mistermikev

2 hours ago, willliam_q said:

The Gotoh trems do look good and axesrus sell them.  I also like that the Gotoh stuff is available at different price brackets so it relatively accessible to all.  
 

 I’ve used axesrus quite a few times in the past and find them to be competitively priced and have quick delivery.  I got a Gotoh locking nut for my Floyd Rose from them to get me the 16” radius and am happy with the quality of it. 

cheap and good... very few real examples of that but ime gotoh is def both.

wow, that fine detail there looks really great.  nice work.

they use gotoh on the suhr guitars... need I say more?  they also make a lot of the fender orig equip parts.

Haven't tried the callaham, but I'm certain it is made out of superior metal... I'm sure it's nice.  The babicz stuff - have a full contact bridge.  It is extremely nice and def a step up in terms of design, quality... does that translate to better tone - doubtful.  Better tuning stability - def. 

Still, if I was doing a vintage strat style (srv) I'd go goth.  They have some good upgrades (the elongated post holes) and are (for my money) the most innovative company making guitar hardware.  Support them for no other reason than to encourage continual research.  locking studs, heigh adjustable tom, auto adjusting string posts, heigh adjustable string posts, side adjust truss rods... I could go on.  On top of that their stuff is top notch quality and very competitively priced.

https://stratosphereparts.com/new-gotoh-510t-sf2-vintage-tremolo-for-fender-stratocaster-strat-sb-5325-010/

https://www.amazon.com/Gotoh-Traditional-Tremolo-Strat-Chrome/dp/B00EB125KW

1 hour ago, sethgali said:

Let me begin with this: I don't know anything about basses, I'm a sax player, but I've always wanted to learn. And I've been itching for a while to build one because it looks like fun. The plan is to build this one and then learn how to play it. I'm a moderately capable woodworker with a decent collection of tools and have watched a ton of videos about guitar building in general.

I've always loved the classic look of the Fender Jazz Bass, so that's what I'm working on for my first project. I plan to go with a natural finish and no pickguard. I found full-scale technical drawings of the J Bass somewhere online and have already prepared an MDF template to use for routing the shape of the body.

I purchased a rough cut ash slab in August, and it finally got dry enough to work with last month. It's 56" long, 1 3/4" thick, and averages 14" wide, I'm hoping to be able to cut two bodies out of this in case I have problems. The width is just barely enough for a single-piece body. You'd think there would be plenty of length for two bodies, but now that it has dried, it has a few issues.

It's bowed on both length (about 3/8" gap at the middle) and width (about 1/8" gap at the middle. I should be able to correct this in the flattening process, but it means losing some thickness. It also has a bad check (crack) at one end about 12" long, a bad knot and additional checking at the other end, and some smart imperfections in the middle.

I figure I have two options:

1) Cut out two single-piece bodies as originally planned, cutting around the worst cracks and filling in the knots and other lesser cracks with epoxy as needed.

2) Cut the board lengthwise and get several smaller pieces (probably three each) to glue up into the two bodes, allowing me to not have to work with any of the imperfections.

So that's my first question: which of these options would be recommended by those who have done this before?

I'm documenting progress on my Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/sethgali/) if you'd like to see examples of the issues with the slab. I'm not fishing for followers, I've just already started the process there.

I'm open to any and all advice on this project, so please fire away. Thanks in advance for your help.

Seth

hello and welcome aboard.

sounds like you've done some good homework.  I think a jazz bass is a great place to start because it is a well documented build. 

afa blank... I love one piece, but also hate the idea of wasting wood.  Perhaps you can get one 1 piece and two pieces that you glue up?  afa thickness... I generally plan to loose 1/8" flattening things so if all goes well that puts you in the 1 5/8" range which is pretty common for fender.  If you've got a lot of bow you might find yourself too much lower than that... you can always consider adding in a drop top. 

Ultimately, you just need approx 1/2" below the neck for mount and 5/8" depth for pickups so in theory you could go for a thinner guitar if you wanted.

nice looking ash.  I highly recommend you update this site with your pics and just link/copy to instagram... you'll find lots of great folks that will be willing to help you and I'm sure most of us would appreciate being able to watch your progress. 

hard to really see any major issues on that slab.  Voids - as long as they aren't structural, can be filled and personally I like to see little imperfections in a guitar, but ultimately you have to decide.

one piece of advice I'd give is to spend $20 and get a postal scale... that way you can keep a close eye on weight as for me that a big consideration.

Get your templates perfect and check them with your fingers... lot easier to get mdf smooth than 2" of hardwood. 

look fwd to your progress, and hope some of this helps.

congrats!

looking great, nice work.

haha, I suggest you post pictures.  I came here for guitar porn and am terribly offended when I don't get any! (jk)

afa moog pcb... not sure I'd want to do a layout for this! 

one look at the schematic and my thoughts are: eh, I'd just build a few other simple pedal circuits and chain em together in there.  You could go all out and try to do your own layout for that exact circuit... but I suspect you are going to have issues finding those transistors.  tl022 is avail and so is cd4007.  I spose you could find a substitute but then why bother trying to create that exact circuit?  anywho, good luck.

7 hours ago, TheRavenOfDiscord said:

 

I'm aware they make bass strings for short scale lengths to compensate, presumably by requiring more tension than standard strings. That said, if they dont make a B string that way it'll be a fun hurdle to jump over 

that's the spirit.  there's a lot of talk on various forums of guys sayin' "you gotta have a 35" sl for a lob B.  I have a 35 and a 34 and to me... I sorta like it floppy on the 34 altho admittedly you get more fret rattle - even with extra thick strings.  I also like my action super low tho so perhaps that's not as much of a problem for others.

29 minutes ago, JayT said:

That's supposed to be gold, like a LP gold top...but I do like TV Yellow too...

ma bad... for the record doesn't really look tv yellow or gold...

personally never cared for gold tops... just incredibly gaudy to me... and I own a jem floral!  that said... some folks like it like that.

47 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Mandolins, mandolos and their assorted kin have rather elevated neck angles to maximize the string tension across those floating bridges. I rather like the look and find them plenty comfy as well.

SR

good to know... have never played any of them, but it def looks nice. 

1 minute ago, JayT said:

Just some ideas to kill time. Criticize away, it is appreciated (good, bad or indifferent)

FYI, is it normal to be thinking of "the next one" before "the current one" is even finished? I have a feeling it is

sorry to hear about the back... here's to mending quick.

your headstock always reminds me of the ankh.  Of the three... I like the middle shape best in the first photo.  Think it looks better in the cherry burst than the 'tv yellow' but black is always a popular choice.

"is it normal" - well I hope so... but if not then we are both abnormal so at least we're not alone!

56 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

I just thought I'd add in my two cents, quite likely repeating what has already been said. Sorry, bit time poor today and concentrated on what was in my head and getting it onto the post....

Carved tops like LPs, or this Aria Pro II PE-R60 hybrid have two angles; the neck plane and the pickup plane.

 

Here I have a neck plane that starts at the leading edge of the binding and terminates at the end of the fingerboard. This is 4° with respect to the body plane. The pickup plane starts where the neck plane leaves off and terminates between the rear of the bridge pickup and the bridge itself. I elected to place this at the bridge line. The point being, the neck plane can be as large as you want however it will require either a taller bridge or the neck itself to be set deeper with respect to the body. This can be a bit weird beyond a few degrees so it'll need balancing out with the rest of the instrument like the horns and how the pickups are placed, certaining with the angle of the pickup rings and/or cavities.

9° sounds extreme and I don't immediately recall production instruments having this kind of neck angle. Maybe more traditional archtops with deeper bodies and different neck-body joint/bridge distances.

Interested to see how this turns out from an aesthetic and ergonomic standpoint. If you don't try it, you can only look at it as a drawing and imagine/calculate how it might feel....to a point.

your 2 cents is always welcome and probably given the idea exchange rate - worth at least... well... lets say 89 cents.

9 degrees was just me being silly because I have a "9 degree sized beer belly" (see scottr post b4 that)!  actual was 4 deg altho now you've got me thinking perhaps that'd be kinda cool.  as you've stated... hard to predict the 'feel' as for me it requires actually playing - not just sitting with a mocked up dummy - to tell if I like it.  Might have to entertain bigger angle on a future build - maybe not 9, but perhaps 6 or 7 just to see. 

good info regarding two possible planes... I think ad may have mentioned this as well... didn't realize it was a thing.  Something to remember for future builds for sure.

thanks for the reply. 

8 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Players with rounder bellies may find a larger angle more comfortable, while flat bellied players may find smaller angles the most comfy.

SR

wutRuTryinDaSay? 

on an unrelated note going with a 9 degree neck break angle here...

as mentioned by many I'd def work off of some sort of plan - a lot of your fretboard length questions can be answered (with no math!) via the 'fret2find' portlet here on the forum.  Its a browser app that will calc out fret sizes ect and create a pdf/jpg.  I'd start there... create an image of your fretboard and build the body around it.  I've build a 32" scale bass, and it's awful comfy compared to a 34... a 30 should be pretty small.  I don't think reinforcement would necc be required given such a short scale... but it probably doesn't hurt. 

I would think your big hurdle is going to be 30" scale + low b string - she is going to be very low tension.  at that point you start thinking about really high gauge strings and we're back to needing reinforcement.

anywho... welcome aboard!

4 hours ago, JouniK said:

What do think would be the best way? Should I file/sand the neck pocket at an angle to correct this? I thought finishing the body so I can mount the bridge in place and then with a string or a thread check the current situation and matching angle?

Watched this today and seems a good and feasable way. Thoughts?

https://youtu.be/J_3t6rMpd38

well... I would find which part is out of spec... is the actual pocket wrong, or is the heel of the neck wrong?

whichever part I'd measure how far it is off and mark that as a line to correct to.

I'm not big on using hand tools to fix things because I just think it's harder to be consistent... but plenty of folks make that work for them.

if pocket - I would use my router plane.  If I didn't have that I'd just put a piece of mdf on the top of the guitar and use a shim to get the right angle. 

if the neck heel... again I'd just use my router plane but I've seen a guy take a vise, put the neck in it with just a smidg sitting proud of it and use a belt sander... the vice preventing the belt sander from going lower than the plane you want. 

16 minutes ago, curtisa said:

It's possible that EMG changed their pin arrangement too. I have a feeling they didn't always use their quick connect system, and if you look at the way they arrange each of the connectors on the in/out cables it wouldn't work any other way with their system as it currently stands:

Each cable is signal + shield, so the only way you can make it work is if the corresponding pin arrangement on the PA2 is <in> - <ground> - <ground> - <out> with the input connector flipped as per EMGs recommendation above, or <in> - <ground> - <out> - <ground>.

 

That gives me a bit of a chuckle. I hope no-one was too disappointed that the mystical tonal qualities of the PA2 turned out to be nothing more than a textbook application of a 20dB opamp. When EMG say the PA2 is an opamp 20dB clean boost system with variable gain, they weren't mincing their words.

well fsb members generally don't regard this circuit so much as good... but more the idea of posting something new and interesting (back 6-7 years ago?) gets hoops and hurrays.  I think part of it is they just love to debunk that anything with widespread commercial success is anything more than "magic beans".  I know there were a few well known members that chimed in on the thread at the time, but no one even mentioned this so... suggests it may have been right then. 

then again... those guys abso hate the clapton mud boost... yet a lot of great guitar players love it so... sometimes I think they are the reverse of folks who think "it's expensive and well recieved so it must be good" in that they think "it's expensive and well received so it must be bad!".

11 minutes ago, Lumberjack said:

Thanks for the warm welcome fellas!  This particular maple top is from Kimball Hardwood's eBay store.  They're a relative new-comer it seems, and frankly I have no idea how they're selling their tops as cheaply as they do - I got this bookmatched 0.32" thick top for $40.  

I don't know if that seems like as crazy a deal to you as it does to me, but they have dozens of listings like this up on eBay all the time.  Definitely wish they were around when I was getting started, 12 years ago I could have hardly gotten the faintest ripple in a quarter inch flame maple top for $40.  

right on... I have drooled over many-a-ebay-listing from kimbal.  Haven't snagged anything as I've got similar deals elsewhere but one of these day's it's bound to happen.  They do seem to regularly get amazing stuff!  I def appreciate you sharing!  also... is that paul bunyan holding an axe in one hand and... well... an axe in the other hand?  cudos!

Just now, JouniK said:

No that you mention it really seems like that way in the pic...and hold it in my hand there is slight positive angle in there, but could be that the neck is not bolted in and neck is not dead straight. I have to bolt the neck in and adjust the truss rod and check that again. I do not know where that have changed cause I planed the whole blank and the template was level to it when I routed the pocket. Did I sand the body unevenly?  Oh gosh. Fingers crossed.

well... catching it now you have lots of options to correct so... perhaps for once my musings actually had a positive impact!  cheers

holy crap... excuse me while I recover from that flamed maple... SOURCE PLEASE!  Like what you are doing there with the binding too... that all is going to tie together nicely.  Vcool.  Look fwd to watching your build.

thank you both again... thank you very much for the replies!

31 minutes ago, curtisa said:

Back to @mistermikev's original question (thread derailment strikes again!):

Well, your labelling of each point on SV1 appears to line up with the schematic that @Prostheta linked to (assuming it's the same one you had in your original post), so I'd say you've got it right.

 

Or the schematic has it wrong and EMG have it right? Given it appears to be a unofficial reverse engineering of the original product, it's entirely possible the author mislabelled some of the pins.

I guess you just need to decide what's more important to you - a working circuit or compatibility with other EMG products.

https://www.emgpickups.com/pa2.html

well... you can see it is physically different on rcustom's layout... and this was posted in a place where it got hoops and hurrays by some folks whom I KNOW know what their doing... so it gave me pause, then mentalpause, then self doubt.  Usually someone would catch something like that so I wondered if perhaps they changed their quick connect connections at some point.

oh, I would not use quick connect... it's not even on my board... it was more me being unsure of myself and not wanting to go thru an entire etch and assembly to find out I had something wrong... which I totally anticipated doing... but am very thankful for the feedback/confirmation.

53 minutes ago, curtisa said:

 

They do have that effect, but C3/C4's primary purpose is to prevent the quiescent DC voltage on the output of each of the opamps (nominally half the 9V supply) from upsetting any downstream equipment. R6/R10 also 'pin' the floaty side of the C3/C4 to ground whenever the switch is not selecting that opamp's output, which minimises any popping noises that may occur when selecting boost/no boost.

hehe, in laymens: prevents poppy.

1 hour ago, Prostheta said:

Pretty much as @curtisa states. The output is switched between the outputs of IC1A and IC1B. IC1B is operating in non-inverting unity gain mode whereas IC1A is operating as an inverting amp as seen by the negative feedback. It seems a bit redundant to my mind, and I am sure that there is a smarter way of making this work. That being said, it would reduce component count by a couple of SMD parts at best I think, so it would be an exercise in futility regardless of how clever the re-design was.

R2 and R3 hold the point where they meet at half the supply voltage, pushed/pulled by the negative plate of C2. C1 is similar to C2, a DC blocking cap. R1 supplies input impedance at 500k (I actually think this could be raised given TL series op amps input current is in the order of picoamps). This is likely to provide basic compatibility with non-EMG pickups such as standard passives so they sound like they're in a 500k sorta circuit. This is a simplification for brevity.

C3/R6 and C4/R10 provide basic high pass filtering to pull any DC and LF junk from 3.2Hz down. R8 and R9 provide output impedance at a low 2k. C6 is a supply buffering cap, D1 is a reverse supply protection diode.

All the pot version is doing is to pull out R4 into what I'd call VR1 and combine that with a pull pot switch for S1.

This is first year A level electronics, which even I almost remember....! I'd be tempted to use a better op-amp than a TL062 though. They're nice low power parts, but an old design. I'd like to say 80s, but I have nothing other than remembering them being available '90/'91 as an common RS/Rapid catalogue part. I like Ti's OPA chips. Not as low power by any means, but a magnitude better in audio performance....not that it means much for our use....but hey! More better is more more better.

I may have misunderstood or made basic errors somewhere along the line. It's a straight interpretation.

for the record I would toss likes on all other replies here but I'm out again.  originally my link did display and once I actually posted it dissappeared... I just assumed for some reason it couldn't display it - sorry - missed that one.

Hehe, you are a smarty pants.  I actually did the entire layout and had omitted the second half(buffer) and it's parts but decided I'd add it back in since who knows... maybe I start playing arenas and have 50ft cables to endure!  so stupid... I'll actually populate those components and never use them altho i could just skip that section.

input resistance... could be raised to 1m - good call.

that's a pretty detailed interpretation.  thank you for that. 

opa chip... would have to check the pinout but it's pretty std.  I think many would work... 2134?  but may opt for the lower draw as in a tl062 a battery will last years and I oft forget to remove the cable... and I have a gaggle of them.

thank you again for the reply!

4 hours ago, curtisa said:

"... You are not authorised to download this attachment. ..."

 

Ow. Your layout hurts my brain 

The EMG documentation for the PA2 practically gives away the circuit layout for free minus the fine details on exactly what component values to use, but you can probably guess them based on common practice for opamp buffering used in pedals.

From your layout, the first half of the TL062 does variable clean boost from 0 to 20dB, as per the block diagram in the EMG product manual.

Second half of the TL062 doesn't appear to do anything in your layout, whereas according to the EMG literature it's used to provide a plainjane 0dB buffered output for active or passive pickups whenever the boost switch is disengaged. In your layout I can see what appears to be 2x BI connections (BI = buffer input?, supposed to be jumpered together perhaps?), but then BO (buffer output?) doesn't go anywhere. The top BI pin also appears to be jumpered to ground; mistake perhaps?

Your push/pull switch seems to simply bypass the whole lot and short out the output of the 20dB boost stage. I suppose it achieves a similar function to the original, but you lose the low impedance buffering action whenever the boost is disabled.

thank you very much for the reply and detailed info.  The reason I won't use their layout is A) it's SMD and gosh I hate working with that stuff with my sausage fingers! and B ) a layout is protected as artwork by copyright.  - Don't want to go there.  C) I don't want to use a toggle, nor do I want to have their buffer on when not in operation... I freq use fuzz pedals and want to be able to completely hardwire bypass the circuit and maintain the passive sound... plus wanted to have access to the crazy amount of boost via a vol knob (push pull)

wow, you actually digested my layout... cripes... that makes my head spin!  Bravo.  Yes, I'm completely bypassing the buffered part and would send pin 5 to ground (prob not even nec)... but who knows, perhaps in some circuit I want to add a toggle and put in three wires - replacing the jumpers, and be able to go to buffered.

funny I saw this on facebook earlier today and was like "I like what you did there with the fork and knife"... shame on me for not throwing a like at it (I might have... don't recall).  long story long - I like it.