Bottlehead Forum
Bottlehead Kits => Legacy Kit Products => Tode => Topic started by: Doc B. on February 07, 2013, 02:57:14 PM
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I have had a bug to build a jazzbox ever since I got hold of an Epi Joe Pass a while ago. So here is my latest guitar project. It's a Shine hollow body, spruce ply top, maple body and neck, rosewood fingerboard. Shine is a big Asian guitar maker who produces a lot of the inexpensive hollowbodies you see around these days. Quite decent construction, and seems "calm" sounding enough when knocked on for playing electric without too much feedback. This stripped down ebay guitar apparently had a floating pickup mounted (weird for a plywood body), thus leaving it easy to convert to a single neck pickup. I will be putting a Lollar Charlie Christian pup in it. Today I ordered one of those cool finger type tailpieces, an ebony floating bridge base with a tunematic bridge with Graphtech saddles, a Graphtec nut, Grover Imperial tuners and some Thomastik flatwound strings. Plan to get it set up and playable acoustic before adding the pickup. Hopefully the frets and truss rod are in good shape and I'm not putting lipstick on a pig....
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Gotta try the piezo-speaker pickup too!
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Piezo pickups are much better than you'd expect.
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I haven't had a real positive experience with the piezo pickups I've heard so far, but I will keep an open mind. This project is a jazz box in the spirit of Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, etc., a nice big hollow body with the mellow sound of that Charlie Christian pickup.
Here's a very interesting comparison of a floating neck pup vs. the same model guitar modded for the CC pickup. Obviously a much higher quality guitar than my project, but the pup differences are the point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq41lscTpvY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq41lscTpvY)
BTW I have bought some of the Armstrong pups that J. Hale pulls off their custom jobs, for cheap. They put them up on ebay now and then. Great pups for the price.
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The Piezo's I've heard were on solid bodies, so it might be a lot different.
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Grover Imperials went on last night. Wow, nice hunky tuners! Bridge and tailpiece just arrived along with some strings. Hoping to have the guitar set up to play acoustic this evening. If it sounds good it will be time to order a pickup.
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I have heard of Grover tuners for a long time, decades! Do they have less backlash than other tuners, or is there another reason for using them. I do know how aggravating tuners can be.
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Here is my junker I redid.
The resin finish is Burgundy, but the guitar still smells a tiny bit like turpentine. The wood is very soft so it gets nicks and what not constantly - fast character building - but gives it a nice sound given the only near bridge pickup.
I've got 250k stepped attenuator for volume, and 20k for tone (had it laying around). Along with the big knobs from an old processing thing, they are easy to move with pinky, just takes a rub of the hand down along the side. The cool part is that because they are stereo attenuators, I bypassed the tone control (orange drop cap) by running a .001 Jupiter vintage on the second volume channel (so the volume of the bypass tracks). It sounds awesome (tone knob).
I broke my E string, you may notice. Truss rod was on, set the intonation and action height. I found out that a penny is perfect for setting action so it is just off of it.
(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm9.staticflickr.com%2F8528%2F8465539371_972d771abd_z.jpg&hash=ccc40742ccfe244692da68a0e14e6b43f3d520cb)
Before the wiring was finished, just trying to shop the tone approach.
(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm9.staticflickr.com%2F8086%2F8462655266_38d8c0f8d0_z.jpg&hash=7ef04d9d0284ba9b6bb6e30afad251b23f9b1ddb)
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Nice! Bet it sounds great.
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I need to make a friend play it so I can hear more. Initial impressions are good. The real hit is the tone dial though. I think I should offer this sort of tweak to friends because you can't get the sound without a dual channel volume. I'll say more later. Whenever the next Tode's ship, I'll know how it sounds with one of them!
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I believe we are awaiting chassis panels, EL84s and some more speakers. Got an invoice from Weber today that usually indicates they have shipped, and hopefully we will have the rest of the parts in soon. We're needing a Tode here at Bottleheadquarters too.
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Gettin' there. Awaiting a new nut and action tuning, then a bit of experimentation with an inexpensive floating pickup I ordered. Bad, bad iPhone pic:
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Fitting a nut - this was a first attempt for me. The nut that came with the guitar was a crappy plastic one that was sloppily installed. I practiced fitting it then chucked it, for a Graphtec black nut. Here are before and after photos of the fitting process - a lot of "remove string, file slot a teeny bit, refit string, fret and check clearance, repeat, repeat repeat until you get there".
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Reminds me of inleting. I have made a few flintlock Pennsylvania Rifles. You get to the point where you blacken a bit of brass over a candle flame, press into place, shave off the marked spots and repeat...
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Turns out .001 isn't enough. I switched to a .0047 and now the tone adjusts perfectly with volume. The sound is a bit different, but actually there are now three rather distinct different sound areas on the tone knob. It can really go from more surf/twang to dark and deep without turning into mud. That is once I put a Seymour 59 in it. The stock pickup was worthless.
I'm beginning to think finish is king or quality in sound. It doesn't mean minimal finishes will make a guitar sound the way you want, but the quality will be higher. Just last night my friend who makes guitars and finishes them with tungsten oil played his bass at a rock'n'roll lotto (for band members). His was the only bass that had any kind of authority, that sounded like a stringed instrument, that you could in anyway identify easily without having to concentrate. Maybe it didn't make the same sounds as some others, but at least you knew about it. It was easily as present, if not more, than the lead guitar (not a cheap one either) in his group.
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I suspect the finish makes a difference too. And I suspect that picking the right piece of wood to start with is probably very important.
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As you said, some guitars sort of need a finish or the sound can be too hard. While that might be true, it seems to me the more logical thing to do is choose a grade lower in hardness of wood. That way you maintain the sound you want without needing the finish to mute it.
While on one hand the muting does work for the guitars that need it, it becomes a bit harsher on ear and much harder to integrate into a band while retaining the essence of authority as towards presence. (especially given the sorry ass state of live venues these days with their shouting speakers)
It is pretty challenging to explain to someone that something sounds better than something else, but the qualities of the type of sound are not desired. It is a new concept to most people. Better should be more subjective but as humans we actually maintain an exquisitely high ability to detect fatigue levels; we just generally don't consciously know it. It is much more universal than people want it to be. Their words don't reflect it, but their listening habits and, particularly, repeat listening habits show this very well. It can often be the difference between watching a band or going for a smoke. The great modifier is of course alcohol, however.
For the same reason I haven't been able to entirely understand the true benefit of power conditioning towards live music. I'm excited to try my future Tode on different levels of power conditioning. Live bands so far have been very in favor - primarily limited by their ability - to some power conditioning. Frankly it is hard to understand how it hasn't been more of an issue given the amount of small adapters used for the hordes of pedals any band typically operates with now. All those tiny transformers from AC adapter are just common mode makers. Rectifier noiiiizzzzeee in all your gear. I tell every pedal dork I know that we should make them a battery pack that fits in the suitcase thing they use, and probably hold enough of a charge to nearly finish a tour with. They all know battery sounds better but dies quick with 9v's. I've been dreaming up a better tone device lately... Along with still wanting to know what a split signal distortion pedal would sound like (described it to you in a PM). Perhaps my tone device could have outputs for distortion pedals (two outs)....
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A friend of mine is excited about potentially using one of these (http://www.original-flatpup.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=283:flatpup6woodenframe&catid=72:fp-wooden&Itemid=115) on a project that currently is a solid body of something unique (forgot what atm).
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Today I got the wiring complete. I decided to do a traditional setup for floating pickup, controls mounted on the pickguard. I bought a surplus Eastman ebony pickguard with cream edge banding to match the edge banding banding on the git and the ebony bridge base. Used what look to be pretty nice CTS "283" series sealed conductive plastic pots, 500K. Used a traditional .022uF cap for tone - a cool old Styrene one from an old German radio. Got some nice cream colored radio style knobs off the bay. Had to do a minor superglue repair of the edge banding where it was loose on the PG, then trim a notch to fit around the floating pickup. Then had to fit the mounting bracket. That one was tough because I wanted no screw heads on top of the PG. Ended up using a couple teeny screws and a hefty dose of super glue to attach the bracket. A wee piece of elk hide pads the top mounting block to keep it from buzzing against the top.
Last step was to drill the holes for the volume and tone pots. One bad thing about ebony is that it is a mother*****r to work. I know that. And yet I became impatient, stepped up the drill sizes too fast - and split the damned PG in half! How many times do I tell you guys to slow down, and do it right? Do as I say, not as I do. Felt like a total boob. One good thing about ebony is it glues beautifully with superglue. Clamps, several grades of sandpaper, steel wool and a buffer had me back in business.
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Strange knobs, but anything that isn't numbered with no point of reference is always better. The modern ones are so stupid, with numbers.
So just a neck pickup huh? Does it balance it well with the semi-hallow body?
My guitar keeps going out of tune in a hurry, like instantly, after tuning. I'm not sure why. I'm going to tighten the truss rod a little. Then I'll check to see if the nut needs a polish/graphite. The tuning keys are naturally loose (not the part you turn, but the part the string attaches too), but I figured with tension it shouldn't matter, am I wrong? Actually maybe the string placement things on the neck are switched. I'll have to get new screws though because the current ones seem mildly stripped.
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This one is actually a pretty traditional/old school jazz box, hollow body, floating pickup, even the knobs are of the style used on 30's and 40's vintage guitars. Take a look at a Gibson Le Grande.
You can get inside tuners and tighten them up. I suggest starting there. Suspect that sometimes people spend money on new tuners when they probably just needed to tighten up the ones they already had. I don't know that adjusting the truss rod would affect how long the guitar stays tuned unless the screw is completely loose. But if the neck mounting screws are loose that could certainly affect tuning stability as the neck pivots a little in the neck pocket. Might try snugging them up a bit if the neck looks like it has shifted at all.
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I've been reading the peg is likely to have a tiny bit of wobble (I don't have anymore than that). There isn't any way inside of that to do anymore.
Hopefully correcting how the stings go over the nut will do the job, with the right string directing things. (had a problem with one hole being stripped a little)
The truss rod is probably fine, but you know, cheap guitars.... The neck started out bowed in too much but has moved back out some sense I acquired it. That being despite that if anything I turned the truss rods to go the other way.
Complaint was that the treble was barely there in the guitar, and I'm hoping the way off string to nut thing was why.