peegee
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Post by peegee on Jul 10, 2019 9:09:14 GMT -5
(Submitted by new member peegee, but during the move to this forum, Proboards ignored his authorship, and instead made me the author. Bad ProBoards, no donut for you! ) Hi all, This is my first post so please be tolerant.
After years of "haven't got enough time" I have finally decided to build my own guitar, but at 73 years old I anticipate this will be a one-off project. I've decided on a solid / semi-solid body after the general style of a Telecaster. I play in a band with a really wide range of music including jazz, American Song Book, 60's/70's pop, soul and rock so I want the guitar to be capable of all those things - and I know that's near impossible. I have questions on neck design, pick-ups and controls so can anyone tell me where to start please?
Bye for now, PeeGee
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Post by sumgai on Jul 11, 2019 0:49:28 GMT -5
peegee, Hi, and to The NutzHouse! I moved your post here, a more appropriate place for two of the three parts of your question. Other stuff will likely be discussed in more detail in yet another forum, but you seem capable of wandering around these halls without adult supervision, so I'll leave you to it. In short, this sub-Forum, and this thread, will likely kick off the discussion about pickups and controls. For discussions on necks (and bodies), you'd be well advised to start a separate thread in Lutherie & Repair. You wanna get some good tones with an all-around axe? Sounds to me like you're gonna be hunting down a Telecaster Deluxe (semi-hollowbody), and perhaps adding a few switches for things like phase reversal (soul) and coil cut (60s rock). You may end up changing out the Fender humbuckers for better ones in order to get that classic 70s sound, but that's a quite personal thing, so don't set too much stock by that remark. Please standby for a raft of other opinions, starting in 4..... 3.... 2... 1.. HTH sumgai
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Post by Jaga on Jul 12, 2019 16:05:47 GMT -5
I would say that there are no bad wiring for any music style.
Have you already decided what pickups you would like to use and how many?
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Post by newey on Jul 14, 2019 9:32:02 GMT -5
Not impossible at all. Had you added "metal" to the list, that makes it tough, what with all the crunchy active pickups typically used there. But a good clean sound will cover everything on your list up to "rock", and a couple of pedals could take care of that as well.
You will see guys in 60's-70's pop bands, soul etc playing Tele-style guitars (or Strats or LPs, for that matter). The Jazz guys (which pretty much covers the American Songbook territory, too) tend to gravitate to the big hollow bodies, but recall that Leo's original solid bodies (Broadcaster/Telecaster) he envisioned as a way for Jazz guys to up the volume level on the low-powered amps of the day without feedback.
Good choice, but since this is your first build, rather than something "in the style" of a Telecaster, why not make an actual Telecaster body/neck? Plans for these are ubiquitous, and working from a tried-and-tested template means you don't have to worry about some odd dimension throwing things off, whether in terms of scale length, fitment of other parts, or overall balance once you're done (guitars that are neck-heavy are annoying to play no matter how good they may sound).
If you decide to go this route, the guys over at the TDPRI forums can be an invaluable resource.
As for wiring, there is now a "slim Superswitch" available that will fit a Tele cavity without modification. 5 tones could probably cover your palette. You could have the 3 standard Tele settings, plus an out-of-phase setting as sg suggested above, and then a "Jazzy" setting using a cap for a fixed bass tone, like the original Esquire wiring. Then maybe add a "solo switch" to bypass the controls for a bit more attack when playing lead parts.
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peegee
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Post by peegee on Jul 26, 2019 10:15:53 GMT -5
Hi,
Back again after over 2 weeks absence! I'm back to "spec"ing up my guitar build and here's what I've come up with so far:- - Solid body after the style of a Telecaster De-Lux with2 pick-ups. - neck pu humbucker of some description, - suggestions please for a nice warm jazz sound - bridge pu - split coil, suggestions please for one with no volume loss when switched to single coil. - controls - master vol, master tone, selector for both, neck only, bridge only as humbucker, bridge only split. - would like to add a balance control to balance the pick-ups when both are on.
Don't know whether all this is either do-able or sensible!!! Comments/suggestions please.
Cheers for now, Peegee
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Post by Jaga on Jul 26, 2019 15:58:37 GMT -5
I believe that this is doable.
Similar behaviour can be also achieved by having individual volume controls for each pickup.
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Post by newey on Jul 26, 2019 18:37:56 GMT -5
A Tele Delux is, IIRC, a semi-hollow body, so I'm envisioning this as more of a Tele, if you're going for a solid body.
Probably hundreds of options therein, but a vintage-voiced PAF would probably take care of that. I see a few big jazz boxes with mini-humbuckers (or at least, with pickups of a similar form factor, not sure if they were/are actual mini-HBs.) So that might be an option. You can get Tele pickguards to accommodate virtually every imaginable pickup combo. Warmoth allows you to custom-specify different neck and bridge pickup mounting holes, etc.
This is going to be nigh well impossible to achieve, unless you wire the two coils in parallel (rather than the usual series inter-coil wiring). And, of course, the parallel wiring won't sound the same as a "regular" HB. Another possibility is to select a HB with two dissimilar coils (like the SD "P-rails", for example), so you could cut to the hotter of the two. But some compromises are likely going to have to be made. As I mentioned earlier, a solo switch would help, but that would mean manipulating 2 switches to get the SC with more volume.
Hmmm. 4 choices. In a Tele-style body. Seems to me that Fender (and others) sell a Tele 4-way switch, which is used in the "Baja Tele" models to give N/N + B/N x B/B. But the coil split could be easily done by one position of the 4-way, so you could have N/N + B/Bsplit/B HB. This has the advantage of eliminating the need for a separate switch to split the coils.. And, it will fit into a regular Tele control cavity just fine.
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peegee
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Post by peegee on Aug 8, 2019 9:49:44 GMT -5
Hi everyone,
Loads of info from loads of folks - thanks all.
However, I'm still very confused re the pick-ups. For example, I can understand what a lead switch does (increases volume when activated), but how does it do it exactly? Also I'm really having second thoughts re a split coil humbucker as the bridge PU. The volume loss debate makes me wonder if it's worth it at all??
I think I need to get this sorted before I can move on so any clarification would be appreciated.
Bye for now, PeeGee
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