DIY e-guitar - Part 4 - Problems
So, now that the guitar is finished and assembled, looks fine, but does it work? Well.. no. Why?
* low E string ring fell off and made string unusable at first set-up - bought a cheapo nickel-plated light 9-42 set from Dunlop for the initial setup
* 21th fret a bit higher than it should be, the rest is perfectly fine - might fix it later, but it's really not that relevant given it's towards the end of the fretboard, and not causing any fretbuzz or problems
* tune-o-matic bridge weak, set-up screws held in place by a wire, but they can move up/down, and so can the individual saddles - will anyway replace it with a piezo saddle* one out of the six tuning pegs does not work as it should, it blocks each ~5-6 turns, you have to force it to move past that point, then it does it with a large click (probably a problem with the gear), so re-stringing is a pain due to initial tune-in requiring lots of tuning peg turns - have to replace the full set, so I am going with black LP-style tulip machine heads
* wiring is modern wiring, meaning turning any of the volumes down to 0 will cut off the signal - I want vintage wiring, and will anyway need to rewire everything to add the third pickup (piezo - using wiring from https://hazeguitars.com/blog/a-more-flexible-3-pickup-gibson with some modifications), and something seems wrong with the wiring (possibly somewhere with the ground), as in some tone/volume setups there's a lot of background noise. This might as well be my mistake, as the circuit is not yet finalized with solder, so it's only wired up for testing (wires wrapped), so it might not make the best contact.
* A500k is used for tone pots and B500k is used for volume pots - I want either A500k for all, or A500k for volume and B500k for tone
* the worst thing is that after everything being set up, the G string simply doesn't intonate well, even if both empty, 12th fret harmonic and 12th fret fretted it is a perfect G, e.g. in 2nd fret fretted it is 20 cents off from the A it should be, and it really stands out from every chord in an annoying way. I did try moving the tune-o-matic saddle all the way to both ends, it didn't change a thing in that problem, based on some suggestions I have tried reversing the bridge, that didn't help either. So the next suggestions say that either my nut is too high, has a bad cut for the G string, or the G string itself has a problem, and might get fixed with another set of strings. In any case, I ordered a replacement LP nut at the local guitar shop and will jump in, request some tech review of the setup, take a look at the intonation issues, and replace the nut (just in case).
So, summarizing:
* low E string ring fell off and made string unusable at first set-up - bought a cheapo nickel-plated light 9-42 set from Dunlop for the initial setup
* 21th fret a bit higher than it should be, the rest is perfectly fine - might fix it later, but it's really not that relevant given it's towards the end of the fretboard, and not causing any fretbuzz or problems* tune-o-matic bridge weak, set-up screws held in place by a wire, but they can move up/down, and so can the individual saddles - will anyway replace it with a piezo saddle* one out of the six tuning pegs does not work as it should, it blocks each ~5-6 turns, you have to force it to move past that point, then it does it with a large click (probably a problem with the gear), so re-stringing is a pain due to initial tune-in requiring lots of tuning peg turns - have to replace the full set, so I am going with black LP-style tulip machine heads
* wiring is modern wiring, meaning turning any of the volumes down to 0 will cut off the signal - I want vintage wiring, and will anyway need to rewire everything to add the third pickup (piezo - using wiring from https://hazeguitars.com/blog/a-more-flexible-3-pickup-gibson with some modifications), and something seems wrong with the wiring (possibly somewhere with the ground), as in some tone/volume setups there's a lot of background noise. This might as well be my mistake, as the circuit is not yet finalized with solder, so it's only wired up for testing (wires wrapped), so it might not make the best contact.
* A500k is used for tone pots and B500k is used for volume pots - I want either A500k for all, or A500k for volume and B500k for tone
* the worst thing is that after everything being set up, the G string simply doesn't intonate well, even if both empty, 12th fret harmonic and 12th fret fretted it is a perfect G, e.g. in 2nd fret fretted it is 20 cents off from the A it should be, and it really stands out from every chord in an annoying way. I did try moving the tune-o-matic saddle all the way to both ends, it didn't change a thing in that problem, based on some suggestions I have tried reversing the bridge, that didn't help either. So the next suggestions say that either my nut is too high, has a bad cut for the G string, or the G string itself has a problem, and might get fixed with another set of strings. In any case, I ordered a replacement LP nut at the local guitar shop and will jump in, request some tech review of the setup, take a look at the intonation issues, and replace the nut (just in case).
So, summarizing:
- machine heads have to be replaced (black LP-style tulip)
- nut has to be replaced (black nut - looking for black graphteq tusq xl)
- pickups will be replaced (double-coil pickups with 4 wires for coil split)
- volume pots will be replaced (push-pull pots for coil split on the two magnetic pickups, simple pot for piezo volume, and one master tone pot)
- tune-o-matic bridge have to be and will be replaced (piezo tune-o-matic)
- tail-piece will be replaced (black wraparound tailpiece)
- 3-way toggle will be replaced (with a black one)
- jack plate and jack socket will be replaced (black one)
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