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Today we have a guest post by my good friend Adam. I gave him some advice and tips, but he did all of the work himself. I’ll let Adam take it from here: “I found this guitar at the bottom of my in-laws’ stairwell. It was being thrown out. When I touched the gig bag it was in, my fingers came away black with dust and grime yet inside was this near perfectly clean guitar. I did a bit of a quick clean and initial set up but now it’s time to get serious and get her playing and looking right. She’s an Epiphone Strat copy. I’d expect Scarlet to be getting on for 18-20 years old too. Further search reveals it to be an Epiphone S310 Batwing Stratocaster. This large cavity was what I was hoping for rather than the intricately routed ones on Fenders and Squires. It will make coating the cavity easier with copper sheeting. It also means I may be able to buy a Fender tortoiseshell guard. The pickups were set in different positions to a Fender and I was worried that if the cavity was shaped like a ...

A small box is fitted to the rear of the amplifier providing a 9V output for the effect pedal. The amplifier section gets 9V through a pedal switch. This power output and guitar signal input lines are combined into a single unit with multi-way cable connecting points as shown in the following figure. Circuit diagram : Guitar Effect Pedal Power Circuit Diagram The circuit can be divided into two sections: power supply and signal handling. The power supply section is built around transformer X1, regulators 7805 and 7905, bridge rectifier comprising diodes D1 through D4, and a few discrete components. The signal-handling circuit is built around two OP27 op-amps (IC3 and IC4). The power supply of about 9V for the effect pedals is derived from step-down transformer X1. MOV1 is a metal-oxide varistor that absorbs any large spike in mains power.  IC 7905 (IC1) is a -5V low-power regulator. By using a 3.9V zener diode (ZD1) at its ground terminal, you get -8.9V output. The same technique ...

Guitar Control Circuit Diagram Device purpose: This preamplifier was advised as a stand-alone carriageable unit, advantageous to ascendancy the signals generated by guitar pick-ups, decidedly the acquaintance "bug" types activated to acoustic instruments. Obviously it can be acclimated with any blazon of apparatus and pick-up. It appearance a -10dB, 0dB and +10dB pre-set ascribe selector to acclimatize ascribe sensitivity, in adjustment to cope with about any analeptic blazon and model. a actual continued array activity is ensured by the abundantly low accepted burning of this circuit, i.e. beneath than 800µA. Circuit operation: IC1A op-amp is alive as an inverting amplifier, accepting its accretion set by a three means about-face inserting altered amount resistors in alongside to R4. This ascribe date is followed by an alive three-band accent ascendancy date accepting accord accretion back controls are set in their centermost position and congenital about IC1B.

There are many ways to string a guitar. After twenty-five years of replacing strings on all manner of steel-string guitars, this is the method that I’ve settled on. There are, of course, other methods, and you are more than welcome to try them out. For this blog post, I will be stringing a Fender Stratocaster, but this method works for pretty much all steel-string guitars, both electric and acoustic. That said, there are some locking tuners or split shaft tuners that should be strung in a different way. For that reason, I should state that the following instructions are intended for standard tuners. Remember that if you have a 3-a-side headstock (there are three tuners on each side instead of six on one side), you will have to string the G, B and high (thin) E strings in the opposite direction to what is shown in this post. Firstly, connect the ball end of the string to (or through) the bridge of the guitar (I usually start with the low (thick) E-string. Obviously this step varies enor...

Well the sun’s out again, so let’s get back to work on our cigar box guitar (part one is here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2012/06/making-cigar-box-guitar-part-1.html). The next step is to shape the peghead. If we just kept this the same height as the rest of the neck, the strings wouldn’t have any downward pull after passing over the nut and would likely jump about all over it, or buzz, etc. Another consideration is how long the tuner shafts are. Besides, the neck is just too thick for the tuners to reach all the way through anyway. The neck is currently about 25 mm thick, so I’ve elected to take 10 mm off the top, leaving us with a thickness of 15 mm. First I mark the depth I’m going to cut off: Then I do the main cutting very carefully with a wood saw. And then I add a taper near the nut. It turns out pretty nicely if you’re careful, and only requires a bit of sanding to smooth things out. Next, we’re going to deal with the tuners. Firstly we mark where the strings will be if ...