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Second build: matte black on budget!


Roi_Pigeon

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Hi everyone :)

I Though it would be nice to plan a little project for summer holidays...

I think I setteled on a more or less accurate replica of the black mansons.

Now as said in the title, this build's budget is gonna be rather limited but i'm still aiming for

a somehow good instrument...

 

The parts I'm gonna use are the following:

-eden paddle neck no inlays (i'll cut it manson style)

-walnut or alder for the body

-gfs/wilkinson hardware (i know...i know... :$)

-gfs fat pat humbucker as it seem to be reasonably close to the spirit of the mbk2

-now, the neck pickup is the BIG deal... I'm about to try to build my own sustainer as it doesn't look that complicated once you can solder and blindly follow a wiring diagram :D

 

I just went and did a template for a mattocaster body, the one with a sightly smaller butt than the kaoss ones :happy:

1434014559-matt-black.png

I'd say it's close to 98% accurate :LOL: everything by photoshop from pictures taken deadstraightfrontfacingbullseye. The cavity shape belongs to mb-1 and is placed as accurately as possible.

For everyone who would be intrested in the template, just send me a personal message with your email adress and I'll send you the psd. But I believe you'll have to print it from photoshop or it won't be the right dimention :)

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Ok so just a few things to consider with this.

 

1. Eden necks have a terrible reputation. Do a quick Google of reviews and they really aren't good. If you're ordering a rake of gfs stuff, I believe their necks are a bit better.

 

2. Be VERY cautious about scaling drawings from images. I'm an architect, and in a profession where accuracy is everything, scaling from drawings is a cardinal sin, usually leading to legal liabilities. With the guitar, if you print from a scaled jpg that goes a bit pixilated and is even a tiny bit off, your intonation could end up being a mess afaik. Get a cad drawing and print it properly to scale

 

3. I tried building a sustainer. Don't. It's way more hassle than its worth and it ultimately sucks.

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Thanks for the the buch of advices :happy:

 

I kinda predicted the sustainer wasn't a particularly good idea.

I'll probably forget that idea and put a rail pickup instead.

 

As for the scaling, I know the scale lenght is insanely important, I made the template for shape, cavity and pickup placement only.

I already printed it and "tested" it with a broken humbucker I had lying around and if I route the pickup placement this size it'll be snug.

I'll just make sure the 12th fret is halfway between the bridge and the nut.

that sould be right hopefully (?)

 

speaking of the quality, I know it's not ideal to cut down the price... but I already made a replica last year mahogany body, gotoh hardware, cts pots, switchcraft switches, bare knucle nailbomb and an actual fernandes sustainer.

I'm not ready yet to throw away that much cash again but I got stung by the luthery bug and kinda want to do more without spending too much. (in case I fuck it up :$ )

Do you think gfs pickups sounds decent enough tho?

And where could I find an inlayfree neck without spending more than 150~200 euros on it?

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to be honest, with the neck, I would either say a) hang on to get a proper neck made the way you want it or b) go for a better quality neck with inlays. If you're ordering a bunch of hardware from guitarfetish for things like the GFS pickups, they have a good selection of necks that have better reviews than eden stuff, even if they do have inlays. Just my 2c.

 

I still think you're going to have problems with printing from a psd/pdf/jpg/crayon drawing. I have never ever in my 8 years of architecture gotten the scaling right from those unless it has a component cad drawing like an eps or something. We've even had construction drawings where when they're printed, people pick scale to fit and it ends up printing at like 99.98%, which seems close, i know, but it's enough to put it off. Thing is, it's both very easy to do the cad drawing yourself or to find an existing cad drawing, and get it printed to the correct scale. Even if you started with things like the bridge/neck position 100% correct and then traced the body from an embedded image in cad, it's still infinitely more accurate. This is just me speaking from experience. If you're confident enough to go with what you have, do that I suppose.

 

As for the GFS pickups, I've used their rails before (cant remember which, the hotter of the two, around 16k in the bridge?) and really liked them. They're seriously loud, although can be a bit bass heavy at times. That being said, I can see myself using them again. I've an itch to build a guitar again, and when the time comes, I'll probably be using GFS parts, cos they're generally good, and I've been happy with them in the past.

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to be honest, with the neck, I would either say a) hang on to get a proper neck made the way you want it or b) go for a better quality neck with inlays. If you're ordering a bunch of hardware from guitarfetish for things like the GFS pickups, they have a good selection of necks that have better reviews than eden stuff, even if they do have inlays. Just my 2c.

 

I still think you're going to have problems with printing from a psd/pdf/jpg/crayon drawing. I have never ever in my 8 years of architecture gotten the scaling right from those unless it has a component cad drawing like an eps or something. We've even had construction drawings where when they're printed, people pick scale to fit and it ends up printing at like 99.98%, which seems close, i know, but it's enough to put it off. Thing is, it's both very easy to do the cad drawing yourself or to find an existing cad drawing, and get it printed to the correct scale. Even if you started with things like the bridge/neck position 100% correct and then traced the body from an embedded image in cad, it's still infinitely more accurate. This is just me speaking from experience. If you're confident enough to go with what you have, do that I suppose.

 

As for the GFS pickups, I've used their rails before (cant remember which, the hotter of the two, around 16k in the bridge?) and really liked them. They're seriously loud, although can be a bit bass heavy at times. That being said, I can see myself using them again. I've an itch to build a guitar again, and when the time comes, I'll probably be using GFS parts, cos they're generally good, and I've been happy with them in the past.

 

I think any inaccuracies in scaling will pale into insignificance compared to the inaccuracy in workmanship, especially if this is only the second instrument he has built. That's not criticism, it just reflects the steep learning curve involved.

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I think any inaccuracies in scaling will pale into insignificance compared to the inaccuracy in workmanship, especially if this is only the second instrument he has built. That's not criticism, it just reflects the steep learning curve involved.

 

You couldn't be more right :)

I did an individual thread to try and get a maximum of feedback.

As I already have some really good axes, the number one purpose of this build is improvement in my luthery ability! so feel free to make constructive criticism :happy:

 

I'm happy to hear that gfs pickups aren't bad neil.

I think I'll go with fat pat in bridge and lil puncher in neck.

for the eden necks, I will check out the one my friend bought after the exams are over.

(i'm in architecture btw)

but so far the main downside was that they didn't fitted fender neck pocket.

I don't know, I never saw as many divergent reviews as for this particular brand lol

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It's such a painful experience. It's not called architorture school for nothing! It was like me saying I'm sorry for your loss.

 

lol, didn't understood it that way :LOL:

yeah, these studies are harsh, congrats on getting through them!

It feels like torture but it's awesome at the same time :)

 

hopefully, I'll put my thread out of this "off topic" state by the end of the week end with templates for the body, the pickups holes and the cavity helped by cad drawings as advised. :)

The neck pocket will wait until I actually got the neck.

 

EDIT: I visited my friend. other than that I didn't quite found time to start yet.

Eden necks are a little better than I expected. They look pretty nice but apparently they need quite a bit of fret leveling to be 100% operationnal.

I looked at what warmoth had. And there's a decent amount of non inlayed neck.

Including strat style that have enough room to carve a moc shape. It sure is expensive but as I compared my replica's warmoth neck with the eden one...I think it worth it!

can't wait to get all the templates ready to rock and roll!

Edited by Roi_Pigeon
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  • 2 weeks later...

okay! Exams are over an endless amount of free time is ahead and I got wood!

I will use a big ass piece of walnut. I had it from a 70years old tree that got cut three years ago. I still have 3 logs of it. I squared the plank with my router and a jig and cut out the shape. I then had it flush with the tamplate I made using my router.

1435322575-20150625-161303.png

1435322567-20150625-161422.png

after routing the main compartiment of the electronic cavity, I felt like sanding the bevels of to relax a little bit.

1435322573-20150625-173952.png

1435322561-20150625-175949.png

then I got done the thing that scared me the most along with the neck pocket and the fuzz routing...

1435322561-20150625-193730.png

Not perfect but pretty good! almost like a glove :)

1435322577-20150625-193738.png

As I mentionned the fuzz factory, I need a battery box to prevent me from unscrewing the whole thing everytime it runs out of juice.

1435322579-20150625-193747.png

and here we go:

1435322627-20150626-144253-1.png

another crucial part:

1435322586-20150626-134313.png

take a deep breath...flip the body and blow in the mess...

1435322584-20150626-135002.png

pickups fit nicely after taking the corners down a bit.

next step: the fuzz routing!

Edited by Roi_Pigeon
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If you need help with a sustainer, let me know, I've made one and put it in my guitar. If you wanna check it out I use it a lot towards the end of this cover:

thanks! Well for now, it's a gfs little killer that's going in neck pos but maybe on a future upgrade? :)

 

Other than that, I'll post photos of the actual state of the paintjob in a few hours after the coat dryed. :D

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  • 4 weeks later...

I totally forgot to post the process but here it is after being strongly delayed because a fly crashed itself in the fresh clearcoat... http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2015/30/1437901088-20150726-105225.jpg

Almost impossible to notice the orange peel I tried to replicate with hammerite underneath on photo http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2015/30/1437901301-20150726-105312.jpg

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It look so odd without the bridge or holes for bridge there, so much matt black ha.

I know right :D

But I finally found the guts to do it yesterday and the strings are well aligned.

Even better: I didn't had to compensate with the tom to get it perfectly tuned!

1438167559-20150729-124951.png

As for the electronics, I went a little psycho with two spsd on-on switches to coil tap the humbucker and replicate the look of the sustainer switches... other than that 1 volume, 1 tone and a 3 pos toggle nothing too fancy. The little led turns on when the fuzz is on so that's pretty cool.

1438167553-20150729-125033.png

the action is pretty low and no buzz. I'm glad I followed your adices about the neck guys. used to be a gfs paddle one. Really comfy to play! :)

1438167547-20150729-125353.png

Now the problem :(

Even if the fuzz is functionnal, I can't get it to work as a on-board fx.

Do someone know how I could manage to get it to work true-bypass style with a on-on DPDT switch (six metal legs behind)

I'm currently brain-storming to try to sort this problem out. would it work to connect all the wires as they would be interracting normally with a footswitch in "on" position (9 legs)

and use one of the two rows of connections to choose wether or not the 9v is in the circuit and the other row would take care of the hot signal going through the fuzz of bypassing it.

not sure if it's understandable. Pretty difficult to explain electronic sh*t in your second language...:LOL:

1438167564-20150729-125439.png

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The footswitch will have 9 legs, as that's a 3PDT switch. Essentially, it's three 2-position switches in parallel. If you want the LED to turn on when you use a DPDT toggle switch, you'll need to add the millennium bypass LED indicator to maintain true bypass. Personally, I like to ground the input and output of the FF when it's off, as it can sometimes be heard oscillating in the background if you don't.

 

Go on over to generalguitargadgets.com and look at the bypass switching articles, that should help. If not give me a shout.

 

Great work by the way!

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Thanks for your help!

I checked out the millenium bypass with led. I don't think I really got it tho... but maybe just getting a little 3pdt on-on switch will be easier as I will be able to simply follow my diagram. (It's the musikding version).

To wait until it arrives. I will just skip the led bit and use its 3 legs to follow the most important part...the fuzz!

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