unfunk's EX-5 build diary: Beauty Omega

Quarks are my theme, and baryons are my... er... neem. I have thought about this waaaay too much.
There are six different quarks; Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Top (Truth), and Bottom (Beauty). This gives me alllll kinds of naming options, since every combination of three (aka a Baryon) has its own unique and (imho) interesting name and/or symbol. This will also give me standard nomenclature should I actually branch out and start building lots of axes.

This one is the Beauty Omega (ssb).

So anyway, it's arrived! I purchased a Pitbull EX-5, and also some copper sheets from a jewellery supply store to use as a body inlay material... and that arrived today as well!

Pictures!

Attachment 23702 Attachment 23703

Mock build:

Attachment 23704

...and with one of the copper inlay sheets (holy hell, they're heavy!):

Attachment 23705

So, initial impressions.

Wood:
It's actually a really nice piece of body wood. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but not this. It has a nice grain with a faint ripple that will come up nicely when stained & oiled, then finished with shellac.
The neck also feels quite nice. The fingerboard feels lovely, and the frets are almost level - there's only 3-5 high spots that I've found so far with my makeshift rocker.

The neck joint, though... it's very loose. Nothing that can't be solved with some veneer shim, but kinda disappointing. I understand why it is, though. Definitely not worth returning it over.

Hardware:
I think "uninspiring" is the polite term, but I knew it would be. Of course, I've not wired anything up just yet, so I've no idea how the pickups sound. For all I know, they could be sleepers!

Since this is just a practice build for a properly customised kit, I'm not too fussed about the quality of all that crap anyway.

Todo:

• Round off the upper rear so it has more of a dome top than the flat edge. See how that looks.
• Cut a belly curve. There's no more denying that I have a belly! :D
• BURN IT!!! (well, scorch parts of it)
• The rest

Nice stuff.

Interested to see what you do with the copper

Ha ha ha, glad to hear there's another particle physics nerd kicking about (and that I'm not the only one who spends time thinking about quarks). Look forward to seeing what you do with it - particularly curious about the copper and the scorching.

yeah, I'm going to have to rethink my body inlay design a bit - I completely forgot that the bass would have the bridge way further back in the body than the guitar version hahahha

its a nicely matched body be good candidate for a stain job the hardware is ok for starters machine heads need a upgrade but all kits are the same and you can get upgraded stuff on the PB store

Here's a (too small) paper cutout of the inlay, plus some light scorching, and some... extras...

https://i.imgur.com/CA3EHwN.jpg

The inlay is going to be tarnished in a special way to be bright and colourful and accentuate the design of the phoenix.

Wow this looks interesting!

Thank you!

I should have been in bed two hours ago, but I had an idea of how to get my cheap-arsed pen blowtorch to work. That went off without a hitch, and so I went at the axe with it. It's kind of amazing, because you can use it like an airbrush. The downside is that some bits will scorch faster than others for some reason.

Anyway, I gave her a scorching, then rubbed her down with some paper towel.

https://i.imgur.com/NGkayxr.jpg

I tell you; the scorched parts are so smooth, I think I could get away with not sanding!

Anyway, I'll be getting my hands on some tru oil tomorrow (and saving the Crimson Guitars Finishing Oil for Charmed Sigma udc (the guitar build), and giving this thing a rub down after scorching the back and sides. Hell, I might even scorch the neck, it feels so nice!

I've noticed though, that one of the body joins is not holding up well under the heat. I hope that's not a sign of things to come...

Natural scorchburst! Noice!

Phoenix rising from the ashes (scorch marks)? I like it!

Thank you!

It turns out I can't get out of sanding, so what I'm doing now is sanding, scorching, rubbing back, and more sanding.

Mock build #2:

https://i.imgur.com/yl5BOvx.jpg

The phoenix is made from copper tape on a paper backing, since I haven't gotten my hands on a jeweller's saw yet (weirdly, Bunnings don't carry them...). I now have a vernier though, so I can order the correct mountings for the gemstones.

I decided that the pickup cavities were too shallow, so I deepened them (by hand!) by 2.3mm, and also opened up the wire channel a little:

https://i.imgur.com/7JRtbBH.jpg

...and after the most recent round of scorching & sanding tonight:

https://i.imgur.com/Vd5RGjr.jpg

Now, unless my stains arrive tomorrow (today?), this is where it'll have to stay until the new year. I obviously don't want to start with the shellacking until I have the staining (and inlay) done.... although it's mighty tempting...

Interesting blotchiness....

Well, my Crimson Guitars Stunning Stains arrived (but not the finishing oil...), so when I got back from Radelaide yesterday, I got to work. A little more scorching, and a lot more sanding later, and I have this:

https://i.imgur.com/VimVTqH.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/pCHTBZU.jpg

Now I just need to wait for the oils to arrive before I can do terribly much more.

You've obviously got a vision in mind. I kinda liked it just the burnt effect without colour, but I'm looking forward to the finish coats going on. Good stuff JB

Yeah, I think just the scorched patina effect will be worth exploring on a later build, as in my experiments (on pine, anyway), it comes up really nicely under a few layers of shellac.

No bass-shaped dents on the car... that's working without a net.

The introduction of the colour is intriguing. Looking forward to seeing how it comes up with the oils. Kind of reminiscent of one of those amazing galaxy images from NASA and elsewhere

First time I've seen an MR2 used as a drop cloth....

I like the effect Unfunk, I thin JH is on the money about it being reminiscent of Nebulae or cosmic gas clouds.

Really intrigued to see where this one goes...

Thanks, guys!

I got a little impatient while waiting for the oils to arrive (they still haven't, sigh), so put it all together to see how she sounds.

First, I stained the neck though:

https://i.imgur.com/qxe50q8.jpg

Then, I realised that having so much red with a blue body wouldn't go together terribly nicely, so I redid the heel portion:

https://i.imgur.com/vBwEJkT.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/TPfxUko.jpg

I plugged her into my guitar amp, and holy hell, those pickups are awful. Noisy as all hell, and as soon as I have the tone turned anything but all the way down, it's a hissing mess. I tried plugging into my recording setup through a DI box to see if it was just my amp, and nope. Still a noisy hot mess.

I added more shielding to surround the pickups, but still nothing fixed it. All the connections are soldered correctly, and I haven't gotten ground and live crossed over anywhere.

I then made a really quick inductive coil and hooked it directly into my amp to see if it was just my amp. No noise whatsoever (beyond the ambient EM field sounds). Picked up the bass strings perfectly fine.
So, these pickups are getting junked, and I'll make my own inductive set using method 4 from here.

Of course, I managed to slice my hand open while trying to get at an old wall wart transformer last night, so that'll have to wait.
In the meantime, the jewellery for my guitar build has arrived, and well, it's just too pretty not to share:

https://i.imgur.com/IAGgymB.jpg

<3

Is it earthed to the bridge?

I dig where you are going, I agree with the guys above its got a bit of 'Nebula' look about it now.

Yup, all the earthing is correct; I even went as far as to sand the base of the bridge to get bare metal, and put a piece of copper tape under the wire to ensure maximum contact.

Strange. The EX5 pickups are normally on the weak side, but not known for being that noisy. How have you wired them up? Pics of the control cavity?

Often a lot of noise occurs if you've mistakenly soldered the signal and ground wires to the wrong tabs on the output jack. It's easily done. Worth a quick check. Otherwise there could be a poor ground connection somewhere.

I'll post pics later, but I definitely checked and double-checked the tabs on the output jack; even going as far as resoldering the other way around, to no avail.

Given that I'll be dismantling it all in a few days anyway, I won't worry too much about troubleshooting just yet. Plus, it's a convenient excuse to try making that fancy pickup design. :D

The pickups are humbuckers (are they 2 or 4 conductor wiring? I think they are now 4), so it really doesn't sound right that they are noisy.

They're 4-conductor wiring (plus shield), with two pairs (red/white, green/shield) pre-soldered, and a black lead left on its own. I've treated this as ground rather than hot, since that follows every other electrical convention I've ever seen. It certainly made everything more confusing though, since it's not mentioned in the wiring diagram.

My wiring is a mess since I knew it was only going to be temporary, so I added extra length to each wire. I also added an extra ground wire to connect the shields of the pickup cavities.

https://i.imgur.com/ULyMCRe.jpg

Anyway. I'm not going to spend too much time on this just now, since my jeweller's saw arrived today! I've got inlays to cut! :D

Ummmm.

Yeah hard to tell with all the extensions, but just looking at that pic it appears you have two earth wires going to the jack?

Difficult to tell as its hard to see what lug each wire terminates on.

EDIT: On the last pot before the jack is the blue wire that goes to the jack attached to the centre or top lug?

Black = hot, red/white = series link between coils, green/bare = ground/shield.

Yes, forget electrical convention when it comes to pickup wiring colours, they could be anything. A fair bit of difference between pickup manufacturers.

Hopefully once you've rewired to Wierdy's colours, you should have it running in a (hopefully) noiseless, full humbucker mode.

Wow, that's nuts. I'll keep that in mind for when I rewire it.
Should the red/white twist be treated as a hot as well?

In the meantime, I got to work on the body inlay:

https://i.imgur.com/S4ksKHR.jpg

Seven blades and one drill bit later:

https://i.imgur.com/Hwj0aRm.jpg

And here's the cut to prepare for hand routing:

https://i.imgur.com/qzLqhS3.jpg

I forgot to take photos, but I cocked up while chiselling out the cavity, leaving a sizeable gouge off to one side of the tail. I've patched it up with superglue and shavings (and lots of sanding & staining), but it's pretty obvious. I'll post pictures once the stain has cured.

Red/white wires are bridging the two coils, so yes, they are carrying signal. Either just tape the end up if using the pickup only as a humbucker, or they can be used with a switched pot or mini-toggle switch to coil tap the pickup for single-coil sounds. You can also unconnect them and wire the coils in parallel rather than serial. Or again make this a switchable selection.

Any chance of simply adding some more inlay to cover up the gouge?

Unfortunately not, as the inlay is made from copper.

Here's my first attempt. As you can see, the stain didn't take very well to the heavy superglue usage.

https://i.imgur.com/zZ3yrOm.jpg https://i.imgur.com/URo48MJ.jpg

My followup attempt is much better, but still crappy upon close inspection.

https://i.imgur.com/kA3HRg6.jpg

and a wider angle:

https://i.imgur.com/PoZXCBC.jpg

Shaping up nicely, IMO. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the finishing oils to arrive, so I'm kinda stuck at the moment. I rewired the pickups according to WirdBits' instructions, and now the don't sound like a hot mess. Just a cold one. They're damn quiet (quieter than when they were wired incorrectly!), and even though I've angled them heavily toward the bass strings, they still pick up way more of the upper three than the lower two.

I think I'll push forward with my own design anyway, since I have nothing better to do... :cool:

You could try filling in the gaps round the inlay with black superglue.

That's what I'm planning on doing. I'm not done treating the inlay yet though; I need to get my hands on some ammonia...

...still waiting on the oils...

So in the meantime, I've been playing with finishes to the copper inlays.

At first, I just took to it with the blowtorch and got some interesting effects:

https://i.imgur.com/hghiX9X.jpg

Then, after not being able to get any 30% ammonia solution, I just got some cloudy ammonia from the supermarket to see how that went with various tarnishing agents:

https://i.imgur.com/SMFFyYN.jpg

Interesting, but not very nice. I then soaked it in bleach for a few hours, sanded it back with 600 grit wet/dry paper and torched it again:

https://i.imgur.com/2Jd9Q8K.jpg

Now we're getting somewhere! I'm seeing a lot of interesting colourations show up, but it's still not quite what I'm after.
I sanded it back again, this time using 1200-grit after an initial 600 round. I also torched it while holding it in my (insulated) hands and a tap running nearby. So, as soon as the colour changed to what I wanted in one spot, I immediately quenched the metal and moved to another spot.

https://i.imgur.com/u5vw9uW.jpg

Bam. That's so close to perfect, that I'm going to leave it there. And here it is in context:

https://i.imgur.com/ZrmZotK.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/aVfnvfW.jpg

You'll notice that the cavity for the inlay hasn't been carved terribly precisely, so there's a bunch of gaps around some of the edges. My plan to combat that is by flooding the cavity with a super heavy shellac mix. I've made up a small batch of that to be so saturated that it simply won't dissolve any more dried flakes. Should work a treat, in theory.

Good thing this is only the practice build! :D

Great work on the copper inlay! Looks superb.

Yeah, that copper inlay looks great!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by unfnknblvbl

At first, I just took to it with the blowtorch and got some interesting effects:

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haha that's the spirit!

looking good man