curtisa

Interesting idea. Provided you're sure that the long edge of the trem route is perpendicular to the centre line, and the two stud holes are meant to be spaced equally either side of the centre line (beware: some trems aren't designed this way), I can't see an issue with it. For a one-off job I'd probably just mark the holes and carefully drill them using a brad point bit in the press. If I was doing multiple jobs I'd make up some kind of jig with a centre line marked on it and both holes pre-drilled.

Probably the least useful compared to using masking tape or the metal collars. They can easily slip up the drill without much pressure, shifting your perceived drilling depth deeper than intended if you're not careful.

I'm liking the evolution of your design on this one, Andy. That's so pointy by your standards, it's practically a BC Rich Warlock. Where does the quadruple-locking Floyd Rose, pyrotechnic launcher and spandex attach? If oak is good enough for Brian May...

Then I reckon you'd want to use a 9/64" or 3.5mm pilot hole. 1/8" is probably going to be pretty tight, 5/32" probably won't hold the screw. Give it a go in scrap timber first to see what difference it makes.

That depends on the size screw you're using. Don't forget that driving a screw into a neck isn't proprietary function solely owned by the guitar world. It's an operation that's employed by anyone wanting to secure two pieces of wood together. If I ever need to quickly determine the correct size of a pilot hole, I'll just grab a piece of scrap timber and drill a test hole into it. If the screw falls out of the hole or offers nearly no resistance to being driven in, the pilot hole is too large. If the screw starts binding or getting so stiff that it becomes difficult to drive in by hand, the pilot hole is too small. You can usually speed up the pre-selection of your pilot hole by eyeballing the drill bit against the screw - the drill bit diameter should be just a fraction smaller than the outer diameter of the screw threads. I personally wouldn't use lubrication to help a screw into a tight hole, unless the material I was driving it into was particularly hard or the screws were particularly fragile. I would think that is the way most people would drill the neck screws. The holes are already in the body - use them as your drilling template.

I assume the switch is just a 3-position, bridge/both/neck arrangement? You'll need to strip both red and yellow cables back. I suspect you'll end up with a braided outer conductor and an insulated centre conductor on each. The braid solders to the back of the volume pot (or tone pot if it's easier). Judging by your pic, the red is the bridge pickup and the yellow the neck. There is also what looks like two short wire stubs still attached to the left and right of the switch - remove them, but leave the bridges where they jumper between two adjacent terminals. Take the centre conductor of the red cable and solder it to where the red wire stub was removed from the switch. Take the centre conductor of the yellow cable and solder it to where the other wire stub (clear? silver?) was removed from the switch. If the switch operates back-to-front, swap the centre conductors from the red and yellow cables. I can only go by the pic you've taken, so take this advice for what it's worth.

Looks to me like neither pickup is wired through (red and yellow wires hanging in mid-air), which would explain why nothing works when you plug in. That should be a fairly straight-forward fix with soldering only.

'Sounds brighter' is probably a misnomer on my part. What is actually hapenning is the inductance of the parallel coils lowers, which weakens the bass response of the pickup. So 'sounds brighter' -> 'has less bass' or 'sounds thinner'.

I've seen custom ebony and rosewood baseplates made up, but they've always had metal saddles and adjustment screws installed.

I suspect you'll get a darker tone (less highs) with a dummy in series with the working pickup. The quick-and-dirty math of what you're proposing is the equivalent of adding an inductor (maybe ~2H) and resistor (maybe ~7Kohms) in series with a normal pickup, which should result in an attenuation of highs, and a slight reduction in overall output. Adding the dummy in parallel effectively reduces the pickup's winding resistance and inductance by half, but at the same time only one coil is actually doing the legwork. As you've found already the output will drop dramatically compared to running a humbucker (or even two singles) in parallel, and become noticeably brighter.

Assuming you're talking about series dummy coil with regular single coil, unless the dummy coil can sense the strings' movement, series connection won't increase output. The key to humbucking pickups with their hotter output is that the two coils both contribute their output of the strings' motion. The two coils signal output summate to provide (roughly) 2x the output of an equivalent single coil. If one of those coils doesn't output anything, all that is left is the output of one single coil pickup. As the dummy coil is still connected in series with the sensing single coil pickup, the resistance and inductance of the dummy coil just hangs there and slugs the total output down. You can put two engines in your car to increase horepower if you want, but unless both are getting fuel, one engine is going to be doing all the work trying to move all the extra dead weight around Parallel connection, as you've discovered, also reduces output but with a different tonal effect.

Your wiring diagram hurts my eyes Your scheme is a good example of why I hate the universal use of wiring diagrams to describe what a circuit does, and why schematics should be used more often in guitar circles than they are. A schematic diagram would assist a lot in analysing and commenting on your scheme. Historically, wiring diagrams are provided to the manual labourer on the shop floor to build the circuit who doesn't need to understand how it works; they just need to know how to put wire A in terminal B. I can make out and re-interpret (by prior knowledge) how your 5-way blade switch works, but I've got no way of verifying the contact/switching pattern of your rotary switch. That said... Adding dummy coils to existing pickups is an interesting idea, although if the dummy coil does not 'sense' the strings I'd imagine it would behave more as a filter than an enhancer. Eg, a single in series with a (non-sensing) dummy is unlikely to sound like a humbucker, but possibly more like a single with less output and a darker tone, although with careful selection of magnetic polarity and winding direction it may have similar hum-cancelling properties. Fender did a similar thing with one of their weird early-80s anniversary Strats, whose name/model escapes me at the moment. Your scheme offers a lot of options. As a studio/noodling tool I can dig that kind of schtick, but my suggestion is to make sure you're not making it complex beyond practicality. Having done the 5-way-plus-mini-toggles thing years ago, I now prefer to keep it simple, particuarly when in a performance situation where I don't want to think about how to switch from bridge to neck without performing fingertip gymnastics. Don't take this as some kind of negative. Given the extremely complicated nature of your scheme and my inability to decipher the finer details of the key switching components in the 10 minutes I've spent looking at it, I can only comment on the way it appears and your descriptions of the modes. At any rate, it sounds like a fascinating scheme and I'd be keen to hear sound clips of some of these left-of-field pickup combos you've proposed.

Only on an open A? Could be a nut slot with too little back angle cut into it. What about when you fret the A string? Does the artifact persist?

The CA+masking tape trick has its place. My main gripe with it is how damn tough it can be to separate the two pieces once bonded. I'll use it if I have nothing else available at the time but when it grips, it grips with ferocity.

I've used the Fluence pickup set in the past, but opted for a regular 9V battery compartment as I wasn't entirely sold on fitting a proprietary lithium battery pack to the guitar - what happens when the battery finally reaches the end of its life and will not hold a charge? Will I be able to get a replacement pack? The T4M hardware is really good quality stuff; I reckon you'll be pleased when they turn up. Be aware that the single bridge sitting on its associated baseplate makes for quite a tall tailpiece assembly. I'd recommend recessing the saddles into the body of the guitar and/or being prepared to add an angle to the neck, otherwise you'll struggle to get the action low enough. There's a couple of quirks to stringing them up too, but otherwise they're one of the best headless tuners out there.

In the photo the low-E ferrule hole looks equally spaced compared to the others. Is the string hole on the top lined up correctly with the bridge plate? Could it be that all the holes are actually correcly aligned and spaced relative to the face they were drilled from, and the string hole has wandered off centre as it's been drilled and exited slightly to one side inside the ferrule hole? If you put a ferrule in the low-E position, can you still get the string through it? It may be that while it doesn't look fantastic at the moment, it might still be perfectly servicable and completely invisible once the guitar is assembled. If this is the case, you could also use the ferrule as a drilling guide to align a drill bit passing in through the back of the guitar to re-align the centre of the ferrule with the off-centre string hole. If you use the ferrules with the raised shoulder they should also assist covering up the slight ovalling that looks like is on the right side of the low-E hole in your pic too. If accuracy is important to you, I'd probably only trust a plug/redrill-type repair to a drill press and a set of brad point bits. If you are strapped for resources to do this repair, I'd start by looking at what you actually need to achieve in the first place and simplify your approach if you can. All you really need is a clear line for the string to thread through from back to front. The ferrule and bridgeplate can easily disguise any sins that might be going on in between. If buying shorter neck screws isn't part of the deal, just do what I do and cut the tip of the screw off with a hacksaw. Provided the neck screw pilot holes have been pre-drilled to the correct diameter and depth, it won't make a shred of difference to the integrity of the neck joint.

You could always buy a set of six generic cheapie folded steel saddles from ebay like these with 10.5mm string spacings, and carefully file each edge to remove the excess 0.25mm from the sides so that all six fitted. Maybe apply some clear lacquer to the edges to slow down any corrosion where the plating would be removed after filing. If it doesn't work out, at worst you've only blown a handful of quid, or you could just drop down another couple of sheckles and try again.

Scott is king of the chip savers

Interesting idea. I guess it would work, although how do you 'encourage' the straight fret wire into the curved form without the cut edges of the wire snagging on the curve as the initial section goes through? Likewise, you'd need to consider the same issue when passing a pre-curved fretwire through the straightener form. FWIW, I just made my fret bender out of three nylon sliding door rollers from the hardware store. Same basic principle as the Stewmac one without paying their prices.

You can actually afford to take a lot more out of the upper cavity if you want. The weight relief gained from the extent of hollowing out the upper portion as you currently have it shown will yield surprisingly little difference. Go large or go home, I say Also consider that the narrow portion of the hollow inside the treble horn will be really difficult to get the router cutter into without it wanting to get out of control whilst whizzing around inside the wood, as it is almost entirely captive on all sides of the bit as it travels into the cut.

Thanks for the kind words, Simon. Good to hear you've taken the plunge with this weird bridge system.

If all else fails: Even so, I wouldn't attempt it with anything less than a brad point drill bit. For trem posts you can get away with a few degrees of 'not vertical-ness'. The more critical components to the drilling process for the bridge is the absolute positioning on the face of the guitar for both posts and ensuring the holes don't become ovalled out while you drill, something that I peronally wouldn't trust to a regular twist drill bit, even using a drill press. The use of a guide, above, should get you within acceptable tolerances on the vertical and roundness of the holes as long as you go carefully. The positioning of the two holes is entirely down to your accuracy of measurement and placement of the bit, which TBH is something you still need to be mindful of when doing this operation in a drill press anyway. At the end of the day, you work within the boundaries of the tools and skills you have available at your disposal. Use the partscaster as a learning experience and a stepping stone for the next bigger thing.

Crossing the International Punchline will do that sometimes.

Bevel. It's a pretty radical design and not really derivative of the usual suspects. In this instance, in my mind it makes sense to leave the traditional Strat forearm contour on a Strat. Edit: too late for the party, once again

Thread derail! Knew the name Sunn O))) for years but wasn't familiar with their music. Was only just recently reminded to check them out on Youtube via another unrelated video I was watching. Drone doom metal \m/