Further adventures of my Starfire

[edwin]

OK, the pickups I got here are installed, or at least the bass and treble are. The humcanceller is waiting for me to rebuild the Series electronics. Right now it's hooked up to an ACG preamp. It works OK and sounds amazing, but I am getting a lot of noise, depending on my orientation. I think once the humcanceller becomes part of the equation, it should quiet down nicely. I'm also going to put a piece of copper under the f-hole to get that electronically solid. I've shielded the pickup cavities as well and just need to connect the ground wires.  Interestingly, while the pickups are rectangular in shape, inside they are trapezoidal. We put some iron filings over them and the shape became clear.   Matt Bergdorf at Woodsong's Lutherie did the work, including making the custom pickup rings that he matched to the top curvature. We decided to mount the pickups to the underside of the rings, so we could get a nice tight fit, so he had to rout and mount the inserts on the underside at an angle so the pickups would be parallel to the strings.  

 

[sonicus]

Edwin, very cool. Where are you installing the humcanceller? have you considered bringing the tailpiece back further and locating the humcanceller between the bridge and tailpiece ? A narrow one might be able to be made .Just thinking ______ If you bring it back you also will be able to have a wider choice of strings ;  that makes it a dual purpose modification.
 
 Wolf

[edwin]

My first experiment will be to put it in the body, under the top of the f-hole on the right. It needs to be parallel to the other pickups, but I'm hoping that it will work off to the side like that. If that doesn't work, we're going to rout between the other two pickups and it should fit perfectly.
 
Not too many issues with strings on this one, I change them every 5 years or so!

[sonicus]

2 trapezoidal  humcancellers were located inside the cavity of my old Starfire off to the side   It worked.  
 
 Your Starfire project is quite exciting for me as well !

[hieronymous]

Edwin - THAT - IS - SOOOO - COOL!!!

[David Houck]

Yes, I agree; very cool!

[afrobeat_fool]

Very Nice!!!

[shae]

Now just a little reshaping to the headstock, and you should be good.

[bassthang]

very cool. Would love to hear clips of it when it's done. that's something I'd like to do to mine, someday, somehow.

[edwin]

Yeah, the headstock thing is tempting, but I'm not going to mess with it because I've got Phil Lesh and Jack Casady's signatures on the reverse of the headstock.  
 
Today, Matt gave me a sheet of copper that a friend of his who worked at Ball Aerospace gave him to use as shielding. So, I'm going to make a box for the inside to really seal it up from the evil electronic elements.
 
I'll post samples as soon as I can get this all together. Right now, unless I stand in certain orientations, it's really buzzy.

[shae]

It's not a Starfire, nor does it have Alembic pickups but on one of the hollowbody basses I built, it has a Darkstar pickup and Audere preamp and I used copper flashing from Lowe's and just peeled off the plastic backing they use to allow it to be used with pressure treated lumber. Made a box for everything to fit in and soldered the seams. The nice thing about flashing is you can make the box and then fold it up to fit in the cavity and then unfold it once it's in there.
 
In the picture I attached you can see how large the box will need to be dependent upon your layout and generally the opening is not as big as what needs to squeeze in there.
 

[edwin]

That's a really beautiful bass! I bet it sounds wonderful. Any clips to listen to?  I love the Dark Stars. Some of the most responsive pickups I've played.
 
Do you have a door on the back to access the electronics? I'll probably be doing exactly what you describe. I have a door, which makes everything much easier.

[sonicus]

Yes , I like it too !

[shae]

Yes, I put in a back cover when I built it. Attached are some images of the back cover and control cavity (which could probally use some wire ties). I also included a shot of the headstock which is vaguely fimiliar in shape.  

 

 

  (Message edited by shae on June 17, 2011)

[dadabass2001]

Very nice! Is that a 30.5 small scale?
Mike