DIY Strat (and other guitar projects)

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 15) - making a new nut

2012-01-15T19:36:00.000-08:00

The old nut on our Hofner Colorama II was in a terrible state. It was too shallow and had a piece of card underneath it in order to raise it up. Additionally the bottom was not flat.

Here it is:

I have no reason to trust this nut at all, so I'm not going to use it as a template for the new one.

So here I am sanding a new piece of bone down to the right thickness using a piece of coarse sandpaper set on a flat surface:

Then cutting the bone to length:

Here I’m checking it fits nicely into the nut slot:

Before I can continue, I need to make up a new half pencil, since I appear to have misplaced my old one.

So we take a normal pencil:

Slice it down the middle (watch your fingers):

Superglue the lead into place (optional, but I find it a good idea, since there’s nothing really holding the lead in place at this stage):

Remove superglued finger from pencil (again, optional):

Sand pencil flat:

And then I usually put some Sellotape (Scotch tape) along the bottom of the pencil to stop from getting carbon all over everything.

Next I draw a line along the new nut, using the frets as a guide:

I like to then draw a second line a little higher as a kind of secondary guide, so I fit something nice and slim under the pencil and draw another line, as follows:

Then I sand the nut down to very close to the higher line:

Mark the position of the slots using my nut slot guide template thingy:

Then file the nut slots using nut files. I file down to somewhere between the two lines, trying to make sure I end up with the same distance from the BOTTOM of the slots to the lower line. Also I file at a slight downward angle so that the slots will be lower at the end closer to the tuners. This ensures that the strings make contact at the very front of the nut.

The idea is to get them as close as possible to the lower line without going over. Once you do that, you’ve gone too far. I prefer a little bit of a buffer, since I can always remove more material from the bottom of the nut if it’s too high, but once I go too low, it’s time to make a new nut.

I then round off the back of the nut a little and polish it up using various grades of sandpaper. And here’s the final result:

Compared to the old nut, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a bit of an improvement:

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 14) - leveling and crowning the frets

2012-01-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

The neck on this Hofner Colorama was originally quite badly back bowed, as shown here:

In an effort to rectify this, we’ve tried three different approaches, as follows:

1. While re-radiusing the fretboard, more pressure was applied towards the middle of the neck in order to remove more fretboard material in that area. This would not straighten the neck, per se, but it would reshape the top of the fretboard in such a way that its top would end up being flatter.

2. When refretting, the fret slots were widened. When frets are forced into narrower slots, this has a tendency to force the neck to back bow, so we wanted to avoid this at all costs. The slots are still narrow enough to grip the new frets, but are certainly not overly-tight.

3. Obviously the truss rod nut was slackened as much as possible. In fact, even with the nut removed, the neck still maintained a back-bowed shape. It was noticed that the washer under the nut was wedged into place, and it was suspected that it might be preventing the truss rod from properly slacking off. In other words, when the truss rod nut was tightened, the truss rod threads would pass through the washer, but when the nut was loosened, the threads might get stuck in the washer, leaving the truss rod in a tensioned state.

After some time, the neck appears to have straightened out enough that we can consider doing a fret level and crown.

First, we tape off the fretboard, leaving the frets themselves exposed:

Then we find something nice and straight with a flat bottom. Don’t assume straight tools are actually straight, by the way. This spirit level has been confirmed as being straight enough for this job, and 400 grit sandpaper has been stuck along the bottom edge.

We then mark the frets with a “Sharpie” pen or similar:

Then we run the leveling tool up and down the fretboard, parallel to the neck, making sure to keep it straight, and giving each area (left to right) the same amount of attention.

It soon becomes evident which frets are sitting high/low compared to others. We need to keep doing this until the top (center line) of the black marks is gone on every fret:

Next, we make the frets black again, and run a radius sanding block up and down a few times until the tops of the black marks are gone on every fret again. This is to ensure we haven’t inadvertently reshaped the curvature of the frets in the previous step.

Now we blacken the frets for the last time and use a needle file to file the edges. Here I’m using a fretboard protector for a little bit of extra protection:

What we are doing here is rounding the edges of the frets again. However, we need to make sure that we don’t affect the heights of any of the frets, so we leave a thin black line along the center of the frets, as follows:

Next we run some thinner sandpaper up and down the frets briefly to help round the frets just a little more. I’m actually using a 1600 grit Micro-Mesh Soft Touch Finishing Pad from Stewart MacDonald (http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Fretting_supplies/Polishing_and_abrasives/Micro-Mesh_Soft_Touch_Finishing_Pads.html):

Finally, some steel wool is used to polish up the frets a bit (I’m using 000 here, although 0000 would give you an even shinier finish):

And here’s the end result. A super-flat, shiny fretboard. I can’t wait to use it.

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 13) - finishing the neck

2012-01-01T18:33:00.000-08:00

Our vintage Hofner Colorama II guitar neck was initially lacquered about two months ago. Since then, after a month, it was sanded back a little and a few more layers of lacquer were applied.

There is now enough thickness to consider finishing this, but before doing so, we need to deal with a couple of pesky areas where the lacquer ran.

This is what I’m talking about:

There are several ways to tackle this, but I’m going to do it with a razor. Here you can see me (very carefully) scraping the surplus lacquer off, one thin layer at a time. The razor needs to be held extremely level here, otherwise one of the corners will dig into the finish where you don’t want it. You can add a little bit of tape to each end of the razor to minimise this risk, but I prefer to just be careful.

Here’s how it looks after removing the unwanted material.

Now we’re ready to give the whole neck a final sanding. I’m wet sanding this with 1200 grit sandpaper. You could get a little more aggressive with this, using 800 or maybe even 400 grit paper, but I noticed even the 1200 grit paper was starting to sand through to the decal pretty quickly, so I didn’t want to push it.

This is pretty much how it looks after the wet sanding. It looks like it’s gone through to the wood, but it hasn’t:

Next, rubbing compound is rubbed into the neck to polish up the remaining lacquer:

And this is how it looks after polishing:

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 12) - repairing the metal tremolo cover

2011-12-20T19:35:00.000-08:00

In between coats of paint, I worked on fixing the metal tremolo cover.

As you can see above, it's being held down by a washer, since it is in fact cracked completely across, as seen here:

In fact, if you look closely at the first photo, you will see that a lot of the surface chrome close to that area has cracked too and is only held in place by magic or something.

Anyway, firstly I bent and hammered it down to something resembling flat:

Then I roughed the surface of it near the crack with a view to trying to solder it together. Remember that the chrome plating in this area was close to flaking off anyway. I figured this was also the least intrusive way to join it without discolouring the surrounding chrome too much.

However, I could not get the solder to stick to the metal cover, so tried a different route.

First of all, I set about cutting a piece of aluminium into the shape of a somewhat oblong washer.

Just as I was almost finished, I discovered I had a much thinner piece of aluminium I could use, so I started cutting that out:

And here it is all cut out and polished up.

However, even the thinner piece looked out of place (don't believe how nice it looks in the photo) and I just wasn't happy with it.

I decided to just try gluing something onto the back of the cover to keep it structurally sound, but found that I couldn't get anything to stick to the chrome plating, even after heavily scratching the surface (going through to the brass in some places) and using Arardite Rapid Steel Epoxy (which is the closest thing to JB Weld I can find over here). So I figured this thing was getting so screwed up already that I would file a big chunk of the chrome plating completely off the back and try gluing again. Once I saw the bare brass, I thought I would try just one more time to solder it. This time, though, I spread quite a bit of flux over it too. I heated up a test area, and lo and behold, the solder took to it.

So I flipped it over, filed off some of the chrome and soldered the top. It's a really obvious repair, but I don't care. I'm very happy with it. I may try to polish it up a bit more, but apart from that, I'm calling it done.

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 11) - flattening the warped plastic pickguard and tremolo cover

2011-12-15T20:16:00.000-08:00

Among the many smaller jobs that have to be done to this vintage Hofner Colorama II is to flatten the warped plastic pickguard and rear tremolo cover. Here’s how they both looked before starting:

Pickguard:

Rear tremolo cover:

I decided to tackle the rear tremolo cover first, since it appeared to be a much simpler job and also easier to replace should things go horribly wrong. I really couldn’t find any information about this on the Internet, so I did what seemed logical in my head, which was to sandwich the plastic in-between two panes of tempered glass, clamp the whole lot together, and heat it with a very hot hairdryer.

Here’s the setup:

After 10 or 15 minutes of heating the area above AND BELOW the cover, I took the top pane of glass off to confirm that the plastic had become soft, then clamped everything back in place and left it to cool naturally. Since I wasn’t in a hurry, I left it for 24 hours, although I’m sure that wasn’t necessary at all.

The tremolo cover came out completely flat. You can see a corner lifting slightly in this photo, but it’s really nothing and will easily be held flat once it is screwed to the back of the guitar body.

Next up was the pickguard. Not only was there some warping raising it up off the guitar body, there was also some bulging around the edges of the pickups, due to the pickups themselves bulging (as discussed here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2011/12/hofner-colorama-ii-restoration-project_12.html). Even with the pickups removed, the plastic edges wouldn’t return to shape, so this would need to be dealt with too.

I tried the same trick as with the tremolo cover, but unfortunately the pickguard material is about twice as thick as the tremolo cover, and has a much larger surface area. Even after 20 minutes or so, I just couldn’t heat it up enough through the glass to make it soft. I didn’t want to apply the heat directly in case the surface of the plastic started to blister or something else equally damaging.

It was recommended that I try pouring boiling water over the plastic, so I tried this method next. Before clamping it in-between the panes of glass and leaving it to cool down, I quickly used a flat-edged tool to push the edges around the pickup holes more or less back into shape.

This method proved completely successful, but at a cost. The pickguard was now perfectly flat, but had discoloured horribly, as shown here:

An internet search brought up a suggestion in a car restoration forum to rub peanut oil into the surface to restore the black sheen, but this method proved useless.

Next option was to try black shoe polish, but surprisingly this didn’t make any difference at all either.

So, I decided to get a bit more aggressive and removed some of the surface with some steel wool. Success! At least I knew now that the discoloration was only on the surface and could be skimmed off.

The steel wool wasn’t really aggressive enough for most of the pickguard, so I sanded it with 400 grit sandpaper (having tried 2000 grit and 1200 grit first without success):

This method worked great, but of course we were now left with quite a rough surface, shown here:

The surface was then sanded with finer sandpaper in a more random direction to remove the lines from the 400 grit sandpaper, leaving us with a nice and flat, but somewhat dull, surface:

Finally, rubbing compound was used to shine up the surface.

You can see the difference already here:

And finally, here’s the end result.

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 10) - repairing the electronics

2011-12-12T18:38:00.000-08:00

Just like everything else on this vintage Hofner Colorama II, the electronics have been treated badly and need some attention. By “badly” I mean that they have been left in a damp or wet environment and the pots are scratchy or cut out completely. The output jack also needs to make better contact.

This can hopefully all be fixed with the help of some electrical contact cleaner, but first I’m going to remove all the parts from the pickguard. This isn’t strictly necessary, but since I’m restoring the whole guitar, and the pickguard also needs attention, this is the route I’m going to take.

Firstly, here’s the whole pickguard/electronics assembly. As mentioned in another post, the beauty of the Colorama is how the entire electronics circuit is attached to the pickguard and can be lifted out in one go:

Here's how it looks from behind:

The knobs are removed, revealing some rather disturbing evidence of damp. Check out that rust!

Rather that turn the whole pot by accident when I’m unscrewing the rusted nuts, I (carefully) grip the underside with some mole grips (vise-grips) and unscrew the nut with a socket wrench:

Once all four pots, the output jack and the pickups (these just push through without any screws to unscrew) are detached, some electrical contact cleaner is squirted into the gaps in the pots. I then move the pot shaft around (like turning the volume up and down repeatedly) a few times to help move the contact cleaner around. I also give the output jack a bit of a clean with the same cleaner:

Incidentally, vintage Hofners are quite hard to date, since the serial numbers are, well, a bit of a mess. You can often date them, however, by their pots. This one, for example, is stamped 250 372. "250" stands for the pot value (250K Ohms) and the "372" stands for the 37th week of 1962 (37=37th week, 2=1962). Remember that this is the date that the pots were made, so it may be a few months before they appear on a guitar. This particular Hofner Colorama II is most likely a 1963 model, so the pot codes would tend to verify this:

The Pickups are also in need of attention. The covers are bulging and the solder holding them to the bases has cracked.

Additionally, one of the pickups has a nasty dent on the top:

And the same pickup is missing one of the tabs that holds it under the pickguard:

The only thing holding the pickups together (apart from the solder) is the pole piece screws. Once removed, the pickup opens easily:

As you can see, these are single coil pickups. Hofner did make humbucking pickups in the same format, but these have “Super” written on the top, just under the diamond logo. I’m not aware of these ever appearing on Coloramas, however.

Here I'm using a small hammer to flatten out the dent on the top of the bridge pickup:

I don't want to go overboard here and I'm happy enough to stop at this point. I'm sure this will polish up nicely:

Both of the pickups were opened, the covers bent back to a non-bulging shape and soldered back on. Additionally, the bridge pickup had a new tab soldered on:

All of the nuts, washers, pointers, etc., were also cleaned with a wire brush:

A lot of elbow grease was required here, especially on the pointers, which all had very deep rust (uncleaned example shown here).

Before putting the electronics back on the pickguard (which, incidentally has been flattened and cleaned up, the details of which will be documented in a future blog post), I've put some metallic tape on the pickguard in order to reduce unwanted electrical interference/noise.

And here's everything back in place:

And the front:

Finally we add the replacement knobs (all sourced from 60s Hofners):

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 9) - fixing up the tremolo unit

2011-12-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

The tremolo arm on our vintage Hofner Colorama II is supposed to be held on with a type of thumb wheel screw, but that’s obviously been lost at some stage and the remaining stud/screw had been hammered down to act like a rivet and hold the tremolo arm on, irreversibly damaging it (the stud) in the process:

The tremolo unit has already been removed from the guitar, but can be disassembled further by removing the big screw holding the arm lever on:

Here's what we're left with:

I've previously drilled into the stud to remove the arm, and the remaining stud has to be unscrewed as it is completely destroyed. That can be forced out with a pair of mole grips (vise-grips), by turning it in an anti-clockwise (counter clockwise) direction:

There's quite a bit of rust on both this part and the tremolo unit itself, so a wire brush is used to remove it:

I'm also rounding the front end of the lever, since it was originally square in shape and was catching on and damaging the tremolo cover.

A look through the parts drawer gives us some components that might be good enough to make a new arm mount. It won’t be completely the same as the original, but it should be close enough:

Here they are put together to check on compatibility and fit:

And here's the whole tremolo unit put back together with its new thumb wheel, allowing us to remove the tremolo arm any time we wish:

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 8) - painting the guitar body

2011-11-30T18:48:00.000-08:00

In the last blog post, we lacquered the neck on our vintage Hofner Colorama II guitar. Today we will paint the body.

Before painting, we do a last check for anything we may have missed, like scrapes or gouges in the wood. This leads us to discover that the raw plug/screw anchor that someone had inserted to hold on the rear strap button, and which we were just going to leave, is, in fact, just half a raw plug.

So, out it comes:

A new hole is drilled:

A wooden plug is cut:

Glued in:

And filed/sanded flat:

Finally, we drill a new strap button hole:

Also, since we're at it, let's drill a hole from the control cavity through to the tremolo area, so that we can earth (ground) the tremolo unit when we put this thing back together:

Now on with the show. A quick mounting system needs to be fabricated, so we cut a piece of wood that can be attached to the neck pocket. We drill a hole in it too, so that we can hang it up. We’ll also put a screw in the rear strap button hole to give us another contact point to move the guitar body around while we’re spraying it.

We give the guitar body a quick wipe down to remove any dust, etc:

Now here’s the body hanging up in our specially-designed spray booth (the spare bathroom, which, btw, has very good ventilation). We make sure to wear suitable eye and mouth/nose protection before proceeding:

And so the spraying begins. We're just using standard car (auto touch-up) paint spray cans for this:

Here’s the body after a layer or two. As you can see, the body filler is showing through. However the original paint job had no primer/undercoat, and we want to keep it that way, so we will keep applying layers until the filler is no longer visible:

After a few more layers there is no sign of the filler:

Here’s the guitar body after two cans of spray paint. We’ll hang it up to dry for a week or two and then sand it with very fine sandpaper. If necessary, some additional layers of paint will be applied. After that, it will receive some lacquer (which will be shown in later posts):

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 7) - applying the decal and lacquering the neck

2011-11-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

In the previous post, we set about making a replacement decal for the neck on this vintage Hofner Colorama II. Before we lacquer the neck, we need to apply the decal.

The decal is printed on special laser waterslide decal paper. This paper just prints on a standard laser printer. It’s also possible to get inkjet waterslide decal paper, but just note that an inkjet printout requires that you spray a layer of lacquer over the printed decal before you let it anywhere near water.

So first we put some not-too-hot/not-too-cold water in a little dish and place the decal in there, making sure to submerge it.

After a minute or so you will notice that it starts to separate from the paper. You can test this by seeing if it will slide around on the paper, but don’t force it too much.

While we are waiting for the decal to reach this separation stage, it’s a good idea to spread just a little bit of water on the area where we will apply the decal. This helps to prep the surface for what is to come.

Once we know it is ready, we slide the decal off the paper directly onto the peghead (i.e. don’t slide it off in the water and then try to pick up just the decal without the backing paper, as it will tend to fold over on itself).

As long as the decal is wet, we have time to move it around to put it in just the right place. You can even add a bit of water if it is starting to dry up but is still not in the right place. That said, try not to end up with too much water on the peg head, as you will need to wait for this to dry before proceeding.

After the decal is located in the correct area, take a dry tissue or similar and gently press down on the decal to make sure it is flat, bubbles are removed and the edges aren’t curled up. This also helps to remove some of the water, shortening our waiting time for the next step (lacquering).

Since this particular neck is maple with a rosewood fretboard, and since we do not want to lacquer the fretboard, we need to mask it off. Here I’m using thin masking tape to do this.

I give the whole neck a quick wipe down with water and let it dry before the next step. This helps to remove any last-minute dust and also preps the surface somewhat to accept the lacquer.

It is common to hang up a neck before lacquering it, but I prefer to lay it flat on its back, lacquer the front of the peghead, and then turn it over and lacquer the back.

Here is the front of the peghead after a few layers of lacquer:

And here is the back:

I put about five layers of lacquer on each side and then hang it up to dry.

After maybe an hour, when the lacquer has had enough time to dry out just a little, but still has some softness to it, I carefully remove the masking tape, being very careful not to touch the rest of the neck.

The neck will hang here for several weeks before getting a final sanding and polishing.

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 6) - recreating the logo and serial number

2011-11-23T18:52:00.000-08:00

Before lacquering the neck on our vintage Hofner Colorama II, we need to deal with the “Hofner” waterslide decal and the serial number stamped on the back of the headstock.

Here’s what the serial number looked like before stripping the lacquer.

And here’s how it looks afterwards:

The “8” is hardly visible (although to be honest, it wasn’t stamped very deeply to start with), and in fact all of the numbers are in danger of becoming almost invisible once we add a few layers of lacquer.

As it happens, I have a set of number punches, but they are a different size from the ones used on this guitar, which leaves us with two choices: sand the numbers off completely and re-stamp them, or try to repair what we already have. I’ve decided to go for the second option, since I feel a little weird about re-stamping serial numbers.

Here we’re using a very small jeweler’s screwdriver as a kind of punch to deepen the outline of the numbers. The straight lines are easy, but the number 8 and the top of the 2 are tough:

Nevertheless I’m pretty happy with the results, and a few layers of lacquer should help smooth it out somewhat anyway.

As for the waterslide decal, well, here’s how it looked before we stripped the neck. It would have been nice to preserve this, but it simply wasn't possible with the state of the lacquer:

Originally the plan was to find an image of a standard Hofner logo online and trace around (I use Adobe Illustrator to do this). That really did seem like a good plan, and the results were more than acceptable.

The standard logo, found online:

And my tracing of that logo:

However, once the old decal was removed, we were left with a very obvious “tan line” in the wood, as shown here:

At first glance it looked like the logo we traced would fit well, but upon further inspection it became apparent that the tan line would be very obvious in certain areas, so it was back to the drawing board.

A photo of the peghead was taken, along with a photo taken at exactly the same angle of a printout of our first attempt sitting in more or less the same place. Both images were then brought into Illustrator, and resized by the same amount so that the photo of our first attempt matched up perfectly with our Illustrator tracing. The tracing was then moved down to the photo of the tan line and the edges were adjusted to match these as perfectly as possible.

Quick screen grab of the tracing as it was being done in Illustrator:

And here’s how the second tracing looks:

You may notice that it’s a slightly different colour from our first attempt. This is because after printing out the first version, it became apparent that it was going to be too light.

Once printed onto special waterslide decal paper and cut out, this is how it looks, ready to be applied to the guitar before lacquering:

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 5) - filling and sanding the guitar body

2011-11-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

In the last post (http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2011/11/hofner-colorama-ii-restoration-project.html), we stripped down and scraped the paint off the body of our vintage Hofner Colorama II guitar. Before we even consider repainting it, there are quite a few issues that need our attention. These are mentioned in the previous post, so if you haven’t already read it, please feel free to do so now.

First of all, one of the screws holding the front tremolo/vibrato cover on was not gripping very well. This turned to be a result of the screw hole being too close to an edge, causing the hole to fall through that edge and making it impossible for the screw to get any sort of grip. We can’t just fill this hole, but rather, need to rebuild the surrounding wood so that it doesn’t happen again. Additionally, the lack of wooden support is the most likely explanation for the split in the tremolo cover, which was discussed here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2011/09/hofner-colorama-ii-restoration-project.html

So first of all, we put the cover back on and mark the edge of it. This will give us an indication of what will still be hidden under the cover once the guitar is finished, and gives us some freedom to have a less-than-perfect finish underneath. The straight line being drawn here also shows us how far back we can build up the wood without it starting to interfere with the tremolo mechanism.

Once we’ve marked the limits, it’s time to remove some additional wood. This stops the join from being right where the screw hole will be, which would weaken the repair somewhat.

Once we’ve removed a suitable amount of wood, we shape a replacement piece of wood to fit in the gap.

Finally, we glue the replacement wood in place, as shown here (the hammer is just used as a wedge to hold it in place while the glue dries).

The next issue is that of the indentations cased by the pickup pole piece screws. These stick right out the back of the pickups and are actually causing the pickguard to rise up off the surface of the guitar and warp. I’ve decided to cut a little trough for each set of pickup screws to alleviate this. Since this is a hidden mod, I’m not too concerned about how it might look.

Marking out the edges of the trough.

Using a fine chisel to cut one of the troughs.

We also have a couple of broken screws to deal with. The best option here is to make a tool to bore a hole AROUND the broken screw. This is a simple matter of finding a piece of metal tubing about the right size and filing some teeth into it with a needle file.

We then fit the metal tube to a drill and drill a hole around the screw, as shown here. Note that it is extremely easy for this to skip across the guitar body while you are trying to drill, so take great care when you are drilling, and if possible use a variable-speed drill set on very slow.

If the broken screw hasn’t disappeared up the inside of the little tool we just made, then you can remove it easily with a pair of needle-nose pliers, as shown here:

Now we’re left with quite a mess of missing wood, so the easiest option is to drill a normal hole that can then be filled with a piece of wood of the same diameter.

Here is the drilled hole, with our wooden rod of the same diameter.

Then we cut the wooden rod to length:

And stick it into the hole with glue:

You may remember we had one more issue with a screw hole too close to an edge. This was located at the bottom edge of the control cavity (under the pickguard). This one isn’t as bad as the one under the tremolo cover, so we are going to simply drill this out and plug it with some more of our wooden rod.

Drilling the hole:

Hole drilled:

Plugging the hole:

There are two sets of screw holes all around the pickguard, and so we will plug all of these using our superglue/toothpick trick, just like we did for the tuner screw holes on the neck here:http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2011/10/de-fretting-and-stripping-scraping.html

The screw holes that were used to secure the tremolo to the back of the guitar are so big now that I’ve had to plug them with kebab sticks instead of cocktail sticks.

And after being chiseled flat:

Finally we’re in a position to start filling any imperfections in the surface of the guitar for which we will apply some car filler (e.g. Bondo). Simply apply this to any areas with imperfections.

And then sand off:

We repeat this process for the other face of the guitar (and don’t forget the sides).

After repeating this process several times, we are more or less ready to think about painting the guitar.

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 4) - stripping and scraping the paint off the body

2011-11-13T19:10:00.000-08:00

In the continuing sage of our vintage Hofner Colorama II restoration project, today we will be stripping and scraping the paint off the guitar body itself.

If you’re already following the project, you’ll be well aware that we’ve already removed the neck. This is what we’re left with:

Stripping a vintage Hofner Colorama (by which I mean stripping it of its components, not the paint, though we’ll be doing that too) is extremely easy.

First we take out all the scratchplate/pickguard screws, allowing us to lift the whole thing out, including the output jack, in one go.

Next we remove the front vibrato/tremolo cover as follows (you should unscrew the tremolo arm before doing this – in this particular project, removing the arm was a bit of an adventure in itself and will be documented later, but usually you simply unscrew the little thumbwheel and the arm comes off easily):

Now the back vibrato cover:

The vibrato itself is secured with four screws in its corners, so we remove these too.

Once the screws have been removed, we simply lift the unit out, as follows:

Lastly we unscrew the strap buttons:

We are now left with the following.

Front:

Back:

A quick inspection reveals a number of issues that will need to be dealt with at a later date, namely a couple of screw holes that are too close to an edge and have started falling through, such as this at the front of the tremolo cavity:

And this at the lower side of the scratchplate:

There are also two broken screws that will need to be drilled out at a later date. One is in the top front corner of the scratchplate:

And the other is one of the rear vibrato cover screws (the bottom left hole in this photo):

We will deal with these (and other) issues in the next installment. In the meantime, let's scrape some paint off.

As with the guitar neck, we need to secure the body before we start scraping the paint off. In this case we have put one screw through one of the neck pocket holes and secured it to a piece of wood. At the other end of the guitar we have just used two sprung grips, as shown here. These provide more than enough grip, without damaging the guitar.

Then begins the slow process of scraping the paint off with a paint scraper.

About 60% done

And that’s the front finished:

Here we are about halfway through scraping the back of the guitar:

Almost there:

Several hours, band-aids, mosquito bites and swear words later, and we’ve finished scraping the paint off the guitar.

In all seriousness, that was about seven hours of work, and not a job I’m in a hurry to repeat. And did I mention the mosquitoes? (Don't feel sorry for her - that's MY blood.)

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 3) - re-fretting the guitar neck

2011-11-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

In the last blog post, we stripped down and de-fretted a vintage Hofner Colorama II neck. Today we’ll re-fret it.

First of all, we need to do some initial preparation, so we lay the neck out on its jig just like in the previous post and then sort out the fret wire. These frets have been bought pre-cut and pre-radiused. They’re not all the same length, so we need to sort them in order of shortest to longest. Here we’ve punched holes (don’t use the frets to do this!) in an empty cardboard box and placed the frets in them in the correct order.

Next thing we need to do is clean all of the dust, etc., out of the fret slots. A thin craft knife will suffice for this, but do it in the opposite direction to the knife edge (in other words, if the blade is pointing forwards, then pull the knife backwards). Remember, we’re not actually cutting anything here, just pushing all of the dust out of the slots.

Next we take our shortest fret and do a test fitting in the first fret slot.

Uh-oh, it seems the fret slots on this 50-year-old neck are very thin and will need to be widened to 0.8mm in order to fit this more modern fret wire. Luckily the blade on this hack saw is just the right thickness (phew), so we can continue. Be extremely careful cutting the slots as you can easily pull a chunk of wood off the fretboard surface by accident.

Here you can see the difference between one of the original fret slots (top) and one of the new slots (bottom).

Also, you may notice that, despite extreme care, cutting the new slot has pulled up a bit of extra material from the top surface of the fretboard, so for the rest of the slots we will use tape, as follows (you can’t really see it in this photo, but if you run your fingernail down the middle of the tape, you’ll be able to make out the old slot very clearly, giving you a good guide for the hacksaw).

It’s important to know how deep to cut the slots. Simply measure the depth of the underside of the fret to deduce this. Here you can see a craft knife, which has been marked with the height we need to cut, being used to check the depth after we have sawed a new slot.

We use a plastic-faced deadblow hammer to tap the frets into place. This type of hammer is very forgiving and will not damage the frets (well, unless you REALLY try), so you can just keep on tapping until they are nice and snug in the slots. I tapped the ends of the fret into place before tapping the middle. This helps the fret to not spring up at the edges at a later date.

Here's my hammer:

Once all of the frets have been installed, we can use a fret rocker to check if any of them are sitting too high. If so, we simply give them another tap or two to encourage them to go a bit lower.

The frets are fitted, but they’re sticking out of the sides of the neck, so we use a file to file them flush with the edge of the fretboard.

Then we taper the edges so we don’t rip our hands to shreds when it’s time to eventually play this thing.

We may have to do some more finishing work on the frets (namely leveling and crowning), but we won’t know until the whole guitar is put together, especially given this particular neck’s back bow.

In the meantime, here’s the (more or less) re-fretted neck.

Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 2) - removing the frets and stripping (scraping) the lacquer from the guitar neck

2011-10-31T00:55:00.000-07:00

The neck on this vintage Hofner Colorama II is going to get tackled before we deal with the guitar's other issues. The neck is in quite a state, with at least the following problems:

1. The frets need replacing (total refret).
2. The fingerboard is very uneven and needs re-radiusing (sanding down to the correct curvature again).
3. There is a long crack/gap running along the fingerboard that will need to be filled in (luckily this is not a structural problem).
4. The nut needs to be removed and replaced.
5. The old lacquer needs to be removed and the neck needs to be re-lacquered.
6. A new waterslide-decal logo needs to be made and applied.
7. The relief on the neck needs to be dealt with (it is back-bowed, even when the truss rod is completely loosened).

Today we will just deal with the stripping down stage.

First thing to do is remove the neck from the guitar as follows:

The machine heads (tuners) and string retainer are also removed, leaving us with this:

Before we can do any more work, the neck needs to be supported or clamped down in some way, so a quick neck rig is made from a piece of wood and a screw is passed from the back of that into one of the holes at the heel of the neck. A second screw passes through one of the machine head holes to hold the neck firmly (this can be removed, or moved to another hole, when doing any delicate work in that area).

STOP! Before continuing today’s post, if you ever decide to tackle a project like this, I cannot stress this enough…. WEAR SAFETY GLASSES. And for the sanding part and lacquer removal part, WEAR A MASK. You don’t want to be breathing that stuff into your lungs. You have been warned.

The nut is tapped out from the side using a hammer and some sort of straight punch. This one appears to have had a shim below it. With the shim removed it is clear that the nut slot will need to be cleaned out and leveled a little bit before a new one is installed.

Nut slot in need of work:

Filing out the nut slot:

A small pair of end cutting pliers are used to SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY remove the frets. Patience is a virtue at this stage. Any rushed movement will surely pull up a chunk of fretboard material by accident.

Once all of the frets have been removed, the fretboard looks something like this:

A radiused sanding block with 400 grade sandpaper is now used to sand the fretboard down. Some of the cowboy-chord finger positions are really worn down, but we will try to get the fretboard as good as possible without having to lower the entire surface by too much. Also, in an attempt to minimise the effect of the back bow, the fretboard is sanded more heavily towards the middle of the neck.

Neck relief (back bow):

Since a lot of lovely rosewood dust is getting spread all over the fretboard, and since, coincidentally, we need to fill in a big long crack, this is a perfect (and very convenient) time to drip superglue along the crack, sealing that dust into the gap. Once the superglue has dried, it is actually easier to remove any excess with a fine file, rather than clogging up the sandpaper. A bit more sanding with the radiused sanding block and we should be done with the fretboard.

The crack before we started sanding:

After a bit of sanding, you can see the crack getting filled with rosewood dust:

Superglue is applied along the length of the crack:

A similar technique was later used on the deepest gouge in the cowboy chord positions of the fretboard.

Now onto the lacquer removal. Since the lacquer is literally flaking off this neck, there is no doubt what the best method is to strip this – with a paint scraper. Here’s a picture of the peghead with the lacquer partially removed. It is very easy to see what has been removed and what hasn’t.

Here’s another picture of part of the back of the neck, also with some lacquer removed. Some areas were easier than others to remove lacquer from, but the outer edge of the peghead was by far the most difficult, especially around the lower edge.

And now here's the face of the peghead after scraping:

The tuners on this guitar have been replaced at least once, and a couple of the tuners have been replaced several times, leaving it with a LOT of holes where there shouldn’t be any. Luckily, most of these will actually be covered by the new tuners, but we would like to fill in these holes anyway, especially since some of them lie very close to where new holes will be and we don’t want any screws to be wandering into the wrong hole.

Screw holes:

Check with new tuners to see what will still be visible:

The quickest and easiest way to do this is by superglueing cocktail sticks into the holes as shown here:

The cocktail sticks are now snipped and filed/sanded down to the same level as the peghead. As mentioned, these will be mostly hidden from view, so no need to worry too much about how well they match the peghead wood.

With the fretboad re-radiused, the lacquer removed and the holes filled, the whole neck is given an all-over sanding. Unfortunately the original logo decal has left a type of sunblock tan line on the peghead, so short of making the new logo an exact fit, this may need to be sanded further. That said, a quick test with a black and white printout of the decal we have made up shows that it is a very close match already.

Old logo "tan line":

Black and white test printout of our new logo:

Similarly, the serial number needs attention. Here is how it looked before the lacquer was scraped off:

And here it is after. It's still there, but hard to see:

Stay tuned for the next post where we will be re-fretting the neck.

The vintage Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 1)

2011-09-27T01:03:00.001-07:00

Some of you may remember me mentioning the 1963 Hofner Colorama II (also known as the Hofner 164) that I bought a while back on ebay. What do you mean you don’t remember? I posted about it right here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-first-ever-electric-guitar.html

Oh wow, was that really three years ago? Who knew?

Anyway, as is always the danger when you buy something without seeing it in person first, especially a 50-year-old guitar, you never really know what sort of shape it’s going to be in. The photos showed a guitar that appeared to be in fairly average shape for its age and most of the original parts seemed to be there, but upon closer inspection it appeared that this particular guitar needed a lot more work than originally anticipated. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single part of this guitar that doesn’t need work in some way or another.

In that previous post, I mentioned that I completely messed with my original Hofner Colorama II almost 25 years ago, and so I feel like this is a chance to redeem myself. Kinda like adopting a puppy after inadvertently running over another one, or something like that.

Here’s a list of the main problems:

1. Neck – The neck is back bowed and the fretboard is both badly gouged in the cowboy chord positions and has a crack running the length of several frets. The frets themselves are badly worn in places too, so a total refret will be required. The neck needs to be completely re-lacquered, the tuners need replacing with something a bit closer to original (and the extra screw holes from the replacement tuners will need to be filled in too). The logo will need replacing due to having to re-lacquer the neck.

2. Body – The paint needs to be stripped and the body refinished. The paint is literally flaking off, and there are some cracks where the pieces of wood are joined.

3. Pickguard and back vibrato cover – Both plastic covers are warped and are now somewhat convex in shape. The screws have obviously been lost/replaced over time and are a bit of a (bad) mix now, so will need replacing.

4. Vibrato/tremolo – The thumbscrew that holds the vibrato arm on is missing and the arm is held on only because the threaded stud had been hammered down like a rivet, destroying it in the process. Also, the chrome vibrato cover has completely split where the screw at the front end goes in.

5. Bridge – The bridge has been replaced with one that has the wrong spacing, radius, and won’t intonate correctly, due to being straight across, so will need to be replaced (at least the top part).

6. Volume/tone knobs – Oh boy, would you look at the state of those? They're in dreadful condition and will all need to be replaced. The knob markers/pointers are also really, really rusty and will need a thorough cleaning.

7. Electronics – The pots are not behaving well at all (cutting out, very scratchy, etc.) and will need to be cleaned out. Additionally, one of the pickups does not appear to be behaving well, although that might (hopefully) be fixed after giving the pots some attention. The output jack could probably do with some attention too.

Wow, what a lot of work for just one guitar, but, hey, think how much FUN it’s going to be! Amirite? Plus, you know, this will totally sort me out with the Hofner karma police.

So stay tuned as all of these jobs get tackled over the next few posts.

Adjusting the neck pickup height on a Fender Telecaster style guitar

2011-09-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

The neck pickup on this Telecaster needs to be raised. However, as is the case on most Telecaster-style guitars, there are no height adjustment screws in sight. There is a way to adjust this, but it’s not entirely obvious. Although the following steps might seem like a lot of work, you can easily do this in 20 or 30 minutes.

Before starting, you should really ask yourself why you want to adjust the pickup height. A common mistake is to think that if you move the pickup as close as possible to the strings, you can get a more powerful and better sound. However, as you move the pickup closer to the strings, the pickup magnets can start to influence the strings themselves, even dampening them and affecting the sound in a bad way. For this reason you need to be careful not to raise them by too much.

The pickup on THIS guitar is noticeably low and the output is much quieter than the bridge pickup. I could lower the bridge pickup instead, but I already like how it sounds and don’t want to mess with it, so I’m going to raise the neck pickup instead.

Before continuing, let’s take some measurements. Press down on the last fret of whatever string you want to measure and then use a ruler to deduce the distance between the pickup and that string. Do this for both of the E strings and also measure one of the middle strings. The reason you need to measure one of the middle strings is that, since this particular pickup is curved on top, it could be closer to the strings in the middle than at the edges. What you don’t want to do is adjust it nicely at the edges only to find that it ends up far too close in the middle.

After measuring this pickup we find that we have a good 4 mm at each E string and just under 4 mm in the middle, so the plan is to raise it up by 2 mm at both ends.

First thing we should do is slacken the strings. You might be able to get away without doing this, but it certainly makes things easier.

Now remove all of the screws holding the scratch plate (pickguard) in place.

Lift up and remove the scratch plate. The pickup will stay attached to the guitar, so make sure you take this into account as you lift out the scratch plate.

You will now see that the pickup is screwed into the body of the guitar with two screws.

Before making any adjustments, it’s time to measure the pickup height again. That way, after we make any adjustments, we can measure how much the pickup has moved (since we’ve slackened off the strings, we can’t compare to our previous measurements now). This pickup is measuring approximately 4 mm above the guitar body at both ends. Remember that the plan is to raise this one by 2mm at each end, so we will raise it to 6 mm above the guitar body.

Although not necessary here, I have unscrewed the pickup completely just to show you what we’re dealing with. As you can see, there are two springs on the pickup screws. This allows you to adjust the height by simply turning the screws. Some Telecasters do not have these springs, however, and if that is the case for you, I recommend adding some now. Otherwise you will only be able to raise the height by propping something under the pickup, such as washers or coins. A cheap and simple method is to steal the spring out of a cheap ballpoint pen, cut it in half, and slide one half over each of the screws, although if you prefer you can get proper pickup springs or tubing from any number of sources.

Rotate the screw at each end to adjust the height (anti-clockwise [counterclockwise] to raise the pickup and clockwise to lower it – note that this is the opposite to most pickups). Keep measuring the height after each adjustment until the pickup is where you want it. Remember that in THIS case the plan was to raise it by 2mm, so we want it to sit 6mm above the guitar body. Your guitar will most likely be different.

If you want to experiment a bit, you could tighten your strings again and play a while to try out the new pickup height. Once you’re happy, you can replace the scratch plate. In this case, we already have the pickup height we want, so I’m going to go ahead and replace the scratch plate now.

If you haven’t already done so, tighten up the strings and enjoy your guitar's new sound!

Stringing (or re-stringing) a guitar

2011-08-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to string a guitar. After twenty-five years of replacing strings on all manner of steel-string guitars, this is the method that I’ve settled on. There are, of course, other methods, and you are more than welcome to try them out. For this blog post, I will be stringing a Fender Stratocaster, but this method works for pretty much all steel-string guitars, both electric and acoustic. That said, there are some locking tuners or split shaft tuners that should be strung in a different way. For that reason, I should state that the following instructions are intended for standard tuners. Remember that if you have a 3-a-side headstock (there are three tuners on each side instead of six on one side), you will have to string the G, B and high (thin) E strings in the opposite direction to what is shown in this post.

Firstly, connect the ball end of the string to (or through) the bridge of the guitar (I usually start with the low (thick) E-string. Obviously this step varies enormously, depending on the type of guitar you are stringing up, but it’s usually pretty simple. I plan to put a post up soon specifically talking about acoustic guitars and their fiddly bridge pins, but in the meantime I will have to assume you can handle this part.

Rotate the tuner to a position where the hole that the string passes through is perpendicular to the neck. Then feed the string through the hole in the tuner, from the center of the headstock to outside of the headstock, as shown here:

Continue to pull the string through the tuner, as described above, but leave enough slack that you can raise the string off the fretboard by about 3 or 4 inches (75 – 100 mm). As a general rule, the thicker strings don’t require quite as much height here, so let’s go for 3 inches for the thick E-string, gradually moving to 4 inches for the thin E-string.

Pull the string back on itself, as shown here:

Feed the string under itself like this:

Now pull the string back in the other direction over the top of itself, being careful to keep tension on the fretboard end of the string using your other (probably right) hand. This tension is important for two reasons. Firstly, it will keep the ball end of the string tight against the bridge so you don't get any surprises once you start tuning up. Secondly, it will give you a nice tight "knot" where the string tightens over on itself at the tuning peg. If this is slack in any way, you may end up with some string slippage when you are not expecting it. There's a real trick to keeping tension at both ends of the string here (unless you have three hands), but I find that pressing down with my (right) thumb on the string just above the nut, while pulling UP on the string with the rest of my (right) fingers will get the job done.

While still maintaining tension with your right hand, rotate the tuner in an anticlockwise (counter clockwise) direction to start tightening up the string. Before you tighten the string to pitch, make sure it goes under any string retainers, etc. In some exceptional cases, you may actually have to feed the strings through the string retainers before they get to the tuners (you may be able to get around this by loosening the retainer a bit then tightening it back down once the string is under it).

Once the string is tuned to pitch, grab it and pull it up a bit to stretch it. You can do this a few times, but be careful not to over-do it, risking string breakage (especially for the thinner strings).

Cut the string ends to leave about half an inch (12-13 mm) sticking out.

Now, using some pliers, fold the end of the string in half so that you do not have any sharp ends.

And that’s you done. You should find that this method will prevent string slippage and help to keep your guitar as in tune as possible.

As usual, feel free to ask any questions or leave any comments below.

Setting up or adjusting a Fender Stratocaster tremolo

2011-08-08T01:37:00.000-07:00

Today's blog post deals with setting up a Stratocaster tremolo unit only. Everything else related to setting up the saddles, etc., can be found in the "How to set up an electric guitar" post here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-set-up-electric-guitar.html. If you’re going to adjust both the tremolo and the saddles, then do the tremolo setup (this post) first.

Let’s have a look at the Fender Stratocaster tremolo (also known as the whammy bar, or the vibrato), as originally patented by Leo himself (as with all images, click on the picture for a bigger version):

It’s really quite a simple mechanism, engineering-wise. Looking at it from the side (FIG.2) we can see that it pivots on the screws that hold it to the top of the guitar body (the screws are marked "15" in the patent drawings). The tension from the guitar strings pulls the unit forward, but this tension is counter-balanced by the springs hidden below the unit (found under the cover at the back of the guitar), hence “floating” the tremolo unit. This is where you, the player, come in. To lower the pitch of the note(s) being played, push the tremolo arm towards the guitar body, thus adding to the string tension. Alternatively, pull the tremolo arm away from the guitar body to add to the spring tension and increase the pitch.

For such a simple mechanism, it really shouldn’t be difficult to set up. Unfortunately, there are many reasons why these are famous last words. One of the problems is that not everyone uses a tremolo in the same way. Some people like to both decrease AND increase the pitch, whereas others prefer to just lower it. Some want the tremolo to move really easily, while others prefer it to be quite stiff, so that it doesn’t move unintentionally (either from leaning on it accidentally, or even from the increased string tension caused by bending strings).

Another problem is that not everyone uses the same string gauge, so a tremolo unit that might be perfectly set up for light-gauge strings will probably not be set up well for medium or heavy gauge strings. Lastly, the starting position of the tremolo unit is a bit of a personal choice. Some people (usually the ones that only want to lower the pitch, or even not use the tremolo at all) prefer to have the tremolo unit sitting flush against the body of the guitar, while others prefer a gap, leaving enough room to pull pack on the tremolo arm, increasing the pitch of the note(s) being played.

Taking all of the above into account, this post will take you through a typical setup for an average player who likes to both raise and lower the pitch and uses fairly standard strings. You can, of course, feel free to adjust this setup to your liking.

One thing to mention here is that there are two common Strat tremolo types. One uses six small screws to attach the tremolo to the top of the guitar body, while the other style uses two bigger screws.

Vintage-style, or "synchronized" tremolo (six pivot screws):

American Series, or two-pivot bridge (two pivot screws):

The setup for both of these styles is almost the same, with the exception of step 5 (below), which will be clearly defined when the time comes. Here are the steps we will go through to set up the tremolo:

1. Remove tremolo arm
2. Remove back cover
3. Remove strings
4. Remove springs
5. Adjust pivot screws
6. Re-attach springs
7. Restring guitar
8. Screw in the tremolo arm
9. Adjust claw
10. Replace back cover.

Remove tremolo arm

Simply unscrew the arm in an anti-clockwise (counter clockwise) direction until it comes out. Be careful not to let it fall onto the surface of your guitar and scratch it.

Remove the back cover

Place your guitar face down on a nice soft surface, unscrew the screws holding the back cover on, and remove the cover.

Remove strings

Remove all six strings. You should now be looking at something like this:

Remove springs

Note: If you have a two-screw tremolo, once you remove the springs from the back of the guitar, there is NOTHING holding your tremolo unit in place. Be careful not to let it fall out or otherwise damage either the tremolo unit or the guitar.

Place your guitar face down and carefully remove the springs. You may have anywhere from two to five springs in there, depending on how it was previously set up. There are various different methods for removing these, but with the strings removed from the front of the guitar, you will probably be able to remove the springs by hand. Just grab them near the claw end, push the spring towards the claw, and lift out. If you’re finding this a bit hard, feel free to loosen the screws holding the claw in place a little. That should give you enough slack to get them off, and will make them easier to get back on later. Alternative methods involve screwdrivers, pliers or special hooks. If you decide to use any of these tools instead of your hand, do be careful not to slip and scratch your guitar.

Adjust pivot screws (two screw model)

Note: If you like (I recommend this), you can take this opportunity to remove both pivot screws and add a little Vaseline to the threads before reinstalling them. Add a little Vaseline to the points where the tremolo unit pivots on these screws too while you have this opportunity. The Vaseline adds a little bit of lubrication, helping things to move more smoothly, and also helps to minimise strange pinging noises when you move the tremolo.

Have a look from the side of your guitar to see how the tremolo unit is sitting against your guitar top. It will hopefully be sitting flush, but if not, adjust each of the pivot screws until it does. Remember that there is currently nothing holding your tremolo in place at this point, so you may have to push it forward with your hand. Alternatively, leave ONE SPRING in place to hold the tremolo unit in place. Unlike the six screw tremolo, the two-screw model is pretty much idiot proof and you can often just screw both pivot screws all the way in without raising the tremolo unit off the surface of the guitar.

Adjust pivot screws (six screw model)

Have a look from the side of your guitar to see how the tremolo unit is sitting against your guitar top. It will hopefully be sitting flush, but if not, slacken each of the pivot screws until it does. Now slacken all the screws one turn more. Finally, tighten down the outer two screws only until they are just touching the top of the tremolo unit. The unit will now balance on these two screws, while the other four will be used solely to keep the unit in place.

Attach springs

Time to re-attach the springs at the back of the guitar. Use the same method as when you removed them, but add a little bit of Vaseline to the two ends of each spring first to lubricate the contact points just a bit. In general, three springs located in the centre and the two outer locations is the most common configuration for standard string gauges.

Just a few notes about springs (since I have your attention), as follows:

1. Not all springs are the same, so if you find that you only have two springs and want to increase to three by just buying a single new one, you could end up with mismatched ones. Better to buy three new ones.

2. If you are tempted to place the outer two springs at an angle so that they are not parallel to the centre spring, but rather taper towards it or away from it, this will end up giving you unevenly-matched springs, as the centre one will be shorter than the other two. Don't do it.

3. More springs will give you a stiffer feel. If that’s what you want, then by all means feel free try it out. Similarly, fewer springs will give you a bouncier feel.

4. Heavy strings might require more springs and lighter strings might only need two.

Restring the guitar

Restring your guitar in the normal way. I’ll be putting a blog post up about that in a few days if you’re unsure of the best way to do that.

Screw in the tremolo arm
We’re going to need the tremolo arm for the next step, so it’s a good idea to screw it back in now.

Adjust the claw until the tremolo unit is at the correct distance from the guitar body

This is quite possibly the most important step of the whole tremolo setup. The claw is the fine tuner that will leave your tremolo unit sitting in just the right place for optimal balance. Before adjusting it, make sure you tune your guitar to pitch. Use the tremolo a bit while you’re at it to make sure everything is loosened up, and keep doing this until the guitar stays in tune even after tremolo use. Now look at the side of the tremolo unit and measure how far off the surface of the guitar it is sitting at. Fender recommends that it sits at about 3.2 mm (1/8").

If it is sitting too high, then tighten the two screws holding the claw in place. Alternatively, if it is sitting too low, then loosen the screws a little. Each time you adjust the screws, you will need to re-check the guitar tuning and use the tremolo a bit, then re-measure the height. Once it consistently sits at 3.2 mm and the guitar is in tune, you’re done. Be prepared to take some time doing (and repeating) this step.

Replace back cover

Like it says, put the back cover back on and replace the screws.

Well that’s the tremolo unit set up and balanced nicely. For other setup tips, feel free to go to the setup post mentioned at the beginning of this one. Otherwise, feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.

Another DIY guitarist

2011-06-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

I recently got back in touch with an old friend from the Basque Country. Back when I was living there and making my Strat, he was planning on making a Telecaster. We were both quite interested in making our own stomp boxes too, and we were both pretty new to the whole thing. We’ve both learned a lot since then.

I was very happy to learn that he completed his Telecaster (and another!) and has not only continued to make stomp boxes, but has made tube amps too.

His name is Raúl, and you can see some of his DIY guitar projects on his myspace page here: http://www.myspace.com/raulbrontes. The picture above is one of his Telecasters. Isn't it beautiful?

He’s also the lead singer and guitarist in the fantastic band, "The Brontës". There’s some information about them on Raúl’s page, but if you want to learn more you can go to The Brontës’ myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/thebrontes.

Keep up the good work, Raúl!

Building a quick Brian-May-style treble booster on Veroboard

2011-05-25T00:40:00.000-07:00

It was a friend's 44th birthday a while back, so I decided to make a quick pedal for him.

I'd been wanting to try out a Brian May treble booster based pedal for a while, and I found this one at http://147pedals.blogspot.com/2010/11/simple-tone-control-brian-may-treble.html.

Veroboard is also known as stripboard or perf board, and looks something like this:

Whichever terminology you use, make sure you get a board with lines/strips of copper and NOT one that has each hole insulated from the next like this:

I like building circuits on Veroboard, since it’s simply a case of following the picture. You don’t even need to understand how circuits work (although it would obviously be helpful for trouble shooting).

Anyway, here are the simple steps to making a Veroboard pedal.

1. Cut your Veroboard to size (in my case 12x5, erm, holes).

2. Now "cut" the tracks wherever you are instructed to do so (you are just cutting through the copper, not the whole board). In the case of this particular circuit, between the pins under R1, C1, R4, and R6. The result after cutting would look something like this, although note that this picture is from a different circuit:

3. Solder the components on. Note that the copper strips are on the underside of the board, and the soldering is just like when you get a pre-made circuit board. This is what the underside of a typical Veroboard circuit would look like. Again, note that this photo is actually from a different circuit.

4. Finally, you need to wire up the enclosure. This circuit was so simple that wiring up the enclosure was the hard bit. If you are unsure how to wire up a stomp box enclosure, then have a look at my blog post over here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/06/buhow-to-wire-up-stomp-box-effects.html

5. Here’s the finished result. I didn’t other to spend much time on making the enclosure itself look good this time around. My apologies in advance for the silly name.

Veroboard is very cheap and there are a LOAD of good circuits out there that use it. Here's just one example of a site that has a few:
http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/richardo/perfboard/index.html
As you can see, the Veroboard layout is much easier to follow than trying to read a circuit diagram, kinda like reading guitar tabs when you can't read music.

Some of the projects don't even need you to cut any of the tracks.

This Brian-May-style treble booster was a very simple circuit to build and works extremely well. In fact I think I may build one for myself too.

How to set up an electric guitar

2011-03-01T23:56:00.001-08:00

Setting up an electric guitar is not rocket science, but it is something that a lot of guitarists shy away from. True, if you do this wrong, you can make your guitar play badly, but if you learn to do it right, you could save yourself a lot of cash.

I should probably preface this by saying that today we are only going to do a basic setup. This is enough most of the time, but occasionally more is required, such as filing the nut, or doing some fretwork. If you want to set up a tremolo too, go to this post first: Setting Up or Adjusting a Stratocaster Tremolo

So what does a basic setup involve? Let me break it down for you, as follows:
1. Checking and adjusting neck bow (how straight the neck is)
2. Checking and adjusting saddle height
3. Checking and adjusting the intonation (how far back or forward the saddles need to sit at the bridge to keep your guitar as in tune as possible no matter what fret you’re playing)

Those three steps will have a dramatic effect on your guitar and none of them are very difficult, or require particularly specialized or expensive tools. In this article, we will do this on a Fender Stratocaster, but the same rules apply for just about every electric guitar. In fact, most other guitars are even easier to set up. Here's today's patient:

1. Check and adjust neck bow (how straight the neck is)

Since we only want to check how straight the neck is, we need to isolate this aspect of the guitar. In other words we don’t want the height of the nut or the placement of the saddles to confuse us, so we take them out of the equation. Don’t worry; we’re not going to remove any of these components, just circumvent them.

I use a ruler to do this, but you can do it using only strings. I’ll describe both methods below.

Method A: Using a ruler

Get a ruler (or straightedge if you want to be all fancy) that is at least as long as the neck, but not so long that it reaches all the way from the nut to the saddles. If you can’t get one between these lengths, and are willing to sacrifice a ruler, get one that’s too long and cut it to length. Alternatively, you can just cut a little out of one edge so that you can still make full use of the other edge of the ruler.

Now lay the edge of the ruler along the frets (don’t rest it on top of the nut or the saddles).

Method B: Using the strings

First, put a capo on the first fret. This stops the nut from having any influence, say from being too high/low.

Next, hold down the low (thick) E string on the bridge side of the highest fret. This stops the saddles from having any influence.

No matter whether you used method A or B, you can now go about measuring the neck bow. This is done by measuring the string height (the gap between the ruler/string and the top of the fret) at about the 8th fret. There is a lot of debate over how straight a neck should be, and in fact it really is personal choice, but a height roughly the same as the thickness of a B string is a good starting point. Personally, I use a 0.012” feeler gauge to do this, but you could use a B string. Simply slide the feeler gauge/B string into the gap to see if it is too big/small.

If the gap is perfect, congratulations – you may now move on to step 2.

If the gap is too large, then you need to tighten the truss rod a little (similarly, if the gap is too small, you need to loosen the truss rod). Locate the adjustable end of the truss rod. On my guitar it is at the head of the guitar and uncovered.

On some Fender Strats, it is located at the other end of the neck. This is a pain, because every time you want to make an adjustment to the truss rod, you will need to loosen the strings, remove (or partially remove) the neck, adjust the truss rod, re-attach the neck and tighten up the strings again to check the neck bow.

Anyway, here’s how you adjust the truss rod. This must be done with the strings tuned to whatever pitch you usually use. If your neck is too bowed (the gap you just measured is too big), you tighten the truss rod by turning the Allen key (Allen wrench), screwdriver, or socket (the tool required depends on your guitar) clockwise. It is recommended that you only turn the tool a quarter turn at a time and then give the neck some time to settle. You will also need to make sure the strings are still properly tuned after each adjustment.

CAUTION: If you find that the truss rod is very difficult to turn, then stop now and take your guitar to the guitar shop. It may be that there is a problem with the neck or the truss rod and you may damage the guitar by forcing it. Believe me, you do not want to damage the truss rod.

If, instead of tightening the truss rod, you need to loosen it, do so by turning it anti-clockwise (counter-clockwise). Again, a quarter turn at a time. Once you have got the gap to 0.012” (or whatever gap you prefer), you will have finished this step. Feel free to remove the capo at this stage if it is attached.

2. Check and adjust the saddle height

Firstly check and, if necessary, adjust the low (thick) E string height. Do this by adjusting the height of the saddle on the bridge/tremolo. If you have a Stratocaster then this is done by screwing two little screws in or out. I recommend that you try to keep these two screws at the same height as each other, although some people would disagree with me.

The question here is how high to make the saddle. Well, this is personal choice. Find somewhere were the string doesn’t buzz on any fret from being too low, but low enough that you can play up and down the neck easily. There’s usually a sweet spot where you can just start to detect some buzzing and you can leave it just a tiny bit higher than that.

Now do the exact same procedure for the high (thin) E string.

There are two ways that you can go about adjusting the other strings.

Method one: Adjust each string the same way as you just adjusted the two E strings.

Method two: Use a radius gauge, as follows:

Lay a radius gauge across your strings, close to, but not touching, the saddles. Adjust the remaining strings only (A, D, G & B) until every string is just touching the radius gauge. Radius gauges can be bought from numerous sources, or you can make your own. Feel free to use Google at this point if you don’t know about radius gauges. Just make sure that you use a radius gauge that matches the neck of your guitar. Not all Strats have the same neck radius, so the best way is to rest a radius gauge on the neck of your guitar (with the strings removed if necessary) to find out which radius you should be using.

Incidentally, I use these snazzy radius gauges that can go either above or below the strings (below gives a slightly more accurate result, although the difference is arguable). I got these from http://www.stewmac.com.

Please don’t take these measurements as the absolute final string height, but more as a good estimate. You can adjust them a little to your own personal tastes after this.

OK, that’s step 2 finished. Your guitar should be nice and playable now. However, it may not seem to stay in tune very well. That’s because the intonation might be off.

3. Check and adjust the intonation

The intonation here refers to the forward/backward position of the individual string saddles. By moving the saddles forwards or backwards, we are actually adjusting the length of the strings. Without going into too much detail, if the string is the wrong length, the positions of the frets will not be correct and the guitar will be out of tune on some of them. Adjusting the intonation is not difficult. All you need is a guitar tuner and a tool to move the saddles forwards or backwards.

Play an open low E string and make sure it is in tune (using the guitar tuner).

Now play the 12th fret of the low E string.

It should also be in tune. If it is too high, then you need to move the saddle back. This increases the length of the string. If the note is too low, then you need to move the saddle forwards. This decreases the length of the string.

Now check both the open and the 12th fret notes again. You’ll have to tune the open string again because by moving the saddle, the tension of the string will have changed and so will need to be retuned.

Once you have correctly moved the saddle so that both the open string and the 12th fret are in tune, you can move on to the A string. Repeat until all of the strings have been done.

That’s a basic setup done. Hopefully your guitar will now be easy to play and appear to be in tune no matter where you play the note. As I mentioned before, sometimes other work needs to be carried out on your guitar to make it play right, such as work on the nut, or a problem with one or more of the machine heads/tuners, but that’s for another day.

Troubleshooting guitar tuning problems

2010-12-30T00:57:00.000-08:00

There are several reasons why a guitar may appear to have tuning problems. Most people are quick to assume that the machine heads (tuners) are the reason for a frequently out-of-tune guitar, but in fact they are rarely the cause.

Here are a few causes, how to spot them and very briefly what to do about them. I’ve listed these more or less in order of cheapest/easiest to most expensive/difficult to repair. Some of these have been covered in more detail in previous posts, and others will be covered in future posts. I’ve left out tremolo problems because I’d like to do a separate article about those.

Strings are still "settling in"

When you first put new strings on a guitar, they are very springy and take a while to settle in, Settling in really means stretching. You can speed up this process by manually stretching the strings after you put them on your guitar. Simply put your finger under each string (about halfway up the neck is fine) and pull the string away from the guitar by a few inches. Don't pull so hard that you're in danger of snapping the string, though. You'll probably have to re-tune the string after doing this, but this only shows that you have most likely successfully stretched it.

Guitar intonation is wrong

Guitar intonation refers to how well the neck length and the fret spacing match up. That might sound very technical, but the only thing a normal user probably needs to worry about is the forward/backward position of the saddles. If you suspect your tuning problems are caused by an intonation issue, try the following. Tune the open strings properly and then check the same strings at the 12th position. If they are in tune (exactly one octave higher), then the intonation is probably OK. If not, then this can be fixed by adjusting each saddle until open and 12th positions of each string match up (exactly one octave apart). Note: If the 12th fret note is too high, move the saddle back. If it’s too low, then move the saddle forward.

Guitar action is too high

If the strings are too high off the fretboard, either because of a bowed neck or saddles that are set too high, then in certain positions, especially higher up the fretboard, the strings have to be pushed down so far to meet the frets, that you end up stretching them. This will, unsurprisingly, knock them out of tune. In some ways, the tuning problems are the same as when the intonation is wrong, in that the higher up the fretboard you go, the more the strings will be out of tune. The difference here is that you will know the strings are too high because you have to exert so much effort pushing them down to the frets.

Guitar action is too low

If the strings are too low, you’ll know pretty quickly, as the strings will rattle against the frets. The easy fix for this is to set the action a bit higher until the buzzing stops. If you find that you need to set the strings very high to avoid this, then you may need to look at the neck bow. You might also want to think about other reasons for rattling noises, such as the problem emanating from the nut or the saddles.

Nut is too high

A nut that is too high gives you similar problems to when you have guitar action that is too high, except that the out-of-tuneness is most noticeable in the lower frets, as the string is really having to be pushed down a lot more in those positions. If the string height over the 1st fret seems far too high, then maybe consider lowering the nut, or one of the slots if a particular string is affected.

Nut is too low

A nut that is too low is going to give you similar rattling problems to when your guitar’s action is too low, except that it ONLY affects the open string. If you are getting a rattling sound and suspect the nut may be the problem, put a capo on the first fret and see if the problem disappears. If it does, then the most likely problem is the nut. In fact, this is a great way to diagnose ANY nut problems.

Nut is pinching strings

Sometimes the guitar nut pinches the strings (i.e. grips them too hard) because the nut slots are filed too thin for the strings you are using. You will know if this is the case because when you turn the machine head, the string will make a pinging sound as it jumps up or down in pitch while being tuned. This jumping makes tuning difficult because you cannot really fine tune (not to mention the additional problems you will encounter if using a tremolo – but that’s for another day). The solution here is to widen the string slot on the nut (be careful just to widen it and not to lower it).

Nut slot is angled badly

The nut slots should be angled slightly so that the highest point in the slot is just where it meets the fretboard. You could probably just about get away with a perfectly horizontal slot, but I really wouldn’t recommend it. A slot which has its highest point nearer to the head of the guitar, or anywhere else between the front and the back is absolutely unacceptable, as this is, in effect, moving the position of the “zero” fret. Think of it like having a bridge saddle too far back or forwards, but at the other end of the guitar.

Strings are not wound onto machine heads (tuners) properly

Strings that are not wound correctly are subject to slippage or other issues. There are many methods to wind a string, but I personally prefer this method: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2011/08/stringing-guitar.html

Machine heads (tuners) are bad

Machine heads fail for a number of reasons. Sometimes they’re just not very precisely made, sometimes things wear out, or sometimes things break. However, machine heads are not the cause of tuning problems as often as you might think. If you are pretty sure one of your machine heads is being problematic, and you want to test it before paying for a new one, try swapping its position with another machine head on your guitar. Now pay attention to where the problem is. Did it stay with the string or with the machine head? If it stayed with the machine head, then, OK, feel free to buy a new one.

Uneven frets (high/low fret)

I’ve left this one to the end because, in my opinion, it’s the one you’re most likely to have to pay a guitar tech to fix. An uneven fret is a fret that sits too high or too low on your fretboard. If it’s too high then when you play one fret closer to the head of the guitar, the string will actually hit this fret instead. If it is too low, then when you play this fret, it will hit against the next fret towards the bridge of the guitar. A higher fret is easier to fix, but for both I would recommend just taking the guitar to a professional. There is one workaround you might consider, though. If the uneven fret is not VERY high or low, increasing the action of the guitar a little may make it not noticeable enough to be a problem.

Well, I hope the above information has been of some use to you. I’ve tried not to go into too much detail because it’s a lot to take in already, and, frankly, you could write a book about this stuff (as some have). As always, if you have any questions or anything else to say, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Making a (bone) nut from scratch

2010-10-27T23:49:00.001-07:00

I’ve made a post on here before about making a nut (out of ebony) by tracing an outline around the old nut (http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/06/making-ebony-nut-and-saddle.html), but today I’d like to show you how to make a nut for an acoustic (or electric) guitar from scratch. This is for a couple of reasons:

1. The old nut might be missing or damaged.
2. You may not be able to trust or may not be happy with the shape of the previous nut.

So let’s look at the patient first. Here’s an acoustic guitar missing its nut. Just a quick note here... there are some remnants of glue in the slot and that should be removed with a sharp knife before proceeding further.

Assuming you have now cleared out all the glue, and are ready to start making a nut, you will first need a blank. Here’s mine:

I was going to tell you that the first thing you need to do is thin the blank a little so that it will fit in the slot, but it turns out the blank I had was perfect already. If you DO need to thin it a little, check out the ebony nut post to see how I did it there. Oh, and if the blank is already TOO thin, then forget it – you need a new, fatter blank.

So far we have a blank that is the correct thickness, but not the right width.

Mark the edge(s) with a pencil and cut it down to size with a hacksaw (not while it's sitting on the guitar, as the photo might suggest).

The next step is to shape the blank nut to the same radius as the fretboard, and make sure the strings pass over it at a suitable height above the other frets. This is the step that you can miss out if you just trace the previous nut’s outline, and is also where a lot of people get stuck. However, it’s not hard at all.

You will need a very specialised tool for this next step, namely the “half pencil”.

Here’s a “whole pencil”. We need to split it down its middle.

First let’s remove that pesky eraser thing at the end. A pair of pliers will make short work of that.

A decent sharp strong knife is required now. I don’t recommend using a craft knife for this – it’s too brittle. Here’s the knife I used.

DISCLAIMER: If you don’t know how to use a knife safely, stop here. I will not be responsible for any injuries you might cause yourself.

If you look at the end of the pencil, you may be lucky enough to find where the two halves were stuck together originally (yes, that’s right, a pencil has two halves, plus the lead – they don’t just drill a hole through a long piece of wood and insert the lead that way).

Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t see the join, so I had to guess. My first attempt was a disaster.

Further detective work revealed a faint line down the sides, so I tried to follow that. Success!

The half pencil is pretty rough at this stage, not least because the lead itself will remain mostly intact. That’s fine.

What we need now is our trusty piece of sandpaper sitting on a nice flat piece of, well, pretty much anything hard (in my case a floor tile).

Sand the bottom of the pencil until you have a nice flat surface and you are now the proud owner of a half pencil!

You can see from the photo how much carbon has gone everywhere. It’s probably a good idea to wash your hands at this stage to prevent more unwanted carbon marks. Also, to stop the pencil lead from falling out (there’s really not much holding it in at this stage), I recommend running a length of Sellotape (Scotch tape) along the exposed part of the pencil to hold it all together.

Place the half pencil on the frets and pull it across the fretboard, while drawing a line on the nut (which you’ll need to hold in place for this part).

You will now have a line marked on the nut where, if you were to file down to this line, it would be exactly in line with the other frets.

In fact, you need to make a line a little higher than this. Some people would recommend freehanding it, but I prefer placing something under the pencil and drawing another line. A good safe distance is about 1-2 mm. I thought I had one of those wooden coffee stirrers lying around, but I couldn’t find it, so I used a lollypop stick.

You can tape this to the bottom of the pencil and draw another line to give you a good (safe) line to shape the nut to before you start filing the string slots.

Here’s the nut with the second line drawn:

And here it is filed down to that line:

Next thing to do is mark the position of the string slots. For this I have a nice little position chart. I got it with my nut files, but I’m sure you could find a printable one easily enough online.

Here are the nut files I’m using:

I use my nut files to file slots down to about halfway between the two lines (not quite finished in this picture).

Remember not to file the slots exactly level (horizontal), but rather at a bit of an angle, angled down towards the peghead side of the nut.

You’ll probably also want to shape the back of the nut so that it curves down a bit on the peghead side. This helps the strings to find their way to the machine heads without too much interference.

This next part isn’t entirely necessary, but if you want to make the nut nice and shiny, you can use something like these micro mesh pads from stewmac.com:

First use the roughest one (be careful not to alter the shape/thickness of the nut), then move through each pad until you get to the smoothest one. You’ll end up with a nice shiny nut. You could just as easily use different grades of sandpaper to do this job, or possibly some other sort of abrasive.

Here’s the finish I got after just a few minutes’ work with the micro mesh pads:

I’m sure an even better finish could be achieved with a little more effort.

So now it’s time to test the nut out on the guitar. DO NOT glue it in place at this stage.

As you can see the strings are sitting a bit high, but the good news is that we can simply file a bit of height off the BOTTOM of the nut now – no need to do all that shaping, slot filing and shining work all over again.

I mark the nut with my best guess for how much to take off (remember you can always take more off, but not really put it back), so better to take off a little at a time.

Another test fitting after removing some height and I’m happy with the results, though I’ll play with it for a while before deciding for sure.

Once you are sure you are happy with the nut, you can glue it in place (although this is not entirely necessary, as the strings will hold it in place very well – just be careful if you ever remove all the strings at the same time).

The question is which glue and how much to use. I’d recommend a very weak glue. Cheap white craft glue, even watered down about 50% is more than sufficient. A single drop near each end of the bottom of the nut is enough.

Finally, here is the happy patient, with its new bone nut, made from scratch. Please feel free to leave a message if you have any questions or comments.

Installing Graph Tech saddles on a Tune-O-Matic bridge

2010-03-15T20:44:00.001-07:00

Removing and replacing the saddles on a Tune-O-Matic (TOM) bridge can be a confusing and somewhat fiddly process, but really isn’t that difficult. Note, though, that there have been several variations of the TOM bridge, and the process differs slightly from model to model. Also important to note is that each different bridge requires a different set of Graph Tech saddles, so make sure you buy the right ones.

Go here to check which model you need: http://www.graphtech.com/products.html?SubCategoryID=34

Here’s the patient. It’s on a 1993 Gibson Les Paul Studio.

If you look closely, you can see that the strings have started to make their own slots where they shouldn’t, though that's not the only reason for this upgrade. The bridge in question is a Nashville pre-2000 bridge, which means the required Graph Tech saddles are part number PS-8500-00.

Once the strings are removed, the bridge lifts off very easily. In fact, be careful it doesn’t fall off when you aren’t paying attention (same goes for the tailpiece, which slides off back the way). Here’s the bridge, with the old saddles still in place.

It is important to understand that TOM saddles (or rather, their screws) are held in place with some sort of retainer, be it a spring, wire, clip, or whatever. Luckily, this particular model allows the saddles (and their retainers) to be removed very easily.

First, unscrew the screw holding the saddle in place. As the saddle hits the front of the bridge, you will feel some resistance, but if you (carefully) continue to unscrew, the screw will force its way past the retainer and start to exit the back of the bridge.

Looking under the bridge now, you will most likely still see the retainer sitting in place. If you don’t see it, then it’s time to look around as it probably fell on the floor or workbench.

The retainer can easily be lifted out with a screwdriver or similar.

Repeat this process for all six saddles.

It’s a good time to give the bridge a good clean at this stage, as it’s unlikely to be as easy to do so anytime soon.

Here’s the set of Graph Tech saddles.

The saddles also come with six retaining clips (small E Type circlips). Make sure you don’t miss these as they are hidden behind the sponge in the packaging.

The saddles are placed in the bridge as follows, and the screws screwed in without the clips. Note that three of the saddles have wide slots (for the wound strings) and three have narrow slots (for the unwound strings). Make sure you put these in the right positions.

Now for the fiddly bit, the clips have to be pushed onto the small grooves in the screws. The location of the grooves is pointed out below.

A fairly simple way to do this is to place them more or less in place with pliers and then push down quite hard with a blunt instrument – in my case, a blunt punch. You will feel a definite click into place when they move to the correct position. Again repeat this process for all six clips.

Here's the bridge with all six saddles and clips in place. The position of the saddles is a bit of a guess at this moment.

The bridge is now put back on the guitar and intonated accordingly (that lesson’s for another day).

Gibson Deluxe Tuners - A Revisit

2010-01-28T01:10:00.000-08:00

Please note that this post is part four of four posts. I highly recommend reading all four posts in order before acting on any of the information.

The other parts are located here:

Part 1: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-and-why-they-suck.html
Part 2: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-part-two.html
Part 3: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/02/gibson-deluxe-tuners-fix.html

Given the amount of visits I’ve received due to the Gibson Deluxe Tuners (and why they suck) posts I made a while back, and what I’ve learnt since then, I decided to revisit the topic.

At that time, I decided the best way for me to fix the tuner was to solder it closed. This worked great and still holds fine. However, I was a little disappointed that I only found out about the “official” fix after I had already repaired mine. In this post, I’m going to actually try this fix with another tuner (which I found in a parts drawer in a local guitar shop). I’ll get onto this later.

Another thing I’d like to discuss is peg head hole sizes for Gibson Deluxe Tuners, and how you can use conversion bushings to fit normal Kluson-style tuners as replacements.

You see, Gibson Deluxe tuners are somewhat of a hybrid tuner. From the back, they look like traditional Kluson-style stamped tuners, but from the front, they look like modern Grover/Schaller/Gotoh-style die-cast tuners. The footprints (the markings that would be left if you removed the tuners) on the back of your peg head are the same as the ones that would be left by Kluson-style tuners, yet the holes that go right through your peg head are the same size as those used by die-cast tuners (10mm). So what’s the solution if you want to replace your Gibson Deluxe tuners with something OTHER than Gibson Deluxe Tuners, but without marking your guitar in anyway, or having ugly footprints left over from the old tuners? Well, it turns out that you can use Kluson-style tuners with what are known as “conversion bushings”. The ones that I have tried out and found to fit perfectly are available from Guitar Fetish (http://store.guitarfetish.com/vitucobu.html).

I also wanted to talk about something else I discovered during this adventure, which is that you can easily convert a bass-side tuner to a treble-side tuner (well, apart from having to remove the back cover and fit it back on). This thought crossed my mind some time ago, but I figured it wouldn’t work, since the worm wheels would be mirror images of each other. However, it turns out they are not, in fact, mirror images at all. Let me show you...

Excuse the use of a bass guitar for this demonstration, but it's a nice clear image. As you can see here, the bass- and treble-side tuners look like mirror images of each other until you look a bit closer. You should see that the worm wheels are not a reflection of each other, but are threaded exactly the same way.

Now here is a Gibson Deluxe bass-side tuner (with the back cover removed).

And here's the same tuner with the worm gear inserted the other way around (voila – you now have a treble-side tuner).

Some of you might be thinking, “No way, that’s going to work, man. You’ll have to turn it the opposite way from the other tuners”, but if you check the tuners on your three-a-side guitar now, you’ll see that they do not turn the way you thought. As mentioned before, they are not exact mirror images of each other.

Anyway, back to the “official” method for fixing the cover back on to these tuners. I’ve heard from several sources now that this is the accepted fix for Gibson Deluxe Tuners.

We place the tuner, closed, on a solid surface, preferably held in place with something. Now we place a punch, small chisel, or screwdriver on one of the tabs, right where the arrow is pointing in the following photo (you can see the mark left by the original chisel, in fact) and give it a solid tap. Finally we do the same for the other tab. [This is called "staking" the tabs (thanksDeuce2222).]

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is the accepted repair for these tuners. I tried it out on this tuner and so far it is holding well. It is also quicker and easier than the solder trick, so it is now my recommended method. If your tuner still keeps falling apart, or part of the tab breaks off, you always have the soldering trick to fall back on.

What to do with an old endpin?

2010-01-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

See picture.

Installing an under-saddle pickup on an acoustic guitar

2009-10-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

This beautiful guitar needs an under-saddle pickup. This is a kind of 4-step process, as follows:

1. Drill a 12mm (or 12.5mm) hole where the endpin used to be, to install the endpin jack.
2. Drill a hole through the bridge to allow the pickup wire to pass through.
3. Sand down the bottom of the old saddle, taking off the same amount as the height of the pickup that will now sit under it.
4. Solder the wire from the pickup to the endpin jack.

OK, let the adventure begin!

Firstly, before drilling a hole for the endpin jack, the old endpin needs to be removed. As this is tapered in shape, it should be easy to just yank it out. Get a good firm grip with your fingers and give it a tug. If you’re lucky, it’ll pull right out. In my case it did.

Now you’re left with a hole that is too small for the endpin jack. As you are not drilling a new hole, but rather expanding one that already exists, the traditional method is to use a reamer.

The problem with this method, however, is that a reamer leaves you with a tapered hole (unless you get a specialised one just for this job), so by the time you open the hole out to 12 mm at one end, it is still too small at the other end. To rectify this, you need to use a round file to file out the rest. I’ve done this before and it took a lot of time.

So instead, I decided to try a different approach this time. It just so happens I have a stepping drill bit whose largest diameter is exactly 12 mm. As it is a stepping drill bit, it behaves in a similar way to a reamer, in that it enlarges holes as it goes through, rather than making one huge 12mm hole in one go. This makes it a nice safe way to drill the endpin jack hole without having to worry about splitting or chipping wood. I wasn’t quite sure how this method was going to work out for me, but it worked perfectly. Note that this will only work if the largest diameter of your stepping drill bit is 12mm.

Most under-saddle pickups require you to drill a hole straight down through the bridge (under the saddle), but this particular pickup required the hole to be drilled at 45°. This was quite risky, as it was very difficult to avoid the bracing inside the guitar. If you are ever doing this, have a good feel inside the guitar to try to locate the closest bracing, in the hope that you can somehow avoid it (whatever you do, don’t have your hand in there while you are drilling the hole). Luckily in this case it was possible to avoid the brace by about the width of a human hair (no kidding).

The hole needs to be smoothed out with a small round needle file, so that there are no rough edges. For this particular type of pickup, it is also necessary to round off the 45° angle, so that the pickup/lead doesn't get a kink in it.

The pickup lead now needs to be fed through the hole and the pickup then placed in the saddle slot.

Now you need to sand the same amount off the bottom of the saddle as the height of the pickup. Use a Vernier caliper to measure the thickness of the pickup, then mark this on the bottom of the saddle. Simply rub the saddle against sandpaper taped to a very flat surface (it’s extremely important to get a flat surface on the bottom of the saddle, so do it right) until you have sanded off the correct amount.

The last thing you need to do before stringing up the guitar is to solder the pickup lead to the endpin jack. Make sure that before you do this, you slide any endpin jack covers, nuts, washers, etc., up the lead, as you won’t be able to do this once it’s soldered. You can slide these parts up the cable from inside the guitar, then pass the lead through the endpin jack hole to do the soldering outside the guitar. It’s a good idea to protect the finish on your guitar with rags or something while doing the soldering.

Here's what the endpin jack looks like before soldering:

Once soldered, push the endpin jack into the hole. Feed the washer and nut down the lead and onto the endpin jack (inside the guitar – yes, it’s fiddly). Tighten the endpin jack nut, making sure that it is nice and tight, as it will have a tendency to work loose otherwise. If there is some sort of endpin jack cover, fit this now.

Here's the endpin jack installed:

Now place the saddle in the saddle slot and string up the guitar.

Here's the finished product. She's a beauty, isn't she? Sounds great too.

How to upgrade guitar tuners

2009-07-28T23:01:00.001-07:00

A very common guitar upgrade is to swap out crappy, cheapo, open-backed (or “stamped”) tuners and replace them with better, enclosed die-cast tuners. I’d like to show you how to do that, and point out a few potential dangers along the way. The example shown uses an acoustic guitar with 3-a-side tuners, but you could follow the same process for an electric, be it 3-a-side or 6-in-line.

Click on any of the images to see bigger versions.

Here’s the patient.

The guitar itself plays well and sounds pretty good, but the tuners have become almost impossible to turn, so it’s time for a change. Although these may look like enclosed tuners, they are simply open-backed tuners, with nothing more than a back cover, which doesn’t even stop dust from getting in.

Decent enclosed tuners can be had very cheap these days. This particular guitar didn’t really warrant Schaller or Grover tuners, but the replacement no-name tuners it is about to receive are a huge improvement over what was there before. I should mention here that if you have a very expensive or collectible guitar, you should probably try to replace your tuners with exact matches if at all possible.

First thing to do is remove the strings. After that, these tuners are removed very simply by unscrewing the little retaining screws, as shown here.

The bushings (also known as ferrules) also need to be removed from the front. The trick here is to stick something like a screwdriver into the hole and then gently roll it around so that the bushing slowly works its way out.

Time for a little cleaning.

Now we’re ready to start the work required for the upgrade.

Unfortunately, enclosed tuners generally require larger holes than open-backed ones. The holes on this guitar appear to be a little over 7mm, but as you can see below, the new tuners in this case will require a 10mm hole.

I got this handy hole-sizing gauge with my drill bit set.

As you can see below, it also measures the enclosed tuner at 10mm.

This is one of the two tools required for enlarging the holes. It’s called a reamer and it really is the perfect tool for enlarging already-existing holes.

I put the reamer through the same 10mm hole on the gauge and mark it with correction fluid. Alternatively, you could mark with a pen, or tape, or whatever you like.

We ream out the hole until the mark meets the wood, then stop. In fact, I would advise you to go just a little bit farther, but not much. The reasoning here is that if you make the opening of the holes a little bit bigger here, you are less likely to chip the finish during the filing process described later.

We do the same to all 6 holes, then repeat the process from the other side of the peg head.

We now have a situation where the opening of the holes on both sides of the peg head are 10mm, but since the reamer is tapered, the hole is not 10mm the whole way through, so we need to do a bit of filing to correct this. Although this photo shows the file being inserted from the back of the peg head, I advise you to insert it from the front. That way it is less likely you will chip any of the veneer off the front of the peg head. If anything chips off the back, it is a lot easier to hide it under the tuner, although in fact, chips from the back are less likely anyway.

Once all 6 holes have been filed, and you have checked them all to make sure the tuners fit, it’s time to screw the tuners into place. Line up something straight, like a ruler, against three of the tuners and make a mark in the holes for the retaining screws. Then do the same for the other 3 tuners.

You could use a drill to make pilot holes for the retaining screws, but I prefer one of these. It’s much easier to control and less likely to accidentally go right through the peg head (and believe me, you really don’t want to do that). It’s called a pin vice (or vise, depending on where you come from).

Whichever method you use, remember that these are just pilot holes, so should be thinner than the screws themselves. Don’t be tempted to just screw in the screws without the pilot holes. There’s a very slim chance you’ll split some wood, but there’s a very BIG chance some of the screws will actually snap on the way in. Last thing to remember is that you should mark the drill bit beforehand so that you know when it has gone deep enough for the screws, but not so deep that it goes right through the peg head.

I recommend that you screw in the retaining screws, but not too tight, then screw on the bushings from the front of the peg head, using a socket (in my case, 10mm). Finally, tighten up the retaining screws. You may even want to use your ruler again while you’re doing this.

Anyway, here’s the finished result (the new tuners got switched from gold ones to silver ones at the last minute, before you ask). As you can see, the back isn’t pretty, but it’s functional, which is all that was required in this case. A set of machine heads with offset retaining screw holes would’ve hidden the footprint of the previous tuners a bit better, so that’s something you may want to keep in mind if appearances matter to you.

Making an Ebony Nut and Saddle

2009-06-29T23:36:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned a while back that a friend of mine generously donated a couple of nut and saddle blanks – one set in Corian and one set in ebony. I already used the Corian nut blank to make a raised nut for playing slide guitar (as seen HERE). Now it was time to put the ebony to use.

My acoustic only came with a plastic nut and saddle, so I was keen to see what sort of a difference this would make (to be discussed later).

The ebony blanks:

The first thing I should mention here is that ebony is a very difficult wood to work with. The only thing I can compare it to is frozen chocolate. It’s extremely hard, but it’s still possible to chip bits off the edge quite easily, so you have to be very careful, patient, and have very sharp tools.

First thing to do was to remove the old nut and saddle to use as a template.

These were then traced around on the nut and saddle blanks.

Let’s look at the process of making the saddle first.

The tracing:

Cutting to length:

Initial, quite rough, shaping, using a file (shown below):

Then final shaping and smoothing using fairly smooth sandpaper, to give the finished saddle shown here:

And finally, fitted to the guitar:

Now the nut

Tracing:

Again, rough shaping, only this time starting with a little plane (shown below), then a file, then sandpaper:

Despite taking care, a bit chipped off, as shown below. No problem, I need to add a curve anyway:

The nut also needed to be thinned to fit into the nut slot. This was done in the same way as the Corian nut HERE.

With the slots cut:

Finally, fitted to the guitar:

The sound is definitely different. The wound strings appear to have more depth and seem to have more sustain too, whereas I was a little disappointed with the unwound strings initially, though they seem to have come to life now. Overall I like the sound, though I would like to also try bone, so don’t be surprised if you see another similar post somewhere down the road.

How to wire up a Stomp Box / Effects Pedal

2009-06-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

Apart from the effects circuit itself, there are three things that have to be thought about when wiring up a stomp box, which are the stomp switch, the stereo input jack and the DC-in connector.

I’ll be referring to this image throughout the explanation (click to enlarge):

1. The Switch

In the OFF position, pin 4 is connected to pin 1, pin 5 is connected to pin 2, and pin 6 is connected to pin 3 (in my diagram at least – you may have a switch with different numbers written on it).

To try to make this easy to follow, consider the left-hand column of the switch to be the input column, the middle column to be the output column, and the right-hand column to be the LED column. If for any reason you only have a 6-pin switch, you can still use it, just without the LED column.

Looking at just the left and middle columns, the input comes in on the yellow wire to pin 4, is directed upwards to pin 1, which is shorted to pin 2 via the blue wire, then this is redirected down to pin 5 which is the output (brown) wire. In other words, a bypass is in operation. As the effects circuit itself is completely disconnected, it cannot influence the signal, so this is true bypass.

As for the right-hand column, there is not much going on there. The earth is connected to pin 6 via the black wire, but it is not redirected anywhere, so nothing happens, and the LED does not light up.

Now in the ON position, pin 4 is connected to pin 7, pin 5 is connected to pin 8 and pin 6 is connected to pin 9.

Again, looking at just the left and middle columns, the input comes in on the yellow wire to pin 4, is directed downwards to pin 7, which then goes to the input of the effects circuit via the green wire. The output of the effects circuit goes to pin 8 via the purple wire, and this is redirected up to pin 5 which is the output (brown) wire.

As for the right-hand column, the earth is connected to pin 6 via the black wire, which is redirected down to pin 9 and fed to the negative terminal of the LED, allowing it to light up.

OK, that’s the switch explained, but there’s more going on here.

2. The Stereo Input Jack

You may be wondering why a stereo input jack is required, when you are only using a mono signal. Well, that’s because the third connector (pin 3) on the input jack is used to control the power supply to the circuit.

Let’s assume for a moment that you are using a battery. Instead of the negative of the battery being connected straight to the negative of the effects circuit, which would mean the battery is in use ALWAYS (even when the circuit appears to be switched off), the negative of the battery is instead connected to the third connector (pin 3) of the stereo input jack. That way, when nothing is plugged into the stomp box, the third connector is not connected to anything and the battery is not being used. When you plug in a mono jack plug, it shorts the third connector to the shield connector (pin 1) of the socket, which in turn connects it to earth, powering the effects circuit.

You may wonder why you don’t just power up the battery at the same time as switching on the effects circuit. Without going into too many details, this is because the sudden surge of power leads to a loud popping noise, which no-one wants to hear.

3. The DC-in Connector

Lastly, we have the DC-in connector. This also has three connectors and can sometimes cause confusion, since instead of having a positive inner (centre pin), it actually has a negative inner. I’ve numbered the pins in the diagram for clarity, as follows: pin 1 is the (negative) inner and is connected to the negative of the battery, pin 2 is the outer and is connected to the positive (+9v) of the effects circuit, and finally in a similar way to the stereo input jack, pin three is the 3rd, extra, pin and is connected to the positive terminal of the battery.

(The difference between this and the input jack is that in this case, pins 2 and 3 are normally shorted UNTIL you plug in a power supply, at which time pin 3 becomes disconnected.)

When nothing is plugged in, the positive terminal of the battery, which is connected to pin 3, is shorted to pin 2, and continues on its way to the positive of the effects circuit. When the power supply is plugged in, however, pin 3 (and therefore the positive of the battery) is disconnected, and the positive voltage from the power supply goes directly to the effects circuit via pin 2.

One more thing to note is that since the DC-in socket has a positive outer, it should be one with a plastic surround, so that the outer does not make contact electrically with the enclosure (which is earthed).

Something like this (below) is fine:

Whereas something like this (below) is NOT suitable.

Under the stairs

2009-06-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

I’m really behind on the updates, sorry. I’ve been doing some real-world stuff that didn’t leave much time for much DIY guitar-related fun. I am happy to report that one of the reasons I haven’t had as much time to tinker is that I’ve actually been playing the guitar a bit.

One of the things that took up some of my time was sorting out a new property back home, which required a rather long return flight, not helped by the fact that the airline forgot to load the headphones for the entertainment system on the way there, and I hadn’t brought my own for the first time ever.

While I was back home, I rifled through some stuff that I had left at a friend’s house and stumbled across a stomp box I made just after finishing the DIY Strat. I had totally forgotten about it, and even if I had remembered I would have been sure it had been thrown out.

Anyway, for the very few that may be interested, here it is. Note the professional enclosure (not)! What a great colour (grey primer covered by lacquer, which was all I had at the time).

The circuit is one of Aron Nelson’s designs (if you don’t know who Aron Nelson is, but are interested in DIY stomp boxes, then Google his name now). This particular circuit is “The Hornet” and the circuit diagram can be found here: http://www.diystompboxes.com/pedals/schematics.html (scroll down a bit to find it)

Unfortunately when I made this, I didn’t really understand how to do the switching, so I ended up wiring it up like this:

I mean, it works (sort of), but it’s not a good way to wire it up for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, this is why it works...

The switch has 4 legs. In one position, legs 1 and 2 are shorted. In the other position legs 3 and 4 are shorted.

When poles 1 and 2 are shorted, power is sent to the circuit.

When poles 3 and 4 are shorted, power is disconnected from the circuit, but the input is shorted to the output, creating a bypass.

However, here’s why it’s not a good way to wire it up...

1. Even when no power is applied, and a bypass is in operation, the circuit still manages to affect the sound, for example by creating some sort of a path from the signal to earth.

2. When the switch is pressed, the circuit is activated at the same time as power is applied, and a loud popping noise is heard.

For those that are interested, in the next blog post, I’ll show you the correct way to wire up a switch in a stomp box:

Making a nut for playing slide guitar

2009-02-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

I recently mentioned to a friend of mine that I was thinking of making a new nut for my acoustic guitar, and he generously donated a couple of nut blanks. One is ebony and the other is Corian. I will use the ebony one to make the new standard nut (which will no doubt be covered in a future blog entry), but decided to make a raised nut with the Corian for when I want to play slide guitar.

Corian, incidentally, is a material that is most commonly used on the surfaces of kitchen units, but has also been used by both Gibson and Martin to make nuts. It is not the best material, tonally-speaking (though it’s hardly crap), but it is easy to work with. More info about Corian can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corian

One of the bonuses of a raised nut for playing slide guitar is that it will be flat, rather than radiused, so no need to work out exact curvature, etc., and since it will be raised off the fretboard, there is no need to worry about precise height measurements. That coupled with the fact that it is Corian should make this a pretty easy project.

My guitar neck is pretty thin (just how I like it). It measures a little under an inch and three quarters. One and eleven sixteenths would probably be more accurate. The nut for playing slide was going to be cut a little wider – something like one and seven eighths. It would stick out a little on each side, but this is OK.

First thing was to cut it roughly to shape. It was just a little too thick, but I would deal with that later. As for the length, well, I had to cut about three eighths of an inch off with a hacksaw. I didn’t feel the need to take a photo of this. Next was to file a curve onto the top, so that the strings fall away on the head side of the nut. Unfortunately my vice isn’t the best, so I needed to do the filing in the way that is pictured here, one half at a time. This method puts the nut at risk when you lean on it with the file, as it could easily snap in half, so be very careful if you do it this way, and support the back of the nut with your finger. If you have a better vice that can grip the full length of the nut while you work on it, then that’s a better solution.

As previously mentioned, the nut was just a little bit too thick, so I solved this by rubbing it on a piece of sandpaper, which was lying on a flat tile. This is a commonly-used and very effective solution. I also used the sandpaper to help finish rounding off the top curve a little bit too.

Here's the basic shape after the vice and sandpaper:

Next thing was to file the nut slots. This can be quite intimidating, but the secret is a good set of nut files and a bit of reading (of course practice makes perfect too). I highly recommend checking out http://www.frets.com for information on this type of thing.

I recently bought a set of nut files called “Norman Guitar Nut File System”. They’re made by a guy called Norman Trent and he mostly sells them on ebay. He has excellent feedback, but some Googling suggests that some people are not happy with how long the files stay sharp, or Norman’s customer support. All I can say is that I got my files pretty quick and they worked well on this project. Norman also supplies a handy laminated sheet to help you mark the correct position for the slots, as shown here.

Slot positions marked and ready to do some filing.

The next step was to actually cut the slots. The depth you cut down should be a little over half of the diameter of the string itself. Also, you should file down at an angle so that the slot follows the curve of the top of the nut. This is to make sure the string makes good contact at the very edge of the nut when it meets the fret board and therefore cut out any buzzing, or intonation problems.

After the final filing I gave the whole nut a once-over with very thin sandpaper, just to shine it up a bit. Here is the end result.

And now here’s the nut on the guitar. It sticks out a little bit at the sides, as planned, and also sits pretty high off the guitar. Now I can really attack that thing with a slide without worrying about banging into the frets.

Gibson Deluxe Tuners (part three - the fix)

2009-02-02T19:20:00.000-08:00

Please note that this post is part three of four posts. I highly recommend reading all four posts in order before acting on any of the information.

The other parts are located here:

Part 1: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-and-why-they-suck.html
Part 2: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-part-two.html
Part 4: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2010/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-revisit.html

OK! Done!

I tried various different options and finally settled on one that I was very happy with. Ironically, it was the one I thought wouldn’t work – the solder fix.

I had already tried the glue repair in the past, but it eventually broke again, so I didn’t even bother trying this time. However, it was going to be my last-resort fix if necessary.

Before I show you the solder fix, I should mention that I did try the metal strap solution first. I cut out a little paper template to fit over the tuner and then went hunting for a suitable piece of metal.

(paper template)

I really wanted to find a nice little piece of brass, but I found a piece of scrap sprung steel that was just the right size, so I thought I’d try that.

(piece of metal before I bent it to shape)

However, when I tried to bend it to a 90-degree angle, it snapped. I tried again with a different piece of metal, but the same thing happened. It’s still a possible solution, but you would need to find metal that wasn’t so prone to snapping, or know how to properly heat-treat it.

So I ditched the metal strap idea and tried solder instead. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it stuck to the tuner casing EXTREMELY well. So well, in fact, that the test blob I tried on the inside first was a pain to file off.

I assembled the tuner and held the back cover in a vice, then heated the join with a soldering iron, as shown here.

Now here it is with some solder added.

The whole tuner (and vice) acts as a heat sink, so you need to have a powerful enough soldering iron to heat up the area around the join before all the heat gets sucked away (be careful that you don’t accidentally lean the soldering iron against the tuner button, by the way - I nearly did that a couple of times). I used a 40 watt soldering iron, but I’d recommend you use at least 60 watts, if not substantially more. I’d also recommend that you don’t touch the tuner button with your finger (or anything else) until the metal has cooled down again, just in case it has softened up at all. And since I’ve already mentioned waiting, just wait until the whole tuner has cooled down before you touch it. Mine got VERY hot. And don’t blow on the tuner to cool it down quicker either - this is bad for solder joints.

Finally, a clean up with a file and we're done!

The tuner is now back on the guitar and the fix is completely hidden. A very satisfactory result indeed.

EDIT: I've since found out that there is another (known) trick to repairing these tuners, which is to attach the back cover, turn the tuner over and hit the middle of each tab with a punch. This distorts the tab just enough to give it some grip. More information here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2010/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-revisit.html.

Gibson Deluxe Tuners (part two)

2009-01-21T23:19:00.001-08:00

Please note that this post is part two of four posts. I highly recommend reading all four posts in order before acting on any of the information.

The other parts are located here:

Part 1: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-and-why-they-suck.html
Part 3: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/02/gibson-deluxe-tuners-fix.html
Part 4: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2010/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-revisit.html

Well, the Gibson Deluxe Tuners post certainly attracted some attention. Seems there are plenty of people out there with the same problem.

Before I talk about my repair options, I’d like to discuss a little further the design limitations of the Gibson Deluxe Tuners. I previously mentioned that the little tabs that attach the back cover to the main plate do not fold over once they go through the main plate, which I found strange. While exploring solutions over the past few days I noticed that a lot of replacement tuners from other (often cheaper) brands had tabs which DO fold over, keeping them very firmly attached to the main plate. I really do have to scratch my head at why the Gibson Deluxe Tuner designers decided not to do this.

Non-Gibson Deluxe Tuners with tabs that fold over:

Secondly, I have noticed that there is one more problem with these tuners, which is that the worm gear wobbles quite a bit, even when the tuner is working perfectly, with the back cover attached. It doesn’t wobble from side to side, but rather away from and towards the guitar head. I hope that makes sense. This is caused by the claws not gripping around the worm gear, but rather, just stopping it from moving from side to side. The alternative solution offered by the Gibson Deluxe Tuners is to make the cutouts on the back cover (which let the worm gear pass through the sides of it) limit the movement of the worm gear away from the guitar head. Unfortunately, these are quite imprecisely cut, so sometimes allow for far too much movement.

So given that second note, I have decided that I need to tackle the wobble problem before attaching the back cover, since once I attach it I don’t want to have to take it apart again.
What I will do is file a little bit off the bottom surface of the back cover (leaving the tabs intact), so as to move the cutouts closer to the worm gear and hold it in place better. This has the added benefit of effectively extending the length of the tabs (not enough to fold over, unfortunately, but maybe just enough for a little bit of extra purchase).

So after a bit of thought, I figure I have maybe three realistic options:

1. Make a type of metal strap, which would hold the back cover on. It would be held down by the two screws that would hold the main plate to the guitar. The disadvantages of this are that the strap would be visible and the screws might need to be swapped for longer ones. The advantage would be that it would require no irreversible modification to the guitar or the tuner, and it might actually look quite cool.

2. Solder the back plate to the main plate. Advantages would be that it would be a quick and easy repair that should be quite strong and fairly reversible. Unfortunately I’m not convinced the metal used on the tuners would accept solder readily. Really, I should be looking at brazing, but unfortunately that's just not an option for me.

3. Similar to 2, but use glue, most likely 2-part epoxy. Quick and dirty solution, but may work well.

Whichever method I choose, I will still file a thin layer off the bottom first.

I’m off work all next week (for Chinese New Year), so I’ll decide what I want to do then.

Gibson Deluxe Tuners (and why they suck)

2009-01-13T21:09:00.000-08:00

Please note that this post is part one of four posts. I highly recommend reading all four posts in order before acting on any of the information.

The other parts are located here:

Part 2: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-part-two.html
Part 3: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/02/gibson-deluxe-tuners-fix.html
Part 4: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2010/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-revisit.html

I have a problem with one of the tuners on my Les Paul. It had the problem already when I bought the guitar a few years ago and I managed to do a temporary fix, but the problem has resurfaced.

Before I go on about it, let’s have a look at a typical (open-backed) guitar tuner.

There are several components and many names for those components, so my apologies if I use ones that you are not accustomed to. Firstly, the tuner can also be called the tuning head, tuning peg, or the machine head (and possibly other names). It has a main plate, through which the main cylinder (or capstan), passes. The capstan is the shaft that the string itself passes through. On the end of the capstan is a gear, sometimes called the pinion gear, and a screw/bolt holds that on to the end of the capstan. Then we have another shaft or pin with the tuner knob (or button) on the end of it. This pin has a gear on it too (in fact they are one part in most cases), and this particular gear is known as a worm gear. From now on I will just refer to this shaft as the worm gear.

As an aside, and for any non-engineer-minded people out there, the reason a worm gear is used is because turning the knob will rotate the worm gear, which will in turn rotate the pinion gear and the capstan, thus tightening or loosening the string, whereas no matter how much you tighten the string, the pinion gear cannot force the worm gear to turn. This is a really good way to keep strings in tune without making it really hard to turn the knob.

OK, back to the description of the tuner. There is one further feature that I have not yet mentioned and that is the retaining “claws” which are part of the main plate and hold the worm gear in place. The claws stop the worm gear from moving away from the pinion gear or falling away from the main plate. The plate stops the worm gear from falling against the guitar and the pinion gear stops it from falling out in the direction of the capstan. So hopefully you can see that the worm gear cannot possibly fall out unless the pinion gear is removed.

Now to the (I believe Schaller-made) Gibson Deluxe Tuners (and why they suck).

As you can see, the tuner has the same components as any standard open-backed tuner, but please note one subtle difference – the claws stop the worm gear from moving away from, or towards the pinion gear (i.e. from side to side), but not from falling away from the main plate! Seriously, it can just fall right off.

“But wait!”, I hear you Gibson Deluxe Tuner fans shouting, “The Gibson Deluxe Tuners have a back cover which stops the worm gear from falling away from the main plate!”

Well, you are correct, but this leads me to the problem with my tuner... the back cover has fallen off. And this brings me to my second criticism of Gibson Deluxe Tuner design. You would think that, if the back cover was the only thing holding the worm gear in place, it would be held on in a way that would be very hard to move.
Let’s have a look at their design.

The back cover is held on with two little tabs (one of mine is slightly damaged, but this happened while I was trying to find a solution to keeping it in place. It originally fell off with the tabs intact). Now as an engineer, I would think that a tab should at least fold over to keep something in place, but these ones just go into slots and do not appear to be twisted, folded, or in any other way modified once they go through the slots. In other words they are held in by “interference fit” only, so that they can come out just as easily as they went in [edit: actually, this isn't 100% correct - please see the comments at the end of this post]. Now let’s think about what’s on the end of the worm gear. That’s right, a big knob/button that sticks out and is basically on the end of a lever. What do we often use levers for? Well, for prising things out of place for one. The longer the lever, the easier it is. So one accidental knock on the tuning knob and you can dislodge the back cover, letting the worm gear fall out of place.

In the course of trying to find a single replacement Gibson Deluxe Tuner (which, not surprisingly, cannot be bought separately), I have noticed many other people scrambling to buy single replacements off ebay or asking if anyone has a spare one on musicians’ forums. A full set is not cheap either; around £60 would not be unusual. I wouldn’t even mind paying that if I though it was a good strong design, but I think you can guess by my rantings how much I think of these things. Unfortunately replacing them with anything other than originals devalues the guitar, so there isn’t much choice.

Additionally, on the front face of the guitar head you need to use a bushing (also called a ferrule) which stops the capstan from rubbing on the wood of the guitar when it is being rotated, and whereas these are normally press-in bushings on tuners of similar design to Gibson Deluxe Tuners, on the actual Gibson ones, they are screw-in bushings. Now I have no complaints about this, design-wise, I’m just saying that there are basically no replacements available other than the Gibson Deluxe Tuners.

Gibson Deluxe Tuner bushing (and washer)

Standard bushing

So stay tuned (no pun intended) for the next blog post, where I will try to fix mine.

The Chiquita Amp

2008-12-10T00:32:00.000-08:00

You may think I named this amp the Chiquita because of its size, but in fact the name came from what was printed on the wood I used to make the box. You see, it was made with the thin wood from a Chiquita banana crate.

After I finished my DIY Strat, I decided I needed an amp. I had next to no money to actually buy one, so I thought I might as well just make one. I did a bit of research online and settled on a simple audio amp using a TDA2030A. Let me just state right now that this was back in 2000, so the amount of info available online at the time was much more limited. I’m sure there are plenty of really good circuits available for fantastic mini guitar amplifiers now.

Anyway, at the time I wanted to build something that was VERY portable and could run off a power adapter for a stomp box. This fitted the bill.

The circuit was just copied straight from the specifications document for the TDA2030A, which is available here: http://www.datasheetarchive.com/pdf-datasheets/Datasheets-8/DSA-140842.pdf
There are several circuits suggested there, but I chose the one that looked most like a simple audio amplifier.

As you can see from the finished veroboard circuit, it is a very simple design. The TDA2030a is at a distance from the board as I wanted to bolt it onto a small heat sink to help dissipate some of the heat. As I said, it can run off 9 volts, but the good thing about the TDA2030A is that you can easily bump the input voltage up to something like 18v and get much more power out of it.

The box was glued together except for the back, which was bolted on. This way I could open it to fix any problems at any stage.

It’s a great little amp, considering its size.

My first ever electric guitar

2008-11-20T21:55:00.000-08:00

Back when I was about 17 (so let’s guess 1987) I got my first electric guitar. I already had an acoustic, but it was time to move on to more exciting things. This one came courtesy of a friend of my brother’s, and cost me (if I remember right) either £40 or possibly £60. It had a red finish, with just a hint of orange, black pick guard, two chrome covered pickups with “Hofner” written on them and a maple neck with rosewood fingerboard. There was no name written on the head of the guitar, so I assumed it was rubbish, although I remember it played great and had a real ‘60s rock and roll tone to it.

At the time though, what I REALLY wanted was a nice red Strat, and I wasn’t too keen on that far-too-much-of-a-hint-of-orange finish on my no-name, so I sanded the body down (very badly) and resprayed it black (also very badly). I changed the old-fashioned-looking knobs to some modern black plastic things and painted the head black too. I also changed the tuners to black Gotoh-type things. After a year or so, I sold it to a school friend and forgot about it for a few years.

I thought about it a few times years later and tried to find out what sort of guitar it was, but had hardly any information to go on. Going on the shape alone, I simply couldn’t find the same guitar anywhere, even on Google, so gave up on ever finding out what it was. I also tried pretty hard to get back in touch with the guy I sold it to, in the hope that he would still have it and would be willing to sell it to me, but without success.

Forward wind to about 2005 and I found myself co-incidentally having a chat with the guy who sold that same guitar to my brother’s friend (before I got my hands on it). He told me a little more history. It seemed that the guy who had had it before HIM had stripped it down and resprayed it (very well, I might add). It was in fact a Hofner guitar, but the logo had been removed during the sanding process. This was enough info to really start my search.

It wasn’t very easy (due to limited production dates of this exact model), but I finally found out that it was a Hofner Colorama II, made in 1963. The final confirmation came courtesy of this page:
http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/vintagehofner/solids/sol32.html
If you ever need to find out anything about old Hofner guitars, then I can’t recommend that site enough.

With this new-found knowledge, I just couldn’t stop myself from searching for one for sale. Finally, about a year later, I found one exactly the same (including the colour) on ebay and managed to stick in a cheeky last-minute bid, winning it for something like £130. It is fairly bashed up, but nothing that can’t be restored. Here are the photos from the ebay auction.

The moment I won the auction, I felt like I had corrected the 20-year-old mistake I had made when I sold my first ever electric guitar.

I will need to respray this at some stage, but that's fine. As far as replacing the hardware goes, well, I need to restore the machine heads to a vintage style. At some stage someone upgraded these to Gotoh-type tuners (I hardly have the right to criticise that, hehe), and I need to replace three of the knobs (two volume knobs and one tone knob), as they have lost their metallic labels, which can't be bought separately unfortunately.

I managed to find one volume and one tone knob on ebay from a similarly-aged Hofner, and here's the best bit; I still have one of the knobs I took off my old Hofner 20 years ago. I also bought a set of vintage-looking Kluson tuners, that will look very close to the originals, but will work much better than they ever did.

Here are the tuners and the knobs I bought:

Just one small problem though. The guitar is in storage at my brother's house in Ireland and I'm in Taiwan, so the restoration will have to wait.

The Mystery Box

2008-11-02T22:53:00.000-08:00

A while back, I went to check out Tony's music shop in Taipei and noticed that they had this obviously home-made guitar pedal in the display case.

It was priced at NT$600nt (about US$20), and I was pretty much willing to pay that just for the parts I could use out of it.Anyway, I asked if I could try it out and they let me. It sounded superb.

There are two main amplifying components on it, a little 8-pin chip and a transistor.

The chip is marked:
OP275

And the transistor is marked:
C550B (This appears to be a BC550B)

There are three controls on it, labelled volume, tone and gain.
There are two toggle switches. The one on the side is a 3-way, with capacitors in 2 of the positions. It works as a tone filter I guess. At the back is a two-way switch, which appears to work as a kind of turbo overdrive.

Pot values are as follows:

VOLUME - A100K
TONE - B100K
GAIN - A50K (dual gang)

(A=audio taper, B=linear taper)

I traced the path of the dual-gang gain control. One gang connects between pins 1 and 2 of the OP275 and the other gang goes between pins 6 and 7 of the OP275. Shown below is an OP275. You can see that the gain control boosts BOTH amplifying stages at the same time. Serious boost there.

The circuit appears to be something between a Big Muff Pi and a Rat, and despite requests on 3 different sites for information, it appears to be a totally unique design. If you know otherwise, please do let me know.

Here's a couple of pics of the guts:

incidentally, they dropped the price to NT$500 while I was paying for it. Happy days.

The Volumizer!

2008-09-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

Today I’d like to show you the booster pedal I made. It’s a straight clone of an MXR Microamp. The Microamp is a great booster pedal because it simply adds volume. You can use this to just increase the volume of your guitar for solos, or you can use it to overdrive your amp. The choice is yours.

The circuit diagram for the Microamp can be found at www.generalguitargadgets.com. General Guitar Gadgets asks that other people don’t post their circuits elsewhere, so I won’t. Just go to this page to get it: http://www.generalguitargadgets.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=70&Itemid=26 (click on “microamp schematic”).

The circuit is pretty simple, using a single TL061 as the amplifier. You can buy a ready-made PCB from General Guitar Gadgets, which would make life a lot easier, but I decided I would just build it on veroboard (strip board) since it was a pretty simple circuit. If this is your first time building a circuit, then just buy the PCB. You won’t regret it.

I made a quick veroboard sketch of the circuit (yes I know, it's rough, but it's been confirmed as accurate).

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the circuit during construction.

At first I built this into a much bigger enclosure, but then I decided to try to fit it into a much smaller box. To achieve this, I had to squeeze the components a little bit closer together on the veroboard and then cut a bit off the board itself, as you can see in the following photo.

It’s a really tight fit, but there’s just enough space to add a 9v battery (though I doubt I’ll do that).

I then added a bit of insulation to make sure the circuit board didn’t make contact with the metal enclosure.

I see a lot of people making their own stomp boxes, and doing a really good job, but then just leaving the box unpainted, or painted a single colour with no writing, or something scrawled on it like a child had done it. I figured I had done all this work on the electronics, so why not try and make the box look nice too? So, I painted the box black, then drew something up on the computer and printed it out on photographic paper (one side is sticky). I didn’t want to rip off the Microamp name, so I called it the Volumizer.

Here you can see it next to a standard-sized pedal (a Digitech DigiDelay) for size comparison. Just in case it’s not clear, the Volumizer is the smaller pedal.

Two-channel passive mini-mixer

2008-08-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
Well, I didn't want to just stop after posting about the guitar. I have been known to dabble in other little projects after all. So don't be surprised if those other projects make it on here for time to time.
Today I'd like to show you the little two-channel passive mixer I made. I needed something that would let me plug two guitars into the same amplifier (and both be used at the same time). So, if someone were to come round to my house, we could both plug a guitar into the same amp. You can't just use a y-connector, since that's just amateur, and changing the volume on one guitar would affect the other. I'm pretty sure it could be unhealthy for certain amps too. Also, I wanted to be able to adjust the level of each guitar so that if one were more powerful than the other, this could be balanced out. Lastly, I wanted to make it as portable as possible, so that I could even stick it in my guitar case.
So, I searched for the simplest two-channel or multi-channel mixer schematics I could find and then came up with this:

Note that I don't claim to be the inventor of that circuit. Five minutes on Google and I'm sure you'll find a similar circuit posted on other sites. I have, however, drawn a nice clear circuit diagram for your convenience.
As you can see, the circuit is incredibly simple. Just three quarter-inch jack sockets, two 10k logarithmic pots, two 10k resistors and a box to stick them in.
I couldn't find a suitably-sized metal enclosure at the time of making this, so I settled on a plastic box with a metal bottom. My thinking was that I could always line it with tin foil (aluminum foil) if it picked up interference, but to be honest, it has never been an issue.
Here's a pic of how it looks inside:

And a closer pic of the resistors, etc.:

As you can see, it only just fitted in there. It may have been a better idea to put the two input jacks to the outside of the pots, but to be honest, I don't think it matters either way.
So, here's how it looks from the outside (front and back):

I've been able to use this little device on a few occasions, and it's been fantastic. The fact that it can fit into your pocket makes it incredibly handy too.
I haven't been in this position yet, but it could even save your ass if you were at a small venue with another guitarist and one of the amps stopped working.
And the cost? Pfft... maybe 200 Taiwanese dollars, which works out at about US$6.

EDIT: I've noticed several forums pointing to this post, and a lot of debate about the 10k values of both the pots and resistors as being too low (it has been suggested that 500k or even 1M pots would be better, for example). I've used this mixer a lot, as has a friend of mine who I made one for, and both of us have found that it does a perfectly good job, especially at home. My advice is to just give it a go and see how it works for you, rather that wasting too much time in advance theorising about how it might sound. If you find that it doesn't sound good to you, then by all means try different pot/resistor values, and report back in the comments below.

Also, just one more comment from me - I ended up re-boxing this mixer. I never had any problem with interference, but I decided to re-box it in an aluminium enclosure anyway, since I found a size that was just perfect, and I liked the idea of it being more robust. Here's the re-boxed mixer:

Some more pics of the finished guitar

2008-07-02T22:19:00.001-07:00

Well, I got asked if I could put up some more pictures of the finished guitar (and specifically the neck joint), so here's what I've got (apologies for the dust). I thought I had a pic of the wiring too, but I can't seem to find it. Next time I change the strings I'll remove the scratchplate and take some.

Enjoy.

(EDIT: The wiring pics have now been added below)

And the wiring pics...

Putting it all together

2008-06-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

Well, considering I had already put everything together before lacquering, this step was dead easy. In fact, the hardest part was having the patience to wait for the lacquer to totally dry. I’d recommend waiting several days, or even a week or two if you can bear it.

Be very, VERY careful with screws, screwdrivers, or any other item which might scratch your nice new finish.

It was a wonderful experience making this guitar myself. I highly recommend it. You’ll learn a lot and you’ll get an amazing feeling of self-satisfaction when you put the whole thing together and play it.

You should also take some time to set the guitar up right. Intonation, string height and neck tension will all make a huge difference to how your guitar plays. If you can’t set it up yourself, then consider taking it to your local guitar shop and paying a small fee for them to do it. I recommend learning to do it yourself though, but do be patient. It’s a learning process, so don’t expect to get it right first time.

Here are a few more pics of the finished guitar from various angles. Enjoy.

Please feel free to leave any comments or questions. I’ll be happy to reply.

Finishing the neck

2008-05-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

It can be a frustrating time waiting for the lacquer to dry on your cool new guitar body, so this is the perfect time to do some work on the neck.

If you buy the neck (which I did), then there is very little work to do really, other than finishing it off. In fact, here is a list of work you will need to do:

1. Make sure that the machine heads fit in the holes, and if not, enlarge the holes (remember to remove the machine heads after making sure they fit).
2. Do any final sanding, etc.
3. Apply any decals/transfers to the head.
4. Lacquer the front of the head.
5. Lacquer the back and sides of the head and the neck.
6. Fit machine heads, string retainers and a nut.

At the top of this post, you can see a picture of the neck after applying decals and a few layers of lacquer. The packs of letters I used for the logo are there too. They're just standard Letraset (although the brand I used is actually called "DECAdry"). This neck has a rosewood fretboard, which does not require lacquering, so it needs to be masked off. After this stage, the masking paper is removed totally and the neck is then laid face down while lacquer is applied to the back and sides. I found that this method worked really well.

Here is a nice picture of the head of the guitar after all the hardware had been added. I'm pretty happy with it. My surname is Morrow, so I tried to play with this word a little. The upside-down R means that whatever way up the logo is, it looks the same. It's very satisfying to be able to put your own name on the head of a guitar, I have to say.

The finish (part two)

2008-05-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

Before you spray your guitar, you should really apply some sort of sealant, otherwise the lacquer (or whatever) will get sucked into the wood like you wouldn't believe. This will make life much more difficult for you and can even affect the tone.
So after applying some stain, that's what I did. Just one layer of sealing varnish, followed by a bit of light sanding.

Next, it was a case of applying layer after layer of spray-on lacquer. This will probably take longer than you think. I lost count of the number of layers I added, and this was probably due to my not applying the sealing varnish correctly. The wood just kept sucking that lacquer in.

Every few layers, you should do some very light wet sanding to try to keep the surface as perfect as possible. If you manage to remove some of the stain by accident, just re-apply it. It's actually not as serious a problem as you might think (or at least it wasn't in my case).

Here's a picture of the guitar with several layers of lacquer applied (as well as some preparation work for the electrics installation, which I'll discuss later):

Even after many, many layers, you can see how the wood is sucking that lacquer. After this photo, I removed the metal parts and kept going with the lacquer until I managed to get a nice smooth finish.

Here are a couple of pictures of the body after the lacquering was completely finished:

The finish (part one)

2008-05-14T21:06:00.001-07:00

Finishing a guitar is pretty tricky. I suppose if you just want to paint it, then that would be a lot easier, but I wanted to stain mine, then lacquer over the top. This is how I did that.

Firstly, I had to construct some sort of holder for the guitar. I did this with an old broken wood plane I had lying around, which fitted the neck joint nicely. I then made a wooden handle for it and drilled a big hole down it so that I could mount it on a spindle. Badly as this photo turned out, you can see the stand holding the guitar up. It is sitting on a spindle poking out of the top of a big block of wood, held down by a vise. The theory was that I could freely rotate the guitar body this way, and even lift it off the spindle and hold it by the handle.

The first thing I did was to add some water soluble stain. This is just wiped on with a cloth and immediately adds a lot of character to the wood. Here it is after a layer or two of the stain. You can add as many layers as you want. Each one will progressively make the guitar look darker.

Checking that it fits together

2008-05-05T23:26:00.001-07:00

At this point I decided to assemble the guitar, just to check that everything fitted together correctly. Obviously I would have to take it all apart again to add the finish. I had only acquired one pickup by this stage, but that’s OK. Here are a few pics of the assembled guitar.

I plugged it in and it sounded absolutely fantastic. Really, really beautiful sound.

The electrics (part two)

2008-04-29T01:04:00.000-07:00

OK, here are the schematics for the electrics (click for bigger image). It is viewed from below.
Remember that this is based around two single coils and a humbucker and that all three pots incorporate push/pull switches.

The three toggle switches allow you to use any or all of the pickups at the same time, and even switch them all off, so it has a sort of muting function too.

The booster is based on a Vox Treble Booster and the battery negative wire is connected to the middle ring of the output jack so that it only ever completes the circuit when the lead is plugged in (to be able to do this, the jack socket must be stereo, giving you that extra middle ring, although the actual output signal will, of course, be mono). That way you don't need to worry about storing your guitar and leaving the booster turned on. Also note that this means the battery is ALWAYS being used when the lead is plugged in, even when the booster is not switched on. The reason for this is that otherwise you would hear a loud popping noise when you switched the booster on. To be honest, I'm assuming you understand a certain amount about making small circuits if you are thinking of copying this circuit.

You should be able to print this out in good quality (300dpi) on an A4 page.

The electrics (part one)

2008-04-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

I decided to try some fancy stuff with the electrics. I’ve always enjoyed messing about with electronics, so was a lot more confident with this part than I had been with the woodworking.

So here’s the rundown on a typical Strat:

Three single-coil pickups
One 5-position selector switch
One volume control
Two tone controls (note, these are not treble and bass, but rather a tone control for the neck/mid-position pickups and another for the bridge-position pickup).

And here’s what I wanted to achieve with my Strat

Two single coil pickups
One humbucking pickup that would fit into the same space as a single-coil pickup
Three toggle switches (one for each pickup, allowing for every possible combination of pickups [eight options instead of five])
One volume control
One coil tap push-pull switch incorporated into volume control
One tone control (for all pickups)
One middle-pickup phase reversal push-pull switch incorporated into tone control
One boost control
One boost on/off push-pull switch incorporated into boost control

The boost circuit would be based on a Vox Treble Booster and would be built by yours truly (me).

It will take several entries to describe all of the electronics in detail, so I’ll start by explaining some of the parts that I needed to source.

Here is a push-pull pot. This can be used as a volume or tone control, but also has a switch which is activated when you pull it out. I needed three of these:

For neck and middle pickups, I wanted to use two standard single-coils, preferably genuine Fender ones, similar to this:

For the bridge pickup, I wanted to get one of these babies. I really wanted to keep the bridge position looking single-coil-like, but have a bit of “oomph”. This is a Seymour Duncan Lil’ ‘59 Jr.

The scratchplate

2008-04-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

It would have been really easy (and pretty cheap) to just buy a standard Stratocaster scratchplate (pickguard), but I wanted to make my own.
You could buy a blank rectangle of scratchplate material at your guitar shop (or mail order one from somewhere like http://www.stewmac.com), but I went for the absolute cheapest option and used a piece of plastic I found in the street one night.

Here it is:

And this is my scratchplate plan:

I used the same technique as I did with the body of the guitar, which was to tape the plan onto the plastic, then cut around it. Again, I would recommend that you do this a different way. Print it onto card, then draw an outline around this onto the piece of plastic itself.

Anyway, the cutting was pretty easy compared to the wood. A hacksaw for a rough outline, followed by filing and sandpaper. Oh yeah, and the sign was cleaned up by sanding the "Associated Weavers" decal off. The small screw holes were drilled (and finished off with a tapered countersunk drill bit), and the pickup holes were drilled out and filed, then sanded into shape. One more thing. Instead of cutting out a slot for the five-position pickup selector switch, I decided to make three small holes for toggle switches (one for each pickup). This would later allow me to choose any possible pickup combination, which would not normally be possible (more on the customised electrics later).

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the finished scratchplate, but you can see a very bad picture of it here without the pickup holes:

EDIT: Actually turns out I did take a photo of the scratchplate, though sadly it's a bad one. Anyway, here it is:

The neck joint

2008-04-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

This was the bit I had been most worried about. The neck joint. You see, if you get this bit wrong, even by a couple of mm, then the guitar will be unplayable. Of course you can always fix mistakes, but it's much better to do it right in the first place.

So here was the challenge. I had hardly any tools and had to rout out the joint. I could do it the same way as the rest of the routing, but that would leave me with a pretty uneven surface. It really had to be dead on.

So I did it in two stages. First I did the same as the rest of the routing, then I finished it off with a small straight routing bit attached to the drill. The drill was attached to a drill stand (or drill press), and I set the limiter so that it would stop at just the right height for the surface of the neck joint.

There was a bit of a problem though. I only have two hands. The drill stand's lever was spring loaded, so I had to keep one hand on that, leaving just one to somehow move the guitar around. In the end I had to hold the lever down with my right hand, then use my right elbow and my left hand to move the guitar in and out. The guitar was resting on a shiny magazine so that it could be moved around with little effort.

I realise this technique sounds totally ridiculous, but given the tools I had, it was the best I could do. And in fact the end result was completely acceptable.

Routing it out

2008-04-10T01:44:00.000-07:00

So far I had made a rough cut of the guitar body shape, then finished it off and sculpted a little bit with the round rasp. After that, a bit of sanding and I was done with the basic body shape. For sanding, make sure you use a sanding block on the front and back faces of the guitar. You really have to keep these bits nice and flat. Then use your hands for the curved parts that the sanding block just can't reach. By all means use the block for curved bits that you can reach. Be prepared for a few blisters on your hands!

Sanding block with sandpaper attached:

The next part was fun (seriously). I had never really done any routing before, and since I didn't have any real tools to speak of, it was a bit of an old-school approach. Basically, what you do is work out what depth you need, then stick some masking tape that far from the end of a drill bit (the width of the drill bit is not important, but I seem to remember using something like 6 or 8 mm). Now drill down until you are about to hit the tape, remove the drill and drill again, then repeat until the area you want to route out of your guitar looks like a honeycomb. By the way, you don't need a drill press for this. A handheld drill will do fine. Perhaps the following picture will explain it better (click to enlarge):

You will also see the hammer and chisel in the photo. That's because after drilling is done, you can use a hammer and chisel to take out the rest of the wood. It's a long, slow process, but gives good results if you're patient.

You can also see in the photo that the neck joint has been routed out, but I used a slightly different technique for this, since it had to be very accurate. I'll explain in more detail next time, so stay tuned.

Sculpting

2008-04-03T02:17:00.000-07:00

After cutting out a rough outline with the jigsaw, I tried various tools. I wanted to find one that would be able to remove a decent amount of wood if necessary, but also leave a smooth-ish finish. I tried various grades of sandpaper, a plane, chisels and a flat rasp (practise on a scrap piece of wood!) None of them were really suitable. Then I got my hands on one of these!

It's a round rasp (mine was made by Stanley). That thing was unbelievable. It cut through the ash like a hot knife through butter and left behind a very acceptable surface. I used it to not only smooth the sides, but also the sculpt out the area at the back of the body (that leans against your ribs) and at the front (that your forearm rests on), as shown below:

Rough Cut

2008-03-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Now that I had my outline and my chunk of wood, it was time to get cutting! I was very excited about this, because I was finally going to get my hands dirty. Firstly I taped the paper outline to the wood (trying a few different positions to minimise/hide blemishes in the wood). Here's what I came up with:

Now there are many reasons why the paper-taped-to-wood option was not a good way to go about this, but I won't go into too much detail. I'll just say that you should look into using card instead of paper, and drawing an outline around it onto the wood, instead of sticking anything to it. Now... you see that great big knot to the left of the photo? Thats' the sort of blemish I was happy to remove.

Did I mention that I had hardly any tools? I managed to borrow an electric jigsaw for this next part, and I broke the bank and bought a couple of clamps to hold the block of wood down while I was cutting it. Here's what the edge will look like after cutting it out with an electric jigsaw. (Lower edge only. I had already smoothed the rest before I remembered to take this photo.):

My advice here is not to cut too close to the outline, as the jigsaw tends to not cut exactly downwards. This means it could cut closer at the bottom than at the top. Also, erm... I know it should go without saying, but remember to move your block of wood from time to time, so that you don't cut into your table/workbench.

The Wood

2008-03-23T20:35:00.000-07:00

I previously mentioned that I had decided to make my own Strat. I had already borrowed a Strat copy and drawn an outline around it. I now needed to get my hands on a nice chunk of wood. I did some investigation and found that real Strats were made of ash or alder. My friend of a friend (the one in the timber industry) informed me that he could more easily source some ash, so I happily gave him the dimensions I needed. The wood had to be 45mm thick and at least as big as the outline template I had made. A little bit extra around the edges gave me some room for avoiding blemishes, etc., or placing them where they would not be seen (like under the scratchplate, for example).
Here's a photo of the chunk of wood as it arrived. In fact it is two pieces glued together. It arrived already glued, and importantly, had been well dried out.

Unfortunately this wasn't the "swamp" ash used in most real Strats, but the ash that is more commonly used in the construction of baseball bats. That stuff is solid! It also weighs a tonne. This was something I wasn't going to realise until I finished the guitar and picked it up for the first time. Anyway, learn from my mistake; get "swamp" ash. Luckily the ash I got still gives great tone.

Plans

2008-03-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

OK, so enough with the background. Time to actually start doing something. I had already decided I wanted to make a guitar and I had my mind set on a Strat. First thing I needed was to get my hands on a reference Strat-like guitar.

It's not hard to get your hands on a Strat copy, and right enough, a friend of a friend happened to have one. I borrowed it and drew an outline around it on a big piece of paper.

Doing this on paper was a bad move, I now realise. A much better option would have been to trace it onto card. In fact, if you're really serious about this, tracing it onto a piece of thin wood would be even better.

This is probably a good time to mention that I was doing this on a fairly limited budget, but more importantly without access to a workshop or many tools. In fact the whole purpose of this blog is to show you that it is possible to make your own Strat copy with very few tools. More on that later.

OK, so now I had my outline and a few measurements. The next thing was to find a nice big bit of wood. As it happened, the same friend of a friend worked in the timber industry and was able to source me some.

Now I had to figure out which wood to ask for.

Why a Strat?

2008-03-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't really have to think much about which style of guitar I was going to build. I had always wanted a Strat, and this is what I was going to make. Now if you ever decide to build your own guitar, and you really don't mind which style you want, then I'd say doing a Telecaster or maybe some sort of customised Les Paul Junior design would be much, much easier. Why? because there is no tremolo to think about, and you don't have to carve out all those contoured bits around the Strat's body.

(Fender Telecaster)

(Gibson Les Paul Junior)

That said, a Strat design is by no means the hardest either. Let's take a Les Paul Standard as an example. You'd have to think about a fixed neck (difficult to attach, with very little forgiveness if you make a mistake), sculpted quilted maple top (a lot of work, and easy to mess up), body binding (also a lot of work, and a whole art in itself), etc.

(Gibson Les Paul)

So here's my list of things to think about, and what I recommend for the easiest option:

1. Neck attachment - recommend bolt-on neck
2. Body top shape - recommend flat (slab) shape
3. Knob and pickup mounting - I would say that mounting all of these on a scratchplate is more forgiving if you stuff up some of the routing.
4. Jack socket placement - You can either mount this on the edge of the guitar (like on a Les Paul), on the face of the guitar, but not within any sort of scratchplate (like the Stratocaster), or on some sort of scratchplate (like, say, a vintage Hofner Colorama).

(Hofner Colorama)

5. Tremolo/vibrato - Easier to give this a miss, although if you decide to go for it, think about a Bigsby-style unit, which can be mounted on the top of the guitar without the need for any routing.

(Bigsby tremolo/vibrato)

6. If no tremolo, think about if the strings will go through the body (like a Hardtail Stratocaster) or not (like a Les Paul). Not going through the body is the easier option.

If I were to repeat this whole adventure again, I would have a slab body, with no sculpting/contours, a scratchplate for the controls and pickups (possibly the jack socket too) and a Bigsby tremolo.

However, at the time I did this, I had it in my mind to do a Strat, so that's what I needed to plan for.

Getting started

2008-03-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

I've been playing guitar since 1986. By all accounts I should be great by now, but sadly that's not the case. That doesn't mean I don't absolutely love anything to do with guitars though. Since I started, I have had several guitars in my possession, some better than others, and until fairly recently, I never had a Fender Stratocaster, one of the best electric guitars ever made.

(Fender Stratocaster)

Starting in 1996, I spent a few years living in Euskadi and eventually found myself with a lot of spare time on my hands, but very little money. I had parted company with a much-loved Fernandes Strat-copy a year or so previously and only had one semi-acoustic guitar with me. This lack of an electric guitar was a situation I wanted to rectify, but as previously mentioned I didn't have much money and I didn't want to buy a rubbish guitar.

That's when I decided to make my own Strat.