Ripthorn

Just from a theoretical standpoint, doing the overlapping series puts the south coil and single coil in parallel, which reduces the overall resistance and inductive reactance to ground, which is likely why you are thinking it is part way between the other two scenarios. It is an interesting concept. I am planning to do an HS guitar in the somewhat near future and may put this sort of thing in as an option.

I hadn't made any prior to this from northern ash, so I didn't know exactly what I was getting myself into (thought more weight would be lost in the shaping/routing part). If I were to do it again, I would do horizontal chambers with a forstner bit before glue up. Also, this thing sustains until just a few seconds shy of forever.

That looks great. Any kind of how-to for doing this?

Let me preface this by saying that for a long time I was never a fan of Fender guitars. That was because all my experience was with those lousy ones that didn't have rolled fretboards or any of the ergonomic or aesthetic things I wanted in a guitar. All this experience was in a small guitar shop in the middle of nowhere, so they were all unexciting solid colors and I am a big fan of seeing at least a fair amount of wood grain. Several months ago, I decided to build a tele, then thought "Well, I should probably build a strat, too, since I don't have any single coil guitars". After that, I decided I wanted a Jazzmaster. However, I didn't want to just knock them off, I wanted to reimagine them somewhat. I stuck to the body shapes, it is mostly the woods, electronics, and a few other things that I took liberty with. Tonight, I completed the first one (the tele). I call it the Filtercaster. Why? you may ask. Well, I am a physicist and all my research at the university was in acoustics. As such, I did a lot of circuit analysis and filter design. So instead of just having the normal low pass tone control, I stuck in about a gazillion switches, 5 caps and an inductor. Now I have high pass, low pass, band pass, and notch filters available to me. How useful will they be? Only time will tell. As for the rest of the electronics, there is a neck phase reversal and series/parallel options as well. All of this was crammed into a standard control cavity. The body is solid northern ash (the unfinished body came in about 7 lbs.!) with shellac finish, the neck is curly maple with satin lacquer, the fretboard is unfinished monkeypod. Nut is bone and the board dots are mother of pearl both in the face and on the side. Pickups are Bill Lawrence Keystones. So far, it sounds awesome. Of course, I haven't dialed in the relief of the neck or intonated it, as I angered the wife very quickly upon completion (apparently she can hear my playing two floors above). You may also note the lack of string trees. That will be remedied shortly, as they are badly needed. I also need knobs and one more strap button, but other than that, this thing is good to go. I'm pretty pumped. I will post pictures of the others as they are finished. The other two have finished necks. Jazzmaster body is being finished currently and the body I built for the strat I decided didn't match the amazing neck I built for it, so I will have to do one from scratch (after I finish building the two mini guitars for my kids for Christmas). Anyway, here's what you really wanted. I'll try to get some pics with better light after I get knobs, etc. Enjoy! Closeup: Back: Control panel closeup:

I don't know about the old Nocaster's, but asking at tdpri would get you accurate answers in no time (after all, tele's are what they do). Good luck.

Well, made some more progress. I got the neck humbucker routes done on both, drilled the control holes, routed the control cavities to proper depth, and put the roundover on the backs. Unfortunately, the tearout didn't get taken care of with the roundover, so I will have to be a little more aggressive in getting rid of it, but I still think I can get rid of it without making it look unnatural. I have my ideas for tummy cuts marked, let me know what you think about them. I still need to tweak them a little, I think, but feedback is welcome. Anyway, since all you really care about are the pics, here we go:

I'm thinking either a big back roundover or doing a little "scoop". I've done that on other builds and like the aesthetics of it. We'll have to play it by ear when it comes to dealing with it, but I don't think it will be a problem.

That black camo looks amazing. Any tips or tricks to doing it? Or was it all just airbrush and do it as you go? That is a great looking guitar, great job.

Well, made some more progress over the last few days. I had some pictures of gluing up the body blanks, but you guys know what that looks like. Tonight I got the bodies routed to shape and routed the neck pockets. As you will see, one of them is a lefty. That is because my 4 year old is a lefty and I did some very discreet detective work to see which way she prefers playing the guitar; I had her play both ways and she much preferred left handed she said. Check 'em out, they're looking really good (ignore the fly on the lower one): The one thing you don't see, however, is what happened when I was routing the back of one of the bodies: Oh well, that will likely come out mostly with the roundover and the rest will come out with some rear carving that will look as if I planned it that way. Here's the control cavity (not to final depth yet, it'll get that a little later):

I started in on the actual woodworking today. In the photo below, you can see the rough lumber. The large board is poplar and should yield three bodies. The smaller blonde board is maple for the necks, then there is also the monkey pod for the fretboards and the curly anigre veneer for the tops. After planing, the bodies will be almost 1.5" on the nose without veneer. Fretboards have been slotted and I have laid out how the necks will come out of the maple. I split the poplar down the center to plane it (only a 10" planer), so tomorrow will be gluing up the body blanks and scarfing the neck blanks.

Luckily, even if the kids don't stay that into it, these will be great as travel guitars or whatever. But I anticipate that they'll stay interested for some time. Tonight should be stock prep, fretboards, etc. I'll try to get some pics after the night's work is done.

Well, the MDF templates are all done and ready to rock. I'll start prepping stock tomorrow or the day after, but to get you guys thinking small, here are a few photos. First one is a shot of all the templates. Second is a mockup and third, just to give you an idea of how small these will be, the body template is laid on top of a standard-sized strat template.

Looks like you do some woodworking around bikes, too. Certainly functions to keep one on his toes. This should be a fun build to follow.

My four year old daughter has been asking me for months to build her a guitar. My 2 year old son always asks to go down to the basement and "play guitars and picks". So for their big gifts this Christmas, I will be building them guitars. Specs are: - PRS Custom body style - Poplar body with dyed curly anigre veneer top - Maple Neck (bolt on) - Monkey Pod fretboards (21 frets) - 21" scale length - Epiphone humbuckers (from the parts bin) The thought here was to make smaller guitars to fit them, but big enough that they can play them for several years. Needless to say, they will have better guitars than most kids their age for the next 5-10 years. I started making the master templates tonight, almost totally completed. By tomorrow night I should have all the working templates done and ready to rock. Then it will be prep stock and get rocking. I'll hopefully keep this updated with pictures, as it is sure to be a lot of fun. I'm downright giddy about how cool these things are going to be. The best part is I have enough materials for three of them (child #3 is on the way, but I'll take good care of the other one until she's old enough to play in three years or so:)).

It looks really good. My one comment is that the floating menu interferes with some of the text. For example, in the Lutherie Resources area. I know you can just scroll down, but it can make for a somewhat cluttered appearance. Just an observation. Overall, though, I think it has turned out quite well.

Are we talking laminates for neck, body, or neck-thru? If for the neck, how thick? Just curious.

This problem occurs for me most commonly when I have to press the strings too far the fret them, thus stretching the string further and producing slightly sharp notes. Check your action. String gauge and neck relief will also play into this. You didn't notice the problem with open strings or at the harmonics because you aren't depressing the string at all. If it's not that, the others above also gave good suggestions.

Could you laminate it to get the right width? It would be like what some people do to increase thickness, only in this case, it would be width. No idea if the seam would be visible, though.

Yes it is possible. You would make sure that they share the same signal ground, but then on the DPDT switch, you send the hot lead of each pickup to the middle lug of the two different sides. The output from each pickup would be on one of the end lugs and then the other end lugs would be grounded. That would give you a kill switch for both pickups while keeping the signals completely separate to do whatever you want with.

The problem is that a three way switch like that just jumps the two signals together, so in that position you have the two tone circuits in parallel. That is just an inherent characteristic in having it wired that way with that kind of switch, unless you are using any special parts, which it doesn't look like.

The volume pot has very little to do with tone (though there is some bleeding of higher frequencies to ground when the volume pot is turned down). The tone pot/cap combination forms a low-pass filter with a cutoff frequency described as w=1/(RC) in radians or f=1/(2*pi*RC) in Hertz. There are lots of applets online that will calculate this out for you. It is an extremely common topology. Determining which cutoff frequency you like is the more difficult part as you have to experiment.

Nice looking build. What was your technique for the fretboard markers?

There aren't any drawings that I am aware of. It's mostly a feel-as-you-go type of thing. Generally you will have a 1/2" carve depth from center to edge. Others with more experience will chime in later, I'm sure.

In both cases your tone controls are completely in parallel with no isolation between them, so you will always have all pickups with the same tone setting which will be determined by the rolloff of the two filters in parallel. I can't think of a better arrangement for what you are trying to do off the top of my head, but I would think there has to be a better way. Then again, guitar wiring is not my strongest suit when it comes to electronics.

It's looking great. How do you plan to address the two tearout spots on that top? That top really is gorgeous, though.