X-Git-Url: https://git.gag.com/?p=web%2Fgag.com;a=blobdiff_plain;f=music%2Fguitars%2Fbdale-1%2Findex.mdwn;h=f7fe02b984076462e77132d547f6e041e2f9e933;hp=6ac99964b9cb9caa925443d0c162e453aaa2ce26;hb=7f46b743f4ab4d1479486af38460db263485b770;hpb=21b679ae84b45a84ca050b835e05f974d41430d8 diff --git a/music/guitars/bdale-1/index.mdwn b/music/guitars/bdale-1/index.mdwn index 6ac9996..f7fe02b 100644 --- a/music/guitars/bdale-1/index.mdwn +++ b/music/guitars/bdale-1/index.mdwn @@ -3,22 +3,32 @@ For Christmas 2014, Robert and Elizabeth bought Bdale a beginner's guitar book, and Robert offered to help with a guitar build project based on the success of his Telecaster build. This is the resulting project, Bdale's -first guitar, started in February of 2015! +first guitar, started in February and completed in December of 2015! After a lot of reading and listening, a few core decisions got things rolling: * build a "clone" of a hard-tail Fender Stratocaster (no tremolo) * body and neck to be near-natural wood color with satin finish -* no pickguard (maximum exposed wood grain, rear control cavities +* no pickguard (maximum exposed wood grain, rear control cavities) * pickups and all hardware in black * standard strat-like 3-pickup, 1 volume, 2 tone design with 5-way selector +* second tone control with push-pull switch to phase-reverse middle pickup * noise-reduced pickups We had a "spare" blank in alder big enough to machine the body, left over from Robert's Telecaster project. So the plan was to machine a custom body and buy the rest of the parts from various sources. -Another intense period of study led to the decision to use +One of the reasons for going without pickguard is that it exposes more of +the natural wood grain to view. A pleasant consequence is that the access +plate for the electronics will be on the back of the guitar, meaning it'll +be easy to pull the plate and tinker with the wiring without having to pull +the strings off... which, given I'm an electronics guy, might end up being +a really good thing! + +## Part Selections ## + +A period of intense study led to selecting [DiMarzio](http://dimarzio.com) Area pickups. These are stacked-coil hum reducing pickups in the standard strat single-coil pickup form factor. The chosen "standard" set consists of: @@ -34,10 +44,103 @@ The rest of the parts were mostly obtained from [Guitar Fetish](http://www.guitarfetish.com/), with the exception of a nicer [hard-tail bridge](http://guitarheads.net/products/bridges/hardtailrear.html) sourced from [GuitarHeads.Net](http://guitarheads.net), and a 22-fret natural -Canadian maple neck purchased from eBay seller "bluelink88". +Canadian maple neck purchased from eBay seller "bluelink88", and black machine +screws in several sizes sourced from Amazon. + +## Purchased Items ## | Description | Part Number | Quantity | Price | Total | |-------------|-------------|---------:|------:|------:| +|amazon.com||||| +|DiMarzio Area Pickup Set Black||1|229.99|229.99| +|ebay seller bluelink88||||| +|22-fret maple neck||1|35.99|35.99| +|guitarfetish.com||||| +|Push-Pull DPDT Pot 250K Audio|F20|1|8.79|8.79| +|Full Sized B250K Tone Pot|F22L|1|2.45|2.45| +|Full Sized A250K Volume Pot|F22A|1|2.45|2.45| +|USA Spec Stratocaster 5-Way Switch Black Tip|F158F164|1|11.45|11.45| +|Set of Three Black Strat Replacement Knobs|A27|1|4.95|4.95| +|Bag of BLACK Pickguard Screws|K60|1|6.45|6.45| +|Pair Classic Strap Buttons Black|K33|1|4.45|4.45| +|Black Vintage Spec. String Ferrules|K15|1|7.45|7.45| +|Strat Jack and Plate Black|K09|1|6.45|6.45| +|Strat Pickup Metal Trim Ring BLACK|K125|3|8.45|25.35| +|Pair Black Butterfly Strat String Trees|K36|1|5.45|5.45| +|Black Gotoh Style 14:1 tuners|E16|1|26.95|26.95| +|Ultra Thick Black Neck Plate with Screws|K03|1|9.45|9.45| +|guitarheads.net||||| |black hard tail bridge||1|16.99|16.99| +## Body ## + +I started out with a 1962 Stratocaster design file created in Alibre by +user protomachinst6 on CNCzone. + +http://www.cnczone.com/forums/musical-instrument-design-and-construction/17659-cnc-32.html + +I originally hoped that I would be able to use FreeCAD to modify this design, +but the STEP import process seemed to lose the ability to keep the various +sub-assemblies oriented correctly relative to each other. Since Alibre has +been replaced by Geomagic Design, I pulled down a 15-day trial version of +that package to one of the Windows machines in the house, and (not +surprisingly) it was able to read the file just fine. I was then able to +export just the body and read that into FreeCAD, which was used for the +remainder of the design work. + +Another interesting STEP file of the body from a 1962 strat drawn by Marc +Erasmus is available on [GrabCAD](https://grabcad.com/library/62-strat-asm) +and it appears at least one person has actually built a guitar using these +files. + +To build the guitar body I want, the existing body design file was +modified to eliminate the tremolo cut-out and rear cavity, to add screw holes +for the hard-tail bridge, and to shift the electronics cavity from being +front-open to being rear-accessible with the front just having 3 holes for +the volume and tone control shafts and the slot and mounting screw holes +needed for the pickup selector switch. + +The first attempt to cut the body on our CNC router failed, because a large +delivery of building materials happened in the middle of the roughing pass, +and I naively thought the router would be ok cutting for a while without +me. Apparently, swarf jammed the bit up enough to cause the machine to lose +steps and shut itself down. Unfortunately, when I attempted to restart the +cut, something went horribly wrong and the roughing cutter put a deep gouge +through much of the body of the guitar. I decided to call this attempt a +bust, and look for more wood to start over with. + +## Wiring ## + +A standard strat has a volume control, 2 tone controls, and a 5-way pickup +selector. The pickup selector allows neck, neck+middle, middle, +middle+bridge, and bridge as choices, with the combinations formed by +putting the two selected pickups in parallel. The first tone knob controls +the neck and middle pickups, the second controls the bridge pickup. + +After lots of discussion with Robert and listening to many demo videos, the +only significant change to this I decided to make is to use a push-pull switch +variant of the second tone control, wiring it to allow phase reversing the +middle pickup. Phase reversing one pickup of a blended pair yields a "nasal" +or "biting" tone. Here is one of the +[clearest demo videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIBHg4kwl2k) +I found of this effect. What I like about this option is that it gives what +sounds to me like an old-school blues kind of tone. + +The other minor tweak I'm considering is "treble compensation" on the volume +control, which DiMarzio shows in some of their wiring diagrams. The idea is +to compensate for the usual loss of treble content when turning down the +volume on the guitar. It consists of an additional 560pF capacitor and 300k +resistor in parallel between the hot and wiper terminals on the volume +control. This may or may not seem necessary once we have the guitar together. + +## Artifacts ## + +The following files are licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 +International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): + +* [FreeCAD](http://www.freecadweb.org/) design file for + [guitar body](guitarbody.fcstd) +* [STL output](guitarbody.stl) from FreeCAD for guitar body + + More to come!