The goal is to marry the neck from a baritone-scale electric guitar neck to the body
of a dreadnought acoustic guitar.
- The acoustic body has been reinforced with
blocks of maple to support the bolt-on neck.
- The original bridge was lifting, and for intonation purposes needed to be moved anyway,
so it was removed.
In its place I will attempt to use an
antler
as a replacement bridge, to be fitted with a buffalo horn saddle.
The adjustability of a temporary archtop bridge is working out nicely, as there will be relatively little room for error when shaping the horn saddle and antler bridge.
- A tailpiece has been added to avoid upward tension on the soundboard.
The low B string is under so much tension that I almost need to use a string winder to pull it the last couple of Hz into tune.
- A surface-mounted magnetic pickup has been added, a bridge lipstick pulled from a new Danelectro '63 reissue.
An undersaddle piezo pickup and preamp have also been installed, although currently that pickup is simply wedged under the temporary bridge and, like the bridge,
held in place by string tension. Good tone, though!
- The lovely abalone-knob-topped
electronics are presently comprised of volume and tone for the magnetic pickup, with a blend/balance pot to mix the signals of the two pickups.
The blend effect isn't as dramatic as I would like, so I may simply replace that pot with a 5-way rotary switch: Standby, Piezo, P+M parallel, Magnetic, and Unfiltered Magnetic.
The standby and magnetic positions will help save on 9V battery life in the onboard preamp, with the unfiltered position for magnetic pickup output straight to the jack, bypassing volume and tone;
the magnetic output isn't as strong as I would like, and I usually have guitar volume and tone cranked anyway.
Not sure if this will provide a noticeable benefit in terms of dB, brightness or hum reduction, but it's worth a shot.
The tone pot is a linear 500k with a .22 µF cap, but I'll replace that pot with an A500k.
The volume pot is an audio 500k with an adjustable treble bleed circuit (a .001 µF cap wired in series with a 100k trim pot).
Thanks to Alan Ratcliffe
for his crystal clear capacitor-related circuit diagrams and explanations.
Similar thanks to Seymour Duncan
and Dan Erlewine.
Hover over the pictures for brief descriptions, or click them for a higher-resolution view.
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The MP3 files were recorded using a Zoom H2 digital recorder
to mike a Crate 30W practice amp. The EQ settings were more or less flat and reverb was set at 7-ish.
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Following is a list of vendors who carry the various parts used in this project:
- Samick acoustic guitar: riceage-musicandmore
- Danelectro baritone neck: Pin-Up Music Parts
- Maple for body reinforcement: Woodcraft of Oakwood Village, OH
- Spax® washer head screws, Rust-Oleum Hammered Copper, 2-conductor shielded wire: The Home Depot of Macedonia, OH
- 4-band EQ preamp, undersaddle piezo pickup, chrome tailpiece, abalone/chrome knobs: bezdez
- D'Addario baritone strings, 500k pots: Music Parts Plus
- Archtop bridge, 500K pot: bassplayer437
- Danelectro lipstick pickup: parkavemusic
- Rosette, buffalo horn saddle: bruceweiart
- Gator acoustic bass gig bag: wilson5094
- Capacitor, resistors and trim pot: RadioShack of Macedonia, OH
- 5-position rotary switch: PARTSPIPE
- 500K blend/balance pot: Stewart-MacDonald
- Assorted hardware: Oakwood Village Hardware & Supply
- Antler: The Wildlife Ranch
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| Also worthy of mention is the Bosch 1278VS Compact Belt Sander, which was indispensable in reducing and shaping the neck pocket.
Sadly, this sander has been discontinued. A bandfile would also have worked, but would be much harder to control. |
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