lovekraft

As drawn, you don't get any "treble boost" unless the volume is turned down - with the volume pot wide open, the 1nF cap is effectively shorted out.

What does it sound like unplugged? If it's twangin' like Don Rich on crack without an amp, there's not gonna be any practical electronic solution. Unless it plays really nice and you can get it dirt cheap, I'd just walk away - not much sense in spending any serious cash for a no-name axe that doesn't sound the way you want it to.

I'll bet your neighbors are glad you're not into high explosives! Unlike opamps, which are optimized for simple cookbook-style circuits with a few outboard components, transistors are a little more difficult to use, but you'll figure that out right quick. My recommendations would be the 2N2222 NPN (RS#276-1617) and the 2N3906 PNP (276-1604) in the 15-paks. They're both general purpose, and at about eighteen cents each, you can afford to destroy quite a few of 'em.

Go to their website and check the application guides. Auto Air is water-based acrylic. I can personally attest to it's compatibility with (Deft and Mohawk) nitro lacquer and 2-part auto poly clearcoats - thier app guide says, "Auto Air Colors are compatible with all urethane clears. Compatibility with other clear types varies. Test first.". Auto Air doesn't offer a topcoat clear, but you can use their transparent base as a midcoat clear. The only downside is that fine detail with an airbrush may be difficult, since water-based media may tend to air-dry before contacting the surface - I think Jeremy mentioned that he hated using it for airbrushing. The pearls, candies, and metallics look really good, rivalling HOK and other highline stuff, and the flake is nice, but it's more old-school, not the huge bassboat flake everybody's used to. For more info, check the website.

It doesn't matter - either will give you asymmetrical clipping. Do whatever is most convenient.

They're also good for chikin'-pickin' country, funk, clean jazz and acoustic-y New Age sounds, and almost compulsory for fretless and clean bass stuff. Contrary-wise, about all they do when used with medium to high gain settings is increase the background noise. For stompboxes, I've always liked the Dynacomp (or it's twin, The Ross Compressor), the Orange Squeezer (and clones) and the little DOD opto comp (280? can't remember...). For bass, I've always preferred a rackmount unit, for more control - dbx, Symetrix and Alesis boxes have all done a good job at various times in my rig.

Zip over to [url="http://www.guitarbuild.com"]GuitarBuild.com[/url] and download the free CAD file - it's under the.DWG files. And don't forget to tell 'em, "Thanks.". Not guaranteed to be 100% accurate, but it'll get you started - if you don't have CAD software, or can't figure out how to print it out, FEDEX/Kinkos or some other local copy shop can probably print them out for you for a nominal fee (I think the last large format prints i bought cost me about $4.00 a sheet for 22"x17" hi-res plans). HTH

OK, I misunderstood what you meant - so you're not actually boosting anything by using a smaller cap, you're simply increasing the center frequency of the natural 6dB resonant peak to make it more musically useful. You say tomato, I say lycopersicum berry - I suppose it could be considered a midrange boost, as opposed to a standard setup with a larger cap, which would then be a bass boost.

I gotta agree - some days I think that even active EQ is more trouble than it's worth! Look for simple, low parts-count circuits with as few controls as possible to conserve space, try to avoid anything with high current draw, like chorus/delays, unless you're willing to resort to heroic measures to power them, and don't forget to completely insulate the back of the board to avoid disastrous shorts when you button it all up. And don't expect it to turn you into Matt Bellamy overnight.

And I apologize if I came off sounding like a jerk - I simply found the irony of instructing Perry about Randy's guitars too funny not to comment, considering his personal involvement and depth of research on that particular axe. No offense meant, I just found it very amusing!

OK, Jade Sound Systems is in Victoria (Australia), and they are also apparently responsible for those Monarch amps that nobody can find any info on. A quick email to mail@jadeaustralia.com.au might get you some support, although I'm not sure if they've got a lot of authorised dealers in NZ (you are a Kiwi, right?) - even if you can't get anything but a schematic, it would sure be helpful, especially if you end up having to take it to a tech.

In general, if only one lead of an electrolytic cap is marked, it's the negative side - there, now if it blows up, you really can blame me! That's one of several reasons I never use those old-school can caps if there's any possible alternative. Why am I not surprised to hear that the guys at CE didn't know either?

You mean an "apparent boost", or resonant peak, right? Since a passive filter can only attenuate, there's never a boost without a battery.

Build an actuator using the strap button, like the Parsons-White B-Bender®, unless you're also intent on doing away with the strap buttons, too. Alternatively, replace all the switches and pots with a micro-controller and use your Powerbook.

Kinda reminds me of the Marshall McLuhan scene in Annie Hall - it just goes to show you never know when the guy you're talkin' to on the Internet might actually be licensed by the Randy Rhoads estate to produce copies, which could make you look kinda silly. Perry, kudos for your remarkable restraint!

Brand name? Model? General description? So far you've given us nothing to help you with.

OK, I looked this stuff up a year or so ago - here's more than you ever wanted to know about nato: Nato/Nyatoh is Palaquium luzoniense, although in commerce other species and the closely-related Diploknema and Payena species may also be identified as Nato. Also known as gutta-percha, the Palaquium species were used to make an early latex rubber, the insulation for the original trans-Atlantic telegraph cables and the bounce in the first really good golf balls. The wood has been used for furniture and boat-building in SE Asia and Australia. It is not related to the true mahoganies (Swietenia)or African mahogany (Khaya). Wood properties ( from Windsor Plywood) Sorry you asked?

Absolutely - retail price and advertising budget!

So just wire both volume pot outputs to the jack - you'll have to reverse the hot wires on the pots if you want independent volumes though (pickup hot lead to pot wiper, output to lh pot lug).

Check out unclej's photo tutorial: Repairing Electronics On Hollow Body Guitars

That's interesting - I use 250mV P-P input as an informal design center, figure 500mV P-P for "clean" boosters, and try to make sure I've got at least 1 volt P-P transients handled unclipped for pristine stuff like compressors and EQs - not always easy, especially with a 9 volt supply. I doubt that the 50mV figure was typical for humbuckers even in Darr's heyday, but I suspect that since tube amps handle transients a lot more gracefully, it wasn't much of a problem until 9 volt stompboxes (and cheap, under-designed solid state amps) became prevalent, and any discrepancies could be largely ignored. Jack Orman has some interesting figures on his Pickup Signals page, indicating that "moderately hot" humbuckers give an initial attack of over 1 volt P-P. I'd be really interested to know if anybody else has done any serious measurments, and what their results have been.

Prostheta, you've missed one important aspect of diode clipping - it only dumps that portion of the AC signal that exceeds the diode's forward voltage to ground, so it limits the signal voltage at that level, and "clips" off the "tops" of the waveform. It's more like a pressure regulator than a valve, bleeding off only what exceeds the desired pressure. HTH

+1 - Accusonics has only been building these things for half a century, and they're both inexpensive and readily available. Why reinvent the wheel?

That's it! If you're using that 5 way 4 pole rotary, simply use one pole for the bridge and another for the neck, and connect both commons to the output - BTW, that suggestion about having both in series is easy enough, since you've got a 4 pole switch, so give it some thought.

That's a plastic body jack, right? If the bushing that the plug fits into is at the top (in your drawing), wire both speakers' hot lugs to 1 and both speakers' ground lugs to 3. Bam, yer done!