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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on October 29, 2018 at 6:43am

Stainless or high carbon steel is the way I'll go from now on. No more soft metal screws.

Progress. Meet Rusty Rat. 

The paint is in the order of importance. Use black very sparingly. Black always looks fake. 

I think I know why the other guitar body was doomed to fail. I was trying to make a guitar that looked like everyone else's. : )

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on October 30, 2018 at 11:57am

I'm loving that.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on November 4, 2018 at 4:51pm

Thanks Paul. It plays really nice. 

That guitar I just build is back on my work bench. I was getting a few parts from a business and needed some 250K linear pots. So I got the only ones they had. "Custom Tapered." More like %^$#@$& tapered. These things are not good. The tone knob doesn't start working till your down to about 4. Then it sounds like a wah. All the time your loosing volume too. Like having two volume knobs for the same pickup. Unfortunately all the 250K linear pots I have are these. I did have a no load 250K pot. Different brand. Using this one for the blend between the bridge and neck pickups. So now I have a three single coil setup without a tone knob. Kinda harsh. I left the bad pots in for the show this last weekend. Worked. I'll replace the tone pot as soon as the new pots come in.

And

Starting the next build. Body will be a bit longer and have more plywood inside. To offset the weight of the neck. Going to try to get a Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge in the right spot. : ) This one will have a humbucker in the bridge and an angled single coil in the neck position. String through body. Set up to be a three or four string. Using that second Les Paul neck I have. Used the first one on the build above.I left the broken screws in, Used 1/8 dow rods to fill the neck holes. Redrilled it and put it on the Rust Bucket. ( new name for that guitar ) 

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 5, 2018 at 12:46pm

I quit buying the small pots a while back because I got so many bad ones. I get the full size Alpha's pots and they work great. The CTS pots are fantastic, but they just cost too much.

Glad you got the neck sorted. I had one that a screw broke in and the neck would move out of place, so I marked the right place with a pencil, backed the 3 good screws out, smeared some wood glue in the pocket, ran the screws back in and made sure the marks lined up. After it dried it stayed in place and still works great. I was a bit lazy at the time and didn't feel like digging the broken screw out.

Looking forward to seeing your next build.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on November 6, 2018 at 5:53am

These 'custom taper' pots were $3.45 each. I stopped using cheap pots a long time ago. Got tired of them failing or just not working. Both CTS and Bourns make mini pots. So there are good minis out there. I don't use them. Don't like the shorter swipe feel they have. 

To get the broken screw out I cut between the neck and body. Then spun the cutaway wood from the neck. The screw came out with the wood. Filled each hole in the neck with a dow rod. Sanded them down flush and re drilled. I'll eventually have to drill the broken screws out of the headstock. For right now nothings moving or falling out so I'll enjoy this guitar as is. 

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 5, 2018 at 12:48pm

I finally got around to sinking the bridge down further on my BO Diddly build. I'll get it set up and tuned over the next few days and give a report.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on November 7, 2018 at 8:16pm

Looking forward to seeing that build Paul. 

The volume pot has to be replaced. It's also a GFS 'custom taper'. Imagine having a volume that doesn't go all the way off?????? I've tossed all of Guitar Fetish's pots. All I'm keeping are the nuts and washers. Just ordered a six pack of Bourns A250K from Gitty.

Guitar fetish selling bad pots and calling them custom is a ripoff worthy of Gibson. 

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on November 10, 2018 at 10:01am

Had a few good 250K audio taper pots so i rebuilt the electronics in this guitar. What a wonderful difference. Single coils definitely need good volume and tone pots to make them sound good. 

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 10, 2018 at 10:25am

I've bought a lot of pots from them without issue. They do overdo it on the marketing.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 10, 2018 at 10:23am

I finally got my BO Diddly git sorted out. It plays great and the intonation is good at least to the 17th fret which is where the body meets the neck.

Pickups:  The Good is they sound like very good minibuckers, The Bad is they don't sound like Filtertrons. They have ceramic magnets(don't know the strength) and they're great minibuckers that would make people happy. Filtertron pickups are Alnico 5 magnet pickups and would lower than these pickups, but since these pickups are larger in size and the box is cut out for them, I'll have to do some pickup surgery. Plan is to replace the magnets with Alnico 5 magnets and place a steel reflector plate over the brass bottom plate to simulate the steel base plates of the Filtertron pickups. That might move me more towards the tone I'm looking for.

Electronics: I currently have 500k pots with a .022 cap. I do have some 1meg pots that I could change over to to brighten up the tone. I'll probably try that first.

Tried to post a couple of pics, but that seems to be a problem at this time.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on November 10, 2018 at 10:30am

Every time I try to post the pics they end up on their side.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on November 10, 2018 at 11:42pm

You might try vintage wiring. It's brighter in sound than modern. Best is you don't have to change any parts you already have. It's just a different style of wiring the parts together.

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