Vic Wong – Jazz guitarist, player of stringed things, engineer and maker
Ugh, drilling holes in old acoustic archtops, right?
Unfortunately, for adding an output jack there are not a lot of good solutions. In the past, I have super-glued them under pickguards, which works fine for the casual cross-legged sit-‘n’-play but it isn’t the most stable thing when you’re standing. So what can be done?
Continue reading “Archtop tailpiece mount for 1/4″ output jacks”
I’ve had this mid-century pole lamp that’s been sitting in disrepair. The plastic (?) cone lampshades started disintegrating and one day a friend was over, reached up to adjust one and it exploded and shattered in his hand. Game over. No one makes replacements for these.
Continue reading “Mid-century pole lamp – replacement cone lampshades”
A quickie!
Lee Jeffriess spread the word that I might be the guy to reproduce obscure pickup covers, and sure enough I got a request for a new one, this time for the Fender 1000 Pedal Steel.
These guitars have “jazzmaster” style pickups in the 8-string format. The client reported they were a perfect fit and after some polishing using a plastic buffing compound they might be able to fool Leo himself. The above shows 3 covers with the original. Not telling which is which 🙂
If you need one for your reproduction project, I put them up on Shapeways who can fulfill the printing and shipping of them: https://www.shapeways.com/product/TMX8J22N4/fender-1000-pedal-steel-guitar-pickup-cover
Get in touch if you need anything else specific regarding these!
Remind me to go on walks more often. I was passing by one of my favorite ephemera shops Stuff Modern and remembered they have a real convenient (and well decorated!) bathroom upstairs that I needed to use.
So I popped in, and stumbled upon this:
It’s an Ampro 12″ speaker cabinet with a glorious art deco metal faceplate. The grill cloth behind the faceplate is unscarred. The back of the cabinet is removable and latched on like a sewing machine case. The handle is spring-loaded and automatically stows itself down when not in use. It was $119 and looked as “like-new” as anything from the ’40s possibly can.
Continue reading “Project: Quilter-powered ’40s “Ampro” speaker cabinet”Thankfully, the days of carrying around a gigantic binder full of your set list charts is over. Like many gigging musicians these days, I use an older iPad running iReal Pro for reading basic chord charts. (I know, I know, purists might take issue with this idea. If you are one of them, can skip this post and continue shaking your fist in another direction.)
I find that full-size music stands are a bit “loud” on stage when all you’re looking at is a 10″ x 7″ rectangle. Plus, as you all probably know by now, minimalism: it’s my thing. We’re still a ways off from reading music charts off of cloud-connected ocular implants, so I came up with this guy:
The stand base is the ubiquitous Hamilton two-section folding stand, a classic of jr. high school band rooms. Notice that (perhaps intentionally) “music” does not precede the word “stand” in the product listing. Their flimsy top sections weren’t the best at holding up actual sheet music. Memories of overstuffed binders somersaulting off of them are now flooding back.
Here’s a question I’ve seen come up again and again: “Which battery-powered amp should I get?”
In my past life as a software engineer, I learned this lesson quickly: asking the wrong question often yields the wrong solution.
I’ve been curious about the Bugera AC60* for a while. After seeing one picture of it, it was obvious that it is a flagrant knock-off of the AER Compact 60*. But the most compelling thing about this little poseur is that comes in at around $250.
That’s more than 5x less than the $1300 AER! Now I’m all for supporting quality boutique products, but I’m also a musician that earns a fraction of a real salary and I love a good deal.
Coincidentally, one soon popped up on my local Craigslist for $150. I sat on the decision for a while. Gear Acquisition Syndrome is real and my apartment is not getting any bigger. But curiosity got the better of me and I’m sure I made some flimsy justifications such as: “it can be my backup/travel/loaner/practice/whatever amp!”, “maybe I can use it as a portable PA!”, “I could use it as an extension cabinet!” (editor’s note: these situations have occurred exactly 0 times in several years).
Needless to day, I took the plunge. Here it is tagging along next to it’s fancy cousin:
Luckily for me, it was virtually unused. It still had some of the protective plastic covering on the logos. The fella selling it was definitely a casual player. He even asked me if I wanted to start a light rock/country band before even hearing me play.
After picking it up I took it straight to a gig (no doubt it’s first) where I planned to use it for half the night. I ended up using it for two sets and switched back to the AER for the quick last set.
In short: I didn’t notice a “night and day” difference that would justify the 5x premium. I simply set it up the way I would an AER and I didn’t have a miserable time with tone or trying to dial it in. Now that may sound lukewarm, but in my experience, “not being miserable” equals high marks in the acoustic guitar amplification space. Both my bandmates were also using AER amps and they too were quite surprised by it.
The next day, I set it up as above with an A/B switch. I noodled around while toggling between the two amps and again, didn’t hear any total dealbreakers. They are both sufficiently loud, nice-sounding amps.
But how about an audio taste test with some samples? Read on….
Quick link: If you need some of these pickup covers for your project, you can grab these from my store here.
When I first met Lee Jeffriess, he was playing bass in a Hawaiian swing band that I perform with called the Alcatraz Islanders. What I didn’t know at the time is that he was a steel guitar legend and a former member of the fantastic Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys during some of their best years.
Go ahead and put this on while you’re reading this, why don’t you?
As I got into steel guitar playing myself and combed through the Steel Guitar Forum for tips on this unforgiving instrument, it soon became clear that not only was Lee a monster player, he was the authority on all things vintage steel. That included history, technique, gear, recordings, and other minutiae like tone capacitor values. Many informative threads ended with something to the effect of, “That’s what I think anyway, but Lee Jeffriess would know for sure.”
So when Mr. Jeffriess, knowing I’ve been getting into this 3D design thing, asked if I could make a pickup cover for Fender Stringmaster T8 pickups, I knew that there was absolutely no other way to get them. A quick googling pointed me to aforementioned Steel Guitar Forums, which confirmed this. Ironically, you can still get modern reproductions the pickups themselves… just not the covers!
Continue reading “Project: Stringmaster T8 Pickup Cover Reproduction”
A banjo-playing colleague came across one of my AT bridge mounts and liked it, but found that the fit was quite loose on thin-string gauges, which are common on banjos. We went back and forth a bit trying to adjust the clearance gap, but at such tight tolerances, results were mixed.
It then occurred to me to make a more universal adjustable model. I had some M3 threaded inserts left over from a previous project so I simply separated the halves of the string clamp sections and made it so they attach to each other and tighten down with a thumbscrew. Now any gauge of string should work, including bass strings if you’re feeling lucky!
Available at my store.
Update! I no longer sell these, sorry 4/29/2020
First, a digression: one of the first things you notice while getting into 3D printing is that it is far from the magic “replicator” of Star Trek, capable of spitting out molecularly-correct cups-of-joe every time. It takes a lot of research, tweaking, and stalking nerdy fellows on YouTube to figure out how to get acceptable quality prints, and even then your stuff will look pretty rough. It’s the nature of the medium… this machine is essentially a hot-glue gun on motors.
As such, I roll my eyes a bit at people who use their 3D printer primarily for making infantile decorative figurines or props. Do you really want to use up all that material, time, electricity, and post-processing hours to produce more useless plastic crap around your house? If this is the trend, future civilizations will no doubt stare in complete bewilderment at landfills full of multi-colored Baby Groots long after we’re gone.
Aww, I know, that’s mean.
Good for you if that’s your bag, but I keep my designs functional and fully understand this stuff is not “production-ready”. They just can’t have the polish necessary to survive the scrutiny of an Amazon review. So 3D printing, to me, is good for small-run niche problem-solving where looks don’t matter.
Once in a while, though, I cook up some design and when I’ve put it all together, I’m surprised that it actually looks good and is functional beyond my expectations.
In this case, it was yet another mounting project for Audio Technica instrument microphones, which I use a lot for acoustic guitar (specifically, the Pro 70 or 831b lavalier models). I found myself wanting something that would point the mic to a sound hole or neck position with a gooseneck arm, “DPA-style“. I’ve heard some bad things about the clamping mechanisms on the DPA mounting hardware, so I thought about other ways to attach to a guitar. Why not suction cups? It worked for Nerf!
Continue reading “Project: DPA-Style Gooseneck Mount for Audio Technica Instrument Microphones”
