Musicmaster DMS1

Finally gtting around to making my build diary for this. A fair bit of the work has been done.

Using the mustang kit to put together a Musicmaster for my partner as a Christmas present. She has wanted to start learing for ages, but all of my guitars have a slightly thick neck for her little hands, she really likes the LPjnr that I made, so I thought a little the short scale will suit her well. And its just a cool guitar to have around.

We conceptualized it and designed it together.

Finished in the Bauwerk Limestone Paint Hay with a musicmaster cream coloured pick guard, we'd been hoping for for anodised gold .... but it is pretty hard to track down and expensive. Hoping the pickguard gets here by christmas as is. Upgraded the tuners to the beautiful chrome gotohs. Picked up a Silver lace sensor, and just one volume, tone and output. Keep everything simple and efficient.

Mostly happy with the quality of the kit, almost considered sending the neck back as there is a little construction damage at the nut that has been poorly repaired, but decided it would just be a little feature really, its not like there is anything structurally wrong. The body is a lovely slab of ash.

Finshing is mostly done. Took a tonne of sanding and ebony timbermate as grain fill. The Bauwerk limewash paint was really great to use and worked really well for a mostly transparent finish. The oil is going on real well over the top. Three thicker base coats on to begin with, up to number 5 diluted 50/50 with gum turps. Looking smooth and glossy already.

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Cut the headstock today, all went well.

This was the scariest bit in building my LPjnr, but for some reason I dived in on this screw it up start again task with less than perfect thoroughness. Just printed out the headstock we selected, the 62, from Electric Herald, cut it out carefully, glued on the front and back, and took to it with my cheap coping saw and rasps.

A bit more sanding to do, but I’m really happy with the result.


And just like that the end is in sight. Scary bits that I’m never sure of, like cutting and finishes being compatible, over.

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One idea I’m toying with is adding some kind of filter in the tone circuit to roll in some high end, as with the single neck pickup, rolling off high end is probably a little less useful than adding some in. Anyone done something like this/know how And if it can be done?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jomasgaard

One idea I’m toying with is adding some kind of filter in the tone circuit to roll in some high end, as with the single neck pickup, rolling off high end is probably a little less useful than adding some in. Anyone done something like this/know how And if it can be done?

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Thats interesting as i have been considering this on mine......

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With my apologies for the screen shots and also to the dudes at Czar Guitar


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Very hard to passively add treble. The best thing is to take steps not to remove it in the first place. So, you could use a 500k pot instead of the standard 250k which will get it sounding brighter. You could have a 500k(ish) resistor in parallel with a switch, which you could bring in to get back to the 250k sound. Installing a tone pot will also take off more treble. You could use a ‘no-load’ tone pot, which has a section of track removed so that set at 10, the pot is out of circuit, and below 9, it acts as normal. But that dies give a step in the tone. To avoid that, you could fit a Fender TBX tone circuit. This has a mid-position ‘normal’ tone setting with 250k resistance, but above that, a second stacked pot is brought in and you can wind the resistance up to 2 Meg, getting a sound like the no-load pot, but more controllable with no jump in tone.

Alternatives are
1) A resonant low-pass filter, but these tend to work more as a mid-boost than treble boost, and you do loose some upper treble in the process. You don’t get something extra for nothing with passive circuits, the energy has to come from elsewhere.

2) A high pass filter so you cut out some low frequencies. Neck pickups sound bassier because the amplitude of the fundamental and the low harmonics are far greater there than at the bridge position. The high harmonics are about the same level as at the bridge. So the tone difference is all about ratio of low to high harmonics. But whilst you can get a more bridge-like tone, you will reduce the volume as a result. So you could

3) Use an EQ pedal to cut the bass frequencies, possibly increase the treble, and boost the overall output.

4) Fit an active EQ circuit in the guitar.

But switching the pot value and no load/TBX tone pot changes can do a fair bit on their own and are relatively cheap to do.

The two tone cap switching will only give variations on the tone when the tone is rolled-off significantly, so you need to be someone who uses the tone pot a lot in their playing to benefit. You really can't hear any difference in cap value when the tone pot is set at 10, though as I said above, just having the tone pot in at all will roll off some treble. There might be 1/8 of a dB difference at high frequencies with different cap values and the pot at 10, but that's far too small a difference for the ear to detect.

My experiments with a tone pot value and a P90 only had any noticeable treble roll off below about 100k resistance, so I've started using 250k tone pots everywhere so that the adjustment range is more spread out over the pot travel. You could use a 100k pot for even better control (as Gibson have done and I now understand why), but that may be pushing it a bit too close to the edge, especially if you don't normally use the tone pot at all.

My only experience with this is on basses...specifically with a G&L. Mine has a treble boost but it only works in active mode. I don't know any way of boosting treble without a battery. The bass also has a "bass" pot the cuts bass frequencies. That might work if you compensate by adding some volume on the amp. Not as pronounced as a the active treble boost tho...

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Thanks for the input all.

Mmmm might put that on the backburner. I want this to be pretty much as simple as it gets for my partner to learn on without any distractions.

Steel wooled the oil down to a semi-gloss this morning. Looking good. Really hoping this pickguard doesn’t take more than a month to come from the US. They’re saying january....but it’s already out of America so here’s hoping.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jomasgaard

One idea I’m toying with is adding some kind of filter in the tone circuit to roll in some high end, as with the single neck pickup, rolling off high end is probably a little less useful than adding some in. Anyone done something like this/know how And if it can be done?

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My sense of Mustangs is that they are pretty jangly, so mostly you'd want to have a bit of treble roll off available.

In a simple, passive circuit it's hard to roll in treble, but there are a couple of simple things you can do to add treble. Perhaps the simplest is to use a higher value volume pot. I am guessing that the kit came with 250k pots. You could try 500k, 1meg or no-load pots. That would give you more treble to start with before you roll off anything.

If that's not enough you can do a passive bass cut either with a switch or pot. Cutting bass and adding volume is very much like boosting treble. A little odd, but not difficult to do.


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