Good luck, you know we will all be watching [emoji3]
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Good luck, you know we will all be watching [emoji3]
Gotta hate pressure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bakersdozen
Well I have sanded and shaped with fretsaw, rasp, file and 60 and now 80 grit.
I am about to go over the whole neck with 120 grit.....then mask up the fingerboard and do some timbermate to fill her pores.
The design is very traditional FIREBIRD but with little changes....length...width....shape near the nut.
Sanded to 180grit.....then she has has been slopped with mahogany timbermate and then hung to dry for about 90 mins. Sanded to 240grit now. Hang up tonight and see how she looks in the morrow.
I cannot believe how much jumps out of wood when you drop a little TRU OIL onto it.
Mahogany neck and headstock.
Little bit of figure on the middle of the neck...but the normal Mahogany spots really show through.
I think that may be enough for now on the face of the headstock until I receive my ordered marquetry veneer pack....but I can keep oiling the neck. :)
Wow, you're not wrong about the Tru Oil bringing it to life. It's good stuff!
WoooHooo got an email...my pack of veneers is on the way.
I have been watching some You Tube tutorials on marquetry. It looks very involved and deals with minute sections of veneer cut to shape and size.....nice. Bring it on.
But...my question. How detailed does a beginner try to be with his first pickguard and truss rod covers????
Maybe a little reserved may be the answer for me.
I am thinking of trying to find distinct grain in the veneers and making a fan shape like the tail of a Lyrebird or the pickguard.....a mix of colours would be nice too.
The headstock face and truss rod cover will just need to be a contrast to the mahogany and each other.....perhaps a darker headstock veneer and a lighter truss rod cover.....sort of reverse to traditional.
I am rather challenged at drawing so may have to try some other way of getting the possible designs down.
I like the nature of darker image attached....the fan nature of the tail....flame in the wood could be cut and arrange to produce the shape of each tail feather.....and cut and segmented and laid in a fan to produce the effect. I know Tru Oil will really lift the grain and figure.....so maybe food for thought here.
The top right image was the most immediately recognisable picture when my eyes past over them.
Yep that is the one I am leaning towards.Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkMark
Just how to make the fan feathers....may have to take some artistic licence.
I'd say that it's down to selecting a veneer that's heavily striped and let the wood do all the hard work for feather representation.
Ha ha Lyrebird... very cool OZ very cool
Tad cheeky hey. 😀Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy40
Weirdy....Scotty....oh he who haunts the threads.
You know me....can’t be straight and boring with tonal options.
I don’t know what sort of sound the Mini Humbuckers bring.....actually I am sitting in my Uber car and can’t even tell you if they have four wires to each pickup.
Buuuutttt......if they do.....
Can I wire these pickups.....humbucker....click.....front coil....back coil....parallel coils....series coils....parallel neck to bridge pickups.....series neck to bridge pickups.
The body has large box type toggle switch on the lower front bout.....2 volume 2 tone and jack on the rear lower bout.
So that gives me four push pulls....nice huh.
Can I trouble you for some thoughts in a diagram.....I promise to look at the pickups when I get home....hoping they have four wires.
Thanks thanks thanks thanks. Love this stuff. 😀
I was wondering how long it would take you to ask. The PBG bass mini hums used to only be two wire, so check them and let me know and we’ll work something out.
Home after a day in the Uber car. TOPVENEER have been awesome with their postage and my veneers have arrived. I got heaps of them and the veneer tape. The light coloured veneer in one of the pics is the one to make tail feathers with I think. Looks great.
https://www.topveneer.com.au/product...ry-mix-0-75kg/
https://www.topveneer.com.au/product...e-20mm-x-200m/
Sad face moment.....dragged the pickups out and they are one cable with two cores.....bugger. So not really much electronic fun here for you Weirdy. Sorry. Unless you have some evil thoughts with a twist. :)
Can I ask? Which is the neck pickup.....yellow or red wired one? Does anybody know?
Neck pup "should" have a longer wire...
And higher impedance.
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The wiring diagram indicates red=bridge, yellow=neck. But it's worth checking the DC resistances with a multimeter just to make sure. As Waz says, the bridge should be higher resistance, indicating more turns of wire to compensate for a lower string vibration amplitude at the bridge, compared to the neck position.
Great advice. Thanks guys...I shall drag the multi meter out this afternoon and see what we have.
The wiring diagrams do have the yellow to neck and red to bridge....just checking in.
Any idea what sort of resistance is the norm for Mini Humbuckers?
This fellow in Melbourne hand winds and makes his own traditional style firebird pickups.
https://mrfabulous.com.au/FIREBIRD%20GUITAR%20PICKUP
I just measured the resistance on the pickups.
The red wired one shows 8.28k ohms.
The yellow wired one shows 8.65k ohms.
Their does not appear to be much of a difference, but the neck pickup (yellow wire) does have a higher resistance.
Interesting numbers though. I did some wandering around Seymour Duncan website....and the resistance numbers on some of theirs run to 16.7k...wow.
But all of the have lower output neck pickup resistance....down to 6k.
I have been watching some You Tube videos on marquetry and had a giggle to myself.
A couple of the videos referred to using CARBON PAPER to allow the design to be copied/transferred to the veneer as you trace the design.
Nearly wet myself laughing. I have not used carbon paper in years....yet alone seen any. Wow.
I remember typing on white typing paper with four sheets of typing paper and three sheets of carbon paper on a manual typewriter.
Where do I get carbon paper now? Ha ha ha.
Specialist artist's supply stores?
There are other options to transfer an image. I’ve seen acetone painted onto the back of a piece of paper ink side down onto wood to transfer an image.
The two wire pickups do limit your options, particularly with the chrome covers. Any phase or neck & bridge series shenanigans will mean the neck chrome cover would become part of the signal path... and it’s almost impossible to pull these pups apart without destroying them, so you can’t mod them to 4 wire or separate the shield.
If you decide to stick with the stock pups you could always try some funky tone options, like having 2 volumes with a master treble tone and a ‘bass cut’ tone. or something along those lines.
The very high DCR pickup readings (e.g 16.7k) are normally because they've used thinner gauge wire in order to add more turns (for a hotter output) in the space available on the bobbin. As thinner wire is more resistive, that puts the DCR up, and then extra turns are added, which puts it up even more. So they are certainly hotter than the standard, but not quite as comparatively hot as the figures may suggest.
If you are sticking with the kit mini-humbuckers, then I'd use the yellow one on the bridge and red on the neck - providing there was enough cable length to do so.
Remember that it's easy enough to swap out the pickups and pots after the kit is built, so you may want to assemble it first to make sure it plays well enough to be worth spending more money on.
Wetsanded to 600 grit with Tru oil.
Love the grain and textures that Mahogany has.
Mmmm, that does look purdy.
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Waz...when they come back into stock you gotta do one. After a good dose of timbermate mahogany is so easy to work with.Quote:
Originally Posted by wazkelly
The neck is really well done...and my kit was even bound on the fretboard.
Best quality kit I have seen so far.
Really liking it....the marquetry idea for the pickguard, headstock, and truss rod cover intrigues me.
I have had a long haul with this build. Today I did a fret dress and full setup and fitted the Ernie Ball strings from the kit. I am still working on the veneer pickguard and headstock and truss rod cover.
List of work completed:-
Lots of Sanding.....mahogany timbermate pore-filling.....lots and lots of Tru Oil....wet sanding and then Meguiars Polish and Bowdens Own Wax on both the neck and the body.
Factory pickups...factory pots....for now....two by treble circuits on both volume pots...2 x orange drop caps of 0.223uf for the firebird mini-humbuckers. (Not the norm of .447uf as the firebird allegedly has a little more bark to it.) I actually like the tonal differences with other humbucker driven guitars I have.
I have fitted a switchcraft jack socket. However neither the standard or the switchcraft jack have long enough thread to come through to the top side of the guitar body. So, being a little different myself, I bored out the hole to fit and dropped in a chrome recessed tele-style jack socket mount. It looks a little different with the recessed jack socket....but a little more chrome never hurt anything.
The Tune-O-Matic bridge has its own issues of course. I am really not a fan. But the low E string is down to 4/64 and the high E string is set nicely at 3/64 at the 17th fret.
I bought the Grover mini tuners with the kit...and love how easy fitting a string to these locking tuners really is.
Future upgrades:-
1. TUSQ nut.
2. Gotoh/CTS pots.
3. Pickups that are coil-splittable.
Other than that I just want to get the pickguard made out of Veneer and the dark wood headstock veneer and truss rod cover completed.
I like the finish and the feel of this guitar.....
(Please note the tuners are set at 90 degrees to the edge of the headstock.....as this headstock shape varies in angle through its length so do the alignment of the tuners.....I tried other ways but they bumped into each other.)
Looks pretty damn good Ozzie.
Really surprised how light the natural 'hog came out.
Cheers, Waz