mistermikev

1 hour ago, Norris said:

I've just caught up with this thread, and have now linked BOTH my builds on my profile @mistermikev 

right on.  just trying to make it easier (for me) to look at your guitar build porn! 

welcome back.  purpleheart all the way!

5 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Just caught up with the video.  Sounds and looks great!

Some great skills on show with your other builds too.  

thank you sir, that means a lot.  looking fwd to my fav part today... putting on some color.  thank you for taking the time!

Just now, komodo said:

That tele sounds killer, it’s got some real meat to it! Love it!

thanks komodo.  I needed that today!

It appears you have made it through the storms and the sun is coming out.  nicely done.

13 hours ago, norm barrows said:

I'm pretty sure my Traveller just uses a plain old bar piezo. there's no preamp. and it sounds just fine.

as for mounting, you can mount it in a channel in the bottom of the bridge, or a channel in the body under the bridge.

for my stained wood piezo build, i'm going to try mounting it in the center gap of the archtop roller bridge first, then in a channel carved into the bottom of the bridge second. i'm going to see if i can build the entire  guitar without any holes or routing in the body other than the neck pocket.  IE just a big solid slab.  it only has the piezo, so you wont see any pickups or controls or covers at all anywhere. just an archtop bridge and tailpiece, with a 1" long piece of wire running under the 6th string from the bridge to the tailpiece (the piezo wire). the jack plate will be attached to the very end of the tailpiece.   dark walnut stained body, neck, and headstock, gold hardware, gloss acrylic finish. I put the neck on 2 days ago. need to dig up a gold jack plate from my parts box.  i've started buying generic stuff like jacks, jack plates, strap locks, strap buttons, by the dozen.    but right now i'm playing with the action and relief on the red guitar.

 welp... you can use a piezo with no preamp but IMO it'll sound a lot better with one.  also low impedance so depending on what you send it too, may sound like dog poo.  On top of that, for me, it's going to be combined with magnetics so mixing it without any pre is going to suck tone from the mags. 

OK so lets actually troubleshoot.  I assume you have a multimeter.  so... take the black lead and clip it to the black lead on the neck pickup.  take the red lead and clip it to white.  set your multimeter to ohms/resistance.  you should read somewhere in the 8-10k range (not sure on these pickups but should be in there somewhere. 

assuming that goes well... clip black to ground lug of output jack.  red lead to the red wire for neck pickup.  change multimeter to voltage reading.  are you reading 8-9.5v? 

then repeat for bridge.  this will tell us if we have working pickups and if they are getting juice from the battery.  if you aren't sure of how to get votage/resistance on your multimeter post a pic or tell the brand/model.

cheers

yes dr freud... it says 'aftermarriage'. 

some nice stuff there.  I like the inlay pattern.

6 hours ago, norm barrows said:

my electrified fender acoustic has no noise issues. and its a similar unit.

if the chinese stuff is junk, buy the real mccoy.

 

welp... I did say "cheap chinese" not necc all chinese.  some chinese stuff is great. 

i digress.  I'm comfy building something like that from scratch and I enjoy it... but the focus of my thread is less about finding something to use and more about what is going to work well in the context of a thinline style build without spending $500 on ghost saddles given I'll probably use it every now and then.

58 minutes ago, killemall8 said:

worth a shot to try those things!
The body is a relatively medium weight piece of african mahogany.

was thinking you were going to say something really light. 

once you've ruled out all the things that make sense... just have to start trying things that don't make sense! 

terribly interesting read.  I know nothing but my first instinct (they might be stinky intincts) was that the guitar just really resonates to the freq range encompassed by the lower strings. 

what if you put tape all over the body to dampen it or clamp another piece of wood to it?  just a shot in the dark.  what type of wood is the body just out of curiosity?  is it light?  (I know you mentioned neck but didn't see body so sorry if you did mention)

perhaps you've created some tesla freq summing death ray guitar! (I'm copy-writing that name!)

2 hours ago, tparker said:

Working on a design for a new guitar. I'm wanting to do some custom shapes for the inlay. The color scheme reminds me of Bicycle face cards. Might play with that and use diamonds, clubs, and heart for the inlay. Or maybe even the face card profiles if I want to be really nutty. It will be a true mess of different guitars. Gibson style pickups and wiring, Gretsch sized neck and headstock, and Fender body.

What I'm thinking about doing is using a cnc or laser cutter to make the holes in the blank of wood before the fingerboard radius is cut. Fill this with blue or red translucent epoxy. Then shave it all down on the cnc. My hope is to use birds eye maple for the fingerboard. Haven't worked with epoxy much so don't know the cutting and sanding properties of the material. 

Oh, and another questions. I'm thinking of putting two tone kill switches on the bottom horn. These would disconnect the tone pots from the volume pots. This would let me go to full tone or a preset tone level by hitting the switch. Would that work? I'm wondering if they should be bypass switches instead, because volumes need to go to ground? Being that I use to do electrical work, I thought guitars electronics would be very simple to learn. Given myself a good laugh at my mental aptitude. Learning guitar wiring hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be.

I like your mockup and your moxy. 

have oft thought of using epoxy for inlay... and adding luminescence to it, but for me (no cnc) it's really hard to get an inlay hole cut with precision... so I have oft thought of just making a backing sheet full of epoxy inlay blank material... or perhaps adding some cookie cutter shapes... but I digress.  have not done it... but I know there is all types of powder you can add to epoxy to make lovely colors and if you can cut the inlay shapes well... the rest is easy.  Have sanded epoxy and it's a hair harder than reg wood so would just be some more wear on your bits.

afa tone bypass... could be easily done.  you could just run the wire that goes to to the cap from the middle lug on a tone pot (see second drawing below) to your switch... then have the switch choose one or the other caps going back to ground on the pot (just one way).  lots of other things you could do there like have one side be a tone bypass, or have one side be a bass cut, etc.  you could accomplish this right on the pot with a push pull too... but with switches you could use an on/on/on or even on/off/on and get three possibilities.  

guitar wiring is pretty straight fwd once you learn some basics... but certainly different than the typical electrician is going to encounter.  I would suggest you check out a good book to get you a better grounding (pun hehe).  like craig andertons elec proj for musicians.  think you can find it free online.  once you get your footing I'm sure you'll be schooling us all.   

this is a good book... great read:

https://www.paia.com/proddetail.asp?prod=PFG

also free one from anderton:

https://msu.edu/~dougl126/Electronic Projects for Musicians.pdf

On 2/11/2020 at 4:16 PM, norm barrows said:

i'd try something like this perhaps.....

https://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Band-Acoustic-Guitar-Preamp-EQ-Equalizer-Piezo-Pickup-Amplifier-Tuner-LCD-Mic/192007678265?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

you could also mount a couple of condenser piezo discs near the bridge inside the body, and wire them to the preamp listed above similar to a cigar box guitar.   the sound would be less bright than your typical bridge bar compression piezo.

I have the schem for a 1970s ovation preamp that I will likely etch/build using metal film resistors and quality electrolytics..  I have used/tested cheap chinese stuff like that before and what you are going to get is a whole lotta noise.  plus the issue of two gargantuan boxes... just doesn't appeal to me but I appreciate the suggestion.

the issue with piezo disks is that they have a very small proximity.  I've got a lot of experience using them to build electronic drum kits and my intuition says that on a thinline style build... there probably is going to be issues getting sufficient level.  That means building a booster and boosting levels... but that adds noise and soon you are looking at adding filters.  Perhaps if I put them right under the bridge... but then this is going to sound very treble strong. 

going to have to try some experiments.  perhaps a combo of piezo ribbon/rope/disks and a condenser mic capsule... but then the electronics are getting more complicated and that's ok... but it will soak batteries fast and that's not ok.

51 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Love the headstock logo Mike.

SR

thank you sir!

So... back b4 finishing the broadchaser I had realized I bought a 24.75sl fretboard instead of a 25.5 (for the tuxedo).  well I got this far on it before I realized...

did a gold mop logo for the les flawes and white mop for the tuxedo...

test mounting my neck for the les flawes

Just a hair of a gap at the outter edge of the corners on the back edges here - the side joints are solid right up to the last 3/16 and I think I'm going to be removing most of that with rounding up that area... so pretty satisfied with the join. 571.88 kB · 0 downloads

made a fun video about the neck join...

mock up w the fretboard

did you spot it yet?  (below)

hehe, lots of folks uisng UV to get lighter areas on under pickguards on strats and stuff for relics... working hard for that!

44 minutes ago, ChrisLAdams said:

I'll take a closer look at the routes and see about the wood.  I've not got a good eye to tell what kind of wood if it's solid, but should be able to tell if it's plywood. 

Up till now, I've mainly focused on trying to decide on a bridge, and tuners.  I've plenty of parts to buy, obviously.  It only came with the toggle switch plate and 1 of 2 back plates.  

I put a set of those Gotoh Vintage tuners on the old Japanese LP copy I have.  Beautiful tuners.  I had to redrill the head for them because they original tuners were at an angle, and the Gotohs were not.

I'm a big fan of Gotoh.  Everything I have used of theirs just feels solid and performs well.  I like that they are so innovative and enjoy supporting them knowing that... auto locking vintage tuners, wheel lock vintage tuners, side adjust truss rods, height adjusting tuners, locking tremolo studs... the list goes on and on. 

also, meant to say... I vote to leave the finish on that as is.  IMO it's got a cool vibe going there... something you can't walk in and buy.  If you do anything... fill with clear epoxy or ca.  Other than that... I'd try to maintain that vibe as much as possible.

cheers

hard to tell from any of those pics if it is plywood or not... you'd have look close at a sideview of the routes.

looks like orig tuners were those inexpensive fender type with the cap that has offset screws on either side... going to be tough to match those but you might look at 3x3 gotoh traditional as they may cover the holes (or not). 

the official term is "smoker's tooth yellow"

wow, what a blast from the past.  hondo generally was plywood... and bolt neck... which makes me think this might be really early for them and it looks like solid wood?  pretty cool.  looks like a cut above typical hondo.

afa trem/tuners... looks like std strat but hard to say for sure on hole alignment.  sm w tuners.   gotoh has really good spec sheets and you might just be able to scale one up, print it out, and see if it aligns with the holes for bridge and/or tuners.  If you can open in gimp or photoshop... then measure the lines that are on the spec sheet (ie it might say 74mm and you scale up till the measurement = 74mm).  then print and overlay it on the holes.

42 minutes ago, JouniK said:

This from Fishman:

Pin 1 – “Voice-2” Select – This contact selects Voice-2 when connected to ground via switch. If open (not connected) the pickup defaults to Voice-1. This is a control pin only, so there is no signal present. Therefore, it can be combined with Voice-2 control pins from multiple Fluence pickups on the same switch contact if need be without interaction. (This can help simplify switch requirements in some cases.)

Pin 2 –“SCO” and “NCO” – These stand for “South Coil Out” for the Bridge pickup and North Coil Out” for the Neck. These are used on Tosin’s switch position-2 to connect the inner coils together while feeding the signal through the Bridge pickup in Voice-3 Single Coil mode.

Pin 3 –“Single Coil” Voice-3 Select – This contact selects Voice-3 Single Coil mode when connected to ground via switch. If open (not connected) the pickup defaults to Voice-1/Voice-2 as selected by the Voice-2 pin. Voice-3 Single Coil mode overrides the setting of the Voice-2 pin when activated. In Voice-3 Single Coil mode, the active coil is the one closest to the neck for both Bridge and Neck pickups. In the same way as the Voice-2 pin, “Single Coil” Voice-3, it can be combined with “Single Coil” control pins from multiple Fluence pickups on the same switch contact without interaction.

well not sure how those translate to color, but that does seem to match up with what is happening on the switch. push pull engages voice 2, left side bottom selector is engaging SCO/NCO in pos 2, right side bottom is engaging single coil mode in pos 2 and 4. 

yes, I don't know what the 3 right side wires on each fluence are... I would assume perhaps it's a live, a neg and a series connection between the two coils?  if so... in pos 2 they are being connected together ie a single coild from one goes into a single coil from the other... and y ou are only grounding your variable resistors in pos 3 (could just run them straight to ground as they can be grounded when not in use) 

seems legit.  again, if you have documentation of what the fluence wires are... that'd help but it looks like everything is in order.

looking at that again... apparently the commons are rev on the other side.  so... x and r which are connected.  so... that part looks right. 

Well.. I hope it was just hitting the plunge release.  I've certainly done that before myself.  to be sure... you might consider taking a marker and marking your bit where it goes into the collet on your next run... then checking it later.

I couldn't like the above post enough... so I'll just say: that's some good advice.

looks great!