Bret Van Horn Dot Org

My impatience got the best of me this weekend. I squeezed in whatever time I could to work on the Jazzmaster and finally got it all set up late Sunday night.

I started out by tackling the remaining wiring tasks, such as installing the pickups and running the ground wire:

While the wiring harness I bought from Hoagland Brothers was very nicely wired, I struggled to keep the extra pickup wires neatly contained. I did what I could, then added the foam pickup supports, and placed the pickguard with some masking tape, in case I needed to get in later and tweak (or fix!) any of the electronics:

Almost ready! Neck was installed after this:

After stringing it up and doing some quick playing, I realized that the nut was just way too high—any open chords I played near the top of the neck were horribly out of tune. I realized this called for some filing. However, I had no suitable files. After a quick trip to the hardware store, I returned with a three-sided triangular file. This is probably not the best solution, but it worked. I was able to bring the strings down to a more reasonable level and the guitar would then remain tuned while playing open chords. Score one for me.

After doing more setup, bridge adjustments, and intonation attempts, for what seemed like forever (people really are not joking when they say the Jazzmaster is one of the more difficult guitars to set up), I decided it was time to install the string tree and straplock buttons. This was much easier than I’d expected. I don’t have photos, but I opted for Schaller straplock buttons to match my straplocks, as I use those on all of my guitars.

Finally, I drilled the holes for the pickguard using the pickguard as the template. There are probably a million reasons not to do it this way, but I felt pretty comfortable with it, so there you go. My lovely daughter installed all of the screws. My wrists are still thanking her.

And then, I spent a ton more time intonating and adjusting the action. And adjusting. I was feeling like the strings were too high, but based on several Jazzmaster setup guides I found, the distances were all within the standard ranges. After experiencing first-hand the fabled saddle buzzing and string slippage, I am now considering a buzz stop for the bridge. It’s cheap and reversible, i.e., it does not require any modifications.

Also, I was playing it for awhile and started to notice a bunch of crackling sounds coming from the electronics whenever I’d play. I decided to shelve it for awhile and then remembered that I’d lowered the bridge all the way right before that started. I raised the bridge just high enough to not touch the cups and the crackling seems to have abated. It must have been some sort of ground loop, I’m guessing.

So, now that it’s all done and ready to go, what is the verdict? Awesome! I love this guitar so far. And while I plan to do some more fine tuning, I’m already digging the feel of it, the shape, and the sound. I don’t know why I didn’t get a Jazzmaster sooner. It feels like it fits me. May have to build another one. And, the finished product:

I’ll take some nicer photos when I have more time (and daylight). Now the only major decision is whether to use the decal I designed or just leave the headstock blank:

Spent a fair amount of time on the Jazzmaster tonight and made some great progress.

I started out with attaching the wiring harness to the pickguard. One unexpected thing I ran into was that the pot shafts for the volume and tone controls were too thick for the pro-drilled pickguard holes. I used a rat tail file to open them up more and that seemed to work nicely. The pots also had pretty long shafts, so I added some extra washers on the inside to keep the knobs from sitting too high off the pickguard.

Similarly, the roller pot shafts for the neck pickup were too thick to fit through the mounting plate, so I used my dremel tool to open those up a little.

Once completed, I had to do some more tweaking, but it finally came out right.

Next, I moved on to the bridge cups and tremolo. The bridge cups were too big for the pre-drilled holes in the body, so I had to drill them out a little more to allow the cups to fit. I was hesitant to do this, and of course the paint chipped around the drilling area, but it will all be covered by the pickguard when all is said and done. I also chiseled out a small channel for the grounding wire to be run under one of the bridge cups, where it will be soldered. I read that this is a better place to attach the grounding wire as it won’t be affected by the tremolo.

Finally, I decided to install the tremolo before I packed it in for the night. I wasn’t quite sure how to position it within the routed area, to be honest. Ultimately, I settled for flush against the back edge, because I thought it would be mounted more true. Before drilling, I put the pickguard on and measured across to make sure the distances were equal as best as I could.

I’m pretty happy with how things are looking so far. I really wanted to do more tonight, but  was getting late, and I knew after I spent about a half hour trying to find a switch nut that I’d dropped, I should get to bed before I really screw something up. Tomorrow I should be able to move on to soldering the pickups and ground wire, and possibly attaching the neck, putting it all together, and starting to set it up. Yikes! This is going a lot faster than I’d expected.

As if I didn’t have enough guitars already, I recently decided to sell of a ton of music and recording gear I had not used in forever, or just simply didn’t want any more. I was able to upgrade/crossgrade a ton of my gear, and one of those things included buying the parts to build my own Jazzmaster. I’ve been wanting to build a guitar for a long time, but the cost of locating all of the parts always ended up being about the same or more than just buying a guitar that was all set to go.

One day while browsing eBay, I came across some auctions by MJT Custom Aged Guitar Finishes. They do custom painting and  aging of aftermarket guitar parts to give them that worn look. They were offering a package, where they painted/aged all of the items for a project guitar (with the exception of the electronics) for a flat price. It seemed like too good of a deal to get pretty much the exact guitar I want without having to source every little thing, and compromise with some off-the-shelf paint job.

But I digress. I’ve never been a fan of brand new guitars. I have a Tele that was built from parts by Old Town Music about 12 years ago, and it’s been through a lot, and it shows. Small dents all over, paint fading and yellowing, wear marks on the neck and body. And I love it. I love the feel of it, how it just feels… comfortable. My newer guitars just don’t have that personality. They will eventually, but it will take many years.

So, back to MJT. I have to say, my initial feeling about pre-aged guitars was pretty negative. At the same time, the price of a naturally road worn Jazzmaster is way more than I can shell out. With the faux aging, I always felt like it was somewhat contrived and fake, and I still do to a degree. And when Fender started offering their own line of aged guitars (albeit, poorly done), it seemed like that whole practice sort of jumped the shark. What I like about MJT is that their orders are all pretty much to the buyer’s specifications. I was able to choose my color, amount of wear, yellowing, finish checking, etc.

I wanted something that looks and feels used and broken in—like my Tele—without feeling like it is trying too hard to look old and road-worn. After working with Matt at MJT, I am extremely happy with the results, not to mention their amazing customer service. Truly worth more money than they are charging (but don’t tell them that!).

So, here are some photos of the parts, a rough layout of what it will look like when done, and the first part of the process for me, installing the nut.

Some quick specs:

• Body and neck from Allparts
• Neck is vintage spec, large headstock
• Body and neck painted and aged by MJT. I went with Lake Placid Blue, which I’d never considered before, but I wanted something new, and really liked the aged look with that color
• Hardware, pickguard, and knobs aged by MJT
• Pickups by Manlius, are hand-wound to vintage specs and very reasonably priced
• Pre-wired electronics harness by Hoagland Brothers (again, very reasonably priced compared to other pre-wired harnesses)

I’ll be posting more updates as I complete this build, and I hope to be able to offer some tips and insight, based on my experiences, to the Internet at large. I know that in my own research on this, information is so scattered or hard to come by, such as how to make the holes in the body accommodate the bridge mounting cups.

In the meantime, enjoy.

So, I know I kind of dropped off from posting Bianchi updates for awhile. It’s a long story, but first, there was a failed attempt to soak the frame and remove the rust. Then, life happened for awhile. Then, a client of mine who does auto restoration wanted to do some trade work, so I had him handle the frame re-painting (see failed attempt to soak the frame note above). And his chromer took forever. And then he got busy. And, well, a year later, I had the painted frame in my hands, and it was… awesome. At that point, I pretty much spent all of my spare time wrapping the bike up. And you know what? It turned out pretty damn great, if I do say so myself.

I opted for some less traditional choices in terms of colors, but I really like how it turned out. I went with brown brake lines, brown leather bar tape, brown leather toe straps and copper plated toeclips/pedals.

Anyhow, it’s a fast ride. I’ve discovered it’s a little too long for me to ride comfortably, but I did find a shorter stem that is close in terms of the time period this bike was built, so one of these days I’ll try to get that swapped out.

With that, enjoy the photos below! Now, on to my next project… building a Jazzmaster copy out of parts. Stay tuned.

New video for Crossed Wires:

So I actually finished this project, for which I documented Phase 1 a few months ago. Good news is that I was able to finish the project in one evening (preparing and affixing the waterslide decal) and an afternoon of soldering. It turned out pretty great. Yeah, the decal dried sort of wonky, but it was my first try. I’ll take it. The pedal has performed just as I hoped, too. The only issue I’ve had was the right LED flickering randomly. Upon opening the pedal up and inspecting, I realized the nut on the bottom that was holding the LED in place had come loose and was shorting it out. Easy fix, right? Not so much. At least not when one breaks the LED-to-resistor connection while trying to tighten the nut. Le sigh. So I res0ldered it, successfully tightened both of the nuts and I’m back in business. Below is a photo album of the process. I’ll be honest here: I’m too tired to put captions on all of these, so you’ll have to improvise some for yourself. Also: I’m sorry about the blurry nature of the photos. Yay for electronics! Boo for hasty cell phone photos!

So while the Bianchi project is on hiatus while I wait for the frame to be re-painted (long, crow-eating post to follow with more details on that one), I’ve been immersing myself in music again. When I found myself with some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket recently, I decided to spend it on something that would also allow me to learn a little something about electronics. After really thinking about what I wanted out of my pedalboard—and studying the pedalboard of The Joy Formidable’s guitarist, Ritzy Bryan), I realized the key to being able to switch on and off an entire bank of pedals at once is a loop switcher.

What is a loop switcher, you ask? It’s a pedal that simply has one or more effects loops built into it. The guitar signal goes in, then is routed through as many effects loops as the pedal has. Each loop could have one or more pedals wired into it. When the switch for a loop is enabled, the guitar signal is sent through that loop, then sent through any successive loops, then to the output, which goes to the amp. Each loop is true bypass, meaning when it’s disabled the guitar signal is not passed through the pedals in the disengaged loop. In my case, I’ll have one loop dedicated to distortion effects, and the other loop with delay and modulation effects. This will allow me to turn on 5 – 6 pedals at once and silence them all instantly with the click of one switch. Great for bursts of noise or to switch a guitar from clean and dry to insane and ethereal. I decided to map out how I’d re-arrange my pedaboard with such a change and here is what I came up with (click to enlarge):

Anyhow, back to that whole shopping thing. I quickly noticed that most of the loop switchers out there cost more than I had to spend. After looking at what seemed like thousands of pedal makers’ web sites, enter Road Rage Pro Gear, a company in Canada who specializes in loop switchers, and who also happens to sell a few DIY kits. I purchased their two-channel kit and was super impressed by their service (they gave me a retroactive Christmas discount refund!) and their documentation. The kit arrived a couple weeks later via Canadian Post/USPS and was nicely packaged. All the parts were securely packed and organized and their cases are nicely milled and designed:

Ever enthusiastic to dive in, I began installing the switches and jacks into the case, ultimately realizing this project would be much cooler if I did some custom graphics for it. So I did a little research. Turns out waterslide sticker paper works well for this, and a company called Papillo makes an inkjet friendly clear waterslide paper. So I opened up Adobe Illustrator and began roughing out some ideas. I needed to match the dimensions of the pedal face, the locations of the switches and LEDs, and most importantly a goofy name.

After some uninspired brainstorming, I settled on the name “Killswitch,” which seemed apropos and was just kitschy enough that I could find some kind of retro graphic to slap on there to drive it all home. Since I’m not making any money off this and it’s a one-off personal project, I did a Google image search and found the perfect image. I then decided a grungy Victorian circus poster motif would be a nice fit. But how to tie it all together? I looked at several of my other pedals and settled on the final design, which I mocked up in Photoshop over a blurry photo of the pedal face. I’m stoked. Once the waterslide paper I ordered arrives, I’ll get it all printed out and affixed, then will clearcoat it. At that point, I’ll be able to dive into the pedal build.

Be sure to check out the finished product!

Superchunk played on Fallon tonight. I had a big, stupid grin on my face the entire time. Totally can’t wait for their Portland show now. Here’s a track they didn’t broadcast, Precision Auto. Rock.

For those of you who have been playing along (which I’m thinking is less than 1), you may remember that I was working on building up a Surly Cross Check frame during the late Summer. I thought that I had posted some completed bike photos, however, as I looked through my articles today, I now see I somehow neglected to do so. So what’s a guy to do? I’ll tell you. No, really.

Today I pulled the bike outside during a dry spell and snapped some photos (see below). First thing you’ll notice is the bar tape. It’s orange (copper, actually) and shiny. If you’re like me, shiny things distract you easily. This makes riding the bike a challenge. Next thing you might notice, if you know anything about bikes, is that this bike is running a mishmash of used components. To recap, someone made me a really good deal on the setup from a bike he was selling. We basically stripped the bike down of his mishmash of used parts and I put the mishmash of parts on my frame. It made things much more affordable than buying new and also got me a working bike much faster. I like that—instant gratification and all.

The parts are nothing to sneeze at for a hobbyist type like me who wanted a general, all-purpose bike. It’s running Campy Veloce shifters/brake levers, Campy Veloce rear derailleur, Shimano 105 front derailleur, Shimano Ultegra cranks, beaten up Selle Italia leather saddle, wheels with Alex rims and Campy hubs, some old-ass Onza Canti brakes and then a few things I supplied (namely the Shimano clipless SPD pedals, Cross-top brake levers, fenders, bike computer, headset, YAWYD top cap and aforementioned F.U.B.A.R. copper bar tape). And that, my dear reader, is why I call this bike Frankenbike.

The most surprising thing? It all works.

I built up just about all of the bike myself, with the exception of the wheels (already built when I got them) and the cable routing. For the cable routing, I had Camas Bikes bail me out. I just wasn’t equipped with the proper tools and experience to do that one well. I must confess, that after riding it for a little while, I also had Camas Bikes do a brake adjustment for me, which made a world of difference. Great service there, I tell you.

So, yeah. Here it is. I love this bike because it’s not pink and orange and teal with dayglo yellow accents like so many modern road bikes. I like it because it’s kinda punk rock. I like it because I can ride off-road without as much fear of flatting out or losing my traction. I like it because I was able to build it up in such a way that it fits me really well and is always a joy to ride. I hope you enjoy it too.

I admit it, I’ve been feeling guilty. That poor, poor Bianchi has been hanging in the garage, neglected in favor of my Surly Cross Check, which has been bringing me much enjoyment. That’s going to change this weekend, however, as I’ve finally got a day with no other major commitments, which means it’s time to soak the frame in an oxalic acid solution. Oxalic acid is essentially deck cleaner. One can purchase it off the shelf at their local paint store. The solution is a fairly diluted one of oxalic acid and water. From what I’ve read, I can expect it to soak for a day or two, with some scrubbing at the rusty spots here and there. Once it’s done soaking (i.e., rust is gone), I’ll drop in a box of baking soda to neutralize the acid and let it soak for awhile like that. I’m thinking I can use our hot tub testing strips to determine when the pH levels are pretty flat. Then I’ll rinse it off, blow it out with compressed air and treat the inside with framesaver. Pretty excited, as once that’s done, it’s time to rebuild!

Now, what to do about the soaking container? I’d read that people often use those cheap hard plastic kiddie pools, about $10 at the local variety store. But it’s middle of Winter and nobody is selling wading pools right now, besides the fact that I don’t like the idea of wasting plastic like that. Then, I thought, if I bought some plastic sheeting (at least not as much plastic as a kiddie pool) and built a wood frame, I could like the frame with the plastic and soak it. We have a ton of scrap lumber in the backyard, so that’s pretty doable. But, let’s face it, I don’t want to spend my day building a frame; I want to get this thing soaking now! I did a last-hope Google search for a solution and the second link I clicked on gave me this image:

Using a bike shipping box, cut out and lined with plastic is just the ticket.

Brilliant! It’s recyclable, easy to do and is the perfect size. Now I’m going to head down to my LBS and see what I can scavenge there. I’ll take lots of photos and report back the results when it’s all said and done.