Saber

Don Ross

Good choice. I saw him play on the same stage as Tommy Emmanuel at the Montreal Jazz Fest but on a different day and he was awesome. He has won the U.S. National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship twice. Even though Don Ross is a fellow Montrealer, I have to say that I found Tommy Emmanuel more entertaining, though.

You're right. The JS1000 diagram is wrong. Their JS1200 Diagram is okay though. And if your capacitor is too high a value, then the sweep will be like what you're getting so double-check that capacitor value, also.

Tommy Emmanuel. I saw him at the Montreal Jazz Fest and was so impressed, I went back to see his second show the following evening.

There is surely a break somewhere in your ground circuit. Check the continuity between the ground of your output jack and all the points on your guitar that should be connected to it (like the bridge, strings, pot bodies, shielding tape, etc.). If it buzzes when you touch it, then it's not connected to ground.

Finally, fullservesite is working well enough after a week or so, that I managed to upload my latest version of Matia's Song. This version has both my acoustic and electric solos. Thanks to Lee for his beautiful song and to Eddie for the opportunity to add a little something to it. I hope you enjoy it:

Matia's Song

p.s. on the drawing it says, 3 singlew coil pickups-one under each string, but I see 6 single coil pups.

I'm guessing that he meant 3 single-coil-size humbuckers (like DiMarzio Fast Track) with one coil under each string.

Here's another way to explain it. I'll use the analogy of stereo speakers to begin with. When the 2 speakers of a stereo system are correctly connected "in phase", and a mono signal is played through them, the speaker cones will move forward and backward at the same time so that the sound of the two will be added, and the result will be twice as loud as if only one was playing.

If you reverse the polarity of one of the speakers, then whenever one cone is moving forward the other will be moving backward so the sound of one speaker will be subtracted from the other. Theoretically, the result would be no sound, but in the practical world you just hear a very weak sound.

Again with one speaker connected out of phase, if the program material uses a lot of stereo imaging, then the sounds that are identical in both speakers (usually the bass sounds) will cancel each other out and be almost inaudible, and sounds panned to one side will be more easily heard because there's no out-of-phase equivalent from the other speaker to cancel it out.

With guitar pickups, the same thing occurs but electrically. When 2 pickups are connected in-phase, the sound of the two will be added together. When you reverse the wires (or polarity) of one of the pickups, the frequencies or harmonics that are common to the 2 pickups (especially the fundamental frequency) will tend to cancel each other. And whatever's different between the 2 pickup signals will be audible. Overall, it's a weaker signal but with its own unique sound.

For an ideal guage, I'd preffer 10.5s (although i have never seen them; I dont think they exist).

Of course they exist, look here:

http://www.daddariostrings.com/DADProdDeta...ID=1&Class=AABA

In case you guys didn't notice, albertop said that his pickup has 2 wires and a ground (or shield). In some pickups, this means that the shield is the pickup's common, one of the wires is the coil split, and the other wire is the 2 coils in series relative to the common (for humbucking). To know for sure, you need an ohmmeter to measure between the shield and each wire. The resistance between the coil tap and the shield should be around half of the resistance measured between the other wire and the shield.

This diagram with a 5-way switch with 8 in-line lugs might help.

http://www.ibanez.com/wiring/wire.asp?y=2002&w=S470

Man, Saber, that solo's really good. It reminded me alternately of the Allman Brothers and Mark Knopfler. Ultimately, it fit really well!

Thanks a bunch! I was a bit inspired by an old album by Alex Degrassi called Altiplano. Now, I'm juggling a few ideas for an electric solo on the second half of the song.

I PM'd this link to Eddie. He suggested I post it here. I added an acoustic guitar solo in the first half of the song. I haven't yet decided what to do, if anything, in the second half. I hope you like it:

Matia's Song

There are 2 other things to keep in mind.

1. Even if the split coil of the humbucker was identical to the single-coil pickup, it would have a lower output since there is smaller string vibration near the bridge than at the middle and neck positions. So that would be an unbalanced situation, and it's also why a hotter pickup is usually placed in the bridge position.

2. Splitting the 8.26K humbucker will give you a 4.13K coil, and that low impedance will load the signal of the 8.28K single-coil pickup if you connect them in parallel, weakening the overall signal. That's not to say that you won't end up with a useable sound, though. You'll have to try it to know. You might also want to try connecting the humbucker's split coil in series with the single-coil pickup to see what that sounds like.

Silvertonessuckbutigotone, it would have been simpler and clearer to just modify the original drawing as such:

And just in case you haven't noticed, the black wire between the jack and the volume pot is connected to the pot's body as well as the lug.

And it's hard for us to tell if you have it right since you don't indicate the polarities of the battery wires (+,-), and also since the jack is not drawn in detail.

The pickup should have 3 wires: common (or ground or shield), dc supply, output signal.

Is it really a "pickup selector" switch or is it some kind of ON-OFF-ON switch? Could you provide a url link to this switch so we have more info to go on? And what about the push-pull switch on your tone knob; your diagram doesn't show it so is it connected?

I went to see Chick Corea and the Electrik Band. Gambale and Patitucci were amazing. I might have gone to see Béla Fleck and the Flecktones if they hadn't played on the same night as the Electrik Band.

I saw Tommy Emmanuel. After seeing his first show, I brought my dad to see his second show on the following day. Amazing chops and highly imaginative are the two things that come to mind considering everything he can do on an acoustic guitar. I hope he'll be back next year.

I also went to see native montrealer Don Ross after reading that he twice won the prestigious U.S. National Fingerstyle Championship. These two talented musicians bring something unique to guitar playing that sets them apart from the rest.

I also saw the Robin Nolan Trio, Jae Chung & Ben Ball Ensemble, Michel Morissete Quintet, and some other less memorable acts.

An out-of-tune relic Hendrix Strat you mean .

Well... it would be an accurate reproduction of Hendrix's own out-of tune guitar which might be a small element that contributed to his "sound".

Maybe this is old news to Hendrix fanatics but while I was watching Woodstock on TV, I noticed during a close-up of Hendrix's guitar that the bridge segments were set for longer string length at the hi-E than at the lo-E, as if the intonation was set-up for right handed stringing and was not intonated after reversing the string order for left-handed playing. I just thought that this was an interesting piece of trivia that might be useful to anyone making a Hendrix relic strat.

Quite true. The metronome is very important because we naturally slow down more than we realize during the harder parts and speed up during the easy parts.

A good midi sequence can also do the job. Sometimes I program a chord progression and let it play in a loop and practise improvising over it. It's less tedious than a metronome.

But for practising single things like learning a new sweeped arpeggio, I start with a metronome to get the timing as close to perfect as possible. Actually, my "metronome" is just a click track played through Cakewalk so if you have a computer, you don't need to buy a metronome unless you need to practise where your computer isn't available.

Always remember the expression, "Slow is fast".

Practise everything really slowly following a metronome without doing a single mistake and playing each note cleanly. Once you have it perfect, then speed up the tempo a bit. If you do a mistake or even slightly mis-fret a note, move back down a few bpm's until you get it perfect.

When you start losing your concentration and start missing notes or getting sloppy with your timing or fingering, then stop a few minutes to give your mind a break and regain concentration or else you'll end up practising "how to play sloppy".

That's how you learn to play fast AND clean. Rushing it makes you end up sounding sloppy and maybe even not as fast. The quality of your practising is as important as the quantity.

This thread might help:

http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7873

I don't see what you mean by "placing the wires in opposite order".

i don't really know if i can get across, but has something to do with the switch, it doesn't matter which pole is the input and wich the output, if you look at the original schematic from geofex you can see they don't u don't need the inverter and in the specs from the 4066 both poles of the switch are mentioned like in/out.

It's true that you can interchange the input/outputs of the analog switches but that doesn't change anything as far as determining whether they are ON or OFF. The Geofex schematic doesn't need inverters because it uses the 4053 which has spdt switches meaning that one side of the switch is ON when the other is OFF. The 4066 (and 4016) has four spst switches that are ON when the control voltages are 9V (assuming you're using a 9V supply) and OFF when the control voltages are 0V. In order to make a spdt out of two of these spst switches, you have to connect the two spst switches in series. That connection point would be the common of your new spdt switch. The first of these two spst switches would have to receive a control voltage of 9V while the second receives 0V. When the first receives 0V, the second would have to receive 9V. The two are always opposite. You need an inverted control signal between the two spst switches to do this whether it's from a 4049 hex inverter or from the -Q output of the D-type flip-flop. I hope this is clear because I don't know how to explain it any better.

If I remember correctly (and that was some time ago), Craig Anderton used the 4016 (which is pin-for-pin compatible with the 4066) because he could get it to do soft switching (no clicks or pops) by slowly ramping the control voltage of each analog switch.

mmm, that looks interesting, how slowly "slowly" is? enough to having a significant lag as you notice in some digital effects?

I found the old Guitar Player issue where Anderton mentions this. In the October 1981 issue, he says that it's Project #15 in Electronics Projects For Musicians. He says "it fades the signal in and out over a period of a few milliseconds. This delay is so small we don't hear it as a delay, but it does prevent any abrupt level shifts that might result in pops."

If I remember correctly (and that was some time ago), Craig Anderton used the 4016 (which is pin-for-pin compatible with the 4066) because he could get it to do soft switching (no clicks or pops) by slowly ramping the control voltage of each analog switch.