fookgub

I wouldn't bother with trying to cut or plane it off. Too much risk of hitting the truss rod. The steam/iron method is actually pretty fast. I removed a fretboard last week, and it really was easy.

The Sustainiac probably compensates for the phase shift introduced by a magnetic pickup (in fact, their patent claims a phase compensation network as part of the driver circuitry). So it may not work as well with piezo pickups. You could certainly add a magnetic bridge pickup for use with the Sustainiac, but it doesn't really seem to be what you're looking for. I would suggest that this is the perfect project for building your own sustainer. Since you're using piezos, you won't have problems with direct feedback from the driver to the pickups. I've been meaning to do a full calculation of the phase between the string displacement and the resulting output voltages for piezo and magnetic pickups, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet (need to pull out some old notes from my transducers class). That would be a handy thing to know, so I'll be sure to post it when I get it done. The delay caused by the Variax system is orders of magnitude greater than the period of the frequencies we're interested in. Feeding a sustainer driver with the post-Variax signal would be a very dodgy proposition. It is, however, entirely possible to grab the signals from the piezos directly before they hit the Variax circuit. In fact, I'm planning to do this on my Variax guitar (which is currently being refinished after gathering dust on a shelf for about a year). You could to the same thing with a piezo-to-midi guitar. In fact, the Graphtech preamp allows easy access to buffered output from the piezos and midi output at the same time.

ding, ding, ding! We have a winnner. Seymour Duncan has a video on their website, and it's worth watching. I've been trying to cram as many sounds into guitars as possible for about as long as I've been playing guitar, so the P-rails idea really appeals to me. Unfortunately, the compromise is something I can't live with (you may be able to, though, so I suggest watching the video). Each of the settings: strat/p90/humbucker have wildly different volume levels. It's an understandable and almost unavoidable problem (in fact, it's accurate to the originals), but it doesn't work for my uses. SD touts this as a feature in the video, so you will just have to watch it and see if you agree. A couple other comments: They nailed the p90 tone, but the strat sounds a little thin, and the humbucker seems dominated by the p90 sound. Keep in mind that I haven't heard them in person, so it may just be the recording, or it may be the side-by-side comparison with all the different tones at once, or it could even be a psychological predisposition to for me to hear what I see. In any case, I 'd love to get my hands on one and try it out, but I won't be spending the $130 anytime soon.

Got to drop a plug in for Rio Grande pickups. Fabulous sounding pickups, and well made, too. "Good crunch and twang" is what they specialize in.

I voted for scotty for the third time in a row. Last month's entry was my favorite from him, but with 4 strong entries in 4 months he deserves to win one of these contests. The rest of the instruments were great (especially the two Pauls), but if I had my choice of which one I'd like to own, it would have to be scotty's bass.

I got the Delrin at work, actually (don't tell anyone ). I ordered it from McMaster-Carr for an experiment that ended up not working out, so I don't feel too bad about taking some. Otherwise, it would just sit unused in my growing scrap bin. I think I paid around $38 for a 12" x 12" x 3/8" piece. Anyway, I machined up a blank yesterday that's long enough to make 3 nuts. The Delrin seems a little soft compared to Corian, so I'm not sure how well it's going to work. I've seen softer nuts on guitars, though, especially the import guitars with plastic nuts. Here's the blank:

Wow, revived almost exactly a year later. Since I started this thread, I bought a better random orbit sander and an OSS. The OSS has become one of my favorite tools, and is absolutely indispensable to me now. I've also gotten a little bit wiser about sanding techniques in general, so I'm spending a little less time sanding than before. One of my friends just got a Performax 22/44, and that thing is just awesome. I ran a body though it a couple weeks ago after I accidentally sanded a 1/16" low spot into it, and the drum sander flattened it right out. I also have a set of cabinet scrapers now, but, as Dugg mentions, I have not been able to sharpen them properly. I think part of the problem is that I haven't invested in a decent burnisher yet, but I'm going to try to get that figured out before I shape my next neck.

Just thought I'd chime in here. I've made these types of conversion nuts in Corian and brass before. See this thread for pictures: http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=21451. Corian is fairly easy to work with, and is probably the best choice if you don't have access to a milling machine. I've found it to be a bit sticky, though, so I use a little bit of graphite (the kind sold for lubricating locks) in the slots every time I change the strings. Unfortunately, I messed up the slotting on the brass nut I did, so I never got to try it out. I am planning to make a pair out of Delrin later this week, and I'll post back with my experiences. I couple words of advice: make sure that the actual nut part isn't too wide, and that the back side of the nut (the part towards the headstock) is low enough that the strings don't rub on it. Also, you can buy small bits of Corian for cheap at http://www.coriansamples.com.

You can buy special screw extractors at most hardware stores. Never used one, but they probably work. At work we use reverse direction drill bits in the mill. They will often grab the screw and pull it out, saving the need to actually bore it out. Very true. When I buy cheap imported hardware, I almost always go to the hardware store and buy quality stainless screws to replace the junky pot metal screws. I've stripped more crap screws that I care to think about.

SOLD to admbwr.

Pictures http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~wrobert/emg-2.jpg http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~wrobert/emg-3.jpg

Yeah, same thing happened to me, too. Unfortunately, it was my first finish, and I didn't know plastic wood wouldn't work. I'm actually in the middle refinishing that guitar right now.

Just thought I'd drop in an anecdote about plywood bodies. I owned an Epiphone P-bass copy for a while that was made from plywood. It was a cheap beginner's instrument that I picked up up for $50 used, never changed any hardware or electronics on it. It sounded fantastic and was completely bulletproof. I wish I had not sold it. Also, Kubicki basses had "plywood" necks made from many thin laminates. Most people that have owned a Kubicki have nothing but good things to say about them.

Just out of curiosity, do you have all the stuff you need to make the boards, and are you planning to make more than one? For one-off circuits (especially simple ones like this), it's often easier to just assemble it on perfboard. DIY Layout Creator is a nice tool for coming up with perfboard layouts, but it seems a bit lacking for designing true PCB's. Also, I have to agree with Pete that a slight redesign using a quad opamp to replace the JFET preamp section would help keep the parts count down. I have to make one last plug for the MIMF preamp, too. The design is at least 7 years old now, and pretty well tested. It was designed to do exactly what you're looking to do - mix piezo and magnetic pickups, and it works well.

The mixer circuit as drawn still needs the buffer. Otherwise you're trying to passively blend the magnetic and piezo pickups using a pair of 500k pots -- the piezo tone will suffer badly. The mixer circuit is straight from a Fender bass, and, IIRC, Walter had to add a buffer to get the piezos to sound good. Both schematics are from Cafe Walter.

Are you set on that particular circuit, or just looking for a preamp/mixer with a layout already done? In the second case, the MIMF preamp (go to mimf.com, register, and look for the library link at the bottom of the page) is ready to go.

Impressive! I've been wanting to make a small drum sander for thicknessing figured wood and creating volutes, but the stumbling block has always been getting the shaft and drum, and figuring out how to connect everything up. Care to share how you did it?

I have an EMG 707 and 81-7 for sale. Would like to sell as a pair. Includes two sets of 25k pots - one set unused, one prewired strat-style jack with battery connector (unused), two quick connect harnesses with a decent amount of lead left, and original packaging with boxes and instructions. I don't have the original mounting screws - I used 4-40 machine screws to mount them, and I will include those. The pickups are in fine shape & have negligible string wear on top. Nothing wrong with them. They're only about 1.5 years old and were lightly used - I just found out the hard way that I don't like the EMG sound. Looking for $150 shipped to CONUS. Can post pics on request, but there's not much to see. Thanks!

I'm sure Pete will chime in here pretty soon, but what you're basically trying to describe is a sustainer (see the massive pinned thread in this forum). Your design wouldn't work for a couple of reasons, but, if you read up in the sustainer thread, it is possible to make a working device like this.

Pete, the major limiting factor in button cell powered preamps is the voltage. Many cells are 1.5V or 3V, which doesn't really provide enough headroom to make a good preamp, even though the button cell has enough energy to power the preamp for a good amount of time. The voltage could be boosted with a small switching supply (and these days, highly integrated low voltage switching supplies are easily available), but I think that's just beyond the level of complication that most preamp makers are interested in. The MIMF preamp runs on 3 coin cells, though. It's a neat little preamp, too. Check it out at the MIMF library if you haven't seen it before. As to the original question: transformers don't do anything for "free." Voltage gain varies by the turns ratio, and impedance is transformed by the inverse of the square of the turns ratio (as seen from the primary side looking into the secondary). This makes transformers somewhat unsuitable for boosting high impedance signals like a guitar's. You can use a transformer to increase the impedance seen by the pickup, but it costs you some output. Also, real world transformers have inductance, which may negate any signal brightening effects you might otherwise achieve (though not necessarily -- it's a design problem). Transformer saturation is probably not going to get you much, either. While you can produce some distortion by saturating the core, you would need to drive it pretty hard to get a very noticeable effect -- something you probably won't be able to do without an amplification stage before the transformer.

Not exactly. A single diode will clip off the one half of a sine wave (half wave rectification), but it is still essentially an AC signal. You would indeed get second harmonic generation from this, but it's not quite as simple as one may think. For one, silicon diodes have a turn on voltage of about .7V. Before that voltage they will not conduct much forward current, so it's difficult to get a diode to conduct directly with a guitar signal. You need to boost the signal level first. I've played around with passive distortion before, and I can tell you that the best you can reasonably expect is a slightly gritty sound when playing hard. You won't be able to get the levels of distortion and compression needed to approximate a distorted amp.

I had typed up a long post with a bunch of recommendations, but, after thinking about it for a bit, I've decided to condense the list to just two options: 1. Use rattle-can nitro Reasons: - It's forgiving and easy to apply. - You can get it easily (both the color and the clear). - Using nitro for both color and clear greatly reduces your chances of having compatibility problems. - No significant investment in equipment. - It's easy to rub out. - Dries reasonably hard and quickly. You will probably need to wait a month or even two before rubbing out, but it will provide a usable finish in the end. - Professional paint systems are trickier, and, while you might get by with a Preval unit or a 2k rattle-can, best results are obtained with a good spray rig. More importantly, using professional paints requires more knowledge and practice. Caveats: - Rattle-can finishes build more slowly than finishes shot from a gun. Make sure to do enough clear coats to avoid sand-through. 2. Take it to a pro Reasons: - If you want an absolutely perfect, long-lasting finish with no fuss, this is the way to go. Caveats: - Find someone that knows how to finish guitars. Just because the guy at your local paint shop does great work on cars does NOT mean he has any idea how to properly finish a guitar. If you can't find someone with guitar experience at least find a custom painter. Someone that does high-end bikes or custom cars is likely to be much more detail-oriented than someone that does repair work. - Do the prep work yourself and make sure it's perfect. Anyway, that's a really sharp looking guitar you've got. Hope the refinishing works out!

I'm building a 3 pickup Strat-style, and I've been struggling for a while to find simple, no-fuss way to add the Tele "outside pickups in parallel" sound to it. An idea finally occurred to me last night, and I thought I'd share it. It's really simple, but I've never seen anyone do this before. Using a standard 5-way Strat switch and a DPDT to swap the neck and middle pickups, you can have the following combinations: Normal: 1. Neck 2. Neck+Middle 3. Middle 4. Middle+Bridge 5. Bridge "Tele": 1. Middle 2. Neck+Middle 3. Neck 4. Neck+Bridge <-- this is the extra combo I wanted 5. Bridge There are still some issues with this kind of switching, but it seems far more intuitive to me than having a switch that adds the neck or bridge pickup to whatever combination is selected. Plus it avoids having to buy a fancy and expensive "mega" switch. Any comments?

The CV builds much faster than lacquer. Even at six coats it was much thicker than any of the lacquer finishes I've done. I'll probably relegate CV to necks and natural finishes, and stick to 2-3 coats max from now on. How did you mix your finish? You can have a lot of problems if you don't get the mix ratios right. I used a graduated syringe to mix in the catalyst.

How many coats did you apply? I had the same problem with CV, only worse. I think my issue was too many coats total (6 wet coats) and applied too rapidly (3 coats a day one hour apart on 2 consecutive days). Sherwin-Williams recommends a maximum thickness which works out to about 2 coats. Also, I used shellac under the CV, which I think was a big mistake. Unfortunately, you're looking at a total re-do. I can tell you from experience that it will crack more. I will be refinishing both of the guitars I did using CV this summer. I will probably just use nitrocellulose lacquer, but I'm considering precat, too.