tparker

This is for a jaguar style guitar that has the three slider switches on the bottom horn and three controls at the bottom of the guitar. No dark circuit. All pots and switches ground through the pick guard. My goal was to have the jaguar three slider switches actually do something I really use. Let me know thoughts on design. blue rewire.pdf

very cool. Will give that a go. Still not following the math on the pots, but will print out the drawing and try to wrap the brain around it. All the pots are 500k and from stew or other good shop. Thank you thank you for the grounding solution.

Yup, you got it Curtis. Did some testing. When I set the blends to 50% it gets a volume and tone boost. What I'm now perplexed about is why it doesn't boost again when you set both to p90 or humbucker? Wouldn't it wall off the signal from ground. What am I missing? Ugh, looks like I'm looking at a triple pole switch to keep the channels totally isolated. Was hoping to avoid that wiring mess. I think I also saw a post about not grounding the blend pot..... That would be really cool to not have to put in a triple pole switch.

Just noticed I labeled the caps wrong. .047 is on humbucker tone control.

Think I got the wiring done correctly, but would appreciate review. I'm happy with features and layout, but wondering about some things. Here's a diagram of what I did. Sorry I can't figure out how to center things in Inkscape. *I had no output at first. Seems that I got a bad pot. Bypassed it and it works fine. Wiper is not lined up with the beginning of the sweep. Ordered new pot. *The P90 doesn't have much volume compared to humbucker. This was expected, but more than I thought. *The P90 is a lot muddier than I remember. I've had this pickup in other guitars and thought it was louder and brighter. But maybe my taste has changed? *Thinking of ways to brighten up the p90. Maybe add a resister to the pot to make it 750? No one makes a 750 or 1 meg pot switch combo it seems. Or maybe the p90 has a short and needs to be rewound? Thoughts?

Success!!! 1. I added a second brass plate to the bottom of the pickup. I read in other posts that people added steal to the bottom of their bridge pickups to mellow them out. Maybe this is similar to effect of the Tele bridge plate? 2. I swapped the position of the A2 and A5 magnets. Now A2 is closer to the neck and the A5 is a the bridge. Maybe this helped mellow the 5 and power the A2. But anyway, I'm done messing with the thing. Time to have fun playing it.

He owns TV Jones pickups and has his secret recipe for winding. My guess is that the V stands for Vincent.

I hear ya about wire breaking the wires Mikev. I've killed 3 pickups this past month. No big loss in that I made them..... but frustrating. I'm going to try a new method tomorrow. It's the inside coil wire that is always the killer in that if it breaks, game over. Going to try something new tomorrow in terms of connecting to the solder point to the wire. Saw a pickup that had the 42 gauge wire going directly to a larger gauge wire instead of a eyelet. Game me an idea to protect the inside wire. I'll try bigger screws Bizman. If that doesn't work I'm kidnap Tom Jones.

Just getting into pickup winding. Got lucky and spoiled with first attempt and created my favorite pickup of all times. So my second attempt was of course doomed to be much less impressive. Which it is. I'm trying to create something that complements a TV Jones P90 neck pickup. That thing sounds like an orchestra of different overtones. Mine....... not so much. It of course sounds a thicker and muddier in the neck, but it also has a "honey sweat" nature to it. I played around with different magnets and settle on a A5 & A2 combination. Noticed that the pole pieces on the TV Jones are larger. What effect does that have? I'm guessing the nature of the metal also changes things. Does the scatter winding technique matter much? Can't find much writing on how to scatter wind things. The only other thing I can think is that the first time I used soap to lube my hand. Second time I used lip balm which, at least for my hand was much better. Think I read somewhere that others use cooking flower. Guess I'll keep experimenting, but wanted to see if others had to say on this.

Polarity was correct and the pole piece was fully charged. Sorry Mistermikev. The guitar is doing much better, but still not as loud as I would like. Here's what I changed. I notice the threaded post under the bridge on the high E was a little loose. I've got to do some more work to really fix this, but it is better. Maybe that was part of it? I had 10.5 strings on the guitar. I swapped the E for an 11. Still not as loud as I would like, but much better. Just for experimentation I removed the pole from the G string since it is the loudest. To my surprise the volume only dipped a little. What did happen was that the strings definition was lost. Wondering if maybe the this is because the Jazzmaster pickups are so wide? Maybe the pole pieces just don't shape the electric field as much narrow pickups. Any thoughts?

Ron, The gold on the back of the neck is actually a stencil I made with frog tape and a laser cutter. Used spray paint on it and the pick-guard. Lots of poly on both to protect them. Plays great. Meant to be my guitar so I did what ever was going to work best for me.. The neck was too thin so I added veneer to it (first picture with yellow cord.) Then reshaped it to match my Gretsch that I love. The E string on the high end is a little too close to the edge of the fretboard for my liking. I want to move the neck to the right/down a bit. Not sure how to do that and keep a flat surface in the neck pocket. Maybe the think to do is just shave it off the guitar neck heel. Then shim the left/top side of the guitar neck? Last question. I decided to use linseed oil on the frets instead of lacquer. I like it this way in that it doesn't create a slick surface. On the lacquer surface my fingers would slide sideways pushing the notes out of tune. Kind of a fat guy on ice problem. The neck feels great now, but shows the dirt. Not a problem in that its my guitar and who cares. But know of any way to keep it a light colored neck and not be slippery? Maybe poly or urethane would be better for me than lacquer?

This is my first build and has been a project on and off the past year. It's been more of an experimentation of style and mechanics rather than a set plan. So lots of attempts at things and then redo, redo, redo, etc. Artistically it evolved into something that, to me at least, brings the America of 1930's together. Earthy farmer worn to the raw bone dressed in the niceties of the gilded art-deco of 1930s refinement. Something akin to a Chicago barren that has achieved his version of the American dream. For the pickups I decided to hide the Jazzmaster in the neck position and only have the Filtertron showing. I gave the Jazzmaster pickup adjustable pole pieces and move the TVJones Filtertron up a bit from the bridge. This was done to give the guitar a visual center of focus. The thumb wheels in the upper horn are micro pots to help save some weight. They control the volume in the neck pickup and tone for both pickups. The chick-head nobs control the volume of the Filtertron and are two blender channels. Thanks to those who came up with this suggestion on this page. The pickup selector is hidden in the lower horn sound hole. This double pole switch selects which blender pot will be in use. As such the guitar switch does not have a middle position. When playing you are either in rhythm or lead mode. My concept for this was to prevent the player from accidentally switching to the wrong pickup setting. My hope was that this would make switching pickups fast and without the need to look down at the guitar.Photos.app.zip

Yes, I can do that. The guitar is in pieces again, so it will be a while before I get to try that Curtisa. The G or D might be good candidates. I'm also wondering if I should pass it through the magnetizer again. But will try swapping first.

I made my own pickup recently and for the most part it sounds great. But, the high E is too quiet despite have a pole piece closest to the string. Here's a litany of odd things about this home made weird pickup. Maybe one of these things caused the problem. The pole pieces are threaded magnets to allow them to be set at different heights. FeCrCo magnets comparable to AlNiCo 5 The pickup is a Jazzmaster style, but the windings start a little out from the poles due to the threading through a plastic bobbin. I messed up winding the pickup several times and caught a slack loop inside the windings. Because of the depth of the slack loop I just tucked it in and crossed fingers it wouldn't mess things up too much. I had to clean up the threads on the magnets a little in that the machining was sloppy and they wouldn't thread. I had jazz flat wound string on the guitar and the E was a little soft on the store bought pickup. But way soft on my pickup.

Need help on figuring out the best plan for finishing the neck of guitar build. It's me so its going to be a crazy story of bad ideas. But how I finish the neck may need to be modified by its structure, so the history is probably important. The neck's story: The neck was from Warmth and had a SRV profile. I finished it with instrument lacquer. Absolutely hated the thing! Felt light I was constantly fighting the shape and my hand was sticking to finish. So other than selling it for a big loss of money, I decided to try to reshape it like my Gretsch guitar. 1. Created profile of my gretsch on frets one through ten. Did this with illustrator, laser cutter, and some old clipboard material. 2. Discovered, much to my surprise, that the SRV neck was thinner than the Gretsch guitar. Crap, how to fix that? 3. Sanded off the lacquer finish from the back of the neck, headstock and heel. I've knocked off a lot of it from inside the frets, but not sure that matters much. 4. Steamed a 1.25mm thick veneer and glued it using Tibon III to the back of the neck. Wrapped it with cord to provide holding pressure. 5. Used profile shapes from gretsch to guide me on sanding the SRV neck. Discovered that if I added soot to the profiles, they helped mark where I needed to sand. 6. Used sawdust and glue to created a strong filler for the veneer to neck transition at the headstock and neck heel. So after all that, which to my surprise went pretty fast, I'm not sure how to get the finish that feels like my Gretsch. The webpage for gretsch says that Streamliners have a Urethane finish. Other places I've read say that they probably used polyurethane and just shorten it to urethane. Anyway, being that there are still some traces of lacquer in the wood, how much risk is there in putting a polyurethane coating on the back of the neck? Will the little bit of lacquer in the wood off-gas and push off the poly? Maybe the layer of glue will force the gas out the fretboard side? Should I use woodgrain filler that is oil based before putting on the poly or paint? I'm thing of painting the transition zones between the veneer and original neck black. This will hide the repair work. What paint should I use? What should I do to fret board? Didn't like the slippery feel of strings on the lacquer. Maybe just use lemon oil or other neck conditioning oil?

My work computer that has this file on it, just died! Curtisa, I messed up on one label and forgot/didn't bother with some of the grounds on the drawing. Jack is grounded and volume pots are grounded (although I don't get the reason for grounding volume pots). The volume pots are 1m for the jazzmaster and 500k for the Filtertron. The tone pots are all 500k. Capacitors are my typo and are the normal value. Finally the split and blend mode label is reversed. In thinking about the direction of the physical switch, I forgot switch the label for the back of the guitar. I did some more messing around with this and when the amp and gain are turned way up you can hear it. It operates as designed. Just really quite and a bit muddy. I did notice when checking conductivity that I'm getting some measurable resistance when I test from pickup to jack. Maybe the runs are just too long? Wires are running in cables next to each other. I've heard this creates a capacitor effect. That stealling volume? I ended short cutting all the wiring except the pickup blender. This worked fine and things sound great! So yeah, the seems like a weird interference thing right?

Did some more work on this guitar. Used a Filtertron pickup instead of a normal hum bucker. This seems to be a better pairing to my ear. But, my crazy wiring plan isn't working. I had to turn it up to 8 on the amp volume to get sound. I've checked over the wiring today and can't find the problem. Anyone else ever had this happen? Double checked amp too. The wiring is pretty odd. The concept has been to use only two way switches for the pickup selector. This way you can't mess up when playing and select the middle position when you want the bridge or something. to get both pickups you hit the other selector switch which takes it to blend mode. Finally, I put in slider switches for the capacitors. This lets you select the capacitor of high value, low value, or off. No ground on volume and tone- I grounded the housing of the pots, but not the empty lugs. I've done this before and it didn't seem to mater. Maybe this is problem? Or just too long of runs on the wire? Anyway, I'm supper tired of opening the guitar up. Thinking someone might of run into the half volume problem and save me the trouble off experimentation.

thanks for the link!

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.

mike v, Any suggestions on the knobs? Maybe black chicken head?

Here's a picture of the previous build.

From videos and articles I thought that the body's wood would make much more of an impact. Hence Gibson adding a layer of maple between two layers of mahogany at one point in their construction. Maybe this had much more to do with the availability of wood sizes and pricing and/or marketing. I recently finished a hollow body guitar made from 2 by 4 glued together. I guess it is yellow pine or spruce. I went into it expecting that the body wouldn't have good sustain due to the soft wood. When compared to my mexican strat it doesn't have nearly the sustain. The neck is really tight in the pine guitar so I assume its the wood, but maybe not? Maybe the jazzmaster usual bridge problems? It has Seymour Duncan Antiquity 2 pickups rather than the Gibson style P90. Was going to move these to the new guitar. and also use a bigsby vibrato and bridge. I like the feel of the Bigsby way more than the thin bar on the Fenders. For this new build I was thinking I would stick to traditional woods used in guitars, but swamp ash wasn't available. Only northern hard ash. Other than the weight you don't think it matters?

I'm starting a new build of a jazzmaster. I got some northern ash because I like the grain and how it will look when stained blue. Like how it looks in photoshop as I plan it.......................but single coil with maple neck sounds has got me worried. This thing going to be a ice pick torture device? I'm thinking about planing down the blank to really thin and adding mahogany to the back to make it a warmer toned guitar. Maybe 1/4 ash and the rest mahogany? Thinking about making it a chambered body too. Try to take some weight out?