Harmony H1203 Sovereign - Fortune Cookie

This could easily be the start of something real
Fortune cookie won't you tell me what's good tonight

When I started repairing and rebuilding this Harmony H1203 Sovereign, I had no idea it would turn into something this big in my life.  The audience for This Old Guitar is international, I have a performance with a group coming up in December 2013, and I have established a stringed instrument repair business.  Who knew buying that guitar would be the start of something so real?

With a performance coming up, I had to choose a guitar to use.  After group rehearsals using my Harmony H1203 Sovereign, Holiday H1214 Archtop and my son's Jay Turser JTA-Flag300, I decided I'd be most comfortable with my Sovereign.  The only problem is she was a straight acoustic.  So, I decided to install the pickup and preamp I had set aside for my Flat Top Tele build.

One nice feature about this preamp is the on-board tuner.  Another handy feature is the combination phono and XLR output jacks, allowing me to plug her directly into a mixing board.

First up was installing the under-saddle piezo pickup.  I compared it with a new compensated bone saddle to the existing bone saddle and to the bridge slot..

The depth of the new saddle on top of the piezo unit was 1/2-inch tall, a full 1/4-inch taller than the existing saddle.

The piezo was also much wider than the existing bridge slot.

I started by trimming out the bridge slot depth with a few tools, including a rotary tool cut-off disc, a hobby knife and a modified hacksaw blade.

After widening the top of the slot enough for it to receive the piezo, I switched to sanding the surfaces.

Using a series of small drill bits, I drilled out a hole for the piezo wire to feed into her body.

With a combination of a small flat file and my rotary tool, I eventually widened and deepened the bridge slot enough to receive the piezo and new saddle.

I made the saddle slot deep enough so that the piezo would sit directly on the top tone wood surface, thinking this would avoid unnecessary weakening of the guitar top and saddle, and ensure the best possible sound transmission when playing her as an acoustic guitar.

After sufficiently cleaning out the saddle slot, I left the piezo inserted and moved on to trimming the new saddle.

Although the required saddle depth was the same as before installing the piezo, the widened slot would now accept a full-width saddle.  So, I trimmed the new saddle down in depth only enough to match the previous saddle.  This made it possible to get the same action after performing this upgrade without having to adjust the neck set angle or truss rod.

A few months ago, I had received a promotional set of 12-52 Martin Lifespan SP's, and thought this would be a good time to try them out.  I moved on to laying out and installing the preamp and battery/output box components.

The transverse braces and new bridge plate I installed last year appeared to be holding up well.

The installation went well with no surprises.

The combination of the short oak bridge plate and the piezo directly against the guitar top tone wood give this guitar plenty of punch and volume.  I should have no trouble being heard with the group while playing This Old Guitar.

Washburn Lyon Bass - Boys of Summer

Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer's out of reach

No disrespect to Don Henley, but I'm looking forward to some cooler, fall weather.  This past weekend brought some mild, drier air to my part of North Carolina.  It was great timing, as a coworker had asked me to check out his Washburn Lyon bass guitar and let him know what it needed to make it playable.  He told me about how the output jack had fallen behind the pickguard, and that it might need some work on the electronics as well.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but the jack was still in there.  I also noticed that one of the pickguard screws was missing.

Other than a few scales, and the opening riff from the Barney Miller Theme Song, I don't know much about playing the bass guitar.  But, I do know that 1/4-inch action at the 17th fret on the two outer strings makes a 4-string bass guitar unplayable.  According to online Fender Owners Manual, this should be less than half that much, just 3/32-inch, on their P-Bass model.  Even at the 5th fret, the high action on this Washburn Lyon resulted in enough intonation to make it impossible to properly play a scale in first position.  A quick check of the relief action indicated a very bowed neck, adding to the high action and intonation issues.

Next, I assessed the electronics.  My attempts to fish the jack through the pickguard got me nowhere, so I removed a few screws from the pickguard.

I reinsert the jack, reattached things with some spare washers and a nut, and added a replacement for the missing pickguard screw.  Although the tone and volume control both worked, the volume control was very scratchy, and the jack contacts were in need of a good cleaning to provide a more stable patch cord connection.  Removing the pickguard to work on the electronics would involve either removing the strings or detaching the bridge from the body.  Before doing either of those, I opted to check the truss rod.

The nut was in good condition.  It turned smoothly, and was just barely engaging the neck in tension.  After a few partial turns with an Allen wrench on the rod nut, the neck started to flatten , indicating all here was in good working condition and just in need of an adjustment.  That was some welcome good news, since things at the bridge weren't looking so good.

As the bridge was already adjusted close to as low as it could be, it was clear it would take a neck angle reset with some shimming in the neck pocket to adjust the 17-th fret action back into the playable range.  With a half hour already into this assessment, I pushed forward by removing the bridge and pickguard.

As with most mass-produced instruments, you can usually find something that was overlooked during manufacturing, and something on the verge of needing repair.  With this one, there was no connection from the bridge to the ground wire, and the short, thin pickup leads broke off when I removed the pickguard from the body.

Thanks to the internet, a wiring diagram for this P-Bass style axe was just a few keystrokes away.  It took almost as long to warm up my soldering iron as it did to make the wiring repairs.

  

With the pickguard back in place, I made a little shim for the neck pocket.  After three iterations of trimming the thickness of the shim and reinstalling the neck, I had the action so low that the saddles could once again be adjusted up away from the bridge to make this bass guitar playable.

At 3/32-inch, even I could play some scales on this bass.  I gave this Washburn Lyon back to its owner, and he was very pleased at the way it plays again.  Other than a possible return to replace the old, scratchy volume control, this one is done.

1975 Stratocaster Upgrades - Cruel Summer

Hot summer streets And the pavements are burning, I sit around

It has been another hot summer in my part of North Carolina, and I had to put things aside until the fall weather made it here.  A long to-do list added to the delay of work at the This Old Guitar workbench.  To help fill the gap, I've enlisted my old high-school pal / fellow guitar enthusiast /fellow engineer bj to be a guest blogger.  I hope you enjoy this posting that originally appeared on the Fender Forums:

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This posting will chronicle the steps to swap my bridge pickup and a few other parts. I’m working with a mostly-stock 1975 Strat. Aside from being on the rotating pickup plan, I’ve rewired the selector switch to have the second tone control work the bridge and middle pickups. None of the changes I’m doing are innovative or otherwise special…I’m just gathering together a lot of information I’ve learned from this forum and other sources in one place, and hopefully clearly documented in case anyone is inspired to try it for themselves.

Our subject:

I’m replacing the current Seymour Duncan SSL-3, which replaced a DiMarzio SDS-1, which replaced the original. I’ve determined a SD SSL-6T is my pickup of choice. It is a good option for a basic vintage-ish sound to work with the originals, and a bit more punch when needed at the flip of a switch. The tapped/full output will be selected using a push/push switch on the bottom of a new tone pot.

For reference, I measured the DC resistance of the two original pickups and the two outputs of the new one, and the others I have:

Stock Neck: 5.82K
Stock Middle: 5.90K
SSL-6T Tapped: 6.75K
SSL-6T Full: 13.16K
SSL-3: 16.17K
SDS-1: 9.55K

So, going by resistance alone (Danger!)…the tapped output is a good fit with the originals. Also, the full output should have some kick to it, but nothing like the SSL-3. Aside from the curiosity factor, it is a good way to make sure there aren’t any wiring problems with the pickup before it is installed.


By the way, the SSL-6T is not an easy pickup to buy. Not impossible, just not stocked by any of the handful of places I checked. A special shout-out is made to Drew Bowman at Pro Audio Land for not only ordering it without any extra fee or hassle…but also for expediting the delivery to me when things got mis-routed arriving to him. So…if you shop online…consider PAL, just ‘cause they were nice to me :)

Here’s our new pickup:

In the process, I am also replacing the (well-worn) original 3-way switch with a new CRL 5-way. It is no longer possible to find and hold the ‘2’ & ‘4’ positions with any dependency, and certainly not in the middle of a song. Here, I narrowly succumbed to a bit of scope creep. During a moment of weakness, I thought of switching around which tone controls worked which pickups and and adding a second tone cap. Fortunately, I recovered and I’m sticking with the original plan of just changing the pickup…and replacing the tone cap with an Orange Drop of the same value…I can always mess with the wiring and other cap values later.

New Switches:

When it is all done, the completed wiring should look like this drawing:

 

Enough planning…let’s get started…

It is easier to remove the knobs while the pickguard is still attached to the body. Use two heavy picks, a slotted piece of leather, or two credit cards; but nothing metal. Work carefully and slowly until it comes loose. After removing the strings, move to the underside of the pickguard to start the disassembly. I like to keep a small bowl nearby to collect screws and other small parts. Put a towel between the pickguard and the body to avoid scratching the finish.

Before starting any disassembly, be sure you know where things are, and where they need to go…make notes, use little pieces of tape, take pictures…
Carefully unsolder the bridge pickup wires and pull them out of the way.
Carefully unsolder the wire connecting the second tone control to the cap on the first – it is usually the capacitor lead, so it might be easier to clip it…depending on your tools and skills. Unsolder the cap. Then remove the wires from the selector switch.

Carefully turn the pickguard over again and remove the tone pot, selector switch, and existing bridge pickup. Place them in a box for safe keeping.

Now...it looks like this:

Install the new pickup, switch, and pot, note location/orientation of lugs, etc. Adjust nuts on pot to set knob height to be even with the others.

So far, it looks like this:

Cut pickup wires to size, and twist/dress as needed to make it all fit well and look nice…unless you have a ‘swimming pool’ route, there isn’t a lot of space.

Solder the SSL-6T tapped- and full-output wires to the top and bottom lugs of one side of the switch. Cut and attach a wire from the center lug and add to ground bundle. Note: Duncan pickups are wound backwards from Fenders. The ‘ground’ wire goes to the selector switch. Confirm tap orientation with ohmmeter if unclear.

For this switch model, the lug at the bottom of the stack is connected to common when the switch is depressed. I’ll wire the tapped output to the lower lug, so the knob will be a bit higher when the pickup is in the full (higher) output mode.

Reconnect wires to selector switch according to the diagram.

Attach the new 0.047uF cap to first tone control in the same location and connections as the original. It is a good idea to use a small piece of heatshrink tubing on the cap lead going to the lug to keep it from shorting to the grounded can. As before, use the lead to make the connection to the second tone control. Attach a wire from the ground bundle to the body of the pot, not the housing of the switch.

And the wiring is done:

Clean up any solder spatters, flux residue, check wire routing to prevent pinching, etc.
This is also a good opportunity to lightly squirt some contact cleaner into any switches or pots that aren’t being changed…

Time to button it all up again and see how it sounds…


Aside from the functional changes, I’m taking the opportunity to address a cosmetic issue. With the original bridge pickup gone for good, I got a black cover for the current bridge pickup, thinking a completely different color was better than a slight difference between “new white” and “older white”. Now, I’d like them all to be the same shade as each other and anything but "new white". I did some reading and find reports of varying success with the “coffee soak” method, and decided to give it a try.

I purchased a set of white pickup covers and figured it would be too difficult to attempt a match to the existing ones, so I’m replacing them all with what should be an age-appropriate shade of faded white. I lightly buffed the covers with fine steel wool to break the surface skin to allow the coffee to penetrate better…and perhaps not completely evenly. I let all three soak for a while and check until they get to where I think they look good against the aged pickguard.

Here they are soaking nicely:

For those of you keeping a database, I used Trader Joe’s Dark French Roast (black, no sugar). The parts sat in the cold coffee for two hours, and came out looking like this:

One New, Two Old, Three Coffee-Stained

If I get inspired, I may attempt to stain a new set of control knobs as for some reason, the volume knob is a lot darker than the tone knobs. Perhaps it’s just worn more from being used much more than the tone knobs? Some other time…

Meanwhile, completing the assembly…

Lay the pickguard in place, being careful not to pinch any wires. To quickly check for problems, install one just string, more or less in tune, to make sure the pickups are all working and the various wiring and controls do what is expected – That nugget comes courtesy of the man from the angry red planet

All is well so, attach pickguard with screws, add knobs and the remaining strings and tune it up.

Here is a comparison between the ‘down’ and ‘up’ positions for the push-push switch:

I’ve spent enough time adjusting pickup heights to know how thick a nickel is, so I set the new pickup more or less where it should be…and await the real test of the project…

The tapped output is a fine match for the stock pickups…clear tones with that bit of sparkle I was missing. The full output is certainly louder, but not nearly as hot as the SSL-3 (or SDS-1) and without the loss of high-end. It’s just enough to make a statement, without changing the tone too much…but not a substitute for an overdrive FX or a quick twirl of the Gain knob.

What I didn’t expect was how much the tone control would change with the new cap. Over the years, I’ve read the discussions over values…usually 0.022 vs. 0.047, and what roll-off is better for what kinds of sounds. The comments (and the physics) support high capacitance values giving lower resonance peaks and otherwise ‘dark’ tone settings (higher corner frequencies), but my stock cap (0.05) didn’t seem overly dark last week as I worked the controls to form a reference in my mind as a comparison…but I was curious…and as mentioned earlier, I was tempted to throw in a 0.022 just to see the difference.

Now, I realize what dark really meant. Apparently, and very slowly over time, ceramic capacitors (usually Barium Titanate or similar material) lose capacitance as the crystalline structure relaxes. After 35 years, there seems to have been quite a shift which was totally unnoticed to me (think about the slowly boiling frog), but after installing the fresh capacitor the tone gets very, very dark when the control gets below about 4. I’m not ready to swap it for the 0.022 yet, it’s actually very cool in a jazzy, bluesy kind of way…but I mention this as an advisory for those with old guitars…and old tone caps…that the tones you hear now may no longer be what they were when first manufactured.

I’m very happy with the project. It looks better with matching trim and I’ve got a variety of new sounds to explore…enough typing…I’ve got some playing to do…

1975 Fender Stratocaster
2012 Taylor GA3-12
1967 Epiphone Madrid EC-30

"Make every song you sing your favorite tune."