mistermikev

looks like these are likely colors:

19 minutes ago, avengers63 said:

Too fast. Wiring is always a stumbling block for me. 

Honestly, I really wouldn't care if I got rid of the pre-amp altogether. I'd be more than OK with just a 3-way,1V, 1T. But it does seem like a shame to not utilize what I already have. And for all I know, the pups might require a battery, whoch would defeat some of the purpose in ditching the pre-amp.

roger that... I really think you should keep the pre... it's 90% wired up.  go get a battery clip from ebay and you can mount it in the existing cavity with just a single screw. 

afa wireup... if I drew a wireup of your 5 way is it something you'd use?  if so... tell me what pickups you will use so I can setup the correct wire colors. 

30 minutes ago, avengers63 said:

Some more detailed pics of the wiring harness...

Here it is spread out a bit. I'm pretty sure the 3 knobs are a 3-band EQ. I agree about some funky tapping going on with the double-blade switch. There's no reason to think otherwise, because there's no reason to use it if not for the extra options.

For the 2 leads coming from the pickups - things are a little jacked. Both have a free red wire. The gray sheath has the white lead going to the switch, while the black sheath has a free white lead. I'm presuming the white leads are both supposed to be on the switch, meaning the free lead broke off at some point. But that leaves the question of what the red leads are for. 

Over at the end of the last pot in line, we have a black wire. That appears to be the ground.

The last mystery is this red wire coming from the harness box. It's been spliced into another red wire which has been cut.

So....... what could all these unidentified red wires be for? The battery?

 

well the red wire from the preamp is more than likely the battery.  I'd bet your next paycheck on it.  red to 9v + and black from battery to ring/ground on the output jack. 

the pickups wires... looks like the super switch was being under-utilized.  i'd bet the red and white were series link and were being sent to ground by that second half they are attached to.  nothing appears to be connected to the common on the halves they are connected to. 

From what I can see pickups go to the 5 way, 5 way goes to preamp, preamp goes to vol, vol goes to output. 

You might want to start over afa the 5 way goes... just desolder everything... then on the side that's connected to the red out wire... connect neck pickup to lugs 543 on one and the bridge pickup to the other side at lugs 123.  then the other half of the switch you can wire the two common lugs to ground and wire up the series link from neck to posts 34 and series link from bridge to 23.  this will give you bridge humbucker, bridge split, bridge and neck split, neck split, neck humbucker. 

I may be going too fast, or too slow... please forgive.

10 minutes ago, ScottR said:

 I don't know much about racks, but it's a lovely piece of furniture.

SR

thank you scott.  I def appreciate your input. 

hehe, I hear ya.  felt guilty.  kept thinking "well this would make a nice neck". 

1 hour ago, ScottR said:

Thanks.

You know, If you hadn't said something.......I'd never have know that was a backstreet boys quote.

SR

well, I'm not actually sure if THEY actually said it... but there was an SNL parody where they said it A LOT!  Seemed to fit how much I like your build so... went w it!

1 minute ago, komodo said:

Don't get me wrong, all I've ever played out of is big tube amps and have also spent a lifetime trying to tame the firebreathers to be tolerable in a small space! Probably a good place to mention that watts and volume are not what most people think.
5 watts can rip your face off and blow the ceiling off. Even 1 watt will.

well... I am a tube guy myself.  yes, tube watts =/= solid state watts.  5/1 watt of tube will def be loud - but this item is solid state... perhaps a small coffee house would work but I imagine it would be at the peak of what it could work for.  it's really a 'busking' amp so should be fine but it would be drowned out by a tube champ for sure!

Just now, komodo said:

Tubes can be dependent on volume to get certain sounds. Something like this is smaller and lighter, will cover more situations and music styles and is very highly regarded.

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PCKZJOK/ref=sspa_dk_hqp_detail_aax_0?psc=1&smid=A3KO61ZGUBAZ09

my buddy had one of those and a while back we did some recordings with it... i was actually going to recommend it too because bang for buck it's hard to beat.  really great sound, portable-battery operated and has an interface.  the achilles heel of it is the interface as it's "latent with latency" but w direct monitoring you can work around.  Not sure it'd be loud enough, but admittedly they are surprisingly loud for size.

don't want to quote the backstreet boys but that thing is going to be "wicked awesoooooome".

well... either way you might as well preserve the epiphones.  later on, if you decide to sell this guitar you can always load em up, or you can hang on to them for when you come across a guitar w/o pickups, or use them for dummy coils... be a shame to waste them. 

looks cool.  I would assume you'd want to use these pickups again so you snip them at the controls.  It is very hard to put new wires on pickups.  so take a pic with your camera first and then snip them - you may have to add wire to them when you put them back depeding on your length.

I know almost nothing so transfering that info to you is going to be easy/fast...

clearly that's an active preamp.  I can't imagine a passive setup that would take up that much space.  also, I'm not sure you would need to epoxy a passive circuit.  So with that in mind... looks like the one attached to the jack is your volume(left most in pic).  looks like you have two stubs there from former pickups... so that's where the pickups go... looks like a superswitch and it's hard to tell (without a lot of work) what's going on but it is a 5-way so likely some splitting action.  the preamp you could figure out what the 3 eq pots are doing by hooking it up and testing... so the only question to answer is where is the 9v in.  my guess is it's red... is there a red wire going into the pre block that is left unconnected.  Perhaps some more detailed pics and we could zero in on it.

If I'm not mistaken the black ice was just a couple led clippers no?  not 100% sure, it may be a transistor or ic w a feedback loop and clippers.  either way... the clipping is going to be inside that black box.  I think it's epoxy... and the clippers are probably the most likely place to get some variation.  assuming you could get to them you could wire in other clippers and swap between.  If it IS ic or tranny based you could probably find a gain setting resistor and swap in/out dif resistance.  I don't think there would be anything you could do with just the hookup leads.... wiring in a resistor to the in would just lower your overall signal (like a vol).  It's a passive device as I recall so you can't limit the power being supplied to it.  just some thoughts.  honestly... if you are handy with an iron... you could find a layout for an lbp1 online and wire that up in there... would be a lot more fun imo and you could mod it to death.

also in recent news... I literally blew up my computer last night.  have had this issue where it didn't like one of the usb devices (wasn't sure which).  It wouldn't restart until the device was unplugged.  well, I was trying to restart so unplugged the usb device and 'ZAP' and little smoke and no power.  Followed the usb cable back to origin - a usb hub I was using to consolidate printers. 

so last night I ordered a new 750w power supply... hopefully we just blew some over-current protection resistor/diode in the power supply... and not the $350 motherboard (or processor or anything else)!  will find out tonight when I get the new power supply... fingers crossed... find out on the next episode of "days of mike v's life"

When I drill these I always use a graduated bit, it results in a much tighter grip in the middle of the neck and almost no grip at the body.

You really don't want the same size drill bit for the next side as the body side, because it can prevent the two from coupling well. You want the whole for the body side, about the same size as the threads. When you screw these together the neck will suck the body to it.

Will only you know your skill level and where you want to start. I would say as far as tools the only thing you really need is a router and a jigsaw. As far as Chinese kits probably not a bad place to learn, but I'd try a bolt-on before I'd go for a set neck.

so... I needed another 10spc studio rack... so figured I might as well build one.  I had two pieces of walnut but opted for the one with a big hole in it... because it had pretty grain.  The grain matches going around the thing... kind of hard to see but... I see it. Working on a second one now. 

Anywho... would love to hear your impressions of it. What did I do right?  what did I do wrong?

also..... BARK AT THE TOAST!

tuff crowd... nobody likes "bark at the toast"?  so I guess better cancel my plans on a series.

extra points for having so many... extra... well... points.  v nice work as always.  that top/finish (2nd pic) is like looking at a stream rolling over rocks.  so much depth there.  you picked a sweet piece of wood.  also, looks like the guitar is going to  have incredible upper fret access.  thanks for sharing.

sounds like a good solution.  I was thinking that on my next white or cream build I'll buy a throw away garment bag and rig up the guitar inside that.  for the blonde, I used a large plastic bin and it worked fairly well.  Afterwards (with just one guitar) the inside was caked with nitro and I really don't want that hanging round my house.  I was doing this all outside and when the wind would pick up - just couldn't spray.  we have a lot of sand in the air here.

fancy white is a standout for me.  Have new found respect for that color as it's easy to collect all sorts of debri in the finish.

this is a topic i have stuggled w quite a bit... (pardon the pun) and have respect for those who cut them out manually.  lot of work.  I hope to have more success on this in the near future using a pattern and 1/8" shank w 1/16" router bit. 

was a fun watch.  nice work.

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

As we know, both the strings and the neck-body combination vibrate. I'm not sure if the vibration pattern looks like a skipping rope or rather like an 8, but anyhow. Just got thinking about the skipping rope: If you tie a knot in the middle, it's easier to swing it. Would the heel serve a similar purpose by solidifying the vibration?

I hear ya... and that is an interesting point. 

I think you are saying I should tie a knot in the middle ofmy guitar. (hehe)

1 hour ago, ScottR said:

Tone is such a subjective subject. If we consider that tone is sound, and adding to tone means changing the sound, it becomes less subjective...until you try to describe what sounds good. I suspect that leaving an inch or so of heel exposed stiffens the neck at that point, which would change the sound compared to a neck not stiffened at that point. Perhaps PRS likes the way that sounds better. Whether most people could recognize the change in the sound, and identify the cause of it is a whole nother debate.

SR

ah... I see what you mean.  more neck in general would equate to more rigidity.  I could see that. 

you do know they've discovered the element tonearium?  it's present in all early 80's lotus guitars.  hehe.

30 minutes ago, ScottR said:

I'm sure I've read that PRS claims the exposed heel on their necks adds to their tone. Personally, I've always wondered why any neck has an exposed heel (that makes an interesting mental image) rather than a smooth transition to the body.

SR

not necc scoffing as who the heck knows and I'm guessing most builders have more experience than me so I'll assume I know nothing.

I think in that article he was saying that the heel end of the neck joint should actually touch the body... and that would be the source of tone transfer.  wait, what?  I could see making the point that more contact would increase the coupling, but why specifically would neck end grain contact improve anything?   Perhaps he just meant a continuous piece would increase tone transfer.  So now I would think it'd be better to cut a 45degree angle on the butt end and really couple them?  I find it hard to believe but I would honestly love to know.

prs: why in the world would an exposed neck heel increase tone?   

my mouth, which is connected to my neck, often has an exposed foot... which is connected (in theory) to a heel... ok, yeah I can see that now.

15 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

My butt transfers tone pretty well despite being quite far from my neck.

If the butt of the neck is synonymous to the heel, well... In electric guitars that'd be end grain to end grain. Would that be the tightest fit humanly possible? If not, how would sound vibrations jump over a gap? Then again, isn't sound part of the vibration family just like colours or electricity? A friend once told that he's seen electricity jump six (6) metres.... Oh my... I'm getting puzzled!

I sense a massive derail in the force.

new term I'm adding to my dictionary... butttone.  @ScottR's guitar is going to have butttone in spades.

(do you think my butttone sounds fat?)