Posted: 11/17/2021 10:28:39 PM EDT
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Partly inspired by Czecher's build, I decided to make a Junkyard Dog. A while back, I bought an old Harmony Stratocaster on Facebook. I used the electronics and some of the cosmetic stuff to build my blue Stratocaster. https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/OK-I-guess-I-m-building-a-guitar-NOW-A-GENERAL-GUITAR-BUILD-THREAD-/148-2347906/ Well, for a while now, I've been wanting a "classic" double humbucker guitar. Not a pointy metal one, but something with a rich, smooth, bluesy tone. So, having a good body and neck, I set out. First, the body I had seemed to have one too many horns. Marked then cut off the top horn.   Decided to do a pickguard something like this:  At first, I thought maybe I would try lauan. I even took a flapdisc and made a cool pattern, but it was way too thick, though. The pickups would probably make contact with the strings. So, I used the lauan as a pattern and found a piece of red painted metal. Decided to cut my pickguard out of that instead.  Decided to trim the headstock down to make it look a little more Telecaster like.  Cut, but not yet sanded to shape...  First test fit. Neck needs more relief, but is already at the end of the truss rod's travel. Hopefully, the strings will pull it back into line.  Otherwise, it's hideous. Lots of honest wear (and some that I just added this evening). Yep, that's a laminated body. LOL.    Perfect! Going to get a Les Paul style harness and put two tone, two volume, and a 3 way switch up top. Should be fun! |
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Quoted: Are you going to route out the full pick up cavity area like the Fender swimming pool routes? You could put 3 humbuckers in like a black beauty LP. What pickups are you thinking about using? I will definitely have to do some routing, which will be made all the more challenging by the fact that I don't have a router. Somehow, that matches perfectly with the spirit of this project. Also, to keep with the spirit of the project, it would be awesome to find a set of pickups secondhand. Maybe even a mismatched set or something. Haven't decided yet. Anybody have suggestions? |
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Never mind. I have a plan for now. Got a cheap set of zebra humbuckers, a wiring kit, and some witch's hat knobs from Amazon. Total cost, $46.   Failed To Load Product Data The humbuckers actually get good reviews and the price was right. https://oldtimemusic.com/best-guitar-pickups/ https://musicgadgets.net/best-humbucker-pickups-for-les-paul/ This'll do for now. Gonna get this thing playing then think about upgrades. |
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Quoted: I like! ...and who didn't have a Harmony growing up??? Cool to have that DNA in there. That particular Harmony didn't play too badly with that neck/body geometry and that should be the same as it was. It does have rather large frets. That'll make it an easy player but also means it'll need a light touch. Going back out to the shop to work on it some more here in a bit. |
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Wow. All I can say is LOL. I spent a little time with the grinder this evening shaping the pickguard. I added a little bit of curve below the bridge and smoothed out some of the contours. That went well. In keeping with the spirit of the build, I used three different types of screws to attach the pickguard, a nice mix of Phillips and hex, so it will always take an extra tool to work on it, lol. After that, I started "routing" without a router. First idea was to drill down and then bust out the remains between the holes. That was going great until I went for hole #2. Yep, that stuff is soft. Didn't help that I decided to sharpen my drill bit before I started.  In the spirit of creating a stunningly bad guitar and in keeping with Arfcom tradition, I then tried several Dremel based methods, one of which was a "zip" bit that burned more than it drilled. That smelled interesting. Like a mix of Grandma's recliner and sweat socks left in a car in July. I quickly lost patience with this process (and smell) so I finally got out my favorite chisel and went at it.  Holy cow, this stuff just crumbles when you work with it. It seems less like wood than some sort of structural foam. Or, cheese. Anyway, this seemed to work the best. I ended up "routing" out half of the pickup cavity, and it actually went fast once I figured out the method.  But, the tremolo spring cavity is alarmingly thin. I might glue in a solid piece of wood to reinforce it, since I plan to block the bridge and will not be re-installing the springs and claw. Heck, I could block up the whole back and just put a plate over it, leaving a gap so the strings can go through.  Tomorrow, I'm going to see about making a hole and wire cavity above the neck for the 3 way switch, then destroying the "wall" between the recess for the standard Strat knobs and the jack and widening that area out. I plan to make a jack plate out of sheet metal and drill into the "heel" of the body to mount the jack in the same way you would a Telecaster. I might even consider trying to make it recessed somehow if I feel froggy. Fun! |
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Quoted: I will definitely have to do some routing, which will be made all the more challenging by the fact that I don't have a router. Somehow, that matches perfectly with the spirit of this project. Also, to keep with the spirit of the project, it would be awesome to find a set of pickups secondhand. Maybe even a mismatched set or something. Haven't decided yet. Anybody have suggestions? Quoted: Quoted: Are you going to route out the full pick up cavity area like the Fender swimming pool routes? You could put 3 humbuckers in like a black beauty LP. What pickups are you thinking about using? I will definitely have to do some routing, which will be made all the more challenging by the fact that I don't have a router. Somehow, that matches perfectly with the spirit of this project. Also, to keep with the spirit of the project, it would be awesome to find a set of pickups secondhand. Maybe even a mismatched set or something. Haven't decided yet. Anybody have suggestions? If you could stand the cash outlay, a set of Seymour Duncan P-Rails wired to offer single coil, p90 or humbucker would give you a truly adaptable beast. ETA oh, I see you're past that already. Looks like you're having fun with this one! |
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So, I had a little time today to work on the "guitar", (in the loosest sense of the word). Continued with the swimming pool route of the cavity. Found the best way was to drill lots of swiss cheese holes down to the proper depth and then route them out.  It's not super fast, but it works well. Again, the stale 20+ year old wood with the burning finish smell is not pleasant. Like a tub of 3 day old chicken livers marinating in expired egg nog. Despite using state-of-the-art precision tools, I was still having issues with punch through into the tremolo cavity. So, I decided to reinforce with a block. I cut it tight as I could and hammered it in, but I decided it needed to be screwed in place. So, surprisingly not owning a pocket cutting tool, I started the hole with a countersink then tilted my drill as sideways as possible. When I flipped it over, I could see that my first set of screw holes were not going to hit home, so I drilled two new ones.  Screwed it in place...  ...and flipped it over and realized that one of the screws was protruding into the pickup cavity.  So, out comes the angle grinder with a flap disc...  And she's good to go!  Next up, routing out the pocket for the volume controls. This was much easier and quicker than I thought it would be.  I decided not to go down to the level of the other two cavities because at this point, I was seriously starting to worry about the integrity of the body. If it clears the pots, it's staying like this. I will take it down further if I need to though.  Then, cut the hole for the jack. Gonna make a plate to fit over this to mount the jack into. Looks good from the inside, too (good being a relative term).  Might have some more time in a while to go out and continue working. Will post when I do! |
So, I decided to make a jack plate. Got some old galvanized roofing material and made a form by drilling a shallow hole in an old board with a spade bit.  Put the metal on the form and started pounding with a ball-peen hammer.  Cut it to shape and drilled four holes in the guitar and the plate, and mounted it. Now the jack will be slightly recessed. Just have to wait to get it to see how big the hole that I need to drill will be.  On to the pickup switch cavity. To make sure the hole for the switch will be centered, I punched it while the pickguard was on the body. Then, using the dimple in the body, I used a poor man's compass to get the round shape. Probably bigger than it needed to be, but I'd rather have room to work than have it be tight. Besides, the pickguard will cover it.  Have to say, I'm getting better at Dremel routing, espeically when I think ahead and take my time. The switch pocket really didn't take long at all...just routed the basic circle, and dropped my depth guide down about 1/8" or so. I could take the 1/8" layer down in under a minute.  Glad I didn't discover this method sooner, because I could have messed up the whole project with routing this neat.  Flipped 'er over and put a wedge behind the tremolo block. Put a couple of screws in it to hold it in place. Good to go.  I also covered the spot where the upper horn used to be with wood filler. I'm going to at least sand it down and hit it with some mostly matching paint. I thought I had some, but no dice. Looks like it's off to the dollar store in the morning, lol. Also, I found a pic of the old Harmony before I started messing it up. She's come a long way, and maybe not for the better... 
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So, I decided I needed to cover the bare wood on the top "horn", or where the horn used to be. I put wood filler on it and sanded it down somewhat smooth. In keeping with the spirit of the project, I stopped just short of doing it right. Then, to find paint. Usually, our dollar stores carry cream colored paint, which I figured would be close enough. But, they had nothing. Off to Wally World. And surprisingly, they had nothing but black and white either. While I was at Wallymart, I texted my brother in law, who owns an auto parts store. "Got any cream colored spray paint?" I get this pic back.  It's a little dark, so it's not going to be a perfect match. Excellent. I send him a thank you message and I get another message...  "No, way too yellow. The first one is a lot closer. Thanks, though." Another message comes in.  "LOL, nope" Then this:  I just replied, "Amazing". He replies, "It adds that special something that women just can't resist!" I ignored that, but stopped by and got the first can he showed me. "Cummins Beige" Somehow, that seemed perfect. But it also seemed as if I'm now required to play only ZZ Top or something like that with it. I put some white primer under it to try to lighten it a bit, but Cummins Beige was having none of it. It's dark. But, when I brought it into the house, my wife, who's still puzzled by exactly what I'm trying to do with this whole project, did not immediately figure out where I had painted it. I was somewhat disappointed by this, but women often don't understand music anyway.  I hit the edge of it with a little steel wool to knock down the shine and expose the primer a bit (way before it was completely dry, of course). Now it's good to go. |
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Mission Creep! I've been looking at Deluxe Telecasters and I'm absolutely fascinated with the wine colored body and black pickguard.  So, I figured, "How could I mess things up better than to build an inadequate and unsatisfying replica?" Tomorrow, I'm getting some wine colored spray paint (if I don't already have some) and some black. Gonna knock the rest of the shine off and shoot a couple coats of rattle-can on the body, then after cutting all of the holes for the electronics, sand the pickguard down a bit and hit it with some black. Lipstick on a pig. Stay tuned! |
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Big day today! First, removing the old Harmony logo from the headstock. I'm gonna put something on here, just don't know what it will be yet.  Put a coat of deep red on the body. Ended up doing two coats today and had to stop there because it was just too cold and was taking the paint forever to dry.  Figured out the spacing to get the volume knobs correctly placed on the pickguard.  Cut the pilot hole for my selector switch.  Found an old back cover (that was originally on the Panther Pink guitar that I restored earlier) and shot some black on it real quick.  Cut out the first pickup slot...  Test fit the pickup.  Test fit the knobs and selector switch. Everything fits well.  I put everything together for a test fit.  I put the pickup rings in upside down, so they taper the wrong way. And the pickguard needs to move left...some of the internal areas need additional routing to move everything over, The pickups themselves could stand to move over a bit to better line up under the strings too. Since I will have to remove the pickguard anyway, no big deal. Those are relatively easy things to do and I'll finish all of that fitting tomorrow before painting. My tuners should get here soon and I'll be able to solder everything up, string it up and take it for a test drive! Can't wait! |
Painted the pickguard black then went around the edge of it with a white paint marker to give it that extra touch of class. Re-mounted all of the electronics. I had to use a piece of Lauan under the control knobs because they were a bit too high without it. And then, it was time to solder the pickups in place. The piece of metal I used for the pickguard came from a gas grill, lol. The instructions and safety precautions were still on the backside. On the Amazon listing where I bought the wiring harness, there was a diagram showing how to connect the pickups. I followed that, hoping that it would work correctly. And before testing, I decided to do some glamour shots. She reminds me of my ex. Looks great from 20 feet away.   Found a single tuner in my guitar junk that I threw on so I could test the pickups. Threw an old E string on it for testing. Took it upstairs to my "studio" and hooked it up. It works! Volume and tone controls correct, and I got the switch in right...up for the neck pickup, and down for the bridge. Yay! First thing I noticed was that the strings where the body meets the neck were WAY too high. Lowered the E saddle and got it to a reasonable height, but had a touch of string buzz. I've got the truss rod loosened completely and I hope that when I get the strings on, the string tension will pull some relief into the neck. I've actually seen this happen with a Fender once...the neck actually bent BACKWARD without strings but pulled beautifully into line when the strings were tensioned properly. Keeping my fingers crossed. My wife asked me why I would take the time to paint a guitar badly. As I said earlier, she knows nothing about music. I told her that I was putting lipstick on a pig. So, when I was thinking of what I would put on the headstock, she suggested a pig.  Just buried my painted pig under 3 layers of polyurethane. Its rather pebbly and I'm not sanding it out. Perfect! |
Nice that the pickups you got came with nickel silver baseplates. I don't know why so many people feel the need to spend so much on boutique pickups. I like how the body varies from a Tele just slightly. I have some unresolved hatred of Strat trems so I would have blocked both sides of the trem but that's just me 
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Quoted: Nice that the pickups you got came with nickel silver baseplates. I don't know why so many people feel the need to spend so much on boutique pickups. I like how the body varies from a Tele just slightly. I have some unresolved hatred of Strat trems so I would have blocked both sides of the trem but that's just me I may have to before it's all said and done. Got the tuners on, installed the string trees, did a "poor man's intonation" setup (just basically eyeballed the two staircases) and put the strings on. Set each saddle down until I just started getting a slight buzz and then raised them up 1/4 turn. And exactly what I had hoped would happen did. The neck came back into line (that is to say, slightly curved) once I tensioned the strings. Yay! The thing plays absolutely perfectly. Couldn't ask for better. Just wish I could play right now! But, during the construction of the guitar, I got into my left index finger with a flapdisc on the angle grinder. Then, I was drilling test holes in scrap metal to make sure I had the right size hole for my jack plate. The metal slipped and she did two revolutions through the fleshy part of my fingertip before I got it stopped. I superglued it, but it's sore as heck and it's going to be a while before I'll be able to do any serious playing. No surprise that it would work out that way...lol. Nevertheless, with great pain and much flaking of superglue residue, I managed to record a couple licks. This is through my Blackstar Fly 3 with distortion, mic'd, running into the board, then out through a Hoomiya headphone tube amp then straight into the computer recorded using Audacity. The only thing I added "post process" was reverb.  And the first test: Guitar test. The tuners were better than I expected considering they were 10 bucks from eBay. Not super smooth, but they work pretty positively and hold tune well. The only issue is, the bridge is moving. I think maybe the wood behind it is a little soft. What I might do is, at the next string change, remove the saddles, drill down through the bridge plate twice at the very back and countersink it, and put some screws through into the body. That'd hold, lol. Otherwise, its way better than I could have imagined, for an investment of $50, some scrap parts and a week's work. Neck is chunky but flat like I like, strings line up well under the pickups, all switches and tone controls work, everything is darn near 100%. Can't beat that! I may do some glamour shots tomorrow. But for now, this is how she looks! 
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Quoted: I like it, 14 sec sound test was just enough to make me want more. I was just upstairs noodling around with it a while ago. Man, my finger hurts. I ended up scraping all the super glue off on the guitar strings and then I got blood all over the fretboard. Came back downstairs and re-applied some super glue and decided to give it a rest. I really want to go up there and play some more! But that guitar sounds pretty amazing for what it is and it plays great. When I start recording some stuff with it, I'll post it up. The wife pointed out that if I just leave it alone for a day or two that it will heal up. I probably won't though. |
| Sounds great. Again, a good example of how a solid production pickup can sound with the right signal chain. Too many people on some of the guitar forums with "I must need boutique pickups" when they need to look at their tone caps/ wiring options as well as a drive pedal/pedals that offer different clipping types. For example the Fulldrive 3 offers Mosfet/non-Mosfet circuit and smooth/flat/hard clipping with some boost. This pedal (clone) has ended my desire to keep swapping out humbuckers... |
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Quoted: Sounds great. Again, a good example of how a solid production pickup can sound with the right signal chain. Too many people on some of the guitar forums with "I must need boutique pickups" when they need to look at their tone caps/ wiring options as well as a drive pedal/pedals that offer different clipping types. For example the Fulldrive 3 offers Mosfet/non-Mosfet circuit and smooth/flat/hard clipping with some boost. This pedal (clone) has ended my desire to keep swapping out humbuckers... I can't justify spending a lot on guitars and parts because I'm just not that good or serious of a musician. The vast majority of my playing time is recording. You can tweak sounds until your heart's content both in setup and post-processing and get exactly what you want (although that sample above is straight out of my Blackstar amp, with only reverb and stereoification added, so I'm particularly excited about recording with this thing). Besides, I've watched several dozen of those "A vs. B" pickup tests on Youtube and most of the time the cheaper ones sound better to my ear, lol. I sold my "last" guitar last year. With the proceeds of that, I've built/restored two Strats, bought a VERY inexpensive Telecaster clone that's fantastic, a cheapo bass that's good for recording purposes, and built the Junkyard Hog. And, I'm still over $300 to the good. |
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I finally got tired of waiting for my finger to get better and just whittled down both sides of a Bandaid to get a minimum width and started playing. Wasn't too bad but sure could have been easier. Anyway, I did a proper intonation on the thing and set some of the saddles a bit lower. Everything's lining up well and she plays nice. Messing around with some song concepts just for fun. Canned drums, me on bass, rhythm and lead. Rhythm is neck pickup only, tone rolled way back, run out of the Blackstar with some slight OD into a mic, then into the board, then out of the board through a headphone amp that uses 2 6J9 tubes, then into the digital interface on my computer. Lead is the same, but with more overdrive and using both pickups with the tones wide open. Both settings sound pretty good to me, but I'm still experimenting. Test 2 I had a couple fumble-fingers because of the bandaid, but the more I play this thing, the more I like it. |
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Quoted: I finally got tired of waiting for my finger to get better and just whittled down both sides of a Bandaid to get a minimum width and started playing. Wasn't too bad but sure could have been easier. Anyway, I did a proper intonation on the thing and set some of the saddles a bit lower. Everything's lining up well and she plays nice. Messing around with some song concepts just for fun. Canned drums, me on bass, rhythm and lead. Rhythm is neck pickup only, tone rolled way back, run out of the Blackstar with some slight OD into a mic, then into the board, then out of the board through a headphone amp that uses 2 6J9 tubes, then into the digital interface on my computer. Lead is the same, but with more overdrive and using both pickups with the tones wide open. Both settings sound pretty good to me, but I'm still experimenting. Test 2 I had a couple fumble-fingers because of the bandaid, but the more I play this thing, the more I like it. Sounds great. Congrats on the "re" built. I love the rough and played look. |
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OK. Final iteration of the first song with the Pig. I actually used four guitars on this song, lol. Five including the bass. Low rhythm - the first blue Strat I built. High rhythm - Pig (starts at 21 seconds and again at 1:38, with lots of vibrato) Mid Solo - Indio Telecaster End Solo - The poor Squier Strat I rescued. Bass: Glarry J-Bass All the guitars went through my Blackstar Fly 3 and the bass went straight into the board. Here's the song: Ride I didn't use the Pig much, but it's already fulfilling the role I wanted it for...an occasional double humbucker sound for recording. Not bad for $50. |