Rockhorst

What I rewired is the following: I disconnected the tone controls, took them out of the circuit (which really brings your neck and middle pickup to live IMO). I also installed a different bridge pickup. What would be a great first help is if somebody could tell me dead certain which of the 2 cases describe above I should go for: with the grounds at the pot casing, should the pot casing touch the shielding on the pickguard or not? (from previous answers I would suspect not).

I didn't work on the shielding for a while because I had some other obligations, but I gave it a try again yesterday. It's driving me raving mad. Please plz assist some more. Situation is the following: I covered the pickguard and the cavity with copper tape with conductive adhesive. Continuity all round. The foil from the cavity reaches over the edges a little bit so it can make contact with the pickguard. I've checked (and double-checked) that the leads on the input jack are in the right order: hot to tip and ground to sleeve. All the ground wires from the pickups are soldered to the back of the volume pot. The tone pots have been disconnected entirely. I did not include a capacitor to prevent DC shock, as was suggested in the guitarnuts article. I've ensured (by temporarily taping it all of) that no part of the audio circuit is touching the shielding in the cavity. The ground wire from the tremolo spring claw is connected to the foil on the bottom of the cavity. I tried 2 things (all tests with an unstringed instrument!): - Leave a hole in the shielding around the volume pot so that it's not connected to the shield. Result: lotsa noise when untouched. No reaction when touching bridge assembly (as expected). Hum goes away when I touch the output jack or the volume pot, i.e. when I ground the audio circuit with my body. - With pickup grounds still wired to the pot casing I had the pot casing connected the shielding on the pickguard. Result: lotsa noise when untouched. When touching volume or output jack noise goes away. When touching bridge/trem assembly noise increases. So the way I see it, I've tried all suggestions in this topic. The thing is essentially star grounded at the volume pot, since the tone controls are disconnected. It seems that somehow, in both cases described above, the audio circuit is left floating. I'm lost here people. Please drop some bread crums.

Let's make this a bit broader: what makes a good neck and what do you have to look for when buying one new or second hand. I'm slowly gathering parts for a Part-o-Caster and have options to buy a second hand neck. I find it difficult to judge beyond cosmetics whether or not a neck would be a good buy. Any thoughts or pointers?

I'm in a position to buy some 2nd hand pickups. They've never been used, new old stock you might say. They're about 20 years old, which is quite a bit. Now I know that pickups 'age' and slowly loose output (and get more character according to some). Does the aging (rate) of a pickup depend on being played or not and should it be something I factor into my decision?

@ihocky2: thanks for the sketch. I've been looking at it some more and the front of the body still gives the illusion that the wing tip is pretty much intact, at least from a distance. So I think I'll be going with tidying up the area on the side and even it out, to keep that illusion going.

Any chances of a quick sketch?

@Dakhahn: funny, I worked on the neck today (removing grime and fine sanding the back) and was thinking of either doing what you descibe or rounding it off. Doing some research I noticed that even the exact headstock shape among Jackson RRs varies, depending on the model. So I think I'll be going that route. I found a place that produces Jackson decals, so the headstock is going to be sanded entirely and finished (hopefully) to perfection. On trems: I went to a parts store today and test fitted a Gotoh and a Schaller. The Gotoh was a perfect fit and hardened steel, so I'll probably go with that one. Any suggesting on the shaping of that upper fin?

I've posted something on the Jackson Charvel forum on the bridges and RR4 in general. Meanwhile, some progress and more detailed pics of certain parts: The neck, sanding in progress: Headstock detail: Note that there's an actual piece of the sharp edge missing on the front. This is why I remarked earlier that I was thinking of ways to make the headstock pointy again: any suggestions? Close up of the wing tip, roughly sanded to remove splinters: Body fully sanded: The 'customer': The neck fit is still extremely tight, one of the tightest I've ever seen. EDIT: Thanks to the Jackson Charvel Forum the bridge has been identified as a JT 580 bridge. Doing further research on that now. Is it (supposedly) as horrid as the TRS 101?

@Westhemann (&others): anybody got a diagram with specs of those TRS-101 trems so I can compare them to Schaller and original measurements? (Since it says on the warmoth site that the two are not interchangable, I wanna be sure before I place an order). Anybody got experience with retrofitting these?

Thanks for that, so what about the alternatives? What would you recommend?

You make a good point Dakhahn. We actually are hardtail fans that always get stuck with tremolo guitars (you know the feeling?). But we're not going to do a trem-to-hardtail conversion, so a true original Floyd Rose seems like a good option, but also quite expensive. Anybody here have experience with the Wilkinson WVS5011K or a VS100? I've always been very curious about them and I think it would look good on this guitar, bearing in mind that we could cover up part of the floyd route to have a larger area for the graphic. If we we're to go with a Floyd style bridge, what would be the best option: Gotoh, Schaller or Original FR? Gotoh is a lot cheaper, but that probably comes with some reduced quality? I'd be interested in any comments on bridges! EDIT: I checked the Jackson licensed. It seems to be a Takeuchi manufactured TRS-101. It has some parts missing, but I'm pretty sure I could find those. Is it any good of would you recommend a replacement?

Has anybody tried this? Silence of the Strat

Thanks Westheman. The thing you remarked that did make sense in the current situation is about the woven ground. That could be the case and could also initially still work and later on make a bad connection when the instrument gets a blow from for instance putting it down. I'll look into that.

Thanks for the reminder on the pencil. Will do! I don't really understand your half round file setup though.

Yup. Signal is weaker and less defined, but they would still pass signal. I also checked the battery power: both pickups had a functioning power line. I'll recheck the switch and the jack. The switch was kind of a bitch to reinstall, so something might get busted there that got worse by some more swichting during playing. Will keep you posted.

Big post... The work plan (in no particular order): -Refin the neck, making it all smooth again -Find a way to get the headstock pointy again, preferably preserving the Jackson logo -Fitting Sperzel locking tuners for fast restringing -Close the pickup selector switch hole -Maybe install push/pull switch volume control (splitting PU coil) -Close up the neck pick up route -Find a new jack plate (not included) -Fit a proper trem bridge on there (the jackson licensed sorta fell apart) -Install a proper pick up in the bridge position (thinking DiMarzio Evo's, or maybe something like an Air Norton). -Shape the upper wing tip into something fashionable Bag o' parts: Sanding: Sanding the back, done: You can see that we went a little overboard with the sanding on a certain part of the back (notice discoloration). We decided to toss hand sanding and got a power sander out. For the rest of the body we decided to start with the power sander and finish up by hand, which gives a lot more control . It's almost blank now (pics soon). The body seems to be made up out of 4 pieces of wood sandwiched between 2 top/bottom veneerlike pieces. Was surprised that they constructed it that way (i.e. I don't see how that made production easier). Some of the bevels became a tad smoothed due to the sanding. I'm open to suggestions for getting them sharpened up again (or can this be fixed with proper finishing?). Also open to other suggestions of course. A few points of interest: -Shaping those wing tips (will post some more detailed pics soon). -We were thinking of finishing it the folowing way: black base coats, huge sticker/decal with graphic, finish with a couple of clear coats hopefully hiding sticker seems (any experience with this?). -Pickup suggestions (suited for playing metal but also some nice abilities). -Tremolo suggestions: I'm not quite sure that a real Floyd bridge would retrofit these routes: it seems that the Jackson licensed has different measurements, comparing the measurements from the Floyd site. I had another thought: maybe I could install a Wilkinson trem. Haven't checked those measurements yet (and the website isn't very informative on installation notes). Would a 2 pivot knife edged Wilkinson trem require the pivot point bushings to be installed flush to the body (slightly recessed now. My guess is that's not much of a problem). If anybody has helpful suggestions, please post. If you need more info or some detailed pictures feel free to request.

Checked the connections to the switch and they seem to be in order. I think it's strange that there's a little bit of signal coming from the bridge PU instead of it being dead silent. I'm seriously thinking of desoldering the whole thing and going over it again...

A friend of mine found this left handed RR4 in the trash. This other friend of mine, being left handed, decided it would be cool if we'd make it into a proper guitar again. Photos (as we found it): This is what we hope to end up with in the end (except for the shark fin inlays): Some in progress pics will follow shortly (as well as a bunch of questions ).

Some additional info: took the pickups out and checked them. Both show comparable resistance measurements and both are supplied with power from the battery. Bridge pickup also sounds a lot softer then neck pickup when no battery is attached.

First off: I know I'm asking a lot of questions lately. Apologies, I don't mean to flood the board. Secondly: I replaced the pots for the bridge pickup in a friends guitar (Epi LP) a while ago. He has an EMG setup. I used the correct type of pots (25K, for actives). When I installed it everything sounded as expected. However he informed me the other day that the output from his bridge pickup was deteriorating. At the moment, it's almost gone. His neck PU still works fine. I checked the control cavity: all connections still there and solid, no continuity issues. Pots still rate as they should and show a nice smooth curve from 0 to 25K. Switch connections still work properly as well. Frankly, I'm clueless (again). Any suggestions or diagnostics I could run? It seems a stretch that the pickup would've broken down... [and yes, we have checked the battery )

Here's a link to the schematic from the guitarnuts article: Schematic So let's say you take out the .33 uF capacitor, would it then become a straight line to the 'chassis' as a ground connection, or would it remain an open short?

Interesting point you make, since the guitarnuts article that I referred to earlier actually stresses that the pots should touch the copper foil, for instance at point 17: In the article, one pot is connected to a terminal of a capacitor. On the other end of the capacitor is a connection to all audio signal grounds. I left out this entire part, so maybe that's where I went wrong. On the other hand, the capacitor would act as a short, so the audio signal still would be isolated from the Faraday cage. More thoughts?

I think binding would nicely accentuate that stripe effect from the different woodpieces on the back. Maybe a subtle PRS style binding?

Copy/pasted to the right forum: I decided to go a little bit apeshit on my MiM strat. Don't know why cuz it already was pretty amazing (it holds itself pretty well against my PRS in sound quality and definitely defeats it in the fearceness department!). I guess I just needed something to do. So I decided to try out the shielding as presented in the guitarnuts article...and failed. I didn't have enough copper tape to shield the whole cavity, but I did have copper paint. So I decided to go for a tape shielded pickguard, painted cavity with some copper strips running across it. I tested it at some point and it was pretty noiseless. I don't know what I did after that, but I can't get it to quiet down anymore. Thing buzzes like mad and is unplayable. I pulled out the tape and decided to start looking for more copper tape. While I wait for the tape, maybe someone here has some thoughts on shielding? Basic summary of what I did: -Shielding with a combination of paint and copper tape (conducting adhesive) -Disconnected the tone controls all together. -I decided not to put in the DC protection capacitor. No stock strat has it and I don't see players dropping dead by the millions. -Star grounding, which comes down to lifting the pickup ground wires from the volume pot casing and connecting it to the pot's ground terminal, since the tone pots where taken out. One thing that may be trivial: because I didn't want to solder/desolder everytime, I tested it with long wires running from volume pot to input jack and connected the wires to the jack using metal clamps. Granted, that might give some noise. Also, the volume pot took quite some heat from the soldering (but still gives good readings on the ohmmeter). One thing I don't fully understand about the guitarnuts article: one makes a Faraday cage of the cavity and grounds the cage to the bridge/trem. The audio circuit inside stays isolated from this, if I interpret the article corrrectly. Wouldn't that leave the audio circuit floating?

A yes...so accustomed to this part of the board that I went here on autopilot. Apologies, I'll post it in the electronics dept.