alloyguitar

That's what I was assumming, but I figured I'd ask, anyway. Wouldn't want to change something and have it cut the wrong frequencies, or something.

I have a schematic for a passive mid tone control I was going to put together in a project i'm working on, but it shows a .039 capacitor in the diagram, whereas, with the pickups I want to run (p90's), and pots (500k), i've been advised that a .022 capacitor is the usual choice, so i'm not sure which one to run. This is the diagram i'm referring to:

Oh, and, for the record, it actually played reasonably well when I got it. Over the past year or so, it'e deteriorated considerably, as I didn't want to bring one of my gibsons or other higher priced instruments when I moved to a larger city, in case they got stolen, so the harmony, and epi lp, and an ibanez sa series with an emg are the ones I chose to bring and usually end up picking up the 'ole harmony since it's so crappy it's enjoyable to play.

Well it was probably just going to be some cheap ebay p90's (I mean, it is a 20 dollar guitar...) that they say test at 6 or 7 ohms (can't really recall). I'm leaning towards 500k pots with individual toggles to turn each pickup on and off, but I basically know nothing about capacitors. I usually end up grabbing one from my spare guitar parts bin and hoping it'll work. Lol

So long story short, I have a soft spot in my heart for this total piece of junk harmony h804, or something like that, I picked up for a whopping 20 bucks on a 'managers special' from one of the pawn shops my dad and I usually haunt at least once a week. He buys and sells tools a lot, so we've built up a pretty good repore with the staff, hence the 20 dollar price tag. Anywho, it has wiring issues. By issues, you can press on the pickguard and the sound would drop out, it'd break up and cut in and out wildly if you played with any more force than one would finger pick (gently) with, etc. It also has a very low, kinda muddy tone, which I believe is for two reasons. One being that the closest the pickups can get to the strings is more than half an inch away (maybe further. Didn't measure before disassembly), and that there's no bridge pickup, per say. It has two single coils in more or less a middle and neck position, and a single volume and tone (both 500k pots) with no selector switch. I'd like it to be a bit brighter/more lively than it is now. My question to you fine gents is what would you run in it to achieve that? I'm considering running two mini toggles to select the individual pickups. I can't easily run more pots than the two, so that's the limit there. I'd considered 1meg pots, but I think that, if I was playing on only one of the two pickups, the tone would be retardedly bright. The stock pickups tested at between 6 and 6.1 ohms. I thought I'd mention that. I also can't easily add a bridge position pickup due to the need to route the body to do so, and my wood shop is 347 miles away from where I am currently, so that's out of the question. I'm also considering p90 pickups, instead of the single coils. I had a gibson melody maker with a p90 in it and found it very enjoyable. The body is already routed oversized (I guess one model with the same body had humbuckers), so that shouldn't be a problem. So yeah, i'm going to stop rambling now, but any help would be appreciated in putting together what combination of pot values/cap values would liven it up a bit. I realize that this is a 20 dollar plywood guitar, but I have a soft spot in my heart for making crappy things, well, less crappy (hopefully). Lol

Okay, so I don't frequent this forum often, so forgive me if this is nothing new, but.. ...how in the hell did you do that?! I love it! If it's discussed in another thread, please direct my ignorant ass there. Lol

Keep in mind that emgs use 25K pots, instead of 250/500k and a stereo input jack, so you'd have to use those. You can't use whatever old ones you have around/already in the guitar.

I thought about taking some copper or something and putting CLR on it (makes it look like hell) for a pickguard, but I might save that idea for my next one. After looking at it, I think I'm going to have to move the bridge somehow (haven't figured that out, yet), because I tried to set the intonation today and it's just not going to happen.

Well, It's not THAT far off. It's playable. I'm learning as I play it, though, that I shouldn't have angled the pickup as much, as it barely picks up the high E string. I'll try and post a sound clip of it later.

Mental Note: Next time, I should triple check to make sure the neck pocket/bridge location is absolutely straight. The High E string hangs off the fretboard slightly... ..plus the neck in general is just too high. I had to space the bridge up to make it playable. Oh well, it was entertaining and looks cool on the wall.

Lol, well that's the beauty of it, isn't it?

...what's MLIA? Anywho, I reburned it, and rubbed some acrylic paint all over it, then rubbed it off. It gives in a distressed look and left the paint in the burns, which helped them show up a lot.

Honestly, I'd leave the animals and probably the natural color of the wood. Then if anybody saw it, you could say that you built it out of a carving you bought at a flea market... ...which is awesome.

Yeah, it's starting to grow on me as well. When I purchased the stain, it was a tossup between Green or Blue. I flipped a coin, and the coin said green. ...had I known that I was going to do the pirate thing I would have picked blue. Oh well. It's still neat none-the-less.

After sanding. I've decided that I'm just going to leave it green and reburn the stuff into it, since I don't have any other water-based stains laying around.

I like that concept. A Lot. Right now I'm just sitting around and waiting for it to dry to asses the damage and what I can do to fix it. Reburning and probably relicing (sp?) are both definitely going to happen. As far as the land, if I apply a darker color directly over the top of this, will it look right? I usually paint things, not stain them, so I'm new to this game.

...and it's actually lowes stain. I applied the first coat today and am pretty disappointed with it, but oh well, I'll live. Hopefully I can save it. Here's a few photos: I decided that I wanted a bit more of a bevel on the lower horn (not that it'd really do anything with a 24 fret neck, but whatever), so I pulled out a precision guitar-building tool... ...an angle grinder. and on the back to fit my side a bit better: And here they are after a few minutes of sanding: Then i rubbed a bit of water on it to get the grain to rise: I should have left it alone here, but my dumbass decided that I wanted a green tele/esquire thing. That's after the first coat of stain, but before rubbing off the excess. Hopefully after I sand off the taller grains and add another coat it won't look as bad. I'm pretty much planning on going over the whole thing with a soldering iron again. Ya win some. Ya lose some.

Holy crap that's awesome. I actually thought about doing a map, but didn't want to spend that kinda time on it. lol.

Bahahaha, I actually thought about putting "Arr Matey" In script under the neck pickup. Lol It was a bitch burning that, though, because the variations in the grain made the soldering iron pretty much go all over the place, but all in all I'm happy. And as far as staining is concerned, I'm not doing anything special. It's a green water-based stain (called Northern Ivy I think). I wanted to use Tung Oil but googled it and everything said that it had to be an oil based stain for the oil to work, so I ended up purchasing a rub on poly. We'll see what happens.

So, I was bored today and ended up making this: Then decided that it needed a pirate ship, so, after about 30 minutes with a soldering iron, we had this burned into it: I picked up some green stain at Lowes today, so I'm probably going to attack it with that. It's spring break for me, so I have to keep myself occupied somehow. Lol.

Wow, thanks a bunch man. That should save me a ton of headaches! I'll keep you guys posted about how this contraption turns out.

well what I was saying is that I wonder how to midi unit would do it. I mean, I would assume that it would consolidate all of the signals down to just one...

I wonder how on earth it could know which string you're playing on? Maybe there are slight frequency differences between a note played on the low E string and the A. Either way, I would think that being off on your tuning even by a little bit would throw that completly out of whack. Weird. -Devon Goodspeed

I've thought about the synth stuff, but having never owned one, I'm really not sure how they operate...I'll definatly look into it, though. fookgub: I'll definatly look into the preamps that you mentioned, as that has been one of the snags I've been hitting.

As simply put as I could possibly make it, the program is being designed to tell which note(s) you are playing, and on what strings they are being played...So, in theory, tab could be displayed on your computer's monitor, and it could grade you on your performance. I.E. it would tell you if, and where, you messed up. ...also, it could be used as a way to tab something in realtime, instead of writing it down on little pieces of paper that will only get lost or thrown away. I know the whole concept sounds awfully complicated, and I may look into using a cat-5 cable as the means of transferring the signal from the guitar to the computer. As of this moment, no actual funds have been invested in the project, we're just trying to see if it would be possible to do with piezo's, and how difficult such a contraption would be. I'm thinking of something attached to the front of a TOM bridge, that would be able to pick up the signal from the strings in a location that it would not be possible to be damaged by the actual string movement.