curtisa

No need to worry. There's no strength advantage to retaining a thin sliver of wood between the neck and pickup. Lots of guitar manufacturers do exactly the same thing:

Shielded 4 conductor cable is part of the USB standard, so it should be there. The cable I've used does have a shield, although it's not a braided type - just a wrapped foil jacket in contact with a bare tinned wire. Stripping the outer sheath of the cable usually takes the foil shielding with it, so it can look unshielded once the wires are exposed. I'll keep an eye (ear) out for any issues, but I'm not expecting any problems with microphonics. If I'd removed the tape on the coils and unwound some of the coil, I'd be repotting it. But as all I did was unscrew the coil from the baseplate as a complete unit and didn't disturb the windings, I reckon I'm pretty safe.

Makes it look like I know what I'm doing...

One of the things that always bugged me when I bought this guitar is that the bridge humbucker doesn't have any facility for coil tapping. As a backup to my other Pac721, I missed that I couldn't get the Stratty bridge split/middle single combination that its bigger brother could do. However, as I've got the guitar in pieces I have the option of correcting this deficiency without spending money on a new pickup by rewiring the pickup as a four-conductor . The original bridge humbucker is a basic two conductor jobbie. As it was always destined to be installed in a budget guitar, it's nothing special to write home about, and probably fairly similar to any super-cheap pickup available from resellers: Unwrapping the outer tape layer exposes the two coils. As a bonus the termination points for each of the windings are made out to little solder tabs, which will make it easier to solder the new 4 conductor cable to than loose winding ends: Useful tip: USB leads from old mice are a cheap (or free!) way of getting 4-conductor shielded wire for this kind of work. The cable is usually pretty flexible and skinny enough to fit through the various holes and channels. This 1.5m cable came from a crappy old mouse with a busted scrollwheel being thrown out from the office. There's enough cable here for four or five pickups: Dismantle the pickup and wiring. The solder tabs actually allow the wiring to be performed without having to remove the coils, but in order to desolder/reattach the ground braid on the baseplate I have to remove one coil to get access: Strip off a few inches off the end of the USB lead and feed it through: And start re-attaching the wires to the windings. I could go to the trouble of following a known colour code, but as this is a cheap no-name pickup going into a cheap guitar, who cares how it gets coded. In the end I have red = coil 1 start, green = coil 1 end, black = coil 2 start, white = coil 2 end: Wrap it back up with the tape (still sticky enough to be re-used) and voilà - a four-conductor humbucker for practically zero cost: A quick check to make sure the coils still have continuity after the resoldering, and we're good to go:

Floyd Rose have routing plans for all their tremolos on their website.

Very odd. As you say, must be an error on C&Ks part. The function is definitely DPDT. I'd trust the datasheet more than the search function. I agree. My experience of modifying sealed products to perform a different function has usually resulted in something that works fine for a few months and then gradually fails as components that were initially assembled within certain tolerances start to fall apart prematurely. Edit: just did a search and I found the thread you mention. He's specifically talking about converting large toggles rather than the mini toggles that are commonly used in guitars. My concern about the longevity of the mod still stands, even moreso that it wasn't/isn't proven to be feasable on a smaller switch.

Aye, they're good, reliable little instruments. My first "big boy's" axe was a Pacifica 721. I still regret selling it to fund the purchase of an Ibanez 7 string RG.

I can't see a mention of "SP3T circuit type" in the datasheet you've linked. It's seems pretty clear that part no 7211 is a DPDT with an on-on-on switching pattern (bottom of page 2), which is what you're after. Be wary of the description/photos used on Mouser and the like. You'll notice that the picture shown on the Mouser website for the on-on-on DPDT toggle is a SPDT switch. Always refer to the part number provided and cross-reference it against the datasheet to verify its function. Mouser and others have a handy parametric search function that can help narrow down a part based on requirements. Looks like the E-Switch 100DP6T1... is a similar thing at a third of the price: http://au.mouser.com/Electromechanical/Switches/Toggle-Switches/_/N-5g2j?P=1z0z2o3Z1z0z812Z1z0z2xk&Ns=Pricing|0 Also try looking on Element14, RS Australia and Digikey. They might not be the cheapest places to find them, but you will get exactly the part number you order, and most of them offer free overnight shipping once you get past about $55.

I believe this is a knockoff of the Steinberger trem used on their Spirit range of guitars. I see lots of people blanket panning these Overlord of Music bridges on the net sight unseen, but no real objective opinions on them, good or bad. Might be a good opportunity to buy one, install it and see exactly how it performs. I'm aware that @Andyjr1515 is using an OOM headless fixed bridge for his latest bass build, so maybe he has some insights? One of my previous builds used the fixed version of this bridge, and despite the quirks and foibles, (some words on the subject here), it's actually not too bad. It won't win any awards for precision, looks or build quality, and I wouldn't want to use it on a premium build, but it's still a surprisingly serviceable unit. Whether this translates to the trem version is up for debate. Again, I see no rational argument for or against them floating around. Don't believe I've seen this one. Got a link? Have also seen this a couple of times. There's probably no reason why you couldn't just buy an aftermarket Schaller or Floyd locking nut to clamp the strings and tune up from slack using the bridge tuners. That's fundamentally no different to how the T4M or Strandberg hardware is strung up. JCustom make some modernised versions of the Steinberger trem bridges. I believe they're the same ones that are used in the Keisel headless instruments. Headless USA sell them, but they're not cheap.

Great to see some of these instruments being fired in anger, and fellow forumites getting the chance to hook up with each other over this strange and expensive hobby we share FWIW, a red band makes it 4.7nF rather than 0.47uF (aka 470nF). Orange is indeed 47nF. Third band = number of zeroes after the first two digits. Red = 2, Orange = 3. Value on cap is presented in picofarads, so Yellow/Violet/Red = 4700pF = 4.7nF.

Rear trem cavity cover gets done with the same pearloid material as the front. No fancy scanning tricks to do this. Just a pair of calipers to get all the key measurements:

Nice score. Definitely needs the big cab to get the full picture of what these old things can do. 6AQ5 is fundamentally a 6V6 in a miniaturised glass envelope, so it's not surprising that it has close lineage to the Fender Champ. I'd imagine any Champ-esque mods will be perfectly applicable to this little nugget of goodness.

It's a shame the finish is still giving me grief, because it's actually one of the better sounding instruments I've done. I was prepared for the X-bar pickups to be quite bright and detailed, but they've turned out to be more restrained and "traditional" sounding. It's been a nice surprise actually. I'd be concerned about accidentally changing the course of history if I did that. Butterfly flapping it's wings over in America causes tidal waves in France, and all that... This is all getting a bit Doctor-Who-Grandfather-Paradox for me on a Tuesday morning....

You've pretty much nailed how I did it. My only extra trick was that after I scanned the pickguard I reduced the colour depth to two (black/white) and then sent it through the "Trace Bitmap" function built into Inkscape. That gave me a vectorised version of the pickguard edges and cutouts against the black background which I could then use as a basis for the redrawing.

The scan gave me a 600dpi image with dimensions of 9930 x 7020 pixels. In CAD that's pretty meaningless, as dimensions in CAD are unitless. A "thing" that has a length of 100 in CAD could be 100 mm, or 100 inches or 100 feet. It's not until I print it at scale or assign a unit of measurement does it have a real size. I can't remember the exact values, but the trace of the raw image I did was about 3x larger than it needed to be once printed assuming I was using mm as a drawing unit. I also needed a way to get from an image file (the scan of the pickguard) to a vector drawing (the CAD of the pickguard), as the CNC only uses vectors to drive the cutterhead. By converting to a vector file I can also scale up or down, add or remove components, rotate, straighten, bend etc without sacrificing edge quality and accuracy.

I could go for plain boring old white plastic like the original, but why not smarten it up a bit? How about some 3-ply white/black/pearloid instead? I have the new scratchplate drawn up at 1:1 scale in CAD, so may as well use the CNC to do the hard work. The trouble is that the pickguard is about 15mm too wide for the bed of the CNC, so my only recourse is to tile it into two halves, and mill it as two separate sections, with a precise move between the two halves so that they line up. In CAD the pickguard gets split into two pieces and some reference marks added to allow the two halves to be milled separately: Then it's off to the CNC with all fingers crossed that the plan works out: Succes!. Well...the more astute viewers will note a continuity error between the last two shots, above. It actually took two attempts to complete the pickguard, after I miscalculated how much excess material to remove off the bottom of the sheet and cut it too short. Still, I now have a replacement scratchplate ready to be reinstalled: If only my CNC was just that little bit wider...

With the scratchplate off the guitar I can send it through the big A3 scanner at the office and get a lifesize copy of it. By putting it in backwards I can get crisper edges as I don't have to worry about the bevelled edge from masking the true outline of the plate: After loading it in to the CAD software and tracing the edges as best I can and flipping it around, I can then scale it down to match the original, and add an approximation of the missing section behind the bridge pickup. There's probably neater and quicker ways of doing this, but for me this works well enough: Printing it at 1:1 scale gives me an opportunity to check the fit before cutting up a blank sheet of pickguard material: Some minor tweaks around the bridge cutout, but otherwise looking pretty close to the original, especially around the pickguard mounting screws which need to line up reasonably closely.

While waiting for paint to dry on the First Build Resurrection thread, here's another rebuild of sorts in preparation for the cleanout. The culprit being a first generation Yamaha Pacifica 112 that I bought many years ago as a backup guitar while I was still in a local gigging band. After the band...err...disbanded, this got repurposed as a test bed for several ideas, including some additional switching to allow all three pickups (the mini toggle near the volume pot) and an Eyb Guitars Buzz Bridge for sitar effects: While it'd be nice to sell it as is and not spend any time on it, I can't deny that with the Buzz Bridge it would have limited appeal on the local market, so the decision has been made to remove the BB and reinstate the original Strat-style bridge. I'll also get rid of the mini toggle, to restore the wiring to stock. The problem with this one is that in order to originally install the BB, I had to cut a section of the pickguard away to allow the oversize bridge assemble to sit properly on the guitar. With the BB removed and the original bridge replaced, it's painfully obvious how much material had to be removed in order to fit it: So I'm going to have to make up a new scratch plate with a recreation of the missing section around the bridge. First thing's first, disassemble the guitar to get the original scratchplate off. The intention is to use it as a template for a replacement and approximate the missing contours to replicate the piece that was cut out. Luckily I had the forethought to save all the original components when I installed the BB, and still have the original bridge, screws and springs. Rather than remove the old trem claw, I left it in as a handy place to attach the BB ground wire. The claw was just screwed all the way forward to stop it from rattling: The mini toggle simply added the bridge pickup in parallel with whatever was selected on the 5-way, to give the all pickups on and bridge+neck options in positions 4 and 5 respectively. While it worked it also had the side effect of duplicating the B+M combo in position 3 and 2 simultaneously, making it pretty annoying in practice. In the end I hardly ever used the additional switching patterns, so it was largely redundant: All stripped bare:

Thanks chaps. Glad to see the end of this one. The finish still has some issues, but I'd rather close this one off and have a playable instrument than spend even more time battling with it. Well, I do live in GMT+10... In a few weeks time there's a Delorean DMC12 going under the hammer down here. Maybe I should place a bid and wind up the flux capacitor to bring this future technology back for you to use?

Usually the brackets indicate that the actuator has a spring return to the centre position, so it won't stay in the bracketed position unless you're holding it there.

Not important. You're talking about switching milli-volt or micro-amp signals. Whatever fits in the hole on the scratchplate will work. Maybe. Possibly. Probably. On-on-on is a switching configuration that has limited appeal outside guitar circles, so it's not surprising that they command a higher price compared to the other versions. Less demand = high price to offset the lower returns. C&K used to be a good name associated with mini toggles. I suspect you'll struggle to get the retailer to tell you what brand they're selling though.

I've seen those videos before too (amongst others). The first one was done with Magic Marble. The second one is one of a series of videos by the same guy (DeanSwirled I believe). I think he uses his own recipe. - definitely not the borax + enamel that gets mentioned a lot. If you notice through the comments that a lot of people ask how he does it but he never replies. If you watch some of his other vids he gets a very long working time once the paint hits the water, which is very unlike the borax + enamel method. Even MM doesn't last that long and remain that fluid. He's also using a lot of non-standard colours, and the paints almost behave more like inks floating on the water. My theory is that he's mixing his own colours up (possibly not enamels either), thinning them down and then adding some kind of retarder to the paints to extend the amount of time he has to use the dip.

Just realised I've had this sitting around finished for some time now, so without further ado I give you the following: Needless to say, I'll be steering clear of painted finishes for a while now.

Yep. The Magic Marble paints are very vulnerable to solvents and will come off with a brisk scrub using turps, white spirit, enamel thinner, acetone etc. Also the reason why I had all sorts of trouble with clear coating On the plus side it means that if it doesn't work the first time it makes it easy to backtrack and start over.

Good grief, no. Don't remind me.