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Post subject: my "black strat" partocastor
Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 8:29 am
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Pink Floyd is the only reason i picked up the guitar. i still cant play but had fun building my black strat. i used a 3 piece alder body off a Squier affinity, a japanese maple neck, oversized homemade sustain block Tonerider blues pickups, "gilmour switch", 250k audio taper pots, a 64 year old .1 mFD wax cap!, all grounds home ran to output jack. zero ground loops. fully shielded cavities and pick guard. shield roled over edge to contact pickguard. jack shielding connected to cavity via soldered wire. Fender vintage style tuners, my first cut bone nut soaked in tea to age. base coat of black nitro cellulose on body. vintage amber tint on neck. and then many, many coats of clear nitro on body and neck. oh, i fretted the neck myself. first time. with frets of i trussed the neck straight and using straight edges made absolutly sure the fret surface was absolutly straight. then sanded with 1000 grit til i could see myself in the wood. this makes for a really slick final finish. frets where leveled using sharpie and flat bar w/ 600 grit..... iI LOVE THIS GUITAR!!!!
i just need a black acrylic pickguard like on the custom shops... anyone have one? Fender wont sell me one:(


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Last edited by regnad on Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 8:37 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2008 3:59 am
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Hi welcome to the Board!!Congrats with the partocaster.....

Use http://www.imageshack.us/ to upload your pictures.After uploading there are a few hotlink address where you can copy and paste it here.
Good luck! :D


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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:15 am
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First let me say this is absolutely beautiful work. I’m very impressed. I would like to hear a bit more about how you did your neck tinting.

Hope this doesn’t send the thread off in new direction, but can you explain why you ran multiple ground wires to the jack?
I have seen a few sites that talk about star wiring and ground loops and honestly I think it’s total bunk (IMHO).
First the resistance difference to all the ground connections is so minimal it doesn’t matter. If you run straight wires to ground they are all going to have different lengths (more wire, more resistance) so I really don’t think your solving anything.
Second, your not dealing with AC here so it’s not like an AC ground loop where the current flow on ground creates hum. If there is any current flow on ground it’s guitar signal.
It can’t hurt anything to do it that way, I just don’t understand why people do it. I may be missing something, but I do have a degree in electronics and feel I know what I’m doing most of the time.
My strat has a copper shield on the pickgaurd like yours and I use it for ground for all the pots. The wiring is MUCH cleaner that way and my strat is as quiet as a mouse. Quieter than my Les Paul.


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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:37 am
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Welcome to the forum regnad! That's some good work you did on the "black strat" ! I'm a Gilmour fanatic myself. :wink:


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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:52 am
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You did a very nice job on that Strat. Very thorough on the wiring. Sounds like you now have a pro quality Strat that you will love forever. I need to sand and polish my frets and fretboard like you did. Mine seems just a tad bit sticky. Is yours smooth as silk?

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Post subject: grounding
Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:56 am
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the ground topic is much like the audiophile disease. with such little length of signal travel there may be very little if any humanly audible difference. i think of it as a cold solder joint wich can and will affect electrical circuits. i have yet to do it but the ultimate goal with my grounding scheme was to keep the audio signal as pure and balanced as possable. keeping the signal free and clear of the shielding. i plan on using a stereo jack and a guitar cable with a steareo plug on one end and mono on the other, carrying the shiel independant of neg audio all the way to the amp but not connecting the shield to the amp. again, i havent dropped a steareo jack in place yet so as of now, once a mono plug is incerted, all the ground wires are commoned up with the body shielding; no ground loops. audio signal is an ac sign wave, very small amplitude though. long story short, theres good and gooder <--LOL ways of wiring anything, this way is bacicly the same as point-to-point wiring in high end amps. do it this way and you should be able to remove a variable in the audio chain that could corrupt the signal. and it makes me feel good!! :P
i dont see it now but i thought i saw someone mention how i stained the neck. i used the too expensive stain from stewmac and added drops to a bottle of rubbing alcohol till i liked the concentration. and rubbed it on till it was where i liked it. I should offer diluted bottles of it for sale! ;)


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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:10 pm
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Hollis Prince wrote:
You did a very nice job on that Strat. Very thorough on the wiring. Sounds like you now have a pro quality Strat that you will love forever. I need to sand and polish my frets and fretboard like you did. Mine seems just a tad bit sticky. Is yours smooth as silk?


im very pleased with the neck. all my buddies (that can play might i add) are very impressed with the entire guitar. makes me feel good and fuels my desire to learn. my theory with the neck was; the frett wire should have fairly tight tolerences, so if the neck is absolutly straight, then when the frets bottom out on the fret board there should be very little fret topping and leveling to be done. this is always better. you must remove the frets to do this though. i also did not have to glue my frets. the frets are the contact point of the string, you want all of the string energy to pass from the fret to the neck and bridge to body. gummy glue would be like dynomat in a car. i tend to rant so my sentences will stray! good luck with that! ;) back to the frets leveling--> example, its better to set up a projector correctly to its screen then using keystone adjustments to make it "look right" the image is altered and not pure. i recomend to everyone to use Nitro to finnish the neck, im a beginner but this stuff just feels great!


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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:16 pm
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eddie, i had to make sure i wasnt asleep in class! i never finished my electronic degree. :( now i have Google! :)
"Alternating Current - Description :
An alternating current (AC) is an electrical current where the magnitude and direction of the current varies cyclically, as opposed to direct current, where the direction of the current stays constant. The usual waveform of an AC power circuit is a sine wave, as this results in the most efficient transmission of energy. However in certain applications different waveforms are used, such as triangular or square waves.

Used generically, AC refers to the form in which electricity is delivered to businesses and residences. However, audio and radio signals carried on electrical wire are also examples of alternating current. In these applications, an important goal is often the recovery of information encoded (or modulated) onto the AC signal."


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:30 pm
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yeah, so anyone have a single ply black .120 acrylic 11 hole pick guard laying around?


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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:40 pm
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Yeah, I should have specified AC power. The difference being that it is a constant unchanging sine wave that can be heard if allowed to leak into the audio path. Again, theres nothing wrong with your way, I was just wondering if I there was something to it that I didn't know.

One more tint question :)
Did you tint the raw wood or was it over the top of an existing finish?


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Post subject:
Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 3:21 pm
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Nice partsocaster :)


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Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 4:48 pm
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Great job , welome aboard. 8)

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Post subject:
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:05 pm
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eddie_bowers wrote:
Yeah, I should have specified AC power. The difference being that it is a constant unchanging sine wave that can be heard if allowed to leak into the audio path. Again, theres nothing wrong with your way, I was just wondering if I there was something to it that I didn't know.

One more tint question :)
Did you tint the raw wood or was it over the top of an existing finish?





all the finish was removed from the neck. really the only way to get an even finifh. the Nitro was sprayed on with a spray gun at around 50 psi. the nitro is very easy to work with. i polished the finish with automotive headlight lens polish.


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Post subject:
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:31 pm
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That is a great looking "black strat"! Well done! I wish I could do that! :D
btw at stewmac there is a 5ply bwbwb pickguard material it is 0.106" thick it is more work but it is close to .120"


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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:23 pm
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Nice job on the Black Strat.

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