SwedishLuthier

Who will bring out the swedish chef while we're still at it? Huh? No, there are no real fjords in Sweden. There are a few rivers that are named fjords, but alas they're fjords only by name. And to me the "Bjergen" guy seemed much more Norweigan than Swedish to me (name, cities, province etc), except for the modular furnitures. IKEA, biggest export business ever in Sweden and it have produced one of the wealthiest men in the world. If Finns are racists agains Swedes we counter that with mocking the Norwegians as hard as we can. We have as many mean, funny stories about Norwegians as the English has stories about Scotsmen. We even call the Norwegians (even the women) "baggar" with means "balls" if you get my drift.

And welcome to the forum!

I don't know how to explain this easily... Think like this: Originally you have a 25.5" scale. You have moved the string break point towards the tuners and tune to standard pitch. Now the 12'th fret isn't at 12.75" distance from the nut, rather 12.75 + .094" from the string break point of the nut, thus making notes fretted on the 12'th fret sharp as the fret, in relation to the string break point of the nut, have been moved towards the bridge. Even if it was possible to adjust the saddles of the bridge long enough to get the 12'th fret to intonate, you would have a pitch that would get progressively sharper when fretting closer to the nut and flatter when fretting towards the bridge. That is because you have actually changed the scale (nut-bridge distance ) from 25.5" to 25.594". Again (and not to patronize you or beat you over the head with this, really not my intention) if you don't get that part, make life easier for yourself and let the LSR go and get a non-locking FR replacement nut. Allparts have them. Parts number is shown on the pic above. After that you also need to make sure that you have the right body for the neck. Not all parts are interchangeable.

The LSR isn't designed to replace a FR nut. Look at this picture: The string break point is moved away from the edge of the unit towards the rollers, thus effectively elongating the scale length and if installed in a non-LSR neck messing up your intonation, not only at the 12'th fret, but all over the neck. To install the LSR you need to cut away a small piece of the fret board towards the 1'st fret to compensate for this. That is included in the instruction for the LSR if I'm not mistaken (I have installed a LSR on a non-LSR neck once and my memory is that this was clearly stated in the instructions...). This is not to patronize you, but if you do not grasp the concept that the LSR need to be closer to the frets and doesn't read the instructions (or did you get the LSR second hand without instructions, if so I apologize) with the unit I really think that you should get you an alternative solution; This is a drop-in non-locking replacement that doesn't require any modifications to your neck EDIT: Installation instructions: http://www.axesrus.com/images/lsrfit.pdf You need to remove .094" or 2.3876mm from the fretboard to get the nut in the right place

Ok, looks like there's a bit of an issue over my headstock design here... Similar comments were also said on the Ultimate Guitar forum too. Basically, as I explained there, it is extremely difficult to come up with totally original designs nowadays as there are so many already, and in this case, it's purely coincidental and I would have no intention of deliberately ripping off one of Ormsby's designs. Although I would recognise his 6-inline headstock shape, I had not seen his 3x3 shape (of which mine resembles) enough until I Googled it yesterday to consciously copy it. With this coming to light in such early days of me using this particular headstock design, I will be withdrawing it as an option on my custom and stock builds and making my way "back to the drawing board" in an attempt to come up with an alternative 3x3 shape for Serpentine Guitars. Ormsby; if you're reading this, my apologies for any concerns or offence I may have caused. . That is IMHO a really mature and humble responce. Cudos to you!

The final part of this repair. The switch arrived. got it in and everything works fine. The sound is nice. The bridge pickup is a bit on the bright side and the neck pickup is on the darker side. on low to medium settings the neck and the combo setting is very nice for bluesy stuff. Cranking the gain a bit does wonder to take the bright bridge pickup and gets you into ACDC land. Hope you all enjoyed. And if anyone came late to the party; Here are the picture library

Wait. Stop working! Leave it like this: That would look great. Oh, oh... To late...

I'm quite happy with the restoration in total. I'm a bitt pissed that I didn't found the problem with the switch earlier, but what can I say. The profitability of thsi specific job was a bit on the low side as I took it in a bit cheep. The reason for that was that I really wanted to do this job. Lot of fun parts. but I priced it a bit low to be sure to get it. But that is a luxury I can afford as i have a sday job so I'm not depending on the money i make on guiatar buidlign and repairs.

New pics up. I found the problem. The switch was bad. I could nearly get it to work, but it still had like 2-2.5 Kohms between the solder points for the bridge pickup. I found a modern repro switch that I have ordered. So it will take a few days before it arrives from England. After that I can hopefully return the guitar to its owner.

Not much done. Adjusted the truss rod nut and filed the bridge saddles so that the radius conformed to the fretboard. Quite a bit of filing as the bridge had a 10" radius or similar. When firing it up for a final test drive the bridge pickup (the one that I repaired) suddenly is almost dead. Not 100% as there are sound, but very low output. Not thin like a HB out of phase, but just really low. Bummer. Now I need to rip the electronics apart again. Well, that'l be another day...

He, he, not as brave as one might think. When turning one of the adjustment screws without the down pressure from the strings it started to move slightly and comming out of the slot. I guess I was lucky as I wouldn't have been able to get it to intonate properly without flipping one of the saddles.

Correction: With some careful prying I could get the saddles out to reverse them.

Well... it was rather a case of quick and dirty. I wanted to get to work on the pick guard so I used CA and toothpicks, 30 minutes of waiting and off to the next phase. And it will not be shown as the pickup rings cover it so I allowed myself a shortcut. The flush cutting end cutter (actually my fret puller) was something I tried out of a hunch that it would work good enough. Usually I use a sharp knife.

Thanks for the nice words. Yeah they are a bit odd , those saddles. They cannot be remover/repositioned, at least not without some serious metal work. I have no idea what the reasons for that is. I hope I can position the bridge good enough so that I can get it to intonate even with those saddles. I have put up some new pics; fitting the bridge fitting a pickup ring (should have done that earlier...) starting to fit the pickguard

Not much work done the last days. The customer have been able to locate a NOS Hofner Micromatic bridge. Thats the model used for the Ambassador originally so I've spent some time waiting for the bridge to arrive. It has finally come to me and I will install it the next day, together with the pick guard.

The most common question I get is "Can you build me an exact replica of a XXXXXXX" were the XXXXXXX part is the name and model of an actual, current model of a known brand guitar maker (Gibson, Fender etc) and when asking why they would like to have a hand build replica of something that is readily available the answer is almost everytime that they think that it will be cheeper than getting the original! C'mon, I charge at least 150% of what the equivalent, high end guitar from a guitar factory cost. At least! I have now learned to ask the right questions in the beginning of the process to not waste too much time on those guys.

Now THAT is clever. The reel move together with the fixing point of the cable! Great idea John. OK, I stand corrected. <mumbling something about friction drive and walking into the sunset>

Hi John, nice to see you here! Last things first: I agree that Tyler should first build a solid hand winder that runs fast and have a counter solution that works on higher RPM settings. As it is easier to discuss topic by topic I start to pick the post apart… "- Tensioner + dancer will probably only work for lower RPM settings" I've been winding my test coils at 1,200 rpm. to keep my test data consistent. The best thing about the dancer is that you can actually see your tension. The tensioner is adjustable on the fly and it can be calibrated by watching the deflection of the dancer. It controls the tension so that it is more equal between the ends, and the long surfaces of the bobbin. Because of this the coils would be less microphonic. This might be one of the big merits of machine winding. There is no right or wrong here. My comment has to be put in perspective of me running my winder at up to 2500 RPM. 1200 is half that speed. I wonder how the dancer would work for RPMs over 2000. My worries: "- To complex with all the friction drive and friction gears" It's actually a very simple design. Other than the reel , there are only three moving parts. The motor, the mainshaft, and the wheel that drives the reel. Yes and No. But first just let us agree to disagree. IMO you have too many moving parts. You have at least 5 rotating axis, one longitudal axis and one traversal axis (i hope I get the english names for those functions right…). Inside the fishing reel there are for sure additional axis and probably a planetary gear or two. That to me is a lot. Not real problem with that but complexity add possible future problems. Add to that at least three friction gears/couplings: Motor to main shaft, main shaft to step down disk, step down disk to fishing reel. My experience is that all friction couplings will wear out, maybe not today or yesterday, but somewhere in the future "- The traverse mechanism will wear out" What will wear out? There's only 1 moving part besides the cable I made from a guitar string. My worry is the bicycle break type of push cable (name?). Myself I have had to replace a few of those on my bikes because they wear out. "- The traverse mechanism will need extremely precise placement and adjustment to be able to accommodate all different bobbin sizes and most of all, all flange thicknesses." The slider on the traverse arm is the wire guide. It's infinitely adjustable between 1/8-11/16" I use a system of alignment pins that allow me to return the platform to exactly the same spot. For exact reference on the wire guide I measure the distance from the end of the transom arm to the guide itself. Bulletproof, and fast. "The complexity to get the traverse to travel so that the movement changes direction a tiny bit inside of each flange is too steep. You will spend more time setting the machine up than actually winding, at least in the beginning." The initial setup isn't too difficult. It only takes a few minutes, but once you have the setup It is very quick. "This at least apply to if you are shooting for a winder that will wind several types of coils. And if I understand the mechanism correctly, adjusting the fishing reel back and forth. Moving it will change the position of the traverse vs the coil laterally (sideways). This in turn will mean that if you have the machine perfectly dialed in and would like to know the difference in sound between different TPLs you will need to first move the fishing reel, then re-adjust the "trow" of the traverse." You do misunderstand the mechanism. When the reel is moved the only thing that changes is the traverse rate/TPL Yeah, obviously I don’t get this part. If you move the reel, the wire inside the bike cable will move latitudal. Or do you unscrew/re-screw the wire were it is held by the real each time you adjust the TPL? If not, the change of position of the reel means that the traverse arm will move and the “zero point” (the point were the traverse arm have its most left position) will move to the right if the TPL is increased and vice verse. Or I am really missing som e important part of the mechanism. "And it also means that you cannot simply mark he base with "this place on the traverse for standard HB bobbin" and similar as that will differ with different TPLs." I drill holes in the platform and insert pins to re-align the base perfectly. Nothing changes. As said before, I really doesn’t get the mechanism… "- I'm a grumpy old man" I'm Batman We have a problem here… "My suggestion if going down this path" "- Direct drive. With a motor with sufficient power you can always lower the speed with a speed control so why limit yourself. With all those friction gears and stuff you will build in a set of possible future problem/issue components (friction drives WILL wear out)" I built the whole thing in a few hours, and for about $25. Anything that wears out would be easy to replace. There's been little sign of any deterioration of components As stated, my personal experience is contradicting that. However the time before the parts wear out and the cost and time to replace them migt be perfectly acceptable. "- Skip the dancer. I run my winder considerably faster without one. It's called over-engineering, a thing I often immerse myself into..." I really like the dancer for reasons I stated earlier. I made it from a guitar string. A bronze .056 I used the same string for the traverse cable. OK! "- Get backup parts for the traverse" What's going to wear out? Se above "- Rework the traverse system altogether" ouch, that's my baby. You should take a closer look. Maybe You're missing something. After all, The TPL is fully adjustable without a belt, gear, or pulley, and with only one moving part. The traverse length is fully adjustable, by sliding the wire guide on the arm. The tensioner is reliable, and adjustable on the fly. It's to my best knowledge unique in these aspects for a homebuilt mechanical winder. Literally. And I’m really sorry for criticizing it. Obliviously I don’t get it 100%. A better explanation of how things move and shift when you adjust the TPL might make me re-evaluate it (as if how I view things was important...) "All in all I don't aim to slam John or his machine, but I think that "less is more" is something that need to be applied to a project like this." Peter, I welcome the criticism. If everyone looked at the world through my eye's, We'd be in a mess. I live by "less is more", and I don't think I could have made it with fewer parts. Tell me if you see something I could omit, dancer excluded. As I work with PLC (industrial controllers) and servo drives I would use another solution altogether , se earlier post. I wouldn’t use a purely mechanical solution. On the other hand, I would go back to over-engineering stuff again, and thus I keep my winder as a hand winder for now. "With my hand fed winder running at 2500 rpm I think I can wind the coils faster than with a auto traverse machine like John's. The problem is, IMHO, That Jason Lollar, in his book, described and built a machine with auto traverse instead of a more simple machine. After reading that book a lot of aspiring winder thought that an auto traverse was mandatory." I've been hand winding pickups for many years. This is the first automatic machine I've built. I'm still prototyping on it. I plan eventually to replace the reel with a cam driven traverse. The trick is making it out of cheap common stuff. If that is you objective I would say that you have really succeeded. Kudos to you for that. Tyler, You can always build a hand winder, and add a traverse later if you accommodate for it. Here's a picture of my mechanical winder. Friction drive of course. I used a reed switch with a $2 pedometer for the counter. It counts every tenth turn from the friction driven decade wheel. No problem with the reed bouncing. Until now the only winder I've ever used. Looking like a solid and well built winder. Then there are that part about the friction drive…

I take on full custom jobs. However I have a list of specs that the customer have to sign before ordering a guitar so that there are no discrepancies in the future. I also refuse phone conversations about custom work. Only E-mails. Those can be answered when you have the time and you can be very clear and specific in your communication. And phone calls tend to take forever with those guys... I make sure I earn money on the custom jobs. When calculating the price I add extra margin as there will be some things here and there that you cannot foresee like you can while building a customized standard model. I make very clear that if the customer suddenly would like to change the specs he will need to pay for parts originally ordered, and additional parts and even some additional time. Its all in the specs/contract he has to sign before ordering The customer has to pay 50% up front when placing the order. That way I'm covering my parts costs if he's suddenly bailing out, or disappears from the surface of the earth. And I can probably sell the guitar anyway. Within those frames custom jobs are fun as they challenge you as a builder and pushes you to perform at another level.

Good source for a counter is a bit tricky. I only have good cheep sources in Europe. The counter I use, a programmable Crouzet counter is a bit too complicated and for sure too expensive. I would look at brands like Kubler or Hengstler. There is also a decent priced counter from Red Lion, the CUB 1 or CUB 2 http://www.newark.com/red-lion-controls/cub7ccs0/counter-digital-8digit-panel/dp/61M5639 However you need a PNP sensor, like this http://www.newark.com/panasonic-ew/gx-f12a/sensor-inductive-4mm-12v-24v/dp/08N9886 to activate the trigger input. A simple micro switch will not be able to work at frequenzies above 10-20 Hz and that exclude putting a simple bump on the face plate and having the switch run against the faceplate. Instead use a wooden faceplate and insert a screw or similar and have the sensor sense that (a proximity inductive sensor doesn't need kontakt but gives a signal when a piece of metal passae by in side the sensing range, often up to 5-6 mm or 1/4". In my case it sense the three magnets that holds the secondary faceplate in place. The counter is then programmed to divide the count with three and thus giving me the correct turn count. As I said, a bit overkill... I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives, but I have no clue were to find them outside Europe. It might seem a bit pricy to shell out with something in the range of 120$ for the counter and sensor, but remember that this is what you need if you want a high speed counter without the hustle of mechanical gears to step down the speed. The calculator has its merits, but high speed input isn't one of them. All high speed functions will need a non-mechanical sensor like the inductive sensor I linked to. However if you put in some time doing a better search that I made I'm sure you will find cheeper alternatives. For a motor I would use a power drill motor or similar. If you use that you get the speed control at the same time. The thingy in the back is an industrial 230VAC to 24VDC power supply. 24VDC is needed for the counter and the PNP proximity sensor. I could as well used a wall wart type of power supply but this is what I work with in my day time so parts are sometimes available for free. Overkill for sure...

Here you are: The winder, a compact motor with direct drive, a double face plate, one stationary, one removable (magnets holding them in place) with a sunken shape of the bobbin, making both fastening and adjustment easy (more about that later), A hand rest that also holds the speed control knob comfortable at the fingertips (no reaching around as seen on many home made winders) soldering station and all I need in one compact, mobile place. If we have a closer look the the winder itself, we see the double faceplate system and the side stops (simple steel bar, two blocks of wood and some parts from the parts drawer). The left side stop is never adjusted as I make a separate face plate for every bobbin I work with. The depth of the sink in the faceplate is adjusted accordingly... I only need to quickly set the height of the coil and off I go. The counter is placed so that I can quickly glance at it while winding (and it has two alarms that I doesn't use, I only listen to the click of the relays) Feel free to ask anything you want. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

My worries: - To complex with all the friction drive and friction gears - Tensioner + dancer will probably only work for lower RPM settings - The traverse mechanism will wear out - The traverse mechanism will need extremely precise placement and adjustment to be able to accommodate all different bobbin sizes and most of all, all flange thicknesses. The complexity to get the traverse to travel so that the movement changes direction a tiny bit inside of each flange is too steep. You will spend more time setting the machine up than actually winding, at least in the beginning. This at least apply to if you are shooting for a winder that will wind several types of coils. And if I understand the mechanism correctly, adjusting the fishing reel back and forth. Moving it will change the position of the traverse vs the coil laterally (sideways). This in turn will mean that if you have the machine perfectly dialed in and would like to know the difference in sound between different TPLs you will need to first move the fishing reel, then re-adjust the "trow" of the traverse. And it also means that you cannot simply mark he base with "this place on the traverse for standard HB bobbin" and similar as that will differ with different TPLs. - I'm a grumpy old man My suggestion if going down this path - Direct drive. With a motor with sufficient power you can always lower the speed with a speed control so why limit yourself. With all those friction gears and stuff you will build in a set of possible future problem/issue components (friction drives WILL wear out) - Skip the dancer. I run my winder considerably faster without one. It's called over-engineering, a thing I often immerse myself into... - Get backup parts for the traverse - Rework the traverse system altogether - I have no solution for that last point... All in all I don't aim to slam John or his machine, but I think that "less is more" is something that need to be applied to a project like this. With my hand fed winder running at 2500 rpm I think I can wind the coils faster than with a auto traverse machine like John's. The problem is, IMHO, That Jason Lollar, in his book, described and built a machine with auto traverse instead of a more simple machine. After reading that book a lot of aspiring winder thought that an auto traverse was mandatory. Ill try to snap a picture of my winder a bit later.

Automatic winder? Pfhhht, that's cheating! No, seriously, I think it is hilarious to see all those "boutique winders" advertising their "hand wound vintage correct PAF clones". The original Gibson HB from the PAF area were machine wound. Fender on the other hand used hand winding for a long time, and there are rumors that Leo Fender had figured out the difference in sound between hand wound and machine wound and decided that hand wound sounded better. However I have not seen any hard evidence or written quotes in contemporary magazines or similar that support that notion. If you are going for an automatic winder I would suggest using a traverse mechanism that I have not yet seen in a pickup winder. However it is the solution I would use if I was to rebuild my current machine. Find a nice smooth plastic bolt or similar item, maximum length is just over the maximum bobbin height. Now you just put that threaded part on the axel of a slow turning motor. Align the motor axel with the thread horizontally in front of your winder and secure it in place. Now you only need to have adjustable end stops and you change direction of the motor at each end stop. The deluxe version has a encoder that keeps track of the position of the wire and also makes it possible to connect everything to a PC controller or a PLC or similar. I work with PLCs in my day job and have access to all this stuff but still haven't got around to automate my winder. So just make sure it is worth the effort of building a automated winder. As you said, if you get a better counter and boost the speed up on a manually fed winder there efforts saved by using an automated winder can easily be calculated. You might save maybe 8 minutes per pickup in the winder (half the winding time compared to today, I think that might be reasonable). However you need to set up the automated winder every time you change type of pickup (different bobbin height, different turn count, different winding pattern etc). If that takes a modest 3 minutes the total saving time is 5 minutes per coil. If the build AND adjustment of an automated winder takes you a reasonable 10 hours, you need to wind 120 pickups to "break even" in regards of time used. If you plan on doing like 50 pickups a year, go for it. If not put the time spend on constructing and building the auto traverse on the "pleasure account" rather on the "productive time account". OK, sorry for the rant...

Making your own winder is a question of time vs money. I spent maybe few bucks on parts (OK to be honest I had access to a industry quality counter, a left over from my day job). Apart from that there is some MDF, a steel bar, a power supply and you are good to go. Spending from 280 (assemble it yourself) to 460 bucks ("pro" version) for the schatten winder just is too much IMHO. The Adams winders looks like a Schatten rip off and as the prize is the same as the new Schatten I would stay away from the rip of version. Google "designed2wind" for some inspiration for home made winders. As mentioned, the material is just a few bucks if you use an existing power dill or similar available motor. And 1000 to 1300 rpm seems a bit slow. My current winder (3:rd version) have 10 000 rpm as maximum. I often run it in the 1500-2500 range.

The fender instruction is good. however there is an easier way of doing things to arrive to the desired gap at the rear: Have a spacer with the desired thickness jammed between the body and the back of the bridge. Tighten the springs so that the tension holds the spacer in place. Adjust, tune and intonate the guitar in all other aspects. Then remove the spacer and adjust the spring tension so that the guitar is in perfect tuning again. The bridge will have the desired gap to the body and the process is so much quicker than adjust, tune, readjust, retune etc.