Ben

First one on the idiot page wins!

I just see some wood... Cool wood though!

Click the volume knob and download the word document. It's a very comprehensive tutorial, thats for sure!

I wouldnt say that my work looks very professional... but anyway; I get by with a router, a jigsaw, an abundance of old, blunt and rusty files, rasps and saws and a lot of patience. A few hours, some sand paper and lots of Ben-power can compensate for most of the the imperfections left by the crappy tools/ worksmanship . Unfortunately my parents do no DIY or woodworking or anything, so all the money for tools and supplies comes out of my pocket.

OK, I've updated. I'm now also on 1.5.0.4 and it is still just a blank black page The only difference is that wheras it used to say 'done' at the bottom it now says 'Transferring data from www.island-photo.us..." But I've waited for more than long enough and its not working. EDIT: Ok, now it works! I had flash installed in firefox, just not the newest version, so I downloaded it and it works. Its still definitely something worth considering though, verhoevenc. Maybe you could have a HTML version too, and let people choose upon entering the site. You'd obviously lose the flashy graphics, but thats not as bad as not being able to see anything at all .

I get a completely blank, black page in firefox. I lied though... I just checked, its no longer the newest version. I'll update then tell you if it still wont work.

HAHA! Did you get this: And whats with that dead mouse photo? EDIT Also, I know its petty, but did anyone else notice he spelt Amsterdam wrong? (He wrote Amstardam )

For some reason it wont work in firefox... its fully updated too. Works in IE though; pretty cool site! That 34-page tutorial is fantastic!

I tried it before I took it apart- it was permentantly overdriven, but actually sounded ok. A propper pre-amp would probably be better though. I need to figure out how to connect things to the power amp now then. Thanks Crafty, and everyone else who's contributed to this thread.

Have a look for yourself; here's my progress thread I'm sure you'll recognise those pickup covers

That camphor burl looks cool as hell! So does the limba and the fretboard too. EDIT: Read the rules before you get in trouble for those pics BTW. You're allowed 1 big pic per post (640x480 max), but the rest have to be links or thumbnails.

Hello Alan! I recognise that template in the background Nice wood!

Great!- thats cleared that up then, thanks Setch. Coincidentally I've read your post just as I was returning to this topic to post this: http://www.lollarguitars.com/BobbinDesigns/p90_bobbin.jpg I KNEW it was from jason lollars site! The reason I couldnt find it before is that since he's updated his site its not accessible anymore. I found it through google image search. (http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=p90+pickup&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&start=20&sa=N) Looks like that magnet arrangement is right for a P-90 then! The only thing that I'm still not sure of is if the P-90 in my diagram would be equivalent to a pickup like the one to the right with the S pole facing upwards... It'd probably be easier to just make both pickups have the same design, but I like the sound of P-90s. And of course theres question about CA that I just posted. Thanks

OK, I lied... make it 3 quick questions Can you pot a pickup in CA? obviously I'd make sure it worked before I did something irreversible like that, but the thin stuff seems penetrating enough to soak into the whole coil, and it seems a lot simpler than wax. Also I found this: http://www.1728.com/guitar1a.htm most interestingly it says that "it is not necessary to have the coils physically wired in opposite directions." Does that mean arrangement (1) above would actually work, and that arrangement (3) would also work if the wires werent reversed...? I hope thats right, I think I'm starting to get my head around this

OK, I tried putting it on the floor and pulling the wire from the spool by hand- I see what you mean now, it seems to sort of 'spring' off the spool, and there isn't much contact between the wire and the top of the spool.

Theres parts with sanyo, motorola, mitsubishi, philips... allsorts printed on them. I can actually only find 1 component with Sony printed on it! Is the power amp just the big black thing, or shall I keep it attatched to that little board its on? Also, looking at some of the premade amp units on this site: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Module...%20AMP&doy=18m6 They all have large caps on them. On mine the caps are all on the main board... You know, when it was still in one piece as a hifi, the mic would always be on when you plugged it in; it wasnt like you needed to set it to 'microphone mode' or anything, it just had one pot to control the mic mix, I'm wondering if I could just clip everything back together, plug my guitar in and see if it works! I'd do that if I wasnt so terrified of mains electricity Whatever happens, theres no way I'm testing anything I've made without one of those RCD things.

Thats what I think is the preamp... the grey cable is the one with the pink arrow on it on the next pic... This is where the preamp output connects to the big board This is a better view of the big board- the bit where the preamp cable joins is circled And this is where the board joins the transformer and the power amp The problem is that the amp is shared by the mic, the CD player, the cassete deck and the radio, and that the signal from the mic doesnt go straight to the amp, it goes through loads of EQ stuff first... Ideally I just want to work out a way to bypass all of that and hook the preamp up to the poweramp, and then hook that up to a speaker. Obviously I'll want a volume control too I might want some EQ stuff later, but I think I'll use some schematics off the internet for that, since the stuff in this thing is really complicated. I dunno if any of the above photos show anything useful, because I dont know what to look for. Any thoughts? EDIT: The things with the red and black tabs on them behind the 2 big caps are the speaker outputs BTW

This kid's going to have a nicer guitar than I do! No Fair. When I was three I probably didn't even know what a guitar was

Cool Baby! Tell me your brothers name begins with a 'P' Then you could have Metal Matt and Punk Pete or something Then hopefully by the time Dan and Josh have grown up there'll be some new genres of music beginning with D and J for them to model their image from... Anyway, what the hell am I on about... Have fun with your cool new nephew!

I think teles have 1 meg volume pots... or at least some old ones did

Ok... I'm an idiot: I'd spent ages looking aty all the huge PCBs I pulled out of the thing and tracing wires... the damn thing's sitting inside the case that I'd put to one side! The fact that it has STEREO AMPLIFIER printed on it in huge letters just adds insult to injury Its apparantly a "STK4152IIAF power amplifier (30W + 30W) in 18-pin 4040 package." I still cant believe I missed it... O'k I'll give it a try then. I'll have to try to find a good place to mount the spool. Thats my backup-plan Still one thing thats puzzling me a little... The black thing with 'stereo amplifier' printed on it is apparantly made by Sanyo, but the board its on says Sony on it... does that mean that the amp itself is inside the black box... if so whats the PCB for?

I do bugger all. I used to do lots; squash, tennis, football... but I just sort of gradually stopped for some reason. I'm going to try to get back into something when I start at uni though.

That makes sense... Just one more thing I'm unsure about then: on the diagram I've drawn a big red arrow pointing to the bit I'm concerned about- it sounds to me that an angle like that would be a likely place for the wire to break.. or do I need to remove one end of the bobbin as in the right of the pic? Alternatively the tape deck has some nice smooth bearings in it that could reduce the stress on the string if I mounted the spool on them... Thanks

In the diagram the magnet is rotated (i think)... I was meaning reverse the wires with the magnets set up as in the pic I was presuming that the p-90 would have a S polarity overall because the S poles on the magnets are closest to the steel core- (I may be wrong about that though) To make this easier for me to understand, which of the combinations below will work: (1) each pickup has opposite magnetic polarity, both wound in same direction, wires on 1 pickup reversed (2) pickups have same magnetic polarity, one is reverse wound, wires on one pickup reversed (3) each pickup has opposite magnetic polarity, one is reverse wound, wires on one pickup reversed The diagram was meant to illustrate (1) I could set it up as in (2) or (3) without too much trouble though. Would the P-90 in the diagrams overall magnetic polarity be S, or am I incorrect in assuming that? Thanks for the help so far

It would look cool embedded in resin on the top of a guitar!