Strat bass: come join me for a mod beyond my abilities

[shadebug]

OK, so my new strat arrived and it works perfectly, which means it's time to go to town on my old first gen strat. My first gen's strummer broke, so I fixed it and it broke again and I kept fixing it until it could be fixed no more. My byte-arts strummer should be on its way now. The tilt sensor is completely useless now, I've got an idea for a fix that won't be prejudicial to lefties... but that's for another day. Then the spring on my whammy broke (I'm the main guitarist for my band and I pretty much only whammy for OD notes, so... yeah). The last one is what inspired me to think about this mod in earnest.

So, the backstory. Half the reason that rockband is so great is the amount of effort that went into making it all look and feel real (it went wrong when they decided to see just how cheap they could get away with making their component shopping list 'who needs switches when you can use two bits of metal?')

The problem is that as awesome as the strats look, if you have two, one will always look wrong, because the strat is, quite clearly, not a bass guitar.

2 things really give it away (and neither are the machine heads, I'm quite happy to believe that it's a 6 string bass, that said, I might get bored and remove a couple anyway)

1) The whammy bar. Bass is a technical and sophisticated instrument, it does not need a whammy

2) The pickup switch. Basses tend to use volume controllers for each pickup so you can fine tune just how much sound you want coming from each (as I understand it, my guitar fu is somewhat weak, but I can totally play the inspector gadget theme)

Of course, both of these serve essential functions and need replacing, and I think I know how.

1) Bend. You heard me. The way I figure it, I can put the fret buttons on rails, attach them to a slide potentiometer (10k linear, to be precise) and suddenly our whammy becomes a bend. My only problem thus far is that the only slide pots I can find are too long and you need to get a good way up the slide before the game registers it as whammying (I spent quite some time very scientifically looping the bridge on foreplay/longtime to figure this one out). Nevertheless, love will find a way

2) Volume knob. As I say, bassses have volume knobs instead of switches, so why fix it if it ain't broke. Luckily, HMX have been sneaky bastards and given us a helping hand when it comes to this. See, that pickup switch isn't a switch at all, it is in fact another potentiometer with a frame to make it click into place. As such, a bog standard 20K linear mini rotary potentiometer is the order of the day.

Now, electronically, these both work. I've slid the slide and made whammy happen and I've rotated the rotator and made wahwah happen.

All that's left is for me to figure out how to get the buttons bending. I have a theory whereby I can replace the holes where the buttons insert with a slider (by which I mean two bits of metal properly spaced) and sliding under a rail, by which I mean another two bits of metal separated from the normal plastic by a spacer. The slide pot I have only fits in the headstock, so that'll have to do, ut I need to figure out how to get the sliding buttons to translate to sliding pot inside the headstock.

Once I work that out, I'll start taking pictures and doing it

also, fun!

[SugarBear]

sounds like it's going to be a great project, keep us update as much as possible as you carry it out, I'm anxious to see the end result.

You'll love your bytearts strummer, best money I've spent on a mod so far.

[shadebug]

I dunno, I find it hard to believe I could love anything more than my mic stand

[HeadHunter67]

I'm eagerly awaiting my ByteArts strummer as well, and sometime I might look into some of the mods at MaxAxxe.com (http://www.maxaxxe.com/) and make my Strat work with GH as well. :)

[shadebug]

OK, so I had an epiphany.

I was previously considering putting the slide pot in the headstock because it's 60mm long and the neck is only 40mm long and the smallest slide I could possibly find is 45mm so that wouldn't help.

The other problem is that the 60mm is too big when it comes to comfortable bending, you'd have to bend up the entire 45mm of slide (the 60mm includes housing) to get decent whammy.

The third problem is that if you put the slide in the headstock, you have to get rid of the clip holding the headstock onto the neck, which will only cause problems.

Then I realised that the slide will entirely fit in the neck if I put it at a massive angle. this reduces the amount of travel since the slide becomes a hypotense to whatever distance the frets are going to move. Also it gets me into the neck entirely so I don't have to worry about the headstock clip,

This is now looking like a less than impossible mod

[Frederf]

(it went wrong when they decided to see just how cheap they could get away with making their component shopping list 'who needs switches when you can use two bits of metal?')

I disagree that metal contacts were a "we're too cheap for microswitches" move, but rather a determined attempt to get away from the feel and sound of microswitch-click. The metal contact system wasn't well designed but when it worked it kicked the butt out of microswitches. Microswitches suck.

I appreciate your efforts to make the bass guitar a more unique instrument.

[shadebug]

there are plenty of push to make switches out there which are more robust and have little or no click

[shadebug]

Ok, I've just realised that, without resorting to some insane trickery, the bend mod will only allow you to bend in one direction (and back, obviously). This is because the whammy has to be xeroed when you start the game or it messes up. You can test it out if you like. Turn off your console, hold down the whammy bar. Turn console back on, turn rock band on, start a song with some nice whammyable notes. Let go of the whammy bar. Now try and whammy and it won't work

[HeadHunter67]

Yerah, I have a PS2 effects pedal that's like that. If you don't turn it all on in the proper order, the whammy bar and the pedal won't work. I'd guess it's the same reason why.

[shadebug]

Shouldn't be a problem for the effects selector, that works no matter what you've got set. or at least I think it does

[TheRocker]

Good luck, I don't know much about modding but sounds like a cool project.

[LinkStrifeLeonhart]

This sounds like it'll end up being awesome if done correctly. Hopefully you'll be able to pull it off to your liking, shadebug!

[shadebug]

honestly, the biggest reason I haven't started yet is because it's too cold to work in the garage. I was going to put up a quick few photos of doing the effects switch since it's painfully cheap and easy (not to make it look good but...) but then it snowed for the first time this winter (which is more like spring now) so I decided to hold off on that,

[shadebug]

just had a much better idea for the pickup switch

replace a machine head

if anybody wants to do the volume knob trick you just need to replace the effects switch with a 20K linear pot (you could do log if you want but you'd be in for a world of pain trying to get at least one of the effects working)

[shadebug]

OK, the effects switcher is done. Unfortunately my camera seems to not be working, that or all the batteries in the house are flat. Either way, I'll explain the process (as relevant to a mk1 strat) in a 12 step guide, because evrybody loves a 12 step guide.

1) Pull the tip off the effects switch. On mine it just popped off, not sure if others are connected by sturdier means.
2) Open up the guitar as usual.
3) Disconnect the effects switch, it's connected to the main PCB just below where the battery pack connects and labeled 5switch, though you won't see that label until you disconnect it. It's glued on so be careful you don't damage the board doing it. I was able to pull it out of the glue with a bit of firm but gentle wiggling.
4) Unscrew the effects switch. The whole switch should now come loose once you get rid of the glue. You should (having gotten rd of any glue) now have the effects switch and its wiring completely free of the guitar.
5) Remove the wiring from the switch, I was able to just pull it off, you may want to use a soldering iron or just cut it off, it's all good. You may now use the switch to decorate your shoes, hold onto the wiring though, it will come in handy later
6) cut three lengths of wire. They need to be long enough to stretch from the headstock, down the neck and connect with the end of the wires you just liberated from the effects switch, I'll let you figure out how long that would be. Personally, I used two black wires and one orange
7) take your 10Kohm potentiometer (you have one of those handy, right?) and wire it up to the lengths of wire you just cut. I put my orange wire on the middle contact because the middle contact is the important one. The other two can be any way round you feel like but if the middle one is wrong then your guitar will be on permanent wah-wah (or on permanent none, i forget which).
8) connect the wires to the old ones making sure the middle one is connected to the middle one (if you'll believe it). Personally, I used solder and heatshrink for all these connections.
9) remove the back off the neck. If you want to separate the neck from the body you'll need to disconnect the fret buttons from the pcb, you'll want to remember which goes where (unless you're cheating scum and want solo buttons up top, whatever). You'll also need to remember which way up the connector fits on (in mine every single connector bar one was contacts up, so it's easy). Personally, I didn't want the hassle of remembering what went where so I just left the neck on, to do that make sure that the middle screw at the end stays screwed in. Every other screw in the neck wants to come out (they're a bit short so if you don't have nails or don't like using your nails you'll want a flathead screwdriver handy to lever them out as you unscrew). The back of the neck will not come off until you take apart the headstock, you'll need a precision phillips screwdriver for the tiny screw in the plate inside the headstock that covers the last two screws connecting the back of the neck to the rest of it. You can now marvel at the fretboards as labelled for an xbox.
10) now you nee a hole for your wires to get through so make one up at the very end of the neck's headstock connector (hopefully this makes sense because there's no better way to explain it). The connector has two prongs and you can make the hole at the end of either of them, though the outside segment of the widest prong has the easiest access (I actually made a hole in both just in case I needed to move the wires to the other side of the fretboard). I just used my wire cutters to make the holes, it's pretty soft and simple plastic.
11) Unclip the machine heads. Be careful because the clips are pretty flimsy. With any luck you'll only break one at most and that'll make your decision of which tuning peg to replace. With the machine heads unclipped you can now cut out the tuning peg you don't want (I should really stop mixing my terminology), the plastic's flimsy so any wire cutter will do, and put the rest of them back in place.
12) Now just park your potentiometer in the hole (it should've come with a nut and a washer to clamp it down on the other side), line everything up and put it all back together again.

Now, the chances of you having found a 10K pot that's the same length as the tuning pegs on the strat are pretty slim, so if you want to use a hacksaw to cut it down to size, that's up to you, personally, I'm lazy and didn't bother. You'll also now have a hole where the effects switch was, I'll probably just put a sticker over it but you might call it an excuse to cover it with tape and paint the pick guard, each to his own.

So there we have it. I'm gonna have a shower then go stare at a sheet of metal and consider if i really want to try the bendy frets mod.

[shadebug]

ok, when i actually put the neck back together I realised that getting the wires to stay in place is damn near impossible. I managed it by creating a separate channel for each wire in the headstock connector, using a whole load of glue, turning the screws a little harder than usual and a whole load of praying. Also, there are support struts in the headstock which need removing before you can put it back together, what with the pot being in the way.

As for the bend, I'm not up to it. After the hassle of just getting the wires to fit in the damn neck I am just not good enough to pull it off. I was also considering a slide on the strumbar, but it seems liek space might be too tight there too. So I'm considering a different approach.

Whammy pedal.

I can think of 3 ways this might work.
1) push potentiometer. this is how real guitar pedals work, unfortunately the smallest I've seen one in is 100K and this needs to be 10k. Also, they're hella expensive for some reason
2) slide potentiometer. As before, have the potentiometer fixed upright and the pedal hooked to the slider, pedal goes down,slider goes down, pedal goes up, slider goes up. Simple...
3) rotary potentiometer at the hinge of the pedal. This one intrigues me because it seems naughty somehow

any ideas are welcome

[shadebug]

ok... I think I've figured it out.

the first option is, in fact, the easiest.

All I'd need to do, or so the theory goes, is rig up a 12Kohm resistor in parallel with the 100Kohm potentiometer found in a standard wah pedal, which should give me something just under an 11kohm potentiometer in all