Interesting

That kit is certainly not cheap? A few thousand Ront?

Greg Perkins wrote: Interesting

That kit is certainly not cheap? A few thousand Ront?

Ahh you know me too well, I've been keeping an eye on the costing...I did everything in the gear junkie fashion - 2nd hand! When it's done, I'll bring it around for your opinion?

Guitar : R2200
Midi guitar bits (Saddles, hexpander) : R1100
Misc labour : R325
Misc materials : R60

I was aiming for under R3500 and I almost managed it except...I misplaced the 13 pin midi cable I had - and I cannot find it. Argh...R800 (new) to replace =(

The graphtech midi bits arn't that pricey new : USD100 for the saddles and USD130 for the hexpander kit (ex shipping/vat). You can add in the piezo kit for another +/- USD130. I could add this in at a later stage, but I want the midi only.

Otherwise I could have gone for a Parker PDF w/piezo bits and added in the hexpander midi kit to it. But after seeing the decidedly average quality of the PDF stuff, I decided to pimp the Cort - which is a far better finished & spec'ed guitar (I jest not).

Now fingers crossed that everything plays nicely together once assembled.

A update for a windy Wednesday (in Cpt anyways)

The body made a visit to Wizard's Wonderous Workshop...And he did a stellar job of routing out some bits for me.

One thing that really irritated me about the the Cort did the wiring was that both pups wiring was routed through the body - which meant you have to unsolder both pickups to remove the pickguard. Stoooopid. So we routed out channels to route the wires to make the pickguard removable ala a fender strat.

Wizard used his neat-o domino tool - usually used for making holes for mortise and tenon joining using special wooden plugs - to hollow out a place for the 13 pin jack. Very neat and easy way of doing it. We were very chuffed with the way that came out.

He then routed out a place for the hexpander board to live under the pickguard.

And finally He routed a channel under the bridge for the saddles wires to run into the main cavity.

What a champ he is!



Then I asked Miles (from Foxywoods), to drill out the the bridge plate to run the wires into the channel. Glad I did, because he figured out how to remove the tiny wires from the connectors - drilled some stealthy holes through the plate and re-connect the wires. All in under 30mins, he knows his stuff! So now the install is practically invisible =D.



Now to find a replacement 13 pin cable...*sigh*

Cool project!

Norman86 wrote: Cool project!

Thanks Norman! Hopefully it plays as well as I imagine it should.

Doesn't seem like I made much progress yesterday - was trying to track down a 13 pin midi cable. Musical Distributors (Bothners) don't have stock and maybe have one at the end of the month. Arghhh.

But...I may have tracked down a 2nd hand one, hopefully it's in a working condition.

Anyways, I tidied up the body routes and did some test fitting of the midi bits. Space is at a premium in the cavity! Want the install to look neat and as "factory" as my skills can manage.

This is good stuff. Wish I had time to do this. I have an old Squier Affinity Strat I want to upgrade. It plays well and feels quite solid but the pickups and tuning are shocking. You are inspiring ?

Squonk wrote: This is good stuff. Wish I had time to do this. I have an old Squier Affinity Strat I want to upgrade. It plays well and feels quite solid but the pickups and tuning are shocking. You are inspiring ?

Thanks Squonk!

I think I have the time because of batchelor-dom - when there is a lady around, my spare time vanishes and my harem (heh) is neglected.

Also it helps to have a bunch of mates who reallly want to see this thing get done. Wizard, the gents at the Gear Junkie & Foxywoods keep on poking me and -of course- All here on GFSA. One major motivator is that I have a gig late December that just *needs* a piano player... :? Otherwise it'd still be a pile of parts and the best of intents.

A upgrade to your squire is definitely a good idea - tuners and pups would be a quick one over the weekend...C'mon you CAN do it!

What I havn't mentioned is that I've been collecting these bits for 18mths - right part, right price - and took my sweet ass time planning it out. Hoping for completion by Sunday, but we'll see...Good food takes time, but a good guitar takes longer?

V8, add me on FB... I might be able to help with a 13pin midi cable... ?

Norman86 wrote: V8, add me on FB... I might be able to help with a 13pin midi cable... ?

Done! Thanks for the offer, can't have too many of these *precious* cables.

I have one arriving (fingers crossed) tomorrow - let's see if it does the trick.

Happy Friday everyone!

Finally overcame a bout of procrastination to tackle wiring the pups up...I tested them about 3mths ago in the guitar, marked where everything went and then had to figure it out all again last nite - my handwriting is *&^%ing abysmal :-[

What made it a touch tricky was that all the pups (both stock Cort ones and the Suhr & Tonerider) had different colour schemes for the wiring, so you have to sit and figure out which wires do what and then apply that to what the circuit is doing. Fun. Not.



It doesn't look all the different, but it is somewhat. Obviously the Suhr and Tonerider are now installed, but I did make a slight change to the original circuit. I moved the direct out (sends the pickup directly to the output jack bypassing the load that the tone & vol pots introduce to circuit) from the bridge pickup to the neck pickup.

It was a personal taste thing - I found the direct option on the bridge pup sounded a touch brittle from my taste - would be okay if I was shreddy smurf, but I'm not. So I tried it out on the bridge when I did a testing and it was too much, but I liked it on the suhr in the neck pos.

Imho, it's a bloody clever circuit - Essentially the direct out toggle switch overrides all other controls, when on it sends only the neck to the output jack. When off the original circuit takes over - if you have the vol on 0 this gives you a kill switch. Quite cool 8)

I did a quick test last nite and it's all functional - but until I string up the guitar I'm not 100% sure it's in phase - having tested it before I'm 99% confident. Though, until I have a final test run, I ain't finishing up the heat shrink tubing - it's a mission to remove if I got something wrong and Murphy is always lurking.

For a laugh, here's the 'workbench' last nite. Hmmm...the pups & controls, now wired up have been liberated from the pickguard, awaiting the next step...whatever could that be?

Not a lot of visible progress last nite, but I was cheered by the arrival of a 13 pin cable courtesy of SA Music group shout-out. Came complete with a GK-2A pickup!



I don't need the GK-2A as I've gone with the graphtech system...but it'll be interesting to compare performance.

The one snag I have hit, is how to test the graphtech before I install - they last were used about 18mths ago and I'd prefer to iron any issues out before they are tucked into the cavity. Last nite's googling was of little help, probably gonna have to part assemble the guit to get some old strings on to check it out, dis-assemble, finalize install and re-assemble.

Guitar tech-ery is fast becoming over-rated ?

Sunday update...A somewhat relieved one!

Got around to a quik 'n nasty test of the graphtech bits. Popped the neck back on, stuck the bridge on, wired up the saddles to the hexpander board, used some old elixir strings (didn't even bother winding them up to the tuners) and cabled up the Roland GI-20 GK Midi interface.



Held my breath, and entered the sensitivity setting on the GI-20. This lets you set, per string/saddle, the input sensitivity. Which means you can check if each saddle is working and if you've connected it to the correct place on the board. Then I just hand tensioned the string and begun testing...

Annnnddddd...whew!

Seems everything is sending 1's and 0's as expected. The G string isn't as sensitive as the rest, but since I don't actually know what I'm doing, I'll wait till everything is properly together and strung up with fresh strings before I panic.

Now to put the pimp into the 'caster - no idea how this will turn out.

It's been a bit quiet - not that anyone is reallly missing the update(s) ?

Been struggling putting the pimp into the caster. But I've kinda managed to get it done - not perfect, but good enough for now...

Basically, I had to do something about the pickguard. It was looking rather tired and sun damaged. Since there was nothing functionally wrong with it and I was retaining the HH pickup config (and you cannot buy one of these), I had a few choices...make a new one (too much like hard work), spray paint the current one or...



Vinyl wrap it! In chrome...of course. I mean what self respecting pimp would not go for a mirror-ish chrome finish? ?

3 attempts later and I can live with it - the material was a lot stiffer than the stuff I've been using, so I had to change my approach somewhat, the chrome finish in extremely unforgiving on surface prep and handling. But we got there, eventually!

Not sure I'd try this again though...

I bumped into lapdawg at the GJ yesterday and he gave me a much needed boost of enthusiasm. Always a pleasure to chat to him, what a inspiration. Especially since he keeps on building right handed guitars for us to enjoy...which as a lefty he never really gets to play :?

So I shuffled off home and got stuck into my little project with a vengeance!

Really happy with the install of the midi bits inside the cavity. A bit of double sided tape, some cable ties & one tiny screw to keep the hexpander in place if the tape dries out and - voila - worked out better than I had hoped. I had to route everything as neat as I could, as there really isn't much spare real estate in the cavity once the pickguard is in installed.



Annnnddd as a teaser shot, I tested fitted the pickguard to make sure that it would actually fit...and it does - just - whew! The only clue that this is a midi beastie is the black 13 pin jack on the bottom right of the guit - nice!



Hmm, my lack of class/style/taste is now revealed....damn, I can't help myself....I reckon the pimped pickguard looks good with the 'buckers in place 8)

Real pimpy, all you need is a broad white hat with a large feather

Really keen on seeing this operate

Looking fabulous.
A plan coming together.
?

Sums up this noobie build perfectly...Despite that, it is bolted together and works!



There was a bit of a polaroid moment when I plugged in the midi and nothing triggered. 10mins of troubleshooting and I discovered the jack had mysteriously disconnected itself - whew!

Tracking IS better than the previous guitar it was installed in and there's a lot less false triggers. I still have a bit of setup on the guitar to do, including a LOT of tweaking/setting up the midi (GI-20) & software (Ableton).

We'll see how much I can improve it, though I do accept that it'll never play with the accuracy of a Axon setup with RMC pickups - for the money it's a shedload of fun, had about 3hrs of piano/synth fun yesterday ?

Aside from setup & tweaking, I do want to do a few more things to it :

• Get some chrome strat style knobs - the white ones just don't look right
• Change the vol pot to a linear style one w/a treble bleed mod - I didn't realize that this one was a audio taper and is basically unusable w/o the treble bleed mod
• I strung up with a set of elixir's I had lying around - and the trebles feel crappy on this guitar. I hear that flatwounds may track better so I'll slap a set of those on next re-string

Greg Perkins wrote: Real pimpy, all you need is a broad white hat with a large feather

Really keen on seeing this operate

Hehe, I think a white heat and feather are a fine idea...then again I would :-[

Coolio, I'll pm you when it's setup nicely!

Wizard wrote: Looking fabulous.
A plan coming together.
?

Thank you Wizard...Without your workshop and skills, it probably would never have happened...You are a champ!