Prostheta

*Most* people do, yes. The 85 was designed more as a neck pickup, but it works nicely in the bridge position. The bass response is lacking due to the lower movement in the strings at fundamentals but it is still pretty beefy. I prefer the EMG60 in the neck position myself - the 85 is a bit too much. Getting back to the point - "looking for the highest output humbucker i can find to add to my guitar to form the heaviest metal sound ever". I'm afraid you're missing a lot of the point on this one. The more you distort a signal, the less dynamics you have in the signal content. Unfortunately a square wave doesn't make the ultimate metal tone, which is what you're doing by having a higher output and driving the input section of an amp. The parts of the tone you need to be considering depend on the style. Do you play: - Solo? Rhythm? - Chords? Diads? Single notes? - Fast? Slow? - With another guitarist? With yourself? :-) All these factors contribute to how your sound works. The EQ content, the dynamics, the harmonic content.... Personally, I think that one of the most awesome metal sounds I heard recorded when I was learning about guitar tone was Faith No More's "Jizzlobber" from t4:17. It turns out the sound is down to bass-heavy EQ, excellent supporting bass guitar sound reinforcing the lines and inverted fifth chords. Sound is in the fingers my friend!

No direct experience myself (yet) but I'd consider a precautionary a couple of grain fills and sandings out of course. A lot easier and less time-consuming than taking off or trying to repair a bad paintjob! The first grain fill and sand back will soon tell you whether the alder you have needs it or not :-)

The EMG 85 actually has a higher output than the 81. Can I suggest using a preamp with a fair amount of gain? 3dB gain is a fair push on your amp if that's what you're looking for. Further than that, an active EQ which you can switch in/out is awesome if you want to kick your amps distortion with different colouration.

Ummm. Okay. Your best friend is the search facility right now.

240v surely? My power sockets go to 11.

The secret of life, the universe and everything is 1.414, not 42 as previously estimated.

The biggest disadvantage is when you're playing live and come around to laying your guitar against an amp/wall/monitor whilst still plugged in, and the jack gets stressed....at least, that's what I'd perceive the biggest problem to be ;-) I cringed last night at the Cryptopsy gig when one of the sound guys leant one of Gore Rotted's Caparisons jack first on the floor prior to time.

Three months to complete huh? Patience in getting results proves itself here!! You could churn out twenty crap boards in three months, but one GOOD one in three outweighs the twenty by far. I hope I can spend that long doing my wife's inlay, except I don't want to spend that long doing it, but I know I should, but...etc... Great work man - it will look totally awesome when fretted and guitared up!!

That's what I was trying to remember TBH - whether the voltage at the cathode remains at 0.7v or not. Now you mention it, of course it would else you'd end up with some crazy non-linear circuits!! Apologies for going off half cocked there....!!! I've not seen distortion done at a "passive" level like that. I was more used to making fuzz boxes using a complemented pair of diodes in the negative feedback loop of an op-amp or transistor circuit. It seems I need to brush up on my fundamentals.

I would try perspex to be honest. It usually comes in sheet or extruded forms and is pretty tough, consistent looking stuff. I believe it still laminates with acetone nicely, and can be buffed back to an awesome shine if you need to.

It's probably just an alcohol or water based dye made to be thicker in gel form for ease of application. Did you specifically want a gel so you can follow the books instructions easily (was there a specific reason in the book for using a gel?) or are you just after staining the mahogany green? Personally I would grain fill the mahogany black or dark green, sand back and go the usual route of sealing, clearcoating etc.

As a sidenote, Perspex is available with reactive flourescent edges although this works better if the illumination is internally derived, as light gathers at the small edges. I'm using this material in 2mm to produce a glowing edge line around a guitar under the top cap ;-) Not exactly the info you required, but still.... This is UV reactive - it comes as rod, but can easily be cut to shape.... http://www.uvgear.co.uk/product/product84.htm I think you meant blacklight reactive material right? Neon is not the term you should be searching for as it's just the gas used in lighting tubes....if it's not blacklight reactive stuff you're after, try fluorescent (although this also covers blacklight reactives funnily enough). Apologies for my UK spelling correctness ;-)

Don't heat gun it - the neck probably wouldn't appreciate the heat treatment. I would try a chemical stripper (Nitromors in the UK) or just plain sanding using 60/80 grit paper. Keep a damp cloth handy to wipe the neck down so you can differentiate between scuffed lacquer and wood mid-sand. Ohwait, you've removed the finish. Most awesome. Disregard that then. Sand the maple to say, maybe 800 grit so it's free of lower grit scratches and apply a sanding sealer. At this stage I'd plump for plain old clear gloss Plasticote in a can, although to get a glassy shine you might want to consider nitro lacquer. Harder to apply for good results (in my limited experience) but better when buffed out. Wait and see what the more experienced members post on this one. I would be tempted to ask you whether the glassy finish idea would be worth rethinking, as a gloss finish could be slower playing than a satin one. YMMV, I find my ESP Explorers slower (except my natural mahogany EXP) but my satin Ibanez S1640FM is swift as hell.

A tone pot is a tap which dumps high frequencies to ground, so using a diode clipper on that type of circuit seems a little odd. Distortion/clipping adds mostly odd order harmonics as you're turning the signal into something more resembling a square wave. A tone control does the opposite by removing higher frequencies so in theory it would be pointless. I stand to be corrected on this as ever of course. I think the circuit you've displayed would dump signals higher than 0.7v or lower than -0.7v to ground. The tone pot just reduces the high frequency components from the pickups which the saturation pot would "add back in" as odd order harmonics. A better circuit would be to add a 9v battery running a small op-amp circuit with the diodes in the amplification feedback (negative feedback?) loop of the op-amp. That way you can increase the "saturation" effect greatly. Just your standard fuzzbox type of distortion. For reference, I would recommend using germanium diodes instead of silicon diodes as the forward voltage before conductance is "fuzzy" typically between 0.6v and 0.7v and gives you a smoother sound.

Duh. Locked my keys in the workshop and I now have to wait until my wife gets home from work to unlock it....GAH!!!

I'll try these today and post results tonight. Thanks guys!

Diodes are (as a bad analogy) a discrete electronic version of a one-way valve. They will conduct one way and not the other. That said, they only START conducting at around 0.7v on average, dependant on the material the diode of constructed from. Silicon diodes (1N4148 for example) conduct forward at around 0.7v bang on. Germanium diodes (0A48?) are "fuzzy" around the threshold, and have a softer forward conductive threshold. Basically, if you GROUND the forward end of a diode (anode) to earth as you explain, then as soon as your guitar signal exceeds the forward conductance threshold (avalanche point) then the signal is dumped to earth, read: no signal. A sine wave like that would look something like this: This will give you a horrible pseudo-crossover distortion which is unmusical and unrelated harmonically to your original signal. The usual way of using diodes to clip a signal is to cap it at the diode threshold voltage, not just to conduct it to earth. I may be slightly wrong here in that the diode may actually maintain the 0.7v on the cathode side but I'm sure it conducts everything to earth here. The one thing I haven't pointed out is that a guitar signal is AC with reference to ground (0v) so you would need to add two opposing diodes to conduct one the positive and negative going excursions for conductance at 0.7v and -0.7v

Thanks guys - this is all a learning process of course, so doing things wrong only helps to accelerate the process a little more ;-) Now I've bound the top successfully (only a couple of minor defects which I can remedy easily) I'm going to veneer and bind the back today. Any quick pointers on pre-bending plastic binding? I've heard hair dryers don't budge it, and I don't own (or want to go to the expense of) a heat gun.

Sound good do you have any pics of your work in progress? have a good one and I'll talk to you later. Mike Thanks Mike - I'll post pictures once I'm further into the build.

I would have used masking tape, but the binding I'm using is .09" x .25" (2.29mm x 6.35mm) which requires a lot of pressure to keep set in tighter corners!

Two methods for not getting your fingers glued to the binding if you have excess. 1 - Keep your finger moving as though you are "smoothing" your binding. This doesn't keep constant pressure on the binding however, if it wants to pop off. 2 - Use some old coarse grit sandpaper as a barrier between your fingers and the binding. The glue doesn't stick to the paper as it can't fill the voids between the grits - unless you flood the binding in which case it won't glue anyway! Yes, I did learn this by glueing myself to my new Ash/Koa Telecaster. More than once. picture1 picture2 picture3 picture4

Here's a spanner in the works: Maybe it's because the existence of a "Warwick sound" has been perpetuated by popular artists who have more money than us to spend on nice amps, recording techniques and engineers. Hell, I made a cheap Encore bass sound awesome when I played in a lofi pop band years ago by recording at a professional studio!! For example: DOWNLOAD I think that instruments only have a characterful sound to a degree but as we know, wood and instrument materials are mainly a subtractive influence on sound - whereas the amp adds colour and interest. I would say, look at pickups, pre-amps, compressors and amps - ie. downstream of the physical instrument. YMMV, I'm usually wrong but graceful about it nonetheless.

+1: oscillating spindle sander - don't leave home without it! +1: black hardware on natural pale woods - the only thing that can make a J-bass nice! Awesome build man. I only hope my second build has results as satisfying as that.

Damnit, that means I'm going to have to buy more tools.

Heh. I'm so jealous of people who have a thickness sander/planer big enough to take a glued up body....mine takes halves so it's out with the plane and sanding afterwards!