KeithHowell

A quick google showed this site: Schematics Have a look and post any questions you might have and I'll do my best to answer. Have a look at GeoFex R.G has some links to beginners sites. (Look under electronics in the left menu frame) Here's a nice tutorial with a symbol reference:How to and Symbols Keith

I've never looked for a site! I'll see what I can find. I don't ever remember actually doing a course in schematic reading, we just picked it up as the electronics courses proceeded starting with a very simple switch, power source and lamp and then getting more and more complex circuits with resistors, capacitors coils etc. and then adding tubes and transistors In schematics the elements are represented by symbols and straight lines drawn between elements, usually keeping your ground line at the bottom of the drawing. Circuits are read generally left to right. ie Inputs an the left outputs on the right. The trick is really to understand the component symbols and what it can do eg a switch, the rest is quite simple and logical. Keith

No you don't need to bridge anything. If you look at the switch on the left it has the inputs from the 3 pickups, the 4th pin is the "mixed" output from the switch. ie the switch connects the pickups together in the various strat combinations, bridge, bridge and middle, etc. The other half of the switch connects the output across the tone controls, which one being dependant on which position the switch is in. Cutting the two wires from the switch to the tone pots takes them out of circuit, the wire from the switch to the Volume pot stays. There is definitely an error on the diagram above: The case of the tone pots should also be connected to ground, notice the one leg of the capacitor is soldered to the pot case. Tone pots are connected between "hot" and ground with a capacitor in series thereby shunting the highs to ground depending on the pot setting. See the pinned item on tone pots and capacitors at the top of this section. Have a look at Mr Gearhead the Fender tech site for more diagrams. Still the horrible diagrammatic form and not schematic unfotunately. Does anybody know where schematics can be found? Keith

The "output" of the switch are the two lugs which are strapped together you can see the "hot' wire goes from there to your volume pot. Cutting the two wires to the tone pots will take them out of circuit. The diagram above I think has an earth missing from the tone pots. I don't like diagrams like these, it's far to difficult to work out the signal path, proper symbolic circuit diagrams are much easier! Keith

I think I found it from Google when I was searching for info on the ES-335. Couldn't find any plans so I had to draw them myself which are now on Project Guitar. This is a great place and very friendly. Keith

I contacted Afri-Can guitars and they passed on the American agent information. Here it is: PHIL SMIEDT AFRI-CAN GUITARS USA 2817 West End Ave. Suite 126-429 Nashville TN. 37203 Ph. (615)383-1863 Fx. (615)297-9857 guitars@africanguitarsusa.com Keith

Your pickup response is definitely going to be different in the left handed version if you leave your pickups like they are. The magnet height is adjusted so that the field is slightly different for each string, the B-string magnet is usually lower than the rest. I have some Hofner pickups that have a bar which is curved, lower at bottom E and higher at top E with a notch cut under the B to flatten the response. Stringing the guitar for a lefty would definitely mess things up. Can you not perhaps swop the pickups for left handed versions? Who is the manufacturer? Keith

Why don't you come to Cape Town and fetch one? Did you get a US Dollar price? Keith

You could always fill the holes with a suitable sized dowel and redrill them on a drill press. Keith

I think theirs a link on the African Guitar site to their American agents. If not let me know and I'll give Graham from African Guitars a call and find out. The exchange rate of South African Rand to US $ is about R6.50 to $1 currently so just divide the Rand price by 7 to give an indication of price. Keith

Why don't you make a compact electric and build or buy one off those tiny 1watt amps. Should be louder than an acoustic. Keith

Pete Townsend has been known to use Banjo with The Who. Listen to "Squeeze Box" on "The Who by Numbers" Keith

Di Marzio do have great customer service! I picked up a twenty year old Di Marzio pickup for about $5 e-mailed them with the description and in a few hours they came back with the identity, wiring colour code, what pots to use etc Keith

Use at least a 30W iron. File the pot lightly at the point you want to solder, often the pots have a coating on them which messes with your soldering. You can also get some flux, it comes in small plastic containers like a pill box and looks like grease, make sure it is NOT the acid based stuff for plumbing, smear some on the filed bit on the pot and then solder. Keith

No I don't think you should attempt to press all frets at once. The StewMac Radius blocks are to long, but you could cut a slice off the end, about 16mm (5/8") should do,and use that. Phil I'll try to post a picture or two of my fret pressing setup. Keith

I have both a low angle,curved bottom (from the nineteenth century) and a modern one flat bottom. The low angle is by far the better spokeshave. The curved bottom allows you to shave curved areas, like at the heal of your neck whereas the flat bottom is more for longer straight areas like the rest of the neck. Keith

When you apply a voltage to a piezo crystal the whole thing physically bends. In the piezo transducer the crystal is laminated to a metal backing plate the plate bends as well. The plate is in the magnetic field of the pickup so as the plate vibrates in distorts the field, the changing flux lines cut the pickup coil which induces a voltage in the coil etc etc. You should find different amounts of feed back by placing the piezo at different points wrt to the pickup also different metal plates, on the piezo should effect it as well. Keith

Why dont you press your frets? I made my own fret pressing caul. Cut the concave radius in a piece of hard wood(I mean firm, rigid wood that doesn't dent easily, not hard as in wood terms balsa is a hardwood) I then lined it with 3mm aluminium. Ive fitted it with a clip so I can simply clip it onto the jaws of my bench vise. Simply press the fret lightly in to the slot with your fingers or perhaps a light tap with a hammer on each end and press in with the caul. Works great. Keith

I presume you are using a standard single action truss rod (Gibson/fender style) which is essentially a rod with thread on one end. The channel needs to be deeper in the middle for this type of rod as the rod needs to have shallow curve. Over the top of the rod a filler piece is glued in this has the same curve cut on it. It is placed in the channel and clamped down ,pushing the middle of the rod down to make contact with the bottom of your curved channel. After the glue has dried the filler is cleaned up flush with the top surface of the neck and your fret board glued on top. Now when you tighten the truss rod nut you will put tension on the (curved) rod which will try to straighten. the centre will push upwards against your filler piece and cause a bending moment in the neck opposite to the moment caused by the string pull. (This principle by the way is used in building bridges and all manner of structural engineering issues) Try to get as good a fit as you can. I always slip a thin plastic tube over the rod before inserting in the channel, fish tank tubing or insulation sleeve stripped of a piece of thin cable works great. It deadens vibration and stops glue from sticking to the rod as well. Keith

Great explanation Stalefish. There is a mod you can do on your tone pot, if it can be opened without breaking it. Open it up and cut the carbon track away from the external lug that is at it's max position. Now when you turn the pot to max it will disconnect the pot (and the capacitor in series of course). Turning the pot slightly "on" will connect it and the tone circuit. There is a tutorial on site about it: Tone pot mod Keith

Hell I thought that was simple. Sorry when one lives with this stuff most of your life you tend to forget others are not as mathematically trained. Essentially if you look at the Xc formula and stick in some values Xc = 1/ 2*pi*F *C you will see that the higher the C value the lower the impedance (or resistance to a given frequency) and vice versa of course so if you stick a capacitor across a pickup ie in parallel with a frequency of Zero you have an infinite impedance e nothing gets shunted (you can't divide by zero but mathematically: the limit of Xc tends to infinite as F tends to 0) As the value of F increases the impedance to it will drop so your highs will be cut more than your lows. Sticking a variable resistor in series with it allows you to adjust the total impedance ie Xc + R giving a variable tone control. You could use a variable Inductor as well to give you a similar effect but inductors are expensive and prone to noise pickup (after all they are coils just like your pickups) Combinations of inductors and capacitors can be made up into filters which will block or allow any frequency band through that you care to stipulate as in cross over networks on hi-fi speakers and in fact the older analogue telcom systems relied on this to mutiplex and split speech channels. Hope that explains things a bit simpler. Keith

The formulae for calculating the impedance wrt Frequency are as follows: Capacitor Xc = 1/(2*pi*F*C) inductor is Xl= 2*pi*F*L 2*pi*f is so common it is sometimes abreviated with a lower case Omega (like a rounded w) so you might see Xl= wL or 1/wC. The pot is put in series with the capacitor and is a resistive load ie (does not depend on frequency so the total impedance to any given frequency is the Capacitive Impedance Xc as above plus the pots resistive impedance for whatever setting its at (eg a 250k would have a value of 125k at ita half way point,tone pots being linear taper). Do a few calcs for different (guitar) frequencies and you'll soon see how things work. Also have a look here: Impedance R.G explains things in quite a bit of detail. Keith

Please explain some more. Are you re-veneering a top which already has holes or making a new body which has no holes yet? Keith

Have a look here: Eclipse

The main advantage of a Fender style one piece is that there is no fret board/neck glue join which could creep under load. The only disadvantage I can think of is the one Leo Fender himself stated: that the laquered surface of the maple fretboard wears through and the board gets and looks dirty (especially on fifties mono-chrome TV apparently) Keith