Partly because I’m impatient and partly because it worked out so well on the last guitar I built – I decided to take the lapsteel out for a test drive prior to 'finishing' it. I found that it was very useful when making my Tele to assemble the instrument and see where the issues were prior to putting a finish on the wood. That way if I screwed up royally – I could still fix it without having to re-finish the guitar.
And just like last time – I’m glad I did.
In my haste to finish the guitar (so I can start playing it - for the love of all that’s holy) I was less than precise with regards to the nut and bridge construction. In short – the strings are not uniform in height or spacing – so you have to compensate while playing. This was the first time I’ve made a bridge (or nut) from scratch – so some mistakes were to be expected. It’s playable but I’m not happy with it – so I’ll be revisiting this before I shellac the instrument.
I also ran into a bigger problem - Grounding.
I know very little about guitar construction. I know less about guitar wiring. I dislike soldering and would be fully prepared to build some bloke a guitar for free if he/she will do my soldering for the next ten years. I find it that onerous.
So, imagine if you will, me poring over a wiring schematic (courtesy of Seymour Duncan) with soldering iron in hand - and realizing I have nothing to “ground” the electronics of this guitar to. See Wiki if you don’t know what grounding or a ground loop is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_(electricity)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_loop_(electricity)
The first time I plugged the guitar in it buzzed like a fridge. Like having a bee stuck in your ear for hours. It was no good and I ran back down to my workshop to unsolder everything and try again.
On my second attempt I soldered the pickup directly to the input jack – no volume or tone controls between. I went back up to the music room and found the buzz still there.
Grrrr…
While sitting there I happened to try placing a spare scrap of wire between components to see if I could ground the signal to something. I even screwed a metal screw into the cavity of the guitar in the vague hope that by connecting a wire to that I could ground the signal to the body of the guitar.
Did I mention that I know next to nothing about wiring?
At last I came across something that worked – I connected the scrap of wire to a string ferule on one end and the input jack on the other. Bingo – buzz gone!
So, one last time I went to the basement and resoldered everything. In order to do this I had to drill a tiny hole between the control cavity and the bottom of the string ferule hole. The ground wire is sandwiched between the bottom of the ferule and the hole that it sits in. Once the guitar is strung up to pitch – the string tension holds the wire in place. Not sure what I’m going to do when I put this together for real – but that’s one less problem to have to anticipate.
I am keeping the wiring for this guitar as simple as I can: One pickup, one volume knob, one varitone knob and the input jack.
So now that she doesn't sound like a 1970's alarm clock - I was able to test her out. She sounds good! I'm a crappy lapsteel player but no one can say I've got crappy gear.
Sound files coming soon!
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