Another arrow in the quiver.

I've been playing the Astro Jet quite a bit. It doesn't stay in tune with trem use as well as I'd like. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that yet. Ideally, it would be great if it held tune...but I'm not sure a) how important that is for me in the real world and b) if the major surgery I suspect it would take to fix it is worth it. I think ultimately it would require removing the zero fret, shortening the fretboard and basically converting the guitar to a conventional nut. That's some fairly serious work and alterations. Going to contemplate it for a while, but I think the next move is to try some 11s on it...that may get it closer to the ballpark.

I'm not sure how I'm gonna pay for it short of selling something, but I could not pass up my latest acquisition. It's on the UPS truck for delivery today. A (supposedly) 1965 Gretsch Corvette. Two pick up version with Burns vibrato, what appears to be the original finish, the original pickguard (though that extra knob is curious) and in overall very nice condition with no breaks or issues, so says the seller. The tuners are not stock...they where swapped out for Grovers (vintage ones by the looks of it). I'm pretty pumped....it was about $850 shipped.

From 1965 Corvette

Mods already

Just a short post to say I made a couple shims from a very old mahogany cigar box I picked up off ebay a while back. They're probably a 1/4" thick and went under the bridge pup. Allowed me to lower the pole pieces and get the body of the pickup close to the strings. Not only does it look better, it sounds much better. Much crisper response, a bit more treble (which is what I wanted) and tweaking pole piece height and amp settings I'm able to get that wonderful almost dissonent musical distortion `trons can do under gain. Loving it! Might shim the neck pup some now too as the output isn't balanced well anymore...and it'll help get the same tonal qualities I've found in the bridge pup.

This is a great read on adjusting Filtertrons, scroll down a bit:

http://gretschpages.com/articles/mals-big-guide-guitar-setup-and-troubleshooting/

May or may not be the last post on the Astro..

Brought the guitar with me to my girl friend's for the weekend. Lots of compliments from her and her dad on it, which was very nice. I got to play it quite a bit and begin the process of familiarization. It's a great guitar to sit and play and also stand, as it balances perfectly. My heaviest guitar to be sure, but still not too bad since it's under 9 pounds. It plays very well, but will need some tweaking. The E string seems a touch muddy, so I want to mess with pick up pole piece heghts on it. The G string is a bit loud, so those pole pieces need to be lowered.

The string spacing is comfortable, as is the neck profile. You can tell this was/is a professional grade Gretsch. I'm quite happy at this point and look forward to playing it a lot more in the coming weeks. Not sure when the next band practice is, but that will be it's first test of fire. Only real problem so far, is it does not stay in tune when the trem is used. Not 100% sure of the cause(s), but suspect a lot of it is the nut. I'm not 100% satisfied with how the first one came out, so I might just start a second one this week. I think I can improve upon it. When I initially mocked the guitar up the first time, it seemed to hold tune fairly well, much better than now. Obviously, I will be tweaking and trying things to get it back to that point. I will say the light fret level I did made all the difference in playability. It plays very well now.

Got a chance to shoot some photos saturday. Here's the gallery:

From Astro Jet Final

Pretty much wrapped up.

Interesting evening. Late yesterday at work I finalized the control layout. I hope it feels comfortable on stage, but if not I can always get another guard cheap and re-do it. I printed off a template to guide where to drill the holes for the pots and switch and took it home. I stopped at Radio Shack on the way to see if they had some 150kOhm resistors and ,001µF capacitors because I wanted to put treble bleed circuits on both volume pots. Yes to the caps. no to the resistors. I thought about it for a bit and figued I'd go wth a 100kOhm and 47kOhm in series, which they did have. Luckily, there's no shortage of room in the control route for the Astro Jet, so space wasn't a issue. I did buy a chicklet .022µF tone cap, but ended up using a Spraque Orange Drop I had at home. It's a whopper because it's rated for 600 volts, but it'll work fine.

From Astro Jet Work 2

I kinda forgot to get some glue of some type for the shielding foil....so I cast about and found this Clear Parts Adhesive from Testors model paint company. It was left over from my model making days and I figured it'd work OK.

From Astro Jet Work 2

It did...smear this stuff around on the guard, apply aluminum foil, smooth out with something that has a hard straight edge, trim with a hobby knife (I prefer Olfa) and your done. This, of course, was accomplished after drilling (and reaming, in the case of the switch) the holes for the controls. Our net was down last night and all I had at hand was a Les Paul style wiring diagram. I knew that would work for my volume controls, but I only wanted one tone. I pondered it for a while, and came up something I thought would work. Checking the wiring diagrams at Seymour Duncan's website this morning, I see I came up with the exact same solution they did.:)


It works fine, but I lose all output if I roll the tone control to zero. Not sure if there's a way around that...or if it's even a problem. I LOVE the treble bleed. Not sure it's the ticket for my single pickup Corvettes, but it may be. Certainly easy and cheap enough to try it out, see if I like it. Just the ticket for the Asrto Jet though. Here's everything all wired and soldered together getting ready to screw the guard down.

From Astro Jet Work 2

At this point I just installed the strap buttons, tuned her up and proceeded to play for a couple hours. It sounds great, but I may try shimming the bridge pickup with some bits of wood underneath. I had to screw out the pole pieces about 7 full turns to get them near the strings and I wonder if it might be better to get the pup itself up there as far as I can. I'll probably mess with that in the coming weeks. Sadly, it just didn't play that well. A through high E strings where fine, but the low E was buzzing a lot and not giving very good tone. I decided to sleep on it and contemplate what the problem was, as I was fairly sure the zero fret, nut and relief where pretty good. Here's a pic on the bench:

From Astro Jet Work 2

For some reason I woke up at about 5am. Grrr. I wanted to get some rest, but it was not to be. I figured I might as well get up and get to work on the Astro Jet before I headed to work for friday (TGIF!). I had figured out that my problem was I needed to do the fret level I had avoided. They're around 45 years old and where kinda showing their age. I thought I might get by with not working on them...and I was wrong. So, I de-strung, I taped everything off, hit them with a Sharpie, and preceded to do a light level. They're small to begin with, so I really didn't want to take off more than I absolutely had to. I don't care for super low action, so not a whole lot was required, really. I knocked all the Sharpie off the tops, then recrowned and polished. Took maybe an hour and a half. I threw some new strings on, since the ones that had been on it where saved from the original mock-up. Little tweaking, tuning and stretching and it plays much, much better now. The low E is ringing clean and true, the intonation is spot on, the action is where I like it. So far so good...but I brought it with me to show my wonderful girl friend (who'se been following along, Hi Gorgeous!) and her dad. That'll give me the weekend to play it a lot, get to know it and...if the weather cooperates...get some decent pictures outside. I'll post a link to the gallery when that gets accomplished.

Oh...almost forgot. This is a substantial guitar. Way bigger and heavier than my Corvettes. Way bigger than my Gison SG Classic. I believe I remember the lower bout is about 13". It's a big, solid, one piece slab of vintage Honduran mahogany. Pretty big neck and headstock too. Plus, all the hardware, including vibrato, metal Gretsch knobs and what not. This morning at work I decided to throw it on our smaller digital shipping scale. I kinda expected it to be heavier than it is...8.6 pounds. I had a 2004 Gretsch Pro-Jet with Bigsby for a while (sold it)...much smaller guitar. It weighed over 9.5 pounds! I consider 8.6 to be remarkable and at the upper end of what I feel most comfortable with. Made me happy.

Next up....I dunno....back to the Explorer....start on the Harmoney....start on the mid 60's Corvette....hmmm.....we shall see.

I have heard the Astro Jet!

So after work yesterday I stopped by a couple local music stores that are more or less on the way home and got a Switchcraft L switch, three WD 500K pots (dunno who makes these, not Alpha and not CTS by the looks of them), a Switchcraft 1/4" mono jack and a pump bottle of Gibson Guitar Polish with polishing cloth. I really, really like this stuff! I went over the whole gutar twice with it before I did any further work. It looks remarkable.

From Astro Jet Work 2

The last major chore was cutting a new nut. I have to do this all by hand, as I don't have a belt sander or band saw. I do have a nice Zona saw and a large selection of files, however, so it takes a while longer, but usually goes well. I have heard some repair shops refuse to do new a nut unless it's part of a larger package of work, these days. I can fully understand. I know I've been quoted $50 for a new nut before and while that seems reasonable, if that's all I did for an 8 hour day, I think at best I might be able to get four done....if all went very well.

From Astro Jet Work 2

I made mine from Micarta. This is a synthetic material that, supposedly, is what Martin prefers to make their acoustic guitar nuts from. I have a couple aged bone blanks, but for this guitar I thought I'd use my little stock of Micarta pieces. Since the Astro Jet has a zero fret, the nut more or less serves as a side to side string guide anyway. The Micarta cuts and sands well and can be polished out to a nice shine, plus it matches the binding. As I get into the final setup, I will tweek it as necessary, but it's pretty much good to go right now.

From Astro Jet Work 2

Then I wanted to get the pickups fitted, My FilterTrons have screws that exit out the bottom of the pickup. The original SuperTrons in a Astro Jet have bar pole pieces that don't. So I had to make room for the screws in the routes. Cheap knock off Dremel to the rescue. I removed as little wood as I could and get by. Didn't take long. I had already done the bridge pup, though not quite as elegantly.

From Astro Jet Work 2

Pups installed! I need to get some new screws though. I only had two chrome and two black...not sure how hard it will be to find these locally, or if I'll need to order them online. I bought silver pickup rings and clear pickup rings. I tried the clear first and didn't care for the look on this guitar . So I installed silver, which looks OK to me. I may paint the clear ones black however and install them at a later date. Stock Astro Jet rings where black.

From Astro Jet Work 2

I'd never measured the fret board radius, though I suspected it was pretty flat. Turns out it's about 16". Like a shredder! Ha.

From Astro Jet Work 2

The last thing I did yesterday evening was install the output jack cup. It had been glued in at the factory back in `64 or so with a couple dabs of hide glue. To get those off and get it cleaned up, I just ran it under hot water in the sing for a while. Then a few minutes with a Olfa knife had it all cleaned up. I checked the hole in the body, cleaned out the crap that had accumulated in there and then used a brass hammer and a block of wood to drive it home. Then I cut a couple lengths of wire, soldered them to the Switchcraft jack and got it installed.

Got up early again (gonna need to catch up on sleep soon) and worked on it some more before coming to work. Hit it with some more of that cool Gibson polish, then got the Sperzel tuners put in. Then I trimmed the screws for the tension bar by about 1/8th inch and got it installed. Next I reassembled the Burns, cut a piece of wire for a string ground, and got it installed. I slipped the bridge in place and got an idea how much I was going to need to trim off the base for the pickguard to clear. Once I determined that, I made and cleaned up the cuts, strung the guitar up and connected the bridge pup to the output jack temporarily.

I wanted to get some tension on the neck for the day, but didn't want any pressure on the bridge unless I knew it was where it needed to be, lest it mar the still very fresh (and somewhat soft) lacquer finish. That's why I twisted the pickup and output jack wires together and have, thusly, heard the Astro Jet in it's almost completed form! I tuned it up and slid the bridge around till the intonation was correct and then played a couple tunes on it. Sounds more or less like it did when I mocked it up before undertaking the rebuild. A note on interest was the bridge. I bought it from Joel and Shanghai because I wanted to have a flat bridge base and a tuneomatic style bridge. I had a part number for the bridge used on the BillyBo, which has a flat top and Joel was the only guy who had that bridge and base in stock. Here's the thing, once I had the fore and aft placement of the bridge tweaked based on the low and high E strings, the intonation of all the strings is almost exactly spot on. I know this came off a BillyBo initially, and find it interesting the compensation is essentially identical.

From Astro Jet Work 2

So, not much left to do. Need to decide on the control layout and drill the appropriate holes in the pickguard, Then I need to try and remember to put some shielding (aluminum foil) on the underside, get the pots and switch installed and get everything soldered up. I'm hoping Radio Shack has a suitable .022mF capacitor in case I do not. I might also install a treble bleed on the volume controls. The srap buttons need to be put on, the set up tweaked and then.....

I've got my original pickguard template drawing here at work, which also has the outline of the control cavity on it. I brought dimensions of the pots and switch and knobs so I can do a mockup drawing and see where and how everything might fit together. I even have four knobs and pots, though I may only use three or perhaps two. Here are some pics I took this morning to give me some control visuals:

From Astro Jet Work 2

From Astro Jet Work 2

Ohhh...shiney!

I'll be tired later today because I stayed up last night and got up early this morning. Couldn't help myself. When I got home from work last night I still wasn't sure I wanted to put more clear on or start rubbing out the almost two cans I had on there. My goal in all of these refinishes is not a perfect finish, more of a mild relic. A guitar that somewhat reflects it's age and doesn't look plastic like and new. That's partly my own personal aesthetic choice and partly because I like to keep these finishes as thin as possible.

I'm not sure which of the trees that surround the condo give off the puffy white little balls this time every year, perhaps cotton wood?...but they where in full force yesterday. It's almost like a mini-blizzard when it happens. They pile up in drifts in the corners outside and the air is full of them floating around. Since I have to paint outside, their presence meant no painting yesterday. I decided to treat that as a omen and proceeded to sand out the paint.

I used mineral spirits for the lubricant (the "wet" part of wet sand). It works very well as I use the low odor stuff, it's got good lubricating properties and I don't have to worry about it getting into holes and swelling the wood. 3M's Imperial wet or dry (the good stuff) in 600, 800, 1200, 1500 then 2000 grits and a small art eraser as a sanding block.

I went slow, started with the neck and headstock, then moved to the body. Took till just short of midnight to get everything sanded out. But, by in large, I was very happy with how smooth it came out and that I only had one area of sand through about the size of the first joint of my little finger. I considered that a success!

So, this morning I got up a little early and got out my Titan 6" buffer I had bought a couple years ago at Auto Zone (something like $30), my bottles of Meguiars cleaner #1 and polisher #2 and started buffing. The little Titan makes short work of this step!

From Astro Jet Work 2

It took maybe an hour to get it where I wanted it more or less. I think I may get some of the Gibson guitar polish and work on it a bit more...not sure yet. Rumor has it it's good stuff for a lacquer finish and "even has a little bit of finish in it" what ever that means.

Here's a close up giving you an idea of the level of shine I like:

From Astro Jet Work 2

And a terrible overall...bad lighting this morning due to clouds....and a terrible photographer as well...

From Astro Jet Work 2

So, I stripped the tape off the fret board, cleaned up some adhesive residue and gave the ebony it's first coat of raw linseed oil. It was thirsty! I might give it another drink after work today, I'm not sure.

Still lots of work left to do, but the "hard" part is over. Perhaps if all goes well I can finish it for the weekend. I need to get three pots, a switch and maybe a capacitor to wrap up the electrics though, so I may need to make a trip to Sam Ash tonight or tomorrow...

So far, so good

Got another three coats of clear on after work. I put these on a bit heavier than the first three, but not what I would call super wet. It looks pretty rough right after you shoot, but the lacquer flows out some as it dries and starts smoothing fairly well. I inspected it again before I left for the weekend and it's getting nice and glossy.

From Astro Jet Work 2

I'm not sure how much more I will put on. I'm not going for a flawless finish or a super high gloss one like you might find on a factory fresh Gibson. I want relatively thin and moderately glossy. Yesterdays three coats was much of a second can of clear. That kind of freaks me out that it's taking so much paint. It is a big guitar, however, and I am getting a lot of waste given I'm using spray bombs. I figure I'll do another three coats (hopefully) next week and see where it stands. If I think I can buff/sand it out with that amount, I'll stop. I may also sand it out with some quality 400 (or 600) wet dry before I shoot those three coats. I'm going to contemplate that over the weekend. All in all I'm happy with how it's going so far.

I polished a bit more on the tension bar (looking good) and cut the other ear off the neck pup last night as well. Plus I went through my parts making sure I had my knobs, pickup rings and other parts in one place. Time and effort...that's pretty much all that's left...that and a three way switch and some pots and caps...