donbenjy

It's not a parker fly though It's hard to tell, but it kinda looks like there are slots in the board for tangs, though it's black on black, but there's definitely a change in material beneath the frets. Woodenspoke is right: it's just about 2.5mm from the end of the fret that's raised (about 3/4 of the way from the edge of the board to the e string). I think part of the problem is that the edge of the board has been very slightly scalloped - not the whole fretboard, just the very ends) - so that as the tip of the fret reaches the scallop, it sticks up ever so slightly. I would guess that the main raised part is about the thickness of a piece of paper: it's only the very end of the corner that catches the e string. yeah, it's perfectly comfy to play, though on further inspection there seem to be a couple more that are similar, but i think it's down to the scalloped edges more than anything. I did remember hearing about parker having some quality control issues, but the rest is the guitar is really well crafted. Apparently on the PM10s they use a 12" neck radius but a 10" ToM bridge too...not sure what effect this would have on anything? not sure whether I can really tell unless I made myself some templates! Cheers again guys, gonna take it in to a shop today, though I don't expect much from them!

yeah, I just checked that out...tbh it really doesn't seem like its a serious enough problem to warrant reseating the frets - especially as I have no experience with fretting. Although I do usually just do all maintenance on my guitars myself and I'm not afraid to try something, but fretting seems like an art rather than a simple job. Unless you think anyone can do it if they take their time?

it looks like the fret isn't curved enough to follow the radius on the neck. Although the fret seems to be seated properly, the edge of the bit you can actually see is raised in the corner closest to the body and the high e string. it isn't really noticeable until the string gets caught there really. I'll try and post some pictures in a few days if I can get that close...Anyone know how much this is gonna roughly cost me to have fixed? I've only played it for about 2 hours so far, so it may just be something I have to get used to really! It's got 9's on atm so when I put my standard 10's on the change in action/relief might means that it's not a problem anymore! So this isn't really something I can fix myself then?

Hey, I just bought a 2nd hand Parker PM10, which is a REALLY nice guitar for the money and it plays beautifully. There's only one small thing I have an issue with: The fretwire on the last fret is raised slightly from the fretboard at the end and when play hard, sometimes the e string gets caught on the lip, fretting a high d note in the middle of what I'm strumming. Now this is quite a cool sound for greenwood-esque stuff, but obviously really annoying when you're playing normal stuff! It may be that I'm playing quite hard because I'm trying to use a 30 valve amp in my halls and it's hard to find a workable volume, so I'll need to wait until I get to play it loud at the weekend before I take any action. Anyway, I'm comfortable working on my guitar, but have never done any fret work before, so what's the best way to address the problem? I could think of 3: 1] File down the tip of the fret - I don't own a suitable file though, and I would probably need to remove the whole wire and clamp it so I don't damage the neck/fretboard. I also don't have access to a shop right now, so this is probably the least likely. 2] Buy some suitable glue for frets and just put some in where it's lifting up to seal the hole 3] remove the whole fretwire and reset it from scratch. What's the best option do you guys think? with the glue, I'm conscious of getting any excess on the fretboard and neck. is that gonna be a problem or is it easy to remove with fret polish or something? Cheers guys Ben

Pete, what did you mean by the "paper bobbin"? I see no paper in your pictures! I'm wondering; has anyone tried to use an opamp circuit instead of the FR? I want to start winding, but I'd like to be able to test the driver ASAP - is there some kinda opamp circuit I could build (cos I have opamps) that anyone knows of? I'm pretty sure the LM thing is dead! My amp has an 8ohm speaker out...likely to work, or would it be too powerful and melt the enamel in the driver?

p00p! I can't get my F/R working AT ALL! I can get a hissing out of the speakers, and if I turnt he gain up, I get weird feedback, but absolutely no input signal. I thought it may have been the board, but I took stuff off and went back to the proto board, and still nothing happens! :S I'm wondering if the chip may be fried, cos I've tried everythin else. Removing the transistor whilst the thing is squealling has no effect whatsoever, and connecting the input to ground doesn't do anything either! I do have some standard opamps lying around, wondering if I could find an alternative opamp type amplifier as a replacement for proto-ing the driver. Update on the driling idea: it doesn't work I used a rechargable/cordless drill, and it was liek using a plastic toy on the steel! not a scratch. I was contemplating a hammer drill, but I keep geting images of severed fingers etc. So I'll save it for another, braver day, or get access to an angle grinder or just use a damn bobbin!

Yeah, I thought that bulging may be a problem, though I have no idea what kinda of effect it would have. I initially started thinking about cutting slots, but then I don't have many heavy duty power tools around, so unless I can work on it with a friend who does, then I'm gonna have to use a heavy duty drill bit to cut my blade. I don't really want to use a bobbin, because It'll add lots of excess bulk, and I don't want to deal with the issue of getting the width right to accomodate the windings without using extra space. The idea of just the blade means that the driver will be the smallest possible for the depth of the core, as it's only the windings that take up space. Ultimately, I'll probably use a single coil casing with the top chopped off, although I really like the idea of using a Tele style lipstick cover. Not too sure whether this too, would be magnetised. Can parellel coils use the same magnet, or are is one of them connected "RWRP" style for "humbucking?" (I.e. connected out of phase, but with an opposing polarity magnet, so the flux is still directed in the same direction)

hmm...I had an iunteresting musing over a bobbinless, but less messy driver, but I might be completely short of the mark here! If your core is thin enough (like a saw blade) take a suitible drill bit roughly the size of the depth of the core, and drill into the blade. Then you'll get a kinda of double ended "spanner" shape, kinda like the angling found on tuners, that force the string down into the middle. This will cause the windings to be pushed inward at each end, so providing you wrap tight enough, then it should work well. It does mean that the windings will be more dense around the centre of the core, rather than spread across the depth, but providing you can get the hole deep enough into the blade, you'll have no protrusion at each end of the core. Obviously it'll need to be ironed out, but is it feasible?

wow! I like the saw blade core idea! Why's there 4 blades on juan's design though? it's not a quad winding right? It looks as if I can't get into my P90, so I'm gonna have to seriously consider a mid driver anyway, so I may as well try, as long as 0.20mm wire is still ok to use? The AWG and SWG codes aren't meant to be easy to understand are they?! Not poked at my F/R since my last post, but I think I'll try to construct a saw-blade type dual driver anyway....the core for my single driver was a HUGE am antenna from a radio (plus I split it in the wrong place with a chisel :S) so I wasn't really happy about winding onto it. My first attempt is probably gonna be stupidly too big, but I can try!

yeah, I thought that, but if he's got a HB in series too, it's gonna sound well muddy...I just put a 1meg pot on the motherbucker (4 coils) in my strat and it's opened up so much! I've got a P90 in the neck and that sounds fine with 1meg

you think it's possible that you'll have a humbucker wired normally, with the coils in series? In that case, 500k is gonna be the only thing you can use!

if you wanted to have a switch that was on at both extremities but off in the centre postion (which is my favourite wiring for a killswitch), then you can't wire it like that, but it's fine to do it that way! are you looking to do some Tom Morello style killswitching, or just to turn the output of your guitar off btw? that'd make a difference to what you bother with

Bareknuckle are very highly revered..depends what type of music you're playing though, I assume it's kinda Satch, Vai type stuff if it's a JEM (apologies if I've made a generalisation). If it is that style, I don't know if bareknuckles are the best... EMGs are good i guess, but an EMG in a squier strat sounds pretty much like the same pickup in a custom luthiered job, so you won't get the tone of the wood as much as with a passive pickup. I'd just like to point out that about 80% (probably more) comes from your amp, and alot is controlled by what FX you use... the old saying: crap guitar -> awesome amp= awesome tone amazing guitar -> crap amp = crap tone It sounds slightly like you're expecting pickups to be the be-all and end-all of your tone, which they really aren't. Sure they play a part, but so does everything right down to your strings! I'm not saying don't get good pups, but don't go overboard and end up dissapointed! good luck!

I know it sounds really complicated, but really it's just one wire! It's just hard to explain it in the context of the weird layout on the rotary switch! but yeah, a toggle is much easier to use as a killswitch anyway I don't know what you'd prefer, but I can do a schematic of an even easier one for you that goes on/off/on, which you can't do that way...

I'm thinking 250k might sound better actually. The dc resistance of the whole wiring will be half that of a regular single coil (1/9k *4 = 1/4.5k) so 500k would be like using a 1 meg on a single coil! "Dude", are you having this as hard wired, or switchable?

well...yes it would, but you'd get a loud hum (like turning distortion on with a lead plugged into your amp, but not the guitar) to get a nice killswitch sound, you have to connect the hot signal in the jack, to the ground. You can either do it in series (means you gotta have a dedicated pole for this, which I assume you won't have), or in parellel, which is the best you can do here! tis pretty easy, but hard to describe: just wire the guitar exactly as normal, then trace the lead back from the left lug of the volume pot to the common connection on the switch, and take a lead off your star ground, and wire it to the 6th position of this pole. Does that make sense? I dunno how much you know about switches really! and that diagram is kinda confusing anyway! on the rotary switch I've got, the common poles are labelled A, B, C, D etc. and the different throws, or outer lugs are 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 etc. In which case, you find the pole (a,b,c etc.) that goes to the volume pot, and connect the ground to the 6th throw (so A6, B12, C18 etc.) hope I've not confused you too much! :S edit: I have a rotary killswitch in my strat, and it's not as easy to use as it sounds! from what I've previously used, the best is a 3 position toggle switch that goes on/off/on...means you need to move your hand twice as slow!

that's not a standard strat/RG shape or routing, so I'd be inclinded to think it's built from scratch - unless it's some kinda unknown or budget model, but somehow I doubt it

coolio! cheers guys! I love the finish on that guitar! what's gonna cover the control cavities on the front? or does it have a scratchplate on? actually, looking at the screw holes, it probably does! Custom or standard? I think a clear on would work well here! It'd be a shame to cover the artwork!

yeah, I've got 2 5w, 4ohm speakers in series that had loose wires, so I stuck them in the bread board...there's certainly a output to it - the speakers hum, but I can't get anything in at all...the trim pot is log, so it's really hard to adjust to 4.5V...but I've been jumping down from 9v, not up from ground, so I guess that make a slight difference....

right...no idea what's wrong with my F/R but even with the right transistor, all that happens is that if I turn the bias control up to full (9v) then I get a squealing noise, which isn't to do with the trasistor, because it still squeals without anything there...and there is zero effect when I touch the hot input or play my guitar through it! I'm wondering if my earlier "attempts" with the PNP they gave me might have damaged the lm386...I'm about 90% certain that my circuit is correctly wired and not shorted anywhere, so I'm kinda at a loss here! anyone got any troubleshooting tips, either generally or specifically for the F/R (nominal voltage readings/resistances etc.) I did mention the bias trim pot was smoking the first time, so maybe I melted something in that! I'll try removing that and sticking a suitble resistor in there instead. tbh, without trying to sound bigheaded, all my previous circuits have either worked straight off, or I've wired something incorrectly, so proper troubleshooting to isolate the problem is kinda new to me! :S

yeah, I tried it, and it was squealing (abit like a feddback loop on a fuzz pedal) so I pulled the transistor out of the breadboard to try and stop it, and there was zero change in the sound! I checked the pinout first, and that was ok, but I think the problem is that it is a bipolar PNP, and those ont he schematic are all N type FETs (I don't actually know the difference between using a bipolar or FET, but obviously there is one!)...I can't find any FETs at all in anything that I could just prototype with, so I'll have to wait and order one off somewhere! I looked at Rapid electronics yesterday: 10p for the transistor, £4.50 for postage!!! :S I think in the mean time I'll try and get on with winding the driver, even though I can't test it! I also had a look inside my strat, and the P90 seems to be sealed :S there are two really small screws inbetween the pole pieces on the bottom, but the base is welded/soldered to the sides in a big blob, so it suggests that I can't open it!!! I'll post a pic later! Hopefully I can fit the driver on top of the pickup then as a compromise!

Sorry sorry sorry for the triple post! maplins didn't have any of the transistors and so stuck in a 2N5401 which is a PNP...I tried it anyway, but it didn't work (that doesn't mean that the circuit is correct otherwise though!!!) If I turn the voltage on the collector up I get some really nice feedback effect that I can tune with the gain and volume pots, but then one of the pots started smoking so I turned it down alot! I really hope that it's just the transistor thats wrong though...I managed to find a 100nF orange drop cap in a radio that I was nicking the core from the LW reciever from so pin 7 is properly tied to ground now...I'm trying to find an alternative tranny on the radio (/CD/tape) circuit boards...there's tons of components, but I don't really think that comparing the datasheets of the models is gonna help seeing as I know nothing about transistors really! Anyway, if there is a chance of a similar audio style transistor in the radio/cd/tape player, what am I looking for? What specifically (in terms of maximum voltage or whatver) makes the 3 transistors on the schematic so suitible? and what do I look at on the datasheets that will provide similar results?! eeep! sorry for boring everyone with this! on the plus side, I have all the orange drops that I'll need I think, and a really nice core for my driver!

Ah, sorry for the double post: I'm working on the wiring diagram for the actual guitar, and I've kinda run into a problem - it's one of those complicated switching ones Ok, so I thought the best way to switch between pickups would be one switch for each pickup, as this allows me to keep my killswitch in the guitar (by turning one pickup off and toggling the other on and off). This dual switch idea is also kinda useful because I can simultaneously turn the neck pickup off, and the sustainer on with one switch (on/off/on) - that means I'll never be able to turn both on at once The problem is that I can't work out how to wire in the motherbucker - my current killswitch is just a simple on/on/on switch wired in parellel across the jack. In the middle position, ground and hot are shorted together, thus grounding the entire circuit. I did it this way because: A) it's the only way that I could find to have the guitar switching on/off/on, which is good because if wired the other way (off/on/off like most that I've seen) I risk flicking it when playing! It's completely silent C) It doesn't mess with the rest of the wiring in the guitar. I can't do this with the motherbucker as it will short out the hot signal which feeds the sustainer, and I have a feeling that this will sound abit crap (I'm assuming that the driver takes a small amount of time to "warm up" to get te strings vibrating properly) and cause a kind of psuedo-tremolo effect as the strings are alternately being driven and then not. This would also short out the P90, so It'd be impossible to turn the motherbucker off and use the P90 on it's own. [novice] If I was switching at a certain frequency I may end up engaging the driver out of phase and virtually stopping the string dead/potentially weakening it (though, if the signal is controlled by the pickup, I dunno if it's possible to engage it out of phase as they'd be "forced" into phase...?) [/novice] That's kinda wordy, but basically I'm trying to say that with the input of the F/R grounded, then the killswitch kills the sustainer as well...what I wanted was to have the sustainer continually on, but be able to toggle the signal to the amp on and off. So then I thought "why make it complicated?!" and considered just killing the motherbucker's hot path using an SPST, but that results in horrendous hum as the hot to the amp is left "failing" unless the P90 is turned on! Sooooo, what I'm asking is does anyone have any idea how I can have neck and bridge pickups seperately switched in and out without humming badly when both are "off?" Sorry if thats unclear! my head hurts! edit: went for a 3p4t rotary to do P90 pickup/Sustainer on/both Off and to change to way that the motherbucker off works in each position! Can't really explain it very well, but basically, with the P90 active, turning off the MB just cuts it's signal running to the pot. When the P90 is inactive, then turning off the MB breaks the hot connection to the jack, and runs it to ground. As the switching is wired in series, the motherbucker's hot lead is still active, and can continue driving the sustainer, just killing the audio signal to the amp. When the P90 is turned on and the switch is used, the hot signal is routed directly to the pot. If anyone cares, I'll do a diagram later! I just ran into another hiccup though...the retards at maplins took about 40 minutes to go through the Bill of Parts for my F/R, and still managed to leave out the 100nF cap pulling pin 7 of the LM386 to ground! What happens if I leave it out?! The only spare caps I have in the house are 10uF electrolytics! unless I buther some old radio or somethin?!

No...it will have to go on top, the driver coil needs to be as close to the strings as possible (yes I tried it!)...sustainiac and fernandes wont even work with a cover on it... Ok...then is there likely to be space inside to accomodate the driver coil? I guess the best thing to do is to open it to have a look, but I wanna get a working prototype of the fetzer-ruby (that's still the current circuit that everyone uses right?!) before I bother opening my guitar - I'm still actively gigging with it as my backup/slide guitar, so I wanna keep the funtionality of two pickups for the most that I can! Two things... 1. The mid driver is a goal of this thread and is definitely possible, but it will not be a "simple driver"...it will need at least two coils similar to the work avalon has been doing recently...a P90 (being a single coil) would not be possible to mod in this way and a specialised driver would be required...stay tuned for further developments from Mr A and myself on the mid driver... 2. As above, the coil needs to be as close as possible to the strings and that means no hiding it under scratchplates and the like...sorry... Yeah, I'd only use a mid driver if the P90 as too hard to mod effectively, and so I'd build my own anyway! Bearing in mind that I'm trying to be as cost effective as possible here, would it be better to just work at this instead of the P90? I'm quite happy to help with any ideas! OK...well there are a few problems here. You have a three pickup guitar like my strat and so the wiring is complicated and some comprimises may need to be made (depending on the switching). You need to completely bypass all but the bridge pickup, select the bridge pickup and turn on the power. I used a 4PDT switch, but to retain your wiring, you may even need more. In your scheme, only the middle pickup is turned off, but not completely bypassed (both ends of the coil)... Sorry - I didn't make that too clear; I've only got the P90 and motherbucker installed, no 3rd pickup. The 5 way switch is purely a coil tap on the motherbucker to bring out some different sounds! By using an on/off/on switch for the P90 pickup and sustainer combined, it ensures that you can't have the pickup and the sustainer on at the same time The only pickup left is the motherbucker, which I have a killswitch for already...I was thinking that this would provide some interesting sounds combined with the sustainer (though atm it shorts hot to ground, so I'm wondering whether this would aversely affect the driver, as the idea would be to have the sustainer constantly sustaining even if the motherbucker was off! I probably need another look at that!). I was considering a 4PDT switch, but would have prefered it if I could have P90 (pickup mode)/sustainer (fundamental mode)/sustainer (harmonic mode) with the extra poles to turn the power on and off, but I can only find on/on or on/off/on switches...anyone found a 4PDT on/on/on? Actually, it is much easier to drive bass strings and often there is enough space on the surface of the bass to fit the driver without modifications. Also, the longer scale length means there may well be enough distance betweeen the pickup and the driver so that bypassing will not be necessary... I tried it with my bass with mixed results. I used the "sustain box" (a copy of my strats driver and circuit) but my fretless bass has a single split P-bass pickup in it. Plenty of room to mount it on the body and well away from the pickup and it did drive the strings fairly powerfully. The problems are, with this type of pickup, 2 strings are in reverse phase with the other so you would need a driver of similar construction to marry with this set up. Also, the circuit has a treble bias that suited the higher strings a lot more...I'd be going for a much bigger output capacitor for the bass (say 470uF) to drive the lower frequencies... As always...I would suggest that you make the circuit and a simple driver and test the device before you get to switching and such on your actual guitar. The harmonic function and power can be operated simple by switching the wires around or flipping the magnet of the driver over and you can test it over the neck, well away from the pickups. Once you have got to this stage, then think about modifications to pickups and the problems of installation... Hope all that helps... pete Yeah...that could be a problem! I'm not gonna be roped into building it for him though! He might even be happy with just the treble side strings...and if that worked, he could easily build a clone and reverse the phasing on them! Thanks alot! I think the first step is to build the amp circuit, and then I should have enough wire to make a simple prototype anyway as well as the P90...What I may do, is install a basic driver in place of the P90 while I work on that, then at least some of it will work! Not quite sure how I'd mount a single-coil sized driver in a HB sized hole, but I'll do it somehow! as for parts for a simple driver: best type of magnets? and do I just use an iron core from a pickup or something? Cheers again! Ben

have you tried the seymour duncan site?! it's got LOADS of standard schematics