j. pierce

This is a neat idea. Love to see what comes of it. It's hard to tell in the photo, but some of the joinery on the body frame looks a little suspect to me. Like the laminated neck a lot.

So you've got the important part - that the bridge must be located in relation to the neck. By moving the nut further away from the body, you have to move the bridge in that direction as well. You *could* shorten the end of the 24 fret neck off, (assuming the truss rod isn't in the way - wouldn't work if the truss rod adjusts at the heel) this would allow the neck to slide further into the body, and move the bridge placement back until it clears the already routed spot for the humbuckers. But why not alter the body? Route the neck pocket further into the body to allow you place the neck further in, retaining the full 24 frets. (Not seeing the neck, I'm not certain that you wouldn't have to remove some frets with the shortening you're talking about.) Alter the body a bit to improve fret access if needed. Honestly, I'd probably just make a new body that fits the neck you have, and work something else out with that body in the future.

I like to put my strap button a little bit north of center, and then another one the same distance below the center line. When I take a break between sets or during practice, I can lean my guitar up against the amp, and it doesn't have that awful tendency to tip over, as it's got two points on the bottom it's resting on, rather than one. I also find I like the balance of it a bit more.

Wait, I guess I missed that this has a TOM - where are you finding a 7 string TOM? Haven't seen one of those around. I must be out of the loop.

If the magnetic polarity is opposite (up is north on one pickup, south is up on the other) you can simply wire them as a humbucker, and if you get a thin out of phase sound, simply reverse the leads of one half. That would make your "start" of the wind go to the inside of the coil instead of the outside (or vice versa) essentially creating a reverse wind for our purposes. Also, if you have the kind of single coils with a magnet at the bottom and steel slugs rather than individual slugs that are magnets, you can simply remove and flip the magnet to reverse the magnetic polarity.

Ah - I think that's actually an LP Junior pickguard - when I think melody maker, I think of this: or the straight-across version on the Joan Jett Melody Maker: I feel like I had a copy of the junior style pickguard, but I can't find it anymore...

I think Mickguard has a Melody Maker - maybe he can help you out? There's actually quite a few on eBay right now, too. Using one of those pretty straightforward pictures of just the 'guard, it ought to be easy to size it you body.

You don't heat it too much, and I guess with oily woods it helps somehow? I don't really know how it works, but it was recommended in the Stew Mac fretting book, and I've just sort of always done it the few times I've removed frets and it seemed to help. I guess it releases oils in the wood or some such? Frank Ford suggests it as well: http://www.frets.com/FRETSPAGES/Luthier/Te...D35refret1.html That soldering iron tip with the groove in the first picture is like what I've done. Another page on Frets.com that mentions it: http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Luthier/To...un/fretgun.html

That's actually something I dislike about the Ernie ball pedals - while the pots seem to last more than I thought they would, they do use normal conductive carbon potentiometers. I've been thinking of retrofitting mine with something like Andertons volume pedal descratcher. I wonder how well that would adapt to use in a wah? It's been ages since I've looked at the circuit. I have had some success with using LED/LDR combos as well; nice thing about that is you can often use what works as a pot and get different resistance out of the LDR. I'm rambling. Also, best of luck Paul. I wish I could offer more than condolences.

I kind of want to see another inlay on the first fret, but that's probably just me. Really digging this. When I was contemplating a fanned fret, I was wondering how my inlays would work angled like this. I'm not thinking it'd be so weird seeing these done that way. Very cool!

25K seems like a value you'd see much more in active electronics or line-level signals. I wonder if there isn't one inside of a volume pedal designed for keyboards or some such? Oh - just checked the Ernie ball website - they have a 25K version of their volume pedals, for use with active electronics or keyboards. They also sell the long shaft 25K replacement pot with the bit the string goes around for 15 bucks. granted, gutting an Ernie Ball pedal to make this (although you can also re-purpose the chassis, too) isn't the most cost effective way of doing this, but you might run across one cheap. And knowing that they make a 25K volume pedal makes me think that some of the other volume pedals for keyboards and such are also 25K. I have an old Crybaby shell, and I have to say, repurposing those is handy, except finding pots that mount into those is a pain in the arse.

I've always heated my frets with a soldering iron (I have an extra tip I ground a small indent in so it stays put on the fret) before removal. It seems to help. I thought that was standard practice, but I don't see it mentioned, so I'll throw that out there.

http://www.dimarzio.com//media/diagrams/4Conductor.pdf Dimarzio documents using a treble bleed cap with a 300 Ohm resistor in parallel in the documentation that comes with their pickups. It was the first place I ran into the concept of a treble bleed cap, and how I've been doing it when I use it.

The auto kill switch idea has come up a few times at the DIY Stompboxes forum as well. ( I know because I raised the same question there years ago. It's been asked since.) R.G. Keen came up with this circuit: http://geofex.com/FX_images/stutter.pdf Whether or not it's worth a try, I can't say. I don't know if that circuit has been built by anyone, but R.G. knows his stuff.

I've had a fair amount of success using a small card scraper on end grain.

StormLeader - you shouldn't need anything much more than the voltages of the power supply you're dealing with. In electrolytic caps, 12 and 16 volt are common values. I often use 24 volt caps in my pedal builds, because I have an 18v supply for some of my pedals and I don't want to bust something the day I mix up the power connections (even though they're color coded!) Don't go too large, because the size of the capacitor will be quite large and you'll have a hard time fitting everything in! You really only have to worry about the voltage rating on electrolytic capacitors - most any film capacitor you buy is going to be rated for voltages considerably higher than you'll be dealing with in a guitar pedal. Usually you'll see voltage ratings like 50v or something when dealing with low voltage film caps. These are still quite small, particularly in low values of microFarads. If you don't have a local supplier for parts you need, I'd recommend ordering from Small Bear Electronics - (smallbearelec.com) they sell parts to the pedal building community, and will have most all of what you need. Steve's a great guy.

Have you thought about winding your own? The cost to get into it isn't that expensive, and you end up being able to exchange sweat equity for cash. Shop for parts the right way and you can get a great sounding p'up for less money, albeit more time. I got a great deal on eBay on a spool of wire, and even if I make a bummer pickup, most everything but the wire can be repurposed. I've just started making my own this year and really liking the results, although I'm still not confident enough to not route for a form factor where a proper, store bought pickup can be dropped in. I was lucky and picked up a winder from a forum member here, but they're easy enough to make out of junk parts.

Alan - I continue to love your work. I don't know what to add that hasn't been said, but I always love seeing the pics from your build progress. Someone may have asked you before, but any comments on you tackle the interesting neck-to-body transitions, and neck carving presented by the extended single cut? I'm planning something similar on a baritone build, and I've been looking at all the pictures of single cuts I can find and trying to figure out the best way to proceed when I get to that point. I've got my own ideas, but I'm curious what other folks methods are.

If you search for blend pot in the electronics forum here, you'll find a couple of posts from folks (myself included) having trouble with Stewmac blend pots. I ordered several from them, and ended up with standard dual gang pots, but with a center detent. Which give symptoms similar to what you've got. They were awesome about mailing new ones out to me - but I think I went through three on one return cycle, and gave up. I would have assumed by now, they had their supply issues sorted out. I will say this is the *only* item I have had any problems with from Stewmac, and they've always been awesome about returns and such. I don't think they even had me send anything back. I tried to explain the problem with these pots to one of their techs, but they weren't getting it. It's a little weird to explain, and I'm not the best at these things, so that doesn't help. First thing though, before you start doing too much trouble shooting - your symptoms sound like you may have reversed the hot and ground coming out of this pot. Maybe you've got it right and the pot is backwards, or you were simply looking at the pot upside down when you wired it. Who knows. But if you leave the pickup connections to that pot normal, and swap the wires going to ground and output from that blend pot, you might get things working. Although it sounds like you pulled it out, so I don't know. So back to the possibility of supply issues: So the best bet might be to try measuring what you've got. Normally, I don't suggest looking at bad parts as the first point of failure - it's almost always a simple mistake that we all make and miss. But knowing that these particular parts have come to me mistaken before, I'd say check it out. And worst case, if you write down how it works, you can figure out how to connect it yourself. First - the principle. Basically, what you've got is two pots with one shaft. One is a reversed so that it goes "backwards" of normal - turning the pot counterclockwise makes a pickup connected to this half louder, and without the volume jump you get from a backwards wired pot. Each of these pots also is only supposed to work over half the rotation, so that turning the pot from center should make one pickup quieter and leave the other one alone. That's why you see what's probably a fully conductive trace on half the pot - once the wiper makes it past the halfway point, the measurements aren't supposed to change on each wafer. The conductive trace should be different sides on each wafer. This is what makes me think you have a blend pot, but it's wired wrong. Anyway, you should try measuring the pot with a multimeter. You only need to be able to measure resistance. Disconnect the pot from it's connections. With the rotation in the center, you should have full resistance (probably 500K, unless you got a 250K pot) between the center lug and one of the outside lugs, and one of the outside lugs should be 0 resistance - that is, continuity. The other half of the pot, should be opposite that. That is, if the top half of the pot is full resistance between center and left, and continuity between center and right, the bottom half of the pot should be full resistance between center and right, and continuity between center and left. Reversed. As you turn the pot clockwise away from the center position, you should see one half of the pot (top or bottom) shouldn't change measurements, while the other half should work like a normal pot - resistance starts to increase where there had been continuity and decrease where it had been at it's full measurement. If you return to the center position and then start to turn counterclockwise, the half of the pot that changed when turning clockwise should now stay the same, while the other half of the pot changes in measurements. If it's not behaving like this - for instance, turning it away from the center detent, the measurements are changing on both the upper and lower half of the pot, then you haven't got a functioning blend pot. FWIW, I ended up getting the blend pot through Brian at Universaljems, and that worked perfectly. (Go to "pots", click on 250k or 500k, and scroll to the bottom or search on the page for "blend" and you'll find it.) It's also an Allparts item, I believe, so most music shops should be able to order you one. Also, your single pot idea isn't really going to work. Volume pots work by decreasing the resistance to ground until all the signal bleeds there. You may get some reduction adding a series resistance like that, but it's not really going to work as you'd like.

Agreed. I've since removed that idea. I think an angled pickup works well on something like a Mosrite, and perhaps it could work with a single coil on this guitar, but the humbucker doesn't work angled.

I ordered this bridge from Stewmac - all the saddles are the same size. On the chrome tremolo version of this bridge I ordered in '07 from Stewmac, the saddles are different lengths. I don't know if the trem has the different sized saddles and the fixed bridge doesn't, or if there's something else going on. There will be plenty of binding on this build - I guess I meant there's not binding on the mockups, but the final build will have it. Wasn't clear.

Parts are starting to come together: Fretboard from Erik (poor picture, but it's great.) And custom Sperzels (matte black and nickel) via TK Instruments; drilled out on the lowest tuner, and a Hipshot bridge. Also got carbon fiber rods, strips for the inlay, and a Luthiers Friend sanding station, but pictures of those are dull. Tweaked a few things with the design, but I'm leaving it pretty much as is for now. Every time I try and take advice and change it I change it back. Will make a few tweaks once I get to working on the template, but otherwise it's going to be pretty close to the original plan. Front Shows the pickups in white - planning on making two humbuckers in wooden covers that mount like EMG soapbars. The planned tenon area shown too. Inlay mocked up, and headstock. Haven't figured out the headstock, whether I want it matching the neck, top of the body or back. Controls are planned as volume, tone, and rotary switch. Still deciding if top will be carved in a fashion that requires a neck angle, or if the neck will be parallel to the body like a fender, with a carve that just falls away from the playing surface. (I don't know if I described that in a way that makes sense.) Back Shows the planned headstock back cap and chambering. The lighter areas show the planned roundover into a belly cut, as well as the area where the single cut is planned to fade into the neck. No binding on either of these, but there will be lots of binding. Okay, I'm going to go do actual work on this instead of tweaking mockups unnoticable amounts over and over. Hopefully next time I bump this thread there's something to actually show for it.

Cool! Glad to hear it's working out well! What're you using for pickups on that thing?

Just got around to picking mine up at the post office; I have to say, if this is considered "blem", it speaks greatly of your quality. I can think of more than a few companies from whom I'd like to see QC anywhere near this calibre. Thanks again!

If you use steel, make sure you go with stainless. You don't want something ferromagnetic as your pickup cover. Stainless was actually Seth Lover's first choice for pickup cover when he was designing pickups for Gibson, I've heard. ( No idea if it's true ) The pickup maker guys swear by nickel-silver. Brass works, but muddies the sound a bit. Aluminum would be doable as well. Traditional humbucker covers are deep-drawn stamped metal. Might be worth talking to companies who do that sort of thing; while setting up a custom run is pricey, (although I suppose if you wanted to offer seven-string covers to the guitar market it might be a worthwhile investment?) but they have an off-the shelf size that could be easily repurposed. I remember looking into this for another pickup project once, but never really followed up on it much. I believe I was looking at this site originally: http://www.deepdrawnenclosures.com/standar...ular_cases.html They have a number of sizes with tooling already set up, so no tooling costs. What the minimum order is, I don't know. No experience with this company, it was just recommended to me. I never got past the "thinking about it and looking at websites" stage. I also believe theres some people that were having Thunderbird metal pickup covers made - perhaps a 7 string p'up would fit in one of those? I don't know who was doing it, but I believe the fretsonthenet guy has their contact info.