curtisa

I take it you mean the reglued pieces on the top left and top right corners? I assume the router was above the workpiece and you were moving the bit in an anticlockwise direction around the perimeter: If that were the case, I'm kinda not surprised you lost the top right corner. There's not an awful lot of timber there to keep it all together, and the bit would want to shear the endgrain away as you got closer to the edge quite easily, particularly if the depth of cut was a bit too ambitious and/or you were moving quickly. The second section I've marked with the '?', could be similar, but again depends on my assumption of the arrow indicating which way you were moving the router at the time; a small section of unsupported timber and the router bit wanting to shear the piece away from the larger mass of timber - poof! The fact that both pieces you're regluing are in a near straight line could indicate that there was some kind of pre-exisitng weakness along that section of grain. Maybe you just got unlucky? Were you routing with a template? How thick is the piece you were cutting?

The FX Edge III 8 is a fixed bridge, not a floating trem. AFAIK there are no detailed dimension drawings of the Ibanez bridges available. Your best bet is to get the bridge and construct routing templates for it yourself. Based on photographic evidence, the bridge is recessed by perhaps 8-10mm. It could be as simple as a flat bed that is merely 2-3mm larger than the overall footprint of the bridge, but there could be other features underneath the bridge that need to be allowed for. Even so, this could easily be measured and incorporated into your routing plan: The more critical features will be the two mounting studs either side of the bridge, and the third smaller standoff at the back. Again, your best bet is to measure the actual bridge and create a drilling layout yourself. Neck height above the body is generally dictated by the bridge you intend to use, so once again you're stuck until you can measure the bridge. The FX Edge III looks to be a relatively tall unit but is designed to be recessed, so you have the option to make it sit appreciably higher or lower than most other types of bridge, giving plenty of leeway for adjustability.

A slightly more detailed description of the technique here.

Just a set of HSS uncoated bits for me, plus a set of Colt Twinland brad points for the high precision stuff (the good ones, before they produced the dud set). Peck drilling (plunge in a bit, back it out, plunge in a bit more, repeat) will help with chip evacuation and minimise rubbing and excess heat build-up. I borrow (stole? paid homage to?) the technique by user @RestorationAD - just about the best way I can think of to drill the ferrule holes on a standard drill press I've come across. Click the link and scroll down to get the pictorial story about how he does it. The trick is to drill from the top side using a short stubby bit to about half depth, flip the body over and use the locating pin on the drill press to ensure the top side remains aligned with the tip of the drill bit, and drill the backside so that the two sets of holes meet in the middle. You can then add your counterbores for the ferrules while the locating pin in the drill press keeps everything concentric. The shorter bit means less chance of deflection once it gets too deep in the wood. Expecting a skinny bit to give you a perfect perpendicular hole all the way through a body in one go is asking for trouble. Even on a CNC this would be hit or miss. Probably no cheaters way of doing those other than 'measure twice, cut once'. Use a brad point bit for the fretboard markers to prevent wandering. For side markers I use an awl (or other similar pointy stick) to 'pre-divot' the intended location of the dot, and then finish off with the corresponding tiny bit. Just the cordless driver is all I'd use in that case.

The lack of customer relations would be enough to put me off...

Members here will occasionally post their own audio/video samples as part of their Guitar Of The Month entry. Have a browse through the individual GOTM winners page to see what's on offer.

Oil bottle is a nice touch Rosewood and Cottonwood are two very different timbers. Unless it goes by different common names based on where you live, Cottonwood is a genus of one of the Poplars. That being the case, that's the darkest looking Poplar I've ever seen There's not an awful lot of straight, tight grain in those photos, so usefulness as a neck or fingerboard material is a bit questionable. Bodies or tops may be an option, but again there's a lot of strange grain directions going on there in a small area that would make me a bit leery of jumping straight on board. I'd be asking questions of the seller like, 'how thick?' or 'how dry?' His response may help guide your decision...

Interesting idea, not sure I've seen a traditional metal saddled bridge on an acoustic before I'm having trouble visualising where your metal insert plate is meant to fit in the whole scheme of things. I'm assuming that the six 'screw holes' are for mounting the saddle screws through, so does this mean the metal insert sits behind the wooden bridge block perpendicular to the plane of the guitar top? And the strings are therefore through-strung from the back a bit like a pinless acoustic bridge?: One thing to watch out for when marrying saddles with wood (which you may have already considered) - the small grub screws used for height adjustment of each saddle will likely gouge and dent the flat area on the bridge plate quite easily. Even in a traditional Strat it's not unusual to see the chrome baseplate dented or scuffed through years of downwards string pressure or adjusting the saddle heights.

Hard to go wrong with Wilkinson stuff at any price point. VS100 is one of my favourite non-locking trems, but I also haven't found too many people complaining about the quality of any of their other lower-spec'ed models either. Another vote for the Babicz trems here. I recently helped my brother rejuvenate an old Strat copy with one of their FCH drop-in replacement 6-screw trems and was pleasantly surprised by the quality for the money. At less than $80AUD it seemed outlandishly cheap for what you got. Whether you buy into the 'more contact = better tone' spiel or not, it's still a very nice bit of kit.

That would be me. I thought those MDF cutouts looked familiar If you're going to dowel and redrill the post you will need to use a crossgrain wood plug rather than a regular dowel. Dowel might be convenient to use, but because the grain direction in the dowel runs perpendicular in the plugged hole there won't be enough strength to withstand the combined pull of strings and springs on the trem post once its installed. Even if you dowel up the hole and redrill it perfectly, you'll find that the post will want to gradually lean over and oval-out the plugged hole. You'll need to install some kind of wooden plug to fill the hole to match the grain direction. That'll require a plug cutter drill bit. The other alternative is to route out the entire section of timber to cover one or both holes, insert a rectangle of timber to fill the void, and redrill the hole(s). If you intend to line the trem cavity in felt or paint it black it will be invisible. Edit: or do as @Bizman62 suggests: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. A slightly leaning Floyd is only a problem if the cosmetics of it bothers you.

There is no standard to speak of. You're left with whatever room is available after you subtract the remainder of distance from the last fret on the fretboard, minus any excess fret board extension past the last fret. Say you have a 24 fret neck on a 30" scale length. The remaining scale length between 24th fret and bridge will be approximately (30/2) - (30/4) = 7.5". There will be an extension of the fret board of say 0.4" so that the last fret has some meat in the fret board to attach to, so your total remaining length between the neck and bridge will be around about 7.5 - 0.4 = 7.1" for you to position pickups at your leisure. All modern necks will at the very least have an adjustable truss rod installed to help counterract the pull of the strings. Necks prone to twisting or warping (eg, long scale lengths, high string tension, made from materials not known for their lateral strength, super-thin profiles etc) will sometimes also have carbon fibre rods or beams installed to help stiffen the neck further and provide more rigidity. Dual truss rods are sometimes used to not only allow for backbow/forward bow adjustment, but also twist correction. The risk with going super-thin isn't largely from snapping the neck, but rather having a neck that flexes easily. This can play havoc if you're a player who has a habit of being physically active while playing (getting 'in the groove' you can easily flex the neck and throw the instrument in and out of tune and/or cause action issues as the neck bends), or during temperature or humidity changes, where the materials in the neck do not have enough inherent strength to withstand moisture or temperature changes and thus allow the neck to change shape. Best case you will find yourself doing numerous trussrod adjustments as the neck flexes in response to the environment. Worst case you'll end up with a neck that ends up warped and unplayable at certain times of the year...or just warped and unplayable. If this was a first time build I'd check out some spec sheets for some commerically made basses of similar specifications and see what dimensions they offer on their necks, and whether carbon fibre reinforcement was used and/or dual truss rods. I'd then base the build on similar specs and not deviate too far beyond them. Even longscale 7- or 8-string guitars might offer a clue as to what is practical in the way of neck thickness and reinforcement methods.

Rogue foot shot! Rogue Quality Street shot! Good to see you're not monkeying about with this build. </thread derail>

It's possible that EMG changed their pin arrangement too. I have a feeling they didn't always use their quick connect system, and if you look at the way they arrange each of the connectors on the in/out cables it wouldn't work any other way with their system as it currently stands: Each cable is signal + shield, so the only way you can make it work is if the corresponding pin arrangement on the PA2 is <in> - <ground> - <ground> - <out> with the input connector flipped as per EMGs recommendation above, or <in> - <ground> - <out> - <ground>. That gives me a bit of a chuckle. I hope no-one was too disappointed that the mystical tonal qualities of the PA2 turned out to be nothing more than a textbook application of a 20dB opamp. When EMG say the PA2 is an opamp 20dB clean boost system with variable gain, they weren't mincing their words.

Back to @mistermikev's original question (thread derailment strikes again!): Well, your labelling of each point on SV1 appears to line up with the schematic that @Prostheta linked to (assuming it's the same one you had in your original post), so I'd say you've got it right. Or the schematic has it wrong and EMG have it right? Given it appears to be a unofficial reverse engineering of the original product, it's entirely possible the author mislabelled some of the pins. I guess you just need to decide what's more important to you - a working circuit or compatibility with other EMG products.

Hey, it's the end of 2019. Lets have a wee dram and forgeddaboudit...

Betterer. Now I can see what's going on a bit clearer. Both opamps are non-inverting (input signal is being applied to both non-inverting inputs simultaneously). Both opamps have negative feedback, otherwise you'd have one opamp doing it's opamp-y thing while the other was a nice squarewave generator. Probably no real value in increasing the input impedance given the application. Worst case source impedance for a super-hot humbucker is, what? 25k? 500k input impedance will never scare such a pickup. They do have that effect, but C3/C4's primary purpose is to prevent the quiescent DC voltage on the output of each of the opamps (nominally half the 9V supply) from upsetting any downstream equipment. R6/R10 also 'pin' the floaty side of the C3/C4 to ground whenever the switch is not selecting that opamp's output, which minimises any popping noises that may occur when selecting boost/no boost.

"... You are not authorised to download this attachment. ..." Ow. Your layout hurts my brain The EMG documentation for the PA2 practically gives away the circuit layout for free minus the fine details on exactly what component values to use, but you can probably guess them based on common practice for opamp buffering used in pedals. From your layout, the first half of the TL062 does variable clean boost from 0 to 20dB, as per the block diagram in the EMG product manual. Second half of the TL062 doesn't appear to do anything in your layout, whereas according to the EMG literature it's used to provide a plainjane 0dB buffered output for active or passive pickups whenever the boost switch is disengaged. In your layout I can see what appears to be 2x BI connections (BI = buffer input?, supposed to be jumpered together perhaps?), but then BO (buffer output?) doesn't go anywhere. The top BI pin also appears to be jumpered to ground; mistake perhaps? Your push/pull switch seems to simply bypass the whole lot and short out the output of the 20dB boost stage. I suppose it achieves a similar function to the original, but you lose the low impedance buffering action whenever the boost is disabled.

I got into the habit of putting step 6 after step 9. Steps 5, 7 8 and 9 are much easier to do if the back of the neck stays flat for as long as possible during construction. As soon as you create the rear contour it becomes much more difficult to hold the neck against flat surfaces (installing frets then requires a shaped cradle to support the back of the neck), or inadvertently flex it if applying pressure to the fret board (can accidentally put an uneven radius on the fret board because you can no longer apply any weight to the middle of the neck).

Shouldn't be any different to placement for any other bridge. Only thing I can think of is that it is possible to position the saddles on a Floyd Rose so far forward that they overhang the leading edge of the bridge plate, which can damage the guitar top if you divebomb the trem and they happen to dig in to the wood. Even 60% travel on the saddles is far more than you'll ever need for placement. Intonation compensation on a guitar will always mean that the per-string scale length will need to be marginally longer than the planned-for value. Even if you position the bridge with the saddles 100% forward, you'll still find yourself backing them off away from the nut once it's strung up and tuned. Saddles that need to go towards the nut after the bridge has been placed suggest that the bridge wasn't positioned right to begin with or there's something skeewhif going on with your fret placement.

Damp paper towel and a soldering iron should get that mostly out by applying heat + steam. You'll have to do a little bit of localised neatening-up of the area after the dent is steamed out, some careful sanding to restore the sheen of the fretboard to match the surrounds, but it should be fixable. Possibly. Have you tried inserting a bit of cardboard into the slot and tracing the edge of the fretboard with a pencil to see how deep the slot is? Could there be a bit of debris in the slots preventing the frets sitting completely flush? The other thing to watch out for is that the underside of the fretwire where the tang meets the flat part of the wire is rarely a perfect 90 degree "T" profile. The tops of the fret slots may need a bit of a chamfer applied to each one with a triangle needle file to ease the shoulders, so that any "wedging" that may be going on when hammering in the fretwire is avoided.

If in doubt consult the datasheets. Relay data suggests the coil resistance for the single winding 5V latching model is 250ohms (assuming the picture on the webpage you linked to earlier is an accurate representation of what you get). Current draw for the relay coil when energised is therefore 5V/250ohms = 20mA. Teensy claim the 2.0 (or rather, the ATmega32u4 chip on board) can supply a recommended max of 20mA output per pin, so that's right on the theoretical limit for the relay coil, although that isn't quite the full story. The datasheet for the ATmega32u4 suggests that the absolute maximum current output per pin is 40mA (page 383), beyond which "... may cause permanent damage to the device...". So the suggested 20mA limit quoted by Teensy is more likely to be a safe limit that you shouldn't exceed continuously for long periods of time if you want the 32u4 to perform as guaranteed by the manufacturer. The datasheet only mentions the 20mA limit in regards to their "test circuit", which further reinforces its use as a continous max rather than a short-term max. But. You're looking at using a latching coil relay, so the drive signal only needs to be applied to the coil in a brief pulse, only long enough to get the contacts to "stick" in one direction or the other. So the 20mA coil drive current only needs to be supplied for a fraction of a second (pulse width timing graph on page 4 of the relay datasheet suggests 10msec pulse would be more than sufficient to get the relay to seal in). The continous safe max of 20mA per pin would be perfectly safe to drive this relay direct from the Teensy, as the chip is only asked to supply this current for a brief pulse, well below the absolute maximum rating of 40mA per pin. It gets better if you're still worried about stressing the Teensy out too much. The relay data claims that the 5V coil must operate at a minimum voltage of 3.75V, so you could put an extra resistor in series with the relay coil to reduce the drive voltage slightly, which has the knock-on effect of lowering the coil current. Say you wanted to give the relay a bit of headroom to operate and reduce the drive voltage to only 4V, a reduction of 20%. To achieve this reduction you'd need to increase the total coil resistance by the ratio of the voltage difference, ie 5V / 4V x 250ohms = 312.5ohms. So the extra series resistor required to drop the coil voltage is 312.5ohms - 250ohms = 62.5ohms. Pick the nearest E24 resistor value, so use 62ohms in series with your relay coil (or 68ohms if you can only find E12 resistors) . The subsequent relay drive current now drops to 5/(250 + 62) = 16mA. I've only ever seen these things implemented as a shorting (shunt) switch, so I'm assuming they're not suited to be in series with the audio signal (possibly to do with inherent capacitance in the switching element? Dunno...). You could get all fancypants and get away with just two TLP222's, one shorting out each pickup. You'd just turn one on to mute the pickup you didn't want to hear, turn both off to hear both pickups, or turn both on to mute both pickups. But you'd need to construct a mixer circuit to prevent the shorting action of one TLP222 from erroneously muting both pickups simultaneously. Circuit complexity starts skyrocketing...

Yes. Sorta. If it's on full treble the resistive element of the pot is at maximum, so the lowpass filter is wound up as high as it can go. Removing it completely from circuit would result in a marginally brighter tone. Even with a tone circuit at max treble you still have some lowpass filtering going on, so it's never fully bypassed. Taking the tone circuit out altogether removes that last little bit of tone throttling that you'd otherwise interpret as being 'maximum treble'. If the resulting tone is too bright for your liking you can always re-introduce the stock 'tone pot at max' setting by replacing the pot with a fixed resistor of the same value as the potentiometer. Sorta. The volume pot is wired as a 'potential divider', which is a fancy way of saying it can variably 'pass through' the output of the pickups at one extreme of its rotation, and ground (ie, silence) at the other. Yes, although like removing the tone pot altogether the result of removing the volume pot is a marginally brighter and louder tone. The volume pot does present a static load to the pickups, even at full throttle, so disconnecting the pot will remove this slight slugging of the tone. Again, this can be restored if you wish by wiring a fixed resistor between the output and ground of the same value as the volume pot that you removed. That jack should drop in fine as a replacement. The mute circuit would work better if the second relay was wired to short the guitar signal to ground, rather than opening/closing the ground connection. Have a look at guitar kill switch circuits for an example. Opening the ground connection as a method of muting would likely result in excessive hum and buzz everytime you engaged the mute function. On the other hand, shorting the signal to ground is electrically the same as winding the volume pot to zero. Relays have a propensity to introduce a pop in the audio signal when operated due to the coil being energised/de-energised rapidly. The pop is induced from the coil to the nearby audio-carrying contacts, and is generally difficult to avoid without adding specialised support circuitry to either suppress the audible pop, or 'condition' the coil switching signals. The fact that you're proposing switching the pickup signals directly may make the resulting pop somewhat difficult to control (the output of a typical guitar is a relatively fragile signal that is prone to induced noise). One method of combating the pop while switching between two signals is to momentarily mute the output while the switching operation is performed. As you're building a mute function into the pickup switching system, you could incorporate this feature into it quite easily. All you'd need to do is engage the mute, switch between the two pickups and disengage the mute again. The mute only needs to be active for 20-40msec, which should be trivial to program up in an Arduino; short enough to be unnoticable to our ears, but long enough to mask any pops from the switching relay. The mute function in its own right would then just be the activation of the mute relay by itself. The only drawback is that as you're proposing to use a relay for the mute function as well, the very device you're using to kill the pop may introduce noise of its own. In that situation look at replacing the mute relay with something like a TLP222 photomosfet switch.

Very well-presented work for a first-timer. You must be proud of the outcome. Feel free to enter your build in Guitar of the Month if you wish. Entry is still open for another week and it'd be a shame for there to only be a solo entrant for this month!

The longer you can leave flat surfaces the better. Makes it easier to attach templates, make critical measurements and work off reference surfaces. Adding a curve to a surface removes it from being used as a reference for any subsequent work.

Just a friendly reminder that users here should be careful about the underlying tone of where this thread is touching on. Keep it civil, please.