RAM Cartridge for the Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer (Part V: Success)

This is part five of my report on building a RAM cartridge for the Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer, and finally I've got some positive news: I've got a prototype that works! Since my last failure report I ordered another prototype batch, this time using seeedstudio's Fusion PCP service, and a 1.2mm thick board. I also ordered on eBay a replacement cartridge socket so I could wire the connector out of the synthesizer and in the future plug the prototype panels in without wearing out the cartridge socket of the DX7.

The layout of the new PCBs is the nearly same as that of the ones manufactured at OSH Park. They're only thinner, i.e. 1.2mm instead of 1.6mm, and this time I even added a pad for the (necessary?) 2.2uF decoupling capacitor. Soldering the handful of components was quick and painless. When I plugged it into the DX7 for the first time (the external connector isn't set up yet), it didn't work. The synthesizer simply didn't recognize the cartridge. To my utter dismay it appears that the PCB is too thin now, as it slipped right into the socket without any force. I could make the DX7 recognize it, however, by pressing it slightly backwards. Still, it didn't work: I consistently got a Write Error. I was quite convinced by then that there was a fundamental problem with my design.

I studied the circuit diagrams again for hours, even wrote a quick'n'dirty disassembler for the DX7's main CPU, the HD63B03X, to disassemble the system ROM and inspect the routines for writing the cartridge. I also started making a connector probe using one of the PCBs with wires soldered to the EEPROM solder pads. This would allow me to signal-trace the various EEPROM bus signals, especially the two chip select lines /CE1 and /CE2 and the write enable line /WE. Because the PCBs are too thin I planned to cover the connector pads with some solder to make them slightly thicker. For good measure I did the same thing with the prototype PCB for a final test to make sure it wasn't a dodgy connection that caused the failure.

I plugged it in, and it went quite nicely into the socket, requiring some but not excessive force. Then I pressed the cartridge voice selector. The display read FORMAT CONFLICT! So I pressed function 8: format cartridge. The display read CARTRIDGE FORM ? I pressed yes. ARE YOU SURE ? Yes. MEMORY PROTECTED. Oh, sure, I forgot. I pressed the cartridge protect selector. MEMORY PROTECT CARTRIDGE ON. I pressed off, then function 8. CARTRIDGE FORM ? Yes. ARE YOU SURE ? Yes. UNDER WRITING ! I stopped breathing. Then, after a few long seconds: FORMATTING END. I took a breath. It worked? I pressed the cartridge voice selector, then voice 1: INIT VOICE. Voice 17: INIT VOICE. It worked?? I saved the internal memory onto the cartridge, and after a few seconds of UNDER WRITING I found all my voices on the cartridge, and they sounded exactly as they're supposed to. I even switched the cartridge to the second bank, ran the same formatting exercise and ended up with a cartridge that had my voices on one bank and init voices on the other. It worked! Success! Oh, sweet success!! How can I ruin it. I need some rest. And another breath.

RAM Cartridge for the Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer (Part IV: Reboot)

This is part four of my report on building a RAM cartridge for the Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer. It took a while since the last installment, because I've got several hard- and software projects that run in parallel. One is a hardware programmer for the DX7, a bit like this Jellinghaus DX programmer, but with far fewer knobs, but a graphical display instead. Another is a user interface (including graphical display) for a Yamaha XG synthesizer based on a DB50XG daughter board, and the third is a software librarian and editor for the DX7.

Anyway, I completely redesigned the RAM cartridge, this time using a correctly sized edge connector, correct pin assignment, and a through-hole EEPROM.

Furthermore, I tried to stay within the confines of the original cartridge board area. The packing is dense but not too crowded. Soldering the components was quick and painless. The board is suitable for both 64kbits (suitable for 2 DX7 voice banks) and 256kbits (8 banks) EEPROMs. To test the board I use the simpler 64kbit device and a an ordinary sliding switch in the position of the rotary coding switch (top left corner of the board), and only one additional resistor. I didn't include a pad for the 2.2uF polar capacitor, but managed to mount it between 5V and ground by soldering it to the power leg of the EEPROM and the bottom pad of R1 to the left of the memory chip. The finished board looked quite neat and tidy, a far cry from the mess of the previous prototypes. I couldn't wait to test it in my DX7.

Well, make that last one "I couldn't wait to test it in my DX7". It seems the board is too thick. I could possibly force it into the connector, but I don't want to ruin my DX7. The boards do have a solid if not heavy feel. Nonetheless, OSH Park's pricing and spec page states that the boards are 1.6mm thick. They're closer to 1.8mm. When I tested my previous prototypes I thought that even my 1.6mm thick hand crafted adapter was close to the limit regarding the force required to set the board into the socket, but these are just too thick.

This is very unfortunate, because I like the quality, price and ease of use of OSH Park, but for this project I can't use their service. I need to find a different prototyping service that allows specifying thinner boards, perhaps 1.4mm or so.

Cheap Home Recording Desk

When I have any spare time, I not only build synthesizers and guitars (more or less artfully) but I also use these devices to make — and hopefully publish someday — my own music. In addition to the DIY gear, I also have a Yamaha MOX6 music production synthesizer, a light version of Steinberg's Cubase DAW that came free with the MOX, a set of studio monitors, and a small Behringer mixing console. All of that constitutes a fairly complete albeit very simple home recording studio. What was missing so far is a desk where I can bring all this to life. Buying a professional desk is, of course, completely out of the question, but on IKEA Hackers you can find desks like this one that may not look like a lot but apparently serve their purpose well.

There's an IKEA store a few kilometers from where I live, so why not go there and look what's on offer? I did, and here's the result of my endeavour: a cheap home recording desk that looks far better that I deserve for my stinginess.

Recording desk, assembled.

It is not the most robust desk, but at least I've got one now. I can always improve stability, for example by adding another shelf console, or a trestle on one side of the desk. In its current state the desk consists of the following standard IKEA items:

Qty.	Article	Article no.	Unit price	Sum
1	LINNMON table top	002.513.43	CHF 29.95	CHF 29.95
4	ADILS table leg	702.179.73	CHF 5.00	CHF 20.00
1	EKBY JÄRPEN shelf	200.943.47	CHF 14.95	CHF 14.95
2	EKBY TÖRE console	502.510.29	CHF 7.50	CHF 15.00
			Total	CHF 79.90

All together a tad below CHF 80. That's EUR 65.87 / USD 83.20 / GBP 51.76. I challenge anyone to beat that!

Recording desk with tentatively placed monitors and keyboard.

Nice!

The Noisy Cricket Guitar Amp

The Les Paul DIY guitar project is nearing completion. Only a few more coats of Tru-Oil, and then assembly, wiring, stringing, tuning and intonation are necessary. Oh, wait...

What I really meant to say is that I want a small guitar amp that I can take anywhere. When googling "simple diy guitar amp" you'll quickly come across the Noisy Cricket Guitar Amp, the latest of a series of LM386-based mini amplifiers like the Ruby amp, Little Gem and Smokey Amp. It is a simple amplifier running off of a 9V supply (wall wart or battery) and consisting of a handful of components around a LM386 audio amplifier chip.

You can find various veroboard designs for a Noisy Cricket on the intertubes, but I chose a small protoboard to build mine. Here's a picture of the component layout. I usually do small layouts in Microsoft PowerPoint. No, I'm fine.

Veroboard panel. Note pinout difference between MPF102 and 2N5951.

I ordered all the components at Futurlec, especially the LM386 that I don't have at hand. It's one of the cheapest supplier, but they ship from Hong Kong which takes at least three weeks. The speaker is a small 10cm Visaton full range speaker (FR 10 HM) from Conrad at less than CHF 15, including shipping.

The build follows closely the guide on DIY Strat with the following exceptions: instead of a separate power switch I'm using a potentiometer with switch for the volume control. I also had to use a 2N5951 JFET instead of the original MPF102, and finally, I'm going for an integrated amp and speaker design.

Noisy Cricket parts

I soldered the board according to the layout above. The picture below shows the result (LM386 not in place yet). Note that the board is not a stripboard. Therefore the connections have to be made by bending and soldering the component leads appropriately. Apart from the two gain connections on pins 1 and 8 of the LM386, no additional wires were necessary to complete the circuit.

The leads that stick out on either side indicate the connection points for the potentiometers, switches, and power as indicated on the layout above.

Panel wiring in progress.

In the meantime I brought my (limited) wood working skills to fruition and built a wooden cabinet for the amplifier. As usual, the corners are nearly but not completely at right angles, but thanks to modern photography it can all be blamed on visual perspective.

Raw amplifier cabinet, sanded and ready for staining.

I then stained the box using a water based mahogany stain, and after it had dried completely, I applied 3 layers of Tru-Oil, giving it a nice vintage look that goes very well with my shoddy wood work.

Stained and oil-finished cabinet, surrounded by a glow of contentment.

I also finished the panel wiring, and the amplifier is now more or less ready for final assembly. The following picture shows the completed panel. From left to right we have volume control with power switch, tone control, grit, gain control, and bass switch. The protoboard is attached to the back of the panel using an aluminium carrier that is held in place by the grit switch. I soldered a 4 pin connector (Vcc, Ground, Input, Output) to the board to allow for easy assembly/disassembly.

The connector plugs into a 4 pin header that is part of the back panel, where the input, headphones, and power jacks are located (see last picture). There's also a 2 pin header there for the actual speaker.

After having fixed a small problem with the protoboard (I had forgotten the connection between pins 3 and 4 of the LM386; see design above), the amp worked! YES!!! It won't fill a concert hall, but as an exercise amp for the living room, it'll do just fine.

The controls have less effect than I expected, something I have to check, but at least I get some sound through the speaker. The connectors have already paid off, because now I can disassemble, check, fix, and then reassemble everything. For now, I have assembled everything and made a few pictures.

Finished guitar amp. I'll look for a speaker grille later.

Back of amp with power, headphones, and input jacks.

This more or less completes the construction of the Noisy Cricket Guitar Amp. I'll check the tone, grit and tone controls to see, if I did everything right, but for now I'm quite satisfied.

I'm aware that you can get a Marshall Micro Amp for around 50 Dollars, but to be honest, building the Noisy Cricket was way more fun than making an online order.

RAM Cartridge for the Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer (Part III: Testing)

DX7 RAM cartridge version 1 (left) and 2 (right). Surprisingly(?) neither works.

My DIY project to build my own RAM cartridge for the Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer is currently in limbo. I have fixed everything that I found to have made wrong with my prototype board, and it still does not work. I had the following problems with my board:

• Edge connector is too narrow. It appears to have a 3+ mm pitch. Mine has a tenth inch (2.54mm) pitch. I fixed it by gluing a separate correctly sized/pitched double sided  PCB to the board. At the same time I also fixed...
• Swapped connectors. There was a 50-50 chance as to which side of the edge connector faces which way. My guess was wrong: the side with the power supply faces backwards. To fix that, I had to wire the pins of my glued-on PCP to the corresponding pins on the prototype PCB crosswise back-to front and front-to-back.
• Missing pull-up resistors. For a reason that totally eludes me, I forgot to add pull-up resistors for address lines 8 to 10. I soldered them at the back of the PCP using the power pin on a near resistor network.
• Missing 2.2uF/16 polar bypass capacitor. I know from various synth DIY projects that you're supposed to add bypass capacitors near the power supply of ICs. I didn't add one on the prototype board, because the design on yates.ca doesn't include one either.

Despite all of the above, the board fails consistently with a Write Error! message. I can briefly see the message Under Writing flash by, which led me to the missing address pull-up resistors. That didn't fix it, though. I'm a bit at a loss, because the circuit isn't that complicated, and I can see no reason why it shouldn't work. Perhaps I have simply fried the 28C64 EEPROM? It is a surface mount device, and I'm not the most expert solderer. For me, it means to go back to the drawing board.

In the meantime, you might be interested in the DX7 RAM Cartridge project by blogger Brian Durocher.

RAM Cartridge for the Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer (Part II: Prototyping)

You knew it! If you followed my Les Paul DIY build log, you're not surprised to hear that I managed to bungle the DX7 cartridge project in a similarly spectacular fashion, and it's all my fault.

The prototype boards arrived, and they look awesome! The PCB material is of a dark violet color, and all the solder pads are golden. I ordered them at OSH Park, where you'll always get (multiples of) 3 boards.

DX7 cartridge prototype boards, rightmost already populated.

When I checked them I saw instantly that I made the connector part too small. Instead of measuring the proper connector spacing, I violated Sommerer's Law ("your assumptions are wrong") and assumed them to be the usual one tenth of an inch or 2.54mm. Well, its closer to 3 mm, so they don't fit. Oh, well!

Now, instead of throwing them away and order another batch with the proper dimensions, I'll use them as tinkering material. I already ordered a small sheet of blank double sided circuit board, which I'll cut to size using a high-tech template that I made from an obsolete phone card.

I'll make the properly spaced connector traces by filing or scratching gaps into the copper layer, and then glue the contraption as a new connector onto the PCB. All that's needed then is pieces of wire connecting the pads on the cartridge PCB with the corresponding pads on the new connector. It'll look hideous, but serve its purpose.

But first I have to wait for the blank PCB to arrive.

Les Paul DIY kit (Part VII: Epilogue)

This is the seventh and final part of my DIY Les Paul kit build report. I strung the guitar and tuned it by ear using a guitar sound on my Yamaha MOX digital synthesizer. It appears that the neck is still reacting to the tension caused by the strings, because I needed several tuning cycles until the guitar stayed in tune for a while. To my surprise, the guitar does not appear to need a separate intonation step, as I get a clean octave when comparing the base tone to the 12th fret. What I get, however, is string buzz, especially on the bass E string. I'll wait few more days for the neck tension to settle and then check the correct distance of strings to frets. There are countless YouTube instruction videos on that subject, and I'll consult them all. Or so. Anyway, from various guitar sites I learned that it could also be uneven frets, so I'll check that, too, before I start tweaking the neck curvature by meddling with the truss rod. So far, however, I consider the guitar set up and ready to play.

Far more knowledgeable people than I am say that a DIY guitar is an ongoing project, and it'll need your continuous attention. But this report isn't, and therefore I'll end it here. Despite all the setbacks and problems encountered (or self-inflicted), building a guitar from a kit was a valuable experience, and I might possibly attempt to build another one. In the meantime, however, I'd like to thank all of my regular readers (both of them) for their interest. Perhaps you're going to build your own guitar from a kit, and if you do, please leave a note and a link to your own build log.

Les Paul DIY kit (Part VI: Assembly)

This is a rather short part VI of my DIY Les Paul kit build log, because fitting and screwing in the machine heads, mounting the neck to the body, screwing the strap buttons to the body and finally the covers for the cavities was surprisingly quick and painless. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The nearly finished guitar in full glory.

Front of the guitar. Note shiny finish.

Back of the guitar with neck shield, covers, and strap button.

After all the setbacks I had, I must say that it looks way better than I anticipated. I'm quite pleased with the result.

OK, next will be stringing, tuning, and intonation of the guitar. I'll need to check a few YouTube videos to learn how it's done. Until then: stay tuned.

Les Paul DIY kit (Part V: Electronics)

This is part five (finally...) of my Les Paul DIY kit construction diary, and finally, I'm going to assemble the guitar.

After having applied a few more coats of Tru-Oil (in total 16 on body top, 12 on body edge/back, and 8 on the neck), I'm ready for l'assemblage. That's french for la montage which is also french. Before starting, it makes sense to line up all the screws that go with the kit to see what's going where, because the parts list may be inaccurate (it is in my kit), and you want the right screws in the right positions.

I wanted to start with setting the neck. My kit is a bolt-on design, hence more like an Epiphone Les Paul, than a Gibson. The plan was then to continue by hammering in the bridge posts in the pre-drilled holes in the body. But when I inspected the pre-wired electronics contraption I found a ground wire for the bridge that needs to be routed to the post cavity before the post is hammered in (it ends up wedged-in between post and cavity wall). So this kind of prescribed a certain sequence of work: first electronics, then bridge posts (with the ground wire in place), and then the neck.

Les Paul DIY kit (Part IV (b): even more Tru-Oil finish)

This is part four (b) of my Les Paul DIY kit build history, and it deals with applying more of the oil finish to the whole guitar.

I'm currently at 9 coats of Tru-Oil finish for the "ebony" front, and 7 coats for the neck and the mahogany colored parts of the guitar (back/edge of the body). Buffing and applying more oil is now very easy, because the surface is more or less smooth all around. Only very little oil is needed now for each surface.

It doesn't get much better than that. Cat approves. For food.

There were a few places where the wood stain was not absorbed properly because of a drop of glue or something that was allowed to drip on the surface during manufacturing. These and a few places where my buffing was a bit too vigorous during the early finishing stages left bright spots in the dark surface that I was able to make almost disappear with the same black felt tip pen that I used to cover defects on the headstock.

Unfortunately, I've found more defects with the guitar body: there's a series of hair-line cracks at the bottom edge that I cannot seem to be able to cover by the oil finish (I think I mentioned these already), and opposite the neck cracks appeared between the wood blocks that the body is made of. If you buy your kit from Gear4Music, and I suggest you don't, you should perhaps apply some wood filler at the edge and bottom parts of the body, sand it smooth and then spray paint the lot. You can still stain and oil the top.

I'll do a few more coats on the body (front and back) and then leave it at that. I'm preparing for wiring the electrical stuff and assembling the guitar. That will be part five of my construction log.

RAM Cartridge for the Yamaha DX7 Synthesizer (Part I: Introduction)

When I was a teenager I spent hours on end in the keyboard section of music instrument shops and played those keyboards and synthesizers that I knew from the back of album covers, where musicians used to list the equipment they used. Of course, the famous flagship synthesizers like the Roland Jupiter-8, the Oberheim OB-8 and the likes were completely out of my price range. Finally, a friend of mine who owned a small monophonic synthesizer himself told me that there's a new synthesizer that's perfect for me: the Yamaha DX7. A few weeks later my mom drove me across the border into Germany where I bought a DX7 for under CHF 3000. Despite being over 30 years old, it still works perfectly, and I still play it frequently.

The Yamaha DX7 was the dominant synthesizer of the 1980s with its idiosyncratic sounds such as the electronic piano, bass, and marimba voices. If you happen to see a music video of that era and watch closely what keyboards the guys with the strange hairdos mime playing on, 9 out of 10 times it will be a DX7.

The DX7 has internal memory for 32 voices, which even for the 80s was relatively little. It has an expansion slot, however, where cartridges can be plugged in to provide direct access to further 32 voices. The DX7 shipped with two ROM cartridges, each containing 2 preset voice banks (2 x 32 voices) selectable by a switch on the cartridge. At the time, Yamaha also sold RAM cartridges onto which single voices or the full contents of the internal memory could be stored, sort of an external RAM extension. Unfortunately, the cartridges are very hard to find these days, and even the used ones sold on eBay are very expensive.

The publicly available circuit diagrams [PDF] of the DX7, e.g. on Dave Benson's DX7 page, reveal that the cartridge design is very simple. It is really only an external memory chip, and the pins on the cartridge slot are just the address, data and signal buses to control the reading and/or writing of data from or to an EEPROM.

The simplicity of the circuit suggests that it should be possible to build oneself such a memory cartridge. EEPROMS with 64kbits (8k x 8), that's room for 2 voice banks, can be found for less than USD 5. The other parts (resistors, switches and an AND gate for the combined chip enable lines) cost perhaps a dollar or two. The PCB is another story, but there are prototype PCB manufacturers like OSH Park that do them for USD 10 apiece or so. Don't even ask about the enclosure.

As you can guess, I'm going to try to design and build such a cartridge. In the following weeks I will be reporting on the progress of this project. Peek preview: The prototype boards have already been sent away for manufacture.

Update [19.08.2014 08:42 CEST]: I just got a notice from OSH Park that the PCBs have been shipped!

So stay tuned!

Les Paul DIY kit (Part IV (a): more Tru-Oil finish)

This is part four (a) of my Les Paul DIY kit build history, and it deals with applying the oil finish to the back/edge of the body and the neck.

After having had quite a success with the black (or "ebony") top of the guitar, I proceeded to apply the oil to all mahogany stained parts of the body and neck. Having seen how the body absorbed the wood stain at all those parts of the edge where the wood is cut across the grain, I expected the oil to be sucked in likewise. The first coat on the back of the guitar went very well. It was absorbed neatly but still with only a few more helpings. Same with the first coat on the neck. But when I started applying the oil at the edge, I thought that I must have used up half the bottle when I finally had rounded the edge. Well, at least the second coat would need less. I was wrong. I could hardly keep up with the wood absorbing the oil, and I applied it generously.

After two coats I started buffing the surface with steel wool where the surface was smooth and (gently) with 400 grit sandpaper where it wasn't. The next coat went far easier, finally leaving a smooth and shiny surface everywhere. I'm now at coat number 4 and I can see the end of the tunnel. I'll do two or so more coats at the mahogany surfaces, and at least another three to four at the ebony top.

Back of the guitar after four coats of Tru-Oil. Cat decidedly unimpressed.

Applying the oil where the wood stain had already darkened the wood far beyond mahogany levels made it even darker. It's now nearly black, and I hate it far less than I should.

Les Paul DIY kit (Part IV: Tru-Oil finish)

This is part four of my Les Paul DIY guitar kit build drama, and in this episode I'm writing about the oil finish. Having seen this video by Fred Yen and followed the debate on gearbuilder.de [German] about what oil to apply and how, I finally decided to go with the Tru-Oil. It seemed easy enough to apply and would result in a nice glossy finish.

I let the stain dry for 48 hours before I dared applying the oil. I cut an old t-shirt to pieces for the rags, and then applied a small amount on it and started rubbin' it in. The oil soaked into the surface like there's no tomorrow, but I knew that and didn't bother. It took a few helpings to cover the front of the guitar. Remarkably little of the stain rubbed off. Once I had covered the front I let it dry for 3 to 4 hours before applying a second coat. I think it's better not to buff the surface between the first two coats as the oil is just too thin and likely wiped off together with some of the stain.

After the second coat had dried I buffed it very gently using industry grade 00 steel wool. The idea is really just to get rid of the shining in order to have a dull surface ready for the next coat.

After 4 coats I already had a pretty hard satin finish. But I wanted more! Much more!

After 6 coats it really started to take off. Buffing becomes very easy and unproblematic. The oil is  hard and thick enough to protect the stain. Also the grain started to show really nicely. This part of the project, i.e. oiling the surface, is really the first part that I consider a complete success. It looks way better than I imagined.

Having protected the top surface well enough I proceeded to oil the remainder of the body and the neck. But I'm not inclined to push my luck and therefore I'm going end this report here. I'll defer that to an other installment of this series. After all the disasters I think I deserve a happy ending for a change.

Les Paul DIY kit (Part III: Staining) - Disaster Edition

This is part three of my Les Paul DIY guitar kit construction log where I'll be reporting on my attempts to turn a lump of repeatedly sanded wood into a nicely stained guitar. It's going to be a story of misery and desperation.

When researching various looks I quickly found that I don't really like sunbursts. Instead, I decided on an ebony top and mahogany bottom, especially after having stumbled across this Supreme Electric Guitar Transluscent[sic] Ebony Electric Guitar Mahogany Body Electric Guitar from China on AliExpress that looks awesome. I stained and spray lacquered a piece of junk wood to get an idea of what I was going to achieve.

If you look closely you might notice that the black surface has a slight brownish tint at the lighter parts. In order to accomplish that I added a few drops of mahogany to a slightly diluted black water-based wood stain, both made by Clou. I shouldn't have. When I started to stain the surface it rather soon became clear that I made a bad mistake. The blended stain seemed to be of a dark violet color. But having started I couldn't just stop but instead had to finish staining the whole body. Sometimes colors change after having dried. Well, it did. The result of my staining efforts was a grayish violet -- very much like blackberry yoghurt left unrefrigerated for two weeks.

There was only one solution, and it rhymed with "sanding". Actually, it was sanding, and lots of it. I sanded the surface thoroughly hoping not to destroy the veneer. Finally, the surface was light enough that I needn't expect it to show through when I stained it black.

Second attempt. This time I used unmolested (neither diluted nor color blended) black stain, and the result was quite pleasing, particularly with the grain nicely showing. I seriously considered ruining it with a botched sunburst finish after all!

Before proceeding to staining the back of the body I wiped down the surface with a wet sponge in order to lighten it up a bit and also to make the grain stand out a bit more. When I was pleased with the result I tore off the masking tape ... and this was the result: the masking tape ripped off pieces of the edge of the body.

I don't think I have seen anything like this in any of the dozen or so YouTube videos that I've watched before embarking on this project. That is one #@§&% dodgy kit! At this point I considered the project a failure, and I was close to dumping the kit. After some deliberating, though, I decided to simply stop bothering and just finish the kit already.

Alright then. I sanded the edge down to mitigate the damage, and then stained the edge of the guitar, the back and the neck using a water based dark mahogany stain. While the back of the guitar and the neck took the stain quite well, the edge absorbed the color like a sponge, resulting in a very dark edge. This was neither expected nor totally unwelcome. I stained the top of the headstock using the same black stain that I used on the surface of the guitar. The two spots where there were glue drops and hence the stain was not absorbed, I later colored using a black felt tip pen. Not bothering anymore simplifies construction a lot.

After letting the stain dry for a day or two I also wiped the mahogany color down using a wet sponge, lightening up the back and the neck, but not having any effect on the edge. Not bothering anymore really simplifies construction a lot.

Next installment will be on the finishing using Tru-Oil gun stock finish. I ordered a 240ml bottle on eBay, and it has already arrived!

Les Paul DIY kit (Part II: Sanding)

This is part two of my Les Paul DIY guitar kit build diary. I made a video where I explain some of the issued found with the kit. Also, there's a cat!

The guitar body is cut and pre-sanded, but to prepare the guitar for staining, I wanted to sand it some more. I started very gently using a 180 grit sandpaper. The veneer at the surface is very thin and easily sanded away. I then proceeded using 240 and finally 320 grit paper.

After wiping body and neck down using a sponge and warm water to raise the wood fibers and then let it dry thoroughly, I sanded everything lightly using 320 and finally 400 grit sand paper. I repeated this cycle two more times and ended up with a smooth top and bottom surface. I didn't manage to smooth the curved sides of the guitar beyond a certain point, especially where the wood was cut across the grain. Also, small fissures appeared at the bottom edge of the guitar, perhaps because of the watering -- or the cheap build.

When trying to pre-assemble the guitar, I found that the neck didn't fit into the neck pocket. I had to sand the sides of the neck's bolt-on block quite considerably until I got a snug fit. The same happened when I test-fitted the pickups. I couldn't set the pickups until I had filed and sanded down the corners of the cavities.

There were also a few places where during manufacturing some wood glue was allowed to seep or drip onto the surface of the guitar, especially at the sides and the headstock. It soaked into the wood and could not be removed by sanding. I can already tell that the guitar is quite shoddily manufactured. If you want to build your own, perhaps you want to find a higher quality one, even if it's a bit more expensive.

Anyway, the guitar is now as ready for staining as it's ever going to be.

Les Paul DIY kit (Part I: Unboxing)

The other day I stumbled across a video log by a guy named Fred Yen wherein he records his building a Les Paul-type guitar from a kit. I don't play guitar, and to be honest, I don't even know where to blow into this damn thing to make a sound. But after having seen him building it, the idea to build one myself seemed just too irresistible. Unfortunately, the kits that appear of a certain quality like this one by Albatross Guitars sold via Amazon are unavailable for people outside the US, because Amazon doesn't ship outside the US. I ended up buying a cheapo New Jersey kit from Gear4Music that has the following features:

• Bolt-On Neck
• Basswood Body
• Maple Neck
• Rosewood Fingerboard
• Die-cast Chrome Machine Heads
• 628mm Scale, 22 Frets
• 2 Volume, 2 Tone, 3-way Selector
• Covered Humbucker Pickups
• Tune-o-matic Bridge
• Chrome Hardware

As it seems customary now that we have YouTube, I made and intend to continue to make some videos logging my build progress. Or lack thereof. Here's the unboxing video. With cat!

The background music, by the way, is a little quick-and-dirty tune made on a Yamaha MOX6 synthesizer using a preset performance, an electric piano and an acoustic guitar voice.