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Rough cuts and adjustable ideas

I finished stripping down the Satellite bass and my boxes arrived. With the guitar in bits I played around holding the neck to the boxes trying to decide the best approach.

Before I saw the boxes I imagined I'd use whichever was the biggest, but once I saw them I changed my mind and decided to use the smallest.

I've a friend David who had mentioned before he had a surplus of hardwood in his garage workshop. I mentioned I was building a guitar and asked if he happened to have any 2 x 1 spare. He did, so I stuck my bits of guitar into a bag and headed up to show him what I needed. My best idea so far :)

He'd already pulled out some mahogany boards, so there were two 3ft lengths and a shorter piece waiting for me. He then kindly did most of the work on the short piece to turn it into the bits I needed for my build. He routered the slot for the box to sit on and cut and drilled the holes to fit the two pieces together and for fastening the neck. He even donated a bag of Cascamite glue and refused to even let me get him a six pack in payment. So I came away with the rough cuts for this build and two future necks. Thanks David :)

Here's what I've got so far. I need to go screw hunting next..

So I've gone for a behind the box approach with the tailpiece built up to be flush with the box. One of the nice things about my donor parts is that the bridge and pickup are both adjustable. I knew the bridge was, but I didn't know the pickups were height adjustable until I dismantled the guitar. It's really simply done, so here's a close up for adjustable ideas of your own - I know I've already been looking for knurled nuts for future builds as a couple of those, a couple of bolts and you've got an adjustable bridge :)

The bridge itself can be totally dismantled as it's just a threaded rod with the various bits screwed on. The pickup just has a couple of springs to make it adjustable, the tighter the screw, the higher the pickup gets. Simple but effective, just like cigar box guitars :)

I'm going to replace the rest of the electronics with new stuff. I'm going to experiment a bit first, but am seriously considering a switchable tone circuit with perhaps a diode based passive distortion as well.

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Comment by Domino on July 7, 2012 at 4:49am: Another trip into the box to tweak the electronics. I noticed I was only using very low tone settings, so tested various settings and realized that above 6 or so there was very little difference in tone. So I've added a 1 meg resistor over the tone pot which effectively makes it a 333K pot rather than a 500k one. I think this is the final form of the electronics now as I'm happy with both the range of options and the controls.

Comment by Domino on July 4, 2012 at 11:45am: Ooops. Missed out a capacitor on the diagram.. There's a 2200pF mustard type in parallel with the diodes..

Comment by Domino on July 4, 2012 at 11:03am: It turned out I was a bit too enthusiastic in choosing the electronics that I like the sound of. I ended up with a 5 way switch where it was difficult to tell much difference between the settings. I've had another round of testing and used the opportunity to add piezo pickups to the Satelight (not a typo, it's new name). I've just finished experimenting with series capacitors on the piezos and here's what the final electronics will be.

I've used a fair old mix of capacitors.. the 8900pF is silver mica, the 100nF are metalised poly and the 166.6nF is a tropical fish.. I tested the values of a few tropical fish I got as a job lot and when I saw the 666 crop up I knew that was the one to use - It's a 160nF by label.. Though somewhat ironically it's actually on the smoothest sounding setting, the edgier sounds are at the other end with the diodes..

Comment by Domino on June 22, 2012 at 1:21pm: Thanks. I did consider pitching the neck back, but having nice flat 3mm wood available made it the simpler option. I always have the option of mounting the metal plate of the bridge inside the box and just having the bolts coming through which would drop the height another couple of mm. It shouldn't be needed though, the changes I've made bring me within half a mm of the original neck height. Though measuring carefully it does look like the neck was pitched back originally - never even thought to check that before. It's 18mm deep at body side of socket and 19.5 deep at the edge. My changes give me 20mm - I'll find out in the morning if it's enough. At least I know now why the bridge ended up further back than I expected!

Comment by The Phrygian Kid on June 22, 2012 at 12:48pm: nice job on this, really great. if your action is still too high you might want to consider pitching the neck back a little, you could add a wedge shaped shim, or cut the angle back into your thru the box piece there.

great work

Comment by Domino on June 22, 2012 at 12:38pm: The wiring looks simpler than my diagram made it seem. I realized I didn't need to use both sides of the 5 way, just one half to switch the hot side of the capacitors and diodes. The other sides just go to earth. The green wire at the left goes through the body to earth the bridge. The tone capacitors are silver mica except for the 0.1uF ceramic disk which is on the tone control itself and hidden behind the volume pot. The other two BAT85 diodes are in the white heatshrink behind the visible one.

I'm going to assemble and test tomorrow.

Comment by Domino on June 22, 2012 at 7:28am: Late last night I thought I better strip down the guitar as if it was in one piece when I got up, I'd probably spend another day playing with it. I figured I needed to lower the action by at least 3mm and once I stripped it down I noticed the screws stuck out behind the bridge and I could gain between 0.5 and 1mm by fixing that. I happened to have a selection of 3mm razor scale blanks, so I glued a pair of yellowheart ones to the body and went to bed.

This morning, I shaped the yellowheart and enlarged the countersinks on the bridge. So I should have about a 4mm lower action now when I put it back together. My sound hole cover arrived, supposedly a brass cabrochon but it looked a bit tinny. I drilled out the center and soaked it in salt and vinegar to try to color match the gold on the box. I drilled and shaped the tone hole, it's more of a flower shape than a circle to match the cover.

I've applied 3 coats of tung oil to the body and back of box, but didn't really let it fully dry between coats - it's all hidden normally anyway so I'm not too worried about how it looks. As I mentioned before I used a small box, so built the body behind the box rather than through it. The box is 6 3/4" x 8" x 1 1/4"

I'm just waiting for that to dry so I can do the electronics and put it back together. Then I can finalize the bridge position, drill a couple of holes and it's done.

You'll have to wait to see the sound hole as I can't turn it over to take a picture just yet.

Comment by Domino on June 21, 2012 at 5:55am: Finished experimenting with the circuit for my electronics, and I even did a diagram. It ended up a bit cluttered but basically it's based on a Greasemonkey tone control with the 5 way switching between two different tone filters and a diode distortion. Though distortion isn't quite the right word as the effect is very subtle, it's like a really gentle overdrive and just adds a little extra dimension to the sound.

The 2K35 values came about because I was using 4K7 resistors and liked the sound control better with two in parallel :)

So basically, the 5 way just earths the part of the circuit that is selected. My five positions are 8200pF, 8200pF + 4700pf, 4700pf, 4700pF + diodes, diodes.. Now if I can just stop playing with the guitar long enough to strip it down and finish it :)

Comment by Domino on June 20, 2012 at 9:17am: I've put everything together to test the action. It's quite a bit too high. I've not attached the bridge yet and had to move it a lot further back than I planned to get 12th fret harmonics in tune with 12th fret. I suspect it'll move forward as the action is lowered. I'm also going to add a sound hole but the cover for it hasn't arrived yet.

I connected the pickup to the jack with twisted on wire, and it's sounding pretty good. The bridge moves pretty easily though and I keep knocking it and losing tuning. I think I'll fill the original screw holes in the neck as the new longer screws aren't quite as tight as I'd like. So a few minor adjustments to make and I've still to treat the back with tung oil, but I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out.

Comment by Domino on June 20, 2012 at 2:50am: I've lost my soldering iron, so can't do anything with electronics until the new one arrives. I've glued the box to the body now and it's clamped up and drying. Here's the reassembled neck with it's cleaned up parts and a new bone nut. I left the string grooves pretty light until I can string it up and see what's needed.

It's had 3 coats of tung oil and one of lemon oil. I filled the crack in the fretboard with maple colored filler (darkest I could find) and tinted it to match the rest with a brown felt tip pen. The fretboard then got a light tung oil coating followed by lemon oil. The oiling lifted a little of the filler, but not so much that it needs redoing.