The Constellation - time for a reset

[Stephen1966]

Zero frets have a lot going for them but lately I've been having some problems with it buzzing and plinking and it's time to convert to a nut instead.

To do this, to the level of precision required for good intonation, I had to build a new jig. Normally, I would sit down for three months and work out every last sub-millimeter detail but this time I just started with the dremel mounting plate I had previously made for a saddle slotting jig and worked down from there, figuring it out as I went along.

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The block that supports the neck, is another thing I had on hand. The bottom is curved and free standing in the jig, so it conforms to whatever angle the neck sits at. The side bars can be adjusted with the thumbwheels to be parallel with the bottom of the fretboard and then the aluminium fence sits/slides on top with stops set to limit travel of the router bit. About 20 hours of work for a cut that will last maybe a couple of minutes. Still, it's very solid and the head doesn't want to move at all just sitting there, not bolted down.

[pullshocks]

Really nice fixture, especially the thumb wheel adjustability. Totally worth it for what you are doing. Will you fill the fret slot before routing?

What do you think of the Hannes bridge? I’m thinking of retrofitting one on an old build of mine.

[Stephen1966]

Really nice fixture, especially the thumb wheel adjustability. Totally worth it for what you are doing. Will you fill the fret slot before routing?

What do you think of the Hannes bridge? I’m thinking of retrofitting one on an old build of mine.

Thanks! Yes, I saved all my ebony dust and I will drop some of that in the slot and then run some CA in there before I start hacking away. The idea, is to route down the centreline of the fret slot. Once the new nut is in, it should be barely noticeable. It's a minimum two stage route, first I will be cutting up to the fret slot and then I have a filler piece, a cut-off from the fingerboard I've been preparing, to go into the back where the existing nut is. The filler piece has to be shaped and dimensioned as well for the new nut width. This kind of job, is like microsurgery - I need to get all my ducks in a row before I spin up the router.

The Hannes Bridge - with piezo pickups, or without? What do you think of it? The design is great for me, especially if you play with the heel of your palm against the body for picking around the bridge PU or muting. There's nothing to catch your hand as you play and it's low profile. Excellent solid engineering, the saddle parts are adjustable for length and height and it would probably be possible to dial in a 12" radius if you have that kind of neck. The routing channel under the pickups takes a bit of prep but two/three years ago when I did this, there were some pretty good mounting instructions to go with it. I think I have a copy of them if you can't find them.

Musically, obviously, it's a piezo, so you will hear the spiky-sharp aspirated attack on notes when you dig in but it does a suprising job of pushing the highs without losing bass or mids. It doesn't have the acoustic body-tone that an ordinary acoustic wired up with a piezo has but it's clean and articulate - generally, good tone. You would need to spend a whole lot more to get anything better I think.

If I remember well, I think the pickups can be used passively - this is where the FET channel on the ODS would enter into its own. Though I run the pickups into a Ghost, Acousti-Phonic pre-amp in the guitar cavity. The tone I get is EQ'd on the board there and I have no complaints with the default setting it comes with, though you might find you have to play around with the gain setting if you use one of these.

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[pullshocks]

Thanks.
I found your earlier thread about your Constellation https://ampgarage.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... on#p422428
Very nicely done.

My interest in the Hannes is mainly the individual string height adjustability needed with a compound radius fingerboard. I see the appeal of the piezo, but not for a retrofit on this existing guitar. When I built it 30 years ago, I used a 12" radius bridge, and it the middle strings were always higher off the fretboard than desirable. It also had the issue of being too tall for the neck angle and had to be inset into the body. I could have filed the bridge pieces, but decided it would be better to keep it unmolested. At that time, the Fender Strat hardtail bridge was the only one available, but it is kind of clunky looking and I didn't think it would look right on the guitar. So I played it with the 12" radius bridge for quite a while.

I am in the midst of modding it for a more appropriate bridge. I have one of the Hipshot fixed bridges, which is pretty nice, but I think the Hannes might be cooler.

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[Stephen1966]

Thanks.
I found your earlier thread about your Constellation https://ampgarage.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... on#p422428
Very nicely done.

My interest in the Hannes is mainly the individual string height adjustability needed with a compound radius fingerboard. I see the appeal of the piezo, but not for a retrofit on this existing guitar. When I built it 30 years ago, I used a 12" radius bridge, and it the middle strings were always higher off the fretboard than desirable. It also had the issue of being too tall for the neck angle and had to be inset into the body. I could have filed the bridge pieces, but decided it would be better to keep it unmolested. At that time, the Fender Strat hardtail bridge was the only one available, but it is kind of clunky looking and I didn't think it would look right on the guitar. So I played it with the 12" radius bridge for quite a while.

I am in the midst of modding it for a more appropriate bridge. I have one of the Hipshot fixed bridges, which is pretty nice, but I think the Hannes might be cooler.

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Many thanks! She's my baby

Hipshot do some nice bridges. It's true though that the Hannes sets up very easily for compound radii. The Constellation has a compound fingerboard as well. In the box, you will find a couple of extra screws of a different length to those fitted in front of the saddles and that will allow you adjust for any radius you care to use. Also, worth mentioning, Schaller have good customer service, I found them to be very helpful when I had a problem with my tuning machines.

If you have already downloaded the technical drawings for the bridge, it looks like you have figured out you need to fit another piece of wood in the cavity left by the old bridge. A shame in a way, your top has developed a beautiful patina over the years and matching it with a new piece would take quite a bit of experimentation with wood stains, and even then, the grain pattern is unlikely to match. Will you go for a more obvious contrast there? All that said, Dave Gilmour's Blackie, had a huge chunk of timber that had to be retrofitted after he changed bridges and that sold for a bazillion dollars at auction. You are not Dave Gilmour are you?

The Hannes mounts on the top surface of the body but worth mentioning as well, the bridge is fixed in position with two 5mm countersink machine screws which you cut to length and pass through the body. On the back you need something like a forstner bit, 13mm diameter to take the 13mm "washers" - a half inch bit won't do - they are about 6mm deep if I remember well. The drilling of these two holes, under either side of the bridge is best done with a pillar drill and if your front and back sides of the body are parallel, no problem. If you are like me though and you have a rake on the front you have to compensate for this with a perpendicular (to the front) drill hole, and correspondingly angled smaller 13mm hole in the back. The tolerances should be as tight as you can make them with no slop. It can be a bit of a pain to set up and execute but it will give you great and solid intonation for another thirty years.

[pullshocks]

... it looks like you have figured out you need to fit another piece of wood in the cavity left by the old bridge. A shame in a way, your top has developed a beautiful patina over the years and matching it with a new piece would take quite a bit of experimentation with wood stains, and even then, the grain pattern is unlikely to match. Will you go for a more obvious contrast there? ...

Thanks again. Did not mean to hijack your thread....
Yes, it ended up being a large patch, and that is going to have an impact on the visuals. I have considered completely re-topping to avoid that. But before resorting to that I will try patching. I have thought a lot about what would look best for the patch material. I've decided to stick with maple, either non-figured or birds eye. It needs a total refinish anyway, so color matching should not be much of an issue.

[Stephen1966]

... it looks like you have figured out you need to fit another piece of wood in the cavity left by the old bridge. A shame in a way, your top has developed a beautiful patina over the years and matching it with a new piece would take quite a bit of experimentation with wood stains, and even then, the grain pattern is unlikely to match. Will you go for a more obvious contrast there? ...

Thanks again. Did not mean to hijack your thread....
Yes, it ended up being a large patch, and that is going to have an impact on the visuals. I have considered completely re-topping to avoid that. But before resorting to that I will try patching. I have thought a lot about what would look best for the patch material. I've decided to stick with maple, either non-figured or birds eye. It needs a total refinish anyway, so color matching should not be much of an issue.

No worries - it's nice to see your work. The cutout can be a feature... it doesn't need to be a blemish. Instruments I've restored - they tell stories. Replacing the top - giving it a literal face-lift - a big job. Some of these older cherished instruments you don't want to erase their histories. I have a strong dislike for the so-called relic'ed guitars. But give me an instrument that's seen a bit of life and has evolved warts and all. Can be a real treasure.

[Stephen1966]

Don't know what's going on with the comments here...! Didn't reply using comments.

[Stephen1966]

The electronics have been upgraded and all the loose connections fixed. A fitful tone control boiled down to a dry solder joint though it looked fine on the surface but rather than restore the modern tone control I went with a 50s wiring which has allowed me to dispense with the treble bleed network.

Here's a video on that:



So far, I'm liking it... the interactivity is cool and with the tone all the way up, the volume is smooth and maintains the highs. As you turn down the tone though, there is an increasingly apparent step down in volume. With tone about 6 you start to hear a step down in volume as you go past 8. Turn the tone all the way down and it's like the volume falls off a cliff face as you get down to around 9. Nothing you can't live with and I'm mostly on 10 anyway.

Maybe that treble bleed network could smooth things out a bit _ I'm trying to simplify and remove components where its possible. That's the electronics done for the time being though.

Edit: it isn't the treble - if anything the mod has the same effect as the treble bleed net. It's nice. But I'm thinking it's the volume pot taper - a J-taper would be better, this in the guitar is a 10% taper. Does anyone know of any 500k j-taper DPDT pots out there?

Edit-edit: found one!

https://www.thomann.de/intl/mojotone_ct ... gLLmfD_BwE

[Stephen1966]

Okay, a bit of a hiatus on this while I took care of other projects but swapped out the Bourns 10% taper, push-push pots for some Mojotone/CTS vintage taper (30%)push-pull pots

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I was hoping the vintage taper pots in combination with the 50s wiring tone pot would solve the problem of the treble "hump". That is, an immediate loss of treble presence when the tone is up full and I turn the volume down to nine. It didn't actually make any difference but the hump is mitigated when I turn down the tone control and then turn down the volume, more seamless, the further you go. The taper is much better though as is, I am pretty sure, the tone overall. I think these are much better pots and as an added bonus, not as important perhaps, it allowed me to use the Schecter knobs I had chosen for their more minimalist design. That's all the electronics and the hardware at that end of the neck sorted now... next, replacing the zero fret with a nut.

Wish me luck

[cbass]

Nice jig. Very nice guitar. I'm such a butcher I would've just attacked it with a chisel

[Stephen1966]

Nice jig. Very nice guitar. I'm such a butcher I would've just attacked it with a chisel

Thank you! When I was learning how to build this guitar I watched a load of luthiers online, building classical and acoustic guitars. Those guys - some of those guys - are real artists and dreadfully boring to watch if you aren't into it. But watching someone slice off a translucent sliver of wood in order to get a perfect fit shows the kind of attention to detail it takes to successfully build a (good) musical instrument. If you are in a rush, forget it

This project has certainly not been rushed. It took two years to design it in my off times. Another six months waiting to have the hardwood kiln dried. And a couple of months of work to put it all together at the end. I quite understand why partscasters are so popular, but I actually enjoy all that design process, sawing, drilling, routing and scraping. Turning something quite ugly, like a dull heavy board slowly revealing a gorgeous, lithe, almost sensual, working instrument. Something that almost anyone who sees it, has people asking, what is THAT? There was a time, I was thinking of making them for a living but having gone through the process now and considering the work that goes into something like this, most people simply couldn't afford what it costs. I am getting an itch to build a partscaster though, I may have to scratch soon.

One thing at a time though, I need to finish this one off first