Drifters Exa-7 first build

[Mr.Drifter]

Turns out the tone pot was fine spline whilst everything else was coarse spline, which is why it sat up so high. Then read up on splines, and found out the screw caps don't need either, and remembered my ltd had screw on ones (aftermarket), so swapped them around, and blamo. Perfect.

Liberator is in, just need to wire it all up.
So, soldering iron is in order.
Though, going to take it up to mega music tomorrow or friday to get a tusq nut and a good setup. Hoping the intonation isn't fucked by the neck placement, but see how we go.
Also going to pay for tuners tomorrow, so will pick them up on the way to mega, and install them so I have some tuners for them to set up with, hah.

So very very close.
Just need to do the finishing touches

[Mr.Drifter]

Nearly done with my explorer kit.
Just need to think of what to put on the headstock, put the truss rod cover on, as well as fix the noise issue.

Wired it all up as the seymour duncan wiring guide suggested (has a liberator vol knob), but it had immense noise with the 2conductor pickups, so did some ground stuff, and it fixed most of it, but there's still a bit of noise. Will probably connect another ground, and see if that helps (noise mostly goes away when I touch the pots/ lead)

Aside from that, it's new pickups, and we're done.
Got it all set up, and it plays great. Frets are slightly off apparently, but not enough to be a major issue. Has as much fret buzz as my ibanez, so that should be fine, hah (apparently mostly because of the .64 gauge b)
Gotta say too, I got some grover tuners put in, and they are awesome. Well worth the money.

Either way, really happy with how it plays so far. Just need to do a few small things, and it'll be g

Strings I went with are ny xl 11-64 (11-49 with a 64 b)

[Andyxlh]

That looks great, nice colours too

[JohnH]

Looks good dude

[Spawn25]

Looks great mate. Well done.

[Mr.Drifter]

So, you know how we had that thing of worrying about how the intonation would be with the neck offset for the pickup surround, and it affecting the high e/ making the high e needing to be at the neck end all the way basically?
It went the other way with this. Seemingly slightly too close to the bridge. Low b string is very close to being at furthest way it can go.
Luckily still have a touch of room, so we're in luck there.

Either way though, has had a tonne of noise, so I'm going to try shielding the cavity, and see how that will help. Seems it may help as much as I'm hoping/ needing.

Have been playing around with it a fair bit to try and diagnose the noise, but sounds like shielding may be all it is, after trawling through videos on the topic.

That and there likely won't be much more progress on the guitar for a while, until after I get back from tas. Driving my car (with my various guitars and amps) back up here. Got a long ass trip, but it'll be worth. Finally have a proper amp again, and will be able to both run bias fx through it (for various tones), and run it itself. Really do miss my 5150 III

[Simon Barden]

I doubt it's shielding that's required with humbuckers unless you have a very electrically noisy environment. With single coils maybe, but not humbuckers. I'm assuming you've got another humbucker equipped guitar to compare against?

So I'd still be looking for a bad or missing ground connection or the output wires crossed at the jack.

Did you locate and connect the ground wire for the bridge?

[Mr.Drifter]

I doubt it's shielding that's required with humbuckers unless you have a very electrically noisy environment. With single coils maybe, but not humbuckers. I'm assuming you've got another humbucker equipped guitar to compare against?

So I'd still be looking for a bad or missing ground connection or the output wires crossed at the jack.

Did you locate and connect the ground wire for the bridge?

Yeah, other humbucker guitar has no issues aside from a small amount of hum that seemingly comes across the amp sim regardless of what's plugged in (or not).

I've tried a number of ground checks, and nothing seems to have worked. Put a wire from bridge to pots, bridge to common ground, extra vol to common ground, etc.

That said, I had only tried bridge outside of coating to the parts, so that could be it. It does have a wire from the bridge post, but it's entirely possible that could have been busted on install, so will have a play some more with that, but otherwise it's as it should be in regards to the diagrams, with an added ground fix

[Simon Barden]

Tried a resistance check from the bridge to ground with a multimeter?

[Mr.Drifter]

Tried a resistance check from the bridge to ground with a multimeter?

I haven't actually, I really should invest in a multimeter up here haha