OK. So I see that its been an insane amount of time since I last posted. Truth be told, the guitar is finished (it's pretty damn cool if I do say so myself - I got a ton of interest in it from the guys behind the counter at my local Guitar Center), but in the interest of full disclosure I will walk through all of the steps I did on this project and share some photo's.

Anyway, while I was waiting for the neck from Carvin to show up (they are custom made so it takes about 3 weeks from the time you place your order) I decided to start working on shielding the body and work on the electronics. You basically want to shield the entire pickup and control cavity of the guitar, especially if you are using vintage style or high output pickups. You can still get results if you are using stacked humbuckers such as Seymour Duncan's or Fender's noiseless pickups, however the results are less dramatic because the pickups already get rid of a lot of the noise. The basic idea is to create essentially a Faraday cage around the pickups and internal electronics. It is basically the same principal that makes you safe in a car in a lightning storm. Essentially the outer sheet metal layer of the car's skin disburses the electrical charge over it while the occupants that are grounded to the inner metal layer (the car's frame) are safe. In the guitar, all of the transient electromagnetic radiation will be disbursed over the surface of the copper, thus "shielding" the electrical components inside from the noise. If you don't trust me or just want to learn more here's the wikipedia link. BTW I learned all that as a kid at the museum of science in Boston they have a rocking electricity exhibit with a monster van de graaf generator (the worlds largest air insulated version)- anyway I digress!

I chose to use copper foil with a conductive adhesive backing. It was a bit more expensive than some of the other alternatives such as aluminium foil and spray adhesive, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't too bad (i believe it was $16.00 or so for a roll of foil that will do a few guitars - I think it came out to 24.00 or so with shipping). Since the adhesive conducts electricity all you have to so is to overlap the foil a bit and the whole shielding job will act as if it is one continuous sheet of copper. Anyway you want to completely line the cavity with the foil. It is also a good idea to bring some strips of foil up onto the body of the guitar where the pick guard screw holes are. That will ensure a good connection between the cavity shielding and the shielding we will put on the back of the pick guard later. It's a good idea to check a bunch of different points on the shielding with a volt meter to make sure you have a good connection between all of the pieces.

If you are also doing the push pull pot modification, you want to mock up the pick guard with the new pots to make sure the cavity is routed deep enough for the new pots. That was a lesson I learned the hard way and had to rip out a portion of my shielding job so I could chisel wood out by hand to get the pots to clear. Wasting all of that copper sure sucked!

Needless to say, the strat is a bit lighter than it used to be!

Next time we will talk about installing the Wilkinson Bridge.

So it was obvious that I needed to remove the pick guard anyway so if you are going to do that, you might as well go for it. The reason why it is called the Boilermaker Guitar is that I have decided to deck it out in Black and Gold, the colors of my Alma Matter, Purdue University. The guitar has a black body and pretty much all of the hardware will be done in gold. In homage to my former college roommate Shane, "here is my specs" (insert Indiana farmboy drawl) for the Boilermaker Guitar:

Body: Black Squire Strat Body

Neck: Carvin bolt on neck with a Maple fingerboard

Tuners: Gold Sperzel Locking Tuners

Bridge: Gold Wilkinson Tremolo

Pickups: Neck: Seymour Duncan Antiquity Texas Hot
Middle: Seymour Duncan Antiquity Texas Hot Reverse wound.
Bridge: Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound staggered pole

Electronics: Custom built from ground up including Star Grounding
and the use of 2 push pull pots to utilize
additional pickup configurations and a fully shielded the control
cavity.

The neck was chosen basically because I really don't like the standard strat headstock. The head is huge and you have to have string trees, which is just plain annoying. The Carvin headstock is a tilt back style, is pretty slick looking and doesn't require string trees (the squire had 2). The absence of the tring trees increases tuning stability as does the graphite nut. The Carvin also comes predrilled for the spertzels, which means less fabrication for me. Additionally it is a 22 fret neck as opposed to the 21 fret stock neck. I added a maple fretboard for its brighter tone and cool look. The Sperzel tuners were included to increase the tuning stability and add mass to the neck to increase sustain. The Wilkinson Tremolo replaces the cheap stamped steel tremolo that came stock. It has a million adjustments so you can set it up just right. It is a lot beefier then the stock unit which should also increase sustain. The pickups are Seymour Duncan's. I went with the antiquity texas hot in the neck and middle positions which is similar to a vintage pickup only wound hotter. In the Bridge, I am putting a Quarter Pound staggered pickup. Once again it has a vintage tone, but about twice the output - I may have to play with the mounting height a bit to try to balance it a bit with the other pickups, we'll see.

I am doing a few different things with the electronics side. First, I am completely shielding the control cavity of the guitar. This is accomplished by lining the cavity in the body with copper foil as well lining the entire underside of the pick guard and tying that into the grounding system for the guitar. This will be extremely important since I am utilizing vintage style pickups, which are not necessarily the quietest things on the earth. Some people even suggest to shield each pickup individually to further reduce the amount of ambient electrical noise they pick up. I decided to forgo this option because shielding the pickups themselves supposedly decreases the brightness, which my whole reason for getting this type of guitar in the first place, and also the fact that it is a pretty delicate operation, and truly I didn't want to experiment on a $200.00 + set of pickups. The next major aspect of the electronics is a modification that utilizes push/pull pots in the volume and neck tone controls. The volume pot push pull switch turns on the bridge pickup and puts it in series with the other pickups in the selector sequence. Putting it in series causes a hotter signal and should really cook with the new pickups which are overwound to begin with. Additionally, it allows for a Bridge/Neck sequence that will give it a similar sound to a telecaster and the ability to have all three pickups on at once. Switching the tone pot reverses the phase on the neck pickup, which cancels out a bunch of the frequencies. This is supposed to produce some cool effects in certain pickup combinations akin to a really hollow sounding guitar. In addition, I will be doing some modifications to the grounding system to increase its safety in case of a malfunction in an ungrounded amplifier. All of these modifications along with discussions can be found on a website called guitarnuts.com - click here.

Next time I should have some pics and a summary of the work done so far.

I guess best place to start this whole journey is probably to give you a brief background on myself. I have been playing guitar for about 6 years now. I picked it up just after I graduated from law school and was studying for the bar exam. I am completely self taught, as I am in many of the topics that will be covered here, which probably means that if I actually took some guitar lessons I would be a bit better player than I am today. As I say to many people, I am not quitting my day job (as an attorney) but I can hold my own in a jam session. My current gear is as follows:

Guitar: Red DeArmond dual humbucker single cutaway .09 Gibson Les
Paul Strings

Effects (in the signal chain order): Dunlop Cry Baby Wah
Ibenez Tube Screamer 808 reissue
Boss DD-6 Digital Delay
DOD Analog Chorus
Accoustic Exciter & Big Bottom

Amp: Marshal AVT50 50 watt tube/solid state hybrid combo

This whole project came about for several reasons. First, my first (and to this point my only) electric guitar up to this point is the De Armond mentioned above. It is a great little guitar. It was actually made by Fender utilizing Guild bodies and necks. De Armond was actually and American pickup manufacturer that fender had bought a while back and decided to use it as the brand name for a single cutaway mahogany solid body dual humbucker guitar to compete with the Gibson Les Paul line. It’s a sweet little guitar. It has a very warm and full bodied sound with the right amount of punch and an insanely fast neck. However, it has the same drawbacks that all the other guitars of that style have. Namely, the fairly limited tonal options (only a 3 position toggle switch switching between the neck/neck&bridge/bridge pickup choices), the lack of a tremolo/whammy bar (actually it should be called a vibrato bar because tremolo is actually raising and lowering volume where as raising and lowering the pitch of a note is called vibrato), and last but not least the thing is freaking heavy. A strat style guitar basically addresses all of the short comings of the Les Paul. With 3 pickups the tonal options really start to open up. A standard strat pickup selector has 5 positions, and the ability to do some modifications that allow for all seven possible configurations. Additionally, the strat basically pioneered the Tremolo Bridge, which allows for dropping the pitch of a note or chord. Lastly, strats are typically made of Adler wood, which still is a very good tone wood, but is substantially lighter than mahogany.

Secondly, I have been working on a song on my digital 8 track and I couldn’t get a sound out of my De Armond that I had in my head for the solo. The main guitar track was laid down with my acoustic that has a nice warm rich tone by itself. When it was time for the solo I wanted to contrast the acoustic with an electric, but I found that my De Armond basically blended in to much with the acoustic and muddied the sound. It tried the bridge pickup, but it sounded too thin. I added some overdrive and distortion to the electric, but it just went straight into the heavy metal realm, which didn’t really mesh well with the acoustic aspect of the other instruments in the mix. I finally decided what I needed was a single coil start type guitar. The single coils would be bright enough to rise above the acoustic without having to crank the gain and going into the land of Metalica.

The last factor was that I stumbled onto a deal on a squire strat that I couldn’t pass up. Now I know that most guitar players think Squires are junk and for the most part they are correct. However, my plan was to replace all of the components that Fender skimps on and replace them with high quality parts. Then I will be able to create my own custom strat that was built the way I want it to be built. The guitar was $75.00, which is less than you can get a body for, which ironically enough is the only thing I am keeping on the guitar. After I brought it home and played it a bit I noticed a few things: 1) I was right that the tone of the guitar was just what I was looking for on the song, 2) that the different sounds you could get out of it far exceeded my De Armond, including the sounds you could get out of the effects such as the wah pedal; and 3) the thing was noisier than all get out, and was difficult to keep in tune whether when you are playing it or if its just sitting around. Additionally, I noticed that the noise got a little bit quieter when you touched the strings, which is a telltale sign you’re your ground wire had become detached. Obviously something needed to be done to make the guitar more than just a novelty.

In an effort to attempt to document the snowball effect that hobbies can have on an individual I decided to start this blog. I am a full time IP/business lawyer - you can visit our site here or our blog here, and a closet musician. While I can hold my own - I definately do not have any plans of quitting my day job. Anyway a few weeks ago I found a deal on a Squire Strat for $70.00, which I couldn't pass up. Obviously I had big plans for this little guitar and the snowball started from there. Ironically, this same situation reminded me of an article I read years back in a gun magazine.

The author talked about the situation where you find a dimond in the rough .45 handgun that needed some work but otherwise was in good condition. It would be worth it since you were getting such a great deal and you could afford to do some upgrades and get yourself a nice little addition to your collection. The next thing you know you are having the parts and accessories packages shipped to your office so your wife doesn't catch on and notice that your kids' college fund starts to dwindle. And this so called small project has taken on a life of its own and the end result is an insanely tricked out super expensive target pistol.

So apparently it's a universal thing that hobbies tend to get out of control every once and a while.

So now its time to embrace the insanity and get on with the project . . . . .