Chambered Black Korina Strat

[swarfrat]

Forgive the utterly hideous backdrop, but it was too cute and the model didn't cooperate when I tried to pose this picture with the black velvet backdrop. (Yes, I even put the rotten ball of multicolored fur and sharp claws on my velvet backdrop, but she would have none of it).

Chambered Black Korina, 24.75" Scale Wenge Fatback neck, Ebony fingerboard, 6100GD frets. GFS Mean 90's, Graphtech Ghost saddles on the Wilky. Controls are stacked Magnetic & MIDI Volume, and a separate Piezo volume which is always on. The piezo volume is a push-pull hooked up to the dark switch on the Acoustiphonic preamp.  (Quite possibly the most simplistic 13 pin guitar ever built - just volume, no tone, and a 3-way for the magnetics) It's been a very very very long journey, with three moves and a job change, but whew - at last!

 

[JaySwear]

Yeah! I love this thing. What do you think of the pickups? Been looking at those myself...

 

[swarfrat]

So far I've not played it a lot. It still has some setup details left. But what I have heard definitely has a nice midraunch to it. Can't wait to get it playable and cranked up.

 

[Corey P.]

I hate black and gold hardware, so I, of course, love this.  I'm sure once properly tweaked it'll prove well worth the wait.  :toothy10:

 

[bagman67]

 

[Cagey]

Nice job! Thing's gorgeous!

 

[kboman]

Well done! While I personally could never live without a tone control, that thing must be loads of fun to experiment with. Beautiful finish and some lovely BK there. The cat is beautiful too

 

[swarfrat]

Yeah, if I decide that I miss the tone control, I'll just have to drill the pickguard for the traditional location. It will still look clean. More likely I'll see about experimenting with a single tone control setting I can hardwire in, two resistors and a cap. When I do use my tone control, I tend to roll it down until the 2nd harmonic and fundamental 'sound' about even. You can usually tell when this is - it's when the tone control starts to really make an impact. That's probably a more desirable setting for a fixed tone setup than wide open.

 

[MikeW]

Congrats. Looks like all the wait and sacrifice was worth it. Love the BK and gold hardware.

 

[DangerousR6]

+1...BraaaaavoH...

 

[Strat Avenger]

Nice.  :rock-on:

 

[Updown]

Very classy  :icon_thumright:  Very nice  :toothy10:

Well done, I love the colour combo, the over-all finish of this is just superb indeed.
Body & Neck, are just made to be together .......
You should be very pleased  :guitarplayer2:

Love it  :headbang1:

Noticed some other new TOYs added to the stable, just for this too  :icon_thumright:

 

[Alfang]

Very Nice, reminds me a lot of Troubledtrebles BK.

As far as no tone controll, good job, I stopped adding tone controlls a long time ago and don't miss it at all

 

[swarfrat]

Re: the Mean 90

Ok - had to postpone nut setup due to work, but I did get it strung up and initial stab at intonation. I have some electrical gremlins that really worry me, but I did get a chance to play it a bit (the said electrical gremlins make playing a pain, since I have to keep a hand on a control - kinda weird, I'm worried I fried something on the hexpander -it's electrical, not mechanical)

I like the Mean 90 on the neck. On the bridge, it has raunch, but not a lot of beef. I was kind of shooting for 'woody' (think Money Talks solo tone) with this guitar more than raunch, even though they're related. My ponderings about keeping the Mean 90 on the neck and putting a humbucker on the bridge might not be far off the mark. Not really sure what yet though.

It's also really make me reconsider my roadmap amp/speaker wise. In the back of my mind I've been kicking around a vertical 212 w/ Warehouse Green Beret's. I'm currently playing my Carvin X-60, but I have an amp I built that's currently on the table to be rebuilt as a JCM 800 2204 w/ an EL-84 power section. I'm now thinking about some sort of Green Beret/ET65/Veteran 30 pairing.

 

[swarfrat]

Plugged in the G-50 and ... I knew that the Yamaha didn't have Axon's piezo updates, however I thought that it just didn't work as well. It turns out that there's a fundamental difference in the way piezo and magnetic signals measure - specifically in relation to the Axon early reflection mechanism - and the Yamaha  DOESN'T WORK with piezo - at least not without a flurry of ghost notes. I tweaked for a while before I dug deeper and discovered this.


So it looks like the Yamaha is going back on the bay. Really upset about this one. Grrrr. I actually got it dialed in and playing notes on the soft synth on the PC. I saw where one person was filtering the ghost notes (Hah, there's a real double entendre) which I could do I suppose, but ... I'm just sick right now - I expended a bit of budget negotiating points to go ahead and scarf it when it appeared - the Yamaha's are pretty rare - not as expensive as the Roland or the Axons, slightly better tracking than the Rolands, but hard to find.  Not going to be fun to box it back up and deal with the fallout.

But at least the fact that the MIDI conversion is working, signal strength and tuning indicates that the hex part of the ghost is working, and apparently my electronics woes I spoke of earlier are most likely in the magnetic circuit, and not what I had feared. (The signal is cutting out on the magnetics - but merely TOUCHING - no pressure - just touch - anything in the magnetic circuit will bring it out.

 

[swarfrat]

Last night I figured out what was wrong with the Acoustiphonic side. Had a miswired dark switch and a misprint in the Graphtech manual (says clockwise is louder, it's not. Says fully counter clockwise is not off - which is true because it's wide open, but fully clockwise is indeed off.) It felt like higher math classes where you're totally lost even though you have a grasp of the basics, and you spend all day deriving some equation, only to find a sign error. And you fix it and it breaks, because you now have an odd number of sign errors remaining.

I will say that I really like the neck Mean 90 + piezo. I can see that getting a lot of usage. I'll also fixed the lower than expected output, and it's now fully working as intended. The only remaining work to be done is final cutting of the nut - although if that's not magical I'm going to end up putting a graphite or roller string tree on it.  But I got to say this hum is killing me. 

I've got one more thing I want to try before selling the Yamaha G-50 - AC coupling the hex pickups.  I've been kicking around ideas for rolling some sort of converter myself, but I think the simplest may be to go with the M-Audio 1010LT, and process in the PC. I'm handy with a compiler as well as soldering iron, and it's a lower cost solution than shopping for possibly broken Axon's on ebay.

 

[swarfrat]

Just a note about the 'Dark' switch. I was puzzled, playing it into a guitar amp. 'Dark' sounded more natural, and 'normal' sounded kinda nasal'. Until I plugged into the board - when suddenly 'dark' because kinda quaky in a 'dark wing duck' kinda way, and 'normal' sounded like what you would expect a rather good solidbody piezo to sound like.

Because of that - I'd say the dark switch is actually kinda useful - depending on what you're plugging into. It certainly makes for a nice 'definition' knob to be able to blend in the piezos with the mags.