Fender Jaguar Alt wiring

 Recently I acquired a nice Classic Player Jaguar that had been modified in a few ways.

The orignal pickups were gone and replaced with Bareknuckle Mule pickups (or so I was told).
Curiously,when measured they were way too hot and I believe they are actually a set of  Holy Divers.

These are very high output pickups and a nightmare in my practice space which has very bad EMI in all directions.

Anyway, the other mod was a simple toggle like the Cobain has and the rythm circuit had been disconnected. The toggle switch was low wuality and the neck wouldn't stay engaged.
I was also curious to see how the new pickups would fare with the original wiring schematic.

The coils are split via 50kohm pots, which I found introduces a lot of noise and cuts off the top end.
I bought some 1mohm replacements that were advertised as Jazzmaster/Jaguar roller pots, but they don't fit the roller whels! Anyway, I made do with the splits. The tone was fine but the hum is unbearable.

Furthermore when all pickups are off, there is a persistent hum that is caused by the pickups not being shunted to ground when in the off position.

I remedied this by changing the wiring scheme to something more sensible. I'm probably not the first to do it this way, but the solution is wholly my own (excuse the jank drawing, or not).

That hum issue has now been rectified and bypassing the coil split reduces it a bit too.
Bareknuckle reccomend a 550kohm pot for the coil split but I can't find those with the apropriate shaft diamaeter.

I'm pretty happy with the tone overall, but I'm looking at going for a more traditional PAF style with lower output. Hopefully that reduces the ambient hum even more.

CME Widi Jack -  Windows 11

This is just a backup of this reddit thread in case it ever gets deleted.
It worked for me today on Win 11 and Ableton Live 11. No restart was required.
I did not have the option at step 5 but was able to delete 2 unused USB midi devices.

The Korg driver needs to be in one of the first 10 slots. Posting here for anyone else who may run into the same issue. Steps to fix:

1. Install Korg USB MIDI driver and utilities, found here: https://www.korg.com/us/support/download/driver/1/285/3541/

2. Run the Uninstall KORG USB MIDI program

3. Click the Option... button

4. Deselect the "Delete KORG MIDI Device Only" checkbox and click OK

5. Select checkboxe for KORG BLE-MIDI

6. Select checkboxes for other NON-SYSTEM MIDI devices until only 10 MIDI devices are left -- NOTE: you may need to reinstall MIDI drivers for your devices after doing this. For me, this was Helix, MidiPlus interface, MC8 and Dwarf; they reinstalled automatically once I hooked the devices up again. YMMV.

7. Click "Next >"

8. Click "Finish"

9. Right-click Start >> Click "Apps and Features"

10. Uninstall KORG BLE-MIDI Driver for Windows

11. Reinstall KORG BLE-MIDI Driver for Windows

12. Restart (may not be necessary, but wth)

13. Connect to WIDI Jack via bluetooth

Arduino Midi True Bypass Looper

I have a midi foot controller but only a few midi enabled pedals, so it was begging for more utility. 

Seeing as I have a several pedals that negatively impact the tone in their off state, I wanted a way to bypass them entirely.

A loop swichter would be easy enough to do and I have the avaailable parts already, but I wanted something a little more interesting. I'd seen a few commercially available units, but the price was prohibitive & none that I'd read up on were equipped to deal with stereo pathways.

I kept seeing relays pop up, so I decided to see if Arduino was capable of triggering them and in about 10 minutes I had ordered a midi shield and a pile of relays.

Anyway, long story short, people had done midi and done relays, but nobody (that I could find) had shared code that blended the two. I've pretty much forgotten what little C# that I knew and had to start from scratch.

Cheating with AI did me no good as even though the code Copilot spat out would compile(Chat GPT would not), it wouldn't do what it said it would. So I cobbled it together old fashioned way (reading the reference material (References below the Sketch)).

I'll be working on this over the summer and have yet to design the enclosure & schematic.
I have 8 relay pairs modules that are mounted on a 3d printed base of my own (poor) design.
This could support 8 mono or 4 stereo true bypass loops (depending on the wiring scheme).

Hopoefully there is enough memory left to run a display of some sort.

Basic Part List:

Arduino Leonardo (others will work).

Generic Midi Shield (this works fine, but get one with sockets on top if you can).

5v 2 Channel relay module (Can be configured like an SPST switch).

The relay modules can also be purchased in larger banks (wish I had known this before I got trigger happy with the order).

Here's the Sketch to control 8 Relays:

#include 

MIDI_CREATE_DEFAULT_INSTANCE();

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

// Configuration
#define LED 13                   // LED pin on Arduino Uno
const int relayPins[8] = {2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}; // Pins connected to the 8 relays
const int midiCCNumbers[8] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}; // MIDI CC numbers to listen for

// Timer for LED control
unsigned long lastLedTime = 0;
const unsigned long ledDelay = 100; // LED on time in milliseconds

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

void BlinkLed(byte num)         // Basic blink function
{
    for (byte i = 0; i < num; i++)
    {
        digitalWrite(LED, HIGH);
        delay(50);
        digitalWrite(LED, LOW);
        delay(50);
    }
}

// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

void setup()
{
    pinMode(LED, OUTPUT);

    // Initialize relay pins
    for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
        pinMode(relayPins[i], OUTPUT);
        digitalWrite(relayPins[i], LOW); // Relays off initially
    }

    MIDI.begin(16);           // Launch MIDI, listening to channel 16
}

void loop()
{
    if (MIDI.read())                // Is there a MIDI message incoming?
    {
        switch (MIDI.getType())      // Get the type of the message we caught
        {
            case midi::ControlChange:       // If it is a Control Change,
                BlinkLed(MIDI.getData1());  // Blink the LED a number of times corresponding to the program number

                // Relay control
                for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
                    if (MIDI.getData1() == midiCCNumbers[i]) {
                        if (MIDI.getData2() > 63) {
                            digitalWrite(relayPins[i], HIGH); // Turn relay on
                        } else {
                            digitalWrite(relayPins[i], LOW); // Turn relay off
                        }
                    }
                }
                lastLedTime = millis(); // Reset the LED timer
                break;

            // See the online reference for other message types
            default:
                break;
        }
    }

    // Control LED timing non-blocking approach
    if (millis() - lastLedTime > ledDelay) {
        digitalWrite(LED, LOW); // Turn off the LED after the delay
    }
}

Reference Material:
Arduino 4 Relays Shield Basics
Relay Module with Arduino
Arduino Relay
Midi Shield
Send and Receive MIDI With Arduino
Notes & Volts Youtube Tutorials

Yamaha QY300 - Backlight Screen Mod

I've now owned a QY300 three times. Its a fantastic tool with one glaring flaw.
You need to be hunched over it to see the screen and the lighting has to be perfect if you don't want reflections masking crucial information. 

About a year ago I bought a replacement screen with a backlight and then proceeded to do nothing with it until today (technically it's actually Black & White, but it appears blue off angle and on camera).

There's not much info out there on replacing the screen with a backlit one (just this gallery), so I was a little shy about getting started. It turns out that I needn't have worried. Its a fairly simple procedure. I didn't even have to mod the case.

Its the middle of COVID-19 lockdown number two in Melbourne so I couldn't run out to the shops and get a new header, so I had to resort to desoldering the  old one. Not the worst task, but kind of annoying and I'm out of practice.

The header on the old board had 20 pins, the new one has 22. The extra two pins are for the backlight.
The old header does cover up those pins, but that was easy to deal with as the LCD replacement that I used had another point that was readily accessible for soldering on some power leads.

I could probably have just made a voltage divider to power the backlight, but I happened to have an already assembled voltage regulator kit and there was space in the chassis, so in it went.

Tap Tempo Ableton & Arduino

After frustrations of trying to keep time, I've finally cracked my main problem.
How, as a guitarist with almost no knowledge of music theory can I get the tempo that feels right without having a band?

Dead simple really and very very cheap.

I came up with the idea a few years ago when still studying accounting and addicted to Kerbal Space Program.

You see I decided to use an Arduino to make a flight controller for that wonderful game. And I did. To a point.

The prototype was coming along nicely and I'd fabricated the chassis, and worked out the code for the various meters, dials, switches etc... but then exams loomed large and it looked like I might not finish if I continued.

So all that stuff was shelved. But not forgotten.

Now it's been a long while since I picked up the old soldering iron, but I've long had this desire to add tap-tempo to my DAW setup.

Ableton makes it easy from a keyboard (not the musical kind).
Not so much for my midi hardware, which refuses to send midi data from the damper pedal for the thing that I desire.

This is where I decided (about 2 years ago) to re-purpose my arduino to enable tap tempo. Then I sat on the idea, because in my shed is a vortex of chaos and I couldn't find the Arduino board, or kept finding other things to do.

The code bit is easy. The barest modification of the Keyboard Write function.

All I did was figure out what the ASCII key number was for ` and then replace A in the example.

I then tapped two bits of wire together, and just like that tap tempo was at hand!
Later by foot.

Here's the code:

#include <Keyboard.h>

void setup() {
  // make pin 2 an input and turn on the
  // pullup resistor so it goes high unless
  // connected to ground:
  pinMode(2, INPUT_PULLUP);
  Keyboard.begin();
}

void loop() {
  //if the button is pressed
  if(digitalRead(2)==LOW){
    //Send an ASCII '`',
    Keyboard.write(39);
  }
}

Scrap-built lap steel

My shed.

Its full of scraps, offcuts and leftover parts from the years of amateur engineering projects.

I grabbed a couple of pieces of timber that were leftover from a kitchen Island that I built and glued them together into a vaguely laps steel shaped block. Then I left it to sit and gather dust for many months.

This past weekend I decided to revisit the project.
I had a handful of guitar bits that seemed suitable.

•  A humbucker from a Gretsch that I modified for a friend with a sustainer pickup.
• The original bridge from my Bass VI.
• One 6 on a plate set of tuners that were intended for a 12 string but would not fit.
• Aluminium scrap for the tailpiece
• A string tree from another (failed) attempt at a lap steel
• 1x Ikea spanner

The build was fairly simple, chisel & rout a hold for the pickup and electronics.

Mount the hardware and deal with a few buzzing spots

 (the bridge wasn't the best choice).

Its nowhere near finished, but I can go from open Dm to open D just by pressing down on the bent spanner, which in turn presses on the 3rd string. It actually sounds really nice, but needs to be stripped down again for a few small mods and of course a paint job.

The tuners work, but they aren't very good and the position is not ergonomic when it comes to tuning, but beggars can't be choosers, and I can't really play more than I, IV, V at the moment.

All slides are not created equally.

Today I'm here to discuss guitar slides.

Like many guitarists, I've dabbled in slide on and off over the years.
I have to confess that historically speaking, I'm actually a pretty rubbish guitarist and an even worse slide guitarist.

Things are changing though, since I've had more time to practice with my studies almost at an end (hopefully I'll be done by the time this post goes up). In truth I'll never be a fancy fast player. There are a few underlying issues physically, but mostly its because I simply don't enjoy that sort of guitar playing.

If you knew my history, you might be surprised.
I grew up playing in death-metal bands in the small town where I lived through my teen years.
The reason we all played metal, is that was the most rebellious thing one could do!
To give my age away, I was a mere lad of 12 or 13 when Nirvana and Pearl Jam broke through onto The Australian Broadcast Corporation's "Rage" and simultaneously channel 10's "Video Hits".

Suddenly "alternative" was mainstream and not in the least bit offensive (tell that to our parents at high volume).

I think probably the earliest slide thing I wrote was heavily influenced by the "Young Guns 2" soundtrack.

What else did I have available? Not much slide in my sisters Madonna and INXS collection (the two coolest cassettes that she had).

The point I'm trying to make is that when you're learning guitar pre-internet, the resources were limited. Music books were expensive and trying to find music that wasn't in the top 40 was nearly impossible. So even if one had instructions, you didn't know what the songs are supposed to sound like.

None of us knew anything about other tunings, outside of dropping E to D.
Back in 96 I was convinced that I had invented dadgad.
20 years laters I was kicking myself for not dropping the G to F# or even F.

I always wondered how all those great slide licks were done in dadgad. You've got this weird 4th in the middle of a chord and it wasn't great for chasing those full slide chord sounds.
I just figured I was lousy at slide and didn't pick it up much over the intervening period between my teens and late 30's

The one almost respectable composition I made resulted in me being oblivious to a home invasion by a couple of miscreants. I'd been in my room with the music loud for a couple of hours only to emerge to discover that my PS2 and games were missing (why didn't they half inch the video camera too?).

Anyway I'm digressing heavily and don't need to tell you about every time I picked up a slide.

20 years since I first messed about with slide, I'm finally getting a handle on some things.
Some of this is due to better information, but it's largely due to better tools.

I've owned around 10 slides over the years. Not a great collection, but when you consider what we have available in Oz, there's little point in buying a metal or glass tube over & over.
I still have my first slide. Chrome on the outside. Rusty in the middle. Don't think it was a dunlop. Was probably a Fender.

It wasn't great. Lightweight and frankly awful to use since the chrome didn't make it through the middle. I had a glass pinkie slide that has long since disappeared onto the vastness of space and a couple of Dunlop brass slides.

One of them a straight tube, the other a slightly fancier concave tube.
The latter was my go-to for about 6 years, the former being donated to a friend.

Note the differences in thickness

Concave profile

Dunlop's 227 is a decent slide. It had a decent weight and the curved surface made accessing single strings a little easier. The fit was pretty good on my ring finger, but way too loose on the pinky.
Recently on a whim I bought a short brass dunlop, but had to use it with tape around my finger  in order to use it at all.

Fed up with that approach I searched for a better solution. That's when I discovered a thing call the "the Rock Slide". They're made in the USA and a little on the expensive side. Especially since the Aussie dollar isn't so strong against the greenback. I debated getting one for a few months, but eventually decided to go for it.

It might be aged brass, but playing has worn it off

Three slides gets you free shipping, but I couldn't spring for that amount of $ without experiencing the guilt and shame for being frivolous on something that might end up being an expensive paper weight.

Sometimes the Rock Slide offer factory seconds for half price.
When I decided to buy, one such sale just happened to coincide.
I purchased an Aged Brass Ball-tip from the "good stock" and a small Glass slide from the factory seconds.

I don't know what the proper small glass slide is supposed to resemble, but I can't see any issues with mine. Maybe the inner diameter is a little loose? The brass ball tip on the other hand fist perfectly on my ring finger to the 2nd joint and the pinky to the knuckle.

Both slides have a decent amount of mass and are comfortable to use courtesy of the half moon cutaway that allows your fingers to bend in a naturally comfortable fashion.
If you fee the slide is a touch too short, then just twist it around and there are a few more Mm to work with.

These slides haven't magically made me a better player, but they offer a rounded end surface that allows better targeting of a desired string. This allows the player to keep plucking a way either side of the slide, while giving access to more advanced techniques without the steep learning curve.

The glass slide is more useful on my 12 string since the action is lower and the string gauge lighter, where my resonator needs a bit more mass for the opposite reason.

My Dunlop 227 slide still has its uses, but I keep returning to the Rock Slide in both glass and brass.

Your milage may vary, but I doubt it.

Blues Box Guitar

As mentioned in the last post I received a beginners cigar box guitar for xmas.
It comes with an instructional booklet, demo CD and a glass side that accommodate even the most well fed of digits.

The booklet and CD are professionally presented, but the guitar itself was a little surprising

I hadn't looked too hard on the outside of the package and though that the box was maybe plywood.
But upon opening I discovered that it was actually thick cardboard.

No biggie, it's an $28 AUD kit.

The neck appears to be pine, but the internet tells me its maple.
Honestly for the tension on the strings, I don't think it needs a harder wood.

The only DIY bit of putting it together is to put the ferrules in, this was easy enough, but some were tighter than others. Placement of the nut is accommodated by a groove in the neck, where the bridge is placed over a conveniently printed line on the body.

There's also a piezo pickup on board, which works as you'd expect.

No frets, but there are fret markers.
The manual suggest GDG tuning, so I did.

Having never played a cigar box guitar, I was a little doubtful of the tonal range of this tuning, but the doubts were without merit.

I've spent many hours avoiding assignments playing this budget instrument and annoying the family.

The internet tells me that it might be harmful to the cigar box market, but I just don't see it.
In fact it just makes me want to get out and make one myself!

I have a fancy champagne gift box that is just begging for some three string action!

Numbers, roadside junk and preparing for the future.

Greetings readers (all two of you),

It's been a rather dull couple of years on the posting front.
I've had a lot on my plate outside of music, studying accounting being the chief time sink outside of working (there's always a guitar next to my desk to help me think).

Also, the coffers are hardly overflowing, so new instruments are pretty rare.|
Actually, thinking about it, not that rare. But they also cost very little.

The side of the road seems to be a good place to find instruments where I live.
I've found a perfectly functional keyboard stand, busted nylon string and a snare drum with stand (both in great working order).

This is all in the last 12 months.

I got an acoustic piano for free (moving it wasn't but them's the breaks right?
It doesn't hold tune all that well on some of the keys, but I got a decent tuning hammer and it's pretty easy to get going if I feel in the mood to bash out the one piano thing I know how to play.

There was also a Yamaha Organ that I got for the price of a couple of burgers.

Lastly, I received a very cheap cigar box guitar kit for xmas.
It doesn't have an actual cigar box for a body, its really just made of thick cardboard.
The thing looks cheap ugly, but I was surprised that it sounded ok and is a lot of fun to play.
Now I've returned to my old habits of look around me for things that I can turn into instruments or bend to another purpose.

My shed is brimming with boxes and cake tins that are begging to be utilised for making noise.

I'll be done with my studies soon and shall resume posting on a more regular basis.

Happy new year!

El cheapo power soak

Many years ago, when I was but a lad of 19 I had a 50watt valve amplifier and lived in a flat.
That amp was the Peavey Classic 50 head. It sounded great, but boy hoh by was it loud.

Back then I had a job repairing turntables and as a result had access to a catalogue of stuff that just wasn't available in the local Dick Smith (remember when they sold electronics components?).

Anyway, in said catalogue they had this thing called a speaker attenuator. It was a little pricey for my measly wage, but I thought that it might do the trick. It didn't and it has been sitting in one box or another for the last 17 years. That was until this afternoon when I fished it out and took to it with the soldering iron.

You see, I had an idea this morning, it was the same one that I had back in 1999.

I'd been on ebay and was searching for something when I saw a "power soak" that was cheap and looked suspiciously like the thing that I had in my workshop.

After a bit of searching on the commute, I came across this instructable and it turns out I'd been doing it wrong.

You see there was only solder on two of the three terminals, so I guess that I set about wiring it the wrong way.

Wiring it up the same as the instructable yielded the result that I was after so many moons ago!

I don't have the 50 watter any more, but I do have two Fives and a Fifteen.
Now the five can be cranked and not annoy the neighbours, but everything in my crappy little sound booth rattles and its a little unpleasant on the ears after a few minutes.

The fifteen on the other hand, gets too loud at just #3 on the dial.
Nice and clean at this point, but the sweet spot is a little further up the dial.

I've only tried out the attenuator on my Epiphone Valve Jr Half-Stack so far, but it worked flawlessly.
The amp can run full tilt and yield a nice gritty distortion, but be dialed down to almost nothing.

With this design, the amp sees 8 ohms at any level and is now at a nice neighbour friendly volume.

Update:
I got around to placing the power soak into an enclosure this weekend and try it out on my Fender Princeton. The results are good, but not as good as they were on the Valve Jr.

There are a couple of factors at play here at least.
The two biggest that I can identify are A: Power and B: Speaker interaction.

The Epiphone overdrives well and doesn't get nearly as loud as the Fender.
Sure its 1/3 the wattage, but that doesn't mean its only 1/3 as loud.
I've run them in stereo and they're not too different side by side.
The Epi isn't being drowned out by the Fender.
Though the fender does cause more rattling of the fixings in the booth.

The Fender does overdrive, but at maximum it is pretty fizzy and not anything like what you hear when running raw into the speaker at full volume.
From what I can tell, the amplifier / speaker interaction is where the great tone of this amp comes from. When the amp begins to distort, the speaker is working hard and lending its owe character to the overall sound. This seems to complement the amp's natural overdrive and also round out any unpleasant fizz. Either that or the assault on your ears means they can't pick out the nuances.

Dialing back the volume of the amp to (around 4 & 5) the zone where it straddles the clean/breaking up threshold and setting the power soak to just slightly higher than where I had it on the Valve Jr yielded a pretty nice tone. Clean and jangly with nice overdrive when hitting the strings hard.

I usually play with a neck pickup, but the bridge was better when using the power soak.
At a guess, its due to the same reason the overdrive at max volume wasn't great. The speaker plays a big part in the overall tone and maybe the lower frequencies are being rolled off a bit as well.

In conclusion, the price can't be beat for the control it provides over neighbourhood relations even if the unit does change the way your amp sounds. I'd love to try out a more expensive unit to see if they too suffer the fizziness that I experienced. I'm guessing that the answer would be yes due to the speaker not being driven the way it is intended. I still had very useable tone, but it is markedly different to the raw amp experience.

Your milage may vary.

Earthquaker Devices - Organizer

Hi Folks,

I know it's been a long time between posts but I haven't had much to report.
Everything is work, work, work.

I'm pretty sure you're not all that interested in balance sheets, economic order quotients or digging up tree roots and the intricacies of laying a flat garden path with recycled bricks.

Me either, but hey, that's my lot right now (Come on October!).

I did get a little reprieve and have been messing about in a friends studio, but nothing worth publishing yet.

A little way back there was a bit of spare cash and I spied a used Organizer pedal.
I'm a sucker for organ tones and I'm a lousy keyboard player so what's a man to do?

In earlier posts I've written about other pitch shifting devices such as the EHX Hog, Digitech Whammy, MXR Blue box and I think even a Boss OC3. Though the last two don't really count.

I liked the HOG, but it was too expensive and I had gear lust so it didn't last long in my collection.
There was a top end warble that I found to be a bit annoying for the price point. But this is just an artifact of the octave up pitch shifting.

I've heard it in the Whammy 4 and it is present in the Organiser (and POG and probably C9 too).

The Organizer is an interesting beast, but you'll want to use a nice clean power supply as it can amplify ripple from the DC input. I have a bunch of them and they vary within the same model designation, so its just a matter of messing about until you find a quiet one.

The manual suggests placing gain devices before it in the signal chain and after testing I can see why.
Any distortion after the fact will reveal clock noise from the delay chip on lag function. And if you're not using a clean power supply it will be even worse.

I would have thought that distorting on the input would have made tracking less accurate, but it works really well. I don't know the math or the way it actually works inside, but maybe its something about squaring off the waveform that simplifies things, but there is a harmonic component to distortion too so maybe I'm off the mark entirely.

What counts is the end result and it is pretty good.

The lag function "feels" like a delay when you move the knob, but I think may be its more akin to the halfway point on the HOG hold function (sort of like portamento on a synth). I'm not going to open it up, so I'll leave it a mystery.

Turing down the bass and dialing a blend of dry with the upper register can give a nice shimmer.
When coupled with reverb and delay the results are pleasing.
Dialing in the bottom end gives (as you would imagine) a nice full organ flavoured tone, especially when running into a Univibe (or clone) for that simulated leslie wobble.

Having seen the Decemberists this week, I know it's nowhere near the real deal, but still a really fund thing to play with.

I found the Organizer to be a fun and flexible pedal that I expect to retain in my collection (how many times can I keep buying the same basic thing right?)

Maybe one day I'll post a demo.....

Found some stuff that I thought others might like :)

Anyone who knows me and has talked music, knows that I love Grandaddy.

I was trawling YouTube for video demos of the Yamaha Electone B-35n as I am soon to receive one to add to my collection.

I did'd find any good demos of that one specifically, but what I did come across was a channel that had some really nice songs that feature the Yamaha Electone C-35.

What's this go to do with Grandaddy you might ask?

Synth Arpeggios, I am a sucker for them.
Grandaddy uses them to great effect and so does the guy in the videos below.
Simple, beautiful.

Anyway if you're up for some nice instrumental tunes, then I suggest you head on over and checkout
Bagatellamusic also, do yourselves a favour and check out ( and by check out I mean throw your money at) Grandaddy and Jason Lytle 

Here are some videos that I quite liked. Enjoy!

Please note, I am not affiliated with any of the above.

I'm Just a fan.

Cheers

T.A.P.O.R.

Found Sound

I haven't been doing much music related stuff of late, so the posts have been few & far between.

Yesterday I was on the other side of town, near where I used to live & spend my money old music stuff. I decided to pop into the Swoppy, but didn't make it, as I saw that Found Sound was open for business (previously it was by appointment only).

I had a bit of a chat to the proprietor whom I have been acquainted with for a number of years.

Found Sound is a bit like the Swoppy, but the stock is a little bit fancier and they only sell items that they would like to own themselves (I'm paraphrasing).

Anyway, if you're in Melbourne you should definitely pop in and see what they've got.

Slow as a....

I sure do take my sweet time to finish stuff.

This time its an old junker guitar that I've had for a long, long time.

It has featured in a couple of posts already:

Scratch plate templates and Summer Projects

During one summer storm after painting the body, somehow water managed to get into the guitar's storage container and soaked it for a couple of weeks before I noticed.

The paint was pretty messed up, but the body was as good as before (eg: fairly rubbish).

Anyway a couple of weeks ago I felt the need to do something with my hands and slapped it back together in an afternoon.

Its not setup, but plays fairly well and stays in tune.

I'm using it to trigger a midi pickup and it is performing quite well.

ZVex Distortron

Last year I built a tagboard ZVex SHO clone.

It was nice.

Clean to very nasty and pretty cheap to build.
It also sounded really good.


Then one day it stopped working.

I tried debugging it, but the  accursed thing would not come back to life (even with a new transistor).

The accursed circuit went back into a box for another day.

I decided that I'd try to find a real one online for cheap (I'm not super cashed up).
Unfortunately that didn't pan out, but something else did.

I'd just finished an exam (which was conveniently located a short walk from my favourite shop) and had a few dollars in my pocket that I had been saving up for such a conjunction in locality & circumstance.

They didn't have any SHO's in store, but they did have a ZVex Distortron.

From what I can tell of the online reviews, this pedal doesn't really get the love that it deserves.

I imagine that has something to do with that its named fairly conventionally and isn't particularly eye catching. People are fickle and these things do count for many of them. I say they're missing out for being snobby.

This pedal is well made, has a small footprint and most importantly sounds good at any volume or setting.

It can clean up fairly well, though it always has a little bit of menace around the edges.
That my friends, is exactly what I was looking for in a dirt box.

It gives a massive amount of boost and a huge amount of dirt if you want.

The subs make my Princeton rumble something fierce but the 3 way switch takes care of that.
There is a lot of tonal variety and sounds great through an amp and equally good driving a series of pedals into a DI rig.

I didn't have a JTM45 to play into as recommended on the ZVex site, but I do have an Epiphone Valve Jr and a Fender Princeton. It sounds great in both amps and I imagine that it would sound great in any amp that you care to use.

Anyway, my advice is go try one out and judge for yourself, other people's opinions will only get you so far.

Cheers
T.A.P.O.R.

Simulating Pickups & Splitting Signals

SHO Clone & Pickup Sim

Last weekend I decided to make Jack Orman's Pickup Simulator. I've had the parts collected in a little bag for a long, long time. It's a really simple circuit, and one that I really should have built earlier (say back in 2009).

The purpose of the Pickup simulator is to deal with certain pedals that prefer to be fed straight from the guitar and not through the buffer of another pedal (EG: Fuzzface, Big Muff, Octavio).

I didn't have the Mouser 42TL019 transformer on hand, but I did have the Mouser 42TL018 which has a similar enough primary coil value.

The pickup simulator works really well, but that's not the only reason I wanted to make it.

I usually record in stereo with one effected and one dry track. The drawback with this is the guitar had to go into a pedal that had stereo outputs. Which by default, introduces a buffer for each channel.

Since the schematic shows that the transformer can be tapped to obtain two different impedances, I figured it should also be useful in sending the signal to two destinations. Even five, if you don't mind a bit of transmission loss in the secondary coil.

Both of my guesses turned out to be correct.

Splitting the primary gives the best signal, and improved the character of the guitar signal significantly when compared to the buffer split.

One side of the stereo pair goes through effects, the other simply goes into an analogue amp/speaker simulator. It was on the clean side that I noticed the most improvement (Especially on the Bass VI).

This is a no frills tool, but it has the potential to bring some life back into otherwise lifeless sounding effects.

This has been one of my cheapest builds, and its probably the simplest. I wish I had invented it, this should really be available as an off the shelf product.

Until next time.

T.A.P.O.R.

Quickie Update - Bass Vi D'Addario XLB095

Dear readers,

You may recall that I (and others on the wide wide world of web) were not entirely satisfied with the stock strings that ship with the Bass VI.

The 6th string is just a tad under nourished to play without buzzing like a march fly when playing with anything more than gentle plucking.

After a fruitless search locally (nobody wanted to sell me singles) I ended up purchasing a fatter low E from far across the Pacific.
Thanks to the modern age (fast shipping and being too busy to scratch myself) they seemed to have arrived swiftly.

It took a couple of minutes to get sorted and ready to play.
Going from an .084 to a .095 improved the tone on open chords considerably. Previously playing an open E was not a pleasant experience. Flabby and toneless.

Some folks on the forum mentioned that the .095 was the bare minimum required to have this instrument sounding the way it should.

From playing it a bit with the heavier string, I think I might have to agree.

The tone has definitely improved, and the buzzing on the frets has lessened significantly. I no longer hear the fret buzz through an amplifier or DI as I did with the .084

The difference between the A & E is slight, though noticeable.
Maybe the A could be fattened up too?

The A string's tone is fine in my pinion, so I think I'm done experimenting with strings for the time being.

I did read on a forum post (don't remember which one) by an apparent staff member that D'Addario were considering issuing a heavier set late last year. Unfortunately I can't find the post to follow up.

I'd really like to try some flat wounds, but since I'm not a professional musician, or even a weekend warrior I'll stick with what I have until they go dead or I break a string.

A couple of handy circuits for driving LED & opto-couplers.

When trying to work out a solution for driving a Vox wah circuit automatically, I found a handy pair of circuits by one Mr Bill Bowden.

The site is no longer active, but I managed to find a copy on Web Archive and later Bill's new website

There are a number of flashing circuits based on 555 timers and both Dual & Quad Op Amp designs.

I've extracted the two images that I use the most and have been particularly good with Tim Escobedo's PWM and the above mentioned wah circuit.

The resistor between pins 7 & 2 controls the rate.

I have used TL072 & 4558 chips in place of the 1458

According to Bill's website, it can also be used as a straight up LFO without the LED and is good for up to around 10khz. I haven't been able to get it to drive an LED faster than about 1/3hz yet, but that's due to a lack of time & actual knowledge of electronics on my part (you don't need to know much theory in order to tinker with FX pedals & synth circuits).

Fender Pawn Shop Bass VI - Review 2013

I've had this instrument for about 6 months now, and overall am very happy with the purchase. Though it isn't without its issues.

Its been so long since I purchased a box-fresh instrument that I can't really compare to my previous (twice?) experiences.

I was prepared for a couple of issues by the multitude of forum posts around the web.

Namely these:

• String Gauge
• Intonation
• Setup
• Crackling electronics
• Aesthetics

The first three points are all related, so I'll tackle them together.

I opened the carton in store, so it was about as fresh as one could get.

The guitar was more or less in tune, but a little lower than standard pitch which I imagine was intentional for shipping purchases. 

As far as setup goes, the guitar was assembled with the neck straight enough to play. The action was fairly low, but as expected (and experienced on the floor model) the low E buzzed like a nest of bees living in the chimney (true story from my childhood).

The vibrato was not setup. I suspect the same issue was the source of one uneducated complaint on the internet that I saw regarding the height of the vibrato bar from the body. Indeed it was too low to play. But easily corrected with a couple of turns of a screwdriver.

Once I got the Bass VI home I attended to the intonation. For the stock action it was pretty close already, but as forewarned by the elders of the internet, the low E would not intonate  without modification to the bridge.

One extreme I saw, was drilling a hole from the neck side of the bridge and inserting the screw that way. My solution was simpler.

Remove the long saddle screw & spring and use a short screw with no spring.

The saddle needed to be right up against the tail side of the bridge, but did indeed intonate spot on, but the string still buzzed.

I did manage to get the buzzing to stop by raising the action a bit, but that meant intonation was not going to happen. Simply because the bridge (not the saddles) is far too narrow for the scale length.

Surely Fender could make a stamped metal bridge cheaply for this instrument?!?!?

Anyway it is likely that I'll be upgrading to a Staytrem as they make a 1" version which is suitable for the Bass VI and apparently without any major surgery. That will have to wait a bit though as I have other expenses at the moment.

This brings us to the crackling.

It seems that a corner was cut in production. There is no foil backing on the pick guard. This causes the pickguard to act like a capacitor which discharges slightly as the instrument is played.
The foil tape is so cheap. I find it absurd that it was left off the instrument. I'll be adding it to mine once I get around to changing the strings.

I get that the idea behind the pawn shop series is that they're meant to be different to what has come before. The instruments in this range look great, but a lot of people are ticked off that this instrument has a distinct lack of chrome.

I don't mind that its pickguard is a little different. For me its like the difference between a Jaguar & Jazzmaster. For that matter I don't mind that it has a Jazzmaster shaped pickup in the bridge (or that its really a humbucker).

What I don't really like is the blade switch.
Especially the knob. It just doesn't look right.

I would have made one of two changes if I were on the design team. Either A: Slider switches in the plastic pickguard or B: a chrome plate for the 5 way switch like on the Johnny Marr Jaguar.
I'd also add in a 3 way toggle like on the Kurt Cobain Jaguar (though having photoshopped it from stock images, I'd go with option A) .

Although there are a couple of things that could have been done better, they re really quite minor.

The neck, though big and chunky actually feels really nice in the hand and is very comfortable to play (have smallish hands). The finish is superb. Its pretty tough too as I've bumped it on my concrete floor a few times and it didn't leave even the slightest scratch.

The pickups are supposed to be wound hot, but seem like they're actually rather low in output. That's fine with me as I prefer lower gain in general. The sound from Neck and Middle is excellent, but like most people seem to be, I'm not too keen on the bridge.

That said, I usually play all of my guitars on the neck pickup so maybe I'm just biased?

I really like this guitar/bass thing.
The only problem I have with it, is that all of my other guitars now feel like toys.  I'm having trouble going back to the Mosrite the most, because the necks and string spacing are vastly different.

Actually this goes for all of my other guitars.

Six months on and I'm still pleased as punch.

Jim Dunlop - Octavio

Octave Up effects don't suit everyone.

In general chords just sound horrible and the effect is really only noticeable round the 10th to 14th frets. Some people disregard it as a one-trick pony, and in a way I agree.

I've built a few Octave Up pedals over the years, some I've kept, some I've sold.
Honestly I can't even remember all of the pedals I've made & parted with.
Pretty sure I built a green-ringer once upon a time.

Don't remember selling it or destroying it, but it isn't in the arsenal any longer.

Anyway, my point is, I like the effect enough to keep building variants, but my favourite is the cheese wedge of the Jim Dunlop - OC1 Octavio.

The Octave Up is clear and distinct for about 90% of the Fuzz range, then you hit this tipping point where the Fuzz is really intense and the octave becomes really dirty. It is a pretty loud pedal and has a tendency to clip the input of any buffered bypass effects in the chain.

I've mostly played it with a  regular 6 string and it has been an enjoyably noisy affair, but recently things have taken a turn to the lower end of the range as I have acquired a Bass VI.

I used to think that it would only really suit the 12th fret region on a regular guitar, so never bothered with a bass instrument. I was wrong and I was missing out. The Bass VI produces the octave effect very clearly when playing reasonably calmly, but start going a bit silly and every note distorst in a way that evokes an auditory image of a torn speaker.


Try running it with a nearly exhausted battery. It does gets into synthesizer territory.
Hmm... I think I might need to build a flat battery simulator soon.....