curtisa

Ouch. I thought we had the monopoly on overpriced, imported goods over here. Give your mate Boris a hug for me when you next see him

Best of luck with the project  

Easy tiger! I should point out this is totally untested - you're the guinea pig

I'm also not certain how the pickup coils labelled 'North' and 'South' are physically going to orient themselves when installed in the guitar (I'm assuming the bridge 'north coil will be the inner and the neck 'south' will be the inner as well if both pickups are installed with the cable exiting on the same side of the humbucker frame). If it turns out that you're actually getting the outer coils for position 2 the easiest solution will be to swivel both pickups around 180 degrees on the guitar rather than fiddle around with the wires. In that case leave yourself some slack on the pickup cables so that you can draw them back through the wiring channels to make spinning the pickups around easier.

Or you might find that the outer coils are close enough for rock 'n roll. In which case,

Carbatec mortising bit with bearing

Currently out of stock, but it's the one I use when I need a template bit with an itty bitty depth of cut. They have another one in currently stock that has a half inch depth of cut if that's close enough?

I ***think*** this is what you're after. It's a bit of a head-scratcher, but this should give you the following:

With the mini toggle in the 'series' position:

1. Bridge humbucker with coils in series (ie, standard humbucker wiring)
2. Bridge + Neck inner coils in series
3. Neck humbucker with coils in series

With the mini toggle in the 'parallel' position:

1. Bridge humbucker with coils in parallel (thinner/brighter tone)
2. Bridge + Neck inner coils in parallel
3. Neck humbucker with coils in parallel

As an added bonus it can be done without rotating any pickup around backwards and all positions are humbucking. The only catch is that pesky 3-way 4-pole toggle switch. It appears to be made by Goldo who seem to have good sales representation on the continent, so maybe importing one shouldn't pose too much of a hassle for you?

Apologies for the use of light grey wire on the white background to represent the white wires from the pickups. I don't have any proper image drawing software on this PC at the moment to make a white wire look more obvious. There is meant to be a jumper between the terminals on the lower-right of the 3-way switch labelled 'in2' and 'in3'; it's just hard to make out.

You can re-use the existing volume pot, tone pot, tone cap and output jack from the original guitar.

I'll scribble something together tomorrow. Things to be aware of though:

• The three way blade switch will require a specific version (not your standard Tele-style selector switch) which may be a bit hard to come by. Essentially it's a 3-position version of the Oak Grigsby 5-position super switch. One example here.
• The two pickups will need to be installed with one spun around 180 degrees. If the look of the pickups is important to you choose humbuckers that don't have a single row of exposed pole pieces, polepieces that are different in appearance (a row of screws and a row of slugs) or zebra bobbin colours.

1 hour ago, biliousfrog said:

Ideally I think I'd like the 3 positions to be: 1)Bridge humbucker - 2) Bridge + Neck (inner coils only) - 3) Neck humbucker.

Then the toggle to switch between series & parallel

I think it can be done with some minor caveats. Need a bit more clarification regarding your choice of seriel/parallel options (this was discussed recently). Do you mean with the mini toggle in the series position you want:

1. Bridge series (ie normal humbucker)

2. Bridge and neck inner coils in series

3. Neck series (normal humbucker)

And with the mini toggle in the parallel position you want:

1. Bridge in parallel

2. Inner coils in parallel

3. Neck in parallel

Or something else?

5 hours ago, daft.dude said:

- When you are grounding at the various points (x4 on this diagram)  Is it all going to the bridge or the back of the volume pot? 

- Is there a typical sequence or rule for grounding?  ie. in my head that's done first is it?

Ground to wherever it's more convenient. As long as everything that should be grounded is grounded, and that the ground is solid and reliable (ie, not likely to wiggle loose or break off), you should be OK.

No real hard and fast rules to worry about, other than chosing a grounding scheme that is practical to implement. It's no good deciding to make the back of the volume pot the only point you are going to wire all 10 ground connections to if you have no way of manhandling ten bits of wire onto the shell of the pot without them all springing loose everytime you approach it with the soldering iron, or reducing the pot casing to a molten, bubbling pile of metal in order to try and heat it up enough to attach that last ground wire.

BTW, you don't need the top-right '0' terminal on the 5-way switch grounded. It's connected to nothing and does nothing, so save yourself another ground wire.

5 hours ago, daft.dude said:

- Where the killswitch connects, I'm guessing it's okay to just solder it straight onto the same lug for the jack output? 

Should be fine.

5 hours ago, daft.dude said:

- With capacitors, is there a particular one I should be using with this setup and a 1 meg pot?

Your tone pot is marked 500k, not 1 meg?

Value-wise, something in the order of 0.022uF to 0.047uF will work fine (the bigger the cap value the duller the tone will be as you wind the tone pot down).

Type-wise, use whatever makes you happy. Most production guitar companies (and regular hoomans) would probably just chose a greencap or Orangedrop-style cap. If you want to use some kind of exotic, vintage, paper-in-oil, new-old-stock, delivered in the beak of a white dove, presented to you on a velvet cushion capacitor, that's also OK, but be aware that their correspondingly overblown price makes them less attractive and their much-larger physical size makes them downright annoying to fit inside a guitar cavity.

5 hours ago, daft.dude said:

- With regards to areas that need extra wire, is there a particular grade or brand I need to get?  Below I've put green dots where I'm guessing I need to place, cut to size, extra wires? 11 in total?

Whatever wire you can get your hands on will work fine, as long as it's easy to work with. Stranded wire is easier to deal with than solid-core. You might find it easiest and cheapest to cut up something like an old RCA video lead and pull out the centre conductor from it, or the power lead from an old phone charger. Wire like that can be free if you look in the right places.

4 hours ago, daft.dude said:

This is the pot I've researched
https://www.tubeampdoctor.com/en/fender-style-push-pull-potentiometer-a1m-pc-mount-d-shaft-004-1512-000?c=335

It will function OK, but it's going to be a pig to work with. The solder pins are designed for a printed circuit board and it's going to be difficult to get wires to solder to it, particularly if you have to make more than one connection to a pin. The threaded portion of the shaft is supposedly only 1/4" long, which is less than Strandberg's claimed 3/8", so there's a chance that the nut will not reach the threaded section of the pot once its installed through the face of the guitar.

Something like this is better, but you'll probably have to replace the volume knob as the shaft is designed for a push-on splined knob:

https://guitarpartscenter.eu/en_US/p/BOURNS-1M-push-pull-audio-pot-std/5135

16 hours ago, simon1138 said:

that fretboard matches the two dodgy ones exactly for fret spacing. neither match the 25.5 inch scale of the template.

Then assume that the template is incorrect, not the other way around. If the three items that you have are supposedly set out to 25.5" scale and match each other, and the 25.5" scale template doesn't match any of the three, then disregard what the template says.

If you've bought pre-slotted fretboards and a neck you almost have no need for a fret template anyway.

16 hours ago, simon1138 said:

I have measured from the nut to the 12th fret and all three say 324mm

Then you have a fretboard that is 25.5" scale.

Nut to 12th = half the nominal scale length. You measured 324mm.  Double it to get the nut-to-bridge distance: 2 x 324mm =  648mm. Convert to inches: 648mm / 25.4 = 25.5".

16 hours ago, simon1138 said:

they are either radiused slightly, on the wrong side or, they are not radiused (which would make sense) and the other side has a bow

Unlikely that they were both manufactured with the slots cut on the wrong side of the radiused face (were they advertised as pre-radiused as well?). It'd also be unusual for only one side to be bowed outwards (bulged?) while the opposite face remained flat. More likely that the fretboards have cupped along the face where the slots have been cut and you've actually got a corresponding bow along the back (unslotted face). If you lay a straightedge across the face of the board where the slots have been cut there's a good chance you'll see daylight under the middle of the straightedge.

16 hours ago, simon1138 said:

I have tried to remove the bow and had no luck as my plane is struggling to cut maple and I dont want the hassle of mucking about with planing the wood.

As @Bizman62 has suggested, unless the cupping is so minor that you can squeeze it flat with only hand pressure, your only real course of action is to reflatten it. That may involve planing. Sanding is another option, using paper attached to some kind of flat surface. The back needs to be relatively flat so that it will mate to the neck and for the glue to hold it successfully. If it's too warped the action of attempting to force the edges to bend flat against the neck is either going to result in the glue joint failing as it tries to pull itself apart, or the neck being liable to twist and warp.

Note that if you do decide to flatten it by planing/sanding, doing so will reduce the effective thickness of the board; if you take off the highest spot on the bowed surface the usable thickness of the board reduces by the amount you just took off. If you then try and take off the high spots on the opposite face to make both sides coplanar you're reducing the thickness again. Maybe not an issue if you're starting with an overly-thick fretboard, but if your fretboard is only 6mm thick to begin with and you were hoping to use a 6mm thick fretboard on your build, it's not going to work.

@Bizman62's other suggestion for trying to coax the board back to a flat shape takes a significant amount of time. Or may not do anything. Or may result in the board re-cupping once removed from the acclimatising environment. You'd have to weigh up for yourself whether you can afford to wait for the outcome of that process. I've seen it done on expensive, one-off, fancy cuts of timber where the chances of it working out were weighed up against the size, cost and aesthetic value of the wood. A couple of maple fretboards, maybe not so much.

If the acclimatising process takes weeks (or there's a chance it may not work), and you're not keen on planing/sanding the existing boards flat again (or they're not thick enough to do it successfully), and a replacement pre-slotted fretboard can be purchased cheaply and takes about the same amount of time to get to you, I know which way I'd be leaning.

No need to remove any of the shielding. Just need to make sure that the tip connection of the jack (and also the tip of the plug once it's inserted) cannot come into contact with the shielding that's already there.

Reinstall the jack and insert a lead. See if/where the jack is contacting the shielding and treat it accordingly.

Edit: @Bizman62 beat me to it.

2 hours ago, tparker said:

Still not following the math on the pots, but will print out the drawing and try to wrap the brain around it.

If you're not familiar with converting a wiring diagram to a schematic it's a bit hard to visualise. Think of it a bit like having a car (the pickup) tow a trailer (the output signal). As you start throwing more weight into the trailer (volume pots, tone controls, blend pots) the car starts struggling more to move the load behind it.

PS - moved to the electronics subforum.

34 minutes ago, tparker said:

What I'm now perplexed about is why it doesn't boost again when you set both to p90 or humbucker? Wouldn't it wall off the signal from ground. What am I missing?

If you set both blend pots to 100% P90 (or both to 100% humbucker), you've still got the P90 signal connected to both blend pots in parallel. Two equal value resistors in parallel result in a combined resistance of half the value of one of the resistors. So if your blend pot is 250K, the P90 'sees' the two blend pots in parallel and is loaded by both, and the effective resultant blend pot is actually only 125K. The output cannot reach its full potential and you end up slugging the P90 signal harder than you would if you just had a single volume pot of 250K.

It's made even worse by the addition of the master volume pot, which further slugs the output. And the tone pot. It's probable that both the P90 and Humbucker are struggling to push the signal out; it's just that the P90 struggles the most and is the pickup that becomes the most obvious to your ears in doing so.

41 minutes ago, tparker said:

Ugh, looks like I'm looking at a triple pole switch to keep the channels totally isolated. Was hoping to avoid that wiring mess.

I think the easy fix is to utilise the unused half of the selector switch at the bottom-left of your diagram to disconnect the ground from the 'de-selected' blend control (my additions/mods in purple):

You might still get some minor cross-coupling wierdness between the two pickups at either extreme of the blend pot rotation, but I think you'll get an improvement in output, and it should certainly alleviate the issue with the blend pots cutting off the signal when they're both set to opposite extremes.

As you say, anything more fancy than this will likely require a three pole switch and a significant amount of spaghetti inside your guitar

Actually, on second look I'm a little curious if it works properly at all.

Consider if you wind up blend pot A to 100% P90 and blend pot B down to 0% P90. Blend pot B will short the P90 signal to ground and you'll end up with no signal at all, even though you're expecting blend pot A to provide 100% P90 signal. If you reverse the blend pot settings (A = 0%, B = 100%) you get the same problem. Same goes with the humbucker pickup signal too. And it's also irrespective of which blend signal you select using the toggle switch.

The best you can expect from the circuit is if both blend pots are set to 50% and the volume pot at max. Possibly another reason why the P90 sounds so dull.

Interesting circuit. I assume you're using the two blend pots to essentially dial in two pickup mix 'settings' and switch between the two, rather than explicitly switch between neck and bridge pickups. For added player confusion you could conceivably dial each of the two blend pots to 100% neck and bridge and effectively reverse the switching of bridge and neck pickups if you wanted  

What are the values/tapers of your pots? Are they the dedicated blend pots from Stewmac or are they just generic dual gang pots?

It could be that the P90 might be getting loaded down too much. At any one time in your circuit you effectively have 3 volume pots and 2 tone pots connected to each  pickup, which in most guitars would probably be considered a fairly heavy load for a pickup to drive. That could potentially lead to the pickups having a dull output.

1 hour ago, tparker said:

Maybe add a resister to the pot to make it 750?

Won't work unfortunately. You can't add a resistor to a pot to make it appear 'bigger' to the pickup.

2 hours ago, tparker said:

No one makes a 750 or 1 meg pot switch combo it seems.

https://guitarelectronics.com/bourns-1meg-audio-taper-guitar-pot-w-push-pull-switch/

1 hour ago, tparker said:

Just noticed I labeled the caps wrong. .047 is on humbucker tone control.

Welllll, you don't explicitly have a humbucker tone control as such. Your tone circuit is connected after the blending, so you really have independent tone controls of each of the two pickup blends, rather than each individual pickup.

As an example, the diagram below will give you what I initially thought you were after. I've added the required wiring alterations in blue:

That gives you:

1. Bridge standard (series) humbucking
2. Bridge series humbucking + middle parallel humbucking
3. Middle parallel humbucking
4. Middle parallel humbucking + neck series humbucking
5. Neck series humbucking

Plus a phase reverse on the middle pickup using the push-pull pot.

There is a way of implementing an auto series-to-parallel reconfiguration of either the bridge or neck humbuckers for positions 2 and 4 as per your request (if I understand what you are after correctly), but not for both humbuckers. There aren't enough switching elements on the 5-way selector to do it. You could configure the bridge humbucker to auto series/parallel when changing from position 1 to 2, but you'd have to add another push-pull or mini toggle switch to support series/parallel of the neck humbucker for position 4 and 5. And even then you'd have to manually switch the neck humbucker yourself if you needed to go from parallel neck+ middle on position 4 to series neck on position 5.

51 minutes ago, daft.dude said:

1. Bridge series
2. B +M both in parallel
3. M parallel
4. N + M in parallel
5 . Neck Series

I think there's a bit of confusion as to what series and parallel means here. When you combine two pickups in most cases (say a Strat with positions 2 and 4, or a Les Paul with the pickup selector in the middle position) the two selected pickups are connected in parallel. Think of it more like two people standing side-by-side. Two pickups can be combined in series, but it's less common. The two-people analogy becomes more like one guy standing on the shoulders of the second.

Humbuckers add an extra level of serial- and parallel-ness to the mix. The pickups themselves are two independent coils (or two independent pickups, if you like, built into the same package). The two coils can essentially be connected in series or in parallel. For most people the humbucker will be wired with the two coils wired in series. The two coils in the pickup can be wired in parallel if you like, but the sound is generally accepted to be significantly weaker and thinner than a traditional series-connected humbucker. Stylistically that's entirely up to you.

So.

For positions 2 and 4 in your case the question becomes:

Quote

2. B+M both in parallel

^^ do you want the bridge and middle humbucker coils to be wired in parallel and the pickups also combined in parallel, or do you want the two pickups to be wired with coils in series and pickups combined in parallel, or some other series/parallel combination of coils/pickups?

Hint: any pickup selection that dynamically/automatically reconfigures the series/parallel connection of the humbucker coils themselves from one position to the next (ie changing from positions 1-2 and 4-5) is much more difficult to achieve - this may help steer your decision a bit.

Quote

4. N + M in parallel

^^ ditto but for the middle/neck pickup combinations?

1 hour ago, daft.dude said:

Pull the volume pot and then you would ideally get

1. B Series
2. B+M both out of phase
3. M out of phase
4. N+M out of phase
5. N Series

Again, I think the use of phase-reversing might be getting confuddled a bit. Reversing the phase of one pickup and only selecting that one pickup (position 3) will be inaudible. Consequently reversing the phase of the combined selection of two pickups (position 2 or 4) will have no audible effect either. However reversing the phase of one pickup and combining it with another one will be audible (that's part of the reason why the in-between positions on a Strat have that characteristic 'quack' sound).

Phase-reversing a sound source (aka, pickup) needs to be combined with another non-reversed sound source for the effect to be audible. To that end I think what you're really after is a phase-reverse option on the middle pickup only.

Sorry if this is a bit long and wordy.

9 hours ago, daft.dude said:

- 2 full humbucking pickups on the middle positions, no splitting

- It is intentional to make the three middle positions quieter with the middle the quietest

- I want positions 2, 3 and 4 to be quieter with more top end and the out of phase switch for lots of different clean voicings.  

So just clarifying, the switching patterns you're after are:

1. Bridge standard (series) humbucking
2. Bridge series humbucking + middle parallel humbucking
3. Middle parallel humbucking
4. Middle parallel humbucking + neck series humbucking
5. Neck series humbucking

Plus a phase invert for the middle pickup on a push-pull?

6 hours ago, daft.dude said:

1. Bridge Series
2. Bridge and Middle Parallel
3. Middle in Parallel
4. Neck and Middle in Parallel
5. Neck in Series

Re, positions 2 and 4: splitting the coils isn't mentioned here. Is this something else you were wanting to consider, or is the intention that these 'in-between' positions to remain as full humbucking on each combined pair of pickups?

Re, position 3: a dual rail pickup with the coils in parallel configuration is an odd request (will likely sound extremely weak in comparison to the other positions). Is this intentional?

6 hours ago, daft.dude said:

1 meg push pill volume to put positions 2, 3 and 4 out of phase

I assume you mean you want to the option of putting the middle pickup out of phase on the push-pull. Note that this will only have an audible impact on positions 2 and 4. Position 3 out of phase will not be audible as there's nothing to put the pickup out of phase against.

14 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Igorrr's "The Making Of Savage Sinusoid".

[draining sink growl]

IGORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[/draining sink growl]

Sorry. Couldn't resist. Carry on.

On 8/1/2021 at 9:22 PM, Andyjr1515 said:

It's around 6.5mm.

Pricewise, well...it's all relative.  For UK prices, it wasn't bad.  But, then again, UK prices for decent timbers are generally outrageous!

Aye. Imported species down here (ie, pretty much any of the 'standard' ones used in guitars) are massively overpriced for us too. In many cases it's cheaper to buy a finished instrument than it is to buy the raw timber to make the same thing!

Having said that, 110 quid is (seems?) outrageously good value for the ebony pair. I don't think I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of getting those for a quarter of that price, notwithstanding even managing to import it here through CITES in the first place.

How thick is that ebony top? Must've cost a small fortune!

I wasn't aware of that particular variant of the Trini Lopez. I assume he had multiple iterations of his signature model over the years? The majority of results I get for 'Trini Lopez Guitar' in Google show something that looks more like an ES335 with standard rounded horns and a Firebird style six-inline headstock (also the guitar Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters is associated with).

Youz aint no bloody true blue Aussie unless ya can pass the attached test. Flamin' mongrels...

Aust-citizen-test_2020-04-17.pdf

9 hours ago, ScottR said:

We need more. I love hearing the Aussie take on things!

Flamin' hell! Watch out for drop bears and don't let the hoop snakes catch ya!

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

No, we are saying it might be 120 degrees.

No. I am saying it's probably not 120 degrees. If it were 120 degrees the math dictates that the point at which the two side baffles meet in the middle is more than half the depth of the cab, which in the second photo at the top of the page doesn't look right. What I am suggesting is that the angle is wider due to the point of intersection appearing to be less than half the depth of the cab. 140 degrees is based on the guesstimate from the photo that the point at which the two baffles meet is nearer to one third the depth. The intersection depth might be more, in which case the angle will be less.

But at the end of the day you really just need to decide how critical these dimensions are to you in order to create a cab with this novel baffle arrangement. The cab appears to be a rare item and no plans exist for it in the public domain, so the chances of you ever needing to square your own interpretation of the cab against the Trace Elliot original are slim, both physically and acoustically. If you work within the known parameters (the overall dimensions quoted above and the appearance of an equilateral triangle for the lower baffle) anything you do after that to make it appear close enough should be sufficient.

I think there's a misunderstanding with what there is to 'break' the neck angle from. Again, I still don't see a need to purposely design a neck with break angle in it to mitigate a high bridge (as you would for a guitar fitted with a tune-o-matic bridge for example).

You can design a guitar with a neck that deliberately angles backwards if you want. There's nothing here that says it cannot be done. But the strings still traverse a straight line from nut to bridge, and the proposed body design effectively stops at the bridge (sketch held up to camera at 02:00 in second video), so there's nothing left at that point to break the angle away from. The pickups still need to be positioned underneath the strings and the face of the guitar still needs to be at the same angle (more or less) as the strings for the pickups to be able to 'reach' the strings. The body itself is so contoured on front and back that neck break angle where it meets the body becomes completely irrelevant.

Borrowing @Bizman62's sketch from earlier, if you extend the neck blank (exisitng lines drawn in burgundy colour) up through the body (new lines drawn in green) there is zero neck break angle required, yet the neck may still be angled backwards as much as you like (relative to other surfaces of the body):

Given that the proposed body is such an organic, free-flowing shape, to simplify design and construction of the 'business end' of the guitar (ie, the neck, strings, pickups and bridge) it will be far easier and simpler to keep the neck-thru section as basic as possible. The wings of the body either side of the neck-thru block can then ebb and flow as much as you like in 3D space, pseudo-angling the neck backwards through the contact points with the players' body.

The more I read the OPs design hitlist the less clear I am about what the shape of this is meant to be. I originally thought the whole thing was meant to be some kind of hollowed-out bowl, convex on the front face of the body and concave on the rear. The 'thickness' of the body was to come from the distance from the outermost front face of the convex face to where the outer edges 'fold back' against the players' body. Now I'm not sure if the body was actually meant to be curved on the front and flat(ish) on the back, giving more of a potbelly shape.

Both bodies are effectively 7.5cm 'thick', but the construction of each are substantially different if they are to be hollow (cross-sectional rough-as-guts comparison sketch below):

Some more clarity from the OP would be helpful here. There are a number of figures quoted that I'm having trouble understanding how they work with each other (1" thick top and back, 4cm thick neck-thru, 5cm chamber depth...). Whether neck break angle is required here may be a little early to call.

Getting back to the OPs original call for things to watch out for, I would point out that if there is some kind of (headless?) trem to be installed in this as the sketch seems to suggest, there will be a minimum thickness of wood required around it in order for it to work correctly. 4cm is certainly what I'd call a minimum to make room for the springs and trem block on most typical headless trem assemblies available these days. You can make the block shorter to fit a slimmer body, but beyond a certain limit the leverage forces required by the springs to equalise the strings starts making the trem feel noticeably stiff and uncomfortable in use.