Dogbreath (HB TE-30 Tele)

Nomad

I bought one of these...

http://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_hbt30be_egitarre.htm

...to use as a test platform for learning to wind my own pickups. This was inspired by mrchi's thread, here...

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/35528/first-hand-wound-pickups-success-at-last-updated/p1

I'm in the process of making the pickup winder, documented here...

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/36268/pickup-winder-for-mini-lathe

This will be updated as things progress (currently waiting for some bits of metal to arrive).

Why Dogbreath? A dogbreath anything is something that's used for trying stuff out, and is generally reliable and dependable, but maybe doesn't look especially pretty. For example, when I worked in IT many moons ago, we had a dogbreath computer on the network that never had the case on because stuff was always being put in and taken out. A dogbreath guitar can serve a similar purpose - in this case, for testing home-brew pickups. I never name guitars, but I liked the fact that the computer appeared on the network as "Dogbreath", so this guitar will be called Dogbreath.

Regarding mods, I have no specific plans at the moment beyond making the winder and trying the results out on Dogbreath. I have to say that I'm not very keen on the greyish 'blonde' body colour, so I may look into changing that at some point. The maple neck and fingerboard is a bit light, but I'm less keen on messing around with refinishing that. Part of me wants to change the bridge and make the strings through-body instead of top-mounted, and another part wants to mess around with the electrics. Aside from using it to learn about pickup winding, I'd like to try and make it produce a good Telecaster type of sound.

Here's a short review of the guitar as delivered...

The guitar weighs 7.5lbs. Finish seems well done. I found one tiny ding or rough bit on the headstock (but I don't care and haven't looked for anything - just happened to notice that). The body has a glossy translucent lacquer that doesn't look mega thick, while the neck and fingerboard have a satin finish which seems to be quite thin.

The neck is chunkier than on my Lemon Drop - a tad deeper, and with a more pronounced shoulder as it comes up to the sides of the board. It's playable enough. The frets are relatively narrow and I would say the finishing is okay - could maybe do with a polish, and possibly a little dressing of the ends to soften the radii there. Although I have to say that there are no issues when playing. String alignment down the neck looks good - consistent distance between the outer strings and the edges of the board. The as-supplied action is a bit high for me, but there is plenty of space under the saddles to bring it down low. Neck relief seems okay, and intonation out of the box is very good. I've been playing it for about an hour and only felt that I wanted to lower the action a bit. The no-name strings are pretty minging because they aren't Elixirs. The wound strings feel pretty draggy on the fingers in comparison - finger squeaks were noticeable, especially with the bridge pickup.

The body does indeed seem to be made of solid wood. The grain lines on the top and back continue round on the edges. If you look at the Thomann photos closely, you can see that the body is actually made of two thinner layers of timber glued together to make up the full thickness. Dogbreath has the same construction. The two layers themselves are each made of two pieces of wood, so four bits of plank in total. The join on the top is straight down the middle, while on the underside it's offset by about 15mm to give a staggered join for better strength.

Pots are reasonable - operation is smooth, but with a little more drag than I prefer (might be the narrower diameter Tele-style knobs - I normally use speed knobs which are wider). They might loosen up a bit. The selector switch operates without issue (and the black knob/cap bit stays on). Machine heads are fine. They're cheapy (I presume) die-cast individual units. They tuned easily, no tings or squeaks at the nut, and it seems to hold tune just fine.

Acoustically, the guitar sounds pretty good. It has a decent volume and sounds balanced. As expected, the pickups are pretty lacklustre. The more expensive TE-52 has Wilkinson alnico pickups and I would expect they sound much better than these. I haven't opened it up yet, but I'm expecting to find ceramic bar magnets and pole pieces.

The bridge pickup sounds pretty harsh played clean, but becomes more tolerable with the tone backed off a bit. The neck is more usable but a bit dull sounding - I guess the cover is made of steel or brass. Switching both pickups on brightens things up a bit. The most noticeable thing about the pickups is that there is no real tone to them. There's no twang, no bounce, no real harmonic depth. The pickup in mrchi's sound clip in his thread linked to above simply blows this out of the water. In a similar way, the Wilkinson PAF-alikes with alnico 2 in the Lemon Drop also have much more character (albeit with a humbucker sound).

With either pickup, I noticed that the volume on the lower strings could be higher. The bottom E especially is pretty weak. Not sure if this is to do with the how the strings interact with the pickups, or maybe the pickup adjustment. As mentioned, this isn't evident when played unamplified. I'm not going to concern myself too much with this because they'll be changed to Elixirs pretty soon.

Overall, I would say that you get a hell of a lot for 63 quid. About the only real negatives are the general lacklustre tone and the loss of volume on the lower strings. Adjustment might fix the volume loss, but I suspect the tone can only be fixed with better pickups. If you were just looking for a budget guitar with a decent sound, with no particular plans to modify it, then the TE-52 is probably a better bet at around 90 quid. For my purposes (cheapest real wood testbed guitar), it's excellent value. Amazing, in fact.

While the pickup winder is being built, the plan is to just play the guitar and get to know it better. For now, a string change and some adjustment - lower the action and twiddle the pickups. I've set aside a couple of patches on the Zoom G3X for the purpose of dialling in some sounds that work (two - clean Fender Twin, and slightly driven Carr Mercury). Once I'm happy with the patches, I'll make some reference recordings, and then use the same patches, unmodified, when the pickup changes happen.

Nomad

A little update. I changed the strings to Elixir 10s, lowered the action a bit and adjusted the pickups to make them more level. The volume disparity across the strings seems to have been cured. It's also sounding a bit more Tele-like (and was with the original strings as well - lowering the action seemed to have done that), albeit still with the same basic characteristics of the pickups noted previously. Certainly improved somewhat.

When I lowered the action, I found that a few notes high up (around fret 19-20) on the E and B strings tended to choke when bending. I haven't looked at the frets, so don't know if it can be remedied or whether it's down to the combination of radius/action. I'm not that fussed just now in any case. I also found that intonation between bottom E and A doesn't match very well - I may well consider a 6-saddle bridge at some point, although compensated 2-string saddles might be worth trying.

It seems to feed back rather easily at low volumes with only moderate gain. Annoying high-pitched squeaks on the bridge pickup, mainly, and tapping the neck pickup cover with my finger nail showed that it's rather microphonic. I guess they aren't potted.

An upgrade component arrived today...

http://i1279.photobucket.com/albums/y521/Nomad_Zamani/Dogbreath/Pickup%20Winding%20Wire%2042awg%20500g%20Reel_zpsmzvd5oxt.jpg

A 500g reel of 42awg wire, courtesy of Brocotts. By my calculations, there's about 18km on that. One 8000-turn single coil pickup should use about 1km, so plenty of pickups to be had from that one reel. No sign of the bits of metal for the winder, and I haven't ordered any flatwork or magnets yet. I have motorcycle training coming up over the next couple of weeks, so I probably won't be doing much while that's happening, other than continuing to build the winder.

Nomad

Some progress on the Dogbreath front - neck pickup is in for trials, but still to be potted.

As posted in other therads, the mini-lathe pickup winder attachments are finished, and a first pickup has been wound...

http://i1279.photobucket.com/albums/y521/Nomad_Zamani/Pickup%20Winder/PU%20TN01%2003_zpsnrwscqop.jpg

Alnico 2 magnets, 42awg wire, 8000 turns, 5.6K.

Tonight, I got the scratch plate and control plate off the guitar and had a look at what was inside...

http://i1279.photobucket.com/albums/y521/Nomad_Zamani/Dogbreath/Dogbreath%20-%20Neck%20PU%2001_zpsxq40knis.jpg

As expected, the neck pickup has a ceramic bar magnet underneath, so presumably pole pieces rather than magnets passing through the coil. The thin co-ax wire goes to one of those cheapy switches with a PCB. Pots are the usual mini types that always seem to be on budget guitars. I didn't pay much attention to them (or the tone cap) so have no idea about values. The pickup will be coming out again when it gets potted, so I might have a closer look then.

The body rout at the pickup is quite interesting...

http://i1279.photobucket.com/albums/y521/Nomad_Zamani/Dogbreath/Dogbreath%20-%20Neck%20PU%2002_zpsqmrhrmpy.jpg

I'm not sure if the cavity is big enough for a humbucker, but it wouldn't take much extra work to enlarge it.

The finish inside the routing seems okay aside from some rough crap near the jack socket. There was also some in the pickup cavity near the hole that the wire goes through. The latter was fairly loose - I was able to grip it with fingers and pull it away. A look at the sides of the cavities showed wood grain that matched the general pattern on the exterior.

I found soldering the hookup wire on easier than expected. A bit fiddly getting it in place at first, but a good heat with the iron and a touch of fresh solder did the trick. No scraping insulation on the coil wire or anything like that. First thing to do after soldering on the hookup wire is to get a meter on the far end and check for continuity. I was pleased to see 5.6K was still there.

When I first fitted the pickup, I reused that original screws (cheap git), but found that they barely gripped the holes in the fibre flatwork - I couldn't get the bass end to rise up. So, I changed them to the ones I bought with the flatwork (just give them a confident turn or three to get them to form a thread in the fibre), and they seem to be fine.

I also put some cotton tape around the coil to protect it. I think the bobbin is probably slightly too full - I should probably get some 43awg wire, which is the proper gauge for this, apparently.

Anyway, it's now in the guitar...

http://i1279.photobucket.com/albums/y521/Nomad_Zamani/Dogbreath/Dogbreath%20-%20Neck%20PU%2003_zpsgjm4eglo.jpg

No cover yet. The plan is to pot it with no cover or tape, and then fit the tape and cover, and pot again. I reckon this will maximise the chance of saturating the coil with wax.

I did some recordings of the original pickups (neck, both, bridge) and one with the new neck pickup, but haven't had time yet to edit them down to something that can be used for comparison. However, my first impression is that the difference is more subtle than I was expecting. If anything, there is more clarity, and the tone seems sweeter all over the neck. With the original pickup, it tended to be more muddy, but with some honk when playing around the 10th to 14th frets. Outside of that zone, it was rather characterless, while the new one is a bit brighter, and individual notes seem more usable. Very early days at the moment - I need to do a fair bit of twanging and get settled in with the new sound.

Still, it's a first for me to be playing a guitar that's producing sound from a pickup I made myself.

Chalky

And if I were you, I'd feel very proud of that. Well done Sir!

DannyP

Nomad said:

there is more clarity, and the tone seems sweeter all over the neck. With the original pickup, it tended to be more muddy, but with some honk when playing around the 10th to 14th frets. Outside of that zone, it was rather characterless, while the new one is a bit brighter, and individual notes seem more usable.

Really interesting! Well done, and thanks for sharing.