Statostectomy FTW!

Tonedef · 2011-02-21T08:41:43+00:00

Well, I had a busy Sunday afternoon. ? What started off as a fret dress for my noodlecaster, turned into a full-blown rebuild. ? Dressing the frets was a lot of work. Apart from the annoyance of taping up the board, the frets wers INCREDIBLY uneven. The biggest problem was not so much that some frets were too high... it's that some frets were too LOW. This of course means that all the others ones need the dressing more than those one or two low bastards. >☹ While I was removing the neck, I also discovered that the machine heads were loose and rattle-y, that got sorted with the reassembly. Also, the neck had been shimmed with a thin sliver of wood. This turned out to be completely unnecessary once I reassembled the neck, the dipshits at the sweatshop had added the shimming to hack the uneven higher fretboard into some semblance of playability. The dressed and polished fretboard looks like a million bucks! It has made the guitar look and feel a lot more expensive than it is. So in a moment of impulsive ad-hackery, I decided to give the body a work-over as well. I cleaned out some stray gobs of polyurethane from the cavities, and then lined the inner surface with tinfoil (I had painted some super contact onto all the surfaces first). This was a simple as carefully squishing a large sheet of tinfoil into the cavities (well, it's Aluminium foil, but I'm not gonna type that f&*#er out every time) , and using a paintbrush to smooth it into the corners. I then lifted it out, glued the cavities and push it back in. A couple of tears here and there are inivitable but it worked out great in the end. To shield the face, I simply glued (with clear bostik) a sheet of foil to the underside of the scratchplate (I had shaped the foil beforehand to be slightly smaller than the edges of the plate) and smoothed it out with a small round dowel of wood (like flattening pastry). I then cut out the pickup holes with a razor blade. I also decided to wax and shield the nasty pickups on it. This was a simple as pushing tine foil into the white 'cups' of the pickup covers, then cutting away the foil from the holes so that there was no contact with the little metal rods when I pushed the pickup back into the "cup". Waxing the pixkups was a simple matter of untaping them, melting crafter's wax into the coil with a small hobby-sized heatgun I've got, and taping them back up once that had hardened. To ensure that everything got grounded properly, I made sure that the foil on the pickups spilled over beyond the screw-holes on the sides, then folded it back over the screwhole. This then gets grounded with the spring which pushes against the lining on the scratchplate. Clever, ne? To make sure the cavity foil grounded properly, this was as simple as making sure the cavity foil spilled over onto the face of the body, so when you screw the plate down, there is contact between the body foil and the scratchplate foil. The plate foil was grounded as normal through the bodies of the knobs. At all stages I used a continuity tester to make sure I wasn't making stuff-ups. Screwed everything together properly, put on a nice set of fresh Ernie Balls, adjusted the truss rodd, and she was ready for a bit of a tune and a try-out. WHOOOOHA. Oh boy, what a difference!!! Ooh, I forgot! I also increased the tension on the trem block springs by screwing the two retaining screws in further. This made a huge positive difference in the overall tone of the guitar. It was sort of muddy and warm and woofly before, now it's got a wonderful, sharp, tenorous and powerful timbre to it, even just playing acoustically. I should have done that long ago, it was like all of ten seconds' work. Well, it's like a brand new guitar! The action had been set ridiculously high in order to make up for the uneven frets, now it's lower than coral snake turds, and I still haven tweaked it to it's full potential yet. The even frets look beautiful, they play beautifully, I can now pull gorgeous clean and bright notes high on the fretboard - and the pickups have lost most of their microphonics, and no more irritating buzzing and humming! The amount of force I have to put into to fret cleanly is a fraction of what it was. I am a happy man. I justed wanted to play and play and play, but to my shock'n horrar I discovered I had only finished up at around 2:30 this morning, so it was time for shower and bed. Tired, but happy! I can only imagine the pleasure of playing a brand-new, perfectly set-up, top-shelf axe. That's gonna be my x-mas pressy to myself!

Tonedef

Shit the bed.

I've taped it up again and started scratching away, but theres simply no way in hell I'll be able to crown the frets properly without a proper tool. I can sit with needle files but I'll smash that f¥$§er with a sledge hammer loooong before I'm halfway done with even one fret. And it would end up beinga a kak job even if I did finish.

Off to the tech.

Norman86

Tonedef wrote Shit the bed.

I've taped it up again and started scratching away, but theres simply no way in hell I'll be able to crown the frets properly without a proper tool. I can sit with needle files but I'll smash that f¥$§er with a sledge hammer loooong before I'm halfway done with even one fret. And it would end up beinga a kak job even if I did finish.

Off to the tech.

Ah crap... Ah well, we learn like that! At least you tried!!!
Which tech are you taking it to, if i may ask?

Tonedef

Costa, probably.

Gearhead

Can borrow my fret crowning file if u want...

Tonedef

Thats very kind of you, Gearhead. Are you sure? Its obvious I cannot be trusted with anything more technical than sun-bleached dog poo.

Tonedef

Hoo boy. Listen to this!

It wasn't the frets at all. The frets are fine! I reassembled the guit, tape and all, because I wanted to play. The buzzing was still there as expected, but I decided to not let it bother me.

However, the guitar's tone started to grate a bit, the sustain and warmth wasnt as it had always been, and after chewing on it a bit I realized its because I had increased the trem block springs' tension. I slacked this off a bit, and this brought back just the right amount of warm blood into the tone. After retuning, I started playing again and realised that the buzzes had vanished!

This was a bit of a headscratcher, so I tightened it again. Buzzing returned. Chewed on it a bit more, then it hit me- the guit body was vibrating much more with the tauter springs, and it was sucking the energy out of the strings. What created the buzzing was that the neck was now resonating out of phase with the string, amplifying the relative motion of the string touching the fret, giving the buzz! It was a matter of dialing the tension to make the neck and body resonate less/differently. It was a harmonic that manifested itself when the strings touched the frets.

DaFiz

Sun-bleached dog poo huh...? Stumbled upon a cure...?
Way to go bud... :applause:

deefstes

Norman86

Thats what i keep saying... and still, not one freaking picture...

i dont think Riaan is tonedeaf, i think he is sightblind ?

Tonedef

I took pictars last night, but I can't find my bloody digicam's data cable! >☹

Norman86

okay, not tonedeaf, not blind, but amnesiac ?

guidothepimmp

now THAT is an interesting one. i never would have concluded that trem spring tension would cause apparent fret buzz. nice one.. will keep that in mind

Tonedef

Stick with me, kid, you'll learn stuff ?

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