Cut It Out!

Before the neck and body get joined together I need to make some space for the circuit board, switches, voulme pots and batteries. I started by drawing out the shape of the covers on paper making sure they will fit in the little space there is left. The covers were then fashioned out of brass plate and could then be used as templates to mark the wood. The first one to try was the space for the PCB, and it is going to have to live in the upper horn. This is as far away from the pickups as I can reasonably manage to keep any interference noise to a minimum.







The controls for the animation are also in the top part of the guitar and are going to be inside the top cutout. This leaves the guitar with fairly clean lines and the minimum of clutter (unlike my Vigier!). There is a toggle switch (Bright/Off/Dim) and a push button (Animated/Static) which are usefully placed to my mind.



On the lower half of the guitar the pickup wires will eventually be routed to a pair of volume controls and the mother of all switches. This toggle switch took a while to track down and is a 4-pole, 3-position, on-on-on switch. In short, I can wire the switch so that I can have the coils from each pickup in series, parallel or just a single coil. This gives some variation in the tone, whilst keeping the controls simple. I don't want it to become too complicated...





Once the switching and volumes have been taken care of, the signal is routed to a 1/4" jack socket. I am using a Neutrik socket as they are really well put together. The hole for this was bored using a hand brace and bit. The recess for the mounting flange was chiselled out and the fixing holes drilled, as well as a connecting hole between the back of the socket and the volume / switch area.




The neck is still being built up. The carbon rods have been stuck in with epoxy resin. I didn't think that wood glue was going to do much with carbon! After them, the LEDs fitted onto veroboard were tacked into place with a dot of superglue and the fboard tentatively placed on to check the alignment. A amount of adjustment was required and then this was bonded into place with wood glue, contact adhesive and superglue (mostly due to me hedging my bets on what is going to work best!). This needs to be thoroughly set before I verify the LEDs are working and then it will be ready for the fboard to be stuck on.