Sonics Washburn Rebirth

[Sonic Mountain]

Ok got it working properly! I've left the coil tap out for now. I think the problem was my earthing arrangement, I must have been creating a short somehow, but I don't really know where it was. I kept tracing through the diagram and everything looked right.

I pulled everything apart and soldered eyelets to the end of all the earths and used a screw and some copper tape to make a really good common earth point. I rearranged the switch back to Weirdbits diagram and it all seems right now. The only real change is that I have the earth from the tone pot going to the common point before going to the jack.

Its always the way the first soldiers are the neatest - so these are a bit blobby after being done and redone a few times, but this is all good now. I'll button it all up and spend a bit of time doing setup and then I can always come back and do the coil tap and tidy it up a bit later.

[DrNomis_44]

Good to hear that you got it working properly, these things can be a bit frustrating to wire-up but if you take regular breaks from it you'll get there in the end, had my fair-share of wiring frustrations in the past too.

[Sonic Mountain]

Yeah, it's like juggling, adding more complications is like adding more balls.

I've just done a really quick once over setup.

First impressions:

The Babicz bridge is unreal for adjustments, so smooth. The intonation - esp on the e-sting is better than I was ever able to achieve with the original bridge.

The Bensons are very clangy around the G string, but at the same time quite warm and mellow.

The Entwistle is a LOT higher output. It sounds unreal, but I think I might need to put a second volume control in for it to balance things a bit. I've messed around with the pickup heights a bit, but I think its beyond that adjustment.

I'll keep it like it is for a while and continue fine tuning. Its got 10's on it and I'd normally run 9's so it feels a bit different, but its so nice to be playing again. Not convinced my fret levelling job is any good, I think I need to re-crown a few. But Yay! it lives!

[JohnH]

Glad you got it sorted Sonic

[WeirdBits]

Glad it's working.

If you've got some alligator clip leads you can easily play around with the coil splitting. Just connect a clip lead to the tip of the red/white pair then clip the other end to your ground point. Test that with the bridge/middle combo in position 2 and see if it's hum cancelling (may not be).

Then try it again but instead of clipping the lead to ground clip it onto the humbucker connection (black) at the switch. That will swap it to the other coil. Test out the combo again and see what works, what it hum-cancels with, and/or what you like.

If the combo's with the humbucker/split sound thin and nasally then there's probably some out of phase happening.

[Sonic Mountain]

Switching the Red/White wires to earth is how it should work. There were a couple of issues, my earthing arrangement off the switch housing wasn't any good. The input jack is stereo and that confused me. I'll introduce a split, but for now I'm going to keep going with the playability before I do any more electrics.

Big thanks to yourself and the good Doctor for your help.

[Sonic Mountain]

I finally got around to knocking up a neck straight edge yesterday from some aluminium flat bar. Works really well. Was also nice to see the my efforts using a normal straight edge were pretty close, but this is much better.







I then went right over the Washburn, re-dressed a couple of frets I hadn't quite crowned enough and set the action and intonation. Its absolutely gorgeous to play now., like really nice. The bensons are so creamy sounding and warm. Really happy with all the upgrades, the bridge is so nice to adjust! Well worth the outlay. Even with the 10's on it now its so easy to play.

If I get keen I'm going to give the SG a fret level and see if I can't get the action a little lower, it's fine really, but I do like it really low, So I'll have a look. I did a quick check with the neck straight edge and thats really good, so I don't think int will take much to improve.

[DrNomis_44]

I definitely need to get myself one of those Neck Straight-edges one of these days.