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Captainstrat

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Everything posted by Captainstrat

  1. I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask this question, but I'll ask anyway, is there an accurate way to measure "drill bit depth" from the tip to the "stop line" (that will be marked off by a piece of masking tape)? Let's just say I've goofed more than once and had to take the neck/body/both to my favorite guitar repairman to fix my mistakes (Hi Brian ) This time, I'd like to do it right. As I'm awaiting delivery of the missing pieces of my parts caster (ferrules, strap locks,vintage style tuning pegs), I've been doing a lot of research that's been paying off so far; but the neck is crucial and I'd like to avoid a repeat of the "drill bit straight through the fingerboard" routine! My likely problems have been improper measurement of the drill bit (0.875" isn't exactly easy to measure, 2.2225 cm is a bit easier, but not by much), because my measuring tape is probably none too accurate... the tape I've been using to mark off the depth limit was likely on the cheap side (it literally would wiggle loose and out of place, to the point I'm no longer sure where the depth limit is)... I don't own a drill press, I probably get impatient when drilling through maple and apply too much pressure I've had a few cases where the drill bit gets loose in the chuck and goes in the chuck rather than in the wood! So I throw it to the experts, any tips to accurately measure and mark the drill bit so I do an accurate job? Thanks!
  2. Say, this may or may not work, but how about using a piece of wound string (.32 -.42) and use it as a piece of abrasive rope? Rather than a re-drill, I simply enlarge the bottom part of the hole so it reaches the centre of the ferrule hole? Since pine is a soft wood I might be able to get away with it? Never mind, I've found a local supplier who carries actual abrasive cords & tapes!
  3. D'Oh! I'll know for next time! looks like the exit holes all line up with the respective string holes on the bridge plate, agreed, the holes for the wound strings may need to be enlarged a bit. As soon as the damn ferrules are delivered, I'll try to use one as a guide and hope that it does in fact wander into the existing hole somewhere in the middle of the body as you say...knock on wood!
  4. So what do you think? With or without Bettie? I've been a Bettie Page fan for a long time, and that decal would cover the knot nicely and give it a cool Rockabilly vibe, whadya think?
  5. "In the photo the low-E ferrule hole looks equally spaced compared to the others. Is the string hole on the top lined up correctly with the bridge plate? Could it be that all the holes are actually correctly aligned and spaced relative to the face they were drilled from, and the string hole has wandered off centre as it's been drilled and exited slightly to one side inside the ferrule hole?" You know, I never even thought of that! I'm still awaiting some parts to be delivered, (the ferrules being part of them)...at first glance the string holes all seem to match the bridge plate, but it might be worth it to remove the saddle and have a good look. if all I need to do is re drill the low E string hole from the bridge plate and it realigns it to the ferrule hole's centre, then great! I've thought of shorter neck screws but wasn't sure if they all come standard length for Fender? If shorter ones exist I'm all for it! "f you have to use the tape round the drill bit method as a depth guide, leave a flap of tape sticking out. You'll find this will clear the waste away from the hole so you can see when to stop a little easier" I never even thought of that, thanks for the tip!
  6. Hi again folks, you know it's been a long time when you forget you used to be a member of this board! I've dabbled in many projects since, some I've kept up with, some I've abandoned; but the need to put another partscaster together never quite goes away! What started out as a "I'd like to fit an actual Fender neck in my Affinity Squier" - MIM necks can be found on Ebay - has morphed into "Let's build my dream Telecaster and sell the Squier once I'm done"... A knotty pine Telecaster body was calling my name on Ebay. Since I wanted a different look from my home made DC Les Paul (Tung oil finish) I decided, after much seeking at the local Rona & Home Depot, to go for Watco clear lacquer, which turns out to be Nitrocellulose based. The finish is far from factory perfect, but after applying 8 coats with foam brushes and letting it dry for 9 days (yep, orange peel and runs in the finish) the wet sanding and buffing did a good job leveling the lacquer and buffing it to a nice gloss! Not factory perfect, as there are a few spots where I sanded through the finish, but given that this was all done by hand without a spray booth or a power buffer, not bad! The sanded-through spots? They give it a "road worn look" that won'y clash with the neck... Found an OEM Fender Telecaster neck through Ebay...I was worried that it might be a forgery (might still be) but the Modern Player Telecasters are "crafted in China", the seller is Chinese...I've compared the headstock logo to that of the Modern Player from the Fender website and it's a match, there is a date stamped in red ink on the heel (2015-07-04)...looks like the serial # and "Crafted in China" were sanded off the back of the headstock (unless that's stamped last at the factory after the guitar has been fully assembled? I dunno, at any rate, the back of the headstock was sanded off). Looks like that neck might have been part of a "reject pile" at the factory: the headstock is dinged and chipped as if it had fallen off a pallet (or dropped on a concrete floor) and was later recuperated...whomever did went berserk with a Dremmel and sandpaper tool to "relic" it...anyway, it was cheap, so I pulled the trigger. Problem 1 - the string hole on the low E-string isn't aligned with its ferrule hole. The proper fix would be to dowel the ferrule hole, re-drill a pilot hole from the top (using the bridge as a guide) and then re-drill the ferrule hole with a countersink drill bit. Problem is all I have is a hand held power drill, and a regular set of drill bits. If I were to get the one countersink drill bit I need, what diameter should I get, and how can I make sure I don't drill too deep? Problem 2 - the body is based on a thinline body, I'm worried that the lack of thickness might result in the neck bolts going straight through the fingerboard...I was thinking of adding layers of masking tape under the neck plate to add a bit of extra thickness and protect the neck from being drilled through for a tight fit...while we're at it, any tips to prevent accidentally drilling too deep? I tried the "tape guide", but I find the tape sometimes wiggles loose! Problem 3 - once all assembled, it will desperately need a fret dress. It looks that some frets were filed at the factory (others are perfectly crowned, others show filing marks) but that the work was abandoned when the headstock got damaged...wither way, there's still plenty of work ahead! BTW, the camera angle makes it look like the G string is also off-center,and the D string hole is still partly blocked with wax paste (from the wet sanding, to protect the raw wood), the only problematic hole is the low E string (on the right)
  7. I apologise in advance if someone's already said this but...I'm about to take a page from Reeves Gabrels' book! I read that he's used a vibrator to play slide as it increased sustain I mean, all jokes aside it would vibrate the strings...I've been thinking of a different approach to the sustainer, maybe attach a piezzo buzzer (or the innards of a vibrator? ) to the underside of the Strat's bridge... something tells me that might not work-in order to generate enough vibrations the "buzzer" noise might be amplified by the pickups...not something I'd want!
  8. Indeed! Oh, and I think this is the model in particular: http://www.musicyo.com/planet/metallist.asp If I win the auction I'll have to take careful measurements to make sure the routing I've done a few months ago is sufficient. And if it is indeed the same driver/circuit it works with a pair of 9V batteries in series (ouch, more routing? ) but on the plus side it would also work as a neck pickup!
  9. The dude emailed me a pic of what hes selling...
  10. Well...seeing that my handiwork isn't doing any better, I'm tempted to go for it: at the very least the driver part will be covered, and I'm sure the solder work on that circuit is cleaner than what I can accomplish...and seeing the seller's asking under $100.00 for it (have you seen how much the Fernandes kits cost?)...I'm very, very tempted! Since my current setup also has the switch noise well... Do you know if Floyd's version of the driver also works as a regular pickup?
  11. Is anyone familiar with the "original" Sustainiac circuit, the one co-designed by Floyd Rose? Just saw one in the classifieds, the seller states "with Floyd Rose's signature at the back of the circuit"...?
  12. Well, I've been enjoying my newly acquired Fender Champion 600 reissue. Other than what my pals at the FDP Forum refer to as "Mains Mantra" (a.k.a. transformer hum) it's a nice, quiet amp (noise-wise) that can get pretty loud for a 5-watter! It seems to agree with all my guitars (Strat, Tele, home made Les Paul and Variax) and with most of my pedals. Problem 1: the more pedals, the more hiss is induced. I might have a fix for that, either in the form of a Hush pedal or MXR Smart Gate. Problem 2: My Dano Surf & Turf compressor (which I use as a clean boost) actually picks up radio signals when the sensitivity knob is set at a certain point (2 -3 o'clock), and that's one thing I'm not so sure the Hush or Smart Gate can handle...I've heard of RF filters added to older amps to filter out radio stations, but in this case it's only the one pedal when pushed past a certain level. I guess the simplest solution would be to back off the sensitivity knob until the radio interference disappears and to compensate with the level knob, but...enquiring minds want to know: could a RF filter allow me to crank up the compressor without the radio signal?
  13. Neither, I fixed the fizzies 6 weeks ago, that's not the issue. I don't think the circuit I originally built has enough gain. To save space I ended up using fixed resistors rather than pots - well I did use a trimpot for the volume, in retrospect I should have done this for both the gain and volume functions, it might have saved me this headache... What I don't get is that I was getting good controlled feedback when playing through my J-Station some 6 weeks ago...I tried the same thing through my newly acquired Fender Champion...the notes won't feedback, they just decay much too fast. And it's not a matter of weak batteries either as I've figured out a way to use my Variax's power supply to power up the diy sustainer (Yes I own a Variax, no I didn't mount the sustainer in the Variax, I mounted it in my Stratocaster and I replaced the standard jack with a stereo jack to supply power to the circuit- just take my word for it, it works! ). I was perusing Ebay and came across the expander circuit, and I liked the space-saving design, mounted at the back of a push-pull pot, in a circuit much more compact than my all-thumbs soldering capabilities could accomplish... If a power amp section could be attached to the Expander circuit I could avoid the current tangled mess of wires under the Strat's pickguard and feed a hot enough signal to the driver. Because I'm pretty sure that's the problem right now: not enough juice going through the driver...
  14. Is anyone familiar with the Artec tone expander? http://www.artecsound.com/exp.html What sounded fine a while back is lacking oompf after putting the home made sustainer down for a few months...the circuit needs more gain than what I currently have, and I wonder if one of the above expanders might accomplish that?
  15. About the clicking...this may or may not apply to a circuit such as the Sustainer, but Guitar Player columnist Craig Anderton had a fix for cheap pedal switch popping (this is from like 1983 I'm working from memory here): patching a 1 meg restistor to ground from the pedal's input and (if I recall) a 100K resistor from the pedal's output to ground...whether or not this could be applied to sustainer I haven't a clue... For lack of a decent digital camera; my driver is a butchered Fender Single coil pickup (which was already busted), using popsicle sticks as spacers (to assure the winding remained in the top 3 mm's) and so much Carpenter's Glue for potting the windings look uneven and messy. The wiring under the pickguard would give any qualified guitar tech a nervous breakdown (wanna talk tangles?) ... but it's working so I won't complain! Er..how does one post a sound clip on this board?
  16. Okay, so here's an update! I performed a few pickup swaps and I'd say I'm 90% of the way there. I'm getting the best results on the wound strings (to be expected) and I know I should use heavier strings for better results and I might consider a different driver prototype: as it stands, setting the driver as little as 1/16" too close to the strings generates too many false harmonics and wolfe-tones...but at a "safe" distance from the strings I'm getting decent performance from he E-A-D and G strings. I'm not sure how strong the magnets used by Fender are, but that driver's magnetism is definitely stronger than the Dimarzio VV's. The pickup swaps: (bear in mind that I own a few guitars) I had a pair of Kent Armstrong PAF's which have a nice jazzy tone, I installed them in my home made Les Paul. Said Les Paul was equiped with a Dimarzio PAF Joe and a Tone Zone...I installed the Tone Zone in the bridge position of the Strat ... a perfect fit for the DIY Sustainer, plus the Tone Zone is F-spaced, a better fit for the Strat. So I'm 90% there...all I might need is a few minor tweaks for it to be at 100%! Tried to record a few clips...wouldn't you know that once I have it working decently I can't figure out what to play Other than a few Tony Iomi-esque "fun with feedback" wankings I can't think of anything tasteful to play...oh well... At least I'm on the right track!
  17. What makes you think string pull is the culprit ? If the string pull from your pickup is enough to have a significant effect on sustainer functionality, then your tone (without sustainer) would have been terrible ! As long as your pickups aren't close enough to the strings to give you 'wolf tones', you should be OK. There are lots of things that can cause 'screwy harmonics' and 'distorted sound'. Screwy harmonics: coil potting not sufficient parasitic oscillations... caused by bad circuit design faulty component(s) poor layout of system squealing feedback caused by interference between driver and pickup (most likely) Distorted sound: too much gain in the pre amp too much gain in the power amp circuit is heavily distorting the signal in some other way poor layout - e.g. components/cable carrying large signal is close to pickup driver and pickup combining to form an unintended transformer causing voltage multiplication and clipping feedback loop between driver and pickup (as above - before the squealing kicks in, you will get a nasty distortion) These are just the things that come to mind right now. If your system is 'nearly' working, but you're getting squeals and distortion kicking in before there is any decent sustain, then look to your driver and circuit. Make sure that your circuit is working cleanly by testing with a speaker. When using it with a driver, lower the gain - you might find that you were just trying to use too much? I remember when I first tried the fetzer/ruby, very low gain settings were required to prevent instability. In my later circuits, I used minimum gain on the poweramp side at all times! As far as the driver goes, be prepared to build a few! There are so many driver variables - even if you use the 'standard' specs for wire gauge and turns, you should still try different core materials magnets etc. and also remember that better quality construction will make a big difference. cheers Col At this stage I'm tempted to say that either the driver circuit isn't powerful enough or that the bridge pickup's output is too weak, likely why Fernandes uses an actual humbucker in bridge position. The Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues was giving me some sustain, but as soon as I tried to wire it in series with a HS2 (don't ask) the sustain was gone. I tried to blame string pull, but I think I screwed up the "sensor's sensitivity" by wiring a hot pickup with a weaker one. More and more I'm tempted to just stick a Kent Armstrong PAF in bridge position and be done with it! I'm just concerned I'll lose the Strat sparkle if I do that!
  18. All right! After two driver prototypes, two amp prototypes; one mega mistake in trying to boost the sustainer output and fixing a major grounding problem; I've got the darned thing at a stage where I can hear it trying to sustain and not quite cutting it ... I think string pull's an issue here. I can definitely hear the screwy harmonics and distorted sound past the 15th fret. I might be stating something that's already been said (or that is an already well-known fact) but string pull and sustain don't work well together ... the clean tone is there in non sustainer mode, now I need to fix pickup height and see if it makes a difference...
  19. I'm just about to throw in the towel ... the Dimarzio HS2 is a whispy POS compared to the Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues...and I'm still getting a dull, lifeless tone in non sustainer mode...and in spite of rewiring the driver with .2mm (32 AWG) wire and potting with wood working glue ...still no sustain! Sigh, I'll see if I can't strip things down to the bare bones minimum...I really don't want to have to replace the Heavy Blues with a full sized 'bucker ... see if the driver/VV HB combo on its own yields the anticipated results ... Questions: the 4PDT switch is used to take the unused pickups (hot & ground) out of the circuit; as well as to disconnect the battery; thus where does the bridge pickup's ground connect to? I'm just trying to reason through this: if you connect the bridge ground to common ground; in sustainer mode the amp circuit's (-) also connects to the common ground (or is that wrong?); could that explain the load down sound I'm getting? Would connecting the bridge pickup's ground to the amp circuit only solve that problem?
  20. If 'tapping' a switch a few times (I assume you mean physically hitting the switch?) makes a difference, then it sounds like at least some faulty soldering or even bad components. Maybe the diagram is good, maybe not, until you fix the wonky implementation, you won't know for sure. wiggling it a bit too ... I'll try ... this was the one schematic simple enough for this simple mind to comprehend ...that being said, the original of that schematic isn't too clear as far as where the bridge pickup's ground is supposed to connect ... me think that's the root of my tone problems. Yep - with a simple driver / mid pickup / bridge pickup config I got my brights in non sustainer mode and some sustain in sustainer mode ... (not bad considering that my prototype driver was built using too thin a wire - .160 instead of .2 and using hot glue instead of PVC glue for potting) ...I'm taking a second stab at the driver, using .2 mm (32 AWG) wire and carpenter's glue. I'm giving it all another stab after work ... thx Col!
  21. Help! I know I made several mistakes in wiring up this circuit, could someone please point them out to me and show me the correction? Thanks! Yep, that's one driver, one neck pickup (Virtual Vintage 2.1), one middle pickup (Virtual Vintage Blues), one bridge pickup (Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues) and an extra pickup (HS2) wired out of phase to the amp circuit so it's in series with the Heavy Blues to provide a hotter signal to the circuit. Looks like a H-S-H configuration, plays like a S-S-S in non sustainer mode and like a Humbucker in sustainer mode ... or at least in should. What I'm currently getting is a dull sould in non sustainer mode (real ugly when you use that tone control); and a lot of radio-like whine in sustainer mode...tap the 4PDT switch a few times and I get a bright humbucking sound and no sustain...
  22. And that the bridge pickup has a hot enough output ...for instance, the DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues (output of 170 mv) gave me better results than the DiMarzio HS2 (90 mv output) ... I'll give the electronics suplus store a second look. My mistake was to ask the guy behind the counter for his thinnest magnet wre, in this case 34 gauge (.160 mm). Thicker isn't a problem.... .2mm is 32 AWG, right? Absolutely! Common craft glue wil do? And I was about to make a double-boiler to pot the driver the old fashioned way! There! I figured out how! I know I must have made several boo-boos in that circuit...how do I correct them?
  23. I think I may have found a solution ... lemme test it out first ... this Strat is going to look like a crazy-ass hot-rod when I'm done wih it!
  24. From the top...I apologise for not giving better details as I can get pretty scatter-brained! Anyway...never mind the rails driver for now as I see it's well above my meager skills ... The guitar used: MIM Fender Stratocaster The current driver: a broken Fender pickup which I've rewired with .160 mm wire...(a bit too thin? I'm kind of limited by local supply you see...) which I've hand-wound as tight as I could and which is held in place with hot glue. The current circuit: The Ruby amp http://www.runoffgroove.com/ruby.html I got it through my thick skull that in order to forego battery use (I'm not very handy with the router and I wouldn't risk routing for a battery compartment) I could swap the Strat's standard jack with a stereo one and use my Variax's power supply (because I also own a Variax) and cord to provide power to the circuit (tip = hot, ring +, sleeve gnd). Does that work? Yes, as I was saying I am getting sustain/feedback though the driver height and circuit levels need to be tweeked as the sustain seems to be limited to the D and A strings above the 10th fret. If I understand this properly, the pickups that aren't in use need to be out of circuit (that's the middle pickup in my case, done that) but also the sustainer circuit needs to be "disconnected" from the output to avoid pickup load down? I really need to rethink my 4PDT switch...better yet, I need to know the proper way to wire it! PS Dude...I just re-read your tutorial and I finally got it ... d'oh! You made a thin bobbin which sits atop an existing pickup...brain cells just connected ... I'd still like to know how to properly wire that 4PDT switch though!
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