Electric Guitars Spinny's first "full" guitar build project

JPsuff

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
MarkDyson said:
Yeah, I'm liking it more than I thought I would. Normally dimed tone sounds shrill and trebly to me but in this build it's not bad at all. I may very well change the way I set up to play.

I love it. I am so happy with this I could bust. :Beer:
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That's the way it is with labors of love.

I liked my Epi LP when I first got it, but I LOVED it after I changed the pup's and hardware mostly because of the time and planning that went into it.

It made it MINE and I honestly think it makes me play better.

Nothing you can buy can ever beat something you created!

Enjoy it my friend!
 
Rancid Rumpboogie

Rancid Rumpboogie

Blues Mangler
Too bad you aren't more accomplished at playing lead. There is so much about pickups that can only really be heard in a lead context ... picking dynamics, etc. Here is clip I did for my GFS Earl Slick dual-bucker guitar with Joe Naylor RailHammers in it..
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pgtv4sftoxfp84b/RR000053.mp3?dl=0
And one of the same guitar comparing its stock pickups with the Joe Naylors
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rwfdbk49s0y4a1p/RR000069.mp3?dl=0
But, I can attest that those Jim Wagner pickups you have in that Strat are ace ... I have the same set in my GFS XV-500 ... but I did use 250K pots with a no-load volume and a .047 cap on the bridge pickup to take off a wee bit of its high end when wanted ... in the no-load notch it is pure Jim Wagner though.
 
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PapaRaptor

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
Sometimes it's really tough being a moderator...
CleaningComputerScreen.jpg
 
MarkDyson

MarkDyson

Blues Hound Wannabe
So, I enjoyed no small amount of feedback about the trem bridge issue with Strat builds. My initial stance was, tits on a boarhog: who needs something that's just going to bork your tuning?

Thing is, I know you guys represent about a gajillion years of playing wisdom and experience, while I merely stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. I get it.

I set up the bridge to float (seriously: did you think I would be satisfied with a one-way vibrato option?) and already I'm thinking I have a decent ear for diving and pulling to target tones. Time will tell. Only challenge was the trem bar came with a white end knob. WTAF? Who plays with that? Snow White? Had to boil the bar as well as the new knob to loosen them enough to make the swap but now it sports the proper black-as-my-evil-soul knob. Soon as I get closer to not-sucking at other playing styles I'll start to exercise that new demon. :Beer:
 
MarkDyson

MarkDyson

Blues Hound Wannabe
Heh. Someone elsewhere called me out on the idea I might abandon tinkering for any length of time. They were so right. :confused:

I decided I'm unhappy with the paradigm of bringing a half-dozen (or more) wires together to a central ground point in the traditional way. They need to go there, sure, but surely that big lump of solder doesn't have to be the only way.

Enter the stripboard stuff I recently acquired for my custom effects builds. What better way is there to spread those multiple connections across a more civilized scape?

pcb strat work 001.jpg

Wiring up some more push-pull pots for series/parallel work and using the boards to tidy up the numerous needed connections. I just came off a 16 hour marathon push for the sake of my current client, and this morning they loved (their words) the work I delivered to help bail them out of their current fix and get their project back on schedule. I plan to do zero client work again until Friday which gives me (minus auto repair and dentist visits) two days to geek out (and play some music) unfettered. This little experiment in alternative guitar wiring methods is part of how I plan to spend that time. :Beer:
 
OG_Blues

OG_Blues

Guitar Geezer
Rancid Rumpboogie said:
You engineer types drive me crazy. I'm a strong proponent of 'just get the job done by the most expedient method'. :whistle:
Click to expand...
//rant on
That's just fine, but.......
Some people enjoy the technology that goes into the tools of one's trade or hobby. If there weren't, there would never have been any progress or innovation over time in those tools of the trade. It took people who like to tinker endlessly to discover the right combination of wire, magnets, materials, etc to understand why and how different PUPs sound the way they do. There are endless other examples. Many of the people who made these things possible were not accomplished players. Where would this world be without the engineers?
For the person whose particular passion is playing, I can fully understand why their motto would be "gitter done!". Nothing wrong with that.
But why can't those people have a similar understanding of those who enjoy the process, science, or mechanics etc. of the instrument?
This is largely the reason behind the many totally bogus myths about guitars in general - the lack of interest to truly understand something.
I have no quarrel with anyone that doesn't care about those things, but it's not right to denigrate those people who do.
These same principles apply to just about everything, not just guitars, amps, etc.
There should be a National Engineers Day IMO.
//rant off
 
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MarkDyson

MarkDyson

Blues Hound Wannabe
As I explore different controls and wiring setups, I’ve come to discover there is little less “expedient” than having a spaghetti tangle of wires that’s hard to trace, that are packed in so close it’s hard to get a soldering iron in there without melting the insulation of wires you’re not even working on, and that makes it difficult to hold the desired ones into place (even with clamps).

The ugly aesthetics of wire jumbles and big lumps of solder aside, imposing some organization and order on all this mess in order to make building and testing less of a chore seems pretty damned expedient to me. :)

Printed circuit boards came about precisely because folks like me hate working in cramped wire tangles. This is the perfect place to employ them. :Beer:
 
MarkDyson

MarkDyson

Blues Hound Wannabe
This is another look at the main framework. The design concept behind this is the push/pull wiring causes the spaghetti problem, and that’s what the boards are going to clean up. I have wires coming from the push/pull connections that are color coded for the pickup wire they’re going to mate up with. Those wires, plus the baseline ground, feed the first row of each board. The pickup leads will also go to the boards, and the hot and ground will have one lead apiece. The multiple ground leads in all go the appropriate strip on the volume pot board. Once it’s set, those heat shrink sleeves go on and the assembly gets affixed to the top of the pot with double stick. The end result is a pair of leads out of each, which are then connected normally as though I were connecting standard single coils.

068B5DDF-A427-466E-A85F-22957067A855.jpeg

When you take in the whole thing, and think about it, all this method is doing is abstracting the complicated wiring for the series/parallel switching into a “black box” that has two wires coming out of it. From there it’s just a Strat build, traditional as Hell. :Beer:
 
MarkDyson

MarkDyson

Blues Hound Wannabe
This article is wonky as homemade sin, but the overarching concept drives my circuit design philosophy:

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-10/thevenins-theorem/

I was a software engineer throughout my undergrad and graduate paths, but I took double majors in EE because I love pain. The crossover is, just as in object-oriented programming design, in EE you can “black box” your top-level circuit and rely on the stuff inside the box to behave as you expect on the macro level.

In this current guitar circuit design I’m viewing the guitar layout itself as a semi-standard Strat build made of abstracted (Thevenin style) components. The guts inside those components are what are populating the mini boards and the guitar itself doesn’t give a flying rat’s about what’s inside the boxes. So long as those boxes are singlecoil style objects with a pair of wires coming out of them...this stuff is easy. :Beer:
 
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