2006 - Lincoln Chord Organ

Taking a break from guitars, I bring you the Lincoln Chord organ.

Many years ago I became obsessed with the sound of a Harmonium. Unfortunately, they're not exactly easy to come upon, nor cheap when you manage to find one. The next best thing, I discovered was an electric motor powered wind organ.

It's a pretty simple setup, a switch a 12v motor with a fan attached, and some little metal strips (tines) tuned to a certain pitch (Like a tuning fork). The air flows over the tines and produces a metallic reed type sound.
The problem with the chord organ that I have is that it was too noisy. I've rebuilt it a few times, but the fan was always very loud, so there was no way to dampen it without getting into the electrics. Frankly that was something that terrified me. Mains power is scary, when you have no idea on what you're doing.

I got sick of it at some point and loaned it to a friend, who evidently had a similar issue, since it never saw a lot of use. When he gave it back, he told me that the power socket was a bit iffy. When I got it home and plugged it in, I discovered that he wasn't kidding. As soon as the power was switched on, there was aloud bang, sparks and the cable had flown across the kitchen.

Upon further investigation, it was clear that the old power socket on the back of the unit had become very fragile. The metal prongs had somehow managed to touch, which resulted in the shower of sparks. I figured that this would be a good time to sort out the motor control once and for all. So I took a trip to my local electronics dealer and picked up a controller for a light dimmer. I was still deeply paranoid, so it sat in a box for another 3 years, until I decided to give it a go.

Installation of the controller, was a fairly simple affair. Just a matter of identifying what was meant to go where. About a 10 minute job if you don't count the time it took to get my tools together.

The fan controller worked as I thought it would. It gives control to slow the fan down enough, to still produce sound when the keys are pressed, but also quieter than before, to the point where you hardly hear the motor.


Unfortunately, something has happened to a couple of the tines, so they don't produce sound, and a couple of the old felt stoppers were worn, so that the keys didn't close some holes. I made my way to one of the local discount goods shops and picked up a packet of felt for $2 and went to work on the organ.


Under the chord keys, the felt wouldn't stick with craft glue, so I ended up using double sided tape (glue was fine under the regular keys). It took a while to sort out the holes with a scalpel, but it seemed to function much better than before.Still not perfect as a few tines seem to be prevented from vibrating by some unknown hindrance, probably a bit of fluff from the felt. But it works for now, just got to tweak it a little more to get it 100% working.

Chord organs are decent sounding instruments if you can get your hands on one nice and cheap, they add a certain old timey charm or an eerie drone to a song. Don't overlook them as junk shop items.

2011 - Weber Z-Matcher

Weber Z-Matcher 50W version

I've had this red box for a few months now, and have used it exclusively with my Fender Princeton Reverb RI and Epiphone 12" cab, which resided in my isolation cab.

The Princeton is engineered for a nominal load of 8 Ohms, but the Epiphone cab is 16 ohms. Everything I've read about the subject is that the amp down't handle the higher load very well, and that it would be better to run two 8 om speakers in parralell(gets you 4 ohms), rather than an 8 and 16. It's all to do with math and ratio's and running mismatched loads is a no no. Sure it's going to get you a load of 6 ohms or so, but since one speaker has less resistance, most of the power will go through there and will naturally be louder than the other as a matter of course. Also this doesn't fit the ratio that the amp requires.
First I tried using a resistive dummy load to match everything up, but since a speaker doesn't have a fixed resistance (due to the combination of frequency and inductance of the voice coil), the results weren't exactly pleasing.

I'd read all about inductive loads being the way to go, and pretty much the only one that I could find with any reviews, was the one from Weber. The manufacturers of fine speakers for guitar amps.
After a lot of deliberation and indecision, I decided that having a variable inductive load would be the way to go. so I bought the 50w Z-Matcher.

The purchasing process is a little odd, it's all via email and can take some time to get your quote back, but the staff were helpful when arranging the postage. But the transaction itself was done via Paypal and they were happy to send it Via USPS when asked. Weber build all of their stuff to order, so there's a bit of a waiting period, but being in Australia, I've gotten used to waiting for my stuff to arrive. Hey, if I can't get what I want locally (or locally at a competitive rate), then I have to go offshore for the products I want/need.

They estimated up to six weeks for assembly, but it was at my door in less than a month (not bad in my opinion). Anyway, back to the box. It came in a simple postage container wrapped in paper and bubble wrap. It's quite a heavy unit, so I delayed taking it home for a few days.
There's no manual to speak of, but there's no need if you're familiar with the basics of speaker matching (all us amplified guitars and bassists should be!).

Front Panel:
amp in
amp impedance (2-16 ohms)
speaker impedance (2-16 ohms
speaker out

Rear Panel
Line Volume
Line out - Balance
Line out - unbalanced
Parallel Speaker out

It was put to work matching the Epiphone Cab in the isolation box.
The first test I ran it through was the line out. Honestly I wasn't really impressed. Clean guitar was fine, but overdriven just sounded fizzy (pretty much like any amp with line out ever).
But hey, I wasn't exactly expecting a miracle there.

The next test I did was mic (Shure SM57) up the speaker and A/B that with the line out. Guess what? The mic even carelessly placed, sounded a lot nicer than the line out. I left it like this for a few months, and just playing with it when I had a couple of spare hours. After a while I noticed a bit of a weird distortion when using reverb on the Princeton. Especially if I was driving the reverb hard. I figured it was either a dodgy cable or maybe a quirk of the speaker cab inside a fairly small volume of air (there's a lot going on in an iso cab with a large speaker. Standing waves and other funky things can send voltage back to the transformer of the amp if you're unlucky). Also my headphones are a little rattly in some frequencies.

Upon further investigation, it turned out not to be a problem with anything mentioned above, and I haven't got definitive proof yet, but I have a hypothesis which makes sense (need to find an engineer wiling to experiment).

I decided to test the whole rig outside of the cabinet and directly with my ears, reducing the variables where interference could occur(cab, mic, lead, mixer, earphones). First up, I tested the amp by itself on a rubber mat to damp vibrations into the floor. Aside from making the house rattle when it was barely past two on the dial, the amp sounded as it should with the reverb cranked).

The next thing I did was to put the Z-Matcher between the amp and it's stock 10" speaker and set for 8 ohms per side. The distortion came back. Next I plugged in the 16 ohm cab. Again, fine on straight guitar signal, weird distortion with reverb. Last up I placed the speakers in parallel. The 16 ohm cab directly into the amp, and the 8 ohm stock speaker via the Z-Matcher (the amp side of the Z-Matcher was set to 16 ohms in order to present and 8 ohm overall load to the amp). As I'd already had a suspicion that the distortion was happening inside the Z-Matcher, it was no surprise to find that I had the distortion coming through the 10" speaker and not the 12".

The Z-Matcher works flawlessly with any signal presented to it as long as there is no reverb in the mix.
What I think is happening is that there are weird things happening inside the inductors of the Z-Matcher, due to the complex reflections generated by the reverb.

Reverb adds to those complexities and since the coils of the Z-Matcher aren't on the move as they would be with a speaker/magnet combination, there is a bit of a inductive choke effect going on and the result is the distortion that I'm hearing. It's subtle and I don't think that it would matter much in a band setting. The sound does stand out for me now as I'm aware of it. But I don't think it's a deal breaker on the Z-Matcher. It's just a quirk of electromagnetism and I can live with it as the unit serves it's purpose.

Repairs: Ibanez FL9 Flanger

Since I don't get much time to play guitar these days and when I do, it's generally just guitar and amp. My FX don't get used too often, and the least often used of my FX would have to be my Ibanez FL9 Flanger. Generally I don't havemuch use for flanging effects. It's fun and all, but I prefer to use it sparingly. If I'm going to use a modulated effect, it's more likely that I'll use a phaser. Just personal preference.

Because of this, my FL9 sat in a drawer for the best part of a year. It's an old pedal (over 25 years) and the last time I went to use it, it just passed a clean tone. The pedal wasn't toally broken, the delay chip was still working as there as a bit of a flange sound when twiddling the controls. Upon opening it up, some of the jooints looked cold. So I proceeded to re-solder everything on the board. No go. It took a  while to track down the schematic (didn't end up using it), but I'd read a snippet from one forum about replacing old electrolytic caps, so i figured that i'd give it a try. I went over the board and documented everything electrolytic.

There were two caps near the middle of the board which weren't coloured blue like the rest (they were orange), so I decided to replace them first and give it a test (I'd seen a similar arrangement on a synth I'd built). My hunch was right, they were there to control the LFO rate. The LFO was working again, but the effect was very subtle. Not at all like I remembered.

Fortunately the board has three trim pots for adjusting various biases. Ignore the middle one, it's there to bias a transistor and the factory setting is just right to avoid unwanted and unpleasant clipping. The trim pot closes to the middle controls feedback and the one further away controls depth. With these two trim pots you can get the pedal to self oscillate. Particularly with the first one. It's not a sound I'd want all the time, so I've set it up to kick in at about 70% maximum on the front panel feedback knob. The mod is safe and easy to do. You won't even need to take the board out to do it. While increasing the feedback makes the flanger more prominent, it still falls short of being a true "jet" flanger. Still it is nice to have in the tool kit.

FL9 Service Manual Page 1

FL9 Service Manual Page 2 (Schematic)

FL9 Service Manual Page 3 (Trouble Shooting)

FL9 Service Manual Page 4 (PCB Layout) - LFO Caps Highlighted w/red box.

Re-Repair & sound sample.

Stereo Flying V Demo

I've not been up to much in the guitar realm of late.
Winter has not been favourable for working outside, mostly due to the lack of dry weather and daylight.

For this post I'm revisiting the Stereo Flying V mod from May 2011.

I did a rough demo a few weeks ago, but have only just got around to uploading it.
The recording was done straight into the desk, with a couple of amp plugins and some out of the box drum loops. Before the guitar signal hit the mixer it passed through a pair of Bad Monkeys with a cheap octave down pedal on the Mustang Bass pickup.

My guitar playing is far from perfect and the sound quality one I uploaded it has changed a bit, so your mileage may vary. Despite my shortcomings, I feel as though the sound clip demonstrates the mod effectively.

StereoFlyingV by TheAwesomePowerOfRockets

Enough talk - Action! Manito Flying V Stereo Mod

I finally got around to modding my bargain Flying V from last year. Inspired by a blog post on Tym Guitars website. The mod is pretty easy to do if you have the tools. I used me Dremel and Router attachment. First thing to do was place the pickup on the guitar and drill the holes for the screw adjustment. Next was to flip the pickup upside down and trace the outline with a sharpie. I had to eyeball the line to make sure that I didn't go over. For the most part I kept within the line and did the final filing and shaping by hand. The Mustang Bullet Bass pickup fits nice and tightly in the hole. Once that was ready, I needed to make space in the body. The manufacturer promised a solid mahogany body, it's low grade, but it looks pretty similar to the photos in my woodworking book.  

Routing out the hole was done with the neck in situ, I just made some rails out of ice-cream sticks and masking tape to allow the router edge to glide over the fretboard. A little bit of soldering and a re-string(the proper way) and it was all roses. The nut needed to be replaced and is close to finished, though I need to spend a bit more time on it to make it just right. Once it was strung up I fired up a few effects, with the mustang bass pickup feeding an octaver. 

 It needs a little noise suppression to kill the bleed over from the 5th string, but nothing to worry about in any real sense. A fun project, that I recommend to anyone brave enough to get into cutting scratch plate material.

Parts PaRtS PARTS pArTs parts!

When getting into work this morning I passed by the lads in the mail room (as I always do) and I was informed that some packages had arrived. What could they be I wonder?

As I approached my desk I saw several packages, one I didn't order, one that I had ordered and one that I'd forgotten I'd ordered! One of our I.T. guys is an ex bass player and he was rummaging around some place, found some old Gotoh Bass tuning heads and though I'd like to have them. Yes I would!

My Hallmark vibrato turned up after just 8 days from the USA, and by coincidence, my Mosrite style roller bridge arrived as well. Packed in with the Roller bridge was also the new stud mount wrap tail bridge for the Surfcaster. So I'm all set to get my guitars back in working order. Now I just need to find time.

Yesterday I finally received my Weber Z-Matcher. It's a nice looking unit. Well built and uses no power aside from the amplifier output to do it's thing. I bought it specifically to work with my 16ohm Epiphone cabinet and Fender Princeton to obtain the required impedance per the manual. It'll also come in handy when using my isolation cabinet for recording as it has a line out as well.  Fun times ahead.

 

The infinite sustain project

This week the story is about my friends guitar.
It's a black Gretsch Pro Jet (I think). A ncie guitar, and despite having a large portion of the body chambered, it's quite heavy. The existing pickups are Mini Humbuckers, but I don't know much about them.
They're stock and have a nice twang to them, not really like a Fitlertron, but definitely down that road. Nothing like a PAF.

We both agree that the guitar sounds great as is, which is why it's taken him some time to make to move to have it "upgraded" to his favourite pickup configuration. An EMG 81.

I originally though he was crazy. But having done the install and testing, I have to admit, it sounds great.

The job was fairly straight forward as EMG supply the wiring harness, the only soldering needed is to and from the volume pot. Got that sorted and played a little bit. The tone of the guitar still had it's nice country feel, but the EMG was clear and has a great dynamic range. Very quiet too. My flat has severe problems with EMI and as such is a good test bed for the sorts of issues that may come up out in the real world.

The routing on the body is wide enough to just drop in a humbucker, though the length of the rout is big enough to put a non dog ear P90 pickup in. I cut some pine and shaped it to fit at either end of the pickup and painted them black to match the body. Once that was done I added a simple chrome pickup ring that I'd had  in my parts drawer. No drilling into the guitar was needed as the screws just slid between the pine and the body, which in turn secured the pickup at the desired height. The mod is so simple that the pickup can't be adjusted, but that's fine since, it's already at the optimum distance from the strings.

The other part of this mod, is one I've done on a few other guitars over the last couple of years. A home made sustain driver. It's pretty easy to do. All you need is a decent magnet and some 0.25mm enamel coated wire for the driver coil and a 1/4w LM386 based amplifier to power it. The output of the bridge pickup is fed into the amplifier and the coil acts like a resonant feedback (not microphonic) that one might get from a loud amp.

I used a Strat style pickup bobbin to mount the driver on. With the gauge of wire I used, you only need 160 turns to get to 8ohms. With some experimentation I have found that the best results are obtained by winding directly to the magnet, rather than just the pole pieces. This has the added benefit of not requiring the poles to line up with the strings as the magnet is a continuous bar.

Mounting the sustainer in a P90 sized hole presented a problem.

First I cut a piece of ply and shaped it to fit in the cavity, but this was going to be a pain to rout as I didn't have a template available and it was raining (my work area is outside). After messing with a small hand saw for a time, I remembered that there was an old chewed up Strat scratch plate in my pile of bits. All that needed to be done was cut to size.

This was easy in principal, in practice getting the coping saw to cut smoothly was a pain. The blade that I have is a little to coarse and kept getting stuck. I managed to file it all down and fit it in the lot fairly easily and the precut hole was prefect for dropping the bobbin to the required height.

In all it probably took four hours to get it all together, but the end result is pretty cool and I'm sure he'll be happy with his country metal noise monster!

My sustainer tutorial

Jagmaster Project

Reverse Hummingbird

While trawling the internet for more info on the hummingbird, I came across these photos.
The guitar looks like it could have been originally intended to be a left handed hummingbird, but has been made right handed with the long horn at the top. Honestly, I think the body shape looks great both ways.

Up to now I had thought that mine was a cheap laminate body and was considering routing to place in a slab of mahogany under the bridge for increased sustain and tone. Looking at these pictures though, reveals the wood through the finish and it seems that the guitar was made in a similar fashion as the neck, by laminating thick pieces of timber, going the length of the body.

Now I am thinking that the appearance of laminate in the body routing, might actually be artifacts of the routing process as seen in another guitar that I worked on.

I've not had much time to do anything much lately, the weather has turned cold and damp, plus the days are shorter, so I barely have any workable daylight at all. The re-finish will need to wait until spring, but in the mean time I'll be able to get the body prepared to accept the new hardware and make up the scratch plate.

Works in progress

I've got the parts for my next upgrade projects.
Well most of them.
Waiting on a roller bridge for the Les Paul and an adjustable wrap tail for the Surfcaster.

The Bigsby and Vibramate were easy to fit to the Les Paul, though the strap button wasn't quite in the right spot, so had to be re positioned.  Haven't got strings on there yet as I want to mess with the pickups again.\

I did a quick and dirty job of rigging up the Filtertron on the Surfcaster.
So far I'm quite happy with the sound of this guitar/pickup combo. It's now got the right kind of bottom end and bite. Very nice cleans, very "alive" sounding.

Both guitars will probably end up being setup for flat wound 12's.

Who knows, it might be awesome?

Am leaning toward Filtertrons on the Les Paul now too.
At least one in the neck and the P-Rail in the bridge.