mistermikev

well... here's my "list" of things I should have had in mind anyway... the order of the coils. you def want to ensure you are using a top coil in every combo which means attention to the wiring order. that also complicates polarity because to hum cancel you need the top coils of either to be opposing polarity if you are going to combine them... but if you are trying to combine the top from one with the bottom from another - then you are going to need them to be the sm polarity (and winding of course) so that the partner coil is opposite to your top coil... that's where this build got into trouble. Another thing that I'm just figuring out... is despite the fact that these pickups are humbuckers... they need a 250k pot. you heard right... I'll be going in again to either replace the pot or put a resistor across it. I was thinking about it this morning and looked at all seymour wiring diagrams for any stacked coils... surprise - all 250k. in my current setup I'm running a 500k pot but modifying it in the 1 position (single coils position) to be 250k. surprise position 1 sounds much more full. to my ears 500k is just too bright and you loose some bass because of the shift. I think ideally I want a 350k pot. have not faced any shielding issues as everything is pretty quiet when in series or parallel mode (less so when mixing coils but that is to be expected).

I'm sure others will weigh in on this but number 1 and 3 are functionally equiv. #2 would be way more stable due to the opposing end grain.

certainly all things to consider. I'm not contradicting at all... but I wouldn't necc rely on any of those things thinking that they woudl guarantee a good neck. lots of folks build necks that aren't multi lam and they are fine... idk what they do but for me - just need to spot that sort of thing earlier on... which means planning to make an initial cut on some wood and then giving it some time to potentially change.

right on... it's very true. it is really the part that you will always be in contact with the guitar on... and small variances in the shape effect each of us differently. twist - well.. .I hear ya there... would be a shame to toss such lovely wood. that said, make sure to consider also how you'd feel if you get all the way done on this guitar and find it doesn't play well due to twist. I think most importantly... figure out how you got there and how to prevent it going fwd. easy for me to say as I live in a giant wood seasoner! afa preference... I have boatnecks I like... and I have thin necks I like. They all have things to offer. I think you just decide what's right for THIS guitar and go with that.

I have large hands compared to other folks... but because i learned guitar fisrt and spec 3-notes-per-string... I struggle quite a bit playing a 34 and it always feels like home on a 32. feel like I can just manhandle it and it plays so fast. Hard to believe 2" at scale makes such a dif... but it does to me. Hope it does for you.

the best part here... shaping the neck. even using the facets method - everyone does it slightly different. Such a personal part of the guitar... in my mind it's the equiv of a "signature" on a painting. looking fwd to seeing how you sign yours.

"what I did not know at first, I learned by doing twice" billy joel well I must have learned the shit out of the electronics on this guitar cause I re-did it 10 times! Odd thing is that I have done almost the sm wiring on humbuckers... did not think doing it on stacked humbuckers would really be that different... but it was. Now I get to figure out the sm questions for a set of stacked dimarzios. i'm told they are quite different in terms of how the coils are created. The secondary coil is apparently an underwound coil by comparrison so... more fun to come! I guess an upside is my wiring layout - having been redone another time... is slightly more organized. anywho... this one is now verified...

right on. the dreaded 4 way switch!

thank you for the encouragement... I think you are absolutely spot on - it's the wrestling that makes you better - not the times it just comes together easy. I'm wrestling all right... wired it up white->black->green->red and it caused more issues than it solved. so... I'm absolutely convinced wire color is right... need to go back to the multimeter and step through it inch by inch.

lol allready was (in there again) this morning! never ending electronics... still not quite happy. so I flipped the polarity on my bridge pickup and all went great - perfect - south up now(scarry process)... sounds great as a humbucker. now... at this point I face a conundrum because I went back in there and flipped the wires back. still... my neck pickup in parallel mode doesn't sound right. wracking my brain. further complicated by the fact that I think now that I can't have the bridge wires fwd - black-white-red-green because this bridge pickup was wound opposite of neck. and I can't have them backward... because then I'll have the bottom coil active in certain split spots... so what I think I actually need is... lol... white-black-green-red! lawdy... blind racing school. big old space - wise words. unfortunately in my case a bigger space would'nt have been weight reduction as the thing is already as fully hollow as possible on either side of the controls!. further... any bigger and it would run into the f hole... (see below)... I did not like the idea of moving the controls... i wanted them to be positioned right yet fully sealed/shielded (ie not going into f hole territory) and hence here we are. the funny thing is... I do this to myself in every venue. with pedal builds... sm thing... rarely a square cm to spare. I would like to say I'm going to heed those wise words in the future... but I just know no matter how much space I have gonna try and get as much in as possible to my own misfortune!

i did this once... on a lovely piece of birdseye. thought "i can go another mm deep" - nope. tossed it and started over. I know that's hard to hear... but I'm glad i did. despite how much you've invested in this neck... when you start to think about how much total time you have invested in a build... at least for me - don't want to be unsatisfied at the end. worse yet put another 10 hours into a fix when you could have spent the time building new. that said - i never like to waste wood and i was ashamed to toss that neck. You have to make the right choice for you. never hurts to try and fix... but don't be afraid to chalk it up to learning experience and start over either. I think yours - it's hard to tell... if that is right under the end of the rod - it's going to be problematic because that is where the pressure will be - the ends and the middle. if it's say "an inch or two" away from the pressure points... less likely to be a structural problem. you also have to consider "how thick is the wood in that area now?" unfortunately any routing is going to be very dangerous as your bit could hit your truss. you could manually carve out a stripe and put a skunk stripe in. You could sand the backside of it flat enough to get the truss out... then sand it a bit more flat... then add a contrasting piece of wood and it will look like a feature... but a lot of work! here's hoping something there helps.

yes, lot of great builds finishing up right now... well... still have a lot on my list. time to make a list: neck pickup sitting at angle... i believe this is due to the edges rubbing the corners - what I get for trying to make the opening "just big enough" and then not using cnc to drill the pickup holes flip polarity on the pickup cut the string slots a hair deeper in nut one knob is not sitting right... i think due to a 6mm post (instead of .25") on the preamp pot... anything I try to put in there is too thick... driving me nuts. toggle switch plate - need to take off and sand it smooth. the ca glue I used was thick and can see some irreg at certain angles currently setup on 10 guage strings... had to order some 9s (who the f uses 9s... well kevin does). need to do intonnation. general clean up - got some buffing compound in the f holes so need to go in there with a sponge need longer screws for bridge pickup - ordered... this pickup is so tall can't get it low enough strap pins need to add a little instruction writeup on the modes... perhaps laminate it and stick to underside of controls. need to make a toggle switch tip need to do a final photo shoot make a video demo - this always takes me forever because I am too long winded. on the bright side... this fretwork was perfect. not one buzz, action is super low. first time I haven't needed any massage there.

so... in wiring up this guitar we had a marathon of murphy's law. issue1 getting things to fit... the preamp literally was 1.5mm too tall, and conflicted w the output jack wire. So I switched to a smaller full freq boost (ala stratoblaster) and wired it up. did not like it for this build. wrestled with myself and finally took the orig (blade based) preamp out to the garage and went at it with my dremel. ended up hitting an output cap and it was enough that I'd have to replace it... finally got that in and sounding good. packed in there pretty tight! issue 2: threaded jack pin - had to switch to 4 conductor wire. push back wire was just not flexible enough to spin and install. issue 3: then I noticed you could see the gold jack right through the f hole. so took it out, painted the end of it black, and put back in. issue 4: despite the fact that I talked to seymour duncan tech support early on and they told me "the vintage stack is wired EXACTLY the same as any other seymour"....... I found the bridge is north up and the neck is south up! Contacted them again in case someone pounded in the poles wrong, got the sm tech from before. he apologized profusely. they are one of a handful of exceptions and are wired with opposing polarity. will have to pass this pickup through my big 1/2" N52 mags to reverse polarity... will do soon. issue 5: start checking other positions of my wiring (two positions sounded perfect). what I learned is... the stew mac 4p5t is wired to make contact in the EXACT OPPOSITE order of the philli luthier 4p5T. shame on me for not checking that earlier. so yesterday morning completely rewired the 4p5T and reinstalled... working perfect. modified the drawing to add two resistors. had switched to 500K pots since most positions would be humbucker... the resistors will run in parallel and knock down the 500K to 280K when either single is selected... and 200K when in middle.

beautiful guitar... excellent work.

i was recently reading about the filtertron pickups... and to my surprise... despite being a 4-5K HUMBUCKER pickup(that's in series)... apparently they are considered one of the loudest pickups. I was like whaaaaa? The article states it has something to do with the very tall narrow footprint of that pickup... and I have tried to ask questions on the pickup mfg groups on facebook to hopefully bite off a piece of understanding... but no luck yet. I have a set from a setzer model... for a future build... now can't wait to try em!

if you tie all the red together and go to the tip of the jack... then tie all the black together and go to the ground/ring of the jack... yes, that's parallel. and series... yup. that is it. now... oddly with speakers the output part works a little different and this digs into how I "simplified" the analogy for pickups. with speakers running at 4 Ohm vs 16Ohm is less resistant... so 4 is actually louder than 16. With pickups it sort of works the opposite in that a 16k pickup is louder than a 4k pickup. Why is that? well you've found the edge of my knowledge on this subject... i will say that 16k vs 4k doesn't necc mean it's going to be louder as that is only a measurement of the resistance and the actual perceived loudness is influenced by a few other things like freq response. that said... dcr is commonly used to gauge loudness in pickups because in general it is accurate. I hope i didn't do more harm than good right there!

ok, there it is... so using seymour wire colors... in series you are going in on black, out on white, into second coil on red, then out on green to ground (using in/out for conceptual sake) in parallel you go in on black, out to ground on white. then in parallel your signal is also going in on red and out to ground on green. so in one case the two coils are running from live to ground in parallel, and in series you go in to 1 coil and then into the next coil and then to ground (i know capt obvious i am). if you think of the two coils like a resistors or like speakers. when you combine in series... you add them. so if coil one is 8k and coil 2 is 8k you are essentially getting 16k. for simplification purposes we'll just make the leap that 16k = 16 units of output ie loudness. in parallel you'd get 4K (1/8 + 1/8 = 8k * 8k/8k + 8k) what do they sound like? well series is higher output, more aggressive, typically associated with a humbucker in a les paul for instance. series also loses a bit of the highs... so is a hair darker. parallel is lower output... often described as 'sweeter'... and typically associated with a strat (all stock strats wired in parallel). it has more highs. that's about the best I can describe it.

well... I don't see a question but am happy to help if you don't mind rubbing my nose in it directly!

oh, shoot... did not see that you were asking... lemme go look...

wow, that really came out nice.

all smoke and mirrors lol... looks fantastic. note to self... add some tinted black lacquer to the bucket list. just classy as all get outl;. also... those controls being 'dropped down' - nice touch.

that fretboard looks lovely in that light. all wood... seems to have a photogenic angle. that is def the angle for that one! also a big fan of short scale. 32 is my fav size - cut my teeth on a yamaha motion b 32" scale and that just feels right. I don't think that body looks too small... if anything it looks pretty big north to south... but it's only your o that matters. i think the tobias basses have an incredibly small body... and then there's the curbo so... no rules.

well... idk what specific model pickups are in either... typically 490r/498t in the studio - no idea on model in the epi... but in both guitars they are supposedly gibson pickups (which is rare for an epiphone to have). edit: just looked it up: the epiphone has 57 classics in it which are widely considered an upgrade to the 490t. oddly, what I'm hearing is muffled highs and the classics are less overwound than 490 series... should have more highs. this is not meant as "qed it's not the pickups" just stating it as I see it.

There's lots of different factors - agreed. every guitar sounds the way it does because of it's totallity. the magic that the Gibson had over the Epiphone - there is no question for me... that chaps and capn are influenced by the idea that "nitro sounds better"... and their playing on both absolutely displays that... but I don't think I'm unconsciously influenced by that. I personally believe that a thick vs thin finish can make a difference... but beyond that I doubt highly that the type of finish necc dooms a guitar. that said... I think I'm listening pretty objectively but coming to the sm ultimate conclusion that one does indeed sound better to me. I'm def not influenced by their need to sell guitars and I think they are... but I also doubt they would purposely try to make the epiphone sound worse. I don't believe he's feeling any vibration through the neck... and that does sound like malarky to me... but again I'm just basing my opinion on what I hear and trying to be objective despite the criticism my opinion might encourage. I'm kinda putting myself out on a limb and ultimately trusting my ears for better or worse. fender - hehe... well here's my own anicdote that is very parallel. I have owned a cort acoustic since the 90s. I bought the cort despite knowing how frowned upon the name is... because I know that they make some really high end good guitars - the larry coryell and matt guitar murphy for one and two. I had played a coryell and it sounded great. dealer cost on my acoustic guitar in 99 was $700 - so it was a lot of money for me at that time. solid cedar top and mahog back and sides. I bought the undesireable label despite potential criticism.. There were certainly other brand names that were more respected that we were a dealer for (alvarez for one) that I could have bought instead. Not saying I am impervious to the sm brand infuence... just that I'm not afraid of going with my gut despite criticism.

right on. that is the thing... when chappers played it thru his amp... it sounded bad to me... when captain played it thru his amp... it also sounded bad... I think that was the point of switching amps - to show how they sounded on either setup. and the studio actually sounded great on both. no epi snob here... i still have an epi 295 that i like a lot... just that one is a bad example to me and surprising because it has good pickups. it is fair to assume that perhaps it was just that setup... and I dunno if either of them setup their amp using the gibson... but there was a consistency in what I didn't like and the only thing that changed was... the guitar.