Keegan

Awesome..

So I was thinking of Ebaying a blank Tele body for like $50, routing out chambers like a tele thinline, and then screwing an anodized aluminum or steel top on it. The top would be cut for the neck pocket/pickups/bridge/controls, so it'd basically be like a giant pickguard, with a diamond-shaped f-hole. Since unscrewing the top to get to the controls would be a pain in the ass, there would be an access plate on the back also.

What do you think, would this sound like crap, like I was playing a tin can, or could it actually sound good?

And if the acoustic sound sucked, do you think it could still sound good played only as an electric?

GAS=guitar acquisition syndrome

gassing=verb form

It just means I want your guitar.

Since you have two of them, you could use them as on/off switches for the pickups though, if you feel like doing that. and then have the other "on" be coil tap or something.

Never take off the neck though; what you see in the neck pocket of a MIM strat cannot be unseen.

You mean all the damn stickers on the neck heel ?

I usually try to get the owner to let me get rid of them. Sometimes one of them will have some serious poly over the top of it, in which case I might just level the finish if it's creating a big bump. Sometime they just have a light poly coat and I cut the poly and get the sticker off. I'll keep the stickers with finish on 'em cause they help me *try* to dial in a matching amber tint on test boards. (even with such help, my tint matching skills leave a little to be desired)

Actually, no. There were a few stickers, but they were nice enough to leave everything unfinished in the neck pocket. I guess 1998 was a good year. But there were all these damn holes drilled everywhere. Probably from their manufacturing process? There were like 3 screw holes that seemed randomly placed, and a big routed-out circle in the middle. Thing still sustains well though.

Actually, I thought about it more last night and I think I might have 1,2,and 3 in the wrong order, so it'd be 3,2,1 and the wiring would go ground, neck, bridge. You might have to try it both ways.

I think a Tele 3-way control would be your best option, since it fits the same hole as a 5-way. Especially since you're using 2-conductor and not 4, so you can't do anything special with the 5-way. And then you could buy an American-style switch and actually know how to wire it, since the workings aren't hidden in plastic.

Nice grain, I love bloodwood. This build has got me gassing. Are the pictured pickups and bridge the ones you plan on using?

Here, I went and drew you up a diagram:

Of course you'll have to wire the braided shield to ground too, so your volume pot is going to be a bloody mess after you're done with it.

I can make a complete diagram if you'd like me to.

Oh, an import switch. Sorry, as far as I know these things work using magic.

Edit: Hmm, stewmac diagrams seem to indicate that they go 1,2,3,C,1,2,3,C from left to right. Hope you can figure it out from there. You can test that with a multimeter to see if C connects to one of its neighbors no matter what position the switch is in.

Mine has Highway One upgrade pickups in the neck and middle and an SD Hotrails in the bridge. Electronics are CTS, tuners are schaller locking, nut is bone, and I got it for free(well, free as in I traded a $300 Epiphone and and Epi Valve Jr Head for it)

I like it better than any other guitar I've tried, especially after sanding the neck to satin with scotch-brite. Glossy necks feel so cheap.

Also blocked the trem and got an aluminum pickguard for it: http://www.sharp-concepts.com/Anodizing/An...0Dia.%20SSH.JPG

Never take off the neck though; what you see in the neck pocket of a MIM strat cannot be unseen.

Yes, a Nuclear-themed guitar needs lots of "grunge".

Hmm, I'm at 5.2 kilos before any shaping or thickness sanding. It'll be at...4.3 kilos after thickness sanding it, assuming it's the same density throughout.

Even Warmoth's heaviest LP is only 2.5kg. How in the hell did you make a 7kg guitar? Did you build it out of MDF?

To chamber or not to chamber? I think some holes may be in order, especially since i'm not rear-routing.

It should be invisible once it's sanded. The walnut was and I didn't even clamp it as well and used more glue.

I have a template, but it's not good enough to actually use as a guide(I tried to bandsaw it along the line, instead of outside it), so i'm just using it to draw rough shapes of the body. Also, the only ball bearing bit I have is only deep enough for doing the neck pocket and electronics routing.

How will I place the bridge since it's a baritone conversion neck? Can I still just use the stew-mac calculator?

EDIT: What kind of weight should I be looking for, so that I know whether to chamber it or not?

I like it. It's like if Gibson tried to copy the Jazzmaster, except they actually made a guitar with quality craftsmanship.

You do need to ground the strings...attach the ground wire to something like the bridge post...even wedged between the bridge and the body is probably fine as long as there is good contact made.

As for the increased power from an HB. 12k is a reasonably strong HB...it could be that it was wired in parallel before and is now in series...but it also sounds like you may have a switching system that is adding another into series with the HB adding 3 or more coils to it potentially from the other pickups. Tap the other pickups to see if they are connected at all when the HB alone selection is selected.

If changing the coil split, you may have affected the noise canceling qualities of combination settings...something to consider.

With the middle hum...it sounds like the poles are grounded but you have reverse wired it...this makes the poles hot...so when you touch it, it will be as it you touched the hot of the jack...instant buzz. A multimeter can check the middle pickups grounding connections by testing between the pole (or whatever you are touching that buzzes) and the connecting wire/s. A tele neck pickup is particularly susceptible to this because of the metal cover...often this ground needs to be taken as a separate wire to reverse them. It is possible that the pickup has been damaged if it is a traditional fender construction...but it is very unlikely, so don't panic.

Hope that helps

pete

I wired according to this http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wirin..._2s_1v_1t_5w_as, except that the tone is a little different because it's a Fender Greasebucket circuit.

The bridge is the only pickup active in pos 1, so it's not any different than before except that the current is going through it the opposite way that it was before(I had wired to the duncan diagram, but didn't see the note about fender pickups, so I had out-of-phase in pos 2, now that is corrected).

There's no way the middle is reverse wired, because black is going to ground, and that's what the Fender wiring diagram for the pickups I'm using says also http://www.fender.com/support/diagrams/pdf...1160_62APg2.pdf

I have an aluminum pickguard, but it's anodized black, so it isn't conducting except where it's scratched(around the pots and the screws for the pickup height adjustment), that's actually how most of my grounding is done, all grounds go to the back of the volume pot, which is grounded to the pickguard, so all of the controls are grounded there too. There aren't any ground loops that i know of, since any metal parts are already going to ground, so I didn't connect any ground wires to them, and double-checked with the multimeter.

Perhaps it just needs the extra grounding to the strings and it'll be fine. It probably buzzed before and I just didn't notice because I was grounding it out by touching the strings.

Maybe I'll just leave it like this, opening up a strat is too much trouble, even with locking tuners.

I think the finish would look best if you make it "dirtier" than just plain yellow and black paint. Perhaps dyes. And have the side dots on the neck be clear plastic with radioluminescent paint underneath(something with a fairly long half life, but too low of energy or quantity to pass through the plastic dots, such as Pm-147 or H-3). I think H-3 would probably be best, because it lasts a long time and is less radioactive. No idea where you'd get radioluminescent paint these days, but it's just an idea.

So I've just barely gotten started on my first build.

Here's the wood, with the body(3pc walnut) already glued up and the padouk i'll be using for the top:

And the padouk resawn/glued:

Yes, yes I did just turn a 18x5.5x0.75 piece of padouk into a 3/8" top(to be sanded to 1/4")

The neck I'm just going to order from Warmoth, since I don't have the tools or the balls to make a neck yet.

The plan is to rout control channels in the walnut, prepare the padouk, glue the padouk down, bandsaw the rough shape out, and then take it down until I'm happy with the shape with an oscillating sander and hand sanding. Then I'll rout the **** in the top, round-over the edges with a router, do some final sanding, finish it with a few coats of Danish oil, and save my money for the rest of the parts =P

Does anyone see any problems with my plan?

Final Parts List

Neck - Warmoth Padouk/Ebony Baritone Conv. Neck w/ Strat headstock

Hardware - Earvana Compensated Nut(blk), Schaller 475 top mount bridge(blk), Gotoh SG38 non-locking tuners(blk), Tele-style control plate(gold), Metal Humbucker mounting rings(gold), Battery box, string retainer(if needed, I've never needed one on a strat headstock though, you just have to string it a certain way)

Electronics - EMG 60A Neck, EMG 58 Bridge, Stacked Volume/tone, 3-way switching, EMG EXG, EMG PA2, Electrosocket jack

Total Cost = about $1000(including cost of tools, rented shop time, and stewmac templates)

Longer is generally better, but I think 25-25.5" would be the best because then you can still load larger strings on it and tune to standard. With a long neck like a baritone, you'd have to use a pretty thin set to tune to standard, so you'd lose the benefits of the longer scale.

Heavier strings are where the better tone is probably going to come from.

They won't work like a normal 3-way, since they're only 2-way with a center off. You could scheme up some really cool wiring options with 3 of them though, sort of like a jaguar.

If you want a humbucker sound, you have to have one normal pup, one RWRP pup, and wire them in series(ie wire the white wire on one to the black on the other and then wire the remaining white and black just like you would normally, the hot wire may not be white, but you get the idea)

If you have an american switch, with the big silicon wafers, the best way to figure one out is to look at how the contacts work when you move the switch. Basically, there are 4 lugs on each side: 1, 2, 3, and Common. A 5-way switch is really just a 3-way with "in-between" settings, so you get combinations like 1, 1+2, 2, 2+3, and 3.

Anyways, you just solder the hot of the pickup you want to the lug of the pickup position you want, and then wire the common lug to the input on the volume knob.

So if you wanted a neck, neck-bridge, bridge, kill, and kill, you would wire the bridge to lug 1(farthest from the common, you can physically see which one is the common if you look in the switch), the neck to lug 2, and then wire lug 3 to ground all on one side of the switch. You wouldn't even have to worry about the other side of the switch unless you were getting into coil tapping or stuff like that.

If it's set up like a strat, lug 1 is the one closest to the pickups, looking at it like http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wirin...1vol_1tone_5way

You'd be wiring it just like that schematic except that your neck would be wired where the middle is on there and then where they have the neck would just be wired to the back of the volume pot. That would give you a switching set-up where if you had the switch pointing to the bridge, you'd get the bridge pickup, then the next position would be neck+bridge, then you'd have just the neck at the middle position, then the top 2 positions would be silent.

So I rewired my strat the other day, because my first wiring job was messy. This time everything is neat and tidy with zip ties and heat shrink tubing, the works. The only things physically different with the circuit are that I switched which coil is tapped on the bridge humbucker in pos 2, I didn't ground to the strings, and it has a killswitch now.

Anyways, the problem is that the middle pickup hums when touched, but neither of the other pickups do this. I thought I must have accidentally cold-soldered it, so I redid the solder joint and checked it with the multimeter....but the hum is still there. All ground connections check out too. Everything is wired perfectly. Is this just because I didn't ground to the strings? If so, how would you suggest I ground to them on a Strat with the trem blocked? I've removed the claw, so there's not really anything to solder to back there.

Secondly, now the guitar has insane power from the bridge humbucker, seemingly out of nowhere. This isn't a problem, I just thought it was odd. I didn't move it any closer to the strings, but now it's overdriving everything. It pushes even this cheap solid state Fender amp I have into clipping with the volume on 2, and the same with my Blackheart. It's even overdriving my distortion pedal(if i play with lots of attack, it goes silent at the peak). I didn't know that a 12k humbucker could do that.

True... but I don't think a schaller TOM will fit in Gotoh metric holes. Maybe i'll just have to make my own piezo.

Is there a way to buy just the GHOST tune-o-matic saddles without buying a bridge too?

Oh, here we go, I found it. Funny they don't mention it on their site, just the strat ones...