Used to Own an Ibanez Road Star II Want to build similar to what I had!

[Maverick Wolfe]

Greetings all, and happy NewYear.

I used to have a beautiful Gloss black Ibanez RSII as the title says. I am planning on Re-creating it as close as possible, however I am going to make the guitar my version of it. I want to do a 5 way or more switch, in SSH configuration I'll need help with the wiring diagram in order to complete this feat. I wanted to do a Strat style Volume, Tone, Tone Config. I want to make sure there is ZERO audio loss, I am no stranger to electronics, or soldering as I typically work with computers and have done a bit of low voltage wiring in the past. My biggest thing will be in learning the difference between 250k 330k 500k, and 1M pots when it comes to control and loss. Is there a benefit to using three 500k pots one volume, and two tone or should I do Two volume and one tone? When doing this I want the absolute best outcome with as little audio loss as possible in all ranges. I'd like to be able to go from playing simple warm upbeat to random rifting and still have it sound great and extremely clean. I've read a little bit on a couple of the different threads, and I figured I'd join and pop in with my ideas for my planned near future first self built guitar.

[Simon Barden]

Hi and welcome.

What model was it?

I had an HSS RS440 back in the 80s.



It just had a common volume and tone, with a coil tap on the volume pot (IIRC) for the bridge humbucker).

Own-brand locking trem and a behind the nut locking bar.

But there were quite a range of Roadstar 2 models.

If you can be more specific, it will help to get us closer to your original.

[Maverick Wolfe]

I felt like I was looking at a ghost when I saw yours and the style. I had the SSS version of the guitar. they were straight lined down the middle, not strat/telecaster style with any of them canted. Difference is mine had the black Floyd Rose. I have pictures somewhere of it, I just can't find them.

Hi and welcome.

What model was it?

I had an HSS RS440 back in the 80s.



It just had a common volume and tone, with a coil tap on the volume pot (IIRC) for the bridge humbucker).

Own-brand locking trem and a behind the nut locking bar.

But there were quite a range of Roadstar 2 models.

If you can be more specific, it will help to get us closer to your original.

[Maverick Wolfe]

I would so much enjoy the ability to hold at least a self semi reproduction of my guitar I used to have, Mine was also an 80's Ibanez RSII. I know PBG can modify or customize a body on request. It wouldn't matter if they charged me a little extra to mod the body, I'd still buy the kit.

On a side note and question about setup:

Has anyone here ever set a guitar up so that all 3 pickups were hot at the same time? If so how clean is the sound or would it sound clean at all?

[Simon Barden]

My DG Strat (SSS) has the neck pickup always on switch allowing an 'all on' selection in position 2 of the 5-way switch. Because the pickups are all in parallel and the phase cancellations you get, it sounds very much like an extra clean and slightly honkier position 2 or 4. You'll get a similar effect with an HSS set-up, though slightly thicker sounding. Being able to have the neck and bridge pickup together gives a very nice clean tone.

I'd be wary of getting Pit Bull to do too much customisation as they are reliant on passing information to a Chinese factory and hoping they do it all. Often you'll get something missed off, or something that should be blindingly obvious missed e.g. people have asked for a single pickup LP-style body with just volume and tone controls in. But because they weren't specifically told to remove it, they still left the pickup selector switch hole and cavity in!

And you won't get anything other than the stock scratchplate and either stock hardware or no hardware. Customisation is normally limited to leaving things off or unrouted, rather than modifying the shape, or something using templates they already have (these aren't CNC machined kits). E.g. you can get P90 routs instead of humbuckers, but don't ask for a slightly different body horn shape. Even single ply binding instead of triple ply binding was too much for them on my one custom order.

Assuming you want a Floyd-style locking trem, then the STAF-1 will be the model to base your build on. https://www.pitbullguitars.com/shop/...ic-guitar-kit/


As the text says, it should come with a rosewood board, though I'd specify that (or maple if you want) when you order.

You might get them to leave out the Strat jack socket rout and drill for a side hole jack to be more Ibanez-like. If they don't, as long as you are going for a solid colour (like most of the RSII series were), then you can fill the jack rout with wood and filler and drill a side hole yourself.

The kit licensed floyd rose trems are nothing special. They work to start with but the soft steel is nothing like the hard steel used for the pivot points on a real Floyd. So replacing that with a real Floyd might be an option. It all depends on how much you are willing to spend on the project.

The kit pickup work, but again, upgrading to something better is an option. The Toneriders PitBull sell are very good lowish-budget upgrades, but you can always upgrade the pickups later if you want.

If you want an HSS pickguard with just common volume and common tone knob holes, look around and you should find something. I know I can get such a pickguard here in the UK, so I'm sure you can find one in the US.

e.g. select the control knob holes and colour and an HSS configuration on this page. https://www.axesrus.co.uk/FRSTRATPG-...tratfrtrem.htm

Pot values generally go with the pickup selection. A pickup has inductance, impedance and capacitance. Add this to the resistance to ground of the volume pot and the amp's input and you get a passive resonant filter circuit, that rolls off high frequencies above the filter's resonant peak value, but boost the frequencies around the resonant peak value.

The higher the volume pot resistance, the higher the frequency the resonant peak will be located at and the more treble you'll get.

The normal volume pot selection is 250k for single coils and 500k for humbuckers (though some really powerful humbuckers with lots of windings and a high DCR can sound quite dull, so sometimes 1 Meg ohm/1000k ohm pots are used for those).

Use 500k with single coils and they can sound a bit too bright and piercing. Use 250k with humbuckers and they can sound too dull and with a lot of mids. 250k with singles and 500k with humbuckers seems to be what most people prefer.

The pot taper is also important. Normal choice is audio/log taper or linear taper. Generally always audio/log for volume and either audio or linear for tone. Some people prefer the less gentle action of a linear volume pot, but 95% will prefer audio. The tone pot type is a personal choice, again based on how abruptly it acts and how far you need to turn the knob to knock off treble. I like audio taper for tone but it is down to you and how you like your tone control to work. If you always leave the tone control on 10, it makes no difference whatsoever.

The tone pot is a bit different to the volume pot in that it doesn't interact in quite the same way with the pickup sound, and whilst a lot of people use 250k tone pots with single coils and 500k tone pots with humbuckers, I now prefer to use 250k audio taper tone pots regardless, as it gives a wider range of controllable tones. Still almost nothing from 10 down to about 7, then controllable treble loss from 7-1, and then still quite muddy from 1 to 0.

The tone capacitor value is another one that has 'accepted' values of 0.022uF for humbuckers and 0.047uf for single coils, but here, the world's your oyster. With the tone control on 10, you won't hear the difference between different tone capacitor values. You can just about measure it but it's too subtle for the human ear to detect. The value only really comes into play when you start rolling the treble off. The bigger the capacitor value, the more treble gets rolled off. With the tone control set to 0 (or 1 if it's a Strat), to me the sound is really muddy even with a 0.022uf capacitor, so I use a 0.15uF or a 0.1uF cap for tone so it operates in a region I find useful.

Because the tone pot always provided a path to ground for some of the high frequency pickup signals, some people fit 'no load' tone pots, which have a break in the resistance track, so when the pot is on 10, there is no path to ground through the tone capacitor and you get a brighter sound. The downside is that you then get a sudden (but small) jump in the guitar tone once you get down to 9. This may or may not bother you.

One other option is to have a 'blower' switch. The volume pot also passes some of the guitar signal to ground and also affects the inherent pickup filter peak. By fitting a switch that bypasses both the volume and tone pot, and wires the pickup direct to the output jack, you get a significantly louder and brighter sound. This tends to be done more on humbucker-equipped guitars, as it can be a bit too bright on a vintage single coil sound, but may benefit hot single coils that are normally duller sounding than vintage-style pickups. Again, it's all personal preference.

On an HSS arrangement where you have both single coils and a humbucker, you have a dilemma as to which volume pot value to pick. 500k for the humbucker, or 250k for the single coils? 500k could make the single coils sound too bright, whilst 250k can make the humbucker sound too dull. Some people will compromise and fit an intermediate value like 330k as the volume pot (if you can find one, they aren't common items for guitars). However, if you use a 500k volume and single common tone pot for all the pickups; by wiring a 470k or k resistor across the 5-way switch (across the right contacts) to ground, when the single coils are selected the volume pot is now in parallel with the fixed resistor and so behaves like a 250k pot.