Stew

fryovanni: Exactly my case. I had worked on a mahogany/zebrawood project 6 months prior to the other mahogany project.

Yeah I'm allergic to Honduras mahogany. I found this out after the begining stages of building my Chris Craft boat guitar. The week of bare wood sanding, I woke up the next morning with my eyes swollen shut, and my body covered with hives. Three nights later (since I thought it was a severe pollen allergy), after continuous sanding, I woke up with shortness of breath. Two of those nights were trips in an ambulance to the Emergency room. After stopping the sanding process, it took 2 months for the symptoms to calm down and eventually disappeared. The reaction also made me hypersensitive to common food allergies, which I've never had before. This made things hard to isolate the allergic reaction for my doctors. Yeah so this is some serious stuff. Now I have to wear a respirator, safety goggles (as always), scarf around by neck, long sleeve shirts, full length pants, and rubber gloves. I'm one step away from looking like a bee keeper. I may return to good ol' alder, poplar, and maple.

Um, yeah, ok, now I know it's Danish oil.

I love that green quilt top. I'll bet it looks better in person than the pics can show. That's one that you polish up, set on a stand, and just admire for hours. I like the simplicity of the Malmsteen axe. Is that an oiled finish? In my mind, it's hard to compete with someone who can do set necks. Nice metallic finish and love the star inlays. And dude (neocon58), don't be so hard on yourself. It took me 3 years to get to this level. My first project was a kit. It's all what you do with it. The light is an above-average approach that kicks. Nice job to everyone.

All I want to do is use the existing setup with original pot and cap values. I don't want to build something, I just wanted to know if anyone knows the cap value that's used in the LR Baggs X-Bridge system. thegarhanman: I'll be contacting you very soon, I'm interested. (Yes I'm in the US).

I have two LR Baggs piezo X-bridge systems in my parts bin. Well, I can't find the pot. I recently substituted a mini 5K for a system and misplaced the original pot (5 Megaohm pot). Along with this pot is the original capacitor that came pre soldered. LR Baggs support will not help me. I need to know: 1. Where can I find a standard 5 Megaohm pot 2. What is the value of the cap used. The cap is very small and I think it was electrolytic polyester, not ceramic. LR Baggs will not disclose this information in any of their literature. Any help would be great. Thanks.

Thanks marksound, it is just the saddle, not the entire rosewood mounting block. I don't have the guitar in front of me so I'll need to get the guitar back to continue working on the guitar. It would be great if this solves the problem. Edited later: Works perfectly, all the way up the neck and open chords. Thanks for all who helped. - Stew

Ok so now how do I repair this badboy? I've never replaced an acoustic bridge before. This must have some sort of transducer underneath. What should I do to be careful not to break the piezo transducer? Are these glued in? How do I loosen the glue? I really don't have specialized one use Stew Mac stuff for this. I'm mainly a solid body guitar fix guy.

The Kaman Corp contacted me a few days ago saying that they would send me a compansating bridge for the guitar, free of charge. Since they no longer make the DuoTone guitar, they have a bunch of comp bridges just sitting around. They said they made the bridge because so many complained about the G & B sting intonation problem. Well, there you go.

As far the B and G string, I'll check to see if there's still some slack that's causing it to slip out of tune or if it's getting caught in the nut. I mean this is a Korean made Hamer. In my experience most Korean made guitars are not quite up to par on setups. I just want to make sure it's not something else before I start permanently changing the bridge. If it's just slack and my intonation is dead on, the altering the bridge will throw it out again, right? I'll check everything out again today since it's sat overnight to get things settled. I've used pencil graphite before for the nut slots. Is this a myth or does anyone out there use something that's an improvement over graphite? Thanks for all your help.

Hey guess what? It was the tuners! After filing down the high frets, I restrung and heard some rattling at the head stock. I thought "it's the tuners". So after spending some time taking out the slack from the strings so that it would stay in tune, I investigated the rattle. It was the washers between the pegface and hex nut. So I tightened each nut until snug. I double checked the tuning and found that now everything was sharp and I had not touched the strings at all while tightening. So I started checking the intonation and now most of all the strings were perfectly intonated after I retuned. The G and B string were showing a little sharp so I slightly loosened the hex nut, retuned everything and checked the intonation. The G & B were now closer to perfect intonation. It's still slightly out but it's very close to dead on without having a loose hex nut on the tuner. So, one last tuning, and the G and B still sounded slightly out when chording. I realized the neck had a fair amount of relief so I flattened the neck by tightening up the truss rod a bit. Turns out with the higher action, I was pressing harder and making certain strings out of tune. With the neck flatter, I used less pressure to chord and now sounds perfect, open chords, barre chords in all positions, in all octaves all the way past 12th fret. Is this normal? I would have never thought about the tuners being used for intonation purposes. I'm not sure if they are original tuners but there is a large script "S" (I'm assuming Schaller) and the words, "Made in Germany" on the back casing. I can't believe this worked.

Here's a visual for you. Seems too narrow to be doing any filing. He barely plays this so there's hardly any wear on the thing.

Alright, I'm in. This is called the "Stew Craft" boat guitar. Inspired by the old 30's and 40's mahogany Chris Craft boats. My guitar is fashioned after a 1939 Chris Craft Roundabout Deluxe "Barrrelback". (sorry, the camera shot the green light as blue) Here's some links of pics while being built: My body blank after glueing Cut and sanded. Mahogany takes forever to sand Back of body Light refelctions, not imperfections on the neck Note the "plank" appearance in the mahogany Boat registration and licence High gloss reflection Specs: - Solid Honduras Mahogany/poplar laminate body - Mahogany 25.5 scale neck, boatneck (yes, I know) neck profile, 1 11/16" nut, pau ferro fingerboard with jumbo frets, white bound with pearl dots. - Gotoh 510 tuners - Dunlop strap locks - 3 independant mini pickup toggles, wired parallel. - LR Baggs piezo X-bridge - Seymour Duncan Antiquity I series Strat pickups. Finish: - Guitar Reranch rattle cans, 1 can Fender neck amber, 4 cans clear gloss nitrocellulose, neck and body. Grain filler applied first before tint and lacquer. Special features: - Custom decals - Fabricated navigational deck light - Custom design acrylic clear pickguard The top Jaguar two way circuit switch serves as the On/Off switch for the deck light. I fabricated the housing out of a pulley wheel casing and then ground down to round off. I also fabricated the colored green & red "port/starboard" lenses out of casting resin, then ground down to size. This is getting long so I'll save the rest for questions later.

I'm wondering if there would be a problem with removing the saddle since I'm guessing there is a ribbon piezo pickup inderneath? Could the Stew Mac comp saddle work with the existing piezo pickup? BTW, it's a string through body so there are no string pins. Yeah I think all I can do with this one is maybe swap out the .010's for .009's, and file down the high #6 fret on the bass side.

I totally agree about the truss rod. But I just can't figure out how to adjust the intonation on this thing. I mean, the bridge is just like an acoustic guitar. It's a glued in rosewood base with a bone bar saddle. With a wooden instrument that is subject to weather changes, how do you normally keep an acoustic guitar intonated? Is it string gauge dependant? Maybe I'll see if Hamer has something on their website. Thanks for chiming in.

A friend gave me his Hamer XT series DuoTone (semi-hollow electric/acoustic). It's a short scale set neck guitar. It's got some problems. First, the intonation is horrible. Action is not too bad, a little hard to chord above 4th fret and major string buzz when playing C note on the 5th string. I'm thinking the fret must be a little high at the 5th fret since it's slight at C# on the same string, and no buzz on D. Problem is how do you do an intonation setup on this guitar? The bridge is one straight bone bar with no compansation. Do you intonate by manipulating the truss rod? Tightening will make the buzz worse, in fact fret out completely, and loosening will raise the action possibly eliminating the fret buzz. What's the compromise? Also I just installed new strings (.010 - .046 Elixer Polyweb lite). What do I do?

Works perfect. Thanks again for your help. Just working with this switch has helped me learn a bit more. Thanks so much for your help. I had some grounding issues before doing this change. Everytime I'd sink the control plate into place, the signal would completely cut out. Now that I've rewired, I have a nice strong signal when completely assembled. No hum other than when split single coil of neck humbucker, but that's expected.

Um, everything sounds exactly where it should be.........but, it's reversed. My bridge humbucker is in the #5 position, split coils in #4, both humbuckers in #3, split neck humbucker #2, and fulll neck humbucker #1. Could I truely have a switch that has the 1,2,3,4,5 lugs instead of 5,4,3,2,1? The switch has not changed positions....it can't. The Super Switch is in a top loading control cavity, which means it's very cramped because of that switch. I wish this guy opted for the rear route, I would have this problem. The switch won't fit if I reverse the switch physically. What do I do? But other than that, it's very exciting to have those options back.

The soldering pen is heating as we speak. Thanks again for going over this with me. Dang, you are that good!

One last thing, most of the schematics I've seen show some sort of jumper between the input connections; 0 lug on pole 1 connected to 0 lug on pole 3. Is one side of the switch input and the other side output? lovekraft, why does your diagram not have these jumpers crossing over to other poles of the switch?

Cool, I'm set then. Thanks again.

Dude, you are the best! I'll give it a shot tonight. BTW, I was not hinting that you had any problem with John, nor do I. He has really bent over backwards to try and help me out. Plus he's been very polite about it when most would have said, "get a book"! Now one last clarification, the tapped wires coming from the neck pickup. You show two red wires, one going to pole 2, lugs 4 & 2. I'm assuming this is the red and white wires going to lug 4, then a jumper wire between lugs 4 and 2, right? Why do you have a black wire connecting to the red/white tapped wires coming from the bridge humbucker? Just to better separate connections from both humbuckers? Thanks again. Now you are probably starting to see what John was going through with me.

In regards to John Suhr, I just don't think he has time to educate me about wiring his pickups. He has answered every email I've sent him but his advice always seems to leave out one element, which in turn warrants another question to him. I hate wasting his time. I have a feeling there is no short tutoral explaination regarding these Super Switches and nobody really has time to explain. How did all of you get to know about this stuff, because I'm prepared to take an electronics class at my local Jr. College. But I'm just wondering how that knowledge would help me understand something like a Super Switch. Is a switch a switch no matter how many lugs and junk are all over?

That is so cool, thank you very much. 5 = full neck humbucker 4 = split neck humbucker (Strat neck tone) 3 = full both humbuckers, (parallel, I'm looking for a Les Paul type middle 3 way tone) 2 = split bottom coil of neck humbucker, split top coil of bridge humbucker (parallel, Strat type "bell" like tone) 1 = full bridge humbucker. I rarely use the bridge position in a Strat so I'm opting for the full bridge humbucker rather than splitting. I know I won't get a true out of phase Strat tone out of the parallel split humbuckers but I'll be close which is fine. I'm using 1 volume pot with a treble bleed, and 1 tone pot. But it sounds to me that I can just keep those output wires where they are currently (no pun intended). Thank you so much for putting up with my questions. I really would like to learn more about these switching options rather than just rely on a recipe schematic. This will help me out with time since my customer needs this by Monday. It's embarrassing to build something you can't explain, and have come back to tweek the switching. That's just sad. RE:link, Just ignore the tone pot correlations on the chart. My config is using a master vol/tone anyway. Example, check top chart to see which pickups are on depending on switch position