Marcel's PBG LP-1SSP

[OliSam]

that is an exceptional finish Marcel. oh....and nice birthing room dude!

[wokkaboy]

looking nice and shiny Marcel, well done. The tele in one of the pics did you put the switch at the bottom on purpose ?

[Marcel]

Yes Wokka,

Yeah..... The Tele.....
The reversed control plate on the Tele is intentional, and the tone and volume controls have been swapped... So it is 3 way Switch then tone then the volume all out on its lonesome...
The pick guard is only a template as I have a leather worker person making a hard leather piece exactly that size in a Tan colour to replace it... He said he might put some embossing on it so it will be a true one-of...
And the pseudo Denim will get covered by real denim once my daughter finds the right piece of Cowgirl embroidered used jeans at the thrift shop where she works...

Just have to wait until it all comes in...

[Marcel]

Okay....

I spent a considerable portion of yesterday and today putting everything together, bolting on hardware, soldering and stringing up.. and then a few minutes (seriously, it was probably less than 15 minutes) intonating and checking for that elusive fret buzz....

It now boasts the following....
French polished Shellac on all spalted Maple that has been coloured with my own mix of Yellow & Brown Keda dye, then U-Beaut wax buffed to shine.
FW Jarrah stain on all Mahogany then covered with 2 coats of BC sealer filler and then 4 coats of BC Tru-oil.
Push back cloth wiring (A.k.a .'50's style wiring) on all signal paths.
Brown drop 0.047uF caps.
PBG neck P90
Yibuy bridge P90

Work still to be done....
Adjustment of the nut... could come down just a touch...
Issue with the neck tone control... not performing as expected/intended

I plugged her into my home made stack for some real volume (better than the Vox VX1 I use for setting up) and got purely and simply blown away by the sweet CLEAN tones that this girl sings.... On nearly every fret and every string you can pluck out crisp clear pinch harmonics.... Well.. you could have pushed me over with a feather..!!!
So you all know, the amp behind my sweet little P90's loaded lady is a home brew job I built based on my own mix of JTM45 and 2204 circuits I found on the net. The 50W from the EL34 output of the amp feeds out at 8 ohms into a 16ohm Celestion Vintage 30 and a Celestion 16 ohm G12H75 Creamback wired in parallel and mounted in a bass reflex cabinet.

I only stopped playing this evening because my wife was yelling at me that dinner was ready (and going cold...lol)

[Marcel]

Lol.... Birthing room.... my son-in-law said "It's on a trailer, but it ain't trailer trash...."....

[Marcel]

Can someone advise the process to upload or link sound files? I'm looking to make a mp3 or two on how she sounds to share with you guys...

I'm a hopeless guitarist, but I know you guys will set that aside when you are listening for tone....

[wokkaboy]

Hi Marcel,
create a free account at soundcloud and upload to the website and you should get a link to post on the forum

here's the link

https://soundcloud.com/

[UpperCaseH]

The whoel guitar looks fantastic, and I really love the colour on the back. Seriously just FW Jarrah > Tru oil? Looks killer!

The amp looks cool too. Can't wait to hear it all together - soundcloud works great for this stuff. I'm trying to get my electronics knowledge up to the point where I can tackle a simple tube amp, but it's slow going.

[Marcel]

Just for you H,

Some history on the Amp... Over 30 years ago it was a 'Playmaster' tube amp with 6L6's, but I gutted it some time in the mid '80's and kept the chassis with the transformers and its case all this time to rebuild it this last Summer just passed.

Whole amp is wired point to point on tag strips - nil strip board.
Most caps and resistors sourced from RS components,
High voltage caps, HV choke, pots and knobs from a guy in Victoria via Ebay
EL34's the cheapest I could find on Ebay
currently running the worn and tired original 12AX7's, NOS replacements should arrive soon.
HT is 390VDC(@300mA) on the EL34 plate (A wee bit less voltage than a Marshall, but still up there)
Home made bass reflex speaker cabinet loaded with Celestions (V30 & Creamback G12H75)

I went with a bass reflex cabinet as back in the day a few mates had done it and it seemed to work well regardless of the cones fitted. Some cones prefer sealed cabs and others open back. A bass reflex is 50% of both, is not as bright as open back and not as contained as a sealed. With the Celestions it truly works for me.

I'll upload a photo when I can resize one down to the limits set on this forum... Else check my Facebook page where I've been active in the 'kit guitar builders' group.

[Marcel]

Identified the tone control issue which turned out to be two issues.

I had put copper foil under the pots and the pots have tags on them that hang down... Well, I had a short to ground on the unused tag... first problem sorted.

Second problem - Wasn't happy with the range of both the tone controls. In addition to rolling off the highs on both knobs it almost became a pseudo volume control at maximum high cut, and I knew I didn't have any short circuits, so I concluded that the installed caps must be the wrong value... Replaced the 473 brown drops (kit was supplied with 473 green caps) with 223 orange drops and both the tone controls now work as expected.... All the general chatter that I'd seen elsewhere about what size caps that typically go with single coils and with humbuckers must have sunk in.

Had a play with the action.... High E is 1.5mm and low E is 2mm @ the 12th fret & still nil buzz... Sweeet!!!