Saturday 27 August 2011

Junk guitar - checking the bridge

I fitted the bridge earlier in the week and strung the guitar up. I thought I should leave it for a while to see how it behaves under tension. So far all is well on the wood front but I think some attention is needed for the tail-piece - a lot of re-tuning was needed at first and I suspect it wasn't just the new strings. I believe the tail-piece has too much give in it. After about three days it seemed to settle more, but I've decided to insert an extra piece of metal to provide more support.

before stringing. the ply facade sits over the bridge so it's slightly recessed.

strung. the black marker pen is just to see if anything drifted

so far, so good

While the guitar was settling under string tension, I began work on the pickup, or pickup housing to be precise. One thing that I will have to buy is wire for winding the pickup but so far I haven't found a ready supply. I will have to either order some on line or take a trip across town to Akihabara, and hope to find some in a shop there.

Anyway, I've begun construction on what will house the pickup and allow height adjustment. This is a actually half of a plastic pill box with a hole cut out. A sheet of aluminium mesh sits inside and acts as a cover. You can just fit a humbucker in there and I used an old one for guidance when making the housing. I expect to make a single coil for this guitar but it's good to know a humbucker will fit in there should the need arise. I should get some more photos of the construction, but here's one for now:
I think it looks like some bizarre cross between a transistor radio and an electric shaver circa 1963 - very Pifco!
(that's good)




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