Drak Build: The De-Constructed Eddie (VH)

[Drak]

HA! So based on Prostheta's Frankie build, which has invigorated my craven wanton lust for EVH tone, and my having a suitable pickup for the job, and no place for it to call home...I figured out a way to make all components happy and co-habitable. So the build first: This is another old build, my first pics of it date to 2010, and it has sat on the shelf for quite some time. Why? Because it's a 2-HB build, and TBH, I simply just didn't need another 2-HB guitar.  The ones I already have are awesome and I love them already. I'm close to being topped out on guitars, so something really has to move me to get me to finish them anymore. I do have my limits on 'things'...The EVH 'thing' is what triggered this back into Action Jackson land. The body and neck are actually done, have Been Done, minus all the Floyd architecture, which is exactly where this thread will pick up.

Where Prostheta's Frankie is (guessing) a 6-screw trem, this will be a 'Floyd', which would place it in Eddie's later years. Music Man, Wolfgang, whatevers, something like that.

As I can deduce, Eddie had a somewhat hot PAF in the Frank, and moved to the hotter winds when he switched to floaters. I could be completely wrong here, but that story is working for me. So my build is a 'later' Eddie thing, and will be Floyded, which I now have to do. Invasive, yes, as the guitar is done, has been done, for years.

So that's the build. The pickup is a Duncan Custom Custom I have mag-swapped with a roughcast UOA5 magnet. And its in a gold covered housing. So not the easiest thing to fit a gold covered pickup into an EVH framework, but what the hell, let's do this. The neck pickup I'm going to use (probably, as its also gold covered) is a Duncan APH-1 neck, which is an A2 at 7.2k (I think)

So, here are a few pics dating back to 2010 for starters. The body is Spalted Maple over Black Limba.

As you can notice, the control cavity architecture has been designed for my EMG active setup, so it should be a fire-breather combined with the customized CC.

 

 

[Gogzs]

Ufff, this one will be fun to watch, great start! 

[Drak]

The neck is a neck I bought from StewMac back when they were actually Stewart-MacDonald, about 20, 25 years ago.

I applied a matching Spalted Maple headstock veneer on it as I usually do.

If you notice, it has a 'section' for you to router out the black 'hump' above the nut and install a locking nut, it's 'built-in', but you have to route it out.

[Prostheta]

But are you going to carve it with a butter knife....?

[Drak]

The beginnings of the finish. Notice my lack of decision for the bridge at this point, I just didn't know what I wanted to do yet.

I should add that I do not own a SINGLE Strat type of guitar, this will be the single only one, as I just never really preferred stratocaster shaped guitars since that is the most widely popular guitar shape On The Planet, and I don't like that, generally.

This was CA glue first coat, you can see the foam brush there, necessary for Spalt.

 

[Drak]

So here is an intended mock-up from  years ago, I was going to use a black Gotoh HB Tele bridge on it.

The finish isn't done, I bursted it later on.

Kinda liked that black hardware look, and I think I'm going to use a black Floyd on it.

I think it'll look nice with the gold pickups and spalted look.

The next pics you see will be right here, right now, live updates, I'm getting ready to route for the Floyd.

The bridge pickup was routed to fit for for the Gotoh Tele bridge, and it's a little too close to the Floyd for my liking.

Had I known, I would have moved the bridge pickup location up a little, but we gotta deal wid it.

I'm locked in at the top, no room to maneuver the neck forward to move the bridge back any.

The only thing I can do is to re-cut the bridge pocket a little bit forward and try to hide or patch any obvious shennanigans in the area between the Floyd pocket and the bridge pickup ring.

But I'll wait and cut the Floyd before I make any decisions for that detail. I would really like the pickup set towards the neck just a tad more.

[ScottR]

That is a very fine piece of spalted maple. I'm looking forward to the adventure your decision making process takes us on.

SR

[Drak]

I got everything Floyd-related done to the body today, will do the (required) black cavity spray tomorrow probably, weather permitting.

Then pics, once everything's blacked out properly.

I decided once this is all done, I'm going to scuff-scratch the finish w/ 400 and spray another coat or two over the whole thing.

It's not that hard, and I think it'll look sharper with another clear over all the Floyd cavities.

Especially if I have to 'fix a shennanigan' at the bridge/pickup area which may be coming up.

It doesn't make sense to me to go to all the trouble of building a guitar and leave it with a less-than-optional functional situation.

Proper function over cosmetic flaws, all day long, they're not wall-art after all.

And I never liked bridge pickups that sit too close to the bridge, I typically always move mine forward just a scratch, a pet peeve of mine.

Not so much that anyone would notice unless they were looking closely, but I usually move them 1/4" forward from 'normal' or so.

[ScottR]

12 minutes ago, Drak said:

And I never liked bridge pickups that sit too close to the bridge, I typically always move mine forward just a scratch, a pet peeve of mine.

Not so much that anyone would notice unless they were looking closely, but I usually move them 1/4" forward from 'normal' or so.

You too?

I like to add just a bit of warmth to the bridge pick-up--get away from the ice=pick.

SR

[Prostheta]

That said, harmonic nodes/antinodes bunch up a lot near the bridge, so you do get a more consistent icepick sound across the board!

[Bizman62]

2 hours ago, Prostheta said:

harmonic nodes/antinodes bunch up a lot near the bridge, so you do get a more consistent icepick sound across the board!

Thanks for reminding! I was already making a mental note to "add warmth" to the neck pickups of my next builds but you gave a valid argument not to. Then again, a quarter of an inch isn't much compared to the magnetic field of a pickup. And on third thought it's easy to add warmth to the icepick sound by adding some bridge pickup with a blender pot. I've got a Strat doing that and on my current build I had the idea of replacing the three way blade switch with a sliding blender pot with a center notch. Unfortunately I never got the sliders, either they were never sent or, as I've learned to think due to recent experience, Posti never announced me that they had arrived and sent them back.

[Prostheta]

Great idea about the sliding pot! I might have to use that myself. 

[Bizman62]

Just be warned, it isn't too easy to find a center notched fader pot of 250 or 500 kohms! At least not as single pieces.

[Prostheta]

Quite likely the case. I'll cross that when I come to it. I think EVH managed to accidentally whang his way around having an icepick-y tone (VH-1 was pretty brash though) by using a lower value pot that one would normally use with a bridge HB. Probably a vintage 300k or maybe even a 250k. Those'll soon roll off that mean top end, as will curly cords and all that.

[Drak]

So I took some measurements of this build compared to the Oak Floyd (I took some pics, will post later) From the nose of the high E saddle to the edge of the pickup on the Oak is 1 1/16". The same measurement on the deconstructed Eddie is 7/8", so that's a 3/16" difference. Which I consider quite substantial at that end of the pool.

I asked myself if I really wanted to go to the trouble and spend the time doing a patch job.

So you know what I did? I looked up some pics of Frankie for reference . From what I can see, I would estimate the high E edge of the Frank is about 1" away from his saddle. And since he had it slanted, with the bass side even further away, that end was even substantially more distant.

So...yes, we're moving the bridge back, yes indeed we are.

The real question now is: Since I'm going to re-route...Do I want to slant a gold covered pickup on a pickup ring and go Full-On Super-Nerd?

I would, ...but that would make the patch job 100 times harder, so, no super-nerd this time, just a little bump northward will do.

[Drak]

On 7/12/2021 at 5:42 AM, Bizman62 said:

it isn't too easy to find a center notched fader pot of 250 or 500 kohms! At least not as single pieces

I bought a bunch of those (about 6 maybe) a long time ago, they're sitting in my parts drawer, as (IMO) they never really worked as well as I imagined they would.

[Bizman62]

53 minutes ago, Drak said:

they never really worked as well as I imagined they would

I used the original pots of the Strat, changing the mid Tone to universal Tone and the other Tone to Blender, using a Breja diagram. That seems to work.

I've also read that one should use two way blender pots for an even output but as I'm not an electrician I can't tell if it were any better.

[Drak]

OK, we live on pics and images here, so here we go.

This is what I'm starting with, this is/was the finished & bursted body, drilled for the Gotoh Tele bridge.

We'll start with the rear route first.

I had already measured the depth of the pickup cavities and knew I would run into the bridge when routing the rear pocket.

So instead of trying to leave a paper-thin wafer of wood, I decided to just blow right through it right into the pickup cavity.

Because I have lots of 1/16" blank wedges of Mahogany, as you can see I had already cut a patch kit out, ready to go.

So instead of routing 5/8" (10/16"), I routed it to 11/16" and glued in the patch with CA glue, took about 1 minute.

You can see the Mahogany patch is already in place and a layer of CA glue applied (basecoat for the black spray coming)

This whole entire Floyd procedure I learned from Dan, from a Stew-Mac VHS tape, about 30 years ago.

That is a drill bit epoxied into a hollow tube, its the only thing I ever use it for, with the standoff to get the right angle.

Got it all from Dan. That little block of wood has a notch in it to hold the tube in position.

OK, on to the top route.

You can see how close the bridge pickup is sitting, my 'shenanigan in waiting'.

Once routed, the entire thing, every single surface (especially that freshly exposed spalt), gets CA glued, then sanded, in prep for the black spray.

You can see the Mahogany patch from the topside here, I used some accelerator as you can tell by the white snowy spots.

Yeah, not happy, I can foresee some very compromised thin wanker tone here.

Welcome to my shenanigan.

Let's give this thing some BAWLZ!

Finished route and the repair area that needs to be addressed.

[Prostheta]

Pray tell, what is a wanker tone?

[Drak]

6 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Pray tell, what is a wanker tone?

Wanker Tone

That 3/16" is the difference between The Shaggs and Mean Street.

[Prostheta]

Shag Street?

[Drak]

30 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Shag Street?

Now you know this ain't no through street, the end is dead ahead
The poor folks play for keeps down here, they're the living dead

[Drak]

Just hunted around in the scrap box for a spalted cutoff piece.

Still needs a tiny bit of trimming, but good fit, good color match.

I'm going to lacquer it up before I glue it in, then I'll put the template back on and re-route it.

[Prostheta]

1 hour ago, Drak said:

Now you know this ain't no through street, the end is dead ahead
The poor folks play for keeps down here, they're the living dead

 

Whoo, Bop bada, shoobe doo wah, bop bada, shoobe doo wah, (ba da whum)
Bop bada, shoobe doo wah (bop bada, shoobe doobe doobe doo whum)
Bop bada, shoobe doobe doobe doo wah
Bop bada, shoobe doo wah (bop bada, shoobe doobe doobe doo whum)
Bop bada, shoobe doobe doobe doo wah
Bop bada, shoobe doo wah (bop bada, shoobe doobe doobe doo whum)
Bop bada, shoobe doo wah, whoo

[Bizman62]

Ooh those lyrics make my boogity boogity shoop go all bomp bah bomp bah bomp!