Almost there, new Build Info

[WRGKMC]

Finally got up the ambition to work on one of my builds this week end. Its been sitting around far too long.

 

This one is made from a piece of Purple Heart which is at lest 150 years old. My drummer got the piece of word from an antique bed post which was shipped over to the US. He used to do antique restorations for an importer before he died and gave me a slab for a guitar. The wood may be much older we can only guestimate based on the style.

 

This was the earlier rough cut on it. The width wasn't quite as wide as I needed for a Firebird style build but I had hoped for something close. I allowed my buddy to route the neck joint because he had a shop and could do a much better job then I could with hand tools. Thing was he had a major screw up and wound up routing the wrong side of the slab. Takes a drummer to do something like that. I couldn't act too upset. He supplied the wood and was very ill battling cancer when he did that work and would never get to see the finished work.

 

I could have redone the route on it on the other side and made it a shorter body but it would have been problematic.

 

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I wound up with this shape instead which really isn't that bad. Since its got a Tele neck it kind looks like a Fender Jag without a horn. I went with a single bridge Tailpiece on this one. I added a StuMac shim to add some lift at the bridge. I may have been able to get away without it but with the bridge completely down the strings will touch the frets which should be ideal once I adjust it up.

 

I also needed some clearance for the pickups. This body had to be made thin because the wood was so darn heavy. I thought my Mahogany LP was heavy at 11Lbs. This slab started off at nearly 2" and weighed as much as a cinder block. I ripped it down to 1 1/4" and tapered the back like a Strat and now its much more manageable.

 

This pic shows the bridge mounted.

 

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I figured what the heck, I may as well do the pickup routes.

 

Man o man I had no idea what I was in for. I thought my Walnut Topped Semi Hollow was tough to route out. I knew that one was petrified.

 

This one was like routing into solid stone. Took me 5 hours total using a Dremmil tool. I had to pull the smoke detectors battery out I was making so much smoke I kept setting the thing off. I actually lost the feeling in my thumb for two days after doing those routes. Must have pinched a nerve in my hand or something.

 

After routing the neck pickup I decided to use an electric drill and remove the bulk of material on the bridge pup. I still burnt up 3 router bits. These are the kind of jobs which make me wish I had built a shop instead of a recording studio. A drill press and heavy duty router would have made short work out of this job but at least it shows others the work can be done with inexpensive hand tools so long as you aren't don't allot of builds on a schedule. I only build one instrument every couple of years any more since I keep them for my own use and use them mostly for recording

 

I had to drill the holes for the pickup wires and ground wire to the bridge too. That was a real bastard too.

This pic shows you just how purple that wood is.

 

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I haven't routed the control plate hole yet. I was going to put in a tele plate but I have to go deep with those to get the rotary switch to fit. I thought I might try something different on this one and bought a Tele Bass Plate instead and plan on using two volumes and a mini toggle instead.

 

I'm still debating whether I'll put the jack on the plate, mount it in the wood, or install a Strat type jack. I suspect I'll wind up with the Strat Jack because a wood mount will wind up being a PITA when sitting. Already checked that out.

 

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The neck isn't bad on this onw. I pad more then I usually do for that one. I had a couple of others on hand which were all maple but they didn't look good with the body. This onw has a yellowed finish and rosewood fret board, plus its a 22 fret tele neck which overhangs the body. The frets aren't the best but I'll likely keep them stock for awhile. I typically use super jumbo for a fluted neck feel.

 

The neck has an excellent feel. This ones going to play really fast. The nut is just a cheap plastic piece of garbage, again, I'll leave that for a shot till too. I'll swap it for a brass nut when I re-fret the neck. No sense in changing it until I do the frets.

 

Once I get the control area routed I'll put the clear coat on. I have to decide whether to go with Poly, Tung or Lacquer. Each have their plusses and minuses. Since this is an antique piece of wood I'm leaning towards Tung or Lacquer. If I wasn't worried about what the slight yellow tinting the Tung produces when its layered on I'd go for it. The stuff is super durable too. Dam near bullet proof. I really don't want to be touching up nicks and scratches so I may wind up with the Tung.

[WRGKMC]

I had the Mighty Mite tuners already. I like them better then the Grovers I have on my other guitar.

I'm likely to swap them out with a set of black toners so they match the pickup rings. I have a set on another guitar which needs to be restrung so I'll swap them then.

 

The pickups are Generic builds but the guy who makes this comes the closest to actual Gibson's I've come across so far. They measure 3 Henry's (most cheap generics only measure 2H) and about 6.5K ohms. (7 and above are too high and sound awful)

 

I plan on installing at least one push/push pot to have the bridge switch between series and parallel. I like the differences this makes in gain/tone compared to something like split coils but I need another pot to do it with both pups. I could split both with a single Push/Push but I'll wait and see how it sounds first.

 

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[Phil O'Keefe]

 

 

[crustoleum]

Appears to have OK upper fret access , a little . maybe . to me.

[crustoleum]

To me , that thing needs a tremolo unit to fill up the lower bout space , well , hmm, yes , even with the purple color , to me , on and with an instrument as such, a tremolo thing , to me would be quite an OK thing to put on that thing, there . maybe , actually

peace

[crustoleum]

maybe a "vibrola" thing with a "harp" thing on the cover plate thing that is on some of those things, or something similar as such, maybe

 

[Etienne Rambert]

I like the small size & color so far. But how heavy is it?

I think you will have something unique when you finish & that’s great.

 

My archtop had had several screwups. But each one & each fix took it away from the norm. Today - there is not another like it on the planet.

 

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[1001gear]

Looks like something from the Philadelphia experiment. The mistake cut looks better.

[WRGKMC]

I actually do have a Bigsby type vibrato I bought awhile back. Its black in color and I did size it up to see how it might look. I decided against it for a few reasons. First, I've tried several roller bridges and haven't found one to sound good using light strings. Not only do they buzz allot but the rollers don't sound as good as regular TOM saddles.

 

Second, the last 3 builds I've done had TOM setups and while I do like them I wanted a change.

I thought about using a Frequensator too but you cant use a floating tailpiece on and angled tail. The tail needs to be parallel to the bridge for it to be straight.

 

3rd. I was impressed by a build I had played about 10 years ago that had a wrap around bridge. The guitar wasn't much to talk about for looks or tone but it's playability was amazing. The guitar sustained for ages and it had no string slippage at the bridge which is an important aspect for a big string bender like myself.

 

I got the control plate yesterday. I would have routed it into place yesterday but my hand was still bothering me so I'll give it a day or two.

 

I have some Tung oil left over but its been on the shelf for a couple of years. I think I'm going to buy a fresh can and foam brushes.

[WRGKMC]

Finished the routing so everything fits. I was tempted to throw it together without a finish to try it out but decided to add the finish instead.

 

I tried some of the old Tung oil I had but it was as thick as glue and wasn't going on properly. Had to spring for a fresh can and they didn't have small cans so I wound up spending more then I wanted with the brushes.

 

I put about 6 or 7 coats on and I need to let it dry for a couple of days before I can sand out any bumps left behind. Tung will get a skin within an hour or two and you can apply the next layer, but it needs to cure for several days before you can sand it without getting beads of lacquer shedding. If you get the last coat is super smooth you can avoid having to do allot of buffing and simply wax it get rid of the sticky feel. Then after a month or so buff it as smooth as glass look using swirl remover to get a near lacquer gloss shine.

 

It was humid and raining all weekend so I had to hang the body in the studio to dry.

You can see how much the wood darkened. It looks like its almost a Mahogany color but that's because I had an orange light in the studio. In a bright white light you can definitely see the purple in it. These pics show the body with 2 coats.

 

Its got the route for the Controls and Output jack here too. Once the finish is done I can install the components and wire it up.

You can see a neck shim in the neck pocket. Stu Mac sells them for different angles very cheap and these allow full contact with the neck heel which its better then making my own.

 

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This wood almost has a 3D looks to it. The grain changes depending on the angle the light hits it.

 

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[Phil O'Keefe]

The tung oil looks like it's really bringing out the grain too. Nice.

 

[WRGKMC]

Yea, its good stuff for natural finishes. You can even wipe it on with a cloth if you wanted a minimal finish and just want the thing sealed. .

The good part is it can easily be removed with paint remover and steel wool very quickly and in situations where you have to apply it under or over lacquer it actually works quite well.

 

My main guitar build has an all maple tele neck that's gotten very worn. I re-fretted it after wearing out the original frets and the finish was only a couple of coats thick. There's not much left on the fret board and its turning that ugly gray.

 

When I get this new guitar done I plan to remove that neck and either remove the rest of the lacquer and use Tung over it or pull the fret, sand it then install the frets and Tung oil over the frets, I just have to remember to wax the frets this time so removing the film and polishing is easier. When I restored my buddies guitar I left the frets in, sanded between frets then applies the Tung over. It gives white maple an antiqued yellow color and the fingers don't stick nearly as much as they do to lacquer.

[WRGKMC]

I do hate finishing guitars but I finally got that mess out of the way. Had issues getting the finish to smooth out and had a grain effect going on. I waited till I had enough coats on there then used an electric sander to get things smoothed out. From there I started wiping coats on there instead of using the brushes and that did the job. I left the grain effect on the back because it simply looked too cool to mess with.

 

Assembly day, finally came. I gave the finish an extra day to dry then put it all together. Took about a half a day yesterday. There wasn't any one thing that was real difficult to deal with, simply took my time to do things like dig up the right screws, drill pilot holes for screws, wire it up and spent quite a bit of time on the frets. I had allot of relief and taking up the truss nut was slow going.

 

I also had high frets in the upper registers which weren't cooperating. They had right ends where my High E was getting trapped under the frets and after a couple of hours of being strung up I had strings fretting out badly over the 12th fret. Had to pull the string back and level at lest 6 times using my diamond fret file the last time and that seemed to do the trick. The strings were a bit high when I was done but the neck is still moving so I'll leave it as is for now.

 

I had to take more material out of the control cavity to have the wires all fit. I haven't installed a switch yet. At the moment I have the two pickups wired independently. I can turn either one off and still hear the other. I may wind up leaving it that way and wire in another pot which acts as a coil tap or tone pot.

 

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The bridge set up much easier then I thought it would. I had some reservations figuring this bridge had fixed intonation for a Gibson scale guitar and the only adjustment you have is tilt and height. Luckily that was all unfounded. I was able to dial in perfect intonation with relative ease though I did have to tweak the several times when adjusting the neck and leveling frets.

 

What was most surprising was the sound I got out of this thing. I suspected this one was going to sound good. After I got the finish on it I knocked on the body with my knuckles and you could hear this really nice bell tone to the wood. The kind of bell tone you'd get from a Xylophone

 

Talk about sustain, Man alive, Got it in buckets out of this one. The most amazing thing was the mid tones. I really didn't think Purple Heart was going to be a decent tone wood. I had read in places it didn't work out very well for guitar builders. Maybe I just got lucky or something but the Frequency spectrum wound up being an superb balance. I though for sure I'd get a muddy bottom end but this thing one is all about tone balance.

 

After building this one I'm more convinced then before that the body shape is a factor in the instruments tone. I was wanting a guitar to look similar to a Firebird when I first started out. I never expected it to wind up sounding like a firebird. (with the brighter tones of the tele neck added)

 

Here's a recording of it I did real quick. The lead part is the New Build. I have a few flubs playing so please ignore those. I hadn't completed its setup and was fighting allot of friction bending strings. I'm used to super jumbo frets and smooth as glass bending. You can hear some of the tones this thing produces,

 

 

What I did was tweak the sound throughout the song balancing between one pickup and the other. There's no switch so you don't hear a hard cut between one pickup and another. I also do some different gain settings and cleaner tones towards the end of the song.

 

I'm running these pickups through 250K pots too. I can only imagine how they'll sound through 500K pots. I wanted to run them before deciding on how to finish the electronics and do have a pretty good idea what I can do now.

 

 

 

 

 

[Preacher]

Awesome; that looks great and the soundcloud track sounds fantastic, made me look up the pickups again from up in the thread.

 

What OD/ amp were using with the lead on that track?

 

The location of the output jack looks great, too, like a straight-up custom instrument.

 

Really interesting project/ guitar - thank you for posting the process. Cheers!

[WRGKMC]

I recorded both guitars direct using one of these with different amp/cab models dialed up. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/StompLab1G--vox-stomplab-ig-modeling-effects-pedal?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpNr8sJnB2gIVkMDACh3w1AIcEAQYASABEgIWE_D_BwE

 

They make a Bass version which I also used playing my Hofner Bass. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/StompLab1B--vox-stomplab-ib-bass-modeling-effects-pedal?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwq-sz5nB2gIVDdbACh0ZCwqqEAQYASABEgKr4PD_BwE

 

I used a Zoom 123 drum machine for the percussion straight in too. I have a full studio too, Two sets of guitar amps, bass amps and acoustic drum set all miced up. I typically use that when I have a full band over and I'm able to run the DAW wirelessly when playing live. For simple song writing I just record direct. Makes things easy so you can focus on the music.

 

I lucked out on that output jack it covered up a small patch where the original bedpost had a screw hole. Its also a very comfortable place for the cable to connect when sitting.

 

I played the guitar for several hours last night, fine tweaking its settings. This one has needed several relief adjustments to level out the neck. Buying premade necks from China is pretty much pot luck on quality. I only got one out of 20 that was really screwed up and that one took months to exhibit its back bow problem. I love this necks profile and tone. Hopefully it will eventually settle down. I been hanging so there's weight on it and that seems to be speeding its ability to counter the strings tension. Time will tell. If its not the way it should be after a few months I'll pull the frets out and level the fret board. I typically glue frets in and after that's done they typically settle down for good.

 

What amazed me the most, I was getting self sustaining notes I been getting at incredibly low volume levels. The one piece bridge accounts for allot of sustain to begin with but I found the F# and C notes on the D string, as well as several others across the fret board to be especially resonant and produce EBow like sustains. This chunk of wood is far more musical then I thought it would be.

 

Again I'm reevaluating my opinions on body shape as having an influence on an instruments tone. This guitar has an ass end on it which is nearly as large as the area between the bridge and neck. I've owned many small body guitars including my Steinberger. Getting similar frequency responses is easy, its just a matter of pickup choice. A small body has practically no additional wood resonance however and could never achieve what this one is.

 

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

Nice job WRGKMC! Sounds like everything turned out really well on the new build project.

 

 

[r0bo01]

good one! i was on the fence about your body shape, but you're probably on to something as to it influencing the sound. nice and snotty when you want it to be! and i bet it sounds tasty clean as well,,,

d b

[WRGKMC]

I'll do more recording with it this weekend so I'll put it through the numbers. I'm thinking a fat juicy compressor with a tad of presence added should produce some excellent jazz tones.

 

I played it for another 3 hours last night and it does seem the neck is settling down. A few micro tweaks to zero things in and it was sounding fine.

The neck on this one is extremely fast but its also wide enough to play chords without problems.

 

Because of the long tail the right hand sits directly over the bridge instead of between the two pickups as you'd find on most guitars. The neck isn't actually longer but because the center is at the bridge you have to reach out farther left when playing. If I pull my left arm against the body it, it would normally put my fingers at the 12th fret on an LP or strat. On this one it puts my fingers over the 15th to 18th frets, at least when sitting. I need to find and mount the strap buttons and see where it hangs.

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

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What I did was tweak the sound throughout the song balancing between one pickup and the other. There's no switch so you don't hear a hard cut between one pickup and another. I also do some different gain settings and cleaner tones towards the end of the song.

 

I'm running these pickups through 250K pots too. I can only imagine how they'll sound through 500K pots. I wanted to run them before deciding on how to finish the electronics and do have a pretty good idea what I can do now.

 

 

So you're using two volume controls and no tone control? Are you thinking about switching over to 300k or 500k pots instead of the 250k's?

 

Are you going to add a pickup selector switch eventually? You could mount it in the extra 1/4" output jack hole on the control plate...

 

How about tone control? Maybe dual concentric stacked controls ala the early Jazz Bass? Or you could leave it switchless and use the extra 1/4" hole for a master tone control...

 

 

[WRGKMC]

I'm still debating on what I might do. I ordered a dozen 500K pots off EBay. The mini pots were 10 for $6. Pretty good deal even if they are generic.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/10x-Audio-5...53.m2749.l2649

 

Truthfully this guitar kicks butt with the ones I have in there now. To be honest I wasn't sure they are 250K's till I measured them and sure enough they were. I bought a loaded Tele control plate for $5 - (man I love those $5 deals on stuff that should only cost $5) I assumed it had 250K pots but given how good it sounds I through they could be higher.

 

This does make me rethink using 300K pots

 

What I don't want is them to get any cooler then they are now. As far as adding a switch I was shopping for an on/on/on mini toggle. I tried to get a regular On/Off /On to work thinking I could ground the pickup but there wasn't any way to do it at full volume.

 

I found another 250K mini pot and tried it as a tone control this weekend. It had the right cut to remove treble I didn't figure on it reducing the edge when it was turned off. I guess three 250K pots is too much even if there is only a tad of grounding through the cap.

 

I guess I'll wait for the other pots to show up and try all 500K. The guitar does look cool with three knobs in a row.