Ruby's New Guts

[Spamonkis]

Being a hopeless tinkerer, I recently replaced/ upgraded the electronics in my Casino. This thread will give an overview of the work I did.

 

I would not recommend this if:

 

1) You don't plan to customize. If the stock stuff ain't broke, don't fix it, especially with the lifetime warranty. If it did stop working, the warranty luthier would probably replace whatever was faulty with top notch stuff anyway.

 

2) If you do not have good soldering skills and experience working on a thin archtop. These guitars are not the easiest to wire. Not really the nightmare some would have you believe, but it ain't a P-bass. And, if you get it installed and your circuit is unreliable, the repeated removal and re-installation will treat you to a level of frustration like no other.

 

Well here goes: I wanted to have series/ parallel pickup capability to use as sort of an onboard solo boost. In series, the two pickups work as one unit with increased output and a bit of midrange emphasis. I also wanted more tone options, sort of a semi vari-tone. Both of these were accomplished with Dimarzio push/ pull switches on the bridge volume and tone pots respectively. While I was at it, I replaced the neck pickup pots with Dimarzios also, and replaced the output jack and pickup selector with switchcrafts (also got the cream color knob on the selector to match my binding, vs the original stark white).

 

For tone caps, I used High quality Mallorys (I will try to reserve justification for not using vintage bumblebees for another thread). I wanted the circuit to be just like stock in the normal positions, so the cap valuse are .022 with the option of .015 when the pot is pulled. This is a subtle difference (less than an octave difference in cut off frequency). Others might preffer a more dramatic effect. One unique aspect of the circuit I designed (see schematic posted below) is that while in series mode, all controls still effect the sound with the pickup selector in the mid position, but only the bridge controls have effect with it in the bridge position (neck position is mute). One effect this gives is additional cap values by putting two tone controls in parallel on the same pickup (the combined series unit). You can easily go from a relatively crisp rhythm sound into a solo with the Clapton "woman tone" with the pull of a knob.

 

For wire, I used vintage style braided stuff. I also added some shielding by putting copper foil on the inside of the guitars top (under the controls). I am posting pictures of the the wiring harness before installation and the schematic.

 

A couple of tips if you plan to do something like this:

 

1) With the hassle of install on this type of guitar, you want to be sure the circuit works before putting it in. Plug it into an amp and use a tuning fork (you can actually use a dinner fork for this) to test function. Strike the fork on something (if using a dinner fork, something hard) and hold it near the pickup. You can use this as a sound source while you check function of your controls.

 

2) Here is the trick for wiring a thin archtop: If you have fairly thin fingers, you can actually reach and position all of the components through the f-hole except the jack and backmost tone pot. Use a very thin peice of wire to go in through the hole the part will install into, and run it to the bridge pickup hole, where you wrap it around the pot shaft, or through the jack hole. With the jack you want to go through and than wrap it around securely enough to pull the jack into place, but loosely enough that a good tug will pull it loose.

 

Well, I hope this info is useful to someone, I'm lovin' the sound.

 

God bless, Spamonkis