curtisa

Grounding the backing plate of a pickup if it has one won't offer that much additional protection against external noise. You'll get more noise rejection by using shielded wire as much as possible. A jazzmaster pickup is fundamentally no different in construction to a standard single coil, and there are usually no special treatments applied to a Strat other than a bit of foil tape on the back of the pickguard and shielded wire on the pickup leads.

Looking good, Jon. The right balance of no frills and bling in my book. How is Mr Oz Tradie? I used to visit his website for updates on his builds and borrow some new ideas, but I notice he hasn't updated anything for a couple of years now.

I can drink to that. Here's cheers

Damn fine work there, Andy. You've got to be pretty chuffed how that turned out. Your shout or mine?

Good to see another Oorstrayan around here. I suspect you and I might have a Gidgee and Blackwood supplier in common.

Cheers Jon. And welcome (back) to Project Guitar.

I've drawn it assuming you had on/on/on switches. It should work as shown, but it is more complicated than if you use the on/off/on switches. Nope, doesn't need to be in this application.

Beer please: The actual grounding arrangement may be dictated by how easy it is to manipulate all those green connections. I'll leave the actual grounding layout up to you. Note the small jumpers on each switch. If you can use the same mini toggles as the original diagram it will be easier to assemble.

Wow, that's dedication. Use shielded wire and save yourself the trouble.

Looks like it has a bit of Warwick in it too with that bulbous upper cutaway. I reckon you should complete it, even if only to say you finally crossed the finish line 35 years later..

I thought we dispensed with the 'Are You Being Served' references ages ago?

Don't discount buying an Explorer kit and pimping it up. They're a good way to get a feel for what goes into building and assembling a guitar from a series of semi-finished components, particularly if your budget is limited or if you don't have access to the various tools used to build an instrument from scratch. If the budget allows, you can always swap out the supplied pickups with something more glamorous, or upgrade the tuners and bridge with better quality variants. Even if you buy all the parts as cheaply as possible I reckon you'll struggle to build something from scratch for less than $300 - $400. That also assumes you don't need to spend any money on tools. On the other hand, a kit Explorer can be had for around $200 or less. It's not a cheap hobby by any means.

I was almost going to say it looks like Blackheart Sassafras. They don't appear to be related, but they share a lot of visual similarities.

If the current build is anything to go by, I expect the next two builds to be some kind of black magic bass that is so far out there it isn't even a bass, man. They'll be more of, like, a reflection of our struggle against bass.

A tapered shim is less risky than trying to do a precise re-angling of the base of the heel. They can be made using only hand tools and sandpaper if you don't want to splash the cash at Stewmac.

IME the Magic Marble paint is much more delicate than a conventional paint coating, and the layering effect of all the various colours and variations in paint film density as it gets dipped tends to create high and low spots in the finish underneath the clear, Maybe your clear coat in that area was just a little bit too thin, the swirl layers were a few microns higher than the surrounding area and a spot was created where sand-through was particularly likely before the nearby orange peel was removed?

I suspect it's more of a grounding or shielding issue than the frequency used multiplexing all the LEDs. If it were due to an abnormally low multiplex frequency I'd expect to see some strobing of the LEDs on video clips of the guitar in action, but you can't see that on any of the videos. I get very similar whining noise on any of my (non-Fretlight) guitars when plugged into the audio interface on my PC while running amp sims, but the difference is that I can move away from the PC or change my position relative to the PC to minimise the severity of the noise, whereas in the Fretlight the noise-inducing electronics are a permanent fixture that you can't get away from. There is one item on their FAQ page which suggests that noise is a known issue with the system, and that correct grounding is key to eliminating the problem (or at least making it tolerable). It appears to be mentioned in the "Troubleshooting" section of product manual too. On the flipside, there do seem to be plenty of videos of people using the guitars with lots of gain but no apparent noise issues, so I guess the noise can be tamed. It's a shame that it appears to be prone to induced noise, because I can see a lot of people would benefit from the system when starting out, and the guitar could act as a crossover point when transitioning between absolute beginner to live performances. To be fair, it is marketed as a training tool rather than a performance instrument. Perhaps going the extra distance to install a piezo pickup and full modeling system would push the price up to a point where the target market wouldn't be willing to pay for such a product? Either way, you've done an impressive job marrying the two systems together

Interesting project. You say the Fretlight electronics were the cause of the interference with the pickups - did you replace it with something else when you reinstalled the neck that corrects this issue?

So therefore I could delete my Photobucket account and all the images posted here would remain visible? I've not posted images of much importance anywhere else, so I'm not too concerned that links would be broken elsewhere.

Interesting. Still appears to work? Either there's something funky about the way the hosting interacts with the forum software that bypasses such limitation, the terms have not come into effect yet or our interpretation of "image linking" is not in line with theirs. ...or their no linking limitation doesn't actually work.

Headpiece looks slightly different. There's an ALP logo stamped into the top and the 'Licensed by KD Patent' stamp has been replaced by 'Advanced Live Performance'. The locking nut replaces the retainer bar on mine, and the ballend of the strings appears to be top-loading rather than fed through the rear face of the headpiece. I kinda figured the little drawer was for guitar picks, but the drawer in that video appears to have some kind of metal spring retainer clip to keep the picks in place that mine doesn't have. Other than that, it's just the trem version of the fixed bridge used on my build. They're about $70 on Ebay. I guess whoever this ALP crowd are, they've just bought or manufactured a bunch of these bridges and done a custom run on the headpiece. Interesting find

I would've read the terms and conditions, but adverts kept on popping up and getting in the way The quick check I did on one of my older builds from about 5 years ago seemed to be OK, and all the pictures were there. I haven't used my Photobucket account for a long time though, and logging back into it just now makes me want to delete the whole thing anyway. I hadn't realised how spammy it's become in recent years. I though the term that indicated that Photobucket reserves the right to place advertising material or watermarks on any of my images was a bit rich. I wonder if Photobucket is soon to go the way of the dodo? A hosting site that peddles that much unsolicited advertising at their users either doesn't care for providing a core service, or is waiting for people to leave so they can close it down while trying to make a last grab for cash with the advertising revenue. I used to participate at another forum many years ago where the forum software was upgraded to something called Yuku V2. The new upgrade had so many ads and popups littered throughout each page and every post, people stopped signing up or logging in. Yuku became known as "Yuck-u" among the remaining members, and it was inevitable that the forum closed about 12 months later due to lack of interest.

I've used epoxy to repair damaged acrylic templates. You can make a little dam with masking tape, or a couple of pieces of greaseproof paper clamped to the template to hold them in place and backfill it with epoxy.

Has the neck pickup always been a problem, or has it only just started misbehaving? Good points mentioned above. A process of elimination is usually best for this kind of thing. EMG 60 is an active pickup. Checking impedance by measuring with a multimeter may give odd results, as you're trying to sniff up the nose of the output buffer built into the pickup. It's not a test that is synonymous with a check of a passive pickup and shouldn't be relied on to give a measure of the pickup's operation. All newer EMGs have the quick connect style plugs. Check that the plug on the rear of the pickup hasn't become dislodged. Also confirm that the other end of the neck pickup lead is properly terminated (depending on the type of installation, this may also be a plug-in termination which could have come loose). It's likely to be either the pickup selector switch, the neck pickup wiring or the pickup itself. With the pickups being fitted with the quick connect plugs you can swap the bridge and neck pickups easily enough. If the EMG60 works in the bridge position then you've eliminated the pickup being at fault. If the EMG85 suddenly stops working in the neck position then you've narrowed it down to the neck pickup wiring or selector switch. Work onwards from there.