New Project: Frankendinky, Part I

So here we are, with the first CGW Tech Talk post of 2019, and I am starting a new project that will make for some pretty decent write-ups. For a lack of a better name, I'm calling it "Frankendinky" for now, since this is another Jackson Dinky parts guitar concoction. Please don't confuse it for the "Dinkenstein" project that I posted about before. This is a very different undertaking!

Let's get down to the details.

This project has started off as your basic Jackson JS32 DKA Dinky body. Poplar construction, archtop, Floyd Rose-equipped, snow white finish, and made in China - very common budget model offered by Jackson in their current lineup. Don't let that fool you, however. Overall, Jackson's current JS series is pretty solid for their price point, and given their current prices ($399 MSRP, $299 in most major retailers), they can make for some great projects for just a little bit of cash. In this case, the JS32 Dinky body I have now was given to me. It's in excellent shape with no damage, blemishes or cracks. Perfect project starter!

To compliment this project, I have a cache of pickups that I have collected over the years. Nothing too fancy or extreme - mostly stock pickups out of various guitars. Amongst these pickups is a set of Washburn Dime 621/623 humbuckers. These pickups were acquired through a trade, and I have yet to try them out. This project seems like a great place to give them a go.

Next up - the bridge and hardware. I will be installing a shiny, fancy and rare Floyd Rose 1000 series tremolo in a burnt chrome finish. This finish was a limited run, and I happen to get lucky through an eBay score with this one. The locking nut, and post inserts are also colored in the same fashion. It looks pretty damn cool in person, and there will obviously be more pics of it (and the rest of the guitar) as this project progresses.

The guitar will also be fully shielded (of course), and wired up with a single 500k volume pot and a 3-way switch. No tone pot, as per my usual preference. These are also open to interpretation in the future, if I choose to change the pickups. Ultimately, the DiMarzio PAF Pro is at the top of my list, but I'll let some other options marinate for a while, as the guitar comes along.

Now, I present the biggest challenge of this project - the neck.


A simple mockup of the guitar with the bridge, pickups, knobs and neck in place.

The neck was also acquired off of eBay. It's an unfinished maple fretboard Jackson copy neck, from China. This neck was the only one that fit my specific criteria. 1) maple fretboard with black sharkfins; 2) 24-fret, 25.5 scale, like most Dinky models; and 3) slotted for a locking nut. I have come to love the aesthetic of the maple/black fin look on Jackson guitars, so I wanted to keep that train going and put together a parts guitar with this in mind. After I bought my DK2M, I fell in love with Jackson's maple board necks. Obviously, this neck isn't a real Jackson neck, but finding an actual DK2M neck (or even a DKA-M neck) is almost impossible. This was the next best option. Not to mention, it was the last one of this style available, and also discounted. Naturally, I jumped on it.

This neck will take a decent amount of work to make it satisfactory, and this blog entry will outline a few major points of installing a new, aftermarket neck onto a guitar. There will be more steps to this in future entries, but this is a good start.


Behold, the unfinished maple neck.


The new neck, compared to the seasoned neck on my DK2M. Aside from the finish, there are other big differences. Compare the headstock shapes and angles, and you can spot a Jackson clone pretty easily.

First challenge - the heel. Since this is a new, replacement aftermarket neck, the heel was cut to leave an excess amount of wood at the builder's disposal. This was intentional, because this allows you to carve, sand and shape the neck heel to whatever you are putting it on. This also gives you room to get the neck into the proper intonation range, in accordance to the guitar. The end of the fretboard is also made the same way, and can easily be shaved down in the event of interference with the neck pickup ring. Also, if you notice, the heel also has zero holes drilled. Again, this is obviously preferred, so you can match up the bolt pattern to your guitar body.

A simple mockup can show us what needs to happen in order for this to work.


Big ol' heel on there, ready for lots of shaping.


You can clearly see the amount of shaping needed.

Now here is the important part to investigate when determining how much to shape - intonation! It's definitely not just a matter of shaping the heel and slapping it on there. There is a nominal range you want the neck to sit in, that will allow proper intonation adjustment in both directions (flat or sharp). To determine this, a little bit of measuring is required.

We already know this neck is 25.5" scale, but it's always best to double check, especially on a cheaper neck like this one. Scale length is determined by the measurement from the nut to the 12th fret, which is 12.75". Then it's doubled, and you have the scale of the neck - 25.5". With that said, the measurement from the saddles to the 12th fret will also be the same - 12.75". This is necessary to know, to determine where the neck needs to fit properly.


Shot of checking proper saddle/neck relation measurements.


Here's the same shot, with markers showing you where to look.

As you can see, I intentionally moved the D string saddle until it was flush with the front edge of the bridge's baseplate (blue arrow). Essentially this is the most you can adjust a saddle before it becomes an interference problem with the body. Needless to say, that's not ideal.

The red arrow indicates the"breaking point" of the string on the saddle - where the string breaks contact with the saddle, and the actual tonal vibrations start. The locking nut is the other breaking point - these two points are where the measurements truly matter.

The yellow line indicates where the breaking point lines up against the measuring tape, which is placed on the 12th fret. As you can see, the breaking point is reaching 12.875". With the saddle already all the way forward, and the breaking point not even within reach of the magical 12.75" spot. This tells me that there is quite a bit of material to shave away at the heel.

You want the breaking point of the saddles to reach 12.75", with the saddles in a centered position on the base plate. This will give you plenty of room to adjust flat or sharp, when it comes time to string and set it up. Too much in one direction can greatly inhibit the ability to properly intonate in said direction, so this is an important step of this process.

Now, moving on to inspecting other aspects of the neck.

Sitting the locking nut on the neck revealed to us that there is plenty of material there to shave off, as well.


Locking nut mock-up.

Measuring the low E string slot, I showed about 4mm of height from the fretboard to the slot (and subsequently, around 3mm on the first fret. That's quite a bit of action! We will definitely need to shave down the slot a little bit, to get it sitting pretty with some nice, lower action.


If you look closely, you can also see the locking nut slot wasn't cut evenly. There's a slight hump in there. Regardless, it will be shaved down so it's not a big deal.

I also inspected the fretboard radius to see what we're dealing with. From the bottom to the top of the neck, I measured 12". Not the same as Jackson's 12-16" compound radius, obviously, but it's ok. This is merely a measurement taken; I don't plan on making changes to the radius.




And then there's other small things to deal with, like sharp fret edges, and a mounting gap. This neck's width is slightly smaller than the body, so there's a gap that I will have to deal with. Sharp fret edges are an easy fix, and the gap can be taken care of with a shim.





So basically - this neck serves as a blank canvas. It's unfinished, meaning I can modify anything else on it that I want, if I wanted to. Now would be a great time to reshape the back of the neck, or maybe the headstock. I don't plan on doing those things (maybe), but the neck is in the perfect state to do so.

That concludes the first writeup of the new Frankendinky project! Of course, there will be more posts as the project continues, and you will get to read all about it here. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I also hope this gives you some deeper insight into the world of guitar modding and building. If you learned anything today from this blog entry, then I have completed my mission. Thanks for reading!

- Kyle
https://www.facebook.com/caldwellguitarworks/

Dinkenstein, Part II

If you recall from an older post, I had previously worked on a recurring project guitar dubbed "Dinkenstein". The guitar made it back in my hands again for another round of surgery, and this post will tell you all about it. The first post I made about this oddball guitar can be found here.

As a quick recap - this guitar is comprised of an older 80s HSS configuration Dinky, mated with a Jackson Kelly (KE3) neck and bridge. The fact that the neck meshed with the body perfectly has made this the ideal project guitar, and of course yielded the appropriate name of "Dinkenstein". In the previous post, the guitar was fitted with a single Dimebucker, and I had also mentioned fret problems as well. In this session, the electronics went through another change, as well as other fixes here and there.

Dinkenstein, in its current configuration. Can you spot the differences from the last post?

1) ELECTRONICS

The guitar was equipped with a single Dimebucker at the time of the first blog entry on the guitar. But now, the electronics were changed completely. The owner wanted to make the jump to active pickups. He had a spare EMG 85 in his parts stash that he wanted to put to good use, so we started with that. I had a single-coil EMG that came out of an old-school set of 89s... the old type with hardwired connections, unlike the more modern solderless connections that EMG utilizes now. So, the single coil was installed in the neck, with the 85 obviously going to the bridge.

Close-up of the installed, different-era EMG pickups.

On the inside, a single 25k volume pot was installed, with a 3-way blade switch - nothing else. No tone pots are used, like before. A 25k pot was utilized for volume, as that's the idea rating for EMG active pickups, as opposed to 250k/500k pots commonly seen with passive pickups. This allows for a hotter signal from the guitar, and since this guitar is set up for metal playing, that's ideally what we want.

Gut shot! Not the cleanest wiring work I've done, but there you have it. The battery easily nestles underneath the wiring, with just enough room to spare. Later model Dinkys came with bigger control cavities, but I managed to make it work just fine with this smaller cavity.

Conclusion - the guitar sounds killer! The EMGs brought it back to life, and it can thrash and bash with the best of 'em.

2) HARDWARE MODS

By request of the owner, several hardware components were swapped out, and ideally mixed and matched for a unique, two-tone look. Luckily, this was possible because both he and I happen to have spare parts for the same style of bridge, which will be covered in detail here.

The bridge installed on this guitar (which came out of a KE3 Kelly) is a low-profile bridge - meaning it's a low-profile Floyd Rose licensed bridge. Low-profile Floyd bridges sit and feel differently than the regular Floyds that most players are accustomed to. The main differences are the saddles - the LP bridge has its string locking screws on top of the saddles, unlike the ones underneath on a regular Floyd Rose. The base plate is also much flatter, made possible by the different saddles. These features allowed a much slimmer, lower profile compared to the standard FR, at the cost of weight/mass reduction, which does contribute to its feel. Some players testify that these bridges are more comfortable in comparison, however, these bridges don't have a very good reliable track record. Based on my personal experiences, anyway.

If you remember, my red Jackson DK2M (the one guitar that I talk about way too much, probably) also came with the low-profile bridge - a JT580LP, to be exact. Same style bridge as the one on Dinkenstein. I have since swapped the bridge on my guitar with a standard licensed Floyd, so I had my LP bridge laying around for spare parts. For the record - the swapped bridge performs much better than the LP. I didn't make a blog post about it, however I did briefly discuss it on the CGW Facebook page back in April.


The JT580LP bridge, with swapped parts.

Since my old LP bridge is black, and his is brushed nickel finish, he had the idea of wanting to make it two-tone silver and black. I ran into some minor but interesting problems with swapping hardware between these two bridges.

The Jackson-stamped nickel bridge is made by Takechui, and it was found on certain older Jacksons, Yamahas, Washburns and certain Ibanezes. It looks like a TRS-Pro bridge, although it's not stamped as such. While it's the same style as the Jackson JT580LP, a bit of modifying had to be done in order for the parts to work.

The goal is to use the brushed nickel base plate, and the black saddles from my JT580, thus creating the sleek two-tone look. After disassembling the Takechui, I discovered some interesting problems.

The saddle inserts (for locking the strings down) were these funky L-shaped inserts, which I have never encountered before.


Takechui saddle insert, compared to the regular style insert.

Because of this strange design, these saddle inserts evidently caused stress on the bottom side of the saddles, which resulted in the bottom of them swelling up and eventually cracking apart. Likely from years of string changes and applying tension to the inserts.


Underside of the Takechui saddles, clearly showing swelling and damage on all six of them. Some of them may be hard to tell due to the camera angle, but they all were showing these signs of failure.


The worst of the bunch, clearly.

I thought this was very interesting, as I've never encountered this before. So it's definitely a good thing that the saddles are being swapped over!

The saddles do share similarities, but they have their own subtle differences - including little nubs on the underside of the Jackson saddles that were clearly intended to only work on the Jackson base plate. Allow me to demonstrate:







You can clearly see some differences between the two brands. Obviously, this isn't a big surprise, as we all know different manufacturers do things their own way. I simply find it interesting to examine these fine details between two uncommon bridges from different manufacturers. These low-profile Floyd bridges aren't seen very often these days, as the standard Floyd designs simply seem much more reliable. Getting a close-up examination between the two bridges was a neat experience, and now I am sharing my findings with you, the readers.

As you can imagine, the base plates had some exclusive design differences as well, as you can see here:


Base plates in low-profile trems. No, the nickel one isn't bigger, I was simply holding it closer to my phone.

If you look, you can see the grooves cut in the Jackson baseplate - that is to allow a place for the little nubs on the Jackson saddles to go. I would only assume this is done as some sort of tamperproofing, but I'm not 100% sure of the reason. And also, you can see the Takechui plate does NOT have these grooves. This of course led into the next minor problem.


Note the nub on the black saddle. Attempt at tamperproofing? That's my theory.

So what happens when you attempt to install the black saddles with its nubs still intact, onto the Takechui plate? Well, look for yourself:



Clearly, the saddles didn't mount flush, so this means the saddles had to be modified to fit. Easy enough - all it took was a rotary tool and a few minutes to file the nubs down smooth.


Jackson JT580LP saddles, now 100% nub-free! 

After that, the saddles fit nice and flush onto the Takechui plate, and can now be mounted up! As a finishing touch, a black bar was used, which rounded off the two-tone look for the bridge.


Stylin' and (low) profilin'.

The contrast between the gloss black saddles and the brushed nickel plate is a very nice touch, and it looks better than I originally imagined.

The only other problem was the tails on the black saddles were longer than the Takechui saddles, which caused slight interference in the routing on the guitar's body. A rotary tool was used there to shave back about 1/8 to make room, and now it moves freely with zero interference. Sorry, I didn't get pics of it. Plans to refinish the guitar are still in the works, so we're not too worried about the shaved wood inside the route - that will all be taken care of at a later date.

But it didn't stop there - parts were also swapped on the tuners as well, to continue the two-tone theme. The owner had the original nickel tuners, and a set of black tuners. They are all the same Jackson tuners, just different colors. Swapping parts between them was easy cheesy, and didn't need any modifying at all, unlike the bridge.




The nickel washers and knobs were used on black tuners, and it's a nice touch to the black reverse headstock. What do you think?

3) FRET WORK

As I mentioned before, the guitar was in need of some fret touch-ups. Nothing major - some spot levelling and crowning was in order. The last four frets were sitting higher than the rest, as well as a few further down the neck. These problems were causing bad, note-deadening string buzz, which also prevented the action from being lowered. Before, the action had to be set pretty high to reduce the buzz to a minimum, and even then it still wasn't good enough. So, some levelling was needed.


Fret levelling under way. The tape is needed to prevent marks on the fretboard, and to also keep metal shavings from sticking to the neck pickup.

The frets were levelled down and checked with a straight edge, followed by crowning, polishing and a full cleaning.




All better! It polished and cleaned up nicely. The fret buzz was eliminated, and the action was able to be lowered closer to the owner's specs. The guitar was strapped up with D'Addario 9-42 strings, and set to good ol' E standard. Obviously intonation adjustments were needed for the changed saddles... and it came out nicely.

As a result - Dinkenstein is back in action, playing and sounding better than ever! The next step of this project will be a full refinishing, but that's for a later date.

For you other Jackson fanatics who may happen to own a Takechui-equipped guitar, you might want to consider peeking underneath your saddles and seeing if yours are cracking. That of course means you would have to re-adjust your intonation, but I feel like it would be worth your while to make sure there isn't anything breaking under there. Alternatively, if intonation is a concern (or you just don't wanna deal with it), you can use some tape and make markings of your saddle positions, and just simply put them back where they were. It'll at least get you much closer to correct intonation, as opposed to just guessing where they were.

I hope you enjoyed this lengthy post, and I hope you learned something new from it, which is always my goal. I have learned several things during the course of this undertaking, and I anticipate going even further, as I always do.

Check back soon for more posts! And as always, you can reach out to me through my FB page, listed below.

- Kyle Caldwell

Caldwell Guitar Works


Obligatory glamour shots:

Washburn G-2V

Several months back, while I was still operating in Nashville, I was given the opportunity to work on this intriguing specimen - a Washburn G-2V guitar from the 1980s. This was months before I had started this blog as well, but I knew that as soon as I started these write-ups, I HAD to make mention of this guitar. This guitar was one of the most unique guitars I've ever had the chance to work with, or play.

My bounds of Washburn guitar knowledge is very small, for the record. Prior to this red G-2V coming along, I had never owned or played a Washburn guitar. I never really thought about checking them out over the years. Nothing against them, of course, it's simply unknown territory for me. From what I do know about this particular model, it was produced in Japan in the 1980s. There seems to be a split production among these, as some of them came with the T600 Floyd Rose-licensed trem, and the others came with the Kahler Wonderbar. This particular guitar is equipped with the latter. Some of them also came with pickguards, and others didn't. I didn't think to grab the serial number when I had it in, so I'm gathering basic data with my magic Google powers.

This rare specimen from the 1980s has a certain charm to it.

The first thing I noticed on this instrument was the gigantic tremolo. This is a Wonderbar system made by Kahler, and stamped with "Washburn 2001" on the upper portion of the block. I've owned guitars equipped with Kahler Flyers in the past, and this tremolo feels like two Flyers put together. The most noticeable thing about this trem is its sheer size - it's almost like an engine block strapped to the body! Serious chunk of metal there.

When you pick the guitar up, you can feel the definite weight of it. Quite a significant difference between a Floyd Rose guitar and this one. The thing about Kahler trems is that they don't require any body routing, whereas a Floyd Rose-equipped guitar has full through-body routing done to it. The demand for the Floyd Rose's routing shaves a considerable amount of weight off the body. So apply that knowledge and combine it with the Wonderbar's size and sheer weight, and you've got a fairly hefty instrument at your disposal.

Everything on this guitar is excellent, overall. It's been very well maintained - a very small amount of noticeable blemishes and dings. The frets had little wear on them, and the 24.75", 21-fret neck played smoothly. The fretboard was in excellent condition as well. It had a neck profile similar to an older BC Rich NJ series or an ESP - not quite as thin as Jackson or Ibanez, but still comfortable to play. 

The ol' Washburn getting ready for some doctoring.

The electronics were the main cause for concern. This guitar is equipped with a humbucker, two single coils, tone pot, coil tap, and an old-school 5-way switch. This guitar had two failed pickups and some less-than-par connections in the circuitry, so that's where it needed the most attention. The owner brought some nifty replacement pickups for installation - a Bill Lawrence 500XL for the bridge, and a Dimarzio Super Distortion single coil for the neck position. As it turns out, the original middle and bridge pickups have failed. What I did was install the 500XL in the bridge (of course), and installed the Super Distortion in the neck. The original neck pickup was functioning, so it was moved to the middle to replace the faulty pickup there.

And of course, a full rewiring was done to ensure solid connections on the coil tap and the rest of the circuitry.

Before shot of the cavity. It's difficult to tell in the picture, but there was some iffy connections in there. A full rewire was imminent.

After shot, after the full rewiring and pickup install. Nice, clean connections everywhere with new wire and fresh solder joints.

I wasn't able to hear the original tones of the guitar, due to the faulty pickups. But the new pickups breathed new life into this G-2V. The owner had intentions on using it in a heavy metal project, so the 500XL he opted for fit the bill quite well. The coil tap adds an interesting dynamic with the 500XL, and it sounded fantastic. The Super Distortion single coil was a great fit for the front end, providing some snarly neck position tones. The middle pickup doesn't hold its own in comparison to its next-door neighbors, but it sounded alright in its place. The owner wasn't too concerned about middle pickup use, so it stays stock.

Back in action with some hot new pickups at the helm.

Following the pickup install and rewiring, the next order of business was the restringing and setup. 10-46 gauge strings were provided for a setup in D standard. Setting up and restringing this guitar was pretty straightforward. The strings are pulled through the micro tuners, retained by the string balls - no need to cut them off with this tremolo. They then get fed underneath the main roller, and then over the saddle roller. As you actuate the trem, the strings freely roll forward and back through both rollers. What I noticed about this design - the mechanical nature of it doesn't allow for nearly as severe of a dive, compared to a Floyd Rose. There isn't as much "freedom" in the movement. They are two extremely different tremolos, for sure, but they both work great in their own ways. The Wonderbar trem works great for applying some tasty chord vibrato of some sorts, but doing a soaring divebomb? Not so much. However, the Wonderbar seemed to keep stable tuning after some tedious whammy action, so I'll chalk it up as a success.

Intonation and action adjustments are also easy - each saddle has their own height adjustment screws, much like standard hardtail saddles, or vintage trems. This guitar actually needed very little adjustment after the restring, which is impressive. It wasn't difficult at all to get it dialed in just right.

The result - we have a heavy-set, Japanese-made superstrat from the 1980s, with some interesting features and more modern pickups. The bridge is a bit cumbersome underneath the hand (which will vary depending on your style anyway), but the neck felt smooth and comfortable. The 24.75 scale brings everything in nice and close, so getting around the neck is no issue. The weight of the bridge and the body seems to help reduce the effort it takes to move the neck around... perhaps a very distinct advantage in some cases. Great tone and solid playability overall - and in extremely good condition to boot. It's got a peculiar character about it.

We've all seen the plethora of superstrats that are out there, but I think any player can admit they each have their own charm to them, in some sort of fashion - this guitar is no exception. It's like a very niche, hidden part of the 1980s guitar world that I didn't know existed. I'm grateful for the opportunity to work on it and play it, because I honestly have no idea when I will come across one again. 

I don't know how many of these are floating around, but if you come across one for a good deal, I suggest snagging it before they're gone for good.

One last note - as I have disclaimed before, I know very little of these early Washburn guitars, so if you do have some insight on this guitar, feel free to comment! There really isn't that much readily-available information that I was able to find, so please let me know with any other juicy details about these guitars.

Thanks for reading!

- Kyle C.

http://www.facebook.com/caldwellguitarworks

https://www.instagram.com/cgw_kyle/

caldwellguitarworks@gmail.com

Dinkenstein, Part I

I have had plans before to do a more technical write-up on this interesting project, appropriately dubbed "Dinkenstein". This guitar belongs to a friend, and it's been an ongoing project between us. We have many more things planned out for this unique axe, but here's a good start to documenting the project.

The Dinkenstein is essentially self-explanatory - it was assembled out of spare parts and rendered into a playable instrument. Fortunately, this one has been a pretty straightforward build, since most of these parts are all from older Jacksons.

The body is a Dinky in an HSS configuration (humbucker, two single coils), built in the late 80s, based on the serial number on the neck plate. This body was just sitting in his closet, collecting dust like an ancient relic. As you can tell, it was hand-painted on at one point. It also had a few stickers on it, which I removed. Regardless, one of the next plans for this guitar is a refinishing on the body, and of course I'll be posting about that when it happens.

Outside of the paintjob, the body is in pretty good shape. No cracks anywhere, which is the important part. The screw holes aren't even that worn either, and the threads are pretty preserved - also important, especially for mounting the neck.

The neck is from a Jackson (obviously) Pro series Kelly, made in Japan in the late 1990s. Reverse mother-of-pearl sharkfin inlays and reverse headstock. Standard rosewood fretboard and maple neck construction. Frets are in decent shape, but need a little bit of touching up - I'll elaborate on that a bit more later. The neck bolts on the neck match up perfectly with the holes on the body, since they are both earlier Jacksons. The original neck on the body is also a 24-fret with the same heel, so mounting up the Kelly neck to it was super easy. This saved us some time on the reassembly, since the neck is a perfect match. In some instances of putting parted guitars together, the neck bolt holes don't always line up with the body, depending on which component came from where, and some modification to the wood would be necessary. In this case, it was a non-issue, so we're good there! The original brushed nickel locking nut hardware stayed in place as they were on the Kelly. It had nickel tuners as well, but they were replaced with black ones at some point.

In case you're wondering, the original neck was removed years ago because it sustained some significant fret wear. The guitar was subsequently retired, given the cost of the work to repair it. The original neck now serves as a piece of decor on a wall. It had basic dot inlays and a regular headstock, compared to the reversed fin and reversed headstock deal on it now. Same scale and fret count, but entirely different character.

Now we shall move on to the next part - the guts! Time to hit the bench.

The Dinkenstein, ready for some surgical procedures.

Pretty straightforward procedures, outlined below:

BRIDGE REPAIRS

The trem posts and inserts were replaced. The original ones were in absolutely awful shape. The threads in the inserts were bored out so there was substantial movement in the posts.

The upper post was the worst of the two. You can see how far forward the post moves, and the huge gap in the threads in the insert, right behind it. This is a good 5mm range of movement from one end to the other. Definitely a no-go.

The play in the lower post isn't as bad, but still too much. Either way, they get replaced in sets by default.

The extreme movement in the posts was causing the Floyd Rose trem to sit in the route at awkward angles. In the past, a bit of modification was made to the trem route to accommodate for the movement that occurred over the years. Not to mention, tuning stability problems as well. But now with the brand new inserts and posts, those are all eliminated. The new inserts were a very snug fit into the body, and the new posts have much better tolerances. These parts were genuine Floyd Rose parts, via the magical StewMac stork.

All new! We went with simple black posts, that contrast nicely against the brushed nickel Floyd.

With this portion of the work, I also inspected and cleaned up the knife edges on the trem. Remember in my previous post where I discussed the knife edge conditions on my DK2M? Same exact concept here. It's all part of Floyd Rose maintenance. The knife edges on this guitar's trem were still in pretty good shape, so I only did minimal filing to bring the edges back.

The knife edges didn't exhibit much wear at all, and required only a little bit of cleaning up.

There we go. After a touch of filing, it cleaned up nicely.

And lastly, I replaced the old springs with a fresh set of matched springs, to restore the rebounding tuning stability. That basically addresses all the deficiencies in this guitar's trem. On to the next part - the circuitry!

ELECTRONICS

I'll shed a bit of light on this guitar's history. I have worked on it before, which involved a pickup and pot install, and cavity shielding. Before, it had a Seymour Duncan Invader installed, wired up to just one regular 500k pot for volume. The Invader has since been repurposed in another guitar, and the Dimebucker wasn't being used - therefore, the Dinkenstein got Dimed. I also replaced the regular 500k pot with a 500k coil-tap pot. The coil tap's purpose is to allow you to run your humbucker with both coils activated, or just one for a single coil tone. Since the guitar's original single coils aren't present, it was only fair.

The guitar's simple circuit remained - just one pickup, one pot, and the jack. The tone pot was removed, and the guitar's original single coil pickups were also omitted. You can tell this by the obvious holes that remain in the body. We have plans for these in the future, as part of the refinishing portion of the project.

The guitar's current circuity, with the Dimebucker and the coil-tap.

A sinister-looking Dimebucker and a realigned, smooth operating trem with a pair of new posts. Ready to rock!

Setting up the guitar was pretty smooth, given the nature of the project. The guitar is strung with 10-46 strings, set in D standard tuning. The Floyd Rose and the neck of the guitar both came off of the same Kelly, which saved some time in the setup. Intonation was already right where it should be. There are some small issues with the frets, which will be corrected later. The higher frets don't show as much wear as the lower frets (lots of rhythm playing in the past), and it's causing some minor buzzing issues on the D string up in the 15th fret range. It will need to be taken care of eventually, but the guitar is still quite playable. Neck relief is good as well. The action is currently compensating for the buzzing issue, but once it's taken care of, the action will be able to be lowered a bit more.

There you have it - the introductory post to Dinkenstein! It currently rocks a peculiar fashion sense with 3 different hardware colors - brushed nickel trem and locking nut; black posts, micro tuners, regular tuners and knob; and a shiny gold trem arm. No chrome found anywhere, unfortunately, but we got three other bases covered!

It's an unfinished project, of course. There are several more things planned for this unique guitar, and you'll get to read all about it here. Dinkenstein will return!

- Kyle

http://www.facebook.com/caldwellguitarworks

https://www.instagram.com/cgw_kyle/

caldwellguitarworks@gmail.com