u6crash

Woo! Guts are in and working! I ended up rewiring the whole thing with short pots. The regular CTS pots for the volume were fine. The shorter no-load tone pots grab just enough of the bushing to work.

This took a handful of tries and I learned a lot of things. 

I learned that if you use too much flux on your switch, it can run and act as a conductor. So I got to take the switch apart and clean it. 

I used two different wire colors, but more would have been better.

Feeding the pots into place got easier with practice. In the end I only used strings on the two tone pots and the jack (plus the switch) because too many strings often meant something was getting tangled up somewhere.

What ended up working best were bamboo skewers. Thin, flexible, rigid, and the point was useful.for moving the knotted ends of strings.

I also used the skewers to position the pots I to place. From the top a skewer would center and steady the shaft. A second skewer from the jack cavity would lift it into place. 

Here is my big oops moment:

I accidentally crimped the split shaft and in trying to open it up I broke off half. I'm using knobs with set screws, so I'm going to make a repair with JB Weld or something. Unfortunately, I also put a small scratch into the body.

Here it is all mocked up. I can't find the bridge. Still need to put the name.on the headstock. It's 3:30am. I'll worry about these things later.

Well. I have two in. And I feel those shafts are too long. It turns out there are some medium shaft pots out there, but they are hard to come by. 

The remaining two feel pretty stuck. I'm tempted to take the whole thing out, find new pots (or manually shortening these), and maybe rethink my wiring strategy. 

Right now I need a break before I lose my cool.

Hopefully I'll have some positive updates soon. I came to another disgusting realization yesterday. The height of the pots with the braided wire soldered on the back is too tall. So I had to break those connections and I'll be moving them to the sides of the pots. New hole for the jack is already drilled (I already had the jack plate on hand) and actually also serves as a nice way to look inside.

The pots have to go in through the bridge pickup hole because they are too big to fit anywhere else. If there were such a thing as medium height pots, that would have been ideal. And as I'm sitting here typing this, I wonder if I need a nut on the inside to keep the pot shaft from coming up too much. 

Partly life has been crazy busy, but also I knew this was going to be the most frustrating part of the process. I did check that the electronics work before I started stuffing them in, so that's one success.

On 3/26/2024 at 5:59 AM, Ay34 said:

Hi 

thank you for sharing this project

im Planing to do similar project can you please let me know if I can put fender USA strat neck on 2014 Coronado 2 reissue body ? Is it going to fit and work ?

 

I'm not certain as this is not a 2014 reissue body. But I see no reason why it wouldn't.

I'm finally trying to get back to this. 

This part went pretty okay. I have underestimated the importance of flux in past soldering attempts.

My idea for getting things in place was this string going through the bridge cavity and then hot glued to the tops of the pots.

This did not quite work and I got things tangled.up a couple times.

Here's where I'm stuck now.

The jack does not come through enough. And now I wonder if I knew this and forgot it. I have an oval jack cover with a circular depression. If I increase the size of this hole, I should be able to get the jack through the jack plate.

Other complications: The height of the long shaft pots is such that they have to tilt them under the binding, which is thicker than the actual top. 

I'm going to try and work on it a little more tonight, but this has taken up a surprising amount of my day already.

Well, I haven't died, but also have made little progress. Took a job at a local warehouse where OT is scheduled too often, while continuing to search and network for a full time job in UX or service design.

Had a little bleed through under the tape. I think I can scrape this clean with a razor, but open to suggestions.

Holes are marked for tuner screws, but not drilled.

Pickguard has one coat on it. I might have to modify the shape more to my liking, but it's a pickguard. I don't need it to play. It can change later.

That's all I've got. Life is crazy busy right now. 

On 10/3/2023 at 9:00 AM, daddymack said:

well...thank you! Pretty much what I envisoned. I know, it isn't my project, but I really think that will help tie it all back together.

Not as weird as it sounded when I mentioned it....?

Paint it with a few coats of enamel to minimize the scratching....or use the same ink and clear coat the heck out of it...

It took a few iterations because it was challenging to keep the top curve below the cutaway. I also wondered if there is any change of catching the point on the back of my hand as I'm strumming, but there's no good way to test that until the neck is on the guitar.

Small update. Might not be much this week as I've got to take care of some things.

I don't think I'm doing this anymore. The idea was going to be to paint it all black, except the orange registration sticker. The epoxy isn't sticky, but it does seem soft. Maybe it will cure harder still. Maybe not.

In the meantime..

I thought about what daddymack said about referencing the headstock.

I still have to cut out the pickup cutouts. Had a little bit of tear out, but I'm going to go solid black with it, so I'm not too concerned. I don't have a clue what kind of plywood this is. It came as packing material with some silkscreen frames.

I'm a sucker for guitar that are just a little (or a lot) funky. I feel like Ken Parker must have taken some cues from this when he designed the Fly. Congrats!

2 hours ago, daddymack said:

I don't know that you need those plastic under-plates for the p-ups, but that is your call.

Oh, and maybe your pickguard shape should be based on the headstock design...just a thought....

The original had rubber spacers under the pickups, so I'm kind of emulating that here. Also, the only #2 screws I could source locally, have a round head. Without the black spacer, the nickel trim has a weird gap as it won't sit flush (which is why you see the divots made with the forstner in any earlier post). Tried it without and it looked fine straight on, but noticable weird gap from many other angles.

I could have sketched out more pickguards (and really, that's a thing I can replace any time, but I'm going with a design pretty close to the original.

This is a sneak peek. I've seen license plates used on guitars before. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it. I'm going to do something a little different with this one, so reserve judgement until you sit in in the guitar. Here the back has been coated and leveled with clear epoxy. If it just looks awful, I'll do something more traditional.

12 minutes ago, gardo said:

Overall I would say it’s outstanding. Sure there may be something you’re not quite satisfied with but you are probably the toughest critic. I think it’s great 

Thank you! I'm starting to get excited. You have no idea how many false starts I've had in the last 20 years. My one success was assembling a Carving bass kit (I wish they still made kits; those were a great value).

Second attempt with black trim rings.

This one looks successful. I earlier made the mistake.of not lining them up when I drilled the pilot holes through the plastic. Both were parts I custom ordered through Send Cut Send, and I think I omitted the holes in the plastic because I thought they might have to bend substantially, thus changing the distance between centers.

Not sure how much more I'll get done today. Should have mowed the lawn. Should probably eat something.

I don't have to make a pickguard, but I'm going to.

I'm getting impatient and sloppy. Deep breaths....

Paper template in place for setting screw holes for pickups.

Shown with pickups in place. I used a pen and an awl to make the holes. It's clear by eye that the original pickup routs were not aligned with anything, because they really didn't have to be, but I didn't want to trust the alignment of the original screw holes, either.

Eight tiny holes in place.

The holes in the corners of the cavity are to allow for the round head of the screws holding the pickups to the face of the body. They aren't perfect, but they don't have to be. These are the black trim pieces that still have the protective paper on them.

Tiny failure here. I tried to drill the holes in the black plastic large enough that they didn't need to be a perfect fit. You can see the alignment is a little off with the nickel trim pieces. I have some thoughts on how to fix it, and if all else fails I have four spare black plastic trim pieces. And I could go without them if I really wanted to.

Some pre-wiring done. I have dry fitted every piece so it should all fit. I have pulled parts through with string alone, but I think I'll try tubing and string so that the strings don't get tangled.

Acquired gold paint pen. Will be practicing my penmanship. The pen has a bit of a chisel tip, which I didn't realize when I bought it. Should be fine.

Checking parts before I wire them up.

Wasn't paying attention and got CTS "The Art of Tone" 525k pots. 5% tolerance has them ranging from 518k to 544k. (They could have been between 450-550 with 10% 500k)

For a while I thought I'd do special/different wiring (TV Jones tone pot mod, Gibson 50s wiring, etc) but not everything has to be so complicated.

Going to use .0033uf caps on the tone pots because that's what I have closest to .0022uf. Might do a treble bleed on one of the volume knobs with a .0001uf cap (measures at 860pf). The only part I am still waiting on is the jack plate I ended up ordering. And I am going to grab a gold paint pen for the headstock tonight or tomorrow.

3 hours ago, daddymack said:

Knobs...?

I will suggest you put a mounting plate for the jack [old dry wood] and open the aperture a bit. I have had to do this several times for [my and other people's] hollow/semi-hollow guitars/basses.  In the long run, it solves potential repair issues...like if the side wall 'caves', which I have seen happen...on older Harmony, Gibson, Gretsch, Silvertone...[it was the first mod I did to my 'hollow beast'].

 

I have knobs. I lucked out in that the original knobs were some off the shelf variety that is still being made today. At one point I was going to get fancy and make wooden knobs with buffalo nickels inlaid in the top. But I'm running out of patience.

I kind of hate to put more holes in the guitar, but you have a good point about old wood. I'll look around. I might even have a spare plate.

Hrm. I found this sold listing for an original Rowe wiring harness. It used 1 meg pots for volume and 250k for tone. And maybe no capacitors? Wild.

Edit: No, there are caps. I found another one for sale and I'm trying to look at it and figure out how it all connects. I don't know that I'd wire it this way, but I'm fairly open minded. Found some Gretsch folks who swear by the 1 meg pot setup, with a caveat that it doesn't play well with dirty pedals. I'm probably going to do a lot more reading. Not sure this is the best use of my time today.

Well, phooey.

Doing a test run/dry fitting and inventory before wiring anything. Learnings:

My four 500k pots are short shaft. They get through and I can get the nut started, but just barely. Ordering long shaft pots soon. (One pictured is a long shaft 250k)

Have two 0.047uf and 0.033uf paper in oil capacitors. I'd kind of had it in my head to use 0.022uf and a 0.015 (just to be different). I'll do more reading. Maybe I'll be different by going with 0.033. Neck and bridge are 7.8k and 11.8k respectively. Might even mod my pots to be no load at 10.

Standard Switchcraft Jack is too short. Deep panel jack is too wide. I could widen the hole for the deep panel jack, but I feel the way it mounts is not meant for this application. 

Have not made a pickguard, but I will. Hollow top bracket in my cart now.

Pickup selector switch is good. Straplock buttons on hand, although I have black pads instead of white. I'm tempted to go to the shops in town and see if they'd trade parts for parts just so I don't have to spend any more money.

Pre-slotted nut, trapeze tailpiece, and bridge ready to go. Vintage cloth wire with braided shield. What am I missing?

Blacked out and drying.

Instead of spraying the black, it is an acrylic ink that I brushed on. I first sealed with shellac, then brushed black, sealed, and did another coat of black. There's a possibility this ink will shrink and crack over time, but I'm okay with that.

Group shot.

The neck came with a thin coat of nitro and I'm debating if I want to spray more or not. I might hold off and see how it feels. I ordered this neck a V back profile and I hope it's not a problem. I think when I ordered it I figured the worst case scenario would be that I'd sand it down closer to the standard C shape.

12 hours ago, gardo said:

The B tuner alignment looks to be a bit of a challenge, do you have any ideas ?  

 

That's probably a function of there being some amount of wiggle room and them not being perfectly straight when I took the picture. When I did the punching for the awl, everything was lined up pretty well. If the absolute worst happens, I already have a dowel on hand to plug and redrill a hole. 

One thing I haven't figured out/decided on, is how far the bushings should push in with just hand held force. There was no point in pushing them all the way in at this point if I had to push them out again, but I wonder how wide I should ream those holes prior to final installation.

About to go out to the garage and sand a little more. Might get as far as painting the headstock black today.

Baby steps.

Back side of the headstock with a piece of scrap pushing the tuners in line. I used a awl to mark the holes for the tuner screws, but haven't drilled them yet.

Front side. Bushings aren't pushed in quite all the way. I have staggered height tuners so I won't need string trees.

Headstock shaped! I still have to rig up a sanding tool to get in between the point and the curve at the top. It might be as simple as a rubber eraser with sandpaper wrapped around it.

Hopefully I continue to make a little progress tomorrow.

One more little update.

Reamer arrived. It seems okay. I had some test holes drilled already. Here is what it looks like with the bushings in and tuners installed from behind.

It's not perfect. It might be good enough. There isn't a ton of leeway with the posts in the bushings, but there is some. The thin board is just applying enough pressure on the tuners to line them up. The low e (far right) is the one that is off most. I don't know that I'll get it much better without some expensive jigs.

Maybe I'll get brave enough to drill into the real neck tomorrow.

Yeah, I've also kind of had it go both ways. Sometimes when one doesn't feel right any longer it can of course just be that it needs a new setup, but yeah, sometimes after you haven't played one in a while it just sounds different than you remembered. Hopefully for the better. 

In addition to ownership change, etc, single login message boards are kind of dated now. These days it feels like subreddits, Slack channels, and Discord servers are the way to go. And even then, you have to have have active users. I've been doing some research on Discord servers.to try and figure out what makes for a thriving community versus a dead one. It's not as simple as lots of registered users, that's for sure.

Delays. On top of things not going right with this project, my priority has been job searching. Anyone need a junior UX designer? Anyway...

It's electroplating day!

My finest wet sandpaper is 3000 grit. I went ahead and polished it with some toothpaste for that last bit of minty shine. Not going for a mirror finish, but this didn't cost me any extra money.

Here is the part in the bath. I think I messed up at first by allowing the lead to touch the solution (the lead is not made of nickel) and I fixed that later.

Four parts in various states. Clockwise from top left: Raw brass part, plated part from previous attempt,.part plated today prior to polishing, and polished and plated part.

Couldn't resist a mockup shot.

I'm debating how I'm going to mount everything. At one point I thought I would just have the screws of the pickup rings hold the pickup against the body. Also realizing I should figure out a way to recess the bottom side of the black spacer ring. I'd really like to do it without buying another tool.

Been practicing the drilling and reaming of tuner holes and I'm not getting them consistent enough. I have a reamer arriving later today, so maybe I'll have some headstock progress to share soon.

I'm sure glad I made a test headstock first.

Can you tell which one is crooked? It's not just one.

Used my drill jig and it was off. I'm going to buy a forstner bit. As far as I can tell, no one makes an 11/32 forstner bit, so I'll go down to 5/16. The bushings pushed in easily into this pine. I feel like with a mallet and some love they will go into a slightly smaller hole on the maple neck.

The other part of this exercise was to see how it would be to shape the profile of the headstock with the tools I have. I rough cut with a jigsaw and cleaned it up with an oscillating spindle sander and a file, followed by hand sanding. It's not sanded as fine as I would sand the final product, but I feel like the proof of concept is there. The point at the top is the hassle. It's pretty clear why more headstocks don't have a notch like that. 

This piece of pine is thicker than the neck, thus why my staggered tuners don't emerge from the top as expected. I double checked that they will in fact be long enough for the neck.

If I get real ambitious tonight I might do some electroplating. I'm letting the shellac cure more before I go sand the body.

On 7/18/2023 at 5:14 AM, gardo said:

The headstock is evolving into something nice.  Had you considered slightly aging the headstock finish so it’s not “newt” looking than the body

Sort of. I'm not going to ding up the surface of the wood and I think it's getting painted black. But what I'll do with the shellac is use a brush to apply it so that it looks kind of consistent with the body.

Body doesn't look remarkably different now. I'm letting it dry longer between coats and using a brush now instead of spraying. Here's some silly stuff I'm doing in the meantime.

This is a jig I did today for drilling the holes for the tuner bushings straight. I'll cut out a replica of the headstock and test it before I do the actual thing. Had to run to the store for a 11/32 drill bit. I'd have ordered a forstner, but I couldn't find that size readily. I think this will be straight enough.

Not looking forward to this. This scrap of plywood has 8 different grits of sandpaper (4 to a side) stuck down with double stick tape. 400-3000. I don't think I need to accomplish a mirror finish, but the better they look before I plate them, the better they will be.

Picked up some nylon string to fish parts through the guitar cavities. I might get around to making a cardboard jig this week and pre-wiring the pots, jack, and switch. Saw in my parts bin that one of my pots is left handed. Hope I have enough of the right kind.

17 minutes ago, daddymack said:

btw...are you using 'coup de foudre' as 'love at first sight', 'struck by lightning' or 'thunder bolt'? French idioms can be confusing out of context....

I prefer it as "Love at first sight". I should note that I don't speak French. I liked the idea of using a word/phrase from another language that didn't have an English translation. Of a dozen or so things ranging from Japanese to Arabic, this is the one that struck me most.