New Headless Guitar Day - a little project

Keefy

As per my post asking about Lace Sensors, here's the reason - a Steinberger Spirit purchased today from @Jalapeno of this parish. As expected it suffers from naff pickups, so having made some careful measurements I have ordered a Lace Gold HSS set (in black finish) and some other bits. The guitar plays nicely and I have worked out how to set up the bridge. Lett he soldering commence!

Keefy

I’ve worked out a switching scheme using a 4-pole 5-way that will give me the following:
1. Bridge HB, splittable to SC with a push-push switch on one of the pots.
2. Bridge SC and Middle
3. Bridge SC and Neck
4. Middle and Neck
5. Neck

I’ve also found that the guitar has a decent amount of lively ‘ring’ to it when strummed unplugged, perhaps surprising for such a small body.

normula1

I used to travel quite a bit for work and always fancied one of those.
Bridge HB and neck single coil is a good combination on a HSS as well

Keefy

normula1 said:

I used to travel quite a bit for work and always fancied one of those.
Bridge HB and neck single coil is a good combination on a HSS as well

Yes HSS is very versatile, although tbh it's is not a pickup combo I'm usually drawn to (and even less so HSH). For a few years I gigged a Yamaha Pacifica 604, and I've incorporated some of its switching scheme into this project.

Keefy

Here's the control cavity. I have ordered 15mm pots (including one with a push-push switch) to replace the tiny existing ones, and a 4-pole 5-way selector. Barrel jack sockets are not known for their reliability so I have also ordered an Electrosocket-type jack cup. That should leave me more room to work with in the cavity but I will need to widen the hole to about 21mm diameter. If I just reamed it wider from the existing centre it would overlap the body edge radius so I will have to hog out wood with a drill and then tidy it up with the reamer.

Keefy

New pots, switches and socket came today - still waiting for the pickups to land in the UK!

Rabs

Cool.. Are you getting the 80s perm to go with it   

Keefy

Rabs said:

Cool.. Are you getting the 80s perm to go with it   

Ha, you clearly haven't seen by current barnet! No, but I am planning to use this guitar in a Duran Duran tribute set in a few months' time...

Keefy

The pickups were supposed to get delivered next Tuesday but turned up this morning, yay! Here's the stash of bits - I have a choice of pots to work with:

Keefy

Removed the strings and treated the fretboard to some lemon oil. The frets look to be in pristine condition;


Out with the old pickups and electronics:


Fitted the new selector switch and the 2 single coil pickups:

Keefy

I made as many pot and switch connections as possible outside of the guitar as there's very little space in the control cavity. I decided to re-use the tone pot and screened connecting cables, not least because a 22mm pot won't fit!


All 3 Lace Sensors now fitted in place:


Quite a few conductors to trim and solder before I'm done:

Keefy

Finished wiring this up today - it was pretty tight working inside that control cavity! The guitar sounds loads better, and doesn't seem to lack anything from having a minimal body. Having said that, it's unlikely to knock my CS Strat off its perch! I noticed that when the Dually HB is tapped according to Lace's instructions, it voices the coil furthest from the bridge. This actually works very well - positions 1, 3 and 5 are like a Tele, and positions 2 and 4 are the in-between Start positions. Popping out the push-push switch turns the bridge SC into a HB, but (intentionally) only when on its own. The split shaft of this pot is smaller than the original so the knob is very loose - I'll either get busy with the PTFE tape or oder a matching replacement.

I belatedly realised that the Lace wiring instructions recommend 250k pots and a 22nF tone cap, whereas I have used 500k pots and a 47nF tone cap. Consequently the volume control drops off pretty quickly and loses top end, and the tone control doesn't do much until the bottom 1/4 of its travel. I'm going to try a 1nF/150k treble bleed network for the volume pot, and a 250k tone pot and 22nF cap.

Strangefan

Love it, I have an 80s hohner b2b bass which was my main live bass for 5 years, totally modded, pickups refinished all electrics, I still have it, they are Brill instruments when you get the hardware right  

BillDL

That control cavity is a squeeze.  Takes a bit of forethought to make sure it will all fit AFTER the wires are all soldered.  Nicely done.

Keefy

Strangefan said:

Love it, I have an 80s hohner b2b bass which was my main live bass for 5 years, totally modded, pickups refinished all electrics, I still have it, they are Brill instruments when you get the hardware right  

Woah, you have some colours going on there! I had a Hohner Jack bass with Jazz-type pickups but that now belongs to my son. I didn't care much for the pre-amp - did you change yours?

BillDL said:

That control cavity is a squeeze.  Takes a bit of forethought to make sure it will all fit AFTER the wires are all soldered.  Nicely done.

Thanks! I fitted the 1nF/150k treble bleed and it works a treat, the volume taper is much smoother and it retains treble when backed off. To fit it I had to pull the push-push pot all the way out of the cavity but it went back in fine because I had dressed the wires round the perimeter of the cavity as much as possible and left a bit of slack. The pickups are nice and quiet and definitely worth the outlay.

I find the vibrato to be so stiff in use that it's hardly worth the bother. I'll have to research whether it's possible to do anything about this.

But for now, a win.

Strangefan

Yes ripped it out and put in cts pots lol 

Keefy

First gig for this guitar this afternoon. It was an outdoor event in a small courtyard backing a local singer/songwriter. No drums, just acoustic and vocals (through an acoustic combo) and bass. I used my Princeton Reverb with no fx pedals. It sounded kind of thin, but I don’t think this was down to the guitar. I’m taking it to my Bowie tribute rehearsal tomorrow night to try on a few songs, big pedalboard into Matchless Lightning. Stand by for a full report!

Keefy

I replaced the tone pot with a 250k and 22nF cap and that works much better. Rehearsal is this evening so while I had all my kit out I tried the pimped Steinberger through my full rig at home. The pickups basically sound Stratty as you might expect. The one oddity is what happens when I kick in my Boss Acoustic simulator pedal. This normally sounds fine into the front end of my amp but with the Steinberger I was getting something like a spitty distortion. I think the Lace Sensors are too bright for the pedal, which in turn is sending HF peaks to my amp’s preamp.

I’ve ordered a 250k switched pot which should tame the top end. I’ve also ordered some numbered knobs with rubber grips as the original black metal knobs give no clue as to how they are set. When I fit the new switched pot I may re-wire it so that popping it out goes straight to bridge humbucker from whatever position you happen to be in. Or I may find I can’t be arsed…,

Keefy

Just got back from rehearsal and the guitar performed brilliantly. The bridge and neck single coils (used individually) sound particularly good - I used them where I would normally engage both WRHBs on my Tele Deluxe.

Unfortunately the singer referred to it as my ‘silly guitar’. Ah well.

Dave_Mc

normula1 said:

Bridge HB and neck single coil is a good combination on a HSS as well

Agreed, although I always miss the middle single alone in an HSS (or HSH) for some reason. I don't even use it that much (though I'm starting to use it more) on a regular SSS Strat! I think it's because you lose the bridge single coil sound with HSS, so suddenly the middle single seems a lot more useful.

BillDL said:

That control cavity is a squeeze.  Takes a bit of forethought to make sure it will all fit AFTER the wires are all soldered.  Nicely done.

That's what I was thinking- seriously tight fit there. I struggle enough when I have plenty of room!

Keefy said:

Just got back from rehearsal and the guitar performed brilliantly. The bridge and neck single coils (used individually) sound particularly good - I used them where I would normally engage both WRHBs on my Tele Deluxe.

Unfortunately the singer referred to it as my ‘silly guitar’. Ah well.

LOL don't listen, that guitar is awesome (not sure how I missed your thread when you first posted it)

Awesome bass too @Strangefan ;

Strangefan

@Dave_Mc ; probably the most marmite bass known to man but when you're on stage looking like this.... You need marmite.