The FrankenWashie is dead....

There were no Mobs, no pitchforks and torches, just a slow decline ending in a total evisceration.
Attachment 9242
He had already lost his head and neck, it remained only to finish the job.
Attachment 9243
The grim sight of the final dismemberment....Vale FrankenWashie, no one understood you with your mismatched Alnico 2 single coils as bridge and neck, much less your Alnico HB middle, or your triple mini switch pickup selectors but you were my creation and my friend for many a year of solitude. Now you are gone and already I miss you.
Attachment 9244Attachment 9245

But I vow the FrankenWashie will not end in a sorry pile of scraps. Much knowledge i have gained since he was built and yet more skills and tooling have I acquired.

HE SHALL LIVE AGAIN.......(insert maniacal laughter and stock footage of forbidding alpine castle)

to be continued

Tough love with that....live and learn.

To make you feel better , watch this YouTube video of classic Epic stuff up's made by a Pro guitar builder...... you will laugh !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyDs7Cm1628

Yeah, youthful exuberance and all that. I'd forgotten roughness and hurried nature of the original build, all that I worried about was getting noise out of it and trying to make it look cool. Still I have a plan to move forward with it and correct the shortcuts and shortcomings of my original work.

I am doing something similar with a strat i put together, but i am just ripping out the very expensive pickups to flog on ebay, then putting my own in.

So what do you reckon needs to be done to resurrect the FrankenWashie?, I like the look of the body, nice piece wood.

@DrNomis_44 the plan is to:
-take a deep rout 50mm wide either side of the center line and about 20mm deep.
-insert a contrasting block of a dark toned Aussie Native timber (the original body is recycled NZ Matai,PROMNOPITYS TAXIFOLIA) I kind of like the idea that the resurrected FrankenWashie will have a NZ Native heart and aspects of Australia.
-establish the center line and rout the neck pocket this was done pretty poorly first time out, I had to shim the neck to get it to sit on the center line. I'll be looking to get this spot on this time.
- Rout out and tidy the control cavities and rough through and insert fill blocks for the output jack and the three miniswitch holes. If I can't get a hold of the Matai here or get the remnants of the body cut over from NZ this may also need to be done in the same Aussie native timber as the center fill.
- redress the neck and fill a cut and screw holes from the rear mounted locking nut, resand, refret and finish it in a clear or tint coat
-I haven't yet decided if I will rescue pickups or get some newbies, but I am going to revise the configuration to sc at neck and middle and HB as bridge.
-I need to decide how to treat the input jack as I can't go in from the edge given how thin I originally profiled it. The whole body is only 35mm deep at its thickest point

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

@DrNomis_44 the plan is to:
-take a deep rout 50mm wide either side of the center line and about 20mm deep.
-insert a contrasting block of a dark toned Aussie Native timber (the original body is recycled NZ Matai,PROMNOPITYS TAXIFOLIA) I kind of like the idea that the resurrected FrankenWashie will have a NZ Native heart and aspects of Australia.
-establish the center line and rout the neck pocket this was done pretty poorly first time out, I had to shim the neck to get it to sit on the center line. I'll be looking to get this spot on this time.
- Rout out and tidy the control cavities and rough through and insert fill blocks for the output jack and the three miniswitch holes. If I can't get a hold of the Matai here or get the remnants of the body cut over from NZ this may also need to be done in the same Aussie native timber as the center fill.
- redress the neck and fill a cut and screw holes from the rear mounted locking nut, resand, refret and finish it in a clear or tint coat
-I haven't yet decided if I will rescue pickups or get some newbies, but I am going to revise the configuration to sc at neck and middle and HB as bridge.
-I need to decide how to treat the input jack as I can't go in from the edge given how thin I originally profiled it. The whole body is only 35mm deep at its thickest point

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Sounds cool, with regards to the output jack, maybe you could try using the type of jack socket as used in Ibanez's S series guitars, the threaded section on them is much longer than the standard 6.35mm jack sockets used in fender Strats.

Thanks Doc, I'll look those up.

like these, plenty on fleabay

http://www.meinlshop.de/images/produ...-3jk1h23_0.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stan

like these, plenty on fleabay

http://www.meinlshop.de/images/produ...-3jk1h23_0.jpg

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Yep, that's the one.

Switchcraft 1/4" deep panel jacks is what they are

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stan

like these, plenty on fleabay

http://www.meinlshop.de/images/produ...-3jk1h23_0.jpg

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Boy aren't there just a few? Thanks for the heads up fellas, that's one job done!

Use Switchcraft

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tonyw

Use Switchcraft

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Yeah I'll throw the Switchcraft in the final ressurection, but I'm going to play with the "Low Cost, Variable Quality" fleabay versions to get my soldering and wiring dialled in. I have not actually done any of that since the original FrankenWashie build.
There's a couple of aspects of this build that are going to be proof of concept for some ideas I want to incorporate into a planned scratch build so I don't want to use good gear if it's going to get stripped out and rehashed time and again.

Just a quick alternative thought... If you must use one of these barril jacks, the Switchcrafts are the only ones to use (once the practice soldering is done, of course). That said, I really try to avoid these, and finally did a mod on my G&L to get rid of its barril jack. The problem is that they are easily damaged by a number of cables out there. If the plug is slightly smaller than standard, you may get spotty contacts. Worse, some cables (e.g. monster cables) have an oversized plug that can damage a barril jack so that in no longer works properly with regular cables. This type of jack also just wears out easier. If nothing else will fit then use the best quality one you can find. But it sort of looks like a strat jack could work, and that would be more durable...

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Yeah I'd thought of using that standard Fender style, but I don't know if I want to go that way. Certainly what you say about Barrel jacks is borne out by my experiences with this one. It as a B*stard to fit, a B*astard to wire and definitely fulfilled the brief of being patchy in terms of performance (Though that may have also been a lot to do with 18YO me's soldering skills).

My money is that it was on the jack. I got rid of mine. Not as pretty, but I prefer reliable ;)

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The more I think on it, the more the fender style of thing makes sense, it is the FrankenWashie after all.....I wonder if I can get tuning machines with Hex bolt keys???

Never had a problem with mine on my ASAT special in 21 years

If it ain't broke don't fix it ;) I had problems with mine though, and it looks like a lot of others have as well, judging by all the threads on the bassesbyleo forum.

After the 2nd one went bad I did this mod:

http://www.bassesbyleo.com/forum/vie....php?f=9&t=242



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I put a football plate in my Baritone...

Admittedly those deep panel Jacks are a PIA to change over

Hmmm, so we had a slight problem when routing out to clean up the control cavity....

Attachment 9418Attachment 9419

It was always going to be a pain in the a*** due to the rough nature of the initial cavity creation (speed bore bits, chisels and at one point a pocket knife), but the breaking through was unexpected.

So, FrankenWashie is going to get a little more Franken, I will remove all of the cover over the control cavity and fill it, with what I don't quite know yet but it shall be in keeping with the FrankenWashie theme.

Okey Pokey, it has been all quiet on the FrankenWashie resurrection.
I was contemplating putting a new "Face down the centre of the body, but that was likely to get fraught, especially with the tapering contour of the body edge. SO i have elected to remove the whole centre (120mm across the centre line) and start anew.

The insert is going to be a core of Victorian Ash with some contrasting Merbau bands on the edges (about 15/90/15mm to make up the 120mm). I had the timber sitting around so i thought it was a good option and would also give me some more experience in laminating to build necks etc.

Without a band saw or table saw longer rip cuts have been challenging, so once i had the two Merbau edge bands roughed, i had to do something to make them even and square. I rigged up a routing guide, based on some of the sterling work arounds Simon had demonstrated in his scratch build.


Attachment 10349 Attachment 10350 Attachment 10351


The end result of this was a blank insert that has some striking contrast in wood tone, which will in itself contrast to the tone of the outer wings.

Attachment 10352

I am also contemplating a work around for the break through on the control cavity, which is in keeping with the FrankenWashie theme, thought the jury is still out on this (conductivity issues and what not). as the rest of the hardware was going to be Chrome, i might go with something in a tarnished stainless steel. Like I say Jury is still out.

Attachment 10353

There are some templates and things that need to be sorted before I get too much further as it will be far easier to rout pup holes and Trem mounts prior to winging it. Also I don't want to do any body cuts until,
A. I figure out how to do a straight manual rip cut or,
B. I have access to a band saw/Table Saw with a good fence.

Okay, so I got impatient and this happened,

Attachment 10426 Attachment 10427

Some fit tidy up to do, but in dismembering the carcass of FrankenWashie I found that the original scale length had been spot on, which was nice to find, some of the other build work(Routs, wiring, Pup configuration) let the whole thing down.

Looks good! How are u going to glue them together?

@SImon, I'm preparing some forms to fit the outsides of the wings, over which I will use large f clamps. I am also considering a dowel locator on each end to ensure that every thing lines up.
I'm still preparing routing templates for the trem and the Pickup rout, I won't be doing the gluing until after I have routed everything including the neck pocket as I feel it is easier to do while the block is still square.
If that doesn't work. I will swap the masking tape for duct tape.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

@SImon, I'm preparing some forms to fit the outsides of the wings, over which I will use large f clamps. I am also considering a dowel locator on each end to ensure that every thing lines up.
I'm still preparing routing templates for the trem and the Pickup rout, I won't be doing the gluing until after I have routed everything including the neck pocket as I feel it is easier to do while the block is still square.
If that doesn't work. I will swap the masking tape for duct tape.

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Yes I think the dowels will definitely help line it up. When I glued my top it was extremely hard to keep it centred because the glue made it slide around.

Progress is made in slow steps.

all i have managed to do from the above is to begin cutting an insert to graft into the place of the input jack slot. I am going to persist with the barrel jack, but work it a little more like a traditional Ibanez version.

The gaping maw of the rout through is going to be partially filled in with an epoxy and then a copper accent piece is going to go across the top of it.

A brief moment of woodworking Zen; I started cutting down the remnant original body to make the above mentioned insert. I am still getting to grips with my Japanese pull saws, and this has been a source of frustration.

I began squaring and soothing off the jagged edge, but the first cut, it went a little wonky,
Attachment 11144 Attachment 11145
Note the intended line of cut.

The second cut went even worse,

Attachment 11146

But the third, a deep breath, a slow start to the cut...and then set breath in time with the saw...

Attachment 11147

Success!

Okay so the reclaiming of the original frankenwashie "wings" is underway. Upper bout, absolutely no problems.

Attachment 11328

Lower bout with control holes, bit more of a problem. I have taken a chunk out which removes the jack point, i have grafted in a chunk of the old centre section as seen below.

Attachment 11327

The joints for that i wanted to leave deliberately rough in order to push the whole "Frankenstein" build ethic, they'll get some treatment before the end.

I've a plan for filling in the breakthrough but more on the later. I've begun preparing a routing template for the mid /new section of body which i intend to rout before i attach the reworked wings. There is some subtle change to the shaping of the lower horn and both cutaways which should make playing higher easier than on the original.

Attachment 11329

At present I have only located the Bridge HB because I am still tossing up a Neck HB or an SC. I am stripping controls down to 1 tone and 1 volume, with a 3 way selector. For the moment it will be the old Alnico 2's that it originally had, but that may be subject to change.

This is an intriguing build. It's got me in...

For the PUP experts out there, a question. Is there a minimum distance between pickups?
I am contemplating going HB/SC OR HB/2xSC but I am really cramped on space, probably only 140mm between bridge and FB end.

They will be naked, with out PUP rings or GOPP, I am just curious if there are issues with magnetic fields interfering with signal etc?

There's no hard and fast rule of where to place but usually they sound best under the harmonic intervals. To find that out just keep diving the scale length by half and half etc.

http://buildyourguitar.com/resources...nato/index.php check out this article.

This is going to be an epic guitar!! Very interested to see the outcome hey!!

@Simon, thanks for that mate.
@RR, thanks mate it's either going to be epic, or an epic cautionary tale!

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Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

@Simon, thanks for that mate.
@RR, thanks mate it's either going to be epic, or an epic cautionary tale!

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Well Dr. Frankenstein didn't give up hey! :D

Great to see this degree of modification, nice job so far, it will look great

I'm loving this build FW. I have no idea where it will end up, but I am sure you will succeed. Sometimes you are forced to think "outside the box" and that's when the magic can happen.

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Originally Posted by robin

I'm loving this build FW. I have no idea where it will end up, but I am sure you will succeed. Sometimes you are forced to think "outside the box" and that's when the magic can happen.

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Thanks for that Robin, this started out as just trying to fix the shortcomings of my original build. It's actually turning into a really good teaching and learning exercise for a number of different aspects of building. Even if it comes to naught, I've learned a lot from it.

cool build Franken, must have taken balls to chop up the old (guitar) body !

sure you have the skills and patience to make this build come up a treat bro !