Long gap from blogging many projects!

Has it been that long? Well I have had to stop, ok slow the rate of guitars being built but lots of other projects have happened in the mean time. 1: Two Valve (tube) hifi preamplifiers build 2: 4x Quad II valve power amp restoration 3: Frugal Horn loud speaker cabinet build, 4: Experimental beer can solar heater. Shall try to add blog entries for these soon.

and another!

I bought up three of these cans (German food canisters) and had a neck I'd made previously so it was simple to put it together. The scale length is like a regular guitar capoed on the 9th fret so ideal for that African Township sound. I fitted a piezo pickup inside but it sounds good acouticaly.

Nearly a year?! Oil Can Guitar

Has it nearly been a year? Whoops! I'd better update you with my latest projects then!
Since my last post I've built an oil can guitar, made my own pickup winder and wound my own low impedance pickups and recorded a cd!
I'd seen oil can guitars on the internet before and thought them rather cool but wasn't sure how musically useful they'd be, more ppl seem to just play blues on them (nothing wrong with that)
After the success of my mahogany one piece ukulele necks I thought I'd try a guitar one but fitting the truss rod in from the back means levelling and making parallel both sides of the neck blank so (being lazy) why no install it from the top Mosrite Brass rail style? The pickups were liberated from the "Les Pew" which now has my home made low impedance ones but I'll keep that for another post.
Working on razor thin sheet steel is far more hazardous and hard work than wood! But the resulting guitar is very versatile and if capoed on the 5th fret upwards immediately sounds like your in an African Township! Great for Reggae too! Heres's some photos.

The Princeton Champ

I decided to treat myself to a valve amplifier kit, my home made valve amp is fine but is based on a 1960's hifi amplifier and really should have it's electrolytic capacitors replaced before it goes bang! So partly  I wanted something brand new and reliable and also fancied an American voiced amp with a 6V6 tube in it with that nice overdriven sound that could fit into almost any situation rather than EL84s  So I went for a 4 watt Champ clone from amp maker. http://www.ampmaker.com/store/WF-55-4w-tweed-style-amp.html   
It all came packed so neatly that I thought for a moment he'd forgotten the valves! The instructions are on line and easy to follow, it was really nice to build something that was guaranteed to work so I could focus on making a neat job of it. I t felt a bit like a busman's holiday but was nice to be building something I could keep bcz though I'm an optical assembly technician now I've been a panel wireman for about 40 years. I received it on Thursday and had it working by Sunday. How loud is 4 watts supposed to be? This thing was ear spilling before it started to overdrive! Good in a way bcz i want to use it in church!  So I added a standby switch too to extend the valve life.I plonked it upside down into an old solid state Behringer amp cab I had kept for such a project, which happened to have an appropriate Jensen speaker. I have to admit  wasn't so keen on the tone, it just sounded to warm and loose with my humbucker equipped guitars ,I could see that a Tele or Strat would be great but I have enough guitars already! I added the tone circuit and instantly loved it! One end of the tone control is mellow and jazzy and the other bright and twangy, but some how the in between sound works better for me. Maybe it's the cathode resistor bypass cap I had to add to make up for the lossy tone controls. This converts it from a Champ to a Princeton. Also I added a negative feedback defeat switch which boosts the volume but cuts the midrange. I didn't want to commit to it and drill a hole in the wood panel as I didn't want to over clutter it or change the internal wiring so wired it outside the chassis but intercepting the connection at the 4 ohm tap of the output transformer and fitted the switch in one of the side infill panels.

The finished Dulcijo.

 

Finished Dulcijo with my Dulcimer, it sounds amazing!A real authentic banjo sound and really loud! I've been having fun playing my dulcimer tunes on it though bcz it's played like a a guitar rather than across the lap it reverses all the fingering!  I'll post some better photos when I have the chance to take them and maybe a video once I've leart to play it better, I keep meaning to visit my local folk club again and this is just the thing to take along. The lower picture is of the drone string nut arrangement, using a slotted screw for a nut and another filed down into a hook. 

A short festive demo. Good-King-Wenceslas

Neck On

Dulcijo neck progress

 

Laid out to see how it'll look

 

Working out the neck angle, a tricky job I often get wrong!

 

Neck heel shaping

 

A new neck extension rod made from scraps, drilling the hole in the neck at the correct angle is going to be difficult!