Maddog's STA-1

[Maddogm]

So after taking ages on the sanding I'm almost ready to go on the Dingotone

While waiting for stuff to arrive I've decided to start on the electronics, after getting a set of toneriders a while back I've decided to upgrade all the electronics, one reason being I'll be able leave the original wiring harness intact in case (when?) I screw something up.

A couple of questions that have come up, On all the wiring diagrams I've seen for standard Strat have a single .047 cap, the harness that came preinstalled had 2 caps (one on each tone pot iirc). is the 2nd cap necessary? Also linear vs Audio pots for tone, is there a better option or doesn't it really matter?

I'm sure I found a good post that covered most of this in a random thread a few days ago but cant find it again for the life of me.

Maddog

[Simon Barden]

A cap per tone pot doesn't really matter - you get this arrangement in many other guitars, especially Gibsons. Leo Fender was a real penny-pincher and used the least number of components he thought he could get away with (e.g. Telecasters moved from 5 to 8 screw pickguards after a few years because the original 5 wasn't enough to stop the guards warping over time), so used a circuit that shared the capacitor between tone pots. No idea why the PBG kits do it differently but the result is basically the same. If I was upgrading pots and caps I'd re-wire it to the Fender standard method, but otherwise I'd leave it as it is.

Audio vs linear tone pots? All depends if you actually use the pots or not. If you always have them set on 10, it makes no difference whatsoever. But if you do play with the tone knobs, then linear pots (the generally selected pot type for tone use) will give you a noticeably darker tone for a small initial movement e.g. from 10 to 8, compared to an audio taper which might take turning from 10 to 4 to get the same darkening of tone. When set to 0, both pots give the same level of maximum dullness.

You can obviously get the same level of darkness in the tone using either style pot, it's just a matter of by how much you have to turn the knob to achieve it.

So if you occasionally like to just knock the edge off the brightness, then an audio taper would probably be the best choice, but if you are a regular tone pot adjuster and like to hear a difference quickly, then linear is probably the better choice.

[Maddogm]

Cheers Simon

Another thing I need to make a decision on pretty soon is what I'm going to do with the headstock colour wise. With the black and gold colour scheme I've been thinking about doing the front of the headstock black and getting a gold logo done from a mob in the UK (I think) that does metallic waterslides

I'm not sure if doing just the front of the headstock in dingotone is feasible so plan B is make the entire headstock black and blend it into the neck. I think making the entire neck black would be too much.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Maddog

[FrankenWashie]

It can be done you've just to get your prep right. Sand the daylights out of the stock edges up to a really fine grade, 1500 or 2000 grit to help repel the stain.
Go to an Auto supplies store and get some of their fine line masking off tape and apply this at the edge of the headstock face. You'd then use regular masking tape back from that to cover the feast of the headstock edge.
When you are staining, be sure to wipe back any excess or spill over onto the tape, just in case it penetrates beneath your masking tape.
Else what you could do is a "stinger" stain job,
but you are still going to have to mask that off on the neck anyway.
If you try the face first, if it doesn't work out, you can rough the headstock edges back to about 180 grit and try for the stinger.

[Maddogm]

I'm not certain a stinger would look as good on a Strat headstock. Also I feel that if can't get the face to work there's no way I'll be able to get that kind of definition on the stinger. Hence why I'm thinking along the lines of blending the transition, or if you look at it from neck to headstock: Fade to Black :P

[FrankenWashie]

or if you look at it from neck to headstock: Fade to Black :P

\m/
Well, folk do bursts all the time with DT or other stains, I don't see why it wouldn't work though I'd be running some test attempts first, though this is mainly due to my ham fisted technique with stains!

[Simon Barden]

No reason you can't just do the headstock face in black. Easy enough to mask off the sides. You could always swap from Dingotone just for the face and spray it black. In that event, I'd spray the headstock first. then DT the rest of the neck.

[wazkelly]

Hi Maddog, I will share a little secret with you.... on my latest Tele build I plan to do a reversed out logo on decal transfer paper so that it comes out as transparent text/logo in the middle of a black sheet that can be dropped over the top of whatever colour, or textured properties for how you want it to look. You just simply trim the decal transfer along the edges of the headstock and job is done.

Another method is to actually photograph what you want to appear on the headstock and print that out on decal transfer paper and apply it to the whole face of the headstock.

[Maddogm]

I'm trying to remove the old nut to put in the DB bone nut I bought with the kit, I'm following the video DB posted but all I seem to be doing is destroying the old nut without it budging

Any tips for removing the nut?

[Maddogm]

I'm also suspect that DB might have installed a bone nut when he did the neck setup despite getting a separate loose nut. Therefore I may have unnecessarily destroyed a perfectly fine nut