Wow. Has it really been that long?
It really has been too long. Too long.
I have been doing stuff - honest. Most of it socialising, travelling, working and having a laff... but there were moments of DIY glory.
I've spent a little time getting back in to guitar-work, by which I mean working on guitars not guitars at work. There have been a couple of things playing on my mind for a while and slowly over the course of the summer I picked a couple of them off:
I didnt get any picks of this, which is stoopid really. The problem with my tele was that the neck 'felt' like the truss rod was at full adjustment (essentially the truss rod nut had reached the end of the thread on the rod). If you don't know what a truss rod does have a quick look on wiki or decipher this (Thanks TDPRI):
I thought I had a great idea in that the lack of thread was the problem so surely I could - in effect - make the thread longer by putting a spacer between the nut and neck-block. After a quick bit of Internetz, sure enough since what may well have been the birth of time itself luthiers have done this. Again thanks to TDPRI:
Why was this important? Well. I wanted to do a fret level on it, and in order to do so I needed to make the neck as close to perfectly straight as possible - which I couldn't cos the truss rod wouldn't adjust. Innit.
Midway through the process...
Anyway - it worked a treat, the fret level and such went to plan. Job is a good'un.
A similar vein. A long time ago I think I posted a picture of this:
Well the electrics were knackered, the action was whack and a whole host of other negative-vibe-slang variables. So the first thing was to work out WTF was wrong with the electrics. I took it apart and found string, a couple of boiled sweets and boatload of FAIL so I decided to rewire from scratch using a simple variation of the old 51 p-bass schematic.
I say variation because someone had drilled an extra hole in the control plate so it needed filling. I think the original purpose of the switch was to invert the polarity of the signal but it was so wrong it was hard to tell.
So now the pots don't scratch, BOTH pots work and the tone pot has a usable sweep. The switch now functions as a volume&tone bypass switch which can (setup dependent) add a little high end back in. And it sounds great.
Modern Player Mustang (aka Jane)
On a trip to see family in Brighton we happened to stop in every musical shop we could find, one particular shop stocked the MP Mustang in Daphne Blue. To my delight, the missus (aka better half) swooned and decided it would be a good idea for me have one. Never one to throw a gift back in someone's face - I graciously accepted.
These are great guitars! I don't care if it is made in China and not GB/mexico/japan/america/indonesia/korea. Oh wait, see, there are plenty of places guitars can be made. Unless I fly out to the luthier and play the guitar before it is sent out it WILL need adjusting to my tastes. I can't afford that.
Anyway, the fact is that this guitar immediately played comfortably, sounded great acoustically and sounded great plugged in. Can't get a better start than that. The problem arises with the Mustang bridge. Common to all Mustangs, I can't help love the idea but hate the reality. I swap tunings a lot, reference the bridge quite a lot (rest on it, locate it with a finger so I know where my hand is etc...) and HATE tuning issues. Now in an ideal world I would not have a guitar with a Mustang bridge because it does not suit my playing style. This isn't a b!tch - if the shoe doesn't fit don't buy it and complain its too small. Buy a Pawnshop Mustang instead and put p90s in it.
I didn't want to be rude and refuse the 'gift' - so instead I decided to tailor the Mustang to my needs. First of all. I very rarely use a whammy bar. So I decided to 'hardtail' the Mustang by locking down the tail-piece. I like to have some tension behind the bridge so I wrap the strings under and around (like normal), this means I need spacers under the tail-piece:
Lovely. Rock solid now. Next up? The bridge itself. This is a great idea in theory until you get someone like me who keeps knocking it out. The idea is that the bridge floats on two very small points of contact. As the strings bend, or move because of the whammy action, the strings DONT move relative to the saddle but the whole bridge moves with the string. This is fine until a string slips, the tension changes (drop D anyone?) or an oaf knocks it with their hand. Not a b!tching sesh, just pointing it out. There is a crappy other problem with this too, if the bridge moves forward or backwards from the IDEAL position not only is the tuning out, but the intonation too... Just sayin.
I decided to replace the bridge assembly with a FIXED poisiton roller bridge. Now, this is an odd duck of a situation where I'm wanting to fit a Gibson style bridge to a fender guitar, this is only a problem because the string spacing, post spacing and fretboard radius are likely to be different... SO WHAT!??!?? PLOUGH ON!
First things first - I wanted the guitar to be able to be put back to original spec if this didn't work out. So no drilling out posts or the such like.
I decided on an equivalent to the Wilkinson ULTIMATE roller and got to work.
Getting the bridge to mount.. The bridge posts are too big to fit the standard Mustang mounts so using a bit of brute force (a file mounted in a vice and the posts mounted in a drill!) I reduced the thread diameter down to the point where it would just fit the mounts, and then a little more. And then took little off the length so it would sit all the way into the mount.
It didn't take long to get it fitting, but there is one issue that may annoy/put-off people. Because the bridge is quite chunky the action is too high without other changes being made... namely the neck angle.
I did some work on a Fender a while ago where the neck was unnecessarily shimmed. I don't know why it was, but hey. Anyway, the factory had put in a couple of bits of sandpaper at the body end of the neck pocket. This in effect raises the necessary bridge height by raising the heel of the neck. I used one of those bits of sand paper and BINGO standard 1.6mm action. I was worried that I'd have a MASSIVE shim in there, but no.
The radius also needed adjusting so I placed thin shims under each individual saddle (the main reason I went for the Wilko style bridge is because of the removable/adjustable saddles) until the 9.5" radius was present at the bridge. Lovely!
The string spacing has actually improved the position relative to the pick-up poles (an unexpected bonus).
All in all I'm really happy with the results, it still sounds great like this Mustang did originally, it stays in tune and if I were ever stupid/desperate enough to need to sell as original it can all be reversed no probs. All I need to do is a fret level and nut adjustment... Which leads too...
I was looking around a while ago and remembered seeing this:
They are available at Stew Mac (picture taken from there) for a decent price, but I'm a DIY kinda guy so I thought I'd make one. I already have the micrometer from the DIY Drum Dial faffery so I thought why not!
It didn't take too long to make and works a treat. The first was too small, the second feels nice to use:
I you look at the dial you can see that it has moved anticlockwise by 0.012". This was confirmed with a feeler gauge too so it WORKS! Hurrah. In all fairness to Stew Mac and the other providers I can see why they use brass/metal for the base as it would make it more stable... Maybe it is time for MkIII?
Anyway this post has taken far too long. There are other things to mention but they'll have to wait.
Oh - and I am really proud/happy/relieved to see more and more LVL_LOK-500 units being given life. Happy building!
