This was possibly my favourite part of the process: installing the pickups. It really wasn’t that exciting and I mean, finishing the paint job and seeing it turn out beautifully was awesome, but putting in the pickups meant it was ready to go! I called up my friend Rob because he knows what’s up when it comes to electronics and stuff. I also do not own a soldering iron and this would have made the process impossible. So I went over to his house and we began installing the pickups. I had wiring diagrams ready to go, so we got started pretty quickly.

We started with the neck pickup. Seymour Duncan has a video where he installs all the pickups at once, but that’s really confusing. One pickup at a time is much more straight-forward. We desoldered the neck pickup from the switch and its ground wire from the volume pot. Then we took the hot wire from the pickup and soldered it to the switch and left the ground wires unattached so that we could save all the ground wires for one final solder at the end.

It was a very simple process and one that was repeated for the middle and bridge pickups. Attach the hot wires to the proper places on the switch and then solder all the ground wires to the volume pot. The last thing to do before screwing the pickguard back on was to reconnect the ground wire and the input jack wires. We soldered those to their respective places and we were done.

Some things to watch out for and/or make sure of when installing pickups:

·         Make sure all new joints are strong. After adding the solder, reheat the joint making sure to touch the wire or metal near the solder without touching the actual joint. This reheat will strengthen the joint. After you’re sure the joint is firm, give it a little tug to make sure the wire won’t come loose.

·         Be careful around the soldering iron. I’m sure this is common sense but it was new to me because I’ve never actually used one before. Obviously it’s hot (and I knew that) so don’t touch it, but also be aware of the smoke that it produces and avoid it. My friend said he’s cried many times after getting some of the smoke in his eyes.

·         If you’re guitar was wired like mine, your input jack will have two wires: a tip (hot) and a sleeve (ground). Both Rob and I almost missed that and nearly soldered them to the same spot.

That’s really it for the installation process. It was fairly simple and it didn’t take very long. The exciting part was putting it back together and testing it out. We got some killer tones out of it and it was really exciting! I’ll have some videos up with samples soon.

When putting the guitar back together, it’s mostly a reverse order of how you took it apart. Re-attach the neck, bridge, tuners, and all the other little screws that are needed. My buddy noticed while we were testing it out that the company did not cut either the neck or the cutaway straight as my neck isn’t aligned like it should be. Nonetheless, it still works perfectly fine.

So, pickups were in, strings were attached, sound was great. The only problem now was the intonation and some fret buzzing. I attempted to contact a guy I know to help me intonate it but he was nowhere to be found and I was in a rush. The only other option was to learn how to do it myself and so I quickly searched the Internet to find out how (http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/intonate.htm).

I began with the bridge saddles. I knew how they should look (as can be seen in that picture on the project guitar website) and I followed the instructions from the site and I was quickly intonated and very happy. I did notice however that after stringing the guitar, my bridge was now on an incline and looked almost like a Floyd Rose style bridge. To fix that, I loosened the strings and then tightened the springs that are underneath the backplate. Once they are tightened, retune the guitar and all should be well. One thing to really keep in mind when adjusting anything on the bridge is to loosen the strings. Adjusting the saddles, springs, or height adjustment screws (action) will change the tension in the strings and if you’re tightening the tension there is a likely chance you will pull your string too tight or it will break. That’s how I intonated my guitar.

The last thing left for me to do is fix some of the fret buzz. In my case, it is caused by a loose fret and so I need to take it in to have the frets hammered down. I don’t have the tools or knowledge of how to do this properly so I will entrust it to someone else.

Aside from that, this guitar is done and awesome. As I mentioned earlier, I will have samples up within the next couple of days. That’s it for project guitar number one. I will have some of my band updates on here soon as well as show reviews and possibly CD reviews as well.

-- Mike

I have learned a lot over the last few days; things such as how not to paint a guitar, how to remove paints of different kinds and how many different kinds of paints there are, and how sharp putty knives really are.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve had my headstock sanded and ready to be painted for quite some time. So I started painting. I took a brush, some primer, and some paint and started on my way. It took 2 coats to realize that a brush was not going to work well. It left brush stroke patterns and textures that would definitely not look nice at all. Luckily, it was water based paint and it all came off fairly easily. So next day, I went to RONA to pick up some spray paint. IMPORTANT: know what types of paints you’re going to need before you go shopping. I purchased some red and some white enamel paint cans. So I went home and sprayed the base layer of white on. After reading up on some guitar painting tips, I realized I needed lacquer paints, not enamels. So off to Home Depot this time to pick up primer, red, white, and black lacquer paints and some paint stripper. After coming home and masking off my desired stripe area, I started to spray paint the new red lacquer paint on. IMPORTANT: do not mix different types of paints. When I took the mask off, the paint had bled underneath the mask. So I was forced to re-sand the guitar back to its bare-wood state. I went back to the Internet to find more painting help and I came across a great website: www.paintyourownguitar.com*. From here, I learned what I needed to do. So my headstock is currently sitting in my basement with its first coat of primer on and that’s the story of my headstock.

The next story I have to share is my guitar body story. I went out and got my body back because I decided I wanted to do the paint job. So what does it take to paint a guitar body? The first thing I knew I had to do was take off the paint layer that was already on the guitar. That’s what the paint stripper was for. I applied the paint stripper and began peeling away at the paint with a putty scraper. It has taken quite a bit of time and effort to get to the wood layer; however I know I have saved a lot of sanding time. I still have half of the paint to get rid of, but I am much farther now than I thought I’d be after one day. I am modelling my guitar after a Ron Fellows Custom PRS guitar and so I am very excited to see how well I can match the paint scheme.

LINK TO PICTURE

As I was scraping some of the paint off today, I accidentally stabbed myself with the putty knife. Though it is common sense (that I seemed to have forgotten for one stroke), make sure you always scrape away from your body and HANDS or any other body part that might be touching the guitar.

One last change in plans that I have decided on is a change of pickups. For one, I figured if I want to work in the electrical field, I probably shouldn’t buy a prewired pickup set. That just ruins the fun. I was also iffy on buying a set of EMGs because my other guitar already has them, though I have never heard EMG’s single coil pickups. Yes, I still recommend EMGs for any guitar; however I want to test out different pickup brands for this guitar. Instead, I chose Seymour Duncan pickups. I am purchasing an SH-6 Distortion humbucker for the bridge, an SSL-1 Vintage Staggered single-coil for the middle, and an SHR-1 Hot Rail Stacked single-coil pickup for the neck position. These pickups look pretty sweet.

I will be doing follow up entries about the painting process (with pictures), as well as the pickups and their installation as the processes take place. I will also have some new pictures up very shortly. It’s almost time!

-- Mike


*Note: www.paintyourownguitar.com does not tell you how to paint a guitar. He sells many books that help you along the way. If you, like me, are extremely broke and cannot buy the book at the time, sign up for his newsletter and read through the tips he gives. Many of these tips will help you as they have helped me.

I will no longer be making my own pickups for this guitar, although in the future, I would still like to make some of my own. Instead, I have decided to purchase an EMG 81/S/S combination set up (pending funds available). I have never heard or even seen an EMG single coil pickup, so I am very excited to see how it turns out. There are a few different sets I am looking at and the winner will probably depend on price (I am broke).

I have found an 81/SA/SA set, and two 81/S/S sets; one being a Kirk Hammett signature set. Once again, the one I choose will likely depend on the price. I plan to make my way to the local music store to see how much a new set will cost and then will compare that price with my options to see if I can bargain down and save myself some money.

(Click to view a list of EMG Strat Pickups)

I am very excited to get this guitar put back together with all the new tweaks. The guitar is out being painted and will hopefully be back in my possession soon. Tonight, I sanded down the headstock so that it could be painted as well. I no longer own a Jay Turser by name; very soon it will have a new “brand”. That brand will probably be named after the name of my summer band. I now also have a desired time of completion and so I will be working on a timeline now to have it completed by July 19th. My summer band has a show set up for that date and I will (hopefully) be sporting my customized new guitar.

I hope to have updates soon, along with pictures, of a new looking guitar. And hopefully I’ll find the money to purchase the new pickup set that I need for it. Wish me luck!

-- Mike

So I decided that since this is going to be my first project guitar, then I'm going to make my own pickups and we'll see how it all goes from there. I have a collection of resources online to help me with the process and I'm currently setting up an expense sheet to see how much it's all going to cost. That will be posted once it has been started with the essentials. It looks as if I'm going to need:

    -   42 gauge copper wire (and lots of it)
    -   Alnico #5 magnet
    -   Some plastic, probably from a CD case
    -   Screws and/or short metal rods
    -   Lots and lots and lots of time

I have a jar of money started as my summer guitar fund. I'm looking to add to that jar, so if you know of any jobs, need a tutor, or have any old junk that you don't mind donating to me, let me know! If you have any thing that might be usable for the building of this guitar, that would also be very handy and greatly appreciated.

Ha; alright so after that shameless plug, I sat down the other day to try and learn how to do a little guitar sweeping, using Bloodmeat by Protest the Hero as my training song and I can proudly say, I have accomplished my goal! There is a new link at the top, "Video" and if you follow that link, you can view the video of that song.

So check it out and let me know.

-- Mike

Today, I started looking at these pickups; what they’re made of and how they’re made. Unfortunately, the pickups on this guitar were not the greatest to start looking at. The single-coil ones had been super-glued together, making it tough for me to take the bottom cover off and impossible to get the top cover off. The humbucker pickup was easier to get apart but still not very easy to get a full look at.

Single coil pickups are fairly easy to understand. They consist of a bar magnet, which acts as a base, wire, pole pieces, and a cover. The wire is wrapped around that base bar magnet thousands of times which allow voltage to flow once a current is generated.

Humbuckers are slightly more complex. The one in this guitar (as well as most other humbuckers that I’m aware of) are made up of two small single-coil pickups mounted on top of another base magnet, surrounded by more pole pieces.

Now, I know a lot of this may sound pretty ridiculous (or maybe it doesn’t), but I will explain it all. For those people who aren’t into physics, this may either just drive you insane or could be an interesting lesson for you. It was originally physics class that got me thinking about guitar pickups and electronics. So, how does each piece of a pickup help make a sound come out?

-          Base magnet: creates what is called a flux field around the pickup. What’s cool about fluxes is that I studied them for about a month in physics and I still hardly have the slightest clue as to what they are. I do know however, that they can create an induced voltage and current. Because of Faraday’s Law and Lenz’s Law... I’m just kidding. I won’t actually start teaching the reason the voltage is created because all you need to know is that it can happen. Keep that in mind for later.

-          Wire: allows current to flow. When voltage is induced in the flux of the base magnet, it generates a current. With current flowing through the wires, they cause the pole pieces to become electromagnets due to the way they’re wrapped.

-          Pole pieces: or electromagnets create a magnetic field. When you play your guitar, the metallic, slightly magnetic strings vibrate with each strum and the vibrations within the magnetic field generate an electric signal. That signal is then transferred through the guitar’s electric circuit, through the cable, into your amp, and out your speakers in the form of glorious music or potentially horrific noise.

So that is how that all works out. Single-coils, again, are pretty simple; one coil wrapped around a pole piece, through in a base magnet and you’re all set. They can achieve great tones, but because there is only one coil, it can give a “hum” noise. Humbuckers use the two single-coil pickups, each wrapped in opposite directions, to cancel out the “hum”. They are unfortunately known to give up some of the tone that a single-coil has in order to cancel that “hum” noise.

Another thing I was unaware of when I first started taking apart my single-coil pickup was the “potting” used on it. First, what is potting?

-          Potting – sealing the coils in a solid material. This solid material is often wax and it prevents the coils, magnets, and other pieces of the pickup from moving around, relative to each other. It prevents the pickups from giving feedback by eliminating and vibration-induced signals.[1]

After finally prying off the bottom cover of the pickup (remember all that super-glue stuff I mentioned earlier), I slowly started to scrape off some of the wax, thinking it was excess glue of some sort. I hadn’t paid much attention to the resources I was using so I initially had no idea what the wax was. After realizing it would be fairly impossible to take the whole pickup apart, I decided to find out what this stuff was to find out that it was wax and that it was pretty important. Luckily, wax isn’t very hard to come by and a quick match-and-candle cover job worked wonderfully.

With the new knowledge of pickups I have discovered today, I am definitely interested in making my own and trying things out. It will take a lot of time, probably money too (which I don’t have), but I think it would be a great experience.

Until next time,

-- Mike

[1] http://www.guitarnuts.com/technical/electrical/index.php