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Drilling for Pickups

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In part 3 of the video series on installing pickups, I select some screws and show some tricks for drilling the holes right where you want them.

For the screws, I chose some slotted silver 3/4” long #4 wood screws.  Even though the Bigsby and tuners are finished in gold, I think these silver screws will look good with the polepieces.

Since the new holes will overlap a bit with the old filled holes, the drill bit will have a tendency to walk into the old hole.  The bit always wants to take the path of least resistance.    I’m using a Rockler Self-Centering Bit, which makes it really easy to drill precisely centered holes – it’s good for things like door hinges and cabinet hardware too.   If you don’t have one of those, the next best thing is a brad point drill bit, which has a sharp spike to prevent the bit from shifting.  With a brad point bit or regular bit, you’ll want to use something sharp like a drill punch or awl to give the drill bit a good starting point.

Positioning Pickups Before Drilling

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This is part 2 of the video series on Replacing Pickups in a semi-hollowbody guitar.  Here, I show some common-sense tricks for properly positioning the pickups front-to-back and side-to-side on the guitar, without having to make lots of measurements, etc.   To place the pickups parallel with the edge of the fretboard and parallel with each other, I use spacers.   You can experiment with spacers of different sizes to find a good fit – I’ve used pens and pencils and scrap wood.  Just make sure the spacer is equal in size along its entire length – avoid tapered pens.  Here, I’m using drill bits wrapped in tape, since my bit set has so many choices in size.   I also show a way to use the low and high E strings as a straightedge when aligning the pickup polepieces under the strings.  Note, in the video, I didn’t realize the camera was slightly angled when showing the pole piece alignment, so it’s not as

Note to self: next time, set the camera to proper manual focus before doing those closeups!

Birth of a guitar

Building an Acoustic Guitar

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It has long been a dream of mine to combine two of my hobbies – guitar and woodworking – and build my own guitar from scratch.   Some day…

Today, Marc over at the The Wood Whisperer posted part 1 in a new video series Birth of a Guitar, documenting Rick Urschel’s classical guitar project.    The video really shows how many steps are involved in building an acoustic guitar, and how many diverse skills are required.   Just imagine what it was like building such a guitar in the days before power tools!  Even with modern tools, it’s a gargantuan effort.

Birth of a guitar

Replacing the Pickups

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I’m finally all set to replace the pickups on my Epiphone Riviera P93.  I’ll be using a set of Vintage Vibe Guitars height adjustable dog-eared P-90’s.  I’ll do a detailed review of these pickups later, but for now I’m focusing on how to do it.

In part 1 of this video series, I remove the old pickups, position the new pickups using a spacer, decide if the existing holes can be reused, and then show how to fill the existing holes in preparation for drilling new ones.  I was planning to use a 1/8” dowel to fill the holes, but it turned out that the factory positioned some of the holes too close to the edge of routed recesses, and the screws had breached through the sides.   So instead of dowels, I’m using Elmer’s Carpenter’s Interior/Exterior Wood Filler.

Wiring up the Jack

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This is part 5 of the video series on wiring up guitar electronics.

In this video, I show how to wire up the jack.  I’m replacing the original Epiphone jack with a Switchcraft L12A.  The L in the part number indicates a longer 3/8” bushing, which is just a bit longer than the Epi jack.  I’m hoping this well allow me to fit a lock washer in addition to the regular washer and nut, so the jack will stay tightly in place rather than falling into the body of the guitar so much (as I showed in my Don’t Know Jack video). More

A Bloody Mess

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Update Feb 4, 2011: I wrote up a number of ideas for solutions in this blog post.  And I wrote up my final mods in this post.

Before plunging into the details, here’s the abbreviated version: the Epiphone Riviera P93 guitar has 3 pickups and 3-way selector switch.  There’s no way to turn off the middle pot other than turning it all the way down. Because of this, the volume pots must be wired with independent (aka decoupled) wiring, which results in bad treble loss when turning down. And because of this wiring, there’s no way to use a treble bleed cap since turning down one will result in loss of high frequencies in the other. This problem can be avoided on a typical two pickup 3-way switch (traditional Les Paul style) guitar since it can use non-indendent (coupled) volume wiring.  Read on for details…More

Connecting the Tone Cap

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This is part 4 of the video series on wiring up guitar electronics.

In this one, I show how to wire up the tone capacitor to the tone pot.  I’m using a .01uF Orange Drop, which I selected for a slightly narrower range compared to the typical .022uF.  I never turned the tone all the way down with the .022, since it turned the sound into mud.  So with .01uF cap, it won’t be as dull when turned all the way down – making the full range of the pot more useful.

Tone Pot Tapers

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This is a quick video comparing linear and audio/log tapers for a tone control.  I’m comparing a Bourns 500k audio taper pot (PDB241-GTR01-504A2) with a Philmore PC27 500k linear taper pot.  The capacitor is a .022uF Orange Drop (225P100V 223K).  I’ve wired the neck pickup directly to the jack with the tone pot in parallel, just like a normal guitar circuit, but with no volume pot. More

Organizing Wire, Connecting Volume Pots and Switch

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Here is part 3 of the video series on wiring up guitar electronics.

In this video, I talk about how to lay out wires in a semi-hollow body so they aren’t ugly through the f-holes, using shrink wrap tubing to keep things organized.   I also show how to connect a volume pot, soldering the braided shield of a wire to the back of a volume pot that already has other wires connected to it (using needle nose pliers as a hold-down).   Lastly, I start wiring up the switch, and show what to do if you’ve lost track in the tubes of which wires are which.  If your multi-meter doesn’t have continuity mode (beeps when a connection is made), you can just use resistance mode and look for connections on 0 resistance.  Another idea to avoid confusion is to use different colored wires for each volume pot, or try to label them before running them through the tubes.

Soldering Pot Backs

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This is part 2 of the video series on wiring up guitar electronics.

All the metal parts of the guitar need to be tied to a common ground, including the pot bodies.   If you don’t do this, you end up with noisy ground problems.  A good place to wire the ground is to the back of the pots.

There’s a few tricks for successfully soldering to the backs of the pots.  First up is a hot iron.  I’ve tried with a 25w iron, and it just doesn’t cut it.  40w works, but be sure to let it heat up for 10 minutes or so before trying.  I use a cheap Radio Shack iron which switches between 25 and 40w.  Also, you need to roughen up the surface of the pot to get off any oil or grease, and to give some good grooves for the solder to adhere to – I just use 100 grit sandpaper. 

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