curtisa

Haven't had much time recently to devote to forum attendance and guitar building in general, but I have to say.... ...the rosette obviously makes all the difference to the tone... ...or, very nicely done Mr Jr So, watcha making next?

What does the tone switch for the Filtertron do? Is it a push-pull pot, mini toggle or something else? A tone pot that only affects one pickup may be a little tricky if you're using traditional Tele switching. In the 'both pickups on' position the tone control is likely to affect both pickups equally. Independent volumes is doable though.

Nice job The first one that just clicks is always a keeper. Trouble is this guitar building malarkey is a slippery slope.

Really fantastic work as usual. Although, I still see no logo! You're doing yourself a disservice by not branding your creations.

Is there anything stopping you substituting regular woodthread screws and mounting from the top, rather than using threaded bolts mounted from the rear? Original Floyd Rose Nuts, for example, usually ship with both types of screws to allow for mounting in either fashion.

Never heard of that one? Flamin' Oorstrayan maybe... Interesting. I just tried it for the hell of it, I can see the 'Buy 2 for 1' option and the 3-packs are already on special for $9.99. But adding 3 to my cart just adds 3x 9.99 = $29.97. Maybe they've tightened up the minor bug in their pricing? In any case, I would think that this only has value for you lucky US residents. Sweetwater then wanted to charge me over $60 shipping to Australia when I progressed further through the checkout. I presume the international shipping would also apply to a Limey Brit.

That tutorial used to be on the original version of the projectguitar.com website, and I thought the old site was still accessible in Google searches, but it doesn't seem to return hits anymore. There doesn't appear to be anything lurking around the Admin backend that I can see, so maybe that tutorial was never transferred to the current site. Our resident server cave dweller @Prostheta may be able to provide some direction. The other alternative is to plug www.projectguitar.com into the Wayback Machine from about 10 years ago and see if the old website content is still being held there in sufficient detail.

Not sure. I'm no expert, but it may pay to ask around at other more specialised forums. Acoustic Guitar Forum? Luthiers Forum? Even the Australian & New Zealand Luthiers Forum? Stewmac have all sorts of long-reach clamps and heated metal clamping cauls for repairing bellied acoustic tops without resorting to removing the top, but they're likely to put a significant dent in your wallet for only one repair. I'm still waiting on @Norris to complete his acoustic guitar re-top project so he can show us all how easy it is

What about applying heat + pressure, or steam + pressure? I suspect the crack isn't the hardest part to fix; it will be the localised bulging where the bridge used to be attached. In all the acoustics I've seen there's usually a reinforcing plate of timber directly underneath the bridge in between where the two big X-braces cross. Maybe that's also come loose or is otherwise damaged and is exacerbating the problem?

Slot depth is governed by how much clearance you need over the first fret to avoid buzzing on the open strings, but not so high that you end up with big intonation problems or unnecessarily difficult action within the first half-dozen or so frets. It shouldn't matter if the nut was made by Gibson, Fender, Ibanez or K-mart.

A bit too loose for my liking. Assuming the centreline marks are correct, it looks like all the slop is asymmetrical which doesn't help things either. IME the wood never expands much on application of a finish. There may be finish build-up on the pocket edges and neck sides which can cause the dimensions the snug up a bit tighter, but not by what looks to be 1.5mm - 2mm in your photo, and certainly it shouldn't be relied upon to fill the gap by an exact and consistent amount. If it were me I'd make a specific pocket template to match the neck. I'm always recommending this link, but I think it should be the preferred way of doing neck pockets over relying on the all-in-one template kits. Universal, adjustable, cheap and you're not locked down to any particular scale length, neck width or taper amount.

Maybe true, but I'd personally want my neck pockets to be tight enough to cover the situation where I'm using thin coatings such as danish oil. You can tighten up a neck pocket template slightly by lining the edges with tape before routing. When you say 'bottom part' are you referring to the edge that backs on to the neck pickup, of the edge that is adjacent to the treble-side cutaway?

Isn't that what tone at zero is meant to do? All joking aside, lower capacitance in a guitar tone control should mean that less highs are affected. So if anything, this is the opposite of what you're describing. What value is the tone cap? You could always change the cap out to be smaller, deliberately pushing the high frequency corner of the tone control further up the spectrum. The other trick you can do is add a resistor in between the pot and the cap, limiting how low the tone control can go when at zero.

Got particular examples? Nearly all tone controls in guitars will be exactly the same - a capacitor in series with a pot, the whole shebang strapped across the signal wire and ground. Swapping the positions of the cap and pot makes no difference. If you are in the habit of playing with the tone pot full up most of the time, it actually makes no difference whether you place the tone pot before the volume pot or after it. You will receive full volume after being tone'd or before tone-ing. Note also that the signal does not 'pass through' the tone pot, rather it gets 'weighed down' by the tone pot. Both controls do this to the best of their ability given that there is some degree of interaction between the two. In a passive guitar this is unavoidable. If you want true segregation of volume and tone controls you need to install active preamp circuitry. As a general rule: Volume first, tone last = less treble roll off as the volume pot is rolled down if tone is at maximum, but tone control usage affects the overall output more, particularly at lower volumes. Tone first, volume last = tone control behaves more consistently at any volume, but volume control exhibits higher degree of treble roll off as you wind it down. I'm having trouble visualising what you're asking. You might have to draw a diagram to explain it better.

The brightest you can possibly make the guitar is to connect the output of the pickup direct to the amp. No volume, no tone, no nuffin. Adding 'stuff' to the pickup is generally a subtractive process on the signal. If you can be arsed, try it as an experiment. If it still sounds too dark, then the only option you have left (short of cranking the treble on your amp) is to install brighter pickups. If you've already got the wiring removed I'd be giving this a go as a last resort. I'm not familiar with the ES137. Is it considered by the wider community to be a warm jazz box or an edgy rocker?

Caps will generally lose some of their capacitance when overheated, ie their value will go down. Total failure is usually the result of some sudden shock to the capacitor, be it environmental, mechanical or electrical.

Was there something special about the wiring in this particular guitar that you're trying to recreate? Can you google some Washburn model numbers to see if the original wiring diagram is out there somewhere? The volume pot is always wired in what is known as a variable voltage divider. It's the standard way of doing volume control, whether it be a guitar or a hifi stereo. The signal you want to control gets hooked up to one side of the pot and ground to the other side. The variable wiper in the middle of the pot then gets swept from one extreme to the other, able to 'listen' to either the full signal or silence (ground) in whatever ratio you move the wiper to. The tone circuit usually just shunts a portion of the signal to ground via the capacitor, the pot just acting as a throttle to send more (tone at zero) or less (tone at ten) signal through the cap. The use of the cap is desirable in that the amount of signal it 'lets through' is dependent on the frequency content of that signal, naturally allowing more highs to pass than lows. The tone pot can (sort of) reduce volume, but only to a certain range of frequencies. Sorta. The tone pot can be either before or after the volume pot and essentially still work the same. But depending on where it is placed has an effect on how the tone control interacts with the volume. One control will cross-load the other in different ways (eg, treble roll-off as you wind the volume pot down, tone control operation affecting overall volume). It usually boils down to which compromise you can live with.

Moved to the Electronics Chat section of the forum for better housekeeping.

You can get a slot lightly wider than the file width by rocking the file side to side as you work it in the slot, but the diffference will only be a handful of thousandths of an inch. It's a handy trick for turning a 0.010" slot into a 0.012" slot, but it won't make a B-string fit into an E-string. For that you'll need a full set of files. I've used a cheap set of double-edged files in the past that worked OK. You get three files in the set with red, yellow and blue handles, but each file has two cutting edges for different sized strings for about 20 dollars. If you want to go even cheaper, I've seen reports that welder tip cleaning files can also be used.

That's OK Scott. We know you're funny.... ...funny looking....

My point was that your OP seemed to suggest that maybe the tone circuit was contributing to the dark sound, hence my suggestion of temporarily disconnecting the tone circuit to see if it cleared things up. As a quick check you could also just hold the removed pickups above the strings of another guitar to save you reinstalling them into the original instrument. Volume pot wired normally. Tone pot wired with input signal from pickup/volume -> left lug. Middle lug -> cap -> ground. Right lug -> ground. The tone pot then sits in parallel with the volume pot 24/7, but the capacitor is swept up and down along the variable resistor element. I have no idea how it would sound, probably darker than your standard tone circuit with a more extreme degree of variance. There is no difference between 'Vintage' and 'Modern' Gibson wiring with both volume and tone pots full up. In that situation they are electrically identical. The differences only start showing up when the pots are wound down away from maximum. Is that the behaviour you're seeing?

Looks like a pretty standard tone pot setup to me. Signal from pickup -> outside lug of tone pot. Middle lug of tone pot -> cap -> ground. If it sounds particularly dark, maybe check that the cap is the correct value for the intended circuit. Also check that the pot values are what they claim to be. Or it's just the way those pickups sound. Isn't it just a case of desoldering the wire on the right hand lug of the tone pot in your first pic?

Do you mean that the tone pot has lug 1 wired from pickup, lug 2 wired to cap and lug 3 wired to ground (plus other side of cap also wired to ground)? That sounds very much like an error, or at least a very specific modification to the tone circuit to introduce a particular effect from the tone pot. If it's wired like I think it is, with the tone pot all the way up you'd get the same effect as having the guitar fitted with 250K pots. What happens when you remove the link between the tone pot and the pickup?

Well done, Scott. Another stunning piece of craftsmanship. Now stop being so good so us mere mortals can have a chance

1Meg pot is quite large, even for a passive-pickup guitar, although it shouldn't cause loss of highs . Try replacing with a 500K or 250K one. It's unclear from your description how the capacitor is wired with the tone control. If you can post some pictures it may help us make some suggestions for you.