayed the top gold.

I'll post a few interesting pics shortly when its put back together.

[ADFinlayson]

Love that, I never really considered spruce as a top wood for anything other than acoustic/archtop builds, I bet it's a lot nicer to carve than maple. The headstock and control cover are nice little touches too. 

[Drak]

Carving Spruce compared to Maple, or Purpleheart, or Oak, is like a hot knife through butter, easy-peasey.

OK, I think I can call it done now for the most part.

Teflon taping the studs seems to have eliminated the severe buzz...but 'something' is still 'stealing' energy from the high E string. All other strings ring out beautifully, and the high E sounds plinky in comparison, Oh well, I'll chase it down and figure it out, maybe a nut issue, maybe it needs a string retainer, maybe harmonica bridges just suck in the end.

It went through four completely different pickup changes before I finally figured everything out and circled closely back to the original idea.

The final answer was to bring down the 'heat' a few notches. The Lawrence L500 series are known for volume and clarity and holding it together under volume, they don't really compress much or dirty up too easily, that's what they're known for, so I thought they would work here. But there was just too much boldness and warmth. For Jerry-Tones anyway.

So the final answer was to eliminate the bridge pickup (12k), move the neck pickup (8k) to the bridge position, and installed a real P-90 (6.3k) in the neck. The P-90 is a Zhangbucker Jazz 90.

NOW it has Jerry-tone in all positions, in many flavors, and it 'is' what it was meant to be all along now.