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so last night i was able to get things playable…the neck having never been used, it’ll take some time to settle in. i had to put three shims, 1.5 mm worth, under the bridge to get the strings off the fingerboard with the bridge as high as it could be adjusted before the wheels run out of room on the posts. it could use a fret leveling but i don’t want to deal with that. in the morning light (HA! it’s not even 6 yet) there’s two functional problems i need to deal with:

1. the neck pickup is definitely askew, and both pickups need to budge over to the right about 3 mm. i really don’t want to take the guard off again, but if i don’t fix it it’ll drive me batty. i’ll need to reshape the neck opening so it’s more straight. budging them over should be simple.

2. i need to take a look at the tremolo. there’s slack somewhere in there that leaves space so the handle doesn’t make contact to pull up until you move it significantly.

i don’t really want to deal with it or destring it so i can get a look at the trem, but i’ll deal with it later on today.

the neck mount is also weird. the pickguard doesn’t leave any room to push it over, but it isn’t exactly in line with the body. i don’t think there’s much to be done with it, though. as long as i get good signal on all the strings it doesn’t really matter if they’re lined up properly.

on the positive side, it feels really good to play. the frets are vintage tiny but that’s OK. the fingerboard is great since i sanded it, and i love the fat neck profile…it’s kind of a C shape but is slightly asymmetrical, lower on the bass side which makes it very comfortable to position your left hand. and it’s very light. i have no idea what it’s made of; the exposed bits show a light wood with visible grain like mahogany, but it’s far too light for that.

i think i've managed to sort out the remaining problems. i moved the pickups over to the right ~3 mm, and put a shim in the left side of the neck pocket. the polepieces line up with the strings much better now, but when i got everything back together the neck was fretting out all over the place. i have no idea why it's being like that, but i added another shim under the bridge and one at the front of the neck pocket and it's playing decently. hoping a night of string tension will give me a little more room. i also took the tremolo apart and adjusted it as best i could. it's still wobbly, but there's a lot less slop in the mechanism. i think i'm actually done now. tomorrow i'll do the lacquer pen stuff on the scrapey bits after i adjust the pickups. i guess the neck pickup is still a bit crooked, but at this point i really don't care enough to mess with it any more. somewhere down the road it'll be a nagging little problem like the Strat bridge that i'll fix. but i'm not taking this thing apart again right now. i think once i'm done setting it up i'm going to do some board stuff before i move on to the Kondor. i'm tired, and my fingers, hands, and wrists hurt.

i got to actually play it acoustically for a bit just now. it has a unique kind of resonance for an electric guitar. i think it’s a combination of light body wood, the huge bathtub-and-drain body rout, and the aluminum pickguard serving as a de facto soundboard that makes it sound almost resophonic. i find playing acoustic guitar licks and chords really comfortable. the more i play on it the more i like the neck…it’s just the right amount of fat to wrap my hand around, and the fingerboard feels really good. i haven’t found myself missing position markers on the fingerboard at all because it feels comfortable to me and my hands just know where to go. i’m looking forward to dialing in the pickups and finding out what it likes to do.

here's the Twisty with the Kondor, my other successful from-parts invention. hopefully the Hopf pickups sound as good as the Kent/Guyatone PUs in the Kondor, which really surprised me. the Kondor is waiting to be worked on...the strings are slack and the nut is off to facilitate clearcoating the headstock, which will also require taking out the tuners. that's simple here because the Fender/Ping locking tuners come off just by undoing the threaded bushing. i don't think the Kondor stuff will take too long because i've already been over it in the last year. there's really nothing technical to do, just finish stuff and figuring out why the pickguard won't sit all the way down in the control rout. i assume something needs a bit more lebensraum, but am hoping i don''t have to get into Dremeling the cavity even though last round was easy. i might wait on doing the Kondor headstock because i think it needs a full moon sticker on the upper part of the headstock. now, whether i can find one small enough to fit is another question. so far the smallest i've found are 1.4-1.5", which might be a wee bit too large. i need to measure the headstock when i get home.

all the guitars on here are the Kondor:

https://soundcloud.com/dubkitteh-1/a-hill-by-the-sea

i'm being haunted by a body i saw on eBay, a bolt-neck hollowbody double-cut in rosewood veneer over heck knows what. i don't have money for it right now, but if i do that's going into the projects queue. god only knows how i'll find a neck that fits the pocket. the sticker says "position of bridge base" so i suppose you could figure out the scale by figuring out how far it is from the bridge to the butt of the neck which presumably would have 21 frets, or to the center line of the neck pickup rout which should be at the putative 24th fret. it appears to be entirely hollow other than a block/sound post under the bridge position. you don't see shit like this every day. in fact, i've never seen a 335-depth rosewood body. i already have wooden bridge bases in my parts box.

i had to go back under the hood of the Hopf this morning…when i started adjusting the pickups the neck pickup shorted out. i knew the connection at the pickup shell was wonky and should have fixed it last time, but noooo. my old friend teflon plumbers’ tape worked to insulate where it was shorting to the pickup cover. while i was about it i also put shims in the front of the neck pocket to fix the neck angle and as a result was able to lower the bridge from teetering-barely-on-the-last-post-threads. i checked repeatedly before putting the guard back on and the sound is solid.

so what does it play like? as noted above i absolutely love the neck, and it’s very light and comfortable. the pickups are simultaneously fat and sharp, and remind me of a cross between P-90s and pedal steel pickups. the tone switch is actually cool and useful, and gives me 4 sounds from each pickup. this could be really useful for my loops. i adjusted the tremolo and got it to where the shift in the mechanism when you pull up on the bar is minimized (but still present).

overall i like it a whole lot. it’s a little nerve-racking to play because i worry something else will come up, but once it’s been working for awhile that should go away.

i’m taking the rest of the weekend off from projects…i’ve been working on this thing for like 3 weeks and i need to do something less stressful for a bit. the Kondor is waiting in the on-deck circle.

i thought you might like to see a bit more detail, so here’s photos of the shimmed areas.


that’s 4 shims in the neck pocket and 4 shims under the bridge. i don’t love the lumberyard look, but it was necessary.

i’ve been playing it more and have some thoughts. first off, the pickups are extremely microphonic which means that it broadcasts every switch throw, tap on the pickguard, and creak of the tuners. i’ll have to be careful when recording with it. i would actually consider having them potted if it didn’t involve taking the whole schlemazl apart again. i think i have mild PTSD from struggling to get everything to work.

i absolutely love the tone switch. all 4 positions are useable with either or both pickups and that gives me a ton of options e.g. the bridge pickup is fairly fat and not that trebly, but i can make it sound like a Strat using the bass cut position. i’m happy that i have the leftover switches from the Jupiter guard so i can have the same circuit in the Galaxiemaster. 4 switch positions for 3 pickups…i might just get lost in there.

i twiddled with the tremolo again and improved it. it’s still not great, but it works OK.

i’m sticking with not working on the Kondor until Monday. i have a Haxan to test against the fuzz units and may put the Instant Lo-Fi Junky on the FEB.

did i mention that it loves pedals? well, now i did.

Question for you, Dub. Did that flat bridge plate with the posts attached come with the guitar or did you buy it? I was looking for that exact part and nobody who ever had a listing for one still had them, and the only company that still made it new was on indefinite hiatus when I checked

i bought the bridge separately, but it’s the OEM bridge. there’s one on eBay now for $145. the seller has a ton of interesting items.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/126955451803?m ... media=COPY

i spend an inordinate amount of time searching eBay and Reverb for interesting parts. i always search “teisco,” “guyatone,” “kawai,” “hofner,” “framus,” and “hopf,” narrowing it down using the site’s search filters to restrict results to the “Parts” subcategory. i’ll search other manufacturers as they come to mind.

Thanks. I found the bridge plate by searching for teisco parts, initially. I'm also a deep practitioner of Google-fu. Lots of reverse image searches and scouring oem listings, looking for key words. I'm sure I annoyed some ebay sellers with my messages like "hey, there was this image on google from 5 years ago with this model# and description, do you still carry that?". There was a lot of vintage used parts that fit the bill on there and Reverb, but too expensive for my project budget (it rhymes with "shmalmost nothing"). I came up with some ideas to DIY it, since it'll eventually be kind of a ratrod guitar, but it's on hold for a bit anyway

i try not to spend too much on parts, but i wanted the Hopf to be as close to original as i could get.

i have an old Teisco bridge i’m probably never going to use that you can have if you like. the space between the posts is smaller than Tunomatic spacing (65 mm vs. 75 mm) so if you need standard spacing it won’t work.


i’m not an absolute stickler for perfect intonation…as long as it’s not painful i can boogie with it. after all, only one of my acoustics has any kind of bridge compensation at all and they sound fine to me. this track has the old version of the Hopf, with the Hofner neck that’s too long so the intonation is a bit wack, but i worked with it.

https://on.soundcloud.com/B3NYCGGiBznQgt5w7

i’ve had a week with the finished Hopf, and i’m pretty happy. i raised the pickups today because the output was low compared to a control guitar (my Tokai Les Paul Special with P-90s). it’s still a bit low compared to my typical levels, probably similar to the Kondor that way. i was afraid there were still wiring problems because i was getting random noises while playing or moving it, but it turned out it was just a bad cable. thank goodness…i really wasn’t ready to take it apart again.

it turns out to have a pretty short scale at 24.5” so i might go up to .011s…that doesn’t bother me on Gibson-scale guitars (24.75”) but this guitar is a little bit boingy with .010s.

i oiled the heck out of the tuners, and they’re tons better, about as quiet as you could ask for from 50-year-old open-back tuners. there’s a little play in them, but it’s copeable.

i’m starting to feel like i’m done. i can’t really think of anything else i could do to improve it other than put a piece of plastic or tape between the tremolo collet and the base plate to eliminate the clicking when i pull up on the bar because there’s a bit of free space between them i can’t adjust away. i’ll do that when i change strings.

i had one more go at the Hopf. i put .011s on which feel much better; i'm taking this as an indication that if i ever get a Jaguar (unlikely as i don't sound good on them) or Mustang (possible but a tad redundant with the Duo Sonic) i'll also need (LOL) Power Slinkys. that's .011-.048. i got 2 sets and will put the other on the Duo Sonic, which will benefit even more from the heavier strings. i took a plastic washer that sits below the spring on Bigsbys and put it over the tremolo collet to keep the base plate and the plate that moves from clacking together when the bar comes up. it’s still not a great tremolo, but it’s serviceable. the bar still rattles a bit, but that’s kind of inherent to the design. it's only really good for wobbles less than a half tone in pitch, not a dive-bomber in the least, and mostly bends down due to the design. i also glued the bridge shims together so they’re easier to work with…at least now when they slide when i’m trying to move the bridge to intonate they’ll move as a group. i honestly can’t think of anything else that needs to be done. well, i need to trim the string ends that are flapping around the headstock.