Hybrid electric

[JimCh]

I shouldn't worry too much about the neck yet, see what it's like when in action. And I imagine at our level of sophistication you could do a certain amount of correction on the frets, even if they do end up a bit thin. If the worst comes to the worst you could take the frets off, sand flat and replace frets, which would bring you the adventure of installing frets which I have got to face soon...

Because you've got a straight headstock I'm not sure the lack of volute is as big a deal as it would be if it were angled. Just don't drop it head first onto a concrete floor...

[keme]

Strung it up.

Tuned to mandolin pitch.

Seems to hold fairly well. No signs of material failure yet.

Bridge too low and nut too high, so it's not playable at the moment. Probably needs a fret job as well.

I will leave it for now and see how it holds up before I proceed to setting up and do the electronics.

[keme]

Fixed bridge pieces and filed down the nut to reasonable action. Playable, and acoustically it sounds like expected.

I'm happy. Now for the electronics. Never got around to digging out that soldering pen. New tips and fresh solder ready. Need a small JFET or three. Other components all sorted out.

Downside: the first (E side) A string slips out of the nut slot. String tree required anyway, but now for the usual reason, to put sufficient down pressure on the string over the nut.

Cannibalized the Stratocaster (which I rarely play, and which doesn't really need that upper tree piece anyway). I can buy a replacement for the strat to fill that hole in the head the next time I pass by a music store.

Or not.

Intonation is not quite right. Nut slots are not perfectly even, and I believe the first fret is too wide from the nut. A rough measure indicates that I need to trim down the fretboard by almost one mm (or around 1/32"). I will need a new nut support then, or perhaps make a new nut from a proper nut blank. The one I have is half of a guitar bridge blank. The other half appropriately went in the bridge pieces.

If I make a new nut and file the slots with more care, maybe the string tree is not necessary. Anyway, it doesn't look too bad. I say it is required. May fit another one for the D course, to even things out visually, if nothing else.

Neck is playable up to 7th or 8th fret, where buzz starts to be noticeable. Visible ridge formed by frets 14-16. Fret job imminent.

[keme]

Fretboard masked off.
Ready for the file.

Trimming the end.
Hacksaw on fretboard. Scary moment.
Did I take too much?

And those nut blanks were not blanks (pardon the pun). I opened the bag and, lo and behold: they are precut for guitar. The cuts are only guide slots, not very deep, so with any luck I can grind them down to blanks and still have sufficient material to work with.

[keme]

Keeping the nut I already made. New support would be required regardless of which material I use, so I play one of my remaining "lazy moment" cards.

Oops! Cut down nut slot too far. Should I have had a zero fret for my first build?

Epoxied the brass screws for the tailpiece/stop bar. Used the rest of the epoxy under a piece of shaving (luckily I hadn't cleaned the plane properly after shaping the body), for a shim under the nut. Another lazy moment (or two).

Luck is still on my side. Shim was perfect and fretwork sufficient. Action is low without buzz along the entire fretboard. Intonation good, I think.

Sounds OK, but sustain suffers ; cause identified: Because of the spread of the tuners, sideways pull moves the strings' resting point away from the bottom of the nut slots. With a flat headstock the downforce is not sufficient. I need string trees all over, it seems. The best music stores around me (an hour drive either north or south) do not stock string trees. Ordering online. Getting a bunch of matched JFETs while I'm at it. I hear that those transistors in bulk packs have significant variations in amplification characteristics. Not sure that it makes a difference for this kind of low power appliation, but they don't cost a lot so doubled price for matched components is certainly worth it, for piece of mind if nothing else.

Dug out the soldering implements. Piezo bar mounted and hole drilled for the mic capsule. Waiting for delivery of purchased goods now. At best it'll be 4-5 days. At worst two months. This virus makes everything less predictable.

'nuff said. Have to make a new support for that nut, so it stays in place while I play.

[sonic]

Sounds like you are having fun. The nut can be fettled with super glue and baking soda iirc a search of YouTube etc will show you how.
As for the FET’s I read about getting them matched and or checking they meet spec for the circuit. I will be honest I didn’t check mine. Just built the circuit as per the diagram. Well not actually as I assumed that the source and drain were the right way round. Turned out I was wrong, I corrected my mistake but didn’t have to bias the FET it worked fine as it was.
This is what I used it acts as a buffer rather than an amp. It matches the impedance well enough to blend with the mag pickup or put it to the amp as a single signal.

[keme]

Been a while.

Summer took my whittling priorities elsewhere, and component delivery is slow these days. String trees was quick, and arrived several weeks ago, but the rest ...

I just received some switches, and someone handed me a slimline humbucker they had no use for. It is made for guitar so twice as long as required, but it is the "rail" type - no pole pieces - so perhaps I can slant it so it looks (and still sounds) almost right. Will try to check it "in the rough" before I start further body excavation. I have ideas for a test jig, but as always, suggestions are welcome. Big world. Someone must have passed this way before.

Semiconductors are still not here, so I can't finish the wiring in a sensible manner, getting the piezo buffered for acceptable sound quality. Sonic: that "gain" component made me wonder: is it a flip switch or is it part of that 4M7 resistor? (Audio taper pot?)

Or can I do something else?

I've got that cheapo active DI box I never use. Cannibalized other stuff before, so why would I stop now?

Hold my coffee!

[sonic]

If you mean the gain switch in the buffer schematic. It’s a little din switch in some or those pegs with a little bridge you see in computers.
I didn’t bother. You have two resistors at the start of the circuit, they are a voltage divider. Depending on where you go from you get either battery or half battery voltage. I tried both and used the one that worked best.
The mint tin buffer is designed to be more versatile so you can use it with more than one instrument. You can always use an on on switch to change the gain for a bit of overdrive or just to have a different tone. I believe if you use just the straight battery voltage you can omit those two 4M7’s from the circuit.
I have cannibalised plenty of things in the past, not always with great success though. I tried some oamps for my build but they wouldn’t work.

I have c