Dub's Wacky Project Guitars Thread--we're baaaaaack

[dubkitty]

the whole bill of materials:

Hopf "Twisty" body
Hofner 173 neck
ProLine Fender-style neck plate with screws
1mm cedar veneer sheet for shims at sides and bottom of neck pocket
currently, a Teisco bridge, to be replaced by Gotoh tunomatic.
Gretsch Chet Atkins "Rhythm and Blues" strings, .010-.048.

i haven't plugged it in yet, but unplugged it's light and very resonant.

[dubkitty]

newest discovery: Hoppy's scratch plate, which i thought was scribed plastic, is actually solid aluminum.

[Achtane]

newest discovery: Hoppy's scratch plate, which i thought was scribed plastic, is actually solid aluminum.

IN BEFORE SKULLSERVANT

[AxAxSxS]

Sexy!

[ryan summit]

thats awesome dk
you know i love them pickups
but id smash em together
so whats up with the trem on there now
looks like it goes into a cavity, no
when you remove it can you show some pics
i may be interested if you wanna get rid of it
also any pickups that are gonna get scrapped
i have the teisco et200
the only thing wrong/missing is the pickups
still have the paddle trem
uhh hofner style i think it is
neck tuners everything all good if your lookin for parts
not lookin to make any dough
if you need somethin its yours
im just enjoyin watchin these come together
plus i treated myseelf to a xany today
feelin all benzogenerositorious

[dubkitty]

the tremolo has a small cavity to fit the spring which extends below the surface, similar to this Klira trem that's on eBay but with narrower internals:

the difference is that the trem arm collet and the spring are side by side on the Hopf trem, and one behind the other on the Klira.

[dubkitty]

so i have to put a Wilkinson roller bridge on Hoppy...the Gotoh Tunomatic, which is a couple of mm deeper than a Gibson unit, still doesn't have enough travel to get the top string intonated and most of the saddles are all the way forward. the Wilko, which is 17mm as opposed to ~12mm on the Gotoh, should do the trick. otherwise it's going to need renecked or to be played below the 9th fret.

however, i plugged in today and she sounds GORGEOUS. the neck PU in particular has a lovely warm jazz tone, and the four-way tone switch (treble boost, bass and treble boost, treble and bass cut, treble cut) should be tits with fuzz. as i was hoping, it sounds like a bigger Jaguar in the trebly settings.

[kosta]

P7110362.JPG

Sweet looking guitar, my man.

[skullservant]

newest discovery: Hoppy's scratch plate, which i thought was scribed plastic, is actually solid aluminum.

IN BEFORE SKULLSERVANT

[dubkitty]

meanwhile, some of my other projects are bogged down. i'm now on the second Kent body fail...the first one arrived in pieces, and the second is more than two weeks late in arriving and i've filed a resolution case with eBay, as i've also had to do with the second Musima which never arrived from Poland and apparently disappeared from the face of the earth after leaving Gdansk on 6/17. in the meanwhile i have $120+ sunk into the pickguard and PUs for the Kent, and a lovely pair of Hofner staple PUs with nowhere to go that were meant for the second Musima and cost another $100. i'm continuing to sand on the original Musima, the body of which is taking forever to sand out the refinishing damage which is even worse than on the neck. NOT HAPPY.

[dubkitty]

apparently the package from Poland is on a fucking BOAT somewhere between Gdansk and New York. i'm irritated enough that i may start calling Gdansk "Danzig" out of spite, but at least it's still out there somewhere.

[dubkitty]

there's progress to report. the guy who failed to send me the Kent body got in touch, apologizing for his fail and offering to send me the body for free if i'll then revise my brutal negative feedback (which included the phrase "AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE"). so IF it works out i'll finally have the necessary parts to put the Kendo (Kent body + Hondo neck) together. better yet, i found a schematic for the Schaller 4-position tone switch which is a constant on many German guitars including Framus and Hopf (Hoppy has a fully functioning example), and another for the Simeto circuit from the DDR Musimas. this is a Framus schematic:

and this is the Simeto diagram:

so i can wire the Musima properly and add a tone switch to the Kendo.

i'm gonna need some help to get things wired properly.

[Achtane]

Nice, I'm interested to see what effect they have.
Wiring up anything beyond the most basic of controls makes me wanna die.

[dubkitty]

the Schaller circuit has a bass cut labelled treble boost (T+) that makes the fairly fat Schaller PUs thin and slashing like a Jaguar, a bypass labelled as bass and treble boost (T+B+), and two deep and muffled treble cuts, one of which (T+B-) is less extreme than the other (T-). as you might expect, T = treble and B = bass. the Simeto circuit is more mysterious and includes a out-of-phase setting.

[Obulus]

Cool, definitely saving these schematics for later use! Where did you find them (and are there some more)?