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oh happy day...i forgot that there's no can on the Twisty controls. this opens up the wiring options considerably. i need to see if the Jupiter pickups will stretch far enough on the harness to reach the cutouts. if that fits i'll need to figure out how the volume control and jack are wired...everything about this setup is literally foreign to anything else i've ever worked on. the shielding on the pickup wires runs all the way to the jack. it sure is grounded well, though. i guess RF interference must have been a big problem playing in the BRD.

so i figured out that i can take the pickups + switches assembly out of the Jupiter guard and attach that to the Twisty volume control and jack with only three soldering points: hot lead from the switches to the volume control, pickup leads shielding to jack GND, and from the switches to GND. i got the pickups out of the Jupiter guard and it appears that there's JUST enough wiring between the pickups to stretch the added distance between the pickup positions on the Twisty guard (about 0.4"). so now i have to disconnect the Twisty pickups and switches, and then figure out how to configure the pickup mounting apertures in the guard so they fit. that'll be the hard part. after that theoretically all i should need to do is solder 3 terminals, get the bridge out, and string it up. i'll be ordering some StewMac shiz for finishing work, and one of those tasks will be stabilizing the areas of the Twisty body where the finish is totally scraped off. i'll probably end up using brush-on clear coat, but plan on trying touchups with one of their clear lacquer paint markers which is waaaaay easier to control. i'm probably not going to have it playable this weekend, though...Becky has designs on me for Valentines' Day, and Saturday morning we're picking up her new puppy after which i need to make up work hours from taking VD off so a lot of the next few days is spoken for. i'm also going super slowly because i don't want to screw anything up. i particularly don't want to get lost in the arcana of German guitar wiring if i can possibly help it.

i got the bridge pickup cutout finished. i’m having to move the center line of the pickups about 3mm in from the top and bottom edges to allow for clearance since they’re bigger than the old pickups. i’m leaving it here for now because i need to rest up for tomorrow. sometime on Saturday i’ll do the other cutout and drill new holes for the mounting screws; after that there’s the aforementioned three soldering points, and if everything’s working then i’m essentially done other than setup and finish issues. oh, and i still have to file the shaft on the volume knob so the knob will fit.


in other project news, i’ve been working on the concepts of wiring the Galaxiemaster. i found white rollers for Jazzmaster parts so i’ll do the pickup volumes as originally planned and white on/off switches for each pickup. i should be able to fabricate 3 roller pot brackets from 2 Jazzmaster or Jaguar brackets (they have different distances between the 2 pots that attach to the bracket) which i’ll need to do to get the pots to line up with the ends of the pickups. when i’m done with the Hopf i want to investigate the most severe automotive polishing compounds. i saw one at O’Reilly that specifically said it’ll take out orange peel texture, which is a GFS body thing. if it works i’ll consider using a similar quality/price level body for my off-in-the-distance Tele and Strat builds, otherwise it’s back to buying used Fender bodies. i’d rather get Strat bodies that have the tremolo mount screw holes already done. the grain filler is ordered so I’ll be able to finish off the Höfner neck, and i can graft in the extra Schaller/Hopf tone switch no problem. the hardest part will be laying out the pickguard, which i can’t totally do until i fabricate the brackets and buy the switches so i know how they’ll mount. i have lots of pickguard template printouts, so it’ll get done. when that guitar is done it’ll be a huge load off my mind, and the culmination of a process that started when i bought a pair of Höfner staple mini-hums off eBay in 2012 because Neal out of Slowdive used to play a Galaxie in their early days, swapping with a Rickenbacker 360.

i had better take a break from guitar projects after i finish the Hopf…i tend to work on guitars, projects, or pedalboards until i get absolutely fried on that part of my life and have to do something else, and i need to spend on stuff other than odd Jazzmaster bits. there’s a couple of things i need to test with the boards which i’ll probably do next. my HAXAN is arriving tomorrow, i want to try the Instant Lo-Fi Junky on the FEB again—i took it off because the always-present compression irritated me but it could be useful—and i need to test the Boss LM-2 and Keeley bass compressor to see if either can control runaway loop volume. by the time i’m done with that it’ll probably be time to order the Keystep and put together my Tiny Synth and Drum Machines corner, but i really do want the Galaxiemaster done. there are several small finish-related tasks i’ll be able to do on various guitars with the StewMac stuff that’s arriving tomorrow which i’ll go into as they come up that’ll slot in when i have time and inclination.

this is the pickguard material i picked out from the Pickguardian site for the Galaxiemaster. it’s 1/8” acrylic and truly has the Italian-guitar vibe. to me it looks like the surface of one of the Gas Giant (giant GAS?) planets. on evaluation i’ll need black roller knobs and switches; white would be more difficult to pick out of the background. while parts searching i found black roller knobs labeled 1-10, which is a brilliant idea i’m shocked Fender never used.

i made a short list of items i need to figure out pickguard item placement, including one roller pot assembly (with bracket, pots, and wheels), one Fender slide switch, one of the pickups, and the Schaller tone switch. that’ll be down the road a bit because i’m not doing pickguard stuff till after the body and neck are ready.

i need a set of those rollers for my Jazzmaster, so i might get that sooner.

now that the StewMac stuff has arrived i’m working on small fixes on various guitars in between the major projects. when i got the Kalamazoo Oriole one thing i didn’t like was that the Oriole logo sticker on the headstock had too much flashing visible around the edges.


so i carefully trimmed around the edges of the logo with an X-acto knife to get that stuff off there. it isn't perfect, but i think it looks better. the material is quite thick, with a black backing behind the color print.


the imperfections pop out close-up, but from a couple of feet away they're invisible except on the tail of the "e."


i'm going to take a break, finish my coffee, and consider what to do next.

clearcoated the damaged areas around the soundhole of the Epiphone acoustic as well as a spot on the left side of the upper bout from being dropped c.1974 when i was hitchhiking without a case and the strap came off. used the Clear paint marker from StewMac. it might have been better to use the poly clearcoat, but i figured lacquer would be more compatible with the old, presumably lacquered finish. unfortunately, the marker lacquer got sucked into some surface finish cracks that ran down from the damage on the soundboard, leaving dark streaks along the cracks. hopefully that’ll resolve itself when the paint dries. i won’t know just how good a result i got for several hours at least, probably till tomorrow. it’s good to have protected those areas on the top in any case. i’m going to wait to post photos until everything’s dry. i HATE waiting for paint to dry…as a kid i wrecked more than one model car/plane by trying to put it together before the paint cured.

here’s the result of the clearcoating on the Epiphone. it looks a lot better now that it’s dry. the visible bits of the first underlying ply, which is darker and runs cross-grained to the top layer, came out darker than when i started but i don’t see that as a problem. they were already like that, just less dark.


i'm torn between doing the headstock on the Kondor, which needs clearcoating to protect the paper condor sticker i put on there, and doing the other pickup opening on the Hopf guard. the Kondor will require destringing, tuner removal, and tape masking around the edge; the Hopf is another 1.5-2 hours of filing, filing, and more filing.

i got the other pickup cutout on the Hopf guard done. i'm going to chill for awhile and then drill the new holes for the pickup mounting screws. once that's done i should be able to connect the pickups/switches to the jack and volume control, check that signal's passing, and then put everything together, put the bridge on (i'm going to let it float since it's non-compensated), and string it up. i'm going to clearcoat the parts of the body where the finish is worn away before it's "done." i like when "done" means actually done. i reckon i'll do the Kondor next. i may try filling some of the chips around the edges with the StewMac black paint marker, but i'll try one inconspicuous spot first to see how it works. we're coming along here.


note: the neck pickup is straight; for some reason the pickguard edge where it meets the butt of the neck is slightly diagonal.

the pickguard is now physically done…drilling the screw holes for the pickup screws was trickier than it sounds, and i did a lot of filing with my tiny round file moving holes to where they needed to be and making them large enough to fit the screw diameter. once that was done i mounted everything on the pickguard and put the paddle switch levers on. i had to file down the shaft on the volume knob to fit the Hopf knob from the Jupiter guard, which requires a D-shaped shaft. i didn’t want to use the Jupiter’s volume pot because it was a tiny plastic thing.


you know how cordially i despise soldering, so perhaps i can be forgiven for punting till tomorrow on finishing up the wiring. it’s almost 8 and i’ve been working on it for about 5 hours, which is enough for one day. i absolutely will have everything put together tomorrow. after that i’ll do the Kondor headstock and experiment with the black lacquer paint marker.

something interesting i discovered is that the contrasting logo, labels, etc. are engraved through the paint onto the guard and are bare aluminum, not white as i thought. i tried rubbing some white grease pencil into the logo thinking it could use some help but that actually made it look worse, accentuating the unevenness of the engraving. sometimes working on these 60s foreign guitars is a very strange revisit to an extremely different world.

before i went to bed last night i tested the black lacquer marker on a part of the Kondor body that's beaten up. it blends so well with the old lacquer, which it literally melts into, that i decided to sand the damaged parts of the body edge and try to get the best possible result. so that's more crap added to the Kondor list. i really have to finish off the Hopf today. i think i'm going to use the clear lacquer on its damaged bits rather than the poly clearcoat because it'll blend better, but that'll be after i have a chance to play it and see how it feels.

naturally i got partway into soldering stuff and the rechargeable battery on the soldering iron died. so it's charging merrily away while i listen to Andy Bell Space Station. why did i buy a battery-powered iron? because it was the cheapest one with a power control knob. lesson learned.

i'm pretty sure i know where i'm going now. the tricky bit is combining all the wires that run to GND including the braided shielding on the pickup wires. i think i'm going to use a small wire-nut electrical connector, several of which have been sitting in the tool box for ages.

when i got everything wired up it didn’t work. i wasn’t sure if the problem might be the Jupiter switches, so i decided to put the original Twisty switches back in because i know they work. i also removed most of the shielding from the pickup cables. i needed the slack in the wiring because the wires were so stretched that it could have been grounding out somewhere even though i wrapped the cable with electrical tape to insulate it. i soldered a ground wire onto the stub of the shielding and spliced extra wire at several points including the positive wires from both pickups so i could route things in a more sensible fashion. i ran out of time before i had to leave so i didn’t get to finish it, but i checked over and over to try to get it right. when i get home tomorrow i’ll finish the soldering and plug the guard into an amp to test it. fingers crossed.

in retrospect i should have left everything else alone and just wired the Jupiter pickups into the pre-existing circuit, but i didn’t want to mess with the pickup wires. which i wound up doing anyway. sometimes i go the long way around. i’m really looking forward to having these guitars done so hopefully i won’t have to do so much creative wiring. not looking forward to wiring the Galaxiemaster at ALL.

well, it works. there was some weird grounding happening on one of the pickup connectors, but after i moved the wires around some it resolved itself. now i have to set it up...i got strings on, but i think i need to put a shim under the bridge to raise it slightly or adjust the truss rod, which requires lowering the neck pickup so i can get at the tiny (2 mm) Allen adjuster. but the hard stuff is done. woo-hoo and all that. the visual balance is nice, isn't it?

once i get it to where it's playing OK i plan to go over the scraped parts of the body--which is somewhat better than i remembered--with the clear lacquer marker to protect them.

despite working carefully from the old pickup openings and keeping the new cuts centered, the pickups are off to the right a bit. happily all the strings get good tone. i should measure the impedance and see how hot they are. they're pretty snappy, more like Dynasonics than P-90s but with a bit of Japanese airiness to the sound. those polepieces are huge, almost Dynasonic-sized if not actually larger in diameter.

it’s weird playing an electric guitar with a 20-fret neck with no position markers on the fingerboard. it does have larger-than-usual black dots on the side.

next i'm going after the Kondor stuff. i'll sand the damaged edges of the body and use the black paint marker to touch those spots up. i'm not going to try to make it perfect, just taking care of the nasty obvious stuff. i'll also clearcoat the face of the headstock as previously mentioned. not going straight into it this evening, though. once i'm done with these 2 guitars i'm going to get out the boards; i try to switch from one thing to another before i get crispy-fried on what i'm doing. i also have a list of small/medium fixes to other guitars that i'm working my way through. after the Kondor will be the Galaxiemaster, which i'm anticipating with equal parts excitement and dread. i have the grain filler for the fingerboard, but still need to investigate polishing compounds as i continue to seek alternatives to hours and hours of sanding. since i decided to use black knobs etc. i can use standard measurements for Jazzmaster switches and roller pots. it's going to be tricky to lay out the wiring for this. i go back and forth about individual volume controls for each pickup, and whether i need a master volume knob. i think i'll have to do a master volume, though, which i could put where the pickup switch goes on a standard Jazzmaster layout because i need a one-move kill switch. so that'd be three pickup on/off switches, a roller volume pot for each pickup, the Schaller tone switch, and a master volume pot. i might put the master volume on the right upper bout like a Gretsch.