The Song Has Ended

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.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Iconography: The Headstock Complete

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.

Home Remedies / Brass Tacks

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.

Keep Waiting, I'll be right on time...

First Impressions of Feedback Control

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:

Field Trip To The Guitar Bar

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.

Color Me Green!

I had one hell of a day last Wednesday as I had to rush to the E.R. that morning with the most excruciating pain I'd ever felt in my life.  Through a CT scan, it was determined that I had a kidney stone, my first, and I came home that day defeated, exhausted, and on drugs.  So, it was especially nice when the body of the guitar came in that afternoon.  It really helped to take my mind off of my current plight—I've had a pretty nasty scare with all of this.

SO much to say here; as we all know, a picture's worth a thousand words:

This seafoam green color is truly amazing.  It's got just enough of a blue tint in it that it tends to shift depending on the light in the room.  I couldn't keep myself from putting the neck and some other components on it right away.  The maple body didn't feel very heavy by itself, but as soon as I attached the neck...  yowzers.  I could tell immediately that it was already heavier than a normal Stratocaster, without any of the other components added to it.  I'll talk about this later on in this post.

Anyway, there are a few interesting revelations / challenges, starting with the neck:

Preliminary Floyd Rose locking nut installation.  Notice anything weird here?

The through holes drilled for the locking nut were off by about a millimeter toward the high E side, causing a shift in where the nut sits.  Unacceptable.  I couldn't have known this when I received the neck a few months ago since I didn't have a locking nut to put on it, but, let this be a lesson to any new project builders: get your stuff fully checked out when you receive it.  I'm long past the point of being able to send it back to Warmoth to have them do anything about it, but I'm confident this can be fixed with a minimal amount of [professional] wood routing.

I attempted to put the pickguard on the guitar to see how it would look, but right away the 500K concentric pot showed its huge ugly side.

The pot scrapes against the very bottom end of the control cavity.  Some additional routing may be needed here as I intend to line the cavity with copper shielding.

And...  More routing WILL be needed to fit the Sustainiac's circuit board and the switches.

The battery box cavity on the back side takes up most of the space here underneath the pickguard, which I originally intended for the DPDT switches.  Those may need to shift elsewhere.  The circuit board may need to be tucked into an additional rout in the cutaway.

The electronics are going to be a NIGHTMARE to install.  Why couldn't I just go with a dual humbucker guitar and be happy with it?  Anyway, I got around to working with the Floyd Rose bridge included in my order.

Complementary Floyd Rose stud installation.  Very pleased that I opted to have this done.  The screws for the "knife edge" joint were a cinch to put in.

I thought of immediately replacing the Floyd's tone block with the new brass one, but then I noticed that I had accidentally ordered the wrong size; 32 mm height rather than 37 mm.

I'm at a crossroad on this one.  I could return the 32 mm brass block for a 37 mm size for the same price, but the width of the tone blocks is another thing I have to consider:

32 mm brass block placed in the bridge cavity for comparison.

Since the brass blocks are wider than the stock piece, I may lose some travel with the trem arm if I go up to the 37 mm height.  The block might wind up hitting the wall of the cavity when I want to divebomb on the strings.  As I've mentioned several times in this blog, I'm not a heavy Floyd Rose divebomb player, but after all of the trouble I went through in deciding to keep a fully floating setup, I want to have full access to the bridge's capabilities.  Perhaps I should keep the current 32 mm block; it would direct the springs further inside the guitar and keep them away from the rear cover when it's installed.  By the way, I already know I want a fourth spring on this thing, so I'll be on the lookout for ordering one soon.

Oh yeah, so the previous photo implies that I've already put strings on this guitar...

I couldn't resist!  By the way, folks, a dab of WD-40 on the screws will work wonders for any double-locking bridge.

I wanted, no, needed to confirm that the maple body I ordered was going to produce the clarity and sharp attack that I wanted, so a pack of Ernie Ball Power Slinkys got installed for test.  I realized immediately that the string retainer piece is necessary.  I didn't need to buy an extra one from Warmoth, though, since the Floyd Rose bridge hardware includes it.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why a string retainer is always needed for a Strat neck.  I put the locking nut screws on but didn't tighten them down; I just wanted to hit a few power chords and see how the guitar plays.

The verdict is...

TREMENDOUS SUSTAIN, BRIGHTNESS, CLARITY, and PUNCH.

Seriously, the notes practically jump off of the guitar.  I can't believe how percussive, tight, and full it sounds and feels.  This thing takes the heaviest palm muting I can give it and it bounces right back.  The jumbo stainless steel frets feel great to bend notes on, the gloss coat on the neck and fretboard feels smooth as glass, and the 10-16" compound radius feels comfortable in every position.  The only thing I could complain about is that the frets could use some additional filing on the sides, but that's an easy fix.

The weight of the guitar—over 10 pounds with all of the components added—is easily justified with it exceeding my expectations in feel and response.  Even with the current issues I have like needing to fix the offset nut and rout more wood out of the body, I'm already inspired and thinking about how the body will react with the Sustainiac and Duncan Distortion, and what kind of music I will make with the guitar once it's finished.

This guitar is officially and appropriately named BIG RIFF.

Oh hey, new Smashing Pumpkins record coming out soon: