And ... another rewire . . . .

OK, after a while the neck pickup in the JM developed an annoying ... seemingly unreproducible problem . . . scratchiness . . . anyway it was painfull to listen to SO back to the diagram and trying to find WHERE I went wrong . . .

Well no faults leading to scratchiness were found . . . BUT . . . it look like the humbucker coils were wired out of phase . . . OUCH . . . start and end somehow got interchanged on the P90 part of the pRails.

EDIT / UPDATE: NO, no, NO . . . they were NOT . . . it's now been corrected in the next post

OK so here is the new diagram . . . and apologies to anyone who tried it . . .

So I took the whole instrument apart and . . . well in the end I think that an non insulated ground wire in the pickup coil switching circuit occasionally could make contact with the hot signal from the neck pickup depending on the vibration and other factors . . . not solid contact mind you, but just kinda glancing off of it ... thus the scratchyness . . . ??? . . . that's the only thing I could find remotely problematic electrically . . . and of course . . . it's hard to see through a solid wood body or pickguard and things undoubtedly move on installation and . . . . 

Also took the opportunity to rout out some 'tight spots' where the pickup legs were a 'tight' fit and to rout a shorter path from the bridge pickup to the coil switching circuit in the upper horn . . . and debating whether I want to coat the whole interior with copper shielding foil while I have it apart . . . 

Anyway here are some shots of work in progress:

First shot is the coil switching circuit being built. The second has the coil switching circuit and the phase switch complete and the rotary pickup selector switch is being built. No cloth wire this time, it's not bad to work with but I didn't have enough for a complete rebuild and it's more bulky than the silicone insulated hookup wire.

Volume & tone next week, I have to have a look at the tone circuit before I put that in (EDIT: done that and yes there was a mistake that has been corrected), the SPDT on/off/on switch should switch the tone circuit before or after the volume pot . . . just to try if it make a difference (quite possibly not), the other switch should give me a straight cap like a normal tone circuit OR a version of the Fender grease bucket circuit . . . 

One more circuit . . . .

Switching 3 PU off/series/parallel the switch positions would be better labeled off/out/send as the last setting sends the signal to the next PU in the chain and the middle position sends it out of the chain.

And here is the 2 PU version . . . .

Something NEW

Somthing I have been working on (off and on) for the last year . . . currently goes by the P1 moniker and the shape isn't entirely finalized. I had to build a sample to see it, you can only get so much from a drawing . . . and you can see only part of the design here, to get the full effect you would need 3/4 pictures as well (which will follow in due course). For now I think the shape turned out reasonably balanced but the lower 'horn' possibly needs to be reigned in some.

I also used this as an opportunity to try various wood working techniques and had to overcome some mistakes . . . thus the yellow heart below the neck . . . .

UPDATE:

More pics

And some details:

And next to a regular size JM body

Guitar circuit revision

The original circuit I showed some posts back works but I'm not satisfied with how the tone knob works (or rather what it does ... or maybe that should be doesn't) do to the tone so it's time for some more experimentation. I may actually temporarily change the tone switch to switch between an onboard traditional tone circuit and and 3.5mm connector  hanging out of the pick guard so I can easily test different tone circuits but we'll see. Oh and the treble bleed never got implemented . . . still have to try that BUT it's another switch and I never drilled the hole for that one . . .

So here it is . . . . the complete circuit . . . .

SD Prails pickups, my version of triple shots, phase switch and rotary 4 position PU selector with selectable treble bleed as well as selectable tone circuits traditional tone and greasebucket circuits . . . . NOT sure about the value of the tone pot yet . . . may keep that as a 500K but then I may solder a 500K resistor from the 0.1 to 0.022 caps to change it to a 250 when switching in the greasebucket. I currently have a linear tone pot BUT the first 1/3 seems to do pretty much zip thus the substitution of a log . . . the volume is already a log but I saw that the original circuit actually had a linear . . . I'm happy with the log so I may well keep it.

Series JM mod . . . .

JM mod ... NO rythm circuit, rytm switch switches between the PU switch and PUs in series.

Neck volume/tone would be Master with PUs in series.








Alternatively . . . .

Bench . . . to work not to sit . . . and do nothin'

Finally . . . new garage door, garage (more or less . . . more more than less) cleaned out and a new work bench were I can leave stuff out . . . . . HURAH . . . . .

Maybe I can finally get that custom body finished I've been working off and on on for . .  ..  ..   ...   ... months now.

Progress ???

July has come and gone . . . August is here . . . . still not ready to reveal but it's coming along ... slowly, the weather is just to hot and the cool parts of the day are spoken for . . . .