Keegan

Have the parts before you cut screw holes or anything, but not too early, and definitely don't wait until after it's "done" to buy everything, or you'll have a bunch of parts that don't quite fit.

Hmm, you should keep it. Then when you're famous people can form all kinds of conspiracy theories about the subliminal Rush Limbaugh broadcasts in the backgrounds of all your songs.

Black Poison Wood, huh? Sounds like something I'd like to sand on all day in a little garage!

You'll be fine once you stop vomiting up blood.

Actually it's once you stop vomiting that the trouble really starts...

If it just quit working, one of the components is probably dead. You already know which one, good job.

Opening the circuit can give you some unwanted noise, I found this out when using an on/on for a kill switch. Run it to ground.

Finally some more progress. Got the neck pocket cut, the edge rounded over, some rough sanding done, and started on inlaying the control plate.

It'll only have 3 neck bolts because my dad sanded through where the 4th one would be(because he doesn't think I can do this myself and has to "help" me). I'll glue the neck in too so that it won't twist or anything from missing that one bolt.

Cool. Looks nice.

How did you make it? Just adhere leather to the front of the old pickguard?

Sure it's a killswitch?

It looks like it needs a battery, which would mean it's some kind of active tone/gain control. It might function as a killswitch with it not wired into the circuit. I'm guessing red goes to battery positive, black goes to ground/negative, and green goes to the volume control.

It depends on the bridge though, check http://www.stewmac.com/FretCalculator for your bridge placement once you get the scale length.

If the neck pocket is angled, you'll want to use a bridge that sits up off the body like a Tune-O-Matic or similar, and make sure you check the specs against your guitar(string spread, saddle radius). If it isn't angled, you'll want a flat-mount bridge.

crazy. is it hard to cut plexi smooth?

Spoken like someone who's never cut plexi =P

It doesn't cut so much as melt, stick to your blade, get thrown around a bit, and eventually wind up looking rough and melting beyond your lines..

Edit: Oh yeah, and if you want to drill holes, it chips, then melts and clogs up your bit.

Not orange enough, that's actually a decent color =P

If your impedence to ground is too low though, that won't help as much as just going to the correct pots.

The foot pedal still seems like a better idea to me. Then you don't have to worry about holding the guitar just right to get the effect you want..

Well of course not everything has been done. It's just impossible to do something new without drawing upon the old, because of the way our brains work. It's not like we just invented everything we have now out of nothing, in that case it wouldn't have taken us so long.

If someone tried to make completely original music, for instance, they would still be drawing upon the idea of music, and it would probably sound like crap to us because we've learned to like the Western 12-step scale for music.

It's more important to make progress than to make something original. Like to improve a body design, or make a shape that's especially eye-pleasing or ergonomic.

Ah, sorry, I missed your link.

How would you use that to change resistance to two outputs though? Isn't that more for feeding data to a computer system to interpret and decide what to do with?

I was just making a point of how hard is it to have a completely original thought.

You're obviously just homophobic because you're afraid to admit your sexual feelings towards your favorite spandex-clad solo-noodling artists =P

Nah, it's just because most of what I listen to is post rock or the guitars are used mainly for rhythm.

Not true. Dang near everything you see or do that is supposedly new or inventive takes it's inspiration or can have it's roots traced to something that already exists. The completely original ideas are so few and far between they are virtually non-existent. Everything draws from something else.

That is just something that uncreative people say when they are confronted with their uncreativity.

That's just something people who haven't tried acid say.

Yeah, the SG switch looks a bit cramped. I'm curious, how did you drill the holes? If you just jumped in with the bit the same size as the final hole, that might have been why it chipped. It helps to slowly work it up and cover the spot you're going to drill with masking tape. I did that and drilled new control holes in my LP just fine through the finish.

Looks like a good first project. I wish I had done that instead of jumping in and screwing up a nice piece of wood like I did.

Edit: Wes' suggestion is even better, do that

What if it weren't a mercury switch, but a mercury pot of sorts?

Like you have this semi-circular track made of something resistive, with one channel output on one end, and the other channel on the other. Then the other side of the track is just plain metal.

I dunno how you'd go about building something like that, but it's just an idea, lol

The only problem is that you get 50% volume in the middle, equally balanced between the two outputs. It'd still be a cool effect though...

It'd be a lot easier to just build a foot-switch to do this, since you'd just need a basic wah pedal with a pot in it, or a blend pot to get 100% output in the center.

If you want to use weights, you'll just need two equal weights(each enough to put torque on the pot, which could be something like half a kilo), something to drill a hole in the shaft of the pot(or some other way to attach the string to the pot), and some string. Kind of useless since it'll be so heavy, but if you hang the weights out of the bottom of the guitar it'll look cool =P

Why does the yellow wire at the bottom of the diagram(from channel 2 to the switch) have an E on it? If it's going to ground...that would explain why your channel 2 is dead.

And the 3-way in that other diagram isn't a leaf-type, that's why the grounding is different. You have the capacitors in Fender-style too, which will also make your diagram differ from others, but it'll work just fine that way too.

If channel 2 is always off, something's going to ground that shouldn't be.

I can confirm that the yellow wire in question is live/hot. I'm almost positive that its the switch because. . .

The switch has 2 channels, switch sits in 3 positions, top-chan#1 middle-chan#1+#2 bottom-chan#2.

bridge pup is chan #2 (default) and chan #1 is neck (default) If I unsolder the hot wire's from the switch I can play both pups individually via channel #1 via the switch, but neither pup will play via channel #2. Both will play when wired direct to the jack.

Going back your comment about its a fender style wiring, would that make a difference in sound? I have no problem re-wiring and I would very much enjoy doing it. But, I'm not one for doing things for the sake of it. I am very new to guitar wiring though I can handle electronics fairly well, when working from schematics.

For what I've read it can make a difference to the sound of the style played, as I have a strat type already I was hoping for something to play metal/rock types.

What would you guy recommend?

You can check the switch pretty simply with the multimeter, hold one side on the ground, and the other on the channel 2 lug, then flip the switch back and forth. If you get connectivity in all 3 positions, it's the switch. It sounds like it is, though. Try a new one.

The difference between gibson/fender wiring is purely a style thing I think, as in it makes no difference, it's probably just due to which way was more intuitive for the engineer(or whoever) designed the circuit in the first place.

I just said that because I've only seen the capacitor hooked up like that in a Fender, that is with it between lug 2 on the tone and ground, with lug 3 hanging out and lug 1 going to hot. In a Gibson, the cap goes from lug 3 on the volume to lug 2 on the tone, and then lug 1 on the tone is grounded. I don't think that there's a tonal difference, I just prefer the Gibson wiring on a stacked potentiometer(since the volume and tone are close together, and it saves space on the back of the pot), and the Fender wiring when you have normal pots because stretching a capacitor across the control cavity is kind of silly and just gives you a higher chance of having the leads ground out on something.

It might have something to do with the fact that Gibson started out using those big paper-in-oil axial capacitors(with one lead on one end and the other on the other end), which would make it hard to solder from the lug to the back of the pot. I think Fender changed the way they wired it when they started using ceramic caps, because they're easier to solder to the back than between pots(because the leads are on the same side).

Now both manufacturers use ceramic caps though, so it's kind of silly for Gibson to keep wiring it the old way, except to make it easier for people who want to put PIO caps in.

Do it whichever way makes more sense in your case. The value/type of capacitor matters more than the way the pot is wired in ever could. Once you get it working, you might try some different values just for grins to see what you like. The type doesn't matter so much, but there is some difference. I was skeptical, but I've tried a few different types of caps and I like the ceramic or PIO the best. I replaced the ceramic in my LP with an orange drop and it sucked. It sounded muddy when turned down instead of just more bassy. It could just be the tolerances though, they're pretty wide for most tone caps for guitars.

Sorry for my lengthy posts, haha.

Yeah, they gave you the wrong kind of pot.

Also I don't think you can do it with a normal pot. It'll just give you a similar problem, except that the middle will be 50% volume instead of 0%.

Why does the yellow wire at the bottom of the diagram(from channel 2 to the switch) have an E on it? If it's going to ground...that would explain why your channel 2 is dead.

And the 3-way in that other diagram isn't a leaf-type, that's why the grounding is different. You have the capacitors in Fender-style too, which will also make your diagram differ from others, but it'll work just fine that way too.

If channel 2 is always off, something's going to ground that shouldn't be.

Steel around the pickups also makes guitars sound a bit lame.

Aluminum can also be anodized black if you prefer.

Example: