New Wood Pieces!

You don't want to know how many hours I spent shaping these wood pieces, if I had the right tools.... with a table saw, drill press, belt sander and jigs set up in my shop, it could have been much easier! The new pickguard was shaped from a 3 ply, 3/32" plywood from a hobby store, can't find this at a lumber dealer. The veneer is Narra wood, a hardwood from Malasia, it cut nicely with an xacto knife, and then after bonding I used the dremel to bevel it. This gives it a nice light-dark-light-dark 4-ply look. So far 4 coats of high gloss polyurethane cover it, next is a little roughing up with steel wool, and another coat or few. It still shows the grain contour when you look across the top, I'm hoping to get it perfectly polished.

The Pickup rings started as poplar scraps from a furniture store, I used a circular saw and sanding disk in my drill to get one about half the thickness of the other. Then I used a miniature router bit in my dremel to cut out the hole for the pickups. How much time could I have saved with the right tools!? The veneer on these is Aframossia, another hardwood, this one from Africa. Why 2 different veneers? Nancy had some samples she got ages ago, they just weren't big enough to do all 3 pieces. I thought it would be cool to match the grain at 45 degree angles, that was before I discovered how brittle this wood was. There are some places where small splinters broke off and I had to plastic wood the areas, but I think it'll look ok. I've been coating these along with the pickguard, can't wait till this part is done!

I disassembled all the hardware except for the tuning machines, so I could really clean up and polish years of neglect. I found there were more chips and dings then I remembered, quite a few down to the wood. Maybe I can make them less noticeable or at least protect them with some coats of polyurethane. The screws holding the Mosrite on were a little rusty, so I used a grinding wheel to polish the heads up a little and then coated with more polyurethane. The most disappointing thing was the obvious existence of the standard Guild stop tailpiece beneath it. So I guess the Tremolo was not a factory option, someone else added it; I'd prefer the stop tailpiece, Oh Well!

I have an On-On-On mini-toggle for the front pickup to replace the old Phase Reversal switch. This will switch the two coils between series/coil-tap/parallel for the front DiMarzio Humbucker. The Tech guys at DiMarzio weren't sure what the original pickups were, but they were able to tell me which pickup was neck and which was bridge, it's been a long time since they were even on the guitar. I will have to order a 4 pole-6 position rotary switch that I was planning on using for the Bridge pickup, I'll be getting an inductor at the same time. I'll be going with a master Volume, Tone and Midrange Notch filter to control the multitude of coil switching options (27!)

With any luck, I can start wiring and testing the switching options next week. I plan on soldering in the mini-toggle, and then jumpering directly to the jack, then plugging into my practice amp and headphones so I can hear the different sounds I can expect. It should look something like this...

Schematic - Phase 1

Pickups & Neck Switch Installed!

Phase 1 is done and tested, I may have to switch the leads, the Single-Coil option activates the slugs and not the screw pole pieces. WOW is this pickup HOT! Even in the Single-Coil and Parallel positions it wants to drive my amp into soft clipping, and the Series? Fergitaboutit! I've installed the bridge Pickup, and tested to make sure I haven't broken any wires. What a relief, these pickups have been "floating" around for years, and I was just praying they weren't messed up! I still wish all the wood pieces matched, or maybe I had some Ebony (to match the fretboard), but then it would have looked like black plastic again. I'm pretty happy with it, it took a long time to get to this point, now to find that 4 pole 6 position rotary switch, and where did I store my 3 position Pickup selector switch?

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