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Comment by Allan Zolnekoff on June 6, 2019 at 10:05am

Soon I will A/B test the stereo pickups. I made 2 guitars with them, the cbg and a Fender baritone that I extensively modified.  Both have identical wiring and pickups, The Fender came with horrible pickups that I immediately changed in the $550 guitar,  I made the sound better, but only 2 pickup positions were actually usable. A big waste of money.

Now, with 2 five way switches, every flip of a switch makes a nice, different tone. Some math major friends say that I now have 24 different tone combinations instead of just 5.  

Comment by Paul Craig on June 6, 2019 at 7:59am

Too many holes or too large of a hole will kill the acoustic properties of your guitar. That may or may not matter to you since you have pickups. An audience wouldn't know the difference because they are listening to what's coming from the amp, but you will notice.

Good deal on running the ground wires.

Comment by Allan Zolnekoff on June 5, 2019 at 8:55am

I used both the big and small screened soundholes from Gitty on my CBG in order to make some crazy feedback sounds on my CBG. The guitar has good tone and sustain, but I might add 4 more holes to the back. That way, when I stand in front of an amp, it might make some ungodly sounds when cranked. 

Btw, I ran a small copper grounded wire to each outlet where I play because they were not really grounded per my tester. Huge improvement.

Comment by Paul Craig on June 5, 2019 at 8:39am

Higher volts = cleaner sound, but less attitude. lower volts = more attitude, but more noise.  I've found this to be true in many cases and many applications. Maybe something in between for the best results of both, but that's all up to the user and user's likes/dislikes.

Long cords and long wires in a guitar can do funny things. My first guitar(60's made in Japan) had large single coil pickups that were extremely microphonic. You could talk through them and if you got to close to the amp or faced it, it would squeal like a stuck pig. I laid it flat on my bed and went downstairs for a quick drink, as I was coming back up I could hear someone talking in my room, it was a trucker talking on his CB Radio driving down the nearby highway. Haha

I put those pickups in my Strat-O-Res guitar that uses a aluminum skillet for a resonator cone and the aluminum took away all the 60 cycle hum and made those pickup completely quiet of hum and noise. Weird how that works.

Comment by Allan Zolnekoff on June 5, 2019 at 8:24am

Thanks. Another thing I stumbled upon is to always use the highest voltage that a stompbox is capable of using, per the manufacturer. There was a noticeable increase in performance with twice the volts and no weird, random noises. 

But even with all that, my bass amp, fed by a long instrument cord, picked up a radio station last week. 

Comment by Allan Zolnekoff on June 5, 2019 at 8:23am

Thanks. Another thing I stumbled upon is to always use the highest voltage that a stompbox is capable of using, per the manufacturer. There was a noticeable increase in performance with twice the volts and no weird, random noises. 

But even with all that, my bass amp, fed by a long instrument cord, picked up a radio station last week. 

Comment by Paul Craig on June 5, 2019 at 7:09am

The walwarts are noisy because they don't have a dedicated ground. They make them so that they can be plugged in either way(so no ground). Lots of RF noise.

Glad you got sorted.

Comment by Allan Zolnekoff on June 5, 2019 at 4:30am

My sound is great now! The pickup maker recommended 2 Fulltone booster stompboxes to boost my guitar signal and they work perfectly.  Also, I did not realize that the typical wall wart transformers add bad noises through the 9 volt power wire. And chained, multiple 9v feed wires are very noisy. 

The Fulltone boxes, used with their 18 volt feed, makes the pedal work more powerfully. 

Comment by Paul Craig on May 17, 2019 at 9:14am

Check your cords, they may be causing too much capacitance?

Everything sounds right with the boosters inline. Unless there's a problem with the splitter box.

I have a stereo cord with a Y split that I plug into the 2 channels of my tube amp without issues(thank GOD).

Comment by Allan Zolnekoff on May 16, 2019 at 6:58pm

From my 3 stereo-pickup cigar box guitar, , a stereo guitar cord goes from the guitar to a splitter box from Ultramagnetics.

From there, a regular electric guitar instrument cord goes to 2 Gallien-Kruger bass amps, (15" speaker in each)  for strings 4-6, and  another one goes to a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp which handles strings 1-3. 

I bought 2 Turnip Greens pedals from Electroharmonix to boost the signal from the guitar. The pedal provides drive and reverb. 

The pedals make up for the pickups that are really made for regular electric guitars, not baritones. The work-around sounds great! . 

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