What are YOU up to, DIY/projectwise? Ask for help?

[Muffin Man]

It's ALIVE!!!!




I'll need to intonate it. Set the action etc... but it plays great and sounds great.  Neck feels really smooth to hold and slide on. 

wow, nice! Cool history on your J.
Was reading that Leo opened Music Man in 1975.

[Pissy]

Putting GFS Mean 90's in my Goldtop Hagstrom.    This guitar has not aged well.  The neck binding  has shrunk and cracked, ultimately what I determined was that it wasn't glued on very well.  Not enough glue.  When I peeled it back to re-glue it the finish was compromised.  I put it all back, but it's ugly.  

So I've moved the switch to the lower horn, this guitar had a separate tone coloring switch that I planned on removing before I bought it.   The hole left over I plugged with a grommet. 

I'm in the middle of replacing the nut on it with bone.  I sanded off too much length the last time and now it's wonky. 

But at the moment it's set up well otherwise and is my only P90 guitar.  I set the pickups as close to the strings as I dared.  I never realized how crucial the pickup height was for P 90's.  This thing goes from trash to treasure in about 1/16" of height closer to the strings.  

[RAGER]

Sweet gold top. I've never had a P90 guitar for some damn reason.

[Pissy]

I hadn't had one in quite a long time.   i had a Univox HiFlier (70's Japanese mosrite ventures copy).  I took a buddy of mine to some dudes house to buy weed. While we're in his basement, the guitar was in the corner.  I picked it up, played a riff and he told me he'd never seen that guitar make any music at all.  Sold it to me for $100. 

At the time I didn't care for the look of it.  



Like this exactly. 


I was into pointy headstocks.  But it played and sounded awesome.  So i robbed the pickup out of it, put it in a pointy headstock Memphis. Funny thing, it didn't sound great until I moved the rest of the electronics.  


Years later I found some p90's to put back in it.  I had saved the switch, new pots I think. Got it working and I gave it to my good friend's son.  He was like 16 and wanted to learn to play.   That kid is now in his mid-late 20's and making tons of music.  He's into gaze post-rock type stuff.  I'm told he uses that guitar as his #1.  Pretty cool.  

So it was around 12 years ago when I last had a p90 guitar.   

This goldtop is setup well now. Fixed the nut, polished the frets, pickup height, neck relief, action... it's in good form, and sounds great!


Working on a Jay Turser resonator now.  It was given to me.  Trying to find buzz on one of these things is next to impossible.  And this one has a piezo pickup under the saddle, so in order to adjust the tension on the cone, i need to take it apart. Like 75% dismantling. 

[Pissy]

Also, gfs has those kwikplug things on their pickups now so you could get a set of these, put them in something you have lying around and swap out with other gfs pickups super easily if you don't like, and/or use it as a test platform.  I'm sure that's what they were thinking people might do by putting that plug on them. 

[Danny G]

The input jack on the 79 Iceman was getting fucky so I bought a replacement and quick-installed before leaving on a weekend run of shows.

The new jack didn't have a long enough shaft (hahaha) for the nut to even thread. Fuck.

Swapped it out for the old fucky one and held my breath.

The old fucky one performed flawlessly all weekend. Go figure


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[Pissy]

I tried adding a chrome cover to a pickup years back and couldn't get it to *not* squeal until I wax potted it


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So i found the squeal.  Since removing the pickups on a semi-hollow is a bitch I devised a way to pot them without removing them. 

The covers can slip off pretty easily, so I removed the rings, slipped the cover off, left the pickup dangling but pulled out enough to flip onto the body. 

Then I covered the pole piece holes in the covers on the outside with a piece of tape.  Melted paraffin with a heat gun dripping into the inside of the pickup cover until there was about 1/4" of pooled up liquid wax in there.  Then gingerly transported the cover to the waiting pickup that was flopped over onto a towel.  Mated the two until it was seated.  I could see the wax pushing out of the assembly.

Maybe the YouTube's already outlined this method.  Not sure.

But it worked!  No more squeal!   

Now I need to do it to the newest addition to my stable.  Bridge pickup is microphonic

[RAGER]

Kinda music related but definitely jam room related. As in MY jam room.

Been doing some spring cleaning and refreshing some stuff so I thought I'd totally rearrange my main jam room where the big amps and drums are while making room for some actual storage of stuff too.

The water heater is down there too. Yep. Maybe bed stuff out of the way and there's water around the base of it. Fuuuuck. All jam room set up halted. By some numbers on the damn thing I put it being installed in 1980. Good run for the thing. I might've been like this for a while. Good thing I saw it. Could've be a catastrophic loss.

Typing this while I'm waiting for it to drain into an 18 qt Cambro lol.

It also has ancient plumbing that's hard plumbed. No flex stuff so I have to upgrade that. Luckily I've got the proper breakers so power should be good.

So yeah,  I'll be wrestling with big pipe wrenches or I'll just bust out the compressor and a dip wheel. Dunno.

Good times.

[Pissy]

I have 3 generations of pressured pipes in this house.  Galvanized, pvc and Pex. There's one main line of galvanized that goes the length of the house that the master bathroom, the ice maker for the fridge and the washing machine all tap off of.  70% of that pipe is behind the sheet rock that covers the basement ceiling.

If the water isn't run in any of those taps for about 2 days, it runs rusty for about 20 seconds until it clears up.  The most annoying one of those taps is the water out of the fridge.  The ice it makes can get iffy looking, a glass of water can look iffy.  

But the fix is really going to be painful with ceiling sheet rock work.  Sucks.  

Hope your swap out is as painless as possible.  

[RAGER]

It went about as expected but it took way longer. Friday is not the day to be running around getting parts and crossing bridges. Everywhere I went it was either traffic or lines at checkout. Although picking up the unit at Lowe's was pain free so I paid for it elsewhere. I did have to use a torch for a couple fittings.

On another note, I'd never looked very closely under the stairs but I found this mounted there. It'll go in the kitchen or garage or maybe still in the basement somewhere as cable management.

[Pissy]

Necktie hangers?

[RAGER]

Under the basement stairs?  For Harry Potter? 

[RAGER]

9/10 accomplished

[Pissy]

That's awesome 

[Muffin Man]

Tremendous

[mortlock]

jams at ragers house. lets plan it out.

[Muffin Man]

I can make the 5-6 hour drive. no problem.

[RAGER]

I'll make tacos.

[Muffin Man]

tacos jam 2023

[James1214]

Fuck. That's like, a haul. Rager you're in Portland, if I remember correctly?

I'm finally pulling the ~100' of 6ga wire tomorrow to finally have proper power in the converted barn. Then I'll be drywalling, and then the fun part, setting everything up, can begin.

[Muffin Man]

6ga.? Whoa. Been reading up on grounding and wiring the hifi. Also have links to fancy power box panels, trip panels, Probably move to a new house to do this in whole though, plus the whole house water filtration like James's. I'm big into wires and good wires, love the wires! James, please keep us posted.

[James1214]

Yeah. I'm pulling a 70A service. I looked at the bundle of wires this morning and it's actually 3@4ga and 1@6. Going into a 2" conduit buried 16" deep. There will be 4 individual 20A legs in the barn. Each leg feeds a wall, 3 2 gang boxes on each for a total of 12 outlets on each wall (I will never not have a plug to use), 2 220a drops, one for the table saw, one for my dust collector. Then a run for lighting. My cool-ass neighbor who was an electrician for 15 years, and is now an electrical engineer is charging me a home cooked pizza and a case of cheap beer every day he works on it, so that's awesome.

The goal with the space is to have a full woodshop, with every big tool on wheels. So that I can slide the table saw under my main workbench, the band saw into the corner, the planer and jointer cart can tuck next to that, then the amps and drums can come out of the sealed closet, and I can also live track jams and writing sessions. It'll probably take a year until that is a reality. It's taken 2 years to get to this point, in that time I've rebuiilt 2 walls, made and installed a 10'w x 9'h barn door, installed 2 man doors, framed internal walls, reroofed, poured an 8 yard slab, dug the trench for the conduit, hung halo lights, refurbished a wood burning stove I'm going to install for wintertime heat..... So yeah. Kinda started from a shittily built outbuilding and now it's ready to fill out with all the fun stuff.

[Muffin Man]

Wow, what a build-out, James1214. I see that kinda stuff in magazines and dream of doing what you're doing - it's inspiring. Having an neighbor electrician is pretty huge! Good luck with the wood shop in the years ahead.

[James1214]

Yeah, the neighbor situation is definitely a big help  I have no issue with running basic circuits of outlets, but 3 way lighting is beyond me, and hooking up a 70A service is mildly terrifying.

Honestly, It'll be nice to just have a place for all the gear for creation of all types in one place. After living out of tiny garages and spaces I couldn't build out properly because I was a renter it's pretty awesome to not have to ask anyone's permission, unfortunately, because I'm doing 99% of the work myself it has to be done in my very rare free time.

The goal is to have the woodshop, all of my art stuff, the digital fabrication stuff (3d printers and laser cutter) and the amps, drums, and recording setup all coexisting in one place. I equate my vision for it to a transformer, with the ability to rapidly turn the space into what I need to fulfill the creative drive I have at that time, no matter what that is. It's not an enormous space at around 600 square feet, but I'll make it work for my needs. The big thing for me is purging everything except he essential stuff, so as to foster the creation. Outside the main body of the barn were also building a material storage area for all my work stuff, and a greenhouse for the wife, which will have a door directly into the garden. Then there's another area on the other side for all the camping gear, holiday decorations, and other random semi-deep but totally doesn't need to be in the house storage. I'll take some photos when the drywall is all done in the next week or 2. Then it'll really get exciting.

[Pissy]

That sounds awesome.  Hope it comes to fruition before you're old enough to not want to do all that stuff.