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Baldman Seven String Tele

#161
Performance will probably be about the same; the cost however is significantly lower. Luminlay is about $30 to do 1 guitar; I ended up spending about $15 for enough material to do many, many guitars and have more color options. Brett had asked about luminlay and I had told him the same thing. I probably will use this method a lot going forward because it looks pretty cool.
 
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#162
One of the advantages of luminlay, at least that I found, is that you don't have the problem of any sort of epoxy mixture getting all in the surrounding grain. In this case, you used brass tubing and put the mixture in the tubing, so the tubing acts as a dam. Without the tubing, I question how well it would stay "in the dot" and how much you'd get in the surrounding grain. Just thinking out loud here.
 
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#163
Forgot to get pictures of the cleaned up markers before I taped off the FB for finishing.

Anyway, here are the Pickguard and TRC going in for aging with vinegar vapor; I could also use muriatic acid for this but vinegar is safer, albeit slower. The parts are sitting over a pool of vinegar in a sealed box.

20220820_144040.jpg

And the finished products:
20220821_081000.jpg

The patina is interesting, you can pick up different colors with different angles, more gold-ish at some, with the occasion bit of green from the copper in the alloy.

TRC on the headstock:
20220821_080757.jpg

The some of the other parts in for the vapor bath:
20220821_204715.jpg
 
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#169
Think I've got the wiring figured out: I'm using a 5-way switch on a 2 pickup guitar o_O 4 of the switch positions are obvious: Bridge, Bridge+Neck in parallel, Neck, and Bridge+Neck in series. What to do with that 5th position? :confused: Decided to steal an idea from the Electra MPC series and make that Bridge+Neck out-of-phase and in series. So the five-way switch will work like this:

1.(all the way back) Bridge in series with Neck, out of phase.
2. Bridge Only
3. Bridge and Neck in parallel.
4. Neck Only
5. Bridge + Neck in series. (I'm thinking this will be the ultra-chug position)

The positions may change if @Baldman wants, but I think this is kinda nice since it puts the core selections in the middle three positions.

Also the volume and tone controls are push-pulls to allow for coil splitting.
 
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#170
Jon Clegg said:
Think I've got the wiring figured out: I'm using a 5-way switch on a 2 pickup guitar o_O 4 of the switch positions are obvious: Bridge, Bridge+Neck in parallel, Neck, and Bridge+Neck in series. What to do with that 5th position? :confused: Decided to steal an idea from the Electra MPC series and make that Bridge+Neck out-of-phase and in series. So the five-way switch will work like this:

1.(all the way back) Bridge in series with Neck, out of phase.
2. Bridge Only
3. Bridge and Neck in parallel.
4. Neck Only
5. Bridge + Neck in series. (I'm thinking this will be the ultra-chug position)

The positions may change if @Baldman wants, but I think this is kinda nice since it puts the core selections in the middle three positions.

Also the volume and tone controls are push-pulls to allow for coil splitting.
Click to expand...

I like the idea. I'm used to all the way back being just bridge. We could do bridge 1, neck 5, so if I need to switch quickly it's me proof. I'm sure I could get used to them being in 2, and 4, but the traditional 1,5 is easier because it's what I'm already used to. Then you have all the Bridge + neck in 2-4. We could take your pos1, and put it at 2, keep 3 as is, and make your pos5 pos4. The out of phase idea is awesome. This set up with coil splits will give me more options than I am going to know what to do with.
 
#171
Baldman said:
I like the idea. I'm used to all the way back being just bridge. We could do bridge 1, neck 5, so if I need to switch quickly it's me proof. I'm sure I could get used to them being in 2, and 4, but the traditional 1,5 is easier because it's what I'm already used to. Then you have all the Bridge + neck in 2-4. We could take your pos1, and put it at 2, keep 3 as is, and make your pos5 pos4. The out of phase idea is awesome. This set up with coil splits will give me more options than I am going to know what to do with.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I was thinking that you might want the 'only' positions at the ends for that reason. All good.
You'll have 20 options but I think they'll be implemented in a way that's easy to use. It's fun to have the options to experiment with though.
 
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#172
Jon Clegg said:
Yeah, I was thinking that you might want the 'only' positions at the ends for that reason. All good.
You'll have 20 options but I think they'll be implemented in a way that's easy to use. It's fun to have the options to experiment with though.
Click to expand...

Are we still going with push pull for coil splits on both volume, and tone? Volume for the bridge, tone for the neck?
 
#177
Jon Clegg said:
Just to verify layout: volume in front (nearest neck), tone in back? If so we might want to put the neck coil split on the volume and the bridge split on the tone.
Click to expand...

That is a great point. The volume being the closest pot to the bridge, the tone being the farthest back. I tend to not use the tone knob too much. I still want Bridge split on the volume knob, as I use the bridge the most. I'm not a shredder, or lead player.
 
#179
Flamingo21 said:
Not that it's any of my business, but I will say this makes excellent sense to me.
Click to expand...

It is your business. Those of you that have commented over the many months on this build have certainly helped this become what it is. I truly appreciate all of your input. The sharing of information, opinions, and feedback has been fantastic, and I appreciate all of it.
 
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