No rest in January - Two guitars & a bass [three down!]

[Amon 7.L]

You're a damn fine artist and a true hero for working with this killer temperature.
I love the top notch design and colour combo, the bridge is also helluva classic looking as it blends with the layout so delicately and pleasantly.
Exquisite craftsmanship.

What's next, a phoenix guitar rising from your sweat and a bit of fire?

[epizootics]

Well, the weather's actually cloudy & a lot more decent today, I don't think I deserve the praises

As of this afternoon, the bass is...DONE!







...and the obligatory family picture (those two are for the same friend):





It's a funky little bass. That 32" scale really is the best of both worlds - plays like butter, but doesn't feel like butter when it comes to hitting the strings. I'm not the best at describing bass sounds but the single coils are pretty thumpy, with a double-bass richness in the neck, in spite of the strings being brand new and trying to get me into slapping territory (I...WILL...NOT...)

The 339 thing should be done by Tuesday, if the paint & clear coat dry in time. And I still haven't gotten started on one of the original designs or the Floyd Rose abomination 'But I have promises to keep / and many guitars to build before I sleep / and many guitars to build before I sleep'

[AWSchmit]

This thread was a joy to scroll through. Thanks for sharing. Great work!

[ThePearDream]

Fantastic work. I really like the shape of the bass headstock.

For anyone considering using Molotow spray cans, I will vouch for them as well. I had great results using their color and clear recently.

[epizootics]

Well, one more of'em is done...Just in time, out for delivery in person tomorrow farther up North.











(all of the hardware had to be aged...turns out a torch and coffee groundings work wonder on stainless steel)





This one very nearly killed me. All of the metalworks, inlays, strange pickup construction (a fat, squat single coil with a magnetic baseplate connecting to a row of metal rods opposite the alnico rods), ageing, etc. kept me busy six days a week for a month. I WANT A WORKSHOP. But the result is really fun - 25" scale, on/off tone control, and a very light weight (under 6 pounds) in spite of all of the metal attached to it. Now I'm going to rest for a bit

[Scout]

Beautiful work! I have a workshop in the cellar but can barely make myself go down in nice weather, especially after work.

[Rgand]

Darn nice, epizootics! Tasteful looking.

[Shadoweclipse13]

Holy shit Epizootics This might be one of your best yet!!! The single pickup holding down the frontier looks amazing!! And that tailplate. Classy as hell!!!

[epizootics]

Cheers guys! It was a slow & grueling process but well worth it in the end.
Talking of the single pickup, I made two of them for the customer to choose from. One is the Dynasonic-looking thing above, and the other is one of my AP6-inspired low-winds. He wanted an easy way to swap them since the wiring is kinda busy for a single pickup guitar. I used two of those tiny snap-in Wago units, they cost 50 cents and do a great job. I thought that would interest the pickup-swapping maniacs out there (of which I definitely am a member )

[antisymmetric]

I hadn't seen those connectors, they look like a cool solution- just looked and found some NZ suppliers.
The Dynasonic-type thing you described sounds intriguing. Looks cool also with that cover. Any chance of a rough sketch on a napkin or something of how it's configured with the opposing sets of rods etc? (Sounds suspiciously like witchcraft )

[epizootics]

I hadn't seen those connectors, they look like a cool solution- just looked and found some NZ suppliers.
The Dynasonic-type thing you described sounds intriguing. Looks cool also with that cover. Any chance of a rough sketch on a napkin or something of how it's configured with the opposing sets of rods etc? (Sounds suspiciously like witchcraft )

Dang, I'd totally missed that post.
The principle is quite simple actually - a steel baseplate is located at the bottom of the alnico rod magnets, and a row of steel pin dowels are drilled into that same baseplate parallel to the magnets. From the side it would look like that:



The pin dowels guide the magnetic field to the strings, because they are an opposite polarity to the top of the rods. It's an imperfect system - the magnetic flux will still flow directly to the base plate in places - but the altered shape of the magnetic system, combined with the extra metal, gives it a different tonal flavor to that of, say, a strat single coil where the magnetic field flows from the top of the pickup to the string directly down to the the bottom of the pole pieces. The fact that the bobbin is short and fat also thickens the sound.

I hope this makes sense. Some of this stuff is quite hard to predict in terms of tonal qualities, but I do spend a lot of time fiddling with those different factors. I have drawers full of failed experiments

[antisymmetric]

Thanks for that, this is all just totally absorbing, fascinating stuff. I'm choosing my battles and not getting into pickup designing/ building at the moment, but if I was I'd be going down this rabbit hole for sure. I'm pretty sure that some of the stuff I read years ago on the subject was a bit simplistic- higher concentration of the flux lines at the ends of the poles, therefore poles MUST be perpendicular to the strings, etc, but I'm seeing sidewinder pickups around now. There was no mention was of more permeable metal added to shape the field in "funny" ways like what you're doing, the Ralph Keller pickups, etc. So much to learn...

[epizootics]

Thanks for that, this is all just totally absorbing, fascinating stuff. I'm choosing my battles and not getting into pickup designing/ building at the moment, but if I was I'd be going down this rabbit hole for sure. I'm pretty sure that some of the stuff I read years ago on the subject was a bit simplistic- higher concentration of the flux lines at the ends of the poles, therefore poles MUST be perpendicular to the strings, etc, but I'm seeing sidewinder pickups around now. There was no mention was of more permeable metal added to shape the field in "funny" ways like what you're doing, the Ralph Keller pickups, etc. So much to learn...

Choosing your battles in the field of guitar building is a smart idea. One can reach dizzying depths in the DIY thing. 'Hey, what if I made my own paint from scratch?' (I worked with a cabinet maker who did that - very cool stuff, but man was it time-consuming); 'surely I can build my own trem units' (that's one of my ongoing temptations); 'making tuners sounds fun' (now where can I get training and access to a lathe?)

All of this stuff is enticing but every build would take me three years

...but...if you ever get the itch...send me a PM Not having to depend on aftermarket designs is fun. It's one of those things that you can approach from both a practical and a theoretical standpoint. The Strat coil/P90/PAF-type pickups are reasonably well-documented, so you can usually predict how they will sound with a given number of turns of wire and a given magnetic material. Things get hazier when you start adding different materials to the mix. For one, you'll rarely get a reliable specs sheet with anything. Some of the stuff I get from the hardware store. It'll just say 'cold rolled steel'. They'd look at me funny in the store if I asked them about carbon content and magnetic permeability. But usually, when you get an idea going, it's worth it to take it to its conclusion. Humbuckers with overlapping coils, soft ferrite rods, diamagnetic spacers, etc. are all interesting to play around with. Even stuff like coil geometry - 'what if I made a single coil with 1 3/8" alnico rods'? (in this particular case, a bobbin as thin as 0.35" would be enough to accommodate 9000 turns of AWG 42, or over 14000 turns of AWG44).