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mu_sound

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    making noises of all kinds

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  1. I used the tone pros fully intonable wraparound bridge. very similar to these Pigtail wraparounds from stew mac http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bridges,_tailp...und_Bridge.html
  2. I'm working on a "thin archtop" style guitar and instead of stuffing the electronics through the pick-up holes & f-holes I was considering making an access panel on the back of the guitar and using the same wood I'm cutting out as a lid (cover) so that the existing carve, grain and pattern on the figured maple match perfectly. My first concern was wether or not it would have an impact on the acoustics of the guitar. My guess was that if I make it small ( less than 2.5in by 2.5in say) it would probably have an impact on the resonance of the back of the guitar, but probably not enough that my ears could tell. If it needed to be sealed I could probably use some insulation material but that seemed like overkill since I am cutting holes in the front face (f holes, pickup holes) so its certainly not airtight! My next worry was how to do it so that it looks nice in the end. First I'd need a lip to keep the wood from falling through. No problem I could glue in a couple of scrap pieces to serve as a lip and as a place to screw the lid onto. or as a friend suggested, I could glue in dowels on the opposite side that keep the lid in the right place and I can screw into. Next how to cut it out so that the edge is clean and I can use the center cutout. That means I cant drill pilot holes and I should probably not try to have any square corners. Large radii all around! So, no pilot holes kinda rules out a scroll saw, jig saw, etc. I thought of using a template router technique. Making a female template (a hole in a piece of wood or lexan) with the proper shape and slightly oversize. Using a bushing to follow the template I plan on taking shallow cuts with a 1/16 or smaller diameter bit. The trouble with smaller is they get progressively more fragile. Wider leaves a larger cutline which in my case is a larger gap between the two pieces of wood. Any suggestions here as far as a bit diameter (I'm using a 1/4" shank router, but I can switch to a 1/2" or a Dremel tool-1/8"). But I digress, you go around and around making progressively deeper cuts until you poke through the wood. In my case its only about 1/4" of guitar body that I have to go through. I have no idea about a Ibanez Artcore. You also probably want to take all of the internal components out before you do any of this otherwise the router will pretty much take care of all of your wiring! Also, you may want to rethink this panel unless you want to refinish your instrument. I'm sure the router will make some scratches and dings in the finish. Anyway, give it some thougt, you already have a beautiful instrument, if you want to tinker with electronics why not pick up a cheap korean made guitar. Usually what sucks in them is the pickups, so it will be a great place to tinker. As for me, does anyone have any words of wisdom for me before I carry the above out on my nicely carved and beautifully figured maple back? I'm plannning on taking a similar approach to the f-holes in the front, but in that case I dont have to reuse the cetral wood, so its a bit less stressful for me, and I can use a normal inlay bit (1/8" cutter).
  3. while I'm at all this question asking, why use two pus pulls at all why not do it the way shown here: http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/schem...v_1t_3w_1pp.pdf is it different? and why are there two empty contacts? If I use a 3 way switch its a bit different than a push pull since it will have 3 positions. So why does the push pull pot have 6 contacts anyway? I havent been able to find a schematic for a push pull pot. Silly isnt it?
  4. Bump! Ok so I don't think I would have room in my hollowed cavity for a push-pull pot. I saw a pic in Newark and they are huge!, Anyway I was wondering if I used a DPDT On-OFF-On mini-switch as a substitute for the push-pull pot, wired exactly as shown in the SD link in the original post. Would I get the same functionality? Did I get the functions even remotely close? Anyone? ...Anyone?.... Ferris.....Ferris Beuhler?
  5. Thanks Jeff, So if I were to draw a logic diagram for this: I'd get 3 way Switch Pos. | Push/pull vol | push pull tone | left...............................push................push .............Full Neck humbucker center .........................push..................push ............Neck/Bridge parallel right.............................push ................push ...............full bridge humbucker left...............................pull ................push ............red-white coil neck pickup center..........................pull ................push ........... red white coil /full bridge in parallel right ............................pull............... push .............full bridge again? left................................pull.................pull .............. red-white coil neck PU center ...........................pull................ pull............... both pickups red white coils in parallel right..............................pull ................pull ............. red white coil bridge PU And the whole time the volume and tone pots stay Volume and Tone is that about right?
  6. Hey there, I am trying to sort out what kind of wiring I am going to employ in my current build. The guitar is a semi-hollow body (maple top & back, mahogany sides) I got myself a LR Baggs fixed (non-tremolo) piezo-electic bridge. I also have 2 Seymour Duncam Jazz pickups. I was thinking about a switching arrangement that gives me the PRS options I have in my last build. however, I read on SD's website, that I have to take apart one of my pickups and revese th bar magnet in it. That sounded like a definite detour...so I was thinking instead of using an arrangement like this... http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/schem...v_1t_3w_2pp.pdf Only thing is I am not sure what the two push-pulls will do in this arrangement. I am ssuming I will get bridge hum, neck hum, & bridge/neck (parallel) with the 3 position switch. will the push pulls split coils or blend or what? sorry for the dumb question. I figured I'd sort out the magnetics first and then deal with the piezo/magnetics options. I might end up making some choices by the amount of real estate I have inside the cavitiy. I may not have room for a push pull, maybe Iam limited to mini-switches galore!
  7. Since I'm curently building a Jazz guitar with double humbuckers and a piezo, I am quite interested in this Petrucci style guitar. However, I just looked at the ernie ball site, and all I can find on the switching configuration is the following: Controls 500kohm volume and tone - .022µF tone capacitor Switch 3-way toggle pickup selector, with custom center position configuration Pickups 2 Custom DiMarzio Humbucking - specially designed for Petrucci what does custom center position mean??? wait wait...following their schematic link gets you to more details. However, it looks like theres at least one more toggle switch that wasnt meantioned and a wierd EQ for the piezos that looks like trim pots in the back of the guitar? http://www.ernieball.com/mmonline/techinfo/ So it looks like the switching is very simple, bridge H, neck H, and inner coils in parallel. Silly question. I am using Seymour Duncan SH-2 pickups, do I have to invert the phase of one of the two inner coils for the middle position to be hum cancelling? That would just call for changing the wires areound right? I've seen a diagram on the Seymour Duncan website that if you want the PRS style switching to be hum cancelling you had to reverse the actual magnet polarity by flipping the bar magnet over 180 deg. That seemed like more destruction than I actually wanted to do on a brand new pickup. Hopefully I wont have to go that route with this approach. On my PRS I tend to use just the Neck position and the position two positions adjacent so i guess that means the inside coils in parallel and the inside coils in series.
  8. Duh, I guess it would have helped if I had actually posted a link : http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/sum96tip.shtml so that what I was referring to...has anyone tried this? liked it? disliked?
  9. Has anyone tried this? ANy comments on the sound? I am building a guitar with LR Baggs piezos & a pair of Seymour Duncan Jazz pickups. would an option like this be overkill on a "jazz guitar" or would it enhance it? -Ed
  10. Not to discourage you from building, because its loads of fun, but if you love Jr's, Guitar Center had them on sale for $99 (Korean made Epi Les Paul Jr. to be specific). I picked one up as a travel guitar. I just unscrew the 4 neck screws and fold it up and stick it in my carry on. Makes the luggage a bit heavy, but at least I had a guitar for my week in Houston. I doubt that you could build a guitar for less than that. Of course the quality of this guitar is not exactly much more than $99. The nut needs to be filed smooth (the high E binds a bit). The tuners suck! The frets arent exactly flat. Once I got the strings changed to 11's and adjusted the truss rod, it had a bit of a nasty buzz at the 3rd fret. So I'm sure what you build will have better craftsmanship and better quality components. The pickup is a very important part of the sound, so make sure you find a pickup that has that dirty Junior vibe you like. I really dug the tone I had that week in Houston. I was playing into a Danelectro $20 headphone amp with the distortion cranked playing "My Head's in Mississippi" a la ZZ Top! I had a ball. Good luck with the build! You will have a blast. -Ed
  11. Thanks everybody! All of your kind words have really made my week! I wish I would have posted them earlier now :-)
  12. Hi there all, So I finally got around to updating the webpage with pics of my first finished guitar. I learned a whole hell of a lot! I made a few mistakes along the way. The biggest was choosing a crappy piece of my large maple slab to use for the top. I thought I would make far more mistakes and end up with something rather unplayable. Luckily, the mistakes I made were minor, and should be improved upon in the next build by changing some steps in my process. For example I carved the neck to shape, including the taper, made the truss rod hole, mounted the slotted & unfretted fretboard, then trued up the fretboard to the tapered shape of the neck (mistake), then radiused it. I should have radiused it before truing it up. The reason being I got a bit of "roll off" at the edges of the fretboard, (ie. the radius increases at the edges becasue my radiused sanding block slid sideways sometimes eating the edge a bit more than the center. Had I trued up after the radiusing procedure I would have cut off the part with the "roll off" issue. I suppose I could also radius the fretboard before mounting it, but I thought that would be riskier because then I have to hit true center when I glue the two together. Another mistake was not hammering in the brisge studs before I painted. beacuse I sized the hole for a nice press fit , it casued the wood to push outward a hair, which caused some of the lacquer to chip off near the bridge post The other mistake I made, and I'm not sure how to fix it on the next run is how to mask the fretted neck so that you dont get gaps at the frets (I think that I did this part ok) and also not "peel off" some of the lacquer atthe side dots, I had this happen on two frets. Its barely noticeable but I KNOW that they are there. Biggest mistake I made: I copied most of the Santana model PRS except for the inlay, scale & pickup switching, I used a 25" scale. However I forgot to compensate for the extra .5" when I located the bridge stud positions. So when I mounted the bridge I had to force screws out a bunch in order for it to intonate properly. I keep thinking I should make an adapter so that I have more metal to metal than just the surface area of the hex screw. I hope the above made sense to someone other than me. Rock on -Ed well here are the links to the pics: finished guitar: http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/f...%20guitar1.html early in progress work: http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/e.../earlyneck.html http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/gluedneck/neck.html http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/t.../templates.html http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/w...d/woodshed.html http://webpages.charter.net/hazysunshine/colors/colors.html
  13. I think you are correct, the truss rod did not fix the buzz, perhaps I was just picking a bit lighter. I guess the big thing the truss adjustment fixed was the action. The low E still buzzes a bit from 12th through 15th. If you think the fret level is the issue I think I'll pursue that route, its easy enough re-dressing frets. Do I have to be careful not to lower them so much that fretting those notes will make them buzz worse?
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