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

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

Just wanted to toss in: hope all is well after the cataract work.

[dubkitty]

it’s going OK. at first my vision in the fixed right eye was hazy, but that cleared up and i seem to be healing well. what’s really strange is comparing the vision in the fixed/un-fixed eyes…the new one is clear with a slight bluish tinge that’s probably just me seeing normal light, while the un-fixed eye is dimmer and has a brown tint as if it was coated with cigarette smoke residue or using a sepiatone filter. i had no idea my vision was that fucked until yesterday. the other eye gets done in a week and a half.

i was deathly ill in hospitals for much of my first 2 years of life; i don’t remember anything, but it left me with a visceral fear of doctors, hospitals, and anything medical. when i go to visit Becky when she’s in the hospital i always have to take a moment to tell myself it’s OK before i go in. accordingly i was fucking terrified when i went for the procedure and wound up in an ugly depressive episode that took a couple of days to work through. i won’t be scared when they do the other one, not only from experience but because they ply you
with propofol, Michael Jackson’s sleep drug of choice. i don’t remember a thing from the procedure though they said i wouldn’t fall asleep. still, i’ll be glad when everything’s done…i have so many medical appointments in the next month and a half that it boggles my mind.

[dubkitty]

i managed to squeeze the Firebird pickups into the M-77T’s routs, but i’m going to have to take them back out and do some artful work with one of the thinner StewMac chisels because the tabs the adjustment screws go into are about 1-2 mm too wide and bind up against the sides of the cavity. they’re otherwise OK…the screw holes from the factory DeArmond 2K pickups are slightly closer together than the ones in the metal Firebird rings, but the mounting screws work with a bit of coaxing. i managed to find exactly 8 matching screws for the pickup rings that fit the covers and screw holes in the parts box. the metal rings were flat when i got them, but a bit of bending helped the screws to nail it down to fit the slightly curved top.

i’m probably going to replace the switch, which is a weird thing with the guts inside a rectangular can and confusing terminals. i have multiple normal selector switches to swap in.

i have the #6 washers to shim the DeArmsby, but need to get the pickup mounts sorted before putting strings on. i should have everything sorted tomorrow, and will order a M-77T pickguard from Pickguardian with the pickup cutouts a couple of millimeters deeper to accommodate the pickup height adjustment screws. i’m getting a clear guard because a black guard would be visually dull and just disappear into the body color while the clear guard will sparkle around the rounded edges.

so we’re within pissing distance of having this one done. i have to see what my finances are like when i get paid next week to see what parts i can afford. the next purchase i want to do is a Telecaster neck that’s exactly what i want for my Tele with the Gemini pickups: mahogany with rosewood board, carbon fiber reinforcing rods, and a wheel truss rod adjuster at the high end of the fingerboard. i’ve been watching it for weeks and don’t want it to get away. if i’m absolutely rolling in dough i’ll also order the Bigsby pickups for the Supro, but that’s likely to take another month. i might get the B3 for the Double Jet instead which would let me move ahead with it. we’ll see. i’d better get whatever i can before the bills from the cataract surgeries come in because i’m going to get absolutely clobbered before i reach the health insurance deductible for the benefits year that ends October 1. after the Supro and Double Jet are done it’ll be Galaxiemaster time…since it has a million small parts and circuits to piece together the acquisitions will be small and progress gradual.

[Gone Fission]

I think I’ve seen Gretsch-inclined folks use old mouse pads as spacers between pickups and rings and arched tops. I believe the magic is that it’ll compress where it needs to. I’m not sure that would have looked right with flat Firebird rings, though.

[dubkitty]

it took a little doing, but i got the pickups in. i used one of the narrower chisels from StewMac to take wood off the sides of the cavities so the tabs the adjustment screws go into would fit. when i started setting up the pickups before installation the screws from the parts box started slipping when adjusting the height; fortunately i found a small ziplok in the box that had held the M-77T parts which had the correct screws which are a finer thread, but they needed the ends ground off like the other screws because they were too long to fit. i haven't screwed down the neck pickup because the wires from the bridge pickup are too short to reach the switch cavity. given that the pickups spec as neck = 8.0kΩ bridge = 8.2kΩ i'm going to just swap the positions rather than muck around adding length to the bridge pickup wires. when that's done i'll need to wire up the regular Gibson-style toggle switch from the parts box...i have an actual wiring diagram for the M-75T with the correct color codes for the wiring so it'll be especially hard to fuck up.

these should be good...i Googled around a bit to find the impedance and saw photos someone took of the innards of their FB720 pickup and they're constructed like real Firebird pickups, not mini-hums in a closed shell. i played an Epiphone Uptown Kat with these pickups and liked it enough that it was on my shortlist before this project came up. it was absolutely great for Neil Young stuff.

[dubkitty]

i got the pickups installed per my last post with the neck and bridge pickups swapped. i had to take out the bridge pickup again because it needed different springs on the height adjustment screws so i can crank that pickup up to where the housing is almost coming out of the ring, which i may need to balance the pickups. if it's not high enough i'll order a Dynasonic shim to lift it a bit more. i restrung it and it's currently quite playable, though i need to do a proper setup once everything's wired up. i really ought to do the switch today...we'll see how my energy level is doing later on. i must say it looks badass with the Firebird pickups and Digsby. now that the pickups are in i can measure how much deeper i need the pickup cutouts on the pickguard to be; i'll have it made so the cutouts are as deep as the pickup rings so i can get it close to the surface on the upper end. this may wind up being my most dangerous project guitar. Firebird pickups, mahogany (well, nato...i always wondered what Warsaw Pact wood would look like before i got the Musima), shorter scale than an actual Firebird, and the Digsby. it should have serious teeth.

[dubkitty]

yes, the neck pickup is slightly crooked in the photo. i corrected it. that's what happens when you're using screw holes in a pattern slightly smaller than the screw holes in the rings.

i still expect a c&d from Disney every time i see that script-ish "D" logo on the knobs.

[dubkitty]

the DeArmond guitars share Guild’s rather whimsical approach to logos…there are three different DeArmond logos on the M-77T, the full name in script on the headstock and Digsby and two different upper-case “D” logos, one on the Digsby and the Disney “D” on the knobs. the M-75T goes even further with a Guild logo on the truss rod cover. real Guild electrics often also have another, different logo on the pickguard, an inverted chevron with “Guild” above it. i enjoy guitars that can’t stop telling you what they are. reminds me of a Kent hollowbody i saw on Marketplace.

i decided to go ahead and do the intonation last night. at first it was a bit squirrely, but improbably when i lowered the action it came out perfectly intonated with the saddles in a straight line. i’d be startled if the same thing hadn’t happened when i switched to the traditional bridge on my Jazzmaster. it’s still unusual, though, and makes me feel good about its stability.

i have the switch wiring all worked out so all i should need to do is solder five points on the switch. the tricky part will be getting five separate conductors—two pickup grounds, the shields from the hot wires from the switch to the pots, and the ground between the switch and the output jack—to the single ground lug on the switch.

[dubkitty]

i took another look at Bigsby guitars to see what the bridges were like, and it’s not as simple as i first thought. some of the bridges are aluminum saddle on a rosewood base, but some have the full aluminum base in rectangular base format. i originally wanted the Sorkin “bowtie” style base and may go back to that if it’s tall enough…the neck angle on the Supro is severe. the drag is that the Sorkin bridge comes with a saddle compensated for a wound G string which i haven’t used on electrics since about 1976 so i’ll have to pay 35% more to get the base with the wrong saddle and the correct one as a separate purchase. i guess i could buy a standard Bigsby bridge and file off the wide feet like i did with the bridge on the Kondor, but i would prefer not to.