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Post by cynical1 on Mar 8, 2011 23:34:28 GMT -5
OK, so I got this 90's (I guess) Fernandes Decade Elite with what appears to be an early version of their 401 single coil sustainer. Right now it has what appears to be 3 single coil pickups with the neck single coil being the actual sustainer. The closest I could find to a schematic...or any real drawing is this: I need to open this baby up again and get some pictures and verify the board pin assignments, as I can't swear to them being identical on the guitar I have. I do know that the toggle switch to activate the sustainer is an odd contraption. There's a 3PDT switch, on-on, pin soldered to a small circuit board that feeds to the main board that's screwed to the back of the battery cover. The 5-way is also some proprietary contraption. The switching, if it's the same as mine, is detailed to a degree on the sidebar of the drawing above. Right now just connecting a battery to the lose red and black wire emit no sound in either sustainer or non-sustainer mode. I do understand that these guitars will remain mute, even with the sustainer dis-engaged, if there is an issue with the entire circuit. I have some work to do tracing down the fault. It could be a bad pot, jack, mis-configured wiring connector assignments by the previous owner, or the worse case scenario would be a dead board for the sustainer. Give me a few to rip it open, find the digital camera and put some pics up. In the mean time, does anyone out there have any experience with the Fernandes 90's vintage 401 type sustainer circuits? Or know where I can find a schematic for this? (My Google-Fu is failing me on this one...) As an aside, I was toying with the idea of taking a single coil, or stacked single coil, pickup and putting it right up next to the sustainer to simulate a humbucker for the neck in the passive 2 position and dropping a humbucker into the bridge. Fernandes says most pickups will work in the bridge, so I was thinking some medium output rail. I already have two HSS guitars and figured a quasi HH would be a nice change. Besides, everything but the neck and bridge pickup drop out of the circuit once the sustainer goes into gear anyways... OK, enough flapping conjecture. I'll post some pics in a few and see if that incites anything. Happy Trails Cynical One
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Post by ashcatlt on Mar 9, 2011 0:20:21 GMT -5
cyn, it looks kinda funny the way they've drawn it in that sidebar, but I'm pretty sure it's exactly the same as any other 5-way strat switch with the commons as the two innermost lugs. It connects the way I would expect it to.
4real is the guy to tell you about this, of course, but he ain't come around yet, so...
Have you measured DC resistance through the driver coil? Do you have a smallish amplifier you could use to test the driver itself? Put it in place of the speaker and plug some other guitar into it. Hold the driver up to said guitar. It'll either work or it won't, but it'll tell you something either way.
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Post by cynical1 on Mar 9, 2011 6:18:15 GMT -5
I haven't verified the sequence off the 5-way in the drawing with any switch we have documented yet...nor have I checked the wiring diagram with the actual guitar in question to date.
I had it apart when I first got it, but made the mistake of putting a cheap set of strings on it to check the neck action and vibrato...and haven't stopping playing it yet...
I'll be out of town again this weekend and have the next three days out on the road late for work...so this is shaping up to be another saga...
But please feel free to keep tossing insights out there as I'll need them once I open it up.
HTC1
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Post by newey on Mar 9, 2011 7:10:26 GMT -5
Ash is right, it's a standard import-style lever switch, from the looks of it.
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Post by cynical1 on May 9, 2011 19:15:29 GMT -5
A quick update on the progress so far on this project.
I've been e-mailing back and forth with Andres at Fernandes about the fate of the original board and the possibility of repairing same. Well, based on the pictures I sent him he verified my nagging suspicion that the board was toast and would never sing on opening day again...
After explaining that I was not the original owner...or probably not the second owner either, was there a way I could get a replacement, short of dropping the $250.00 on a new 401 sustainer kit. This is where things take a decided turn for the best.
For $50.00 Andres offered to send me the complete main board assembly, complete with toggles and all wiring harnesses. My board was one of the original issues, "PRE 1.0" according to the board. This one is the latest and greatest and has all the refinements and additional control functions.
Before making the offer to send the new board they were more then happy to discuss troubleshooting, sent several drawings to identify the board and offered information on cross referencing common components rather then sell me inflated OEM replacements. They even looked into my question using the L-90's and never once tried to sell me one of theirs. Very usual and refreshing to see these days...especially for an old jaded cynic such as myself...
So, for reference, Fernandes Guitars just went up several notches for customer support and really impressed me as a class act. They treated me like I just bought a new guitar instead of someone who was trying to salvage a 20 year old out of production model.
+1 for Fernandes!
Happy Trails
Cynical One
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Post by ashcatlt on May 9, 2011 19:26:37 GMT -5
Hooray for customer service!
You could probably save $40 by building the circuit from the LM386 datasheet.
Did you ever measure/test the sustain driver itself?
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Post by cynical1 on May 9, 2011 21:04:05 GMT -5
Maybe you could have saved $40.00...but this is a bit more involved then I care to tackle. I can make the connections and drill the new holes, but board level stuff is above my pay grade. I'll post pictures of the new and old boards later for comparison.
When I picked up the guitar my buddy let me know that the neck and middle pickups metered, but the bridge was dead. With the Fernandes design nothing works unless the battery powers it...even with the Sustainer off...so there was no way to pull any sound out of it as the original board was dead.
I figure I'll just pull and toss the existing bridge pickup, move the middle pickup to the bridge and have at it. The Fernandes design has the neck drive the strings and the bridge picks up the driven string. With the Sustainer engaged the middle pickup goes silent anyway, so no great loss in the short term. Once the L-90's go in it just reverts back to a 3 pickup guitar with a Sustainer again.
Worse case scenario is I need to get a neck driver. The bridge and middle are going to be L-90's anyway. Considering I have less then a 1/2 of a tank of diesel fuel invested in this guitar I'm cool with the idea of buying out the driver if I have to. Fernandes doesn't rip you off so if I have to spend money I'd rather do it with someone who I trust.
Andres has even offered to vet any modification I make to get a series/parallel out of the two L-90's and ensure it still flies with the Sustainer circuitry.
I've already got a line on some DuPont 2253 seafoam green paint. Thinking about a fiddleback wood veneer pickguard, dyed with a washed white burst and epoxy resin coated...
As an aside, for a guitar that has obviously not been well cared for it took very little to set it right...and it's built like a tank. I never paid much attention to Fernandes before this guitar, but I must admit I am very impressed with what I've seen and experienced with them.
Makes me wonder just what it could do with someone who could actually play it...
Happy Trails
Cynical One
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Post by cynical1 on May 10, 2011 18:41:29 GMT -5
Well, got out the old digital camera and took some shots of the old Sustainer Pre 1.0 board components and the new replacement. Some of you might find it interesting how the design changed and migrated to a single board. Here's the top of the old Sustainer board: And here's the back...you can see the corrosion and deterioration that killed this board. On the original Sustainer there was a second board with just an On/Off switch. Here's the side to show mounting: And the back where the power feeds in from the battery and the connections go out to the main Sustainer board: The unused connector on the left was for a normal\harmonics mode, but in this OEM version it was not employed. Now for the new one... Here's the top of the new 401 Sustainer board: The two switches are for On\Off and for the Normal\Harmonics sustain modes. And here's the back. The white pots allow you to fine tune the sustain, neck "passive volume", sustain attack and harmonics mode. The three small unsoldered points at the bottom center of the picture are where I could solder in connections to run a Sustainer volume pot to tweak the amount of sustain that passes through...but I don't trust my soldering skills to that extent at present...maybe some time in the future... And finally, the side: Well, that's enough bandwidth burned for today... Happy Trails Cynical One
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