Post by Charlie Honkmeister on Jan 18, 2017 1:36:57 GMT -5
China Girl and Redbird
First instruments with pre-production variable res tone system using my from-scratch design. (circuit design, PCB layout, SMT PCB, assembly)
I've just finished up with these two guitars. Generally for my first demo instruments I am taking inexpensive guitars or factory seconds and fixing/repairing them, then completely gutting the electronics and installing my variable res tone system. I will be working soon with a couple of local builders to try to move up the guitar food chain.
China Girl (in memoriam David Bowie) is a Drive Wildfire X3: Gibson scale length, set neck, maple over mahogany, Guitar Madness (believe Artec) rail humbuckers (about $14.00 each.) Strung with Dunlop 10's.
Redbird is a Parker PDF70 (Indonesian): Fender scale length, ebony board, Parker tremolo, SOS compensated nut, CALIG H62 rail humbuckers (about $22.00 each.) Strung with D'Addario 9.5-44 which are my favorite on a Fender scale length.
I had to do a little bit of spot leveling fretwork on both, and on Redbird, had to clean up the fret ends. Both got a fingerboard reconditioning, fret polish to 8000 grit, and complete setup.
China Girl has a push-pull which switches the guitar into "studio mode" when pulled. That just converts the tone to a simple variable lowpass and also allows the guitar to be set "flat" if wanted , for going into a board or computer running a DAW with plugins.
Redbird has a push-pull which when pulled switches the bridge pickup into series coil mode. This gives a volume boost and moves the tone control range down to allow the player to get a quick lead boost for a crunch or distorted solo.
Both instruments can cover tones from dark Gibson humbucker jazz tones (think vintage ES175, but more clarity on the high end) to bright, spanky Fender cleans a la Tele but without icepickiness, and everything in between. It's a bit of a minor mindblower to hear Fender-type tones coming from a two-humbucker guitar.
These went through about three rounds each of listening and tweaking to dial in the right component values. Since the key resistors and capacitors are on an 8 pin DIP component header plugged into a DIP socket on the board, tweaking values just involves opening the control cavity, popping out the header, soldering new parts to the header, and plugging the header back in. It takes about 5 minutes for any component changes needed to tweak the voicing.
I'm also compensating pickup load resistance based on one pickup or two in parallel, but that's done at the pickup selector switch and/or the series/parallel push-pull. This can provide a near-acoustic sound quality when the selector switch is in the middle position.
Both of these instruments sound amazing now that the resonant frequency ranges and Q values have been dialed in.
-Charlie
First instruments with pre-production variable res tone system using my from-scratch design. (circuit design, PCB layout, SMT PCB, assembly)
I've just finished up with these two guitars. Generally for my first demo instruments I am taking inexpensive guitars or factory seconds and fixing/repairing them, then completely gutting the electronics and installing my variable res tone system. I will be working soon with a couple of local builders to try to move up the guitar food chain.
China Girl (in memoriam David Bowie) is a Drive Wildfire X3: Gibson scale length, set neck, maple over mahogany, Guitar Madness (believe Artec) rail humbuckers (about $14.00 each.) Strung with Dunlop 10's.
Redbird is a Parker PDF70 (Indonesian): Fender scale length, ebony board, Parker tremolo, SOS compensated nut, CALIG H62 rail humbuckers (about $22.00 each.) Strung with D'Addario 9.5-44 which are my favorite on a Fender scale length.
I had to do a little bit of spot leveling fretwork on both, and on Redbird, had to clean up the fret ends. Both got a fingerboard reconditioning, fret polish to 8000 grit, and complete setup.
China Girl has a push-pull which switches the guitar into "studio mode" when pulled. That just converts the tone to a simple variable lowpass and also allows the guitar to be set "flat" if wanted , for going into a board or computer running a DAW with plugins.
Redbird has a push-pull which when pulled switches the bridge pickup into series coil mode. This gives a volume boost and moves the tone control range down to allow the player to get a quick lead boost for a crunch or distorted solo.
Both instruments can cover tones from dark Gibson humbucker jazz tones (think vintage ES175, but more clarity on the high end) to bright, spanky Fender cleans a la Tele but without icepickiness, and everything in between. It's a bit of a minor mindblower to hear Fender-type tones coming from a two-humbucker guitar.
These went through about three rounds each of listening and tweaking to dial in the right component values. Since the key resistors and capacitors are on an 8 pin DIP component header plugged into a DIP socket on the board, tweaking values just involves opening the control cavity, popping out the header, soldering new parts to the header, and plugging the header back in. It takes about 5 minutes for any component changes needed to tweak the voicing.
I'm also compensating pickup load resistance based on one pickup or two in parallel, but that's done at the pickup selector switch and/or the series/parallel push-pull. This can provide a near-acoustic sound quality when the selector switch is in the middle position.
Both of these instruments sound amazing now that the resonant frequency ranges and Q values have been dialed in.
-Charlie