Latest project

[Doc B.]

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....

[Paul Joppa]

Gotta try the piezo-speaker pickup too!

[DoS]

Piezo pickups are much better than you'd expect.

[Doc B.]

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:



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.

[DoS]

The Piezo's I've heard were on solid bodies, so it might be a lot different.

[Doc B.]

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.

[Grainger49]

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.

[DoS]

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)

[Doc B.]

Nice! Bet it sounds great.

[DoS]

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!

[Doc B.]

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.

[Doc B.]

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:

[Doc B.]

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".

[2wo]

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... 

[DoS]

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.