Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Alright, a little more progress today. I got my Forstner bit to deepen the control cavity on one of the sunbursts

My mother in law has a full set of nice wood working tools, I was gonna use her drill press to cut this but their basement flooded because it's rained every day here for the last 2-3 weeks. I don't wanna get electrocuted so I decided to let that go... I did start soldering some wires though.

Then I noticed something moving (my work area is in the basement, and some dumba** named Daan left a window open to let the soldering fumes out, and I got a bat in the house. I didn't catch the little bastard until he got upstairs, and got my wife and all 3 kids screaming like little girls. If Ida been filming that, it would have looked like some bad Disney comedy with 4 crazy girls running around screaming at the top of their lungs...I finally caught the bat with one of my kids' butterfly net and released it outside. By then I kinda ran out of steam, so I didn't finish soldering. I DID get some of my Corvette together, though

Sent from my butt using last night's tacos

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Man I cannot wait to get the Vette back up and running. I just have to decide if I'm going Vol/Vol/Tone or just Vol/Tone and dummy pot for now.

Also I gotta get the pup heights straightened out, P90's are mounted with screws thru the top, and you put spacers (small bits of foam actually) under them to get the height correct. The wires in these come out the bottom of the pups instead of the sides like the old ones, so now I gotta break out the Dremel to make a wire channel so the pup sits in the cavity straight.

I'm too tired from the bat incident (and the birthday party we were at this afternoon, a whole house of screaming 4&5 year olds) so I think an Adult Beverage is called for now.

Well maybe cleaning up my work space would be a good idea, too...


Sent from my butt using last night's tacos

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Well the M-I-L's basement dried out enough to try to drill today. I got her to watch the girls while I used her press.

As soon as I touched the bit to the wood, it would stop. I tried everything I could think of to get it to cooperate, but I got like 1/32" of wood removed. Crap.

I ran outta time, too so while I'm at work I gotta figure out a way to get it to stop slipping and actually cut. It has a screw to adjust the belt tension, but I can't hand tighten it enough to not slip. Maybe I can get a wrench on there next...

Sent from my butt using last night's tacos

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Got the press sorted out. The belts were on wrong, the set-screw on the pullies was ready to fall out, and the ...belt tightening screw (whatever it's really called) wasn't tight enough but it's all working now.

It took longer to drive to her house (or fix the drill press) than drill the cavity out. Unfortunately now I'll be at work from 3pm Friday until 7am Tuesday... I should have brought all my guitar crap here! (like THAT would go over ok...)

 

[daan]

Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Shimming up the neck pocket on the blonde Strat (the neck pocket was a MM or 2 too wide for all the necks I have laying around) once the shims are set I'll sand them down to fit.


Sent from my butt using last night's tacos

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Setting pup height. I had to Dremel out a deeper channel for the wires coming out the bottom of the new pups (as opposed to the sides of the old ones) then I had to restring and play around with the foam shims to set the pups where they need to be (3/16" from the strings, according to TVJones)


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[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Trimming the pick guard around the bridge.

If I put the kids in a box, it takes 'em long enough to escape that I can have 2 minutes to work on my stuff...


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[King IzzO)))]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

A lot of this sounds very, um... familiar.

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

I cleaned up the edges of the control cavity (gotta love Dremel tools)

Bridge screws and string saddles put back on (whatever the original screws were made of, just stripped out instead of going into the wood so I went down to Ace and got a bag of Stainless ones to replace them.


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[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

I'm not sure what they drilled the top strap button hole with, but it was about 4 sizes too big. I doweled it and will re drill it.

I drilled and installed the bottom strap button. I gotta bag of Beer Washers from the home brew store, wish I found out about those before buying Strap Locks for half my other guitars.


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[TIGEREYELASER]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Daan, you're doing some fine work here. Care to lend me a hand? Preferably the one with six fingers on it.

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

My helper for all of this.


Sent from my butt using last night's tacos

 

[TIGEREYELASER]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

She's cute daan, favors her mother lookswise? I just can't imagine you being that pretty.

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

She's cute daan, favors her mother lookswise? I just can't imagine you being that pretty.

:laughing:


Yeah right now I thank god she looks like her mom, but once she's a teenager I'm sure I'll wish she looked more like me (scare the boys away instead of attracting them)
I put the girls to bed early and soldered like a madman on a bunch of things, but didn't actually FINISH any of them. Maybe I should call in to work tomorrow.

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Daan, you're doing some fine work here. Care to lend me a hand? Preferably the one with six fingers on it.

Yeah, I had 7 before that nasty power tool incident...

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

Well I've done a lot of thinking over my crappy long work shifts(when I'm away from my Man Cave but looking at stuff on line), and I finally came to a realization that at the rate I'm "picking away" at these things, I'll be 75 before any of them are actually done. I REALLY like the idea of customizing and working on a guitar to make it "mine", but realistically none of them will be playable until all my kids are in school full-time (3-4 years from now). Plus, the more time I spend futzing with these, the less time I spend actually PLAYING guitar, which is kind of the point of having them, right? I would like to get something that's in one piece and playable NOW, and just concentrate on playing with the 7 minutes of free time I actually have in the forseeable future. I know you lose a ton of $ on "parts casters", but if I'm to get another guitar, I need to sell some of these off. I'll be putting ads up in the classifieds (as long as posting THIS doesn't violate any rules!) so come check that out if you are interested.
Thanks.

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

OK I actually got a baby sitter to have some work time. My daughter came to me and asked me to please finish her guitar, she missed playing it. So I knuckled down and got hers done:


I had gotten some pickups from a guy online, in a gear trade. What he sent ended up not being what he represented them as, and I just couldn't get them to work anyway. I re-wired this guitar 3 times between Sunday and last night, and then just pulled the most recent pups out and put the GFS ones back in, since I know they work. (GFS "Brassbottom" singles. SUpposed to sound more P90-ish or something.) Also, it got 2 new pots (I must have fried them soldering grounds to them so often, this guitar has had at least 4 sets of pups in it over the years) and a new switch. It's 100% done, other than final set up tweaking.

Oh yeah, it's a "JB PLayer" neck from the 80's (my 2nd guitar that I bought in 1985 so it's been around a while) the body from a mid-90's MIM Strat, a heavyweight brass tremolo block, and the Brassbottom pups. It sounds good, and the neck is like an old friend at this point.

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

I also spend a good long time soldering on this other guitar

I also got the neck pocket set up for the neck (it was a hair loose in the pocket so I shimmed the sides with veneer, and sanded it until it was tight). All I gotta do is solder the bridge ground once I lengthen the wire a bit, and string it up and it's done too.
It has 70's grey-bottom Strat pups in the guard from my 90's MIM, a push-pull volume to add the neck pup in and a heavy brass tremolo that I had to shave down to fit in the thin body (It's actually a late 80's/early 90's Korean Squier plywood body, but it weighs about the same as a Palouwina body I had, it's a gorgeous shade of aged Oly white that it got naturally (as opposed to the ridiculously expensive nitro lacquer paint I bought for a different project).

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

I also got a lot of the next guitar wired up. THis one has electronics similar to the bananna pudding one (MIM ceramic single coils with a push-pull to add neck) I'm not done wiring it up, but a good hour with the Weller and that one will be ready to go, too.

I think my problem is I'm a LOT better at starting projects, than I am at finishing them... but now that 2 of my kids are in school, maybe I can get a little more work done here.

 

[daan]

Re: Project A Palooza (or, Get to work, Daan!)

More wiring...

Every night after work I just nut up and go work for 30-45 minutes. It sucks being tired the next day (I get home after midnight and the kids are up by 615- 630 every day for school) but yawning a lot is better than you guys having to hear me whine about not finishing everything...