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
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