Samba Pa Ti

lovely guitar. only concern is that theres no top hat, and this makes me sad : (

I don't think you are going to get very far with the pick guard and the cavities unshielded. The shield should be made continuous (tied together) with wire and this shield is tied to the ground wires of your pickups and the ground wire of the output jack. Really with the cavities etc. unshielded you are fighting a losing battle.

lace pickups (practically noisless) into a telecaster wont need much shielding, only the neck pickup is out in the open, the rest of the electronics are all shielded by design (control plate and bridge being made of steel/brass).

still that doesnt explain where the hum is coming from though.

is the bridge grounded ?

there should be a wire coming from the control plate ground (back of pot) usually it uses the same hole as the bridge pickup wire and then the plastic is removed and the bare wire is squashed between the body and the bridge making contact

eg > http://www.tdpri.com/articles/build_gifs/BIG/1359092.jpg

dont worry about using unshielded wire or shielding the pickup routes, i doubt thats the reason it will be humming unless you have a lot of noisy electronics.

also double check wiring and make sure the output jack is wired up correctly (hot lead to the tip of the jack)

Ok, did what SwedishLuthier suggested. It looks like I have a bad coil. Black to white I get approximately 6.9k, and nothing red to green. I tried various combinations of wires black to white is the only one that gets a reading. Does that mean this pickup is f'ed or is there any way to repair this? I think I got ripped off...

its possible the coil is bad, id be inclined to check if the red/green wires attach to the coil ends properly if they have been pulled too hard somtimes they can snap the fine wires the coil is wound with, ive repaired a few pickups like this.

make sure the studs are the same distance apart as the old ones, ive got 3 guitars with the 2 point trem and they are all different string spacing...

maybe the coils in that pickup are wired up backwards, i cant remember how to find out which wire is the start and which one is the finish of each coil but you can always mix them around untill you find the best sound (a lot of messing about though).

could try gibson pickups in it, either paf's or Ttops quite hard to find though.

you could just remove the tone cap altogether (depends if you actually use the tone). an EQ pedal might be useful as well or some sortof booster (mid boost treble boost) i dunno what they sound like on bass tho so i cannot recommend it, just suggest.

Then I can choose to leave them as is or recharge them to full potential.

do you charge your own magnets up ?

what equipment do you use ?

i think the main problem is the pickup itself, the one i have sounds like crap, doesnt matter which guitar its in or which amp (ive tried it on loads). it put me right off SD pickups.

swapped it out for a gibson PAF and was much more satisfied.

i assume its like a leather guitar finish but they used crocodile skin instead, they sell snake skin guitars as well but i cant tell if its real snake skin or not

id expect it was real, its not like they are protected or anything.

i had the same problem with that pickup, wanted the zztop sound, didnt get anywhere near, i didnt try it with boosters tho so that might be the missing link

snip

those guitars look fine to me, being a CDT teacher i would expect that you would have experience by now of using various glues (titebond/pva) and how to deal with excess.

just get a les paul switch on ebay, sorted.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Switchcraft-Short-St...67#ht_500wt_928

thats expensive, chrome tips are available, i suggest shopping around.

what do you mean by onboard ? (inside the guitar ?)

ive used a few delay pedals and most of them are analog electronic ones, ibanez ad9 and dod fx90 are my personal favs and recommendations for bucket brigade circuits.

these are relatively short delay pedals (not psychadelic) they can provide a nice slap back which imo nullifies the need for reverb and sounds 10x better than all my spring reverbs, it just has more depth.

use http://tinypic.com to upload one and post it here

does the pedal have true bypass wiring ?

does it have a 3pdt switch in it ? (that switch is shown in the gif linked by borge)

if its just a dpdt switch replacing it with a 3pdt will make it easy to add an led but will require rewiring.

ah that makes perfect sense!

how do guitars without the dish get away with not having the knobs crooked then ?

the pickup routes will have to be widened to fit in soapbar p90's they are bigger than single coils and a bit bigger than a humbucker.

you can get a p90 in a humbucker casing but again that wont fit in the middle position (that is if this is the guitar you're talking about > http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbase/pics.../9/5/653495.jpg ).

I switched the camera out of preset and did some manual adjustments to the flash and iris. These look more like the real deal.

lovely colour, im not sure i like the indentations where the knobs + switch go,

i think when theres knobs on it they will look good but without knobs it looks perculiar to me.

is that done just to make the top the right width so the knobs will fit on the pots ?

a good way to get a nice pic of the body colour would be to take a photo of it outside with no flash, or indoors in the daytime with natural light coming through the window, i find camera flashes to be evil for washing out colour and misrepresenting the colour tone.

http://stetsbar.com/stop.tail.html

http://www.vibramate.com/vibramate-faq.html

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bridges,_tailp...ce_Tremolo.html

good luck patenting somthing that has already been done, vibramate is pretty much the same idea.

how did you change the pole pieces to gold ?

removing them can ruin the coil if you're not careful

AHHH ITS GARY!

i like titebond, never had a problem with it, and yes i use the original because i cant find the others locally.

they both look amazing, is the design cut into the wood then painted ? or just painted on the guitar ?

i like the liony creature on the telecaster especially