jnewman

LMI has a straight file made that way (not a rotary one). I never saw it on their website, but it's in the catalog they just sent me.

What you have listed as "D"s are diodes. 1N4007 is just a model designation for a common rectifier diode. What you have listed as "tubes" are in fact transformers. The 269EX is the power transformer, the 125ASE OT is the output transformer. What you have listed as "V's" are the tubes - a 12AX7 preamp tube and a 6AQ6 as a power tube. What you have listed as the "Fils" are the connections to the tube filaments, they are not separate parts. What you have listed as "F" is the fuse. The way ohm listings work: if there is no letter (or R) it is just ohms, if there is a K it's kilohms (1000 ohms), if therei s an M it's megaohms (1,000,000 ohms). Numbers after the letters are decimals. For example: 45R6 is 45.6 ohms. 345K is 345 kilohms. 10M is 10 Megaohms. You probably ought to start with an opamp design .

The micro champ is actually a tube amp while the ruby and little gem run off of op-amps? On the other hand, the micro champ can't run off of batteries, it needs wall power. You should connect all the V1 circles together, all the V2 circles together, all the V3 circles together. It's just a way to make the circuit neater, as you'd have a bunch of wires crossing that weren't actually connected if you actually put the connections between the circles together. The green numbers are target voltages around what you should measure at those points when the amp is running - it's a way to help make sure you have everything hooked up correctly. Also, no offense, but if you can't put a parts list together from a schematic, you probably don't have the electronics experience to build a tube amp that uses potentially lethal voltages and can kill you if you screw up the right way.

I think he's looking for the pole piece screws that are a part of the pickup itself, not any kind of mounting screws. Don't have any clue where to look, though - it's pretty hard to find pickup parts - maybe call some pickup makers?

It is just the one outlet that is having the problem, I've checked all the outlets in my room. The amp does have a third pin. The third pin (in the outlet, not on the amp) reads 60VAC with nothing at all plugged in to the outlet. I am not sure whether or not the building is on three-phase, although it was built in the early 70's. I do intend to make sure it gets fixed.

Thanks for the heads-up. It is indeed a problem outlet, for some reason the ground (third actual ground pin, not the relative neutral pin) is running right at 60V AC halfway in between the neutral pin and 120V hot pin. I know better and should have checked that to begin with, but it didn't occur to me. It's very strange, because I'm living in a college dorm and we have commercial-grade wiring and this has only started happening in the last week or two. At least it's only the one outlet and not the whole power system. I'll buy an extension cord today to cover the stuff plugged in there (there are only three outlets in the room) and talk to the maintenance guys about getting it fixed.

So, when my guitar (stock Fender Stratocaster) is plugged into my amplifier (Stock Marshall JTM60 Combo), **whether the amp is turned on or not**, and I am playing barefoot in my room (which has a flagstone floor), my strings shock me a little bit. This also happens if I unplug the guitar and just touch the ground/tip of the cord while it is plugged into the amp. It doesn't happen if I'm wearing shoes or have my feet sitting on a book or clothes or something. It's not strong enough to zap on my fingertips, but on the backs of my hands, or my arms, it zaps pretty good. With my feet on the ground, I get a reading of about 30V DC between my skin and the strings and about 60V AC between my skin and the strings. Until I made this measurement, I thought I was maybe just getting a ground loop or something, myself grounded at a different level from the amp. Now that I find that there's AC voltage as well, it seems obvious there is some kind of serious problem. I've unplugged the amp and won't be playing it until I get this resolved. The amplifier sounds just fine, although it has been making a few popping sounds recently (I had assumed it was just because the tubes are getting old). Is one of the transformer taps shorting into the ground channel? Is a tube blown? Can anyone tell me what's going on? Thanks, Jimmy EDIT: Forgot to add. None of the tubes LOOK blown. There are four little Ruby's and two big Groove Tubes, I can't read what types through the screen that's protecting them.

That's one of the best looking necks I've ever seen - I'm really impressed!

The filling with wax is called "potting" and is used to reduce microphonics with the pickups. It is not necessary at all, and some people say it messes up "vintage sound" by dampening highs. If you use plastic ones you can use glue or adhesive or anything - it doesn't really matter as long as you get it stuck on. With metal ones you normally solder them from behind - takes a decent power soldering iron though.

Hide glue's kind of a pain but it works... you can also use regular titebond wood glue.

I wasn't being the least bit sarcastic - I'm highly impressed with them so far, and like you I really appreciate the wiring pins. Assuming everything is wired right inside the eopxy, they should be fine forever as the connections are so easy to remake. Plus they look really cool from the front, too .

There is very nearly NO information on these ANYWHERE. There are like two reviews on harmony-central and none anywhere else. Myka has used the ZBS's a lot, but I haven't seen the PBF's anywhere - except on my desk! I just recieved a PBF-49 vintage neck and PBF-57 jazz/rock bridge (bit higher output than the vintage group). The ones I got are nickel covers, and all of the PBF/ZBS series pickups are potted in black epoxy. The wire construction is excellent, with perfect soldering and careful attention to detail. These pickups are rock solid. I think you could run over them in a car without hurting anything but the mounting ears, and there's no way there'll be microphonics problems. I ordered them from www.pickupcentral.com, which I would recommend to ANYONE. Phil's a great guy, best service I've ever seen, great prices, and fast shiping. Anyway, here're a good picture of 'em, since even decent pictures aren't available anywhere (please note, I took two different pictures of the same pickup and combined them into one file. The two pictures are of the same pickup. The pickups are exactly standard humbucker size): I'll be finishing up my walnut and maple stratocaster in the next week or two and putting 'em in, and once I get the whole thing going I'll let everyone know how they sound - I have high hopes.

That happens because the images are stored off-site, not on projectguitar itself - if the images disappear from their off-site locations, the "user posted image" tag shows up. Unless you just saw it with RGGR's post?

Yikes... I may be getting one of those myself, that's CHEAP! I don't really like hammering frets in.

Never try to do fretwork without a good pair of end cutters. Please. Just don't. It takes way, way, too long. I used a heavy duty pair of wire cutters on some of them, but you don't get a flush cut, and filing them takes FOREVER.

That thing's awesome! I wonder how well it works and how well it actually sounds?

Hm... I guess I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess it makes sense that there's a different technique for bass, seeing as how most bassists don't use picks... heh. Oops. Either way, it sounds pretty good .

I played on something recently that's the best sounding amp I've ever heard - a Trainwreck Climax. DAMN. I couldn't believe that thing. Amazing. Literally the best amp I've ever heard. EDIT: Although I must admit, the tweed bassman head through a leslie rotating speaker I played through at the same time sounded almost as good - that was pretty crazy too.

Man, as nice as all those guitars are, something about that LP really does it for me. I like it more than most of the fancy top ones! Maybe I've just been permanently ruined by the fact that my first ever guitar was a tobacco burst .

Are you really sure you want 29 frets? Have you ever actually tried to play a guitar with that any frets?

The neck is structurally sound the way it is now, it's just cosmetic - and I don't even mind the way it looks now, especially as I was planning to laminate a thin piece of maple to the back of the headstock (not the front, though, that'll stay uncovered). I feel like I will be better served by finishing the guitar up as it is and not possibly structurally ruining it trying to make it look like nothing happened. I know there are people here who will disagree with me (and have), but it's my guitar, and, at that, only my first one. I'm not going to risk screwing it up and I'm not going to start over - if nothing else, I need the practice on the rest of the details before I start only accepting perfection, because frankly I can't make perfect guitars yet .

Well, I may yet do that... in fact, I've been thinking very carefully about it, and probably will do that and replace most of it with the laminate. I'll have to be really, really, careful though - if I do try it, I'll probably have to pull the truss rod out at of the headstock end so that I don't damage it trying to get the wood flat and low enough.

Yikes, lots of posts! RGGR - I've thought about doing that with the dye - I'm not sure though. I don't mind it being there as a reminder. korge - Before gluing the wings to the neck-through piece, I routed a channel on the interior of the top wing to bring the wires from the front pickup cavity to the back pickup cavity. Then I'll route out a cavity (from behind) behind where all the pots go. Then I'll drill the jack socket hole in the side of the guitar, and then drill from that rear routed cavity to the rear pickup cavity (maybe through the jack hole or maybe just at a little bit of an angle). The rod was just installed before I put the fretboard on. All the pieces were straight and an inch and three quarters thick. The middle piece was a little more than half an inch, the two walnut pieces on either side were a bit more than three quarters of an inch. The next maple pieces I just planed down till they looked good, they're about a quarter inch now. None of them are tapered. RGGR again: I'm doing the best job I can on this guitar, but it's only my first and I'm sure to make mistakes. If I took it apart and tried to put in a new neck-through piece, I'm sure I'd make some other mistake. It'll just be a reminder to be careful in the future, as it doesn't affect how the neck feels at all. If I were building this for someone else, the answer would be different and I wouldn't be happy unless it were perfect, but (this being my first) I'm obviously building it for myself, and I don't want to go back almost all the way to the beginning and start over on this guitar for a mistake that I made and fixed. Maybe if I leave it this way, it'll help me remember not to make the same mistake (or ones like it) again. That said, I should've gone ahead and tried using an extra scrap of the laminate I had so that it would look closer to right, and even though I'm not going to go back and nearly start over I can understand wanting to, it's just that for me the other option comes out slightly on top. EDIT: RGGR's last post showed up after I started writing this one and I didn't see it - I just have one thing to add. You actually can't feel any difference there, because I was very careful to blend it into the neck. It's possible I'll still file or route the maple off and try again with a piece of the laminate, but I'm not going to start over on the whole neck. Also, if this were going to be the only guitar I build, my answer might be different, but I'm already planning an SG for this summer .

Very very carefully . If you really want to do it, get a dremel of some variety with the tiny router bits and a very sharp chisel. Cut out the pieces you are going to inlay first, then place them on the board (with an adhesive) and go around the edges with an xacto knife. Use the dremel with router bit to remove most of the material, and use the small chisel to make clean corners. Make sure you leave some extra sticking out so that you can sand them down to the fretboard surface and get them properly radiused. Please practice this on scrap before you try it as it's not as easy as it sounds. Unless you're talking about something like bondo or wood putty, in which case I'd tell you to scrap the idea and either start practicing real inlay on scrap wood until you're comfortable with it or pony up some cash and pay someone who does that kind of thing for a living to do it. Wood putty or bondo looks fine - sanded and under paint. Putting it out front in a fretboard wouldn't look so good.

The surform's a lot of fun, but it's pretty dangerous. Shaping the neck was actually my favorite part of the whole project so far, it was like you just look at it, think about what you want, rub the surform across it, and it takes the shape you want. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking and went too thin, but I really enjoyed the whole process. I did the whole neck (including taper) freehand with a sanding drum, surform, rasp, bastard file, and sandpaper, and it was great because it was a lot like sculpting.