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

[dubkitty]

i got the leads sorted. i made sure all the solder joints on all the extensions were good, used vinyl tape to insulate them, and then used heat-shrink tubing to seal up the joints. this allowed the cables to pass through the body routs easily with no snags. now it’s sitting on the coffee table waiting for the pickups to be connected to the pots. if i don’t get it done today it may not get done till the end of the week because i have a dinner engagement with Becky’s family tomorrow and then Cataract II on Wednesday. but i feel better about the prospects now. i wrote to Pickguardian about the necessary mods to the guard shape to make it work and am waiting to hear back.

[dubkitty]

well, after all the care i took trying to get this right it turns out that the bridge pickup is fucked. i tried making contact directly to the output jack and the other set of pots and it was just as bad. i assume i fucked something up when shortening the leads. happily they’re only $30 a set so i don’t feel guilty.

what can we learn from this? NEVER SHORTEN LEADS MORE THAN ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. assuming the pickup was good to begin with, if i’d just clipped the plugs off the leads everything would have been fine. as one of my favorite bumperstickers says, OH NO, NOT ANOTHER LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

so i’ll order another set of the FB720s. while i wait i should work on the long-neglected Double Jet and maybe do another round of painting on the Jetstar. i’m going to have to rework the TV Jones harness i got for the DJ because it’s made for an archtop with a master volume control on the right upper bout that i don’t have and can’t install because there’s no routing there on the DJ and i’m certainly not going to do it. so a huge length of cable will get removed including the master volume extension. i also have to swap the switches that came with it for the shorter right-angle switches because the tall ones won’t fit in the switch cavity. i might as well have just built the harness myself but i was trying to avoid soldering. HA HA. i’m still not looking forward to reworking the neck pickup rout or reinstalling the pickups using a conversion kit TVJ sells to put traditional-mount Filtertrons in Pro Jets. but now and again these things just got to be done, as Robert Hunter once wrote.

i should also work on the Galaxiemaster body, hopefully do a couple of rounds of intensive polishing and see if the result’s good enough to avoid having to sand the whole thing. i’m feeling a bit less strict since i noticed orange-peeling on the M-75. i don’t see where i have to be better than a whole bloody factory can be.

i decline to get overly bummed about this…it’s not like i was working on a $2000 guitar for an important client or something. it’s just not that big of a deal.

[dubkitty]

ordered the replacement pickups as well as a couple of solutions for the pickup mounts. one is a set of black plastic mounting rings from an Epiphone Flamekat which would provide better support to keep the pickups in position, the other is Dynasonic spacers from TV Jones which would raise the bridge pickup ring. i think the bridge pickup might need to get real close to the strings for the kind of tone i want from Firebird pickups. if this stuff wasn’t cheap it’d be a real drag. not that it isn’t a drag anyway.

[dubkitty]

i may be on forced project hiatus for a bit…the option i chose for my cataract surgeries requires glasses for anything more or less than about 20”-25” and my old glasses are worse than nothing. the problem is that i have no vision that can resolve guitar wiring well enough to solder wires onto pots. this will probably last around 6 weeks; the eyes need a month to settle in and then it’ll take about 2 weeks for the glasses to arrive. so i may be limited to broad-strokes finish work for awhile, which isn’t great for the M-77T, Double Jet, or Supro but could be just what the Galaxiemaster has been waiting for. it kind of sucks that i’ll probably have to wait to do the Supro till later, but i don’t mind getting away from the M-77T for a little while. it was starting to get as frustrating as the Double Jet was the last time i quit doing projects, and i have too much to do to totally quit.

[dubkitty]

i think it might be simpler to use some of the cable i have to make a new harness using the roll of cable in the parts box and the components from the TV Jones harness rather than altering it which always has the potential for slip-ups. i really only need a run from the switch cavity to the control cavity that couldn’t be more than 24 inches max because Pro Jets had good cable routing. the components are first-rate, though it’s going to suck trying to get the capacitors off the tone switch. obviously this isn’t happening till my glasses are done.

[dubkitty]

ordered some knobs. i decided to use the black version of the Kondor’s cream synth pointer knobs for the Galaxiemaster’s rotary pickup and tone selectors, and got some black Russian Big Muff knobs for the Wandré which needs knobs that are less bland-looking. i first saw these on the Waterslide Guitars demos on YouTube and found them on the Small Bear site.

[dubkitty]

i spent most of a day working my way through problems that cropped up with various guitars since the big jobs are kind of off the table for the moment. i first started working on the Eastwood Wandré, trying to optimize the pickups. i found a setting with both pickups backed off where they contrasted with each other less, but it was far too quiet when compared to the Strat which is in rough balance with the majority of the guitars so i cranked them back up. i had to pull the neck pickup and shorten the springs because they were crammed against the pickguard. i found that with the volume rolled off about 30% the pickups sound more like each other so that’s an alternative sound. the Russian Big Muff knobs are great compared to the fairly dull stock knobs. i have a alternate toggle switch knob coming that has more personality.

the weird thing is that i watched as many videos of vintage Wandrés as i could find and none of them sounded much like the Goldo Davoli RI pickups in the Eastwood or clips of Buddy Miller playing his Wandrés on stage. my pickups aren’t too far from the Miller clips. as i previously mentioned somewhere on here they’re also not terribly close to the Waterslide guitar demos using the RI pickups. i’m looking at the possible upside, which is that i can quit trying and get used to the pickups as they are. i’m not sorry i got the Eastwood, but i’d feel better if the pickups worked more like the ones in the Waterslide guitars.

when i got the Strat out i found that its truss rod needed to be let out which is always a pain because it has the vintage adjustment at the heel. i took care of that and did some slight pickup and action adjustments and it was sorted.

next i redid the pickup heights on the Moon Blue DeArmond M-75 with the Gold Tone pickups. in contrast to the Wandré, its pickups needed to be lowered because it was startlingly loud. that was simple at least and thankfully didn’t require polepiece adjustments.

i finished off my maintenance mini-blitz by figuring out why the Duo Sonic’s output was massively reduced. i gather that one of the pots got rotated when the pickguard was replaced and its leads were shorting out. it took a lot of fiddling to figure out. i’m really happy it’s working again because it’s one of my favorites.

i’m resisting the temptation to put the Bigsby B6 and saddle on the Supro because my friend Charlie has said he was curious about them and the Eastwood Wandrés so i want to let him play them in their stock states and i’m also not in a hurry to explore the mysteries of the fiberglass/mahogany body shell. so i got out the Double Jet to check out where it’s at.

the new Bigsby B3, unlike the B6, isn’t long enough to cover all the holes and indentations from the installation of the B50 i took off. i decided to do the quick/dirty solution and put black screws in the most apparent holes. i don’t think it’s a good use of time to try to make that area perfect.

it looks like i can just cut the TV Jones harness at the master volume loop and have enough slack to reach the upper left switch cavity. i’m still working out what order to connect things in, and am getting ahead of myself because the pickups need to be mounted before they’re wired up. i need to move the neck pickup about 4 mm south of its current location so the pickup can be mounted properly; here’s another job for the luthier’s chisel set. all said, it’s not as hard as i’ve been thinking it is because there are a lot of little things that have to be done.

the Gretsch tuners i got off eBay don’t work because the posts are too short. hopefully i’ll find somewhere else for them. the current tuners, which are Kluson-style with the works in a ridged metal box, are adequate for now. i’ll get some higher-ratio tuners later on.

i think i’m going to give it a round of polishing before i set it aside so it’s ready to go. i oiled the fretboard a couple of times because it was quite dry. i’m afraid it may need one of my frontier fret leveling jobs with the sanding block because there are some pretty good indentations in the first few frets, but i’d prefer to avoid that.

i guess i’m going to do more Double Jet stuff because that’s the thing on the table i can do for now. the black plastic Epiphone pickup rings and the Dynasonic shims for the M-77T both arrive tomorrow, but the pickups are somewhere between here and China so i’m not getting to that soon. seems like the next DJ things are a full polish and altering the neck pickup cutout. when that’s done i’ll use the TVJ adapter kit to install the pickups, after which it’ll be harness wiring time. i’m not entirely sure what to use for a bridge…the Electromatic Jets normally used a modern (i.e. post-ABR) tunomatic design but i found that an old-style ABR-1 looked better on the Dyna Jet. i used to use a Gretsch bar bridge on the Dyna Jet but it’s not optimal for the angled position of the posts which make strings dead out because they encounter the edge of the slot so i’ve gotten away from it. i could try other options that don’t use the stock posts but i’d prefer not to pull the sockets because the area between the bridge pickup and endpin already has too many extraneous holes and these would be particularly large.

i’m glad i got it out because i’ve left it sitting for a long time waiting till i felt ready to deal with its unique set of challenges. it’s still going to be a bear in several ways, but i think it’ll work out.

i haven’t forgotten about painting the Jetstar repairs, i just haven’t felt like dealing with paint. if my supply situation continues i’ll get to that sometime this week.

i’ve been considering what to do about the Telecaster and the Strat-with-CS69-pickups. i have green guitars on the brain, and i found a special run of the Player II Strat in British Racing Green that hits most of my marks except that it has the two-post tremolo which i have no experience with. i can probably live with that. all i’d have to do is change the pickups. the Tele will be more involved because i want stuff that no stock Tele offers; it would be a waste to buy a BRG Player II Tele because i’d change the neck, pickups, switch plate, selector switch, and other parts. i saw a Squier CV Tele Custom with double binding and a Bigsby which is extremely tempting and which i wouldn’t feel guilty about chopping up so that’s a possibility. i’m kind of trying to ram as much spending through as i can before the medical bills land on me like a 20-ton boulder so fuck if i know what’s going to be coming or when.

the baritone JM is on the back burner for now. i need to spend some serious time with the downtuned CVJM to be sure this is something i want to pursue. i especially need to run it through the big board.

i’m pretty sure i dealt with most of the Small Annoying Problems in the other electric guitars other than rewiring the Kondor with the varitone between the rotary pickup selector and the volume knob which i’m aware of. It’s On The List(TM).

[dubkitty]

jeez, sorry for the epistle-ization. i didn’t mean to write Remembrance Of Things Past.

[dubkitty]

i had a look at the harness and i can just amputate everything north of the master volume knob loop and reattach the pickup and tone switches, which i have to replace anyway because the original switches are too tall for the switch cavity. so that'll simplify things a bit. polished the entire thing last night so it's looking nicer. i might conceivably have a go at mounting the bridge pickup which doesn't need any alterations to its cutout, but it seems like it might be better to do the neck pickup first because changing the cutout will inevitable create a mess of wood chips that'd be harder to clean up with the bridge pickup in place. i would really like to get this thing done with because it's been hanging around forever, enough that i'm not doing the kind of fine detail stuff i've done on e.g. the Jetstar. i'm thinking of the DJ as the more aggressive Filtertron guitar for those times the White Falcon isn't quite it. if i find it redundant i'll try trading it to Charlie, who has loads of guitars including more Teles than you could shake a stick at which might be handy for me. i really don't like selling guitars, though, and trading is just selling for something else.

[dubkitty]

i got the new harness installed. i had to open up the potentiometer holes in the top and the jack hole in the metal jack plate because the new parts are US spec while the Pro Jets are metric. fortunately i had a round file of the right size and it didn't take too long. once the cables were pulled through the routs i put the control cover on to close it up for awhile. i'll need to get back in there again to connect the harness's ground lead meant for an archtop tailpiece with the guitar's ground lead that goes to one of the bridge post sockets, but not until after the pickups and switches are connected. i love the jewel-arrow knobs, which are the chromed version of the gold knobs on White Falcons. the only reason i don't have them on the Dyna Jet is because i chose the older arrow-only knobs that appeared on the earliest Duo Jets c.1953-54 which were Dyna-equipped rather than the later Filtertrons.

irritatingly the "black" screws i put in the most obvious holes from the B5 install are more "dark chrome" than black, so i'll need to get some paint on them along the way. next will be doing the enlargement of the neck pickup cutout, which i'm expecting to be the trickiest bit. i don 't think i'll go after that today because i want to take a look at the different pickup mount options for the M-77T's Firebird pickups which are supposed to be delivered today. i prefer the look of the metal rings, but the plastic rings might be better at supporting the pickups and keeping them properly positioned.

[dubkitty]

for review purposes here's a shot of the Double Jet before i took it apart. you can see that both pickups are crooked, and that the neck pickup's mounting ring has been crudely notched to fit against the end of the fingerboard; this was necessary because the pickup rout is too far north for the ring to fit properly because the stock mini-humbuckers didn't have rings but mounted directly to the wood in the pickup cavities. everybody who did this mod on the older Pro Jets cut the ring rather than fixing the rout. i'm mildly amused by the fact that the old owner positioned both pickups crooked by roughly the same amount. i absolutely hate that Gretsch and everybody else and their dog insist on mounting the flat-mount B5 Bigsby on arched tops where they don't fit right unless tightened down so much that they make indentations on the top which you can see on the stripped Double Jet. they do this on almost all of the Electromatic Jets; IMO at least they could do a B7 if they insist on the tension bar. here you can also see how clunky-looking the modern tunomatic is compared to the ABR-1 on the Dyna Jet. i basically had to rework things for it to be acceptable to me. i'm not going around with a sloppy-ass looking guitar...i have a certain amount of pride.

good god, i looked at the dates on the old Double Jet photos and i left off on it almost 5 years ago, September 2020. you know how time fades away. so long ago that the Gretsch Pages still existed. the silver Duo Jet pickguard i'm using on the DJ was given to me by someone from TGP. it was a weird forum with a lot of superannuated rockabillies who thought the Beatles "ruined rock 'n' roll," but there were some interesting and nice folks on there.

double jet old.jpg (26.27 KiB) Viewed 218 times

Dyna Jet ABR-1.jpg (112.15 KiB) Viewed 218 times

[dubkitty]

yes, i made sure to put the neck pickup volume in front and the bridge pickup volume knob at the back. TVJ was nice enough to label them "N" and "B" respectively. now all i have to do is connect the two cables to the selector switch correctly LOL. it made me happy to put some things together for this because it's been apart for so long.

i know it's kind of a heretical statement, but i think it would be cool if Gibson/Epiphone did a doublecut Les Paul Standard like they did with the Special. i guess the Epiphone Genesis was sort of that, but IMO it wasn't done too well. maybe the Gretsch cutaway profile works better than a Les Paul cutaway for this, though the Specials got around this with asymmetrical cutaways...the singlecut Special has the same outline as a Standard but the doublecuts alter the right-side cut as well as having a different shape for the left-side cutaway. i've always dug the Double Jets, and if i had a good excuse i'd get a red one but that would only be remotely justifiable if i went with the Supertron pickups with their blade polepieces.

turns out that the tunomatic on the Supro i'm taking off for the Bigsby aluminum saddle is a proper ABR-1 with the retaining wire which will move over to the Double Jet when i start working on the Supro.

[dubkitty]

there actually are a couple of Buddy Miller clips where his Wandrés sound rather like mine. the first is a visit to his house with the link to the point where the Wandré gets played; the second is a live clip from 2012 of him and Richard Thompson playing two tracks together where he's quieter than Richard but you can hear it dig in a bit. my bridge pickup is a bit snappier, being a humbucker with a coil for strings 1-3 and a coil for strings 4-6 that's more like 6.5kΩ rather than the singlecoil's 4.2kΩ. now i feel better about buying it.

[dubkitty]

in upcoming projects news, i got the mahogany Tele neck i’ll use for the Gemini Telecaster. it’s a terrific piece of work, and i wouldn’t hesitate to order another neck from the seller—Havok Guitars on Reverb—if i needed a aftermarket neck. i’m on the waiting list for a double-bound Sherwood Green body from GFS, and once that’s here the Tele should roll out in fairly short order. of course, when it arrives will determine where it goes in the queue.

for now i’m sticking with the M-77T and Double Jet as the frontline jobs, and hope to get them done before the Mojo Bigsby pickups arrive for the Supro. i also plan on doing another pass at the Jetstar’s finish problems and polishing the Galaxiemaster body as background tasks. i sure do wish the paint didn’t require 2 weeks to dry because it forces the job to take longer. i’m going to have a whole new gang of guitars to get used to and work up by the official beginning of fall.

[dubkitty]

ordered the Fender Custom Shop 69 Stratocaster pickups for the second Strat. i could go two ways on this; the easy way would be to buy a complete Strat, the cheaper-but-harder way would be putting something together out of parts. i have British Racing Green on my mind, and could do either option…there’s a Player II Strat i’m watching on eBay for $669 and also a 2-piece aftermarket alder body. each has its drawbacks. the Player II has the two-bolt tremolo which i haven’t used and am dubious about, while the eBay body would require me to drill holes for the bridge mounting screws which i promised myself i’d never do again after my troubles with the other Strat. if i put a Strat together i might get an all-rosewood neck from Havok who made the Tele neck. i’m getting ahead of myself, but only because i want to get to the end of the road.

it occurs to me that i could just try polishing the Tele neck which has a thin satin finish. i’ll try the back of the heel first so it won’t show if it turns out weird. i’ve had good luck polishing matte finishes in the past…i had a Brownsville (Sam Ash) dreadnought acoustic with a solid top that was like $119 on clearance that i polished and did bone nut/saddle/bridge pins and got $300 for it when i was selling off gear.