Wingman's Adventures: Repairing A GTX (Guidance Appreciated)

[Not Steve]

*This first paragraph is LONG, so if you want to read about the project, move along to the next paragraph.*

Hello everybody! I guess you're wondering why it says 'wingman' instead of 'not Steve', that's because there wasn't that much room there... and that is my 'stage name'... go figure... Aaaaaaaaaaanyway... let's continue to our story shall we? It's a tale of a seventeen year old kid who had parts lying around. He first encountered these parts at a garage sale in sunny Casper Wyoming. Everything was in pieces, fretboard detached, pickups rusted, pots strewn about, and yet, he was drawn in by the lightning bolts that showed through the chipped paint. 'Applause GTX 22' called out at him from the headstock. He cringed and said 'how much?' to a person who was all too eager to get rid of it. After trading a sole twenty dollar bill for the box of guitar parts and golf balls, he returned home to give his brother the box for thirty dollars. As the years passed, their roles changed, and the kid decided that building a guitar would be fun. It would be creative, inventive, why quite possibly the most fun in the world!!! His brother got a job at a bank and through a lack of time, decided, it was much easier to buy guitars that didn't come in a box with golf balls and too few screws to attach the back plates. Thus, the brothers would eventually return the guitar parts for a crisp ten (I never said either brother was fair), and continued living. That seventeen year old entrepreneur/extortionist would then begin a journey to rebuild the guitar to it's former glory... probably better, because a fat strat has an extra single coil between the humbucker and the neck pickup... so he would begin a journey to turn it into a fat strat with a series/parallel switch on the humbucker... Uh, where was I... Oh, He would start his journey with the guidance of the community of a guitar website full of all knowing experts. This is that website, and I am that person which seeks your help. I shall chronicle my adventures here, and hopefully, together, we can build me a guitar capable of melting faces, or sounding okay enough, I'd be happy if it didn't suck. Today We start our journey with:



I've got the bridge on already, it actually wasn't really tricky at all. The fretboard is giving me trouble though. I put a little bit of wood glue on either side of the truss and put a long wood block on the fretboard and clamped down on it with about five clamps. The fretboard slipped a fraction of a fraction of an inch horizontally, and I would prefer if it hadn't... To fix that, will I have to remove the fretboard and start all over? How do you keep from having that issue??? It seems impossible to keep it from sliding at all. Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks!

[cheepaxes]

I'm not an expert by any means but I suspect your best bet is to remove the fret board and try again. Based on things I've read elsewhere, I suspect hide glue might be better than wood glue, because it may be more removeable/workable. But don't take my word on that.

Got any pictures?

-Scott

[Not Steve]

I'll post pictures tomorrow, I need to charge batteries today! You can't really see it anyway though. These are my only pictures that I have now, they are pre-gluing. it's the lightning one if you didn't read the whole thing.
http://s355.photobucket.com/albums/r453 ... s/Guitars/

Edit: Thank you by the way, I'll check into the hide glue.

[Not Steve]

[Not Steve]

Followup on the neck: I'm relatively certain that it won't be any problem, but if it is, I'll sand it down, it's not off enough that you can even see it...

aaaaaaaaaaaanywho, I have the body and neck all together now, so I might as well get to work on the schematic. I have been analyzing schematics out of a book I have called 'Guitar Electronics for Musicians', it's an okay book. I'm an oddball, so I would really prefer that it were more text book-like, I want it to tell me everything about every subject it covers, more than I need to know right now, but it only tells the basics, oh well, it was cheap, it has enough for now. anyway...
The two schematics that seem the most relevant for me are from (quote) an 'ES-335 with coil tap 1974' and a good old Les Paul. Originally, I was going to bore a third hole in between the existing single coil sized slot by the neck, and the humbucker sized slot by the bridge, but I think that instead, I'll stick two humbuckers in, as I have a couple stacked humbuckers lying around. I mapped out the connections on my stacked humbuckers, and they look like the coil schematic from the ES-335 that is in my book (I was happy that my schematic looked like something in the book, yay!) I'll get some pictures up soon. By the way, could anyone tell me what exactly all of the 'grounds' in the schematic connect to? I'm assuming from what I have seen inside of guitars that it probably means either that there is an unassuming silver wire connected to ALL of those points, or they are all supposed to be soldered to the back of the pot (maybe just soldered to nothing.) Good night! I'll update soon![/b]

[Not Steve]

If anyone could help me out with working the kinks out of my schematic, I would REALLY appreciate it!



WOO HOO!!! It took me all day (I'm new and I didn't have any help other than existing schematics) to fix this up all nice and pretty (like a four year old wrote it) but I have something to work with! It's only a 'picto-schematic' (I can't remember what they are really called), I was revising the connections while I was changing it from a real schematic to this one. The SPDT is supposed to be a series parallel switch. The red wire (marked with a capital 'R') is soldered to the 'starting' connectors for both coils on that stacked humbucker. My brother told me that I need a master volume so that I can tune on stage without making noise, or unplugging the guitar, but think that I Might do something else instead. I was thinking about using the SPDT switch as an on off switch for the bottom humbucker, and using the SPTT as a 'series/parallel/off' switch, so that I could turn both off if I wanted to. I never use the master volume on my other guitars, so I don't really want to add the extra seventh hole in the body, I already have to find a spot for another pot anyway...

PS, my camera still isn't working, this is a scan of the original.

EDIT: also, I'm wondering where they sell the 'grounding' cable (just the plain silver wire), I haven't seen any of it anywhere, and I don't know where to look. If anyone knows where I can get it, I would really appreciate it!

[Not Steve]

Crap, I made a stupid mistake on this pictorial, I meant to put the lead off of the bottom humbucker on the other side of the capacitor on that pot, and just have the ground going through that one connector. That was a really stupid mistake!