digi2t

Congrats on a superior piece of craftsmanship. I had an inkling that the competition would be stiff, but I got my ass dusted, and rightfully so. Will only serve to drive me a little harder. Excellent tutorial. I think I'll skip the building in 2008 and just read that . By the way, I heard that they've reserved a spot at the Louvre, right next to the Mona Lisa, for the V8. Happy New Year, and as alway, Cheers

I'm not sure about the voltage being a factor, though I may be wrong. The third pole on the tone pots are not grounded, are they? If they are that would explain the volume loss. Just a thought. Cheers

It seems that you have your heart set on diamondplate, but may I throw another idea at you? How about a carbon fiber look? Yellow and black always seem to look pretty groovy in my book. By the looks of it, if you take a carbon fat strat pickguard (HSS), you might have enough material there to make something up. If you can get your hands on any strat pickguard, you could see if there is enough material there to do it. You can find the carbon stuff on Ebay, including truss covers. As for the shape, have you tried copying the the swoop of the top of the headstock on the neck end of the pickguard, and then coming around to follow the contours of the body? Might work. Place the body on a piece of construction paper, and trace it. Then cut it out and transfer the curves you need to the pickguard. I've used this technique before. It helps you stay true to the existing contours. The entire guitar is pretty curvy, so I would tend to stay away from anything linear. That's my 2 bits. Cheers

1 comment, and 2 questions; First. Really cool looking little guitar. It's blowin' me away. Two. What shade of yellow is that? Is it Krylon as well? Three. Does your wife have a sister? Looks great dude, Cheers

"Give to Caesar what rightfully belongs to Caesar." Ancient proverb which avoids much headbanging. Cheers

OK, here's another course. When you rewired the PU, is it possible that while soldering you may have accidently melted the insolation somewhere and shorted two leads or to ground? Happened to my nephew one time, he was soldering in a 2 lead PU, and the lead was a coax type. The insulation got hot enough that the ground coax melted through the inner positive insulation and shorted out the PU. Took me a while to spot it because physically everything (outer insulation) looked good. That one was a bugger. Just a thought. Cheers

I'm confused. Is it an actual Duncan PU or a clone? You mentioned before that you installed a Duncan, then you state it's a clone. If it is a clone, are you sure that the wires are color coded the same as a real Duncan? I mean, you may have the same colors in front of you, but they may represent different leads. Might be your problem. Cheers

My hats off to the Erik, blackdog, and Daniel. Amazing work. I'm glad I entered the contest and joined this forum. You folks really inspire me. Having seen these amazing instruments (read "works of art") only encourages me more to work harder on my next build(s). Kudos to all, especially Erik. That's a slobberknocker in my book. Hope I get to that level one day. Also, a thank you to all who cared enough to post their constructive critiques on my entry. Nice of you folks to care. Cheers all

A quick check on the Ibanez site shows that all guitars featuring this configuration are wired the same. Only the colors change. If the drawing is wrong, which to my eyes doesn't seem to be, then there are thousands of Ibanez's out there with the same problem that you are experiencing. Since this is highly unlikely, I suggest that you check and make sure that your switch is not grounding or shorting between the 4th and 5th position. The Strat like sound in the 4th position is normal, humbuckers in parallel sound like that, but if your switch is shorting, that will kill the PU going from parallel to series. To quote a tutorial from GuitarNut.com; "Hey! What Happened to the Sound? When coils (or pickups) are wired in series you have to short across one coil (or pickup) to turn it off -- you still have to provide a complete circuit for the other coil or pickup. With coils or pickups wired in parallel you have to open the circuit to a coil (pickup) to turn it off -- shorting the coil will short all of the coils when they are in parallel. One mistake I've seen people make is wiring a four-wire humbucker with two or three switches -- one to select series/parallel wiring for the coils and the other(s) to short one coil or the other to use the pickup as a single coil. The only problem with this scenario is that if you have the series/parallel switch set to parallel, and then try to select a single coil, you kill the pickup completely. This is okay if you're expecting it and know why it happens (and know to avoid that combination of switch positions) -- but I've seen it put people in a panic, too! It is better to use a multi-pole, multi-position rotary switch or an on-on-on mini-toggle if you want this kind of capability." The other posibility is a short between the coils in the PU itself. As mentioned above, in the 4th position it MAY be the PU in parallel, or it MAY be just one coil working, then shorting out completely when you go to series. Just out of curiousity, have you thouroughly tested the switch for grounds or shorts, and have you tried the bridge PU in it's place to eliminate the neck PU as the culprit? Cheers

Just wondering if anyone out there has a .dwg (or other AutoCAD compatible) plan of the Destroyer II body. The full size one, not the pukey mini sized one. Cheers

Here's an idea... a joystick. Now how cool would THAT look on a guitar? Cheers

Last minute suggestion. I was thinking about you dilemma today, so I tore into one of my guitars and experimented with some different capacitors as treble bleeds. I found that a .01uf cap (103 code) on the volume pot of my neck pickup really brightens up the tone when you roll off the volume a hair. Sound like a mellow twangy bridge PU. Along with the .047uf on the tone, I was surprised by how much more flexible my neck PU was. Never tried it before but your post really got me thinking, and I always wanted to try a treble bleed circuit. You have 3 poles on the volume pot, one is grounded, just solder in the cap between the 2 other poles of the volume pot. I played around with some other values of caps, but this one gave me the best results to my ears. Caps are cheap, buy a bunch and trial and error. Hope it helps. Cheers

The ultimate in flexibility insofar as pickup placement is concerned; http://www.georgelynch.com/guitars/7string.html I think a guitarist from The Grateful Dead had some kind of sliding pickup arrangement as well, but my memory is kind of fuzzy on that. If memory serves me, it was a 3 PU arrangement with the center PU that would slide between the two others. I think Gibson also had a bass back in the 70's, the G3 Grabber if I'm not mistaken, that featured one sliding pickup that you could position anywhere between the bridge and neck. Too much alcohol and the attention span of a chipmunk. This is what you get... Cheers

Insofar as the volume pot is concerned my research is telling me that you may have installed a 1MOhm (or higher) pot. Check out this link; http://www.wdmusic.com/selecting_pots.htm and read the section "The Effect Of Potentiometer Values In Relation To Output And Tone:" Pay particular attention to what's written at the end of the first paragraph of this section. The higher the resistance to ground, the brighter (fuller) the sound. But on the flip side, this will also make for a much narrower taper at some point. Check out this link; http://www.guitarelectronics.com/category/...asicwiringfaqs/ and read the part "How to check the taper with an ohm meter:". This might sort out the problem with you volume. Did you do the second test on the tone pot as per Curtisa recommendation? You didn't mention if you did. As for testing caps, the only method I know of requires an analog (dial) type multimeter. It won't tell you the capacity of the cap, but it will let you know if the cap is short or good. Link is; http://www.applianceaid.com/micro4.html Even has a groovy little graphic that shows you what your meter should do when you test. Hope this helps, Cheers

What type of pots are you using? 250 KOhm? 500 KOhm? Linear? Audio? What size/type capacitor are you using? Need more info. According to the plan, the tone should work no matter what position your switch is in because the pot is right at the end of the chain before the jack. Are any of the lugs on the tone pot grounded DIRECTLY (like one lug on the volume)? If so, that will negate your tone pot. Lastly (and most simply), is the pot good? Is the cap good? Disconnect everything and test it by themselves. Cheers

The ultimate answer is... they're all decent software. Just depends what your comfortable with. If you can play with them beforehand, do it and go from there. Personally, I had a lot of problems getting my head around AutoCAD, but when Inventor 4 came along, I took to it like a fish to water. By the time I had any exposure to Solidworks or CATIA, I was already up to Inventor 7. I was so "Inventorized" by then, Solidworks just didn't grab me. Intuitiveness is the key, and that's alway a bit personal. Go with what your comfotable with. In the end it's 6 of one or a half-dozen of the other. By the way, the only reason I use Inventor to design a guitar is for the visual aspect, and to calculate my wood. Even if I had access to CNC equipment, I just couldn't see myself building a guitar by CNC. Just seems a little "soulless" IMO. But that's just me . Cheers

The Minnie Pearl of the guitar world. I love it.

A true scholar and gentleman, thanks Drak. All I needed was someone to give my compass a bearing. Now I know what to research. Thanks a bunch

Hi all, Just a quick question. What type of paint/stain is used to get the brilliant transparent colors (blue, green, red, etc) that we see on some of these beautiful guitars? Case in point, GOTM for November "The Shark". Brilliant color, yet transparent to show off the grain. What are the products of choice? What is the best process? Thanks. Cheers

Is it a bolt on neck? If so, wouldn't a shim in the neck pocket make up for the difference? Hence, no calculated mutilation required. If it's a set neck, I'm sure someone in here should have an elegant solution to your problem. Cheers

To the ears, Geo is absolutely correct. What I described above is the theoretical. Except for one of my guitars in which I use a linear for the tone, I've rarely seen linear pots in a guitar, at least in my neck of the woods. P.S. My son wants me to use this smiley . There you go. Doesn't take much to please him...

It basically depends if your really into using your volume control in your playing. A linear pot is just that, linear. If you look a volume knob, the 0 to 10 marks can be read as 0 to 100 percent, with each number giving you a precise 10 percent drop or rise. With an audio pot, when you dial down to 5, you may still be putting out about 75 percent of volume, but will drop more drastically from 5 to 0. Audio pots basically have a finer adjustment between 5 and 10. The 50 percent mark even varies between different pot manufacturers, but now your getting into brain surgery. Again, depends what your into. Try both, your ears will do the rest. Cheers

I'm assuming that you disconnected all the wires from the pot before testing? I don't know which model Yamy you've got, but from the sound of it, it's seems to be a S-S-S pickup arrangement. If you do put a humbucker in, don't forget that you will have to use an appropriate pot for that pickup, and cap for the tone. Personally I've tried a 250Kohm pot on a humbucker on one of my guitars, but didn't sound very good. Again, that depends on the structure of the guitar. Caps and pots aren't that expensive so I generally keep a small selection on hand and mix and match until I get a sound I'm happy with. Here is a good link insofar as basics of pots and caps are concerned. The rest is up to your ears. Cheers

Well, you could take them down A BIT heightwise with a level, but you will not succeed in turning a jumbo into a medium. You can only make a tall jumbo into a shorter jumbo. DO NOT level and then attempt to crown with a medium file (seen it tried), the radii are not the same and you will destroy your frets. Again, by my experience, a jumbo fret feels like a jumbo fret no matter who high or low it is. If it's high, your a long way from the fretboard. A little lower, it feels like a railroad tie sliding under you finger. It's all personal taste and playing style. If you do decide to take them down a bit, polishing will have to be of utmost importance. Since the frets will "feel" wider, a thorough polish job will help make them "feel" smaller gliding up and down the fretboard. If you really, really, really want a medium feel... then keep practicing and, when you feel comfortable, refret with mediums . Cheers

It depends what "too tall" means. What size wire is on there now (jumbo wide, jumbo, medium)? How worn are the frets (flattened, grooved)? How high is just right for you (measurement or comparitive size)? IMHO playability will be affected if you take them down so far that you won't have any wiggle room left later to make adjustments. As far as I'm concerned, the frets also contribute to sustain to varying degrees. Also, don't forget that after leveling, you have to recrown and polish them. You definately don't want them down to the point where you'll be digging ditches on either side, unless a "fretless wonder" is your goal. Personally, if it's going to be a keeper, I've just gone and replaced jumbos with mediums. Workwise it was 6 of one, or a half dozen of the other. If it's not a keepr, well, you just can't make honey out of dogs**t... sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert. What I do know is that you've come to the right place to ask, but could you just provide a bit more info as to what you've got and what you need. There are a boatload of fine and knowledgable people here willing to help, not to mention the really fine tutorials section. Cheers