curtisa

Nothing but moths in mine. Guess we'll just have to stick it on the tab.

Nice! Looking forward to some updates. I need to get posting progress shots too, so thanks for subconciously giving me a kick up the arse

A hearty handshake from this side of the equator, Mr Jr. A very well-deserved win. Your round then?

Is the tone pot for the bass EMGs the same as the tone pot for the guitar EMGs? I've got a stack here that will never get used. I can send you one if you're desperate?

Based on how they're described, I'm inclined to think that they're the regular models squished into a P90 box and likely sound the same. I can understand actives aren't everyone's cup of tea, but there are actives (not necessarily EMGs) out there that don't all sound like mid-80s James Hetfield. The EMG 66/57 set is quite nice, as is the Fishman Fluence. My take on it is more, "I'm having fun trying these out. I wonder what the next model sounds like?"

Now that you mention it: http://www.emgpickups.com/guitar/p-90.html

Nice big rectangular pickup cavities there, Scott. You must be installing EMGs in this one then?

You could always chuck in some pickups with big, powerful magnets to kill the sustain. Set them nice and close to the strings. The last thing you want those strings to do is do that annoying "vibratey-notey" thing

Careful - you'll wake the tone voodoo gatekeepers if you keep this up. You'll need to know the magic password if you want any hope of escaping their clutches.

That's a curly one. Must be some kind of fluky combination of string tension, scale length, hardware used, resonance or construction that sets it off. What happens if you put a capo on the 1st fret and down-tune a half step back to normal pitch?

If you're sure it's buzzing at the 12th, perhaps the neck is too straight? Try a different gauge low-E? Maybe it's got something to do with the amount of elasticity that particular string has, in conjunction with string tension that allows it to "over-vibrate" when played open? What about truss rod rattle? I've seen a guitar where you could get it to buzz by plucking the open B string while fretting the low-E at the tenth fret. The open B would cause the low-E to resonate behind the fretted 10th, which was rattling on a fret somewhere between the 9th fret and the nut. Weird. If you have a multimeter with a continuity "beep" function you can pinpoint the exact location of a fret buzz by clipping one probe to the string behind the nut and use the other probe to touch each fret. As you pluck the string, if the string is buzzing on the fret you have the second meter probe attached to, the meter will beep.

Nut slot cut too low? String rattling in the slot (slot too wide, too flat)? Neck relief too little? First fret too high? Could be unrelated to frets too. Look for something rattling in sympathy - tuners, bridge components, strap buttons, pots, nuts etc...

True Temperament frets only ensure that the guitar plays as close as practicable to Equal Temperament rather than each note being mathematically perfect (a physical impossibility on a guitar, or indeed any instrument where the notes are primarily developed by fixed means - piano, organ, harp etc). Even then, the TT fretted instrument will still have the same inherent pitch errors already present within the Equal Temperament system, something that cannot be avoided in western music. I've seen many people say that bending strings on a TT guitar must feel weird, or require a different playing style. But the counter-argument by people who have tried it always appears to be that it feels no different...or perhaps they just adapt quickly?

I think you'd be surprised how little adaption is required to switch from straight to angled frets. You might even find that it encourages a more relaxed fretting wrist when playing and shifting from lower to upper registers. When changing positions from the lower areas of the neck (further from the body) to the higher areas (closer to the body), the natural tendency of the wrist is to want to angle the fingers more horizontally as it moves closer to the body. This coincides with the changing angle of the frets as they travel up the neck, which should (theoretically at least) match more closely how the wrist wants to turn as the hand is brought closer to the body. A good example is fretting a full barre Fmaj chord on the first fret and then playing the exact same chord on the 13th. The lower barre chord forces the wrist to rotate clockwise in order to fret all the notes properly, and the same chord played higher forces the wrist to rotate counterclockwise for the same result. If the frets are all angled to naturally counteract this rotation, the wrist should adopt a more relaxed angle between the two extremes. Bending strings is no different. The "relaxed" direction your fingers want to push or pull the string to bend it should be the same direction the fret angle. There's no free lunch though. It is possible to over-compensate things. Multiscales with really wide fan ranges (extremely steep-angled frets at each end of the fretboard) will probably negate these ergonomic benefits. And if you're used to sighting your hands' position on the fretboard by looking at the fret dots/side dots you may find that hitting the highest notes by what visually looks right takes some getting used to, as the increasing negative fret angle on the higher frets can skew your alignment of the fret dot vs where you think your fingers have landed.

While it would be true that the tapering of the string from bridge to nut would cause a pitch error on the fretted note the more acute the taper is, this pitch error is minute and is also partially compensated by the adjustability of the saddles when setting the intonation. I guess you could argue that a "true" single scale length guitar would have mildly semi-circular shaped frets and nut, where the centre of each frets' arc would be the convergence point of all six strings as they taper beyond the limits of the nut. In practicality almost no-one's ears can hear such a small error when compared to the inherent innacurate nature of steel strings pressed against metal frets. You'd get more pitch error by exerting excessive fret-hand pressure while fretting, micro-bending each note by mashing it down hard behind the fret. Fan fretting/multiscaling doesn't change any of this. The only difference is that each string gets it's own unique scale length rather than a single common scale length for all strings.

A gentle reminder to forum members about the use of the Guitar of the Month entrants' thread (from the first post in this thread): Please keep the content of this thread on topic and neat 'n tidy. There will be plenty of opportunity for appraisals of everyone's work in the Guitar of the Month Voting thread. Thanks.

Wot they all said. Excellent work, Mr. Jr.

Please tell me you didn't just mill your own nut? I've yellowed a bleached bone nut using a very weak dye solution, which came out well as the dye can penetrate into the pores of the bone, but plastic binding would be non-porous. You could try dyes but I suspect the colour will just sit on the surface of the plastic and come off at the slightest bump or scratch. Various shades of cream binding is available cheaply though. What you really want is something that can accelerate the ageing process of ABS - turn your guitar into a 25 year old Amiga 500

Ahhh, y'see, you missed a trick there. The correct answer would've been something along the lines of, "I designed it that way. It's meant to be like that". Or, "Everyone knows the tone sounds better if there's a zero fret installed and then removed and then replaced by a nut. The void from the empty slot under the nut gives the instrument more air..."

I kinda prefer the look of the off-centre outer tuning pegs. It's in keeping with the vintage roots of the instrument. The real deal Gibson does exactly the same thing. I would imagine relocating the outer tuners for straight string pull would then place them too close to the headstock edge, That particular two-a-side headstock shape must precludes a straight string path without significant redesign/rebuilding. Any reason why you swapped out the zero fret? Customer preference?

For a one-off I see no problem with your method for the body outline or a headstock shape. It may even be quicker. You will find that some templates are still required for other operations though - neck pocket, pickup cavities, taper of neck, control cavities etc. A lot of these shapes are largely just straight lines which will simplify their construction.

I think we might be getting our wires crossed here. That is the PRS 513 wiring. That's what it'll look like inside your guitar if you recreate it, in addition to the Ghost system and piezo/mag toggle.

The first picture in this thread might be handy too.

If you managed to get the original pickups then you've done pretty well for yourself. Were you able to get the original 3-way blade switch too? That will be key to getting the guitar wired properly with the split humbucker functions. If not, I believe PRS will sell spare parts for their guitars. Might be worth sending them an email and see if they can supply the proper 3-way blade switch. Nice looking instrument, BTW.

Close, but not quite. Each coil in the "humbucker pack" is individually tapped, and the 3-way blade selects between: Two single coil pickups configured as a standard series-wired humbucker. Two single coil pickups configured as a standard series-wired humbucker, but with each coil tapped for reduced output. One single coil pickup with the other shut off. There's a brief disussion here about the 513 schematic (with contributions from fellow forum members @verhoevenc and @SwedishLuthier I see), and in the middle of the post there's a diagram from the PRS patent. The scheme requires specially-wound pickups and a 3-way 6-pole switch, neither of which are going to be off-the-shelf parts. It's not clear from the diagram you've drawn what you're connecting where - there's a lot of detail missing in the connections of all the various components as you've presented them. The short answer is that you might be able to build something similar to the 513 wiring using, perhaps, stacked single coil humbuckers as a substitute for the custom-wound singles used by PRS, but it will never be a true 513. The 3-position switch is harder - your only option here is probably a rotary switch rather than a blade, although a 6-pole version will be difficult (not impossible) to source. It's potentially a big outlay of cash to buy these components in the hope it will actually work as expected. The switching between piezo and mag is trivial, and can be accomplished referencing numerous diagrams on the web.