Lighting Up Time

Chewie & me decided a while ago that lots of little wires and lights inside a neck would no doubt cause trouble. Lights are essential, but wires need to be kept to a minimum. Space is pretty limited so we came up with the idea of using a long piece of veroboard cut to shape to connect to all the leds. The walnut fboard stiffening was removed with a dremel mini circular saw and a chisel. It didn't need to be exceptionally neat as it will be hidden from view eventually.

Blue surface mount leds were ordered a few months ago, but they didn't look that blue to me. A second lot of leds were sourced and these looked a lot nicer. These ones were even smaller - 0603 size, 1.6mm by 0.8mm! Each led has a 100 ohm series resistor, and all these led / resistor combinations were connected in parallel so that only two wires are needed to be fed into the main body.

Soldering surface mount parts can be quite tricky. The small black rectangle at the top of the board is the resistor. These are 1206 sized (3.2mm by 1.6mm). The led is barely visible, but is soldered between the resistor and the yellow wire coming up to meet it. This is part of the octave marker, the other resistor / led is at the bottom.






Strangely I found that two of the ten leds were more green than blue. They were all packaged in a strip so I was expecting a much better colour match. Fortunately the ibanez neck only needs eight, so the two dodgy ones were saved to look green on another day.



Once all the parts where fitted, the assembly was tested, run from 5V with an extra 470 ohm resistor. To reflect as much light forward as possible, the veroboard, solder & resistors were painted white. A hole was drilled at a particularly cunning angle in the neck and the fboard was placed on top to give an idea of how the finished neck will look. Not bad methinks. It still needs clear dots put in place, but it has definitely livened up the old-timer...