Dub's Wacky Project Guitars Thread--we're baaaaaack

[dubkitty]

i haven’t put the Hopf back together. i started physical therapy for my back this week and my time has been really scrambled. i hope to do it soon, but am not sure when.

i think i’ve found the hobby paint solution to the Jetstar. there’s a Japanese company called Mr. Hobby that makes among other things paint products which include small bottles of various primers. they all have Mister-themed names…there’s Mr. Surfacer, Mr. Finishing Surfacer, Mr. Aqueous Finishing Surfacer, Mr. Mahogany, Mr. Metal, and my choice Mr. Base White. i found an explanation of the different types and that sounds like the right one. if this actually works i’ll be a happy kitty. i’ll order it today and hopefully it’ll get here next week. at that point i’ll probably sand the body and headstock fixes so if necessary i can primer those as well and tint the color coat for all the areas at once. i sure do wish it didn’t take the color coats weeks to dry, but at this point i’m not going to start hunting for other paint solutions.

the Strat knobs are on the way, but won’t be here till Monday. if i run out of stuff to do i can work on the Galaxiemaster neck and/or do the (hopefully) last passes of polishing the body. though i’ll have to disassemble it for storage i really want to get the neck on because it’ll feel much more like a guitar then rather than a pile of parts. it won’t take a ton of work to do that. sometimes i think i’m overestimating how hard finishing the Galaxiemaster will be, but then i think about wiring an 8-position rotary pickup selector and the Schaller tone switch with a master volume that really needs to go out on the upper bout where the Jazzmaster pickup toggle is and it’s more nerve-racking. i guess i’ll have to run the wires from the selector to the tone switch, up to the upper bout for the volume knob, and then back out to the output jack. fortunately the body has wide enough routs for the wire placements.

everything with electrical needs is on indefinite hold other than the pickup mounts on the Double Jet. i’m going to order a Lido series Tele body from GFS to use for the Esquire Custom. it’s essentially the same as the Squier body, metric-spec poly-finished poplar with white binding, so it shouldn’t be a big problem if i decide to sell it. all the Esquire stuff will swap over except the output jack; the Lido bodies require an external plate. i don’t see that as a problem. i might end up capacitor-rolling because though the Arlo mod’s cap value makes it too quacky in the upper mids, my choice just sounded dulled though the modern weirdnesses of the wiring could be to blame. we’ll see when it’s back together with “vintage” wiring. if nothing else it should be easier to sell a whole guitar than a pile of Squier parts.

it’s kind of weird how some of my projects lead to multiple guitars, some of which i didn’t exactly want. i thought the Jetstar would be worse than it was and expected to harvest the pickups and chuck the rest, and i wasn’t looking for an Esquire at all. turns out that Esquires solve some—but not all—of my issues with Telecasters. the single hotter pickup is surprisingly good at doing the things i like on Tele, and i like the bridge switch position which bypasses the tone control because it gives you a 5th-gear bump for solos. if i was going to do country stuff i’d use it along with the Bigsby Supro and probably the Les Paul Special or the green Strat, though the Gemini Tele would also make sense. i still hate the 3-saddle bridges but don’t know that i care enough to change it. now that it’s settled, a horrible task that took a couple of hours going back and forth between intonation, string height, and literally pushing saddles sideways, it should be stable and is more in tune than the various stationary bridges on others of my guitars e.g. the Hopf, Kondor, Supro, and Tokai LP Special even though those bridges are all compensated. “cowboy compensated” maybe? i guess i’ll see if it remains stable over a longer period before deciding, assuming it stays for a longer period.

[dubkitty]

the Strat knobs are now in Richmond, and should be here Monday for sure barring some kind of postal weirdness.

[dubkitty]

i found these absolutely brilliant vintage Bakelite RCA radio knobs on eBay that i think i’ll get for the Galaxiemaster. i need something in a pointer stylie for the pickup selector and tone switch and these have a nice low profile that won’t harm my knuckles. i’ve seen other examples with white paint applied to the crevices which would be even better but may be a pain to do. black on a light background is much easier if you use India ink.

on this background pickguard color.

they want 1/4” D-shaft pots, which shouldn’t be a huge problem because i can file down round shafts which i’ve had to do before.

finishing the Hopf will be a bit protracted because i need to fill the holes from the old bridge inserts. i don’t have dowels anywhere near that big so i’ll use the rosewood filler i got thinking i’d use it on the Galaxiemaster fingerboard and then paint it black to blend in with the pickguard. that’ll add a day or 2 for it to dry. once again, “done” didn’t really mean done. and once again a problem i thought i’d dodged comes back to bite me in the ass. at least out of the vintage projects the Kondor is really, really done.

the Dyna Pro Jet, an old-school project from the 00s, is back on the list because i want Seymour Duncan Custom Shop Dynasonics. that’s way down the road, though, because they’re even more expensive than the Mojo Bigsby pickups. at well over $400 a pair they’ll be over $100 more than the original guitar cost. but they’re by far the best modern Dynas, better than the TV Jones and miles better than the stock Tokiwa Gretsch Dynas that are in there now. because of the cost that’s going at the very bottom of the list. i’m not made out of $300-400 purchases.

[dubkitty]

StewMac has been having a 20% off sale with the perk of a year’s free membership in their StewMAX program which gives you free shipping among other things, so i took a deep breath and ordered the soldering station along with a chisel tip bit for pots and the like and some solder since i used up the last coil. i’m still planning on taking time off from electrical work though i may have to do the M-77T pickups and the Esquire so they’re done. or done-ish at any rate. i’ve quite been enjoying not looking at the same group of guitars waiting to be done that were out for months. i really hope the new station helps me do better work and maybe even makes me not hate soldering with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

[dubkitty]

i got into the Hopf today and it turned out to not be too bad. the StewMac chisels did great at pushing back the edge of the rout so the bridge pickup clearance is sufficient. i mixed up some of the rosewood grain filler and taped off the open side of the bridge stud holes and packed them full of filler slightly above the level of the top since it’ll shrink when it dries. once it’s settled i’ll level it off and paint it black so it blends in with the pickguard.

to get it thick enough i had to mix more than was needed for the holes so i decided to fill the non-inlaid sections of the Höfner neck’s fingerboard because it’s by far the tiredest fingerboard i have. i think it’ll be an improvement once it’s sanded which it needed anyway.

[dubkitty]

a side note: i’ve long been curious about just what material the Hopf body was made of, and while chiseling out the rout pieces came off and then broke into smaller pieces in symmetrical layers indicating that it’s some kind of laminate in layers about 2 mm thick. i’ve seen claims on the internet that it’s the same material as the neck and is probably pine or linden. i can’t confirm or deny this, but the neck resembles the Framus laminate necks which i believe were maple. it also seems unlikely that a pine neck would work with the neck’s tiny truss rod and adjuster. at any rate, it seems like plywood was the postwar German material of choice.

lighter for scale.

the grain filler didn’t work well for filling the bridge stud holes. i think i’m going to clear it out and go get some proper filler at Home Depot. i’m tired of trying to make materials do things they weren’t meant to do. there’s holes in the apartment walls that could stand to be filled as well. it’s not entirely dry, so there’s still a chance it’ll work.

[dubkitty]

the Strat knobs were in fucking Charlottesville, but USPS somehow sent the package to Virginia Beach instead of delivering it. so that'll be another day, maybe 2. it's particularly galling because i'd rather wait to play it till it's really finished. that's life in the 21st, no-longer-American Century.