Interesting Neck Thread

This thread has some interesting information on allparts and mighty mite necks, as well as tru oil finishing. It seems that tru oil is not hard to apply and is a good choice for someone like me who wants to try starting out with an unfinished neck.

Some day maybe I'll build a stompbox

General Guitar Gadgets

Fretting

A little clicking and I found a post on fdp.com that says:

Here's the info I got from Fender when I asked.
Fender medium jumbo/standard fret wire:
The Fender Medium Jumbo wire is .046" x .103"

So now it's clear that this is what is on the stowaway. Also, looking at the fret size information at Warmoth, I see that this is the same as the Dunlop 6150 size. From the Warmoth site:

Item Number	Width X Height	Description	Used By
6230	.080" X .043"	This is the smallest fret wire.	Vintage Fender necks.
6130	.106" X .036"	Often referred to as "Medium Jumbo".	Many Gibson necks.
6150	.103" X .046"	A true "Jumbo". It is about the same width as the 6130 but a bit taller.	Modern Fender American necks.
6105	.096" X .047"	Narrow and tall.	A popular choice.
6100	.112" X .055"	Huge! This is big stuff for the almost scalloped feel.	Common on Ibanez necks.

This makes me feel a bit better, as it's clearly a respectable fret size.  The neck width is another story.  Now what's troubling is that none of the Allparts necks use this size. Here's a table I distilled from looking at around 20 strat necks on their site.  Note that there's some inconsistency, in which the same name is used for different wires. I sent them a note about this - no response.  Based on this, I wouldn't feel comfortable ordering something from them, as I'd have no idea what I'd really be getting.

Name	Size
Jumbo	.118" x .055"
Jumbo Modern	.114" x .055"
Jumbo Stainless	.098" x .047"
Jumbo Stainless(!)	.110" x .055"
Tall	.095" x .055"
Vintage	.079" x .043"
Vintage(!)	.079" x .051"

Hand Size

I played my Stewart Stowaway while on vacation and I realized I really like the neck.  When I got back I immediately measured it and found:

Radius	9 1/2 inches
Width at 1st Fret	0.80 inches
Width at 12th Fret	0.93 inches
Fret Size	0.043x0.105 inches

This is kind of disappointing, since it's a thin wimpy neck with low frets.  I'm getting the impression that cool guys use fat necks with jumbo frets.  Actually these frets seem weird to me, since they are quite low, but also quite wide.

I've been wondering about how hand sizes are measured and how that correlates to what the ideal neck dimensions are.  I had asked Warmoth about this, and the answer was that it's not possible (or they don't know how) to infer the right neck size from hand dimensions.  Ha!   I found some useful data at the anthrokids website. Based on some very sloppy measurements, it seems that my hands are quite average size, except for a long index finger.

Shimming

I decided to take  another shot at shimming (sounds like the "attempted to tempt her with Tempters" commercial).  I found the comments on this site to be helpful.  This time I obsessively measured the thickness of every piece of paper I could find and finally settled on a method in which I started with a piece of printer paper the size of the neck pocket and then laid on layers of painter's tape so that I got a gradual slope from the width of the paper (I've forgotten what it is) to around 0.75m, which is what that NYHRC card was.   I punched holes with a hole punch, then re-punched when it turned out I'd screwed up, installed it, and it seems ... no different, but certainly not worse.  In a fit of sentimentality, I wrote my name and the date on the shim.  Perhaps one of my kids will disassemble it in 30 years and be inspired to heave a wistful sigh in memory of me.  Just the sort mawkish sentimentality which I claim to despise, but there you have it.



After having strung up, I installed the Tremel No (again), and started the endless process of setting up.  After many, many iterations, I think I have the relief and action right, and the intonation is almost ok.   I was helped in the latter by my new toy, the Turbo Tuner ST-200, a genuine strobe tuner.  What this means exactly is a bit unclear to me, but it seems to be a much smarter sort of tuner than the usual.   When one hits a string, it vibrates at its fundamental frequency, and all integer multiples of that frequency.  For example, hitting the open A string, which is A2 (110Hz), results in some mixture of 110, 220, 440, 880, ... vibrations.  The "amount" of each of these determines the tonal characteristics of the sound that's heard. Or something like that.  Anyhow, the tuner knows this and, presumably after determining the fundamental frequency (which must be the closest "real" note to the loudest), it must compare that frequency, and all others it finds by doing an FFT to integer multiples of the fundamental frequency and display these differences in a groovy circular display.   It takes some getting used to, but it's fun.  I bought this one instead of the polytune thinking it was "cooler".  It is, but the polytune may be better to use on stage, not that I'm on stage that much :-)

Crossroads

I got the Tremel No set up ok, and it seems to be doing the trick.  I think I'll either use it to lock down the trem (most of the time), or to let it float.  I don't know why I'd want to be in "dive only" mode, but there's  a lot I don't know.

I'm still quite bugged about having to shim the neck so much.   A wise man with whom I consulted says that Mighty Mite necks are mostly crappy, and that mine most likely is too.   So I'm thinking of bagging this neck and buying an allparts neck

More Shimming

I spent some time compulsively measuring the thickness of everything credit-card like thing I could find around the house.  In the end I decided to

• Lower the saddles so that the height was correct.  The height at the nut was 0.051 inches, and the body to neck height in the middle of the diagram was 0.0343, so the saddle height should be 0.394, which is just a little under 25/64. I used my Stewart MacDonald String Action Gauge to adjust the height of the low E string first
• I cut a shim from my old NYHRC card.  This card is 0.75mm, substantially larger than the Metrocard, but still not quite as thick as a credit card.

Interestingly I once again had to loosen the truss rod to add some relief and, even having done that, I've got something like 0.006, which is rather low compared to the Fender spec.

Wow that's an irritating animated GIF.  If anyone other than I read this blog I'd have to remove it.  With this shim in place, the guitar seems a lot better.  The saddles are lower. It does bug me to have that gap between the neck and the pocket.  I'd be happier with a tapered piece of plastic that has screwholes and fits across the top of the neck fully.  Maybe I'll try to do that next.

An Interesting Observation

With the shim, and lower saddles, and the guitar tuned up, I find my trem is decked! This means the string tension is undoubtedly lower.  I don't get that.  I would have thought that a certain fixed amount of tension would be required to get a particular string to a particular note and that's it.  It must be more subtle than that.  With lower posts, various angles are different, and so some physical quantities must be different. Torque or something like that?  This is just the kind of lesson I was hoping to learn from doing this project.   Even if there's a paragraph in some Erlewine book that says the same thing, it becomes real only through having observed it "in the wild".  

To Float Or Not To Float

Should I loosen the springs now?  I have no float at all. It would seem stupid to have the Tremel No in there and not have some float. I wish I knew enough physics to understand this a bit better - or at least had better intuition about this kind of stuff.  Loosening the springs will decrease tension "exerted" by them.  The guitar will go out of tune (flat) and the bridge will float up a bit.  Then I'll tune it and the bridge will float less due the increased tension from the strings being tighter.  Or something like that.  

I've seen derisive comments about statements like "string tension should equal spring tension".   It seems those deriders are saying that the correct thing to say is "torque from the strings should equal torque from the springs". I can't say because I don't know what it means, unlol.

Shim

It's really been bugging me that my saddles are so high, as described in the last post (I think).  Just look:

The screws on the saddles are screwed in almost all the way.  As I mentioned last time, I looked around, and it seems like either shimming the neck (whatever that really means) or "shaving" the neck is what's called for.  But I have no real idea what's involved in either.  This thread on strat-talk was quite helpful.  I shimmed the top of my neck using a NYC Metrocard, which turns out to be 0.35mm thick, versus a credit card which is around 0.82mm thick.  To help myself understand what's going on, I created this picture using gliffy.

It was quite helpful to me in understanding what's going on. On the left, of the picture is the nut, and the line joins it to the bridge saddle on the right.  The bump in the middle is there because the neck doesn't join up flush with the body, but rather the top of the neck is a bit above the body.  I created the first diagram, then duplicated it twice and moved the nut down, then up to show the result.

What do I take away from all this?  If everything is exactly right, then if the saddle is adjusted so that the contact point with the string is at the height equal to the sum of the height of the nut (defined as distance at the nut from the neck to the string), plus the height of neck above the body, then the distance from the neck to the strings should be constant along the entire neck.

If the neck is angled back, as in the second picture, the distance will narrow as one goes down the neck. And if it is angled up, then the distance will widen.

It does seem better with the 0.35mm shim, but not good enough.  Next, I plan to do some careful measuring, then set the saddle height to where it should be and try to get an idea of the size of the required shim.  I'm very tempted to contact Rob DiStefano, a well-known local builder who I bet could really get this thing into shape. OTOH, I'd really like to do it myself.

Bleh

My new sustain block arrived, and it was indeed the right one!   I promptly ignored all my plans, as described here, and started hacking away.  The result is that the guitar is once again fully assembled, but without shielding or the new black pickup covers.  I say "fully assembled", but that's not really right.  The Tremel No is not fully installed, and much more importantly, I really think the neck is sitting too high in the pocket.  The saddles are almost as high as they can go,  and it just seems wrong to me.  I fear that the right thing to do is to "shave" the neck, and it seems (insert ref) that the mighty mite necks may have a problem that requires this.    I have a real horror of anything that involves woodworking - even drilling holes for the tuners terrified me.  Maybe I just have to get over it.

Later today I'll post a question on strat-talk, and I may disassemble it and do some measurements of the neck and neck pocket and compare them to the dimensions given on the Warmoth site (see the link under "Diagrams" here). 

JB JR

I also expect my JB JR to arrive today or Monday at the latest.  It's a bit of a risk to install the pickup so close to the time of the gig, but I think I can handle it.  I may skip the push/pull coil tap at first, though it really seems quite easy.

Sustain Block Arrives Tomorrow

Or at least that's what I think!  Hurrah.

On other fronts, I've decided to replace the bridge pickup on my American Standard strat with a JB JR, which is a humbucker in a single-coil form factor.  Since I have a push/pull pot on hand, I may wire it up to coil split when the pot is pulled up, as explained in these instructions from the Seymour Duncan site.

Playing vs. Playing With

Tonight I practiced, rather than noodled around with my project guitar.  I'm very proud of myself.  This is probably less out virtue than out the fact that I have a gig coming up.  

Sustain Block

My sustain block still hasn't shipped.  What a drag.  I'd like to use this guitar for a gig on the 22nd, and to do that I'd have to use it in at least one practice. In the mean time, there's really nothing stopping me from doing the shielding and swapping out the pickups.

What's Left To Do?

I think I'm actually almost done with this project!  What remains to be done is

• Install the black pickup covers; though I checked the measurements, I haven't actually installed them
• As long as the pickguard is out, put in the copper shielding
• Clip the ground wire that goes to the trem claw off the pot and attach to the shielding instead!
• Once the package arrives from GFS, reassemble the trem 
• Install the trem and get the Tremel No working 
• Probably intonate!

It's disgraceful, but I'm thinking about what to do next.  If I just buy a Paulownia body from GFS, I have all the other stuff I need to assemble another partscaster!

p.s. I actually did do some guitar playing these past few days!

Fixing the Claw Screw Holes

I took my inspiration from this wonderfully informative and witty thread on strat-talk.  Here's a recap

Here's a picture of the way the claw screws were.  You can see that there's not enough distance  between the screws,  but what you can't see is that the right screw is on a very steep angle. I decided to plug and redrill both so as to get the positioning just right.

Although I already  ordered a 12" long 1/8" aircraft drill bit, I learned on strat-talk that I could just buy an extender for my drill, which I managed to obtain at my friendly neighborhood Ace Hardware. The picture below shows it in my drill, ready to go.  Also, under the drill you can see the dowel I'll use to plug the holes.

This next exciting shot shows a hole drilled out, and a dowel ready to be glued in place. This is a swamp ash "vintage tone" dowel - the same kind as used by Pinetop Sideboard, author of "Endust My Broom".






Once the dowel was in place, I redrilled, based on an ingenious cardboard template of my own design.  I coated the screws with wax from Yehuda brand Shabbos candles and, as some people think they say in France, viola!

OK, not perfect, but quite a bit better, and certainly good enough. The only problem is that the guitar now spontaneously plays Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen.

I feel a lot better after the fiasco with the screw extractor.  I've been wanting to do this for a while!

A Box Arrives From GFS

Another box of goodies from GFS!  This one contains

and most importantly

or rather that's what it should have looked like.  Instead, and to my utter amazement, I ordered the wrong one! What I need is the "import" model with the hole for the trem in the center of the block; what I ordered is the "mexican" model, with the hole closer to the back of the block.  Rats!  So I immediately ordered the right one, and dropped off this one at UPS to be sent back to GFS.  I'm so disappointed as I really wanted to get this done.

One bright note is that the pickup covers fit.    And now I have to wait some more.

What To Do In The Meantime?

The screws for the claw were drilled really badly.  They're not properly separated, one is at a bad height, and too much of an angle.   Terrible isn't it?

A while back I bought a  1/8" dowel so that I could plug and redrill the holes, but I still haven't done it.  Now's a good time ...

An Even Worse Setback

I couldn't get that screw extractor to work :-(  I think the arm broke off too deep inside the block for it to take hold.  Bleh.  So I have to get a new sustain block for $20.   I was so sure this would work too. The silver lining is that I get to order more stuff from GFS, so I ordered a sustain block, new saddles and some adhesive-backed copper foil for when I get around to shielding this thing.   Another advantage is that my pal Curtis at GFS was able to find some black pickup covers that will fit these pickups and he threw them in to the order.


What's This About Pickup Covers?!

I should explain about the pickup covers,since I seem to have forgotten to record this fascinating interlude in my saga.  When I ordered the pickups, I also ordered some black covers that would supposedly fit them.  To quote the GFS web site:

The oversized magnets on the best GFS Strat sets can be very tough to shoehorn into a standard USA sized pickup cover- so we offer these custom made covers to fit our Premium, Authentic and JH EXP sets. We ship a set of 3.

But when I tried to install them, I found they weren't deep enough. Just look at this picture and notice the wire, clearly visible on the left!

I corresponded with Curtis, who told me that some of their recent shipment had not been sized correctly.  I sent him this diagram, based on painstaking measurements made with my digital caliper.  Note that the covers that were too small are a full 1mm lower (measurement "A").  Happily, and as you know from having read the opening paragraph carefully, Curtis found me some that are the right size, and he added them in, gratis, to my new shipment.

Setback

I got the Tremel No installed with no trouble except that ... my tremolo bar snapped off when I screwed it back in.  Crap.  This takes me back to the days when I would routinely snap off the bar while trying to imitate Ritchie Blackmore.  I'd have to take the guitar to Sam Ash and have them drill it out.   The tech would make me feel like an idiot, or at least that's how I remember it.  Maybe I was just embarrassed.

Regardless of what actually happened, I resolved to deal with this myself, and rushed out to buy a cool drill bit called a screw extractor.  It's a cool idea.  One end of the bit is for "burnishing" the exposed part of the screw head.  The other part is a reverse-threaded bit.  One drills in to the stuck screw using this bit, in reverse, resulting in the screw "un-drilling".    Once my drill finishes charging, I'll try it out.




I removed the bridge and detached the block, so I'm ready to go.  I should have bought a vise, but will live without it.

Tremel No

This is exciting.  According to the USPS site

Your item was processed through and left our BETHPAGE, NY 11714 facility on July 2, 2010. The item is currently in transit to the destination. Information, if available, is updated periodically throughout the day. Please check again later.

 Now I remember that it's FedEx that doesn't do weekends; this is the plain old US Portal Service.  Hurrah.

I'm off to go kayaking with strato51573r, then lunch with our stratom07h3r and it should be here when I get home!

Finally Installed the Pickups

I finished wiring, and ... it didn't work.  I decided it was my attempt at star grounding, so I undid it. Still didn't work.  Finally I studied the Acme diagram and blew up the section with the tone pot.  I realized that what I had intepreted as a soldered wire from the back of a pot to one of its tabs was actually a bent wire coming from a capacitor!  That connection had been bugging me anyway, as it seemed not to make sense.  And in fact it didn't - all the signal was going to ground I supposed.  Once I fixed that, I was all set.

It sounds pretty good.  I really like the blender pot, and I definitely like having just a single tone pot. Now I just need my Tremol No.  Unfortunately it was sent via USPS, and so I may not see it until Tuesday.

I've been thinking about that thread on strat-talk, in which one poster remarked that one has to think whether one wants to "play with guitars" or "play guitar".  I've spent all my time doing the former, and having a great time, but I don't want to lose sight of the latter.

Tremel No Ordered

OK, I ordered one on ebay for approximately $50.  I was convinced by the review I read, along with the sound clip that clearly illustrated the improved sustain.  It's very hard to restrain myself from buying these gadgets, despite a strong belief  that I'd be better off as a musician if I were to ignore "playing with guitars" and focus on "playing guitar".   I have to look it at as being a hobby activity distinct, but related to, being a musician.

Installing Pickups

OK, I started installing the pickups!  I decided to install them in a spare pickguard and then transfer them to the guitar's pickguard once done.  As mentioned yesterday, I bought some ring terminals for a pittance, but didn't emerge unscathed, because I decided to get a better multimeter, one that would do a continuity test and beep rather than just display something, the former being much more satisfying. Another $30 lost to this gear habit; OTOH I do like this one a lot more than the tiny portable one I bought a while back.

As mentioned, I'm doing the blender wiring thing.    Also, following the suggestion from a guy on thegearpage.net, I'm doing star grounding.  Even though the guy at Searcy Pickups said it's stupid, at the very least it seems much neater. I'm breaking it up into steps

1. Solder all ground wires to the ring, including the claw and jack wire, except for the volume pot ground
2. Solder all connections to volume pot
• volume pot → switch
• volume pot → tone
• volume pot → output wire for jack
• volume pot → ring for ground
3. Solder all pickups to switch, and solder the switch to the blender pot. Note that the bridge and neck wires will each share a wire with the wire going to the blender; twist them together first
4. Solder the cap on the tone pot - note diagram says 0.047 not 0.022!
5. Test

Today I did Step 1.  It was pretty easy, and using the new multimeter was great fun.

As for step 5, here's my approach to testing.  First, a reminder of how the blender pot works: when on "10", i.e. fully clockwise, it has no effect.

• When the switch is in position 1 or 2, turning the blender towards "1", i.e. counterclockwise, mixes in the bridge pickup
• When the switch is in position 4 or 5, turning the blender towards "1", i.e. counterclockwise, mixes in the neck pickup

With this in mind, I'll temporarily solder the wires to the new jack, then plug it into an amp.  Then for each switch position, I'll do this:

• Switch to appropriate position
• All pots to 10, tap each pickup which should be on with a screwdriver, and note response from amp
• Blender pot to 5, tap each pickup which should be on
• Blender pot to 0, tap each pickup which should be on, expect stronger response from mixed in pickup

 Also, it can't hurt to see if the tone pot is doing anything, though that may not be discernible.

What Comes After Testing is Completed?

1. Remove neck and reinstall with new neckplate
2. Remove pickguard and transfer new electronics to it
3. Install new pickguard, threading through claw ground wire, but not attaching permanently
4. String up and test
5. Once Tremel No arrives, install, solder claw ground
6. Intonate, adjust, etc...