Operation: Make My Sparrow Rat Rod Gooder.

[WhiskeyJack]

[mention]Greg_L[/mention] do these orange drop caps have a polarity i need to concern myself with? Is there a particular direction these bad boys need to be installed in? Its not marked to my eyes and if it is i am missing it entirely.

A quick google tells that no there isnt. But as you read more and more some people feel there is "desireable" flow to them. Would you agree to any of that?


Also i tested the old pots and they seem fine. Two of them ring in around 410-430k on the high end though?

[muttley]

No polarity to caps...

Pots have a range of values and then stamped as 250k or 500k or 1M etc... Sometimes I will run through a box to find some with a specific reading so those are good to go as well. The biggest thing with pots is whether they are linear or Audio Taper. Dont worry abut the exact value for now.

[Greg_L]

@Greg_L do these orange drop caps have a polarity i need to concern myself with? Is there a particular direction these bad boys need to be installed in? Its not marked to my eyes and if it is i am missing it entirely.

A quick google tells that no there isnt. But as you read more and more some people feel there is "desireable" flow to them. Would you agree to any of that?


Also i tested the old pots and they seem fine. Two of them ring in around 410-430k on the high end though?

What Mutt said.

There is a polarity to some types of capacitors, but not Orange Drops. Just stick em in. Orange Drops are popular because they're cheap and small and have very consistent tolerances and great quality.

Your pot values don't mean a whole lot unless you know what they were to begin with. If those are true 500k pots, then 400k-ish readings would probably be a little problem given the usual +/- 10% tolerance. It's out of spec. But what if they started at an actual 475k? Then 430k is no big deal.

500k isn't a magic number. It's just a common value for guitar pots. It's a general baseline. As long as it's close, it's good. You won't hear a few ohms either way.

[WhiskeyJack]

Awesome. Thanks for confirming that for me!!!

I am not too worried about the old pots and those values i mentioned. Three of the four new ones all ring it slightly above 500. Only one was below. no big deal. Stoked. Nearing the finish line.

[Greg_L]

Awesome. Thanks for confirming that for me!!!

I am not too worried about the old pots and those values i mentioned. Three of the four new ones all ring it slightly above 500. Only one was below. no big deal. Stoked. Nearing the finish line.

[WhiskeyJack]

Here I made a little diagram for you. This is a basic Les Paul style cavity wiring.

s-l1600.jpg

BV3 and NV3 are bent back and soldered to the pot case.
NV2 connects to the neck pickup side of the selector switch
BV2 connects to the bridge pickup side of the selector switch
NV1 connects to the hot lead of the neck pickup
BV1 connects to the hot lead of the bridge pickup
The pickups' braided shielding or ground wire can ground at any convenient pot case.
The center of the pickup switch will go to the tip of the output jack.
The output jack sleeve can ground on any pot case.
The bridge/tailpiece wire will poke through the cavity somewhere. Solder it to any convenient pot case.

The grounding is important. See how that black wire loops around the pots in a horseshoe shape? That's what you want. You don't want a closed ground loop. Leave one end open. This way all the grounds travel the same path out of the guitar in the same direction. The horseshoe shape and single output jack ground ensures everything can only go one way out.

If i am understanding this diagram and illustration corrrectly:

-The middle lug on the tone pots are connected back to the back of their respective pot.

-BV2 and NV2 are a shared connection with the orange cap and the appropriate selector switch wire. I.e. both the cap and the respective wore terminate to the same lug?!

-and for the grounding.. If possible i should try to get the output jack and bridge tail piece wire to terminate on the same pot?! For argument sake lets say if i can try to connect them to BV pot?!

Would it still be an undesireable loop if i connected the output jack to say the NV pot and the tailpiece wire to BV pot?! Is that a loop?

I think thats all i got for now?

[WhiskeyJack]

I got a little trigger happy with the little leads from the lugs to the back of the pots but i think it is liveable?!

Is it possible to maybe attach the other ground wires from the jack amd tailpiece to some of those bigger grosser blobs?

[Greg_L]

If i am understanding this diagram and illustration corrrectly:

-The middle lug on the tone pots are connected back to the back of their respective pot.

Yes. You can bend the lug back or use a small piece of wire to ground to the pot. Don't get solder down the hole in the pot though.

-BV2 and NV2 are a shared connection with the orange cap and the appropriate selector switch wire. I.e. both the cap and the respective wore terminate to the same lug?!

Yup. Correct.

-and for the grounding.. If possible i should try to get the output jack and bridge tail piece wire to terminate on the same pot?! For argument sake lets say if i can try to connect them to BV pot?!


Would it still be an undesireable loop if i connected the output jack to say the NV pot and the tailpiece wire to BV pot?! Is that a loop?

I think thats all i got for now?

The tailpiece ground wire should be closest to the Neck Volume pot on a LP type guitar. It usually pokes into the cavity right near the neck volume pot. Your guitar may be different. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't have to go there, but it has to go somewhere.

The output jack depends on the type of wire used and the selector switch. All those pot and pickup grounds are going to flow to the selector switch and to the jack. Typically the jack's wires go all the way across the guitar straight to the switch. The jack tip wire goes to the hot side of the switch, the sleeve wire/shield grounds at the switch ground. Are you using braided pickups wires?

[Greg_L]

I got a little trigger happy with the little leads from the lugs to the back of the pots but i think it is liveable?!

Is it possible to maybe attach the other ground wires from the jack amd tailpiece to some of those bigger grosser blobs?

That's okay for the pot connections as long as those little jumpers are very secure.

The jack wire depends on the wire used. You need to get a connection from the selector switch to the sleeve of the jack. That can be via braided wire or individual wire. You can ground the jack on a pot, but you'll also need to get a wire from the switch ground to output jack.

You're gonna have four connections at the selector switch and a bundle of wires running through the guitar. Two pickup selector wires, a switch-to-jack-tip wire, and a switch-to-jack-ground wire.

[Greg_L]

I think I may have confused you. Look through this.

https://www.sixstringsupplies.co.uk/how ... %20diagram

[WhiskeyJack]

@muttley @Greg_L DONE!!

Harness in, pick ups in place, grounded correctly... i think. I almost walked away from this with the tailpiece ground wire not attatched to anything but i caught it right at the last second.

I slapped a tester string on it, plugged it in and ran it through the gamut and everything seems to do what it i supposed to do!!!

Hindsight being what it is i should have grabbed some sample sounds before but it was sort of already pooched so it wouldnt have done much good really.

I will for sure grab some samples after i get this tidied up, assembled and set up!!

Thanks for yalls patietnce and help! I overthink everything and make simple things harder on me then they have to be.

Before and after pictures anyways

[Greg_L]

Whoa really clean! Great job dude!

[Tadpui]

Looks great [mention]WhiskeyJack[/mention] ! I'll ne interested to hear how it sounds.

[muttley]

[WhiskeyJack]

Ok. I surmise i found the root of the entire intonation issue with this guitar!!!

I suspect that the maker was to proud to grind down their fancy ass metal truss rod cover on the back side and instead replaced the nut with something higher for string clearance over said cover. Thus throwing off the the quality of the whole thing over a bit of vanity!!!

And im like the king of "oh man thay looks nice i want that"

I could be wrong... but stay tuned. I will have the strings on here shortly.

[muttley]

Man, that looks crazy? Easy way to find if that is snagging the strings is just to string it up without the truss rod cover. Having said that if the break point is at the nut you could have a fucking frisbee behind the nut and it would just fuck with the tuning not the intonation....

[WhiskeyJack]

@muttley ..... by a hair.

Crisis averted and i humbly stand corrected.

Just by eyeballing it though it it was a likely symptom.

[muttley]

Hmm best guess is that thing will give you all sorts of problems with sympathetic buzzing and annoying noises but it wont a affect the intonation. Intonation is about what happens between the two fixed points of the vibrating string. That monstrosity is behind the nut and will only affect what is going on when you try to tune or how it holds tune.

If you have no reason to have it there I would get rid of it though. It will likely give you no end of problems trying to get the ting to hold tune....

[JD01]

WJ, nothing to add other than well done.

[WhiskeyJack]

Complete.

I'm calling it here. It is largely a much much better playing and sounding guitar. Also better looking with the new reflector knobs on it. I love reflector knobs on LP's. I don't really care what the rules are for what knobs go on what species of LP to "be authentic" this is my project so my rules. It looks way way better IMHO in addition to playing and sounding better.

I'll get some tone samples of my monkeying around this weekend sometime.



It is sadly the littlest bit sharp on the E, A, D, and e still no matter how much i try and make adjustments to it. It's not enough that you'd notice in a mix as i have tested in some demo songs of mine and it sounds bazillion times better.

But, I have done all i can do and feel comfortable doing. Mutt may have to confirm for me but i suspect it could still be a problem at the nut as i didn't realize until AFTER all this work was done and i was doing the final set up i discovered the very first fret is a higher then all the rest. I only caught it while sliding a metal rule up the frets while thinking i might make one final truss rod adjustment (i didn't) / set up and the rule slid petty nicely until it hit the first fret right by the nut and it came to a stop. I went back and did the fret rocking thing but having nothing to rock against at the first fret i double checked by sliding the rule again and sure enough it come to a complete stop at the first fret.

So that tells me and my limited knowledge on this subject that where i set the height of the nut slots off the height of the first fret, now discovered to be higher than all the other frets, i probably could address that issue and fine tune the nut again. But i'll worry about that next string chnage. As of now it is more than usable and i am just being really really picky.

I could also set it up so it is perfectly set up off the first fret. I have lately been playing and writing some cool riffs capo'd at F. Just something about overdriven full chords capo'd on the first fret sound friggin amazing to me.

All that -OR- the neck angle is wrong and i am not tackling that at all. It's is plausible. If that is the case, This will be come a parts guitar and i'll stick the Kent Armstrong Pickups in my Epiphone and call it a day. or sell it as is. Who knows.

Tones to come dudes.