That's a bummer Marcel i feel for mate nothing worse when its coming along really nice and some ugliness shows its head been down that road as wellQuote:
Originally Posted by Marcel
Printable View
That's a bummer Marcel i feel for mate nothing worse when its coming along really nice and some ugliness shows its head been down that road as wellQuote:
Originally Posted by Marcel
I could see a cream coloured LP guard looking quite nice on that guitar, mate! Good thinking!Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcel
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Just Read your comment about the trapeze tailpiece marcel, I think that would make it look pretty nice
(I am also doing the same kit, I am thinking of doing that)
I did have those thoughts of using a trapeze but have gone with an adjustable Gold wraparound bridge from guitar fetish. Hoping it will be here this week
http://www.guitarfetish.com/Gold-Bad...dge_p_376.html
And over the past few days I've managed to get the blemish fixed. Some careful sanding and some additional coats of clear has rendered the blemish near invisible. I doubt there will be a need for a pick guard now.
That’s Great! and yeah I might just stick with an adjustable bridge
Had some time to do a little thinking over this build after a comment was made to me about the F holes.
The comment was the F holes are too big, and as the builder I'd beg to disagree... main reason... all the electronics (as in the pots and switch) has to get fitted via those oversized F holes... there is nil back plate to cover a hole for electronics access.
Which leaves me with what to do if I want phase reversal or coil splitting... Yeah, it is easy enough to wire it up any way I want, but there is that huge F hole gap between the switch and the pots, and nobody like seeing wires all higgaldy-pickaldy across F hole gaps, that's just Yuk! ... so what to do ???
Thinking.... planning... thinking.... planing....thinking....
Did some of the hardware fit out this afternoon. ... It seems perfection is not my strong point. It all seems only just okay to me...
The new bridge itself is fine, just wish the posts would go deeper in. I cleaned out the holes with a drill but they still sit proud about 2 or 3 mm which is enough to make the action very ho-hummm... I think I need a bigger hammer, but that brings on a whole new set of issues. And getting them out might be a nightmare in itself considering how hard I had to hit them to get them this far.
Will be going the HB/SC switching option on this one. Pull switches on both the vol and tone controls --- vol = neck, tone = bridge.
That's going to look schmick, with the gold, black and red, Marcel! I like it!Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcel
I wouldn't be bashing in the bridge posts until it's ready for wiring, if you pull it out and knock it back in it will be a looser fit each time, and you want the bridge earth wire to be nice and firm (unlike my last attempt!)
I doubt I could pull the bridge posts out even if I wanted to.... They are in pretty damn tight, and they need to go in a few more mm yet. I used a offcut of ply as a cushion when whacking them in this far and now that ply is all dented which is why I stopped. I wish I had my Dad's old fly-press that could give a few tonnes of pressure nice and steady and gently and the job would be so much simpler. I just have to make do with a piece of Pine or Maple and a bigger hammer. The alternative is build a lever-press out of Uni-strutt which is a lot of effort for one task, but may do the job better. Oh-well, this is yet another thing to ponder over...Quote:
Originally Posted by Swanny
I used a short socket extension as a drift, one sharp hit at a time. It’s nerve wracking!Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcel
Yes Swanny I have done the same thing to drift them in. Of course on my first kit, the LP, I forgot to put the earth wire in the bridge hole which introduced a whole lot of fun in getting one of them out using a bolt, large custom washer with a big hole to go over the bridge, and a lot of spacers and nervous sweat!
I think it's looking great in these photos, well done!
A few days ago in a moment of idleness I put some kit strings on, tensioned them up, played a few notes, was reasonably happy, and the put the build down.
Today, as I walked past while on another task the build caught my eye... Those strings look odd... and I got my string height ruler out and did some checks...
12th fret = 4.7mm
3rd fret = 1.6mm
Way too high.... The neck is reasonably straight, a little can come off the nut, but those bridge posts sleeves must go further into the body at least 2mm or 3mm more..... There is no other way to lower the action as the bridge posts themselves are screwed all the way in.. I hope I don't crack the body whacking them sleeves in further ...
Dedicated a few hours getting the bridge posts "better". Pulled them out using my special lever pulling tool. Checked the depth of the holes to make sure they could go in deep enough. and then re-inserted them using a much bigger hammer and then re-strung the guitar....The inserts are now flush with the surface of the body which now allows the bridge to sit hard up against the body at the lowest setting.
It gave an improvement, but not what could be hoped for. At the 12th fret the action is still pretty high with 3mm on the high E and 3.5mm on the low E. Additional work on the nut will improve that slightly but not by much.
Now I need to find the wiring colour code for the Epiphone PU's so that I can solder this beastie together. The decision to keep the Epiphone PU's in this build will be dependant on how well it plays/intonates with the higher than ideal action. If it's no good then the PU's, tuners and bridge come out and the build will redone with cheaper kit hardware and it will become a 'Cat Walk Model'.... All looks cos nobody wants to listen to it ....
Damn, I've only just started sanding mine. I can't wait i can't wait i can't wait!
Something I plan on doing soon (hopefully tomorrow) is double check the actual heights of the original kit bridge to the one I got from Guitar Fetish. I suspect the GF bridge that I'm currently using is slightly taller that the kit bridge and thus is the underlying cause of my string height issue.
The GF bridge is much nicer and has individual string intonation settings, but it does have substantial meat underneath to hold the string ends and so the reason for overall additional string height.
The other alternative is change to a normal LP style bridge with a trapeze or a stop bar. There is plenty of room to do either...
Yeah i'll be replacing the kit bridge. I was going to do some research. let me know how this one works out
Hey maecel could you grind the bottom of the btidge of a mm or 2
Shaving the bottom of the bridge will no make a difference here Adam... the problem is the height of the string saddles above the bridge post height.
On the kit bridge the strings sit about 5mm above the upper edge of the "slot" in the bridge post (the 'step' in the post where the bridge normally sits) which in my build gives a possibility of a lowest string height of about minus 2.5mm. The GF bridge the strings sit 10mm above the upper edge of the posts and hence the problem.
If using the GF bridge was a 'must have' and to get a reasonable string height without drastically modifying the bridge string saddles then the post thread sleeves need to sink into the body by another 2mm, which would put the bridge full length hard up against the body... I think life will be easier (and look a whole lot neater) if I just go back to the kit bridge and live with it...
Ah, what a bugger. I guess it's one of the hazards of building a kit, but it's still pretty annoying
While the wife is away the husband can bring his projects inside so he can work on them in air conditioned comfort... and maintain said comfort with a generator while mother nature reeks havoc on the mains power supply.... What a wonderful start to the year...
Anyways....
I replaced the bridge... put back the kit bridge... strung it up with a 9-46 set of NY-XL's as the set of Ernie Ball''s I grabbed from the shed were 11-46's and not the 10's I wanted, and it was raining so I thought 'bugger that...'... Wired up the PU's to pull switch pots so that I could have individual SC/HB switching on each PU.... tucked everything (all the wires) neatly into place. Tuned and intonated (which went surprisingly well) and then tried it out on my VOX VT40X...
At first I thought it was the amp, but then I tried the Tele and the LP and determined that indeed this PRS-1H build sounded Very bright... extremely bright .... Swapping back and forth between the guitars... and then at one stage when the vol pot on the PRS-1H didn't fully mute the guitar it suddenly dawned on me my error.. I had not put the earth wire on the vol pot... everything else worked fine. just that the vol control doesn't mute the guitar and the guitar sounds abnormally bright .... but it works, and doesn't sound half bad, actually it is kinda bad-ass in an acoustic way...
When I get the inclination I'll pull the vol control out and fix it, but until then... and yeah the string ends need trimming...
While the soldering iron was hot for the Klon clone pedal I was building I figured it was a good time to add the earth wire to the volume pot. About 20 minutes of fiddling to get the pot out so I could solder the wire, and then 5 minutes to get it back in again...
While I was at it I got the multimeter out and measured the resistance of the two Epiphone ProBuckers and found the other reason that this build is so bright. In HB mode the neck is 8k1 and the bridge is 8k7. both very low resistance for HB's. In SC mode they are both a little over 4k each. Signal level is quite decent despite the low coils resistances, with nil problem getting respectable overdrive sounds through pedals or amps.
On a semi-acoustic (hollow body) build like this PRS-1H to me and my ears it is not that bad a thing as the acoustic properties of the guitar really shine, but it does take some getting used too. Not that there is any less bass just that the high end is very present...Because of this and as I have another chrome set of Epiphone ProBucker/57 bucker combo which has me thinking it is highly likely that the chrome set will find their way into my ES-1TL build as the Alnico II Toneriders in it seem a tad too dark for that build and the Epiphone PU's should brighten it up a lot.... time will tell ....
All that's left to do is some nut work and a touch of work on the frets... Been 4 weeks and still waiting for my order from StewMac with my new fret and nut files to come in so just a bit annoyed with the mail systems 'Xmass rush' or more appropriately 'International Non-rush' ...
That looks great!! The colour and contrast with hardware fittings looks amazing very eye catching!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcel
Something that's not visible in the the correct time line point in this build diary is how I ensured that the neck is/was in the correct place when I set it...
When dry I found the correct location for the nut and 12th fret relative to the bridge. I then created a block spacer (in my case a tiny piece of plywood) to fit in the gap between the neck tongue and the back of the first PU cavity. Essentially I extended the neck tongue to the back of the PU hole.
After glueing the spacer block in place in the PU hole I could then be sure the neck would be in the correct place when I set it eliminating the need to do bridge to 12th fret measurements during the actual neck setting process. The neck set process became just working with the neck, body, some glue, a set of clamps and two strings.
A picture tells a thousand words. I didn't include this picture earlier due the huge amount of glare on the top that hides the flame that is actually there.
Nice tip. I imagine that will help a lot of people out.
For want of a better place to put this, and to not start a thread that may only have a few comments .... a note on bridges.
On other PRS-1H build threads many have opted to replace the kit bridge with one that is fully adjustable, of which there are two main choices being the Musiclily and the "Bad Ass" bridge with the Wilkinson bridge offering basic overall adjustment with extra trims for the G and B strings...
I got a Bad Ass bridge in Gold for this build and it didn't fit. Too tall, resulting in higher than ideal action at the 12 fret. As a result I stayed with the kit bridge and its limited intonation options.
Some of you may know I have a PRS SE245, which comes with a bridge that also comes with limited adjustment for intonation. While the intonation wasn't that bad it still niggled at me so on the strength of posts in other PRS-1H build threads I obtained a Musiclily bridge in Chrome to be fitted to my Chrome loaded PRS SE245... A set of D'Addario EXL120 (9-42) and about an hour slowly working through the intonation setup and the PRS SE245 is now beautifully intonated...and sounds as awesome as a PRS can.... though there is an issue.
The musiclily fully adjustable wrap around bridge while providing all the adjustment needed for perfect intonation it is not a high quality piece of kit. Actually it is a pretty ordinary item of mass manufacturing from dubious quality metals. In my case during adjustment of the A string saddle it became apparent that the set screw is bent or curved causing the adjustment to become very tight at a certain point in its adjustment range. With the A string saddle effectively stuck and the head of the associated screw now burred I resorted to setting the entire bridge position according to the A string intonation requirements first and then setting the saddles for the other 5 strings based around that. Not the ideal, but luckily for me it worked...
As they were only AU$16 each I did buy 2 of the Musiclily bridges but by the time the disaster happened I had already strung the instrument and replacing the errant bridge would mean trashing the brand new unplayed set of strings. So for now the errant Musiclily bridge stays on the PRS SE245, and Chrome hardware options remain a remote possibility for my PRS-1H build...
And for reference PRS do have/sell a fully adjustable wrap around bridge to suit the SE245 and very similar to the Musiclily bridge though at upwards of AU$230 each plus shipping I doubt I will be placing an order any time soon...
Hey Marcel, Thanks for posting this. I haven't got this far in my build yet (God I take so long!) but I think I got the Wilkinson bridge as I think the height measurements are right on. I'll let you know (when I get that far).
Ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HE takes so long he says! :rolleyes: ROFLMAO!Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy40
but not as long as FW.......