curtisa

Afterimage Guitars - MSR6 "Catalyst" After completing my first mutliscale build aroung a year ago I was hooked with the concept and decided I needed a 6-string equivalent to complement the original 7-string build. Again, sticking to my theory that each build should be an excuse to try new ideas, I decided to throw in a few extra features and construction methods to the mix. The chambered body reduces the total weight to a bantam 3.5 kilos. The bound body and neck, along with the brushed chrome covered pickups give off an aged edge, while the use of fan frets, active electronics and an ultra-slim neck mean that this is anything but a vintage rocker. Body - Chambered Tasmanian Blackwood Top - Figured Eucalyptus with cream binding Neck - 5-piece Tas Blackwood and Celery Top Pine with Jarrah accents, carbon fibre reinforcement Headstock - 3x3 configuration, with matching figured Eucalyptus headplate, cream binding Fretboard - Gidgee with Cheesewood "ring" fret markers, cream binding Scale length - 26" - 25", 9th fret perpendicular Radius - 16" Trussrod - Allied Lutherie Tuners - Hipshot Open Gear Grip Lock in chrome Frets - Medium nickel silver Nut - Bone, artificially aged to match binding Pickups - EMG 57 bridge, EMG 66 neck in brushed chrome Bridge - ABM independent saddles in chrome, through-body strung Electronics - 1x vol, 1 x 3-way toggle Finish - Danish Oil Build thread located here

Bandsaw would make keeping the cut straight much easier, but you'd still have to spend some time cleaning and squaring up the cut with a hand plane and sanding. Given that you have to spend time finessing the gluing surfaces for either method, it pays to weigh up how much of a difference in effort it is first.

Needs some more clarification here - are both ground wires from both pickups connected to ground or only the neck one? If the ground wire from the bridge pickup is not connected the electrical circuit from that pickup is incomplete. No ground = no sound. Pickup windings could be damaged, but unlikely if they're new out of the box. I assume that they came supplied with leads of their own and you didn't have to solder anything to the pickup frames themselves.

As long as you are comfortable with soldering and have access to the necessary tools (or know someone else willing to do it for you) then yes, I believe ordering the pickups without the wiring kit will be the best solution. The H4/H4a humbucker instructions seem to indicate that they can be coil tapped (as per the GRX original pickups), it'd just be a matter of working out what wires would be necessary to transfer over from the EMG pickup Quick Connect cables to get the equivalent operation

Pretty sure EMG do not offer a 3x passive pickup wiring kit, and the 2-pickup wiring set that ships with each H4 pickup won't give you sufficient connection points to expand to a third pickup. The three-pickup wiring kit you've linked to will only suit their active pickups, and does not include the necessary switching requirements to match the Ibanez GRX (positions 2 and 4 on the 5-way switch coil tap the humbuckers). Your only likely option is to use the Quick Connect cables for each pickup, cut off the plug that usually fits into the EMG 'basestation' and manually solder each cable to your existing controls to achieve your desired switching requirements.

Thanks everyone! Ta very muchly. I've still got the Evil Twin to get through yet. No doubt it will have a few more nasty surprises in store for me before I get through it. Cheers, big ears! The body is about tthe same width as a Strat, but it also has a narrower 'waist' than usual which may accentuate its small size. It is comfy to play. With the chambering and slim body it came in at 3.5kilos, around 7.7 of your imperial pounds...or 0.000000000015 Olympic swimming pools...

Shouldn't matter. The physical locations of the lugs between the two makes of pots should be identical. Looks like the CTS pots simply provide solder pads underneath the circuit board to make it easier to secure the wires to the switch connections. The pins on the switch are also correspondingly numbered. The Alpha pot should have the same group of six pins underneath the switch that will match the arrangement of the pins on the CTS. Just transfer the wires one lug at a time taking note of the numbering and you should be good to go.

Time to wrap the Good Twin up:

Clean out each slot with something like a blunt razor blade. Make sure there isn't any sawdust or debris sitting in the bottom of the slots preventing the frets being driven home. Check fret slot depth and compare against the length of the tang on the fretwire you're using. A small piece of cardboard can be rested inside the fret slot and using a sharp pencil trace the surface of the fretboard onto the cardboard. Check the depth at the edges and centre of each fret slot. If the slots are too shallow to accept the fretwire they'll need deepening with a thin kerfed saw. Check the thickness of the tang of the fretwire you're using is thin enough to fit in the slots. Take a piece of fretwire and rest it against the end of a slot where it meets the edge of the fretboard. The tang itself should fit into the slot without much resistance. It's the barbs on the tang that give the fret enough grip to stay seated. If the tang is too thick you'll either need different fretwire or the board re-slotted using a different saw. Make sure your hammering technique doesn't skew the fret as it drives it in. Start with a few taps at each end of the fret to get it to bite and stay put. Each subsequent blow of the hammer to fully seat the fret should be delivered with minimum bouncing off the surface of the fret. It's less like hammering in a nail, and more akin to pushing it in with quick 'shoves'. Make sure something is under the neck at the position you're hammering (sandbag, block of wood covered in removalists felt or carpet scraps) so that the neck can't flex as you strike the fret.

Moved to appropriate subforum.

I think the other thing with the X-Carve is that the software requires an internet connection to run, which may or may not be an issue for some people. I'm on the fence regarding the X-Carve. There are enough so-so reviews and opinions about it to make me think that it's not necessarily the best value for money. While proprietary software and belt drives don't necessarily equate to poor performance, it's a little concerning that you may have to regularly check belt tensions, and that you're stuck with their online software. Another concern I've seen mentioned is that the larger unit doesn't scale up the cross sectional area of the framework, so it tends to flex and sag a lot more than the smaller unit.

I guess some good quality 1/4" diameter straight and 1/4" round nose tungsten-tipped bits would be a good starting point. If you want to do engraving maybe get a V-point bit too. If you're going to get one of the machines that uses a palm router as the spindle you'll probably struggle to find bits smaller than about 2mm in diameter that directly fit the collet, so you will have to get a collet reducer to take advantage of smaller bits with, say a 1/8" shank.

<Shameless self-promotion> Have you seen my write-ups regarding mini CNC machines for guitar building? Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 </Shameless self-promotion> In all seriousness, the machine used for those articles was marketed as an engraving machine/mini CNC on the ebay store I bought it from. It's probably very similar, if not the same as the ones you mention. I guess it depends what you want to achieve from the CNC. I personally only want to use it to complement the hands-on aspect of guitar building, rather than do the bulk of the heavy lifting. A small machine like that one fits the bill as I don't expect it to be over-taxed, such as directly cut a body from a timber blank or carving the back of a neck. Making routing templates, doing inlays, cutting cavity covers etc is what I use mine for. A bigger machine will permit the use of bigger cutting operations at the expense of requiring more space and deeper pockets. A machine big and powerful enough to mill a guitar body from a timber blank will set you back multiples of thousands. It will make a bigger mess too, so you'll need a way to keep the dust under control. Any CNC will involve a significant amount of learning and experimenting if you're not familiar with CAD, CAM or motion control software. The software itself and some decent cutters will probably set you back a further several hundred bucks. Don't be put off by the idea though. Once you've settled on a unit and got the basics down it opens up a big world of new ideas and techniques for guitar building and general woodwork. In addition to the Chinese eBay units, the X-Carve and Shapeoko3 seem to be popular kit-based machines for around a grand. I have no experience with either unit, but the Shapeoko looks the more robust of the two.

Thanks. You're half right - engraving was done on the CNC machine and infilled with black epoxy.

Not dual concentric. Dual gang. Dual concentric is two stacked pots controlled with individual knobs. Dual gang is two stacked pots controlled by a common knob. Bourns make them: http://www.wdmusic.com/bourns_push_pull_pot_dpdt_a_taper_6mm_solid_shaft_250k_bourns_250pp_ss.html You'd treat each element of the dual gang pot as if it were the two individual pots shown in the Graphtech documentation and wire it as such. The push-pull switch would be wired to the 'QSW' terminals. Grpahtech have a 'one of the other' mod for the quickswitch on their FAQ pages for people who only want to select between piezo and mag without the 'both' option. Anyway, if the circut normally works with intermittent hum I'd be looking at faulty wiring - maybe your bridge ground isn't solidly bonded, or the cavity shielding isn't properly earthed. Also consider environmental issues, such as doing your testing next to a electric motor or computer.

Yep, the ABM saddles are brass, so they should dent/notch easily if struck with steel. The Good Twin was just done with a couple of cuts with a triangular needle file on each saddle. With strings on it for the last month it's been fine like that. I'm yet to assemble the Evil Twin, so I'll have a go with the hammered-string method and report my findings.

All the literature I can find mentions that individual volume pots are used, rather than shared. There may be some particulars of the two volume circuits in the Acoustiphonic PCB that prevent you sharing grounds between the volume pots as you have done. The manual shows individual ground wires run to each pot, rather than one ground wire daisy-chained to each. This may be for convenience on Graphtech's part, but could also be a mandatory requirement of the circuitry. If you have a spare volume pot try wiring it as per the manufacturer's diagram (without the push/pull switch) and see if that cures the hum issue. Maybe you have insufficient shielding in the cavity? When touching the yellow wire does it hum only when either the piezo or mag is selected? Might also be worthwhile posing the question to Graphtech support and see if they have any ideas. Rewiring it with a dual gang push/pull pot and using the 'QSW' terminals for the push/pull switch is probably the only thing I can think of that would minimise any problems with adapting the existing circuit to suit the application.

I can't help it. I'm easily distracted by...Oooo look, a shiny thing...

A (fiddly to make) alternative to a plain vanilla truss rod cover. A teeny rare earth magnet sunk into the bottom of the trussrod access and an M2.5 screw in the bottom of a wooden plug. Pressing the forward edge of the plug releases the magnet and allows access to the truss rod: One of these days I'll finish these builds. No wonder the last few bits always take the longest...

Quick thoughts: You haven't drawn a bridge ground wire - is one installed in the guitar? The 100uF cap isn't suggested in the Acoustiphonic documentation - is it necessary? Double-check the jack connections - make sure you haven't mixed up the tip/ring/sleve soldering The shared volume pot for the mag/piezo isn't a suggested option in the Acoustiphonic manual. I guess it should work as you have it drawn, but without knowing the finer details of the circuitry on the PCB I'm not sure what effect toggling the volume connections between the two functions will have to the output. The suggested toggling option in the manual is to use the QSW terminals with a switch to select the two functions, with a separate permanently-connected volume pot for each function. I guess you could use a dual gang volume pot to emulate this wiring, but perhaps finding a dual gang volume pot with a built-in push-pull switch may be troublesome?

Bazinga!

Someone else may correct me, but I believe silicone is not recommended for wood as it makes subsequent refinishing or gluing problematic - the silicone remains within the fibres of the wood and prevents reliable adhesion of glues and finishes. If you have no intention of ever refinishing the instrument it's probably OK, but if you ever need to do repairs or modifications it may create difficulties later on.

Thread moved to appropriate subforum.

Thread moved to appropriate subforum.

Piezo pickups will do what you describe, provided you can find a way to mount them directly to the body. A piezo relies on being physically excited to generate an analogue of the vibrations, as opposed to a magnetic pickup which relies on transducing a strings' vibration and proximity into a voltage which can be amplified. The effect you get out of it may not be entirely what you're 'hearing' though. With your ear pressed against the body you're also listening to a filtered version of the body's vibrations through your ear canal and skull, rather than what's being transferred naturally through the air to your ears.