Dub's Wacky Project Guitars Thread--we're baaaaaack

[dubkitty]

the Jetstar is an interesting guitar. i like putting it next to my Jazzmaster as alternate projections of a possible future...they both date from around the same time and get all taffy-like with their body profiles. yow, am i Space Age yet? i was thinking about putting reissue Grover Firebird banjo tuners on, but on contemplating realized that not having the tuner buttons visible down the left side would throw off the visual balance of the headstock. to get a nice result you have to think about shit like this, as you might recall from my revisions to the CVJM. i really want to put a metal Gretsch switch cap on, but the stock switch is import spec and every Gretsch cap i have is for a US spec switch. do i care enough to replace the switch? i have a couple in the parts box. or do i order an import cap? i sort of feel like i should be cheap-ass here because these aren't supposed to be luxury guitars when i'm done, they're supposed to be effective weapons. and US switches usually suck less than import ones. so that might be a thing. i like the pickups a lot...they're somewhere in between PAFs and Gibsoid mini-hums/Firebird pickups, with a plunk-y quality to the attack that's pretty unique and a nice rounded high end that cuts well and should work well in a mix/in loops. if i was rolling in bucks i'd be tempted to get one of the reissue Thunderbirds, which meld the Jazzmaster vibe of the Jetstar with a plethora of Jaguar-like switching options. i wouldn't trust the kickstand, though, and would take it off as soon as the guitar was out of the box. when did i turn into a Guild fanboy? i have as many (counting the DeArmond which is a Guild Squier) as i do Gretsches.

Jetstar 7-26-24.jpg (70.72 KiB) Viewed 1229 times

Jetstar + JM.jpg (131.73 KiB) Viewed 1229 times

[dubkitty]

the Stetsbar tremolo is fiddly as hell to get sorted, but after several hours of futzing i got it to where i'm pretty satisfied with it. there's two tension springs and two length-adjusting Allen screws which work at cross-purposes to each other and take forever to get into balance. it feels a lot like a Strat tremolo, and has that same kind of rapid onset once the bar starts to move despite their very different mechanisms. the hype is that it's supposed to drop the strings a consistent number of cents across the board, but in reality it drops the low strings way more just like a Strat tremolo. i'm pretty sure that's inherent when dropping strings of different outside diameters because it's common to almost every tremolo i've used other than the Maestro Vibrola. if you want a Strat's worth of pitch-bending and wobble on a flat-top guitar it's worth looking into. apparently Floyd Rose also has a surface-mount tremolo available through StewMac if you like that sort of thing. i wouldn't want to deal with a locking nut under any circumstances myself.

[oldangelmidnight]

The Dearmond looks great. The clear pickguard and knobs are a lot of fun.

[dubkitty]

i figured out how to make the metal switch tip work on the Jetstar without swapping out the switch. at first i tried thin plastic tubing, but that was too thick. i was about to cut up a brass potentiometer shaft adapter when i remembered that i have a roll of Teflon plumber's tape. a couple of turns around the threaded portion and the tip screwed right on as if it belonged there and seems quite secure now. i really think the change makes a difference; the balance between black and nickel/chrome as the secondary colors is a bit better. subtle, but noticeable. the black tip made things too dark.

Jetstar 7-28-24.jpg (68.09 KiB) Viewed 1162 times

one very handy thing about the Jetstar is that the odd lower body configuration makes it stand up more easily than guitars with more conventional curves, and way better than asymmetrical shit like the Jazzmaster. it's the only electric guitar i have that i don't have to worry about falling over. i should have realized that the bottom line is that the Jetstar is a mahogany slab guitar albeit a particularly oddly-shaped one, and i loooooove mahogany slab guitars. they're probably my favorite configuration. it's nice that the DeArmond project wound up giving me two cool and useful guitars.

i had intended to work on other stuff this weekend, but i'm terribly tired and decided to do nothing but rest and noodle. i have a tendency, which has shown up in this thread, to throw myself into shit until i wear myself out. i keep getting worried about the soldering stuff coming up even though it's simple if i work out what i'm doing before turning the iron on. i always burn my fingertips.

thanks for the comment on the M-75T. i liked it when i got it, but i absolutely love it now after setting it up and niceing it up. the DeArmond 2K pickups are very underrated.

[dubkitty]

at some point i should go back through all these posts and do a compendium of useful tricks and solutions that i've devised, things like using a piece of a heavy guitar pick to reinforce split-shaft pots so you can securely screw solid-shaft knobs on and the plumber's tape trick.

[dubkitty]

i might buy a $137 Grote thin hollowbody off Temu that's an extremely poor man's Guild T-50 "Slim." it even has a (somewhat) stepped pickguard. no doubt the pickup is shite, but i have two Epiphone P-90s in the parts box that come in at 7.05 and 10.24 kOhms respectively that i'm sure either of which would be fine. and even with every worthwhile mod i can think of it's still a damn sight cheaper than the Guild which lists for $1200. a set of high-ratio Grover Sta-Tites and some new pots and we're headed home, maybe a new Kluson tailpiece it the stock one is as shoddy as it looks from here. it would be tempting to re-terrace the pickguard to a Guild style. i could even get a Guild harp tailpiece which would work because they both file under "G." i find it striking that out of all the guitars in the world, this is the one the PLA decided to clone. note the big block fingerboard inlays stolen from the Aristocrat.

Grote.jpg (32.8 KiB) Viewed 1144 times

Guild T-50.jpg (45.83 KiB) Viewed 1144 times

my Number One Principle Of Cheap Guitars is in play here: how good does it really have to be for $137?

i remember when guitars like this and the Gibson equivalent, the ES-120/125, went for $100 if the seller was LUCKY. this was the mid-70s, when nobody wanted anything but Strats and Les Pauls. my 1968 ES-335 was $200 in 1975, and even in the mid-80s you could get 60s Telecasters for $200. STILL KICKING MYSELF FOR THAT ONE.

[dubkitty]

apparently you can phone Guild customer service and order Aristocrat bridge feet, so i'll order up several sets when i get paid on Wednesday.

[dubkitty]

back from my weekend break and i put the ABR-1 on the Dyna Jet. you'd think this would be simple, no? well, no. only one side of the bridge would fit over the odd adjusters Gretsch used on these guitars, which are a bit larger in diameter that regular tunomatic studs. i could see irregularities in that aperture just by looking through it. so i drilled that out and made it work. kind of stunning inconsistency on the part of Kluson. then i notched the saddles--they aren't pretty, but i managed to get the spacing pretty right--and slapped it on the guitar, whereupon i discovered more problems. the retaining spring sat just high enough to muffle the low E string and i couldn't make it work with the saddles as they were, and the high E, G, and low E strings couldn't be intonated with the saddles in their regular orientation because they ran out of room. so i took them all out and rearranged them with a more realistic radius (which i later fine-tuned with files) that raised the E and A strings slightly and reversed the saddles in question so it'd be close enough for jazz. the low E is a wee bit flat with the saddle as far back as i can get it, but i can live with that. i mean, i had a bar bridge on for 18 years. so that's finally dealt with. of course, now i have to do the polepieces all over again...

[dubkitty]

i didn't do a lot while we were out...life got really complicated in there with a major auto accident (i'm OK, the car was not) and a nice little bout of COVID. before things went sideways i fixed the wiring on the Kondor. i'm a little disappointed with the varitone, but it does give me a couple of useable options. i think i'm going to keep the Guyatone bridge pickup that's in there rather than finding a hotter one, which does exist. it sounds fine with the Kent pickups.

i did get the replacement pickguard for the Duo Sonic from Pickguardian and it's perfect. i sent in the old guard and a tracing with the pickups repositioned to 50s spec using a 50s reissue guard that didn't fit but had the pickups in the right places. it literally snapped into place between the neck heel and the bridge and lays perfectly flat. he made a 3-layer guard because i guess that's standard rather than the one-layer white that's vintage-correct (my fault for not specifying) but i rather like the added bit of visual definition the black layer provides. i had to go after the pickup cavities with the Dremel, but everything worked. the re-positioning of the pickups made it 400% better; the bridge has the kind of SNAP you expect from a Fender now, and the re-angled neck pickup seems both warmer and more articulate. i wish i'd gotten it together sooner...i always liked it, but now it's hard to put down, moreso because it's so tiny and weighs so little.

i think i needed some time off. the next thing will probably be the double-cut Gretsch Electromatic Pro Jet i got awhile back which had a poor-quality conversion to TV Jones Filtertrons that i'm going to fix. i need to alter the TVJ wiring harness i ordered which was made for a full-sized archtop by shortening the general length, removing the master volume which i won't be using because it's impossible to install in the PJ, and changing the pickup and tone switches to the shorter right-angle version because the regular ones won't fit in the control cavity. after that i have to redo the pickup mounts so the damn things aren't visibly crooked like they were before i took everything apart. i have all the parts and everything so it shouldn't take too long.

i'll probably try the bar bridge first because i have one. in the long run i'll probably either go back to a tunomatic or get the metal bridge feet Guild sells like on my Aristocrat. i might change out the tuners for ones like the ones that came on the repro Kalamazoo Oriole i got on eBay, which are high-ratio open-backs of decent quality and astonishingly cheap. i don't know when i'll feel like going after it, but it should be a "this year" thing.

the important on-deck stuff includes the Hopf which needs the fingerboard sanded and the pickup openings in the aluminum pickguard altered to fit the Saturn 62 pickups, and the Galaxiemaster which needs all kinds of shit done. the GM may not get done this year...it's already October, and there's only so much sanding and polishing a fellow can stand. once this stuff is done i have a couple of things in mind, but they can hang for awhile.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Duo Sonic is looking great! Very cool

[dubkitty]

it’s always been very comfortable to play with the 22.5”
scale, small body, and impossibly light weight, but now it sounds as good as it feels.

[Kacey Y]

Nice, the Duo Sonic looks good. The adjustment to pickup placement making it more enjoyable to use is a big deal

[dubkitty]

huge deal. it's gone from a curiosity to a tool. i love it when the result of all my futzing about is an actual improvement in the functionality. i'm chuffed today about the 12-string which i used for a long looping session yesterday with the full system where i got all kinds of lovely stuff that doesn't even necessarily sound like a 12er at all. the doubled courses in particular do wonderful atmospheric keyboardy things through the modulation and multiple reverb units. did i mention that i rotated the pickup to a diagonal orientation because it was very bass-heavy/treble-deficient? it helped a lot. now i understand why people started angling pickups. the only drawback is that the pickup really needs a preamp to get to unity gain with a typical electric guitar. i have the Mellowtone "party favor" Hi 5 as a clean boost at the start of the FEB and use it to knock the output level up enough that it'll kick open the gate on the Micro Tron. this also helps out the Duo Sonic and is generally handy for matching levels, bringing up quiet stuff like glissando guitar and bass tones through the Octave Multiplexer that needs a kick. the 12-string is one of my best success stories in Mod World. gained a ton of functionality, i like the sound better than a typical electric 12 because it benefits from the jumbo body and is less shrill, it works better, looks better, and the whole schmeer was way cheaper than buying an electric 12. and let's not understate how great it is to tune it with an electronic tuner. i've been kind of depressed lately, so it's nice to look at it and say "that worked."

[dubkitty]

having reached a bit of a stopping point with pedalboard adventures for this week, i decided to work on my original project guitar, the Strat of Theseus. this guitar started out as one of those awful early-80s 2-knob Strats with the horrid Kahler vibrato. over the succeeding years its incarnations included being hardtailed after i chopped the mechanism off the Kahler with a hacksaw, filled the block cavity with a piece of vermilion i hand-contoured, and bolted the plate to the filler block with wood screws; adding a Bartolini 9V preamp (long gone) to bring the original pickups' output even with my ES335; replacing the original god-knows-what-wood body with a 2-tone sunburst alder body from Stewart McDonald back when they sold finished bodies and standard tremolo, replacing the pickups with Fender CS '54 Strat pickups and having Gary Brauer's shop in San Francisco do the wiring, and finally replacing the neck with a CIJ '56 Strat neck. the only remaining bits from the original guitar are the pickup covers, pickguard, two knobs, neck bolts, and strap buttons. it's designed after Richard Thompson's old '57 Strat.

there are two major issues that need to be sorted...i screwed it up setting it up at the last minute for a gig in May so the truss rod needed to be let out. string setup redone, and pickup heights re-adjusted. but the irritating problem is that when i originally installed the bridge i fucked up the bolt holes so the bridge sits slightly crooked. i'm not sure it matters as far as functionality goes because the tremolo is totally decked (i think an arm broke off inside the block back in the early 00s), but that sort of small visual fault drives me batshit. so it's off to the races again.

after taking everything apart, you can see how out-of-whack the holes are. i tried fixing it back in the 10s but got it wrong again. you can see the dowels from the first repair attempt, where i was at least able to fix the crack where the screw area had broken because i hadn't drilled the holes properly. the treble-most hole was left as-is because it's actually in the correct spot. the B string hole has been drilled slightly.

bridge 1.jpg (61.89 KiB) Viewed 341 times

i had some dowels that i bought when i was in Chicago and first doing project stuff in earnest so i cut pieces to length and drilled out the old holes to fit; this was the same thing i did last time.

bridge 2.jpg (62.28 KiB) Viewed 341 times

now i sit and wait for the glue to dry. tomorrow i'll redrill the holes, using a tiny bit in the Dremel to start because it's lighter and much more controllable than the electric drill and then gradually enlarging the holes to the correct size. better put more glue in that B string hole, Bobbo.

bridge 3.jpg (69.27 KiB) Viewed 341 times

[dubkitty]

if this gets done before the end of the week i'll probably work on the Double Jet. i need to rework the archtop-style wiring harness i got from TV Jones, redo the pickup adapters/mounts and reinstall the TVJ pickups, wire everything up, and install the old Bigsby B5 (by "old" i mean "came off a 60s Guild Starfire a friend who fancied himself a luthier had chopped up back in the late 70s") that used to live on the ES335 before i got the proper B7 and domed thumbwheels. the B5 is the "wrong" size for a Jet which normally takes a B3 but it covers the screw holes from the B50 it came with. it'll be nice to have another, slightly snappier flavor of Filtertrons to complement the White Falcon. before i took it apart i played it some and the Classic Plus bridge pickup was vicious. i'm seriously considering getting another Electromatic Double Jet and putting in a Powertron and Supertron, but not until the other guitars are done. the other projects in the pipeline--the Hopf, Galaxiemaster, and the finish repairs on the Jetstar--require a lot of sanding and/or filing which i really don't feel like fucking with right now, and since winter is coming in i can't spray-paint in Becky's shed until it gets warm again. i guess i'll go after the Hopf after that because it's less work than the Galaxiemaster which needs the pickguard and wiring designed as well as finishing work galore.