What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

Just fixed my nephew's American strat. He said the volume knob turned but it always stayed on full. Turned out it had a treble bleed on a tiny board with surface mount components. The solder connection for the wiper lug broke, the the output was still going through the treble bleed to the output. Easy fix
 
LukeFRC said:
I am a bass player. With basses. I can not play guitar, I’ve got an acoustic which gets played sometimes.

Years back I had a long loan of some Squier japan HH contemporary strat with the trem blocked off … then that went back to its owner….
Then I found a 1980s Yamaha SG400 (think les Paul) in my aunts bin that was nice but humbuckers just aren’t my thing, I tapped the coils and that was nicer… that got sold

Then there was a Japanese Squier strat, I don’t like strats, I don’t like the tremolo I don’t like the way they sound and look and that also got sold quickly - also thick poly finish was not nice. That went …

Then I built a pedalboard for the bass…
Then I went back to a HX stomp
then a friend of a friend showed me a guitar sound on the hx stomp … and it gave me an idea…

And today this was collected … bit nicer than I need - but it’s lovely! And weighs less than 3kg!View attachment 106592
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I found a loose wire inside - turns out the front pickup switch wasn’t working right.

It’s a 1990 model and the wiring diagram for a mid cut is from 1993 and only uses one push pull pot -
I had a look inside and it seems to be series parallel switching - but with a cap on the ground end of one of the coils - random enough I’ve not found a much about it online… (not searched much though tbh
 
80’s Kramer of a buddy… 10 years ago everything he owned burnt down in his house… This was one of the only things that survived… He had someone glue in some new wood where tremolo was and had the body fixed up enough to play… I rewired and put new pots in for him today and shielded it..
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jwin615 said:
View attachment 106874
Half way through and only 2 in double digits. High of 618!
Anyone have any suggested circuits for 500+ beta PNP Ge?
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I used a couple in a two transistor Tone Bender Mk. III derivative, replacing the Q1 and Q2 darlington pair with a single high hFE germanium transistor. Q1 had an hFE of 351, leakage 230µA and Q2 had an hFE of 472, leakage 478µA. It sounds really good, but nothing you couldn't do with the usual darlington configuration input stage and some tweaked resistor values.
Lonestar.png
I can double check the collector voltages if you are interested. Another option would the Monolith Oracle, a mean-sounding germanium Fuzz Face derivative with high hFE transistors.
 
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swelchy said:
80’s Kramer of a buddy… 10 years ago everything he owned burnt down in his house… This was one of the only things that survived… He had someone glue in some new wood where tremolo was and had the body fixed up enough to play… I rewired and put new pots in for him today and shielded it..
View attachment 106877View attachment 106876View attachment 106878
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I know a luthier who's house blew up (garage was his workshop, no one was hurt) due to a natural gas leak. He's shown me a few things he kept but the one that made me the most sad was a late 50's telecaster....I mean 80% of a tele body that was burnt to hell. Good on you for helping out.
 
giovanni said:
Holy cow! Never seen Ge transistors with such high gain! What model are they?
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2N1379
They're not all that high. But yeah, only seen a couple oddballs but usually much higher leakage. These had to have been pre sorted, in the good way this time. Only a couple over 100 uA.
@~65F top 5 of 50.
310 15
498 218
556 0
600 55
618 18
2 had betas under 100. Everything else's beta was 100-298. Good haul.
 
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Bought a cheap used SD SH-6b (Distortion) and something’s definitely off.
It sounds really thin. Suspiciously thin...
I checked the DC resistance and both coils read open. I’m wondering if both coils are actually broken and the pickup is only passing signal through the capacitance between the windings or something. From the outside it looks totally normal though, so I started thinking: could this be some kind of intentional mod from the last owner?

Weird thing is, I actually kind of like it for super high-gain stuff. For chuggs, it kicks like a mule!
 
jimilee said:
@jubal81 hey man, where you been? Look at you just posting like you’ve been here the whole time. Great to see you!
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Heya, Jimi!

The short answer is the puzzle-solving part of my brain is coming back online after a tough stretch, and guitar circuits are getting fun again.

Life really started kicking my butt about 2 years ago, beginning with extreme work burnout. This year I've been working at turning things around, so I hit the gym, cleaned up my diet and lost about 60 lbs and put some muscle back on. I'm only 5'4" and last year I think I was pushing close to 220 lbs. Blood pressure and pre-diabetes are fixed and I sure feel a lot better - not 24 again, but it's a huge difference.

I also recently got diagnosed with ADHD, and the meds sure help. I'd been wanting to rebuild one of my amps for a couple years. The first day I took the meds, I had an inspiration and fired up DIYLC to make a turret board layout for my idea and had fun doing it - even relearning Inkscape to design a new control plate, which normally annoys the crap out of me.

So now I've got a bunch of projects I'm excited about and I think I can put together some cool stuff for you guys to play with.
 
jubal81 said:
Heya, Jimi!

The short answer is the puzzle-solving part of my brain is coming back online after a tough stretch, and guitar circuits are getting fun again.

Life really started kicking my butt about 2 years ago, beginning with extreme work burnout. This year I've been working at turning things around, so I hit the gym, cleaned up my diet and lost about 60 lbs and put some muscle back on. I'm only 5'4" and last year I think I was pushing close to 220 lbs. Blood pressure and pre-diabetes are fixed and I sure feel a lot better - not 24 again, but it's a huge difference.

I also recently got diagnosed with ADHD, and the meds sure help. I'd been wanting to rebuild one of my amps for a couple years. The first day I took the meds, I had an inspiration and fired up DIYLC to make a turret board layout for my idea and had fun doing it - even relearning Inkscape to design a new control plate, which normally annoys the crap out of me.

So now I've got a bunch of projects I'm excited about and I think I can put together some cool stuff for you guys to play with.
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Oh wow, that’s great news. Glad things are turned around. I’m looking forward to the results of your new inspirations.
 
I thought, THOUGHT, I was going to work on completing projects I have and cleaning up some weird issues I have in a couple pedals.

BUT NO, I had to go and click the “Send Order” button. Here’s to more projects - Electrovibe mini and a XLR mini out (to see how it works for my projects).
 
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