Banging it Out

[Ulu]

Banging it out on the custom Stratocaster. I’m playing through a little portable radio amplifier so it makes an expensive guitar sound like a $12 ukulele.

 

youtube.com/shorts/SIfzqqM-dYo?si=MdTik7UKPRLWaT61

[Ulu]

This is the amplifier that I built being tested for the first time out in the shed in the middle of the night. It’s quiet because I didn’t want to wake everybody up.

 

 

After hearing the hum on this video I will never put my iPhone against the amplifier again.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2025 by Ulu

[Ulu]

I realized something after watching a few videos of myself play the guitar. My mouth is moving constantly.

 

I had to go back and play some more before I realize what I was doing.

 

I am sub vocalizing the beats as I play the music, and if I actually vocalize I would sound sorta like Lawrence Welk going, “…an a one an a two an a boo bah dee boo boop..”

 

[Los_Control]

6 hours ago, Ulu said:

I realized something after watching a few videos of myself play the guitar. My mouth is moving constantly.

Thats normal .... we get older and always talk to ourselves .... we think nobody is watching or listening ..... there always the wife or someone looking sideways at us.

[keithb7]

Cool that you play guitar and tinker with amp building Ulu. I do the same. I’ve built several tube guitar amps. A few amps were kits that I assembled. As my experience grew I started to build them completely from scratch. It’s fun and rewarding. I too have a Strat and a few other guitars.  I play in a band, we play gigs locally. Another great, fun hobby that helps fund my vintage Mopar hobby.  

Keep on picking!

[Ulu]

Well that sounds like a lot of fun. I haven’t played or sang with a band for about 50 years now.

 

I have only built one tube kit from scratch, and that was a five tube Motorola AM radio.

 

Our shop class built these when I was in the ninth grade, and I had mine for several years but foolishly sold it.

 

When I was younger I was going to build a vacuum tube voltmeter from scratch, but then they came out with cheap solid state voltmeters and I kind of drifted out of the audio business into the computer business for about 40 years.

 

I have two different old radios and a phonograph that I bought just for the amplifiers.  The Mint amplifier was always supposed to have tubes, and I was going to use this old phono set, but turns out it’s good for four ohms & the mint speakers are set up for eight.

 

There’s the 1967 Silvertone guitar that I rehabilitated with some golden age tuning heads from Stew-Mac. It needed a little booster amp to wake up those gold foil pickups, but it’s a very classic tone.

The phonograph was a 1954 Newcomb, manufactured in California. The little rubber drive wheels were all shot, so you can imagine what it sounded like when I put a record on it; but the amplifier still works great. Someone has recaped it, replaced the bias resistors, and the tubes are all good.

 

I have a little Silvertone radio that will make an even better amplifier but I need some new tubes for that one.

 

 

 

Edited June 30, 2025 by Ulu

[Ulu]

That turned out to be a pretty neat little amplifier, especially once I got it hooked up to a more efficient speaker.

 

The hi-fi speakers from the 1961 zenith radio turned out to be just the ticket.

 

it was in fairly good shape when I got it but the guy who had resurrected this one did a pretty sloppy job of repairing the main condenser can.

I got rid of all of that with a bunch of tedious scraping and managed to get rid of all of the corroded zinc without destroying the insulators or the new capacitors. I replaced the can with ones that I scavenged from the Zenith AM/FM radio.

 

After extracting it carefully, And trimming off the lugs, I shaved it on the belt sander.

 

 

You can see that this one had not corroded between the steel mounting ring (now missing all its  lugs) and the zinc can itself.

 

It looks much nicer now and electrically it is much more secure. I added a new copper ground wire inside the can that goes to the underside of the chassis, soldering directly to the original lug.

 

That ground is hidden inside the can now.

 

Before: ugly white rust.

 

After this experience I’m ready to tackle the 47 Plymouth radio. It needs this exact same service to the condenser can. (And more)

Edited July 3, 2025 by Ulu

[Ivan_B]

Yep, those filter condensers go bad with age; done that on my 40 radio, works well 😀

[Ulu]

I’ve had mine since 1983 now and I’ve never tried to repair the radio. Along time ago I was going to put modern electronics inside of the old Plymouth radio. Aside from missing the original speaker and the tin cover, it appears to be complete.

 

So of course now I want to make a portable 6 V guitar amplifier out of it.

[Ulu]

The little amplifier is finished except for some kind of badge to cover the unnecessary holes.

Here the mesh is too tall, so I trimmed it. I bent the mesh edge so it locks into the aluminum reglet, and bites it hard.

The speaker cabinet got a new baffle from a 40 year old mahogany plywood drawer bottom.

 

 

 

The mesh was the Newcomb phono speaker grill, and the back is an old sample bit of heavy commercial aluminum windowsill.

 

The wood ends came from a “mahogany” cutting board.

 

 

I’m using the Zenith speakers which still sound great. Grill cloth came from a Hawaiian shirt.

 

This is just a mockup photo, and the mahogany ends aren’t varnished yet. It needs varnish, a new pilot lamp, and a badge or logo.

 

Edited July 12, 2025 by Ulu

[Ulu]

Ok, here I actually test out the amp.

 

 

This is 10 minutes long, so you’ll never hear it on AM. I’m just noodling around, testing different pickups and effects pedals.

 

[Ulu]

I’ve been trying to make a deal on this guitar for 3 mos now and it finally came through.

 

This a Korean copy of a famous Gibson from Kalamazoo. About 1/10th price but 99% of the quality.

 

 

 

[Ulu]

Did I mention I am building another Guitar?

 

Well I’m building another Guitar.***

 

This is actually the partial rehabilitation and complete customization of a cheap Chinese guitar that had a built-in synthesizer and speaker.

There was so much wood removed from the body of the guitar for the speaker, the battery, the controls, and the electronic package, that it wasn’t a whole lot of work to keep hollowing it out and make a semi hollow guitar.

I was originally going to use masonite like a Danelectro, but I had this 50 year old mahogany plywood just sitting around staring at me and I decided that I should use it before I burn it up in the hobo stove to make cocoa.

I cut a lot of  relief in the plywood to make the Guitar resonate.

I used a little Dremel router to make all the cutouts. There’s was also quite a bit of hand sanding to get the neck fit up.

 

This originally had two single coil pick ups but I modified it to include one humbucker.

 

 

Then I trued up the edges as well as I could with a belt sander and ran it over the router table.


 

 

 

*** I do not know why my iPhone insists on capitalizing the word Guitar but I’m just going to give up and go with it.

[Ulu]

It’s not sanded and varnished yet, but it’s together and it works.

[Ulu]

So I finally finished this. I spent a lot if time scraping and sanding, but it paid off.

 

 

I am well pleased with the sound. That Synsonics neck pickup is really loud. The humbucker has that legendary tone (in a Korean copy.)

 

It still needs fine tuning, and a name.

 

Audio samples to come….

[Ulu]

I love metalworking, and I’m back on it every day now, which is to say, I’m back to welding etc on my project car.

 

But first, I didn’t get to show how I made the tailpiece. This came from a BBQ spatula. Nice thick stainless.

 

I traced this and shaped it by eye, flipping it over & re-tracing until it came out symmetrical as possible.

 

 

After I took this pic, I took it apart, polished it more & re-worked the bridge.

 

Intonation is now very close, but not perfect yet. Almost 3 cents sharp at the octave on the A & B.  I really need to move the bridge about 0.94” south and 1/16” left, as shown.

 

I knew this might happen, as I located the bridge posts manually. I also allowed for it by not installing the 1/2” dia knurled inserts. I threaded the posts directly into the wood for initial setup.

 

Now I can just ream it slightly offset and thus correct the positioning.

[Ulu]

So instead of working on the project car, I bought another guitar to work on.

 

(I must post a better photo….)

 

This is the Danelectro U2, a 1990s recreation of the single pickup 1957 Danelectro U1.

The funky “TV Yellow” color made it easier to photograph on black & white TV cameras.

 

Anyhow, I got it cheap, it had nice tuners, rusty strings, and a weak bridge & saddle setup: Typical for this model.

 

I fixed the bridge and made an aluminum saddle to replace the wood one.

More pix to come.

 

Edited February 24 by Ulu

[Ulu]

So I tossed the rosewood saddle, straightened the chrome bridge, and fabbed a new saddle from aluminum, similar to the one for my ‘65 Silvertone.

 

I cut it from the same metric square.

 

After lots of shaping:

 

She got a pretty good cleanup and restringing.

 

 

I like the way this guitar plays. The maple and rosewood neck is nicer than my new Telecaster.

 

The pickups are bright with a touch of overdrive. They will feed back rather musically.

 

Like the old Silvertone, the body is mostly hollow, and skinned with tempered Masonite. Unamplified, it does not have the tone of a spruce and mahogany guitar.

 

But amp it up and the sound is wonderful. These were popular guitars back when a Gibson could cost as much as a used Buick but a U1 was 1/2 the price.

[PheonixFlaming]

Interesting, creative work. I should’ve looked you up before we moved to Maine., my mistake. 
 

got some snow on the ground, photo is the bridge entering Bath, Maine near us.
 

 

[Ulu]

Not a chance of snow here. But we got record snowfalls in the high Sierra above us, so there will be lots of water in the spring.

 

I spent a lot of time creating and polishing and tuning up that saddle.

 

It’s possible to buy an aftermarket bridge for this guitar that would work just fine, won’t cost much, and save me a lot of labor.

 

But I am retired and such labor is what I’m into now.

 

This is a short video of me trying to improvise on the guitar. It’s pretty bad but I don’t want you to have any misconceptions about what a fantastic musician I am. It is mercifully short, so you won’t have to suffer too much.

 

I’m playing out in the shed through a tiny little amplifier with a 5 inch speaker. There’s not much bottom end.

 

Also there is a lot of buzzing because I put on lighter gauge strings and the the neck decided it didn’t want that. It needed more tension. I will have to switch them back.

Edited February 25 by Ulu

[Ulu]

I decided that I needed a roller type string guide on the custom guitar I built, as the stock wimpy string tree just wasn’t going to cut it.

 

I cut this aluminum from an old computer hard drive chassis that had been laying around in my junk pile.

I got some little rollers from the ball ends of guitar strings and I secured them with a tiny computer screw.

After drilling, I trim this off a lot shorter; but for fabrication purposes I needed some “tail” to hold in the vise. That tail I could sacrifice later.

 

And so it was rudely shortened for testing purposes.

 

The original string tree screw holds it back to the guitar, and it works A-OK now.

I need to take it off and polish out all those scratches and shave it a little bit skinnier. Then I’ll put it back together and put a dab of silver solder on the screw to make the roller assembly. permanent. 

[Ulu]

I got this little dingus polished up nice enough.

[Ulu]

Gluing up the 1970 Harmony guitar.

I don’t have real guitar clamps.

Just rubber bands and 1/8 rods.

 

Before:

 

After:

 

[Ulu]

https://youtube.com/shorts/Xd3YOAh9G1Q?si=6lfXsbc9QRVvGID5

 

First time playing this old POS.

I got the action super low, but the neck is really chunky. I screw up right away.

Edited March 1 by Ulu

[Ulu]

Working on another Harmony from 1969. This is a nylon string parlour guitar.

 

 

The bridge is loose & most of the braces are as well.

 

She has got a huge crack in the back.

 

 

Someone has played El KaBong with this poor guitar.

 

At least I won’t have to take the neck off of this one, but every brace needs to be re-glued after I clean off all the old dried crap.