ShortScale.org

I have a few things planned for my Mustang and will unveil as they happen. The first is done though and I'm uploading pictures now. None of the steps are too drastic, but the combined result should improve the look and playability of the guitar a fair amount.

I'm be putting the pictures in spoilers so that when you load the thread for feature updates, the scroll bar won't be all over the place while it loads the old pics. I'm aiming to document things with pics as I go, and in some cases there will be an overlap in pics (as with the first one. I'll take some better pics in natural light when I do the next mod).

One thing I was going to do a while back but wasn't able to because I didn't have the camera available was to take pics showing how to clean a mustang switch. There's an Aug page in the wiki about it but the pictures aren't great. I've done mine and the amount of gunk was quite impressive. The contat on one switch isn't great so I might do it again and fix that, taking pics as I go. That's the type of thing to expect anyway. So without further ago, I'll get back to writing the first proper entry.

Robroe cover aging

The new robroes just looked too sharp against the old tort. I didn't want to go all out and do the equivilant of a belt sander job on them, but I did want to artifically age them a little. I had a quick read and coffee sounded the most reliable way. That or brown Kiwi brand shoe polish. As luck would have it, we had three tins of Kiwi brand polish- all black. Coffee it is.

I'm very happy with the results. It came out exactly as I wanted with very minimal effort. If you're considering trying this, and not sure if you'll be waiting weeks or if you'll destroy your covers, I'd recommend giving it a go. It was a piece of piss.

The next installment is entirely dependent on Royal Mail doing their thing in a timely manner and things showing up at my house in the morning. Hopefully I'll have another one of these tomorrow, along with those daylight comparison pics.

Nice man, really good results. Sounds like it was minimal effort too. Can't argue with a good return on investment :p

awesome. post more please. i'm looking forward to modding my mustang a bit too.

hmmm

i might do this to all my covers if the stain holds up under playing conditions

I used to coffee stain my lace sensors when I was into them. It was a bit trickier since the covers didn't come off. The stain does hold up if it actually gets a chance to sink in. I never even used steel wool/wet sand on the plastic and it still held up.

Great thread, look forward to more updates.

Very cool James, that looks superb.

Lowering the switches

This is the mod that made me want to do this thread in this style. I know people have mentioned this before and wanted to do it, and although it's a simple idea, I thought I'd lay the details on the table and help anyone wanting to do it but unsure how to go about it. The basic idea is this...



The screw thread holds without the need for a nut on the other side, but for the sake of (something) and because it's not that difficult to do, I've used a small bit of rubber tubing in the role of a washer. You could use a small piece of wood with a hole drilled for the screw, a spring (a la pickup mounting), a shitload of washers or nothing and the results would probably be the same.

For the tubing, I used some the outer part of a now obsolete cable (for connecting a video player to a TV using the old style connections) and it fits perfectly. Recyclying FTW.

Theres about 1-2mm or excess in the screws that hold the switches against the pickguard. I spent an awfully long time travelling between various DIY/hardware shops trying to find the same type of screw but with a longer length so that I could lower the switches. The results were disappointing.



After giving up on that I bought some online. If you're interested in doing this and need some longer screws these are the details of what you'll want -

3mm (Most likely listed as M3, I think they do this to distingish between the diamater and the length, so they can say M3 x 24mm and have people know its not a short stubby screw, but a thin long one) machine screw, with a length in the range of say 10-16mm. I'm using 12mm. You'll also need a countersunk head to fit into the pickguard. This is what made it a bastard to find. most places I looked stocked machine screws of various types in the M4-M6 sizes, but for M3 the only one I could find had a pan head (similar to the pickup mounting type) which would protrude from the guard and defeat the purpose. Because of the metric and imperial sizing, these screws are very slightly tight. I'm not sure if an M2.5 would work better of if it would be too small, but these just take a little bit more effort on the first time you put them in. I put them in with no tubing and no pickguard the first time just to loosen it up as it were. The thread pitch of the stock screw is quite large, so the very slight enlargening doesnt in anyway damage the switch and the stock screw will fit as before.

Enough waffling, on to the pics
There'll be pics with both mounted in a future post.

As a goodwill gesture to my fellow shortscalians I have three sets of Mustang switch lowering screws and rubber washers to give away. Each set consists of 4 screws and a piece of rubber tubing longer than the combined length of the screws for you to cut to your desired length. The first three people to PM me asking for one get them. I'd prefer to keep it in the UK but I'll send one set elsewhere if requested.

A couple of things to note. When talking about how well things fit with the switch mod, I'm using vintage switches. I have a RI type switch, the switchcraft ones you'd get from allparts or wherever and the screw is a little tight for those, too. It'll go the same as for the vintage type. Little more effort the first time, then fine after that and stock screws still work as before.

Although the stock screws are short, it is possible to lower them a little. You could get slightly more than the width of the pickguard lower using the stock screws. Also I realise that if you don't use a washer of some sort, the switches could 'fall forwards' towards the stock position if you held the guitar in a position to allow gravity to do that. So i'm recommending using something to keep the distance uniform.

1 set of screws and tubing has gone. 2 left.

Noice. Can't say the switch height ever bothered me but I know where you're coming from.

I've hit mine a few times whilst playing. I'll admit it's partly down to sloppy technique but they are very high and in prime 'hit-whilst-playing' territory.

This part should be a little obvious, but when doing things like this you need to bag and label your parts. I lost quite a few small bits like this as a noob by being slack about it.

Change that label to say "Tiny Metal Cocks" on the Reverse.

James wrote:I've hit mine a few times whilst playing. I'll admit it's partly down to sloppy technique but they are very high and in prime 'hit-whilst-playing' territory.

I had (still have) this same problem, I don't know why it never dawned on me to just lower the switches. Methinks I'll be doing this today. I'm liking this thread, keep it up.

New pots

Boo CTS, salut Aplha!

These are Alpha mini 250k pots. I got mini because they were cheaper and I think smaller is better for this sort of thing. I had a brief moment of considering two volume pots and no tone, but I'm going to stick with master volume and tone for now.

I also have on hand quite a lot of resistors and capacitors from my brief foray into pedal building so I've gone with a treble bleed mod. It's one of those mods to stop you loosing treble when you lower the volume pot. I'm not sure how worth it it will be, but it's only going to take an extra minute or so of my time so I may as well try it. I've used a .0001uf cap and a 100k resistor in parrallel (I believe the parrallel version is referred to as the 'Duncan' way, presumably after Seymour Duncan). I'll post back any details on this once I've had it in for a while. I have no previous experience with these pots so I won't be able to compare directly to that, but I imagine there will be a noticeblae, alebiet small, difference still.
After doing this and reassembling, the bridge pickup is much better than it was, but the neck pickup is borked. I'm not sure what's wrong but it's very quiet in either 'on' position, and has an out of phase type sound. This is regardless of the position of the bridge pickup. A wire came loose whe I took the pickguard off and I resoldered that before trying it out. When I found the problem I tried replacing the switch with a new one but the results were exactly the same. Now I have an old switch off the guitar though, I'll do the 'how to clean' a switch thing (I checked Aug's wiki page and it was better than I thought, but I'll do it anyway still).

I'm not sure what to do next to debug the neck pickup. I might try re-doing the bridge pickup switch though I don't know how that could have changed since it worked fine before. I'm considering changing the switching funtions to have a 3 way pickup selector, and then the other switch do something else, but I'm not sure about that.

New (old) knobs

This is quite a simple mod, but I'm not really a fan of the RI style mustang knobs (although I've somehow managed to accumulate at least seven, expect classifieds posts soon for some of those) and these were going fairly cheap on US ebay. The auction listed them as being from a 65 mustang, which is around the same time as most of the rest of the parts. I wouldn't be too bothered if they were from 71 o whenever as long as they look like they do.

There are quite a lot of pics around with the RI ones, so here's one with one RI and one vintage. One of each side by side, and then both vintage.







You can see the small piece of metal I'm using to connect the control plate to the bridge for grounding. There isn't a little tunnel bit for a wire to go to the underside of the bridge, so i hammered a lipped washer flat, cut it down a little, and sanded it (mostly to clean it to get a better contact) and it works perfectly.

when i still had that white pg on my p bass i put the pg in a bowl with super black coffee (like lots of coffee hardly any water) and teabags and make sure it's super hot, then i left it for a few nights, then i redid it (again with super hot coffee). works great and it lasts idd.


mustang luv

That thing is a labour of love. It's going to be perfect in every way when you're done with it. Still can't believe what a bargain you got.

no sign of them screws yet- no worries if you haven't got round to posting them, but if you have and they've gone missing i'm going to go radge at the postie next time i see him.

stewart wrote:no sign of them screws yet- no worries if you haven't got round to posting them, but if you have and they've gone missing i'm going to go radge at the postie next time i see him.

Sorry I meant to PM you about that. I haven't got round to doing it but aim to do it today.