Ordering parts for the Big Riff Strat was a wacky process due to a combination of finding out what exactly I wanted/needed and allocating funds for the purchases. The neck needed to be ordered earlier because it took the longest amount of time to build. Standard hardware isn't cheap. Specialty modification hardware definitely isn't cheap.
This time around, I wanted to stick with a normal Precision Bass setup for the bass build: one pickup, one volume knob, one tone control. There will be no active electronics for the signal path although I did have the body routed for a 9-volt battery box as a just-in-case convention. The battery box wires are routed into the control cavity and looped together with the ends taped.
Thankfully, I had the funds to order the neck and the hardware pertaining to the body on the same day. I placed the orders separately so that the hardware could ship immediately and I could work on soldering the electronics together. The neck hardware was ordered separately and came in later. Almost all of the pieces are in black:
Gotoh 201 bridge
More mass than a standard Fender bridge and featuring singular deep saddles. Fender's traditional bridge saddles always seemed like an afterthought to me, as if someone at the factory said, "Hey, we've got some exposed threaded rod over here, why don't we make use of it for a bass bridge and save some money?" Much less chance of knocking it out of position now when I'm going aggro on the strings.
I'm actually quite excited about the look and function of this bridge.
Round Top Knobs (2x)
Now that I have these I'm having second thoughts, but they're the easiest pieces of hardware to swap and the least of my concerns.
Standard Strap Buttons
I only bought these for the screws. I will install Dunlop strap locks on the bass as I've done with all of my guitars, but use the larger screws by grinding the outside of the heads off with a Dremel tool. I showed this process in an earlier post.
Switchcraft Mono Jack
CTS 250K Potentiometers (2x) / .047 μF Ceramic Disc Capacitor
I lost interest in diving into the details over which combination of pots and caps sound best, so I simply went with what was shown on a wiring diagram provided with the Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder pickup.
Wiring Kit
Enough wire for an experienced tech who knows exactly what they're doing. For an inexperienced hobbyist, barely enough wire.
Non-Tremolo Bridge Screws (set of 6) / Pickguard Screws (set of 12)
I still have some pickguard screws left over from the Big Riff build, but I needed more.
Single Battery Box
Copper Shielding Tape (2" x 24")
Vintage Round String Retainer
Ordered two of these by accident. No big deal.
Neck Plate / Neck Plate Pad / Neck Screws
The neck plate pad, made from a flexible plastic, protects the finish on the body from the metal of the neck plate. Great idea.
Schaller BML Tuners
By the time I could order these, Warmoth's website showed that they were
out of stock. I called to ask if they could email me when more sets of
black BMLs come in from Germany. The man I talked to on the phone
said, "Can I put you on hold for a second? Let me take a look." In a
minute he got back to me and told me he found the last remaining set in
their warehouse. Warmoth's A+ customer service shines through again!
Neck hardware came just in time for Christmas, but no neck yet.
A word about the pots: I measured the maximum resistance values in the two that I purchased and neither reach the full 250K-ohm rating. One reads 240K and the other a somewhat startling 223K:
Should I be upset about this?
If we're talking in terms of electronics tolerances, then the 240K pot
deviates within 5 percent of its intended rating, which seems acceptable
to me, but the 223K pot falls at the 11 percent mark. I'm not sure
what CTS or the guitar tech community deems as within tolerance, or how
much of a difference this actually makes in the overall sound of the
guitar, but this just didn't sit right with me. I kept both anyway and
attempted to wire everything together... Well, what happened will be
the subject of the next post.
In "Rivière" by Deftones, the way the distorted bass comes in without the drums at the first chorus just gets to me. Brilliant.
Warmoth's website works seamlessly between its "custom builder" section and "in-stock" section.
In the custom builder, you get to add all of the features you want to
your guitar body or neck, and it tallies up the price. Don't know what
some feature is? Just click on the "more info" button with the question
mark, and a pop-up window shows up with a detailed description. The
pop-up windows become crucial when you need to find out about less
obvious (but no less important) technical design aspects like nut width
or fret size.
The in-stock section presents a selection of bodies and necks that are, get this, in stock, I'm guessing primarily due to customer returns or order cancellations. This section of the website is fully filter searchable by body/neck type, wood construction, color, price, etc.
So when you're working in the custom builder, the website will give you a notification if there is already an in-stock item available with the same or similar specs for less than the cost of ordering a new piece. And that's exactly what I found: a seafoam green standard P-bass body for $60 less. With a brief window of opportunity open a couple of weeks ago, I went for it:
Specifications:
Construction: Solid Body
This is rock and roll. Either you play a solid body bass or you sit at your tech job and wonder why no one is interested in your jamz. Chambered body is not an option.
Core Wood: Alder
Joking aside, while I love the resonance that a solid body guitar brings, there are limits to how much any instrument should reasonably weigh. The maple body construction of the Big Riff Strat made it over 10 pounds; far beyond the normal weight of a Strat. A solid-maple-body P-bass would probably sit at the 14-15-pound mark and destroy my left shoulder over time. Alder is a good standard medium-weight tonewood with a decent amount of resonance that should match well with the maple neck I intend to put on it. (More on the neck in a later post.)
Unique Choice (Optional): None
Solid color alder, no special choice needed. Orientation: Right-Handed
Control Cavity: Top Rout
Pickguard going on this bass, so no rear rout necessary.
Pickup Routs: P-Bass Standard Split (Neck) Only
Why not add another pickup rout in the bridge position? I thought of putting a Jazz Bass pickup here, "just in case" I wanted to punch it in for different tonal variations. But then I thought, don't mess with a good thing. With the J-bass I'm currently playing at church, I'm already completely rolling off the bridge pickup's volume knob. The humbucking Duncan Quarter Pound split-coil P-bass pickup is all the sound I need and want.
Input Jack Rout: No Side Jack Hole
Standard pickguard going on this one.
Bridge Rout: Hardtail, Gotoh 201
I've been interested in the higher-mass Leo Quan Badass bridges for a long time and would have opted for one in black, but I may be a few years too late. Leo Quan appears to be out of business. What happened to that company? The Gotoh 201 looks like a solid adjustable bridge with a standard mounting screw-hole configuration. I should be fine with the 201 until I can find a Badass II to replace it.
Mounting Holes: Standard 4-Bolt
Contours: P-Bass Style, No Contoured Heel
It's cool and all that Warmoth offers this choice, but why in the world would any rock bassist play high up on the register enough to need a contoured heel? Or if the contoured heel is actually needed, why isn't said bassist playing a neck-through?
Top Binding (Optional): None
The Telecaster is the only Fender body design I think I would ever consider ordering a top binding for. Not saying I'm in the market for a Tele at this time. Not saying I won't be in the future.
Battery Box Rout: Single Battery Box
This is the only modification I had done to the existing in-stock body that wasn't already there. This is a "just in case" situation even though I have no intention of using it for the time being. Yes, that means there will be a battery box on the back of the bass with no battery inside and nothing to wire it to. Lately I've been working with Arduino electronics, both in my engineering physics class and through a NASA-funded scholarship program, and there are some rad things that could be done with the bass internally. I'm thinking of putting a gyro sensor and a transmitter into the control cavity (and powered by a 9-volt battery) which could control a colored LED strip based on how the instrument is held. More on this in a later post, I'm sure.
Finish: Solid Color, Seafoam Green
Yes! I love this color and I'm not ashamed to have a second instrument with it!
The months of October and November are a nostalgic time for me, and I
wind up listening to several of the emo records I enjoyed in high
school. I still think it's awkward that Jason Gleason was in the music
video for a Further Seems Forever song that Chris Carrabba sang.
I thought that I had finished this blog and that it would remain as a testament to a ten-month period of design, experimentation, building, and tweaking. I had a lot of fun with the project and the blog, and I'm still very much satisfied with the end result, but I didn't expect that I would return.
I'm building a bass guitar!
It makes a whole heck of a lot of sense. I play bass guitar live far more often now than I get to play electric guitar. This year I've filled in on low-frequency duties for my friends in the band Ghost Ship as they've released their second full-length album, Costly, this year on BEC Recordings. I've played our church's Fender Mexi Jazz Bass for the last three years, and took care of it as if it were my own instrument, but have never been completely happy with it.
I've stalled hard on owning a bass and/or bass gear for years, mainly because of my pride. Guitar is my first love; bass is just what I played when I couldn't get my way. Another main reason, honestly, is because I didn't know what I wanted in a bass, and I was determined not to buy one unless I was going to be satisfied with that one for a long time. Vintage Gibson Grabber basses are rad but I was never going to get the right opportunity to fully put one through its paces with a heavy-handed pick attack, and besides, Grabbers are getting harder to find in a clean condition for a decent price. Rickenbacker 4003 basses sound awesome, but honestly, there's something about the Rick brand aesthetic that throws me off just a little, at least such that I don't want to own one as my main bass or sole bass. Ernie Ball Music Man StingRays are solid instruments for playing rock and roll, but I hate the raw feel of their necks, and to get one with a lacquered neck would cost an arm and a leg.
So the crossroads or the fence or whatever you want to call it has existed for a long time, and I've hung back from the pursuit of the instrument, which feels more like a mistake with the passing of time. But then I saw one of my all-time favorite bands, Failure, on their 2014 Tree of Stars reunion tour. I stood right up in the front at stage left, and witnessed Ken Andrews wielding a Fender American Precision Bass with a Seymour Duncan SPB-3 Quarter Pound pickup installed. I've seen P-Basses a thousand times before, but for some reason I was floored by the dark, growling tone of Ken's that night. I realized, too, that the split-position pickup made it possible to get an even pickup action underneath all four strings, unlike a Jazz Bass where the A and D strings sit higher to compensate across the fretboard's radius, which causes a volume drop when I switch from, say, G to C on the third fret.
Questions came up like: Would I rather have a Precision Bass, or a Jaguar Bass with a split-coil pickup in it? Should I buy a Fender bass or make a new one through Warmoth? I had my eye out on a few options, and found that a Warmoth custom P-Bass with a birdseye maple neck would cost the same amount as a Fender American Standard. So when the opportunity came along to purchase an in-stock seafoam green Precision body for less than the cost of ordering one from scratch, I went for it. And I got a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder which I can't wait to try out.
Black adds a touch of sophistication to seafoam green.
I'm glad Duncan did away with their cheesy Basslines logo on their pickups.
So that's it. This bass will be Warmoth custom build number two,
although it will be far more simple overall in design and function than
the Big Riff Stratocaster. I intend for it to be a "twin" to Big Riff,
with a seafoam green body, AAA birdseye maple neck, and black hardware
appointments. The neck will have a thinner and more comfortable Jazz
profile rather than the baseball-bat C-shape typical of most Precision
basses. (See what I did right there? I've already made a decision
based on years of experience although my proud six-stringer self
wouldn't have wanted to admit that I know that much.)
More planning, tech specs, and photos to come in future posts. Listen to that boom here:
Ten months of design, experimentation, purchasing, assembly, anxiously
waiting while it was being worked on at Mike & Mike's, and tweaking
at home, and I now have my first ever custom instrument. And just in
time for the target date of March 8th, 2015—my 30th birthday.
I couldn't have known when the process started in April, but working on this guitar seriously helped to get me through one of the toughest periods of my life—for the fall of 2014, taking on a full-time course load at North Seattle Community College while still working my full-time job. When I couldn't see friends, when I was losing sleep, when I was up to my eyeballs in math and physics and programming homework, I had something tangible to look forward to. I'm convinced that the idea and the followthrough were a gift from the Lord. Now that it's over, I actually miss the journey of working on this project. It feels funny, like mental pins and needles. But the time is moving on. I'm leaving my job of three years so I can solely focus on pursuing my engineering degree.
Tackling this project through the lenses of the Classical versus the Romantic, as described in Robert Pirsig's Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, felt like both a complicated math equation and a celebration of my history with guitar, which I loved. Both sides came together to produce something unique and special. My friends became excited for and fascinated with the process as it went along. Michael Adams, tech extraordinaire who has had his hands on perhaps hundreds of guitars, told me that Big Riff was one of the most exciting guitars he had worked on last year. He paid me the highest compliment: "It's not something I would ever go for, but everything worked together beautifully."
I've already been asked what the next project will be. I wish I could keep on designing and making guitars! But I can't, at least not for now. Big Riff was my attempt at an "end-all be-all" double fat Strat with a built-in sustainer device, which could handle metal.
If I had the ability to make another guitar, it would be a baritone. I've been interested in baritone guitars since I was a teenager. There's something awesome about the increased scale length and low-end girth. The problem with baritones is that guitar manufacturers tend to view them as secondary: poorly made, with a cheap black paint job and an irredeemably disgusting tribal motif intended for nu-metal fans to go "Yeeeaaaaah! F***in' cool, bro!" OR, they're just a knock-off of a traditional Fender design and are always equipped with single-coils pickups. Why aren't there humbucker-equipped baritones, with original new designs and made with quality wood and components? There's a void there in guitardom. 7- and 8-string guitars are finally being taken seriously as professional quality instruments, but given the longer scale length which impairs the ability to bend strings (even high ones), you'd think that heavy guitarists would be content with foregoing high strings and asking more for baritones.
In the last few years, I've also been interested in guitars made with unconventional materials like acrylic and aluminum. Acrylics aren't common, but they have been around for a while. The Dan Armstrong plexi is a classic instrument with an innovative "hot swap" pickup design (seriously, why didn't this take off?). It's heavy, unusually expressive and clear—no pun intended—and fun.
Photo pulled from Google image search.
And then there's Electrical Guitar Company. These folks craft space-age looking necks machined from aluminum. I've yet to play with one, as they're a custom order only, but sweet goodness they look amazing. The bodies may still be made out of wood, or chambered aluminum with a slick polished "mirror" finish...
(Google image search)
...Or acrylic WITH the aluminum neck! Best of both worlds!
WHAT IN THE WORLD?!(Google image search)
And then there's the Moog Guitar. It's like having a sustainer on speed. Both pickups are independent devices which can be set for sustaining or stopping power, and the pickup operations can be blended for out-of-this-world harmonics. And it's not a cheap sound-effect gimmick, either: the strings are actually being affected to produce these tones. The Moog Guitar comes complete with a built-in ladder filter. It's unfortunate that these guitars have already been discontinued. I'm certain the $3400 price point didn't help its cause:
A millenium ahead of its time.
Obviously these materials and designs reach far beyond anything I could ever ask Warmoth to do if I wanted to build another custom guitar. But this is where my mind goes in my ongoing quest for tone. I don't want a vintage or "relic-ed" instrument. Give me the unusual stuff. The really unusual stuff. Perhaps, after another three years of school and electrical engineering degree attained, I will have ideas for even more guitar functions that haven't been explored yet.
Anyway, enough of that. This blog will remain online as an archive to an entire beginning-to-end process, and if I get to design another axe, I may decide to reinstate it.
I need to thank the heroes who made Big Riff possible:
Warmoth guitars— Everything about my experience with them has been awesome. Well-laid-out website on both the body/neck design and purchasing ends. Every time I needed to call them to ask a technical question, the very first person I talked to on the phone answered that question; there was not a single "Oh, that's not my department, let me transfer you to..." Also, EVERY order came in on time or earlier, including the birdseye maple neck. I would be proud to do business with them again.
Angeles Moreno— Angeles was super cool about sending me the Moogdula font for the headstock logo. Through our email interaction, she seemed pleasantly surprised that someone wanted to feature her handiwork on a musical instrument.
Chris Mannino— My coworker who helped by making the vinyl labels for the headstock. They're killer and I now have spares! Michael Adams and Mike & Mike's Guitar Bar— What can I say? In his last month in Seattle, Mike really pulled through and did a thoroughly kickass job with the electronics as well as with fixing several small points on the body and neck. There was only one person I would have felt comfortable bringing it to for wiring the Sustainiac, and he took charge of it like the expert professional that he is. Mike, thank you again, friend, and I'm so happy for you and Charissa as you both pursue your passions in Los Angeles. Mike Ball (aka "Other Mike") told me "This doesn't have to end just because Mike [A.] is away." I'll be sure to visit as often as I can!
And I'd like to thank God, the Creator, who has made us in his image and given us the capacity be creative. May the music I make with this instrument be pleasing to him.
I neglected to talk about the headstock decals I had made (!!!) because it had to be done in a couple of phases. Well, the cat's out of the bag:
Alright, so the satellite's reversed, but give me a break; it's badass.
A quick word before I get too far: I don't know
anything about waterslide decals, or how to go about getting custom
waterslide decals made for that matter, but there's a label department at my
manufacturing job and I asked if it would be okay to print vinyl labels
for personal use. The same thing? On our scale of printing, I could get a sheet of
black-on-clear labels, they could be custom die-cut (I think plotted is the right word here), and it would cost virtually nothing. The results were fantastic. Read and look on:
Let's refer back to the Finishing The Neck Design post from July. I postulated that I wanted the number 15 on the back of the headstock, inside a circle. I was convinced that I wanted a logo or a trademark for the main part of the front side of the headstock, and that it should be in the same font as the front cover of Cave In's Jupiter record. I was leaning toward Big Riff, but hadn't come to a conclusion yet and would give myself the time to figure it out. However, with the project being inspired so heavily from Cave In's music—and my undying love for both metal and space rock—the satellite logo from Jupiter was picked to go on the circular end of the headstock. (Is there a name for that part, by the way?)
Same font? Look at the letter 'V'. Someone's going to find this blog later and say "Well DUH, Nick, that's _________." Please do.
That Cave In font. Just, IMPOSSIBLE to find. I scoured Google; no luck. I put up a .jpg of Jupiter on my Facebook wall and asked my Seattle designer friends to tell me what it was; no one knew. I asked Cave In themselves through Twitter. The question was put off to Hydra Head, no doubt to Aaron Turner (Hydra Head founder, Isis [the band!], Old Man Gloom, + 500 other projects). Turner did the artwork/design for that record. No answer.
Cave In, if you get to read this, thank you for trying.
I put off looking for a font through November and December since that's when the majority of the hardware pieces came in AND when it was Go Time to send it off to Mike & Mike's Guitar Bar for tech work. The search picked up again in January. Should I bother with a font at all, and simply pay a designer (plenty of friends to choose from) to make a custom logo? Maybe that fat '70s style headstock would do well with a '70s style logo. Big, wavy letters. But that idea just didn't seem right. With all of the tech considerations and that satellite logo on the end, I needed the main logo to look modern. This launched a small-scale study of typography itself. For example, I like Futura a lot and have used it in the past for my YouTube videos, but I didn't realize that it dates all the way back to 1927. I had a coworker telling me about all kinds of font design things, which was fascinating (but I've forgotten by now). And I was scouring the web trying to find a free font that looked sci-fi and retro. I found some cool stuff, but nothing clicked.
But then I thought... WHAT ABOUT MOOG?
Why didn't I think about this sooner? As a longtime fan and user of Moog products, of course I'd be proud to emulate the Moog logo for my own logo—by this time, I knew I wanted the guitar to be definitively titled Big Riff. I assumed I'd be able to find the font easily—surely it must exist, right?—but to the best of my ability to learn about it online, it looked like the logo was simply designed for Moog back in the sixties and it stuck. Hmph.
Then, in a moment of blessing, I found this on a message board:
The Moog documentary film, since purchasing it in
2006, has continued to be a source of inspiration to me. I hadn't made
the connection all these years that the font used in the film was based on
the Moog logo, but at the same time, I was very well familiar
with Ms. Moreno's work:
Highly recommended, whether you're a synth player or [like me] any other type of musician.
So I emailed Angeles Moreno, and she was gracious enough to send me her Moogdula font for free, with one stipulation, "Show me what you do with it!"
It took some additional planning on my part,
But the result turned out much better than I had expected.
Perfect.
Remember the number 15 that I wanted for the back of the headstock? I decided to go with Futura. We set it up so that there would be a black circle around the number, but the plotter just couldn't cut it quite right, so I cut out the number by itself:
Fifteen years of pursuing my craft since age fifteen.
By the way, I've got plenty of spares in case anything happens.
...Incredible. The guitar is now 100 percent complete. No more additions. No more tweaking. It's all there, it all works, and I'm totally satisfied with it. I'm ready to wrap up this blog with one final post in the next week or so. By the way, I've actually been enjoying the tone of the Sustainiac when used as a neck single-coil pickup. It's a new thing for me. Jangling, open chords just sound great. I'm thinking about getting a compressor pedal sometime so I can replicate the guitar sound in the verses of the song "Wounded" by Third Eye Blind, which I talked about in my Top Ten Tones post.
There are always some final touches and tweaking to be done to a guitar when it comes home. This one was no exception:
I've
been using Dunlop strap locks for a decade plus. The locking mechanism
is solid and the look of the strap peg replacement on the guitar isn't
intrusive (oh hey there, DiMarzio). I just have one problem with them,
though: the Dunlop set's provided screws are almost always
shorter/smaller than whatever screws are installed in the guitar. In
the olden days I used to take a new guitar's original screws to an Ace
Hardware store (southeast corner of Broadway and Rural, Tempe, Arizona) and ask a clerk
there to grind the outside of the screw heads so that they would fit the
Dunlop pegs. Now I can perform the job at home with a Dremel tool:
"Nick, doesn't that ruin the structural/mechanical integrity of the screw?" I'm glad you asked. With 10+ years' experience, the answer is No.
The chrome screw is the one provided in every set of Dunlop strap locks. I never use them.
Strap locks installed, and the new Couch Racer X strap is a happy camper.
Alright, so, there was an issue dating back to November that I haven't talked about yet. When the guitar body came in (the same day I came home from the hospital from kidney stone problems) I went crazy-go-nuts and installed the Floyd Rose bridge right away so that I could put strings on the guitar and feel the string response. This meant installing the claw plate with the two internal screws—the holes were drilled for them, after all. Well, this caused issues for Michael Adams later on when he was working on my guitar, and I did receive a mild scolding from him about attempting to perform tasks that should be left for a tech to do. (How could I know about this one? Pre-drilled holes!) Because I jacked the screw so far into the body, the only way he could back it out was to shave the Phillips head down to a flat head. Part of the paint job got wrecked in the process, but at least it can be covered up by the rear trem cover. Not his fault, and I'm not worried about it.
It isn't pretty, but it works, but it needs a swap.
I need the claw plate screws in good working order for tuning adjustments, so I knew that I wanted/needed a new one to replace the one that got ruined. That meant ordering a new claw plate altogether. Don't worry; it was only seven bucks. But I got to revisit the issue of whether or not I would care to install a brass block on the Floyd Rose.
...Aaaaand I went for it. In my Color Me Green! post I talked about my concern over adding a 37 mm height brass block; either the height, or width, or both, might be too much for the existing bridge cavity. With the initial set of strings on the guitar, I pushed the whammy bar all the way until it touched the pickguard. No issues there. I judged that I should be able to install the brass block I wanted without any issues.
When I ordered the first brass block from floydrose.com, I decided also to order new coated (black) "noiseless" springs since I was intrigued by them. They're supposed to cut down on the amount of vibration in the bridge/spring cavity. I've given them some play and they don't feel any different from regular springs, but they do work. They come three to a set, but I use four springs, so I ordered two sets. This means that I have two noiseless springs left; I would only need to order one more set and I could replace the four springs in my Jackson Soloist.
The very last of the hardware pieces for the entire project!
Coated noiseless springs and the correct 37mm size brass tone block.
I forgot to take photos of the bridge in its dismantled state, but it was an easy enough fix by itself. I kept the same claw plate since it was already connected to the ground wire but wound up replacing not one, but both Phillips screws. The annoying part of it is that I had to spend time resetting the intonation, which, on a Floyd Rose bridge, isn't the simplest thing in guitardom to do.
Cleaned up and ready to get down to business.
The increased width of the brass block doesn't interfere with the interior of the cavity, i.e. it's not hitting the inside wall.
Here, the trem arm is pulled all the way down to the pickguard on the other side. No problem.
So, what happened?
I put a fresh pack of Ernie Ball Cobalt Power Slinkys on the guitar, which I had wanted to do but refrained up until this point because they're pricey. I tuned up the guitar, left it with the trem blocked overnight so the strings would stretch out, then set the intonation the next day. The contraptions released, I played an open E chord and a couple of other notes whilst unplugged and it went something like this:
Typical Stratocaster: *ring*.... *plink plink*
Big Riff sans brass block: *RIIIIIIIING!*... *BINK BINK!*
Big Riff with brass block: *KEEEERRRRRAAAAAAAAANGG!!!!!* *KOHW!!! KOHW!!!*
SERIOUSLY. I don't know what the deal is, but it's like there's a full 33 percent increase in sustain and resonance! The notes have an extra... metallic feel to them, but that metallic feel is warm and clear. It's a perfect complement to the brightness and punch of the maple body. Plugged in, the sound is clearer on distortion and extra chimey on open chords on a clean channel. At the time of this writing, the guitar is in Drop D tuning. It's simply a joy to slow down, hit that low D, and listen to it ring out, whether with high gain, or with low gain and a delay pedal, or even unplugged. (And that's without turning the Sustainiac on, too.)
On a functional level, the guitar is finished.
But I'm not done with this blog just yet.
Until then, check out this tune from Tooth & Nail alumni Stavesacre. Tonight I plugged in and jammed along to this, and Big Riff responded beautifully, especially during the long whole notes in the bridge.
I'm having a rough go with the beginning of the school quarter, having intense assignments in both my calculus and Java progamming classes right off the bat. But I managed to bring Big Riff home from Mike & Mike's, along with all of my other gear from my church, and have taken a little bit of time to sit down, plug it in (at the lowest volume possible in the house), and tweak it. It's helping my brain cope with the stress.
The Couch Racer X strap looks fantastic with the 3-ply pickguard, by the way.
Per my custom when I bring a guitar home, the very first thing I did was raise both of the pickups as high up as they would go without being hit by or affecting the strings. I don't care to go into exact measurements, but they're up very close to the strings. I raised the pole pieces on the Duncan Distortion bridge pickup so that each pole is an equal distance from its adjacent string. I've read and heard over the years that doing this can cause phase issues, or that an extra powerful pickup (like a Duncan Invader with its oversized magnets) can literally pull strings out of tune, but I've been doing this for a long time and have completely made it part of my approach to the instrument. Just feels right to me.
I may be hated by many for doing this, but I don't care.
And... The issues with Sustainiac's "lightness" or "softness" I mentioned in the previous post, all went away. This thing screams! The change was so drastic that it became intimidating to use. It can "grab" notes immediately and begin sustaining them; either one note with the same strength as the eBow (mentioned in my third post from back in April last year), or several notes with the driver's magnetic pull divided between them. It will sustain any string that's left open, so I'm going to have to be very intentional to mute strings with my left hand. The website says that it grabs thicker, wound strings much more easily than the lighter strings, but I think the string response overall is about equal, and works just about everywhere on the fretboard. There's extra incentive to keep the neck straight so that no dead spots appear and ruin any sustain I might try to have going.
The Sustainiac's three harmonic modes (called Normal, Harmonic, and Mix by the manufacturer) each have a character all their own:
The Normal mode is simply the first note, the fundamental, which sounds every bit like the eBow's "low" setting. The response is quick and it grabs the lower strings more readily but will work on the high strings if I'm holding them down.
The Mix mode plays 2nd and 3rd harmonics, much like the higher setting of an eBow. It takes the longest of the three modes to track—up to 2-3 seconds longer than the other modes. At first I didn't like the way it did this, but after some time I figured out that I can "punch in" a little bit of some harmonic action to add some color to a chord. I am now leaving the switch in the middle position to activate the Mix mode first when I turn the driver on.
The Harmonic mode has the fastest response of the three modes and replicates amp feedback with obnoxiously high 3rds and 5ths. It favors playing one string or note very loudly and tends to pick a higher string before it will grab a low string. Floyd Rose dive bombs are a lot of fun on this setting, mostly on account of being obnoxious. After reading a few times over on the Sustainiac's website that most players tend to leave the driver controller solely at its maximum setting, I thought that I might have the same experience; in other words, I'd have a functioning but useless knob on my guitar. But it's totally useful. I can "fade" out the strength of the driver, completely controlling the rate of decay on a note or a chord. I can set the pot halfway or two-thirds of the way down and it will lightly grab the notes in a chord—very interesting for adding drones to chords with the Mix mode on a light-to-medium gain amp setting.
The driver has weird reactions to the tone control. It tends to shy away from grabbing strings with the tone rolled down, but it still works. I'll need some more time to play around with this; I know there's a cool and usable trick lurking in that control setting somewhere. The Sustainiac as a neck pickup is just that: a simple single-coil. The +6 db "dark boost" works and resembles a '59 neck pickup. I typically never use a neck pickup by itself. I'm used to matching an alnico humbucker in the neck position with a hot ceramic humbucker in the bridge, and putting the pickup selector in the middle position whenever I want clean(er) tones. To be honest, I have no idea where I'll go with this thing. I might find that I enjoy clean single-coil tones with it and start flipping all the way to the neck position, or I might push the dark boost to classic Siamese Dream rhythm tone territory.
I'm pleased to find that the active controls don't affect the output of the pickups. Yes, that's right, I said pickupS. I took the 9-volt battery out of the back of the guitar and both pickups still worked, along with the volume and tone knobs. If the battery ever runs out while I'm playing, I lose the driver and "dark boost" capabilities, but I've still got a functioning guitar. EDIT 2/24/2015:I later found this to be incorrect. When the battery runs down completely, or when there's no battery, it simply sets itself to using the bridge pickup—the Duncan TB-6 Distortion. I can make do with this. It's a happy accident that the Floyd Rose's whammy bar is perfectly within a one-handed reach of the Sustainiac's switches. Back when I was designing the guitar, I only knew that I wanted the switches below the strings but out of the way of my pick attack. However, it's very convenient and useful to have the palm of my right hand centered on the whammy bar while being able to work both of the driver switches with my middle or ring finger.
One hand, three different operations: picking, whammy bar, switching electronics.
It's yet another happy accident that I decided to put the concentric knob as far back or down as possible on the pickguard, because the whammy bar barely clears it (both knobs, actually). I didn't think about it during the design phase, but it would have come back to annoy heck out of me. Or maybe I would have received a phone call from Mike during assembly: "Hey man, I know you want everything a particular way, but the whammy bar is hitting the concentric pot..."
By the way, the Duncan TB-6 Distortion was the perfect choice for this guitar and for pairing with the Sustainiac. It really is the unsung hero here; a tone workhorse producing a great balance of lows, mids, and highs; it's suitable for heavy palm muting, leads, and even clean tones. As I've mentioned before, I've had the Distortion (SH-6 model) in several guitars in the past and it's definitely no accident that I chose to have one again.
Take that, Strats-should-only-have-single-coils purists!
There's a lot to this guitar and it's going to take some time to build up the... connection with the instrument so that there's no thinking involved when handling the controls. But I'm already discovering new tricks, especially in conjunction with the Moogerfoogers (hint: the Ring Modulator just LOVES the Sustainiac!) and I'm FINALLY able to do some of the things I had only dreamed of. I'm finally able to explore that part of "my voice", the techie side of my personality coming through in creating the weirdest sounds possible. And with my own hands, no less.
Alright, no more messing around. It's time for some
metal. Revocation are the best thrash band I've been introduced to this
past year and a half:
Much has happened since the last update, and I would have preferred to post at least once since then, but December was a crazy time in terms of final exams, catching up on relationships, giving myself too many things to do when I intended to get rest, and switching rooms in the house I live in, which meant no internet there for a little while. In short, BIG RIFF IS NOW A FULLY FUNCTIONING GUITAR.
Allow me to backtrack a little and tell the story. At the tail end of November, while I was just recovering from my kidney stone episode, I went out to see Michael Adams and Mike Ball, purveyors of Mike & Mike's Guitar Bar, play a show in one of the many Ballard bars as their '90s-era Weezer cover band, My Name Is Jonas Brothers. It was revealed to me then that Mike A. would be moving to Los Angeles with his wife at the end of the year. Bummer! I was asked to keep it hush-hush for the time being, but we talked of bringing in the pieces to my guitar and having him work on it before he left.
Throughout the process of designing and eventually building this guitar,
the intent would have been to do as much work as I could by myself,
including the wiring. Then I tried to drill the holes for the tuning
machine screws on the back of the headstock (embarrassingly noted in my Prep Work post), which was a minor disaster and served a stern warning to think about what kind of guitar I wanted—a professional instrument—and
what my current skill level is in woodworking and guitar repairs: let's
say, a two out of ten. Michael's upcoming move became the lynchpin in
helping me get over my arrogance and agree to having him complete the
full setup of the guitar. I trusted him with my instrument; there was
no issue with that. I just couldn't trust myself anymore, at least with
this project at this time.
So I brought in all of the pieces to
the Guitar Bar and we went over what I was envisioning for the build.
An additional cavity would need to be routed out underneath the
pickguard for the placement of the DPDT switches.
By the way, those little buggers weren't cheap. $15 a pop for black flat levers because the only online sites that carry them are guitar parts carriers. I'm not impressed with being ripped off here. Any other DPDT type switches would have been much more affordable at $4 to $9 apiece. Notice how the left and right switches are 2-position "ON-ON" and the middle is a 3-position "ON-OFF-ON"—that's no accident.
The work desk of Mike & Mike's, where my axe would be assembled.
Daddy needs to leave you here for a little while... Don't worry, you're in good company! Go play and make friends!
It took a tremendous amount of patience not to pester the shop with questions about any progress being made with the guitar for a few weeks, but like a parent eager to know how his kids are doing while he's away, it did happen a little bit. Nick, just back off and let the man do his work. Toward the end of December, however, I received confirmation that the most grueling task of the project was being tackled.
This is the image Mike sent me of where we agreed to install the Sustainiac's switches, just before routing a space underneath the pickguard. This is veeeeeeery close to where the battery box cavity sits on the back side of the guitar, so placement here is crucial.
Switch cavity routed out. Notice that there's additional routing in the existing main cavity; this is where we agreed the circuit board should go. (Image courtesy Michael Adams [Instagram @puisheen])
Wiring this thing must have been a NIGHTMARE, but Mike did a killer job keeping it all together. A channel was routed out on the top side so that the pickguard could be installed and taken off without destroying the wiring—but of course I was asked to never remove it. We had the copper shielding removed from the pickup cavities because the Sustainiac needs to set up an electromagnetic field between it and the bridge pickup to work properly. The shielding in the other cavities remained. (Image courtesy Michael Adams [Instagram @puisheen])
Having been told only that "it works", I came by the shop to see the recent progress. The electronics set had been finished and the neck's nut offset was fixed by filling in the screw holes and redrilling them.
Much better! I'm going to email Warmoth with photos of the nut before and after; not to scold or get anything out of them, but only to let them know that they did make a mistake, which I hadn't caught because I didn't have the nut when I received the neck.
The concentric pot has master volume on top, master tone on bottom. The other
knob is the driver strength controller for the Sustainiac; I expect to
use it the least of all of the guitar's controls, so it makes sense that
it sits right underneath where the trem arm will rest. The small switch between the two knobs is the +6db "dark boost" for the Sustainiac when it's being used as a pickup. The pickup selector is simply a three-way Tele-style CRL switch:
Black-on-black near such an eye-popping color is hard to photograph, by the way.
And, of course, the switches for the Sustainiac's operation. The switch on the left (toward the bridge) turns the Sustainiac on and off, and the switch on the right (toward the neck) is the 3-position toggle for the harmonic modes:
EXACTLY where I envisioned that I wanted them. Very easy to reach, and yet out of the way of where I pick and strum. Perfect!
A few days later, the guitar was completed and I came over to try it out. I didn't have a whole lot of time to play that particular day, so I plugged into a single-channel tube amp; otherwise I would have asked to try it out on the Orange Rockerverb 50 head that they have in the shop to run it through its paces on high gain. Anyway, the Duncan Distortion pickup was loud and punchy right off the bat, without any of the pole pieces being raised up like I normally do with all of my guitars. The Sustainiac, when used as a pickup, has a decidedly single-coil feel to it, and the "dark boost" gives it a considerable kick. Master volume and tone are smooth on the concentric pot; not scratchy.
...And the Sustainiac works. Reach down, flip the switch to turn it on, and it automatically selects the Duncan for pickup output while it's working its magic on the strings. Strum a chord, wait for the notes to decay a little, and you can feel it "grab" the strings. It will sustain multiple strings at once, so you have mute whatever you don't want being played. The harmonic mode switch works instantaneously, too. I was able to make some interesting sounds and progressions right away by working the harmonic switch in conjunction with dive-bombing on the Floyd Rose.
The Sustainiac did feel a little light on its response, even at its maximum setting. Some tweaking may need to be done with the pickup height (higher or lower with either or both pickups), the string action, or even by changing string brand. Ernie Ball boasts a higher magnetic resonance with its Cobalt Slinky line. I already use Cobalts on my Jackson SL2H Soloist and they feel, play, and sound great, so it might behoove me to use them on Big Riff. Perhaps none of these factors will make a difference once I've got the guitar plugged into my own gear and "break in" my instrument. In any case, this is not a reflection on Mike's workmanship; I will stand behind it and support him, because he did a truly kickass job.
The guitar itself is punchy and... stout is the word Mike used, and it's perfect. The Heaviest Strat In The World beckons you to dig in with your pick, to pitch it your hardest and fastest riff so it can knock it out of the park, grand slam! I am finally FREED from having my knuckles hit a knob underneath the strings, so I can palm mute any way that I like. The full-float Floyd Rose bridge, again, allows for notes to be raised and lowered. Definitely the right choice and I'm looking forward to pairing it in interesting ways with the Sustainiac. When you're comfortable with your setup, you feel better, you're confident, and you play better. This guitar is going to wind up being my main go-to instrument before long.
At 10 pounds 6 ounces, Big Riff is ready to rock.
There are some logistics to work out before I can take it home, but I expect to have it cleared up in about a week. I can't thank the shop enough for completing my dream axe.
The project isn't finished yet, and won't be for a little bit. I normally use nylon straps, but I just ordered a new Racer X vinyl strap from Couch Guitar Straps since I got to try one with my Strat and it was very comfortable. I still need a new hardshell case: 99 percent sure I'll purchase an SKB flight case. I returned the Floyd Rose 32 mm brass tone block with a promise that I would revisit picking up the 37 mm size later on, but I did order a new set of springs for the Floyd since I prefer having four rather than the standard three in the rear cavity.
I talked to a media professional friend about making a decal design for the headstock, and he said he could/would do it. I'll get with him shortly to share ideas.
If you made it all the way to the end of this ridiculously long post about a guitar, I salute you. Now relax and listen to some synthesizers! Can't get enough of the new Rentals record, Lost In Alphaville.
