jnewman

Boy, you sure are picky. If you're going to set conditions, then at least say them in a polite way. The conventional wisdom does NOT say that it can't be done, just that it's a huge pain in the ass. If you want to do it, the only way for it to really look right is to strip the finish, glue blocks of wood that you've cut exactly to the right size into the hb routes, trim them to match the top of the guitar, route for the dogear p90's, refinish, and mount the p90's. You probably won't be able to make a good enough grain match for a transparent finish really to look right. If you try to just mount them without filling the holes, but then you'll have holes along the top and bottom of the pups that will look stupid. You could also use soapbars and make rings like HB rings that will surround the soapbar and cover the holes, but you were pretty specific on the dogear thing.

One comment on your schematic: there's no reason to have two wires going from the blend pot to the volume pot. You only need one.

I dunno, ZZ Top has a furry guitar and furry bass they play. They're both explorers and they look like they're covered in long white fur. The fur's just trimmed around the strings and pups so that it doesn't touch them.

Hey man, no problem, everyone comes up with things they don't understand when they're trying something new. I've built a couple of amplifiers lately and I came up with some pretty silly questions over on one of the amp-building boards!

The resistance in the pickup has nothing to do with the bridge, screws, etc. It's the resistance of the coil of wire in the pickup that actually generates the audio signal. To accurately measure this resistance, you will need to disconnect the pickup leads from the controls inside the guitar (which requires using a soldering iron to remove them, then soldering the leads back on when you're done), then measure the resistance between the hot lead and the ground lead. You can measure them without disconnecting them, but your measurements will be somewhat off because of the parallel resistance of the controls (your measured value should be lower than the actual value by 2-7% or so, if you don't disconnect the pickups). Also, the 2K setting will not work because P90's are usually around 8-10KOhms.

Most heatshrink will shrink to a little less than half its original diameter. If you pay some more, you can get some that will shrink to a third its original diameter. If it doesn't say, it's a safe bet that it's 2:1 heatshrink and not 3:1. Measure the bits you have to heatshrink - you need to buy heatshrink whose original diameter is bigger than what you want to heatshrink, and whose shrunk diameter (be it half or a third the original diameter) is smaller than what you want to heatshrink.

3'x2'x2" is WAY more wood than you need unless you're trying to carve the whole guitar out of a single block of wood. And if you were planning that, you wouldn't be asking about using 2x4's . A standard body blank is more like 20"x14"x2". In addition to being about three times as much wood as you need for a body, you pay a HUGE premium on a piece that big to get a single plank with no cracks or inclusions. Just checking LMI as an example, they have alder for $50-60, swamp ash for about $60, and mahogany for about $100. When I was building my first guitar, I just went to a hardwoods store that sells mainly furniture wood and bought some nice kiln dried walnut and maple. I bought about 4' of a 2" thick and 10" wide maple board and about 8' of a 2" thick and 7" wide walnut board for about $150. That's enough wood for two or three guitars, including the necks.

If I were making a Superstrat, sure... If I were making an LP, no. Just depends on the use.

Stewmac has a wiring diagram for the blend pots. It looks like you're missing one thing. You have the bottom left lug going to "output", and on the stewmac diagram the bottom right lug should be going to ground. Your schematic is missing this connection to ground.

You could just twist a loop into a piece of wire and hook it around the mini switch shaft, then tighten the nut down on it. That should work fine to ground the case and toggle of the switch.

Go to www.seymourduncan.com and look at their schematics. Under the telecaster section, they have two setups for bridge humbucker neck single coil, one just switching between pups and one switching between pups plus a switch for coil tapping the humbucker. The schematics show the lever-style tele switch. At the top of the humbucker section, there's a "three way switch translation" page that will show you how to hook up any of the three types of switches.

Well, the jump in volume business is really just if you switch from one to the other. If you've got your amp set at a volume you like with the HB and switch to the single coil, it'll be quieter and cleaner, and if you have it set with the single coil and switch to HB it'll be louder and more driven. It shouldn't really make the pickups sound any different, except for the volume pot value thing mentioned earlier. So yeah, if you're playing metal and just use the HB, you should be fine, and if you're playing blues with the SC you should be fine. You can use HB's for blues too, although the super high-output ones sound a little funny. Lots of blues players use Les Pauls or similar HB equipped guitars. Albert King played a Flying V a lot. Also, the pots are 250K ohm and 500K ohm, not 250 and 500. If you could find 250 or 500 ohm pots, they wouldn't work very well in a guitar.

Plenty of Fender's guitars have come with 3-piece bodies for a long time, and there are customs around with tons of pieces in attractive/interesting/strange/bizarre patterns. I think you'll be fine using whatever is easily available to you.

The "incompatibility" thing is mostly just that if you have a low-output single coil and a high-output humbucker, there will be a big volume jump if you switch pickups on the fly. You might also have picked it up with people talking about not using both active and passive pickups in the same guitar. It can be done but it's a pain.

With the same speakers, in terms of absolute, scientifically measured loudness, 15W of output to the speakers is 15W of output to the speakers. The tube amp may sound a little louder based on the differing character of the tube amp vs. solid state amp, but in terms of decibels, it's not. Of course, this all goes out the window when you start changing speakers. Changing from the least efficient commonly available 12" speakers (at 92-94 decibels sensitivity) to the most efficient commonly available 12" speakers (102-104 decibels sensitivity) would be the same as using 10 times as much output power with the low-efficiency speakers, and will sound twice as loud. So a 92 decibel sensitivity speaker and a 150 watt amp would be about the same volume as a 102 decibel sensitivity speaker and a 15 watt amp.

Micromesh is available up to 12000 grit, and they say you can use it wet or dry, then wash the gunk out when you're done and use it again. It's significantly more expensive than sandpaper but lasts a lot longer and gets a whole lot finer.

The main thing I would say in favor of scarf joints is that they're stronger than a tilt-back carved out of a single piece of wood. If you have more than just the smallest bit of grain runout (which carved out tilt-backs do), then your wood strength drops dramatically. The first guitar I built had a straight headstock with no scoop, just the fretboard height above the headstock. That part of it worked fine, although the guitar does have other problems (mainly relating to fret dress).

Man that's shiny! You've got quite a polish on that thing, it looks great. You really did that through a preval sprayer?

Pfft. That's not the least bit attractive and I'm not the least bit jealous. Just kidding... it looks fantastic! I'm impressed. (And jealous!) Seriously, it looks amazing. The detail is remarkable with the binding and trim and everything.

Greg, there is one thing I think you've got wrong. I think that random chunk of metal is supposed to be an indicator for the volume knob. That said, I agree that I would certainly never buy one of his guitars, am impressed by the incredible lack of professionalism of his website and apparent attitudes, and am also amazed by the sheer BS level in some of the things he says (I especially liked his longwinded statements about how his super magical nut material eliminates tuning stability problems, and then he puts in string tees with the sharpest angle I've ever seen).

Another good amp-building forum is www.18watt.com. In their "By the Bench" section there is a current 220+ page thread on modifying the valve jr., with mods directed at voicing it more like fender amps or more like marshall amps plus some general upgrades. The valve jr. output transformer has a 4 ohm tap and an 8 ohm tap. You would have to disconnect the 4 ohm tap from the output jack and connect the 8 ohm tap. That's the one wire change that Godin mentions.

Like a harp?

The blackface champs are 6 watts, and justifiably famous for their tone, especially for such little amps. I almost built one, but I finally decided on the tweed deluxe instead.

These little portable saws are usually referred to as contractor saws, as opposed to the big heavy floorstanding units called cabinet saws. I have not used the DeWalt unit in question but have used some other contractor saws, one Bosch one and one Craftsman. A well made contractor saw works just fine, although it does not have quite the stability or accuracy of a cabinet saw. For what you say you will use it for though, it sounds like even a contractor saw is overkill and you would get along just fine with a circular saw and a decent guide, which would cost a lot less, even if you purchased a very good circular saw. This option would also take up a lot less space. If/when I get a space to set up shop semipermanently, I intend to get a good bandsaw and a drill press and the table saw may or may not be added for years. I don't have much use for one and what use I do have for one can be done with my circular saw or chop saw.

First off: Twice the resistance of 8 ohms is 16 ohms, not 4 ohms. 4 ohms is LESS resistance than 8 ohms. Two 8 ohm speakers/cabs in series have twice the resistance, 16 ohms. Two 8 ohm cabs in parallel have half the resistance, 4 ohms. For stereo amps, you have it backwards. A stereo amp puts out a specific voltage swing on the output. This voltage swing, divided by the impedance, gives you current. So far we have V/R=I. Now, power is voltage times current. So we get Power= V^2/R. So if we decrease R, we actually increase power. For example, my Halfer stereo amp is rated per channel at 150W at 16ohms, 250W at 8ohms, and 400W at 4ohms (It's a beastie, that's conservative RMS output, not peak). A solid state guitar amp should also work this way, but a tube guitar amp requires a specific impedance speaker to be connected to that impedance's output, with the end result that the power output is about the same regardless of speaker impedance as long as you're matching impedance correctly with output transformer output. You should not encounter a situation in which your amp can't drive a cabinet, even if it's only 5 watts, or 1 watt. The speaker rating is purely how much power they can use without damage. Of course, high powered speakers tend to be made much more stoutly, so it takes more power to get speaker distortion, but speaker distortion is a pretty small part of most guitarists' preferred amp tone. Speaker sensitivity is measured by the volume of the speaker in dB 1 meter from the speaker with 1 watt input over the range of frequency response for that speaker. The least sensitive Jensen speakers are about 94dB. The most efficient Jensens are about 100dB. 6dB is a BIG difference. Most modern 10" speakers are rated around 94-98dB. If you have the most inefficient Jensen speakers in the cab and a pretty efficient 10" built in, it actually is entirely possible for the 10" to be louder. Mickguard, let us know how you like the AC15!