Mysteries of X350 Pushbutton Switching

john_kidder said:

How many options are there?

If I were back in my lab, I'd ask someone to make a replaceable switch assembly for a test bed. Might there be a stock switch plate that fits close enough, that could have holes drilled, switches mounted, etc.? Find a suitable jack for the wires from the pickups, with a corresponding plug from the switch assembly? Then one could swap assemblies in and out at will.

I will get a cheap new binding on the back just to hold it together. Then, when you have figured out the options and a plan of attack, I'll start the guitar on its way.

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I don't know if there's a stock assembly that'd work, but a piece of blank pickguard material should be easy to cut to shape: basically just a rectangle with rounded corners, plus whater holes/slots for new switch(es) and pots(s).

Once you've found out the depth of the switchplate, you'd get some pickguard material, enough to make a guard too.
You figure the pitting by the nut came from contact with a vinyl guitar strap.

A page on filling chips in fingerboards.
Filling divits in a fingerboard. Something you'd practice on a beater first. Otherwise, bingo!

john_kidder said:

The back bindng is shot.

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Carefully remove binding and replace with closest match. Try a thin colored wash on scrap, to try an match the natural aging? I'm thinking tinted lacquer?

Layers of ply are separating on the waist of the bass rim.

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The plywood is delaminating, shoot some thin hideglue under the separations and clamp down with a sandbag? Maybe even a heated sandbag?

The peghead surface looks corroded near the nut, as if it had been eaten away by something.

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Interesting use of an amalgamator solution to repair a crazed finish. Lacquer drop and a cork block/2500 grit to repair?

The pickguard is amazingly warped.

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Make a repo from the warped guard (just in case. ) Gentle heat and slow and gentle compression to try to flatten it out?

The frets are shot, and the fingerboard has huge divots all up and down the neck - Eiichi the luthier said it looked as if had been played by an aggressive blues guy who never cut his fingernails.

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Repairing fingerboard divots.

It's had a replacement neck binding sometime, which seems to have been heatshrunk over the ends of the frets.

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Considering that it needs a refret, that may or not be a problem. My Gretsch has nibs on it's binding. Maybe there are nibs on this one?

What do you all think? I'm ready to start the ball rolling.

Default said:

My Gretsch has nibs on it's binding. Maybe there are nibs on this one?

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What's a 'nib' in its spare time?

Shaping binding for Gibson-style fingerboards
Gibson binds some fingerboards with the binding glued flush to the ends of the frets. This requires “nibs” along the length of the binding to match these fret positions. To do this, tape the binding into the channel and trace the location of each fret with a sharp pen or pencil. Remove the binding and cut it to shape, nipping away between these nibs with a band saw.

stolen from Stewart-McDonald

Speaking of Harmony, has anyone out there discovered what little tone monsters the Harmony H-15 solid bodies are?

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Just yesterday I was playing the H-15V I bought a while back for $100 and marveling at what a little beast it is. But I'll tell you what Moto, I'll trade it to you for one of your Starfire IIIs. Reasonable?

Reasonable?

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Uh...no.

Those Bobkats are frisky, but they're no match for the DeArmond goodness on a SFIII. A musician buddy of mine bought the first H-15 I set up and he uses it all the time. He leaves his '64 335 home where it safe and ventures out with an ax that can stand the rough and tumble of the roadhouse. I'm working on another for him now. One good Bobkat deserves another...

Good things to report all around. Hideglue is the miracle man with the TM button I need. The old button was not seated firmly because there was a glob of hardened glue inside the slot on the button. I cleaned it out and the generic button now seats nicely. All it needs is a nice TM on it. There was nothing wrong with the switch shaft. Thanks, Hideglue!

The maze of capacitors continue to baffle me. Before diving inside, I'm wondering if anyone has a wiring diagram for the X350, hopefully one showing the tone caps that are placed in secret locations. The cap connected to the tone pot on mine is very, very subtle, nothing at all like the strangulation cap connected to the neck pickup circuit. Rolling off the tone with the tone knob only takes a little hair off the treble, not much more.

Anyone have a picture of the wiring harness from one of these things? I'm prepared to pull the guts out straightaway, but I'd love to know what to expect. Are the caps connected to the neck and middle pickup switches such that they can be literally "clipped", or do they need to be removed with a jumper wire soldered in their place?

The patient is on the table. An capectomy is imminent.

Cap clipping; without the circuit diagram it's difficult to be certain, but caps will only have two functions on this switch, and maybe only one. Most likely, the caps are there to shunt some treble to ground, in which case you simply clip them out and don't replace with a jumper wire. If you do put a jumper wire in those cases, you'll ground the pickup and it will go dead. Possibly there are some caps in series with the signal, which would cut out bass frequencies from the signal ( I have had this arrangement on an old levin archtop). In those cases, you jumper the cap with a plain wire.

What I'd do, IF you can handle a soldering iron, is proceed step by step and unsolder one end of each cap, observing the effect on the sound carefully. If the signal gets brighter and louder when you do this, it's a cap to ground and you can clip it or ( better) unsolder it, having noted its position. If the sound goes dead when you unsolder one end, try a plain wire jumper and see what happens; if you suddenly get more bass than before, it's a ''bass choke'' cap, and you can jumper it.

If you're not handy with a soldering iron, I'd suggest holding back on a mass unclipping program without a circuit diagram, although I guess the chances of doing irreversible harm are small, so long as you save the caps and note their positions in case you need to reinstate them, or have a tech do it.

Good luck!

Chris,

Many thanks for that helpful information. I've done a lot of soldering and monkeying around with harnesses, pots and caps, but I've never encountered a bass choke before. My guess is the 350 is only shunting high frequencies to ground. You're right; there's no great damage if I keep track of what goes where. Still, a wiring diagram would be real handy. Anyone have such a road map? (Hans?)

The 350 must be set free.

Bill

One question for you pothead 350 owners, do you find the tone knob control to be particularly subtle? That is, when I roll my tone completely off, it only knocks a bit of the treble off unlike most other tone caps.

Thanks...

Bill

I clipped the caps out of my 1960 X 350 and it sounds markedly better. The tone controll functions normally.

Clip em. You'll be happy you did. I did this a decade ago and never looked back! 8)

Billy D and Guitarman,

Thanks for the nudge. A capectomy is scheduled. Report will follow! 8)

B

B - You probably don't need any further encouragement, but I'm a satisfied customer of the capectomy! :lol: On my '54/56 X-175 there was a single cap on the neck pickup draining all the wonderful high-end. Clipping it unleashed the full tonal potential. There's no desire to go back to mud-land!

Whoa, Val! I hadn't thought to look for a strangulation cap on my '59 175. Where would this evil-doer lurk, exactly? At the pickup or at the pot? The switch? I wonder when they stopped all that capping around with their guitars? I just played my "new" '60 X-350, and it's striking how much tone the cap squad bleeds off. I can't wait to shake the little buggers off. Thanks for the tip!

You would know if your X-175 has the 'strangulation cap'... the neck pickup would only permit that woofy bass tone if that was the case (like the tone control rolled all the way off)... but below is where the cap was on mine, right at the 3-way toggle switch - not where one might expect it to be... I just snipped it at one end and tie-wrapped in place in case a (crazy) future owner (surely after I'm dead) wants to return it to stock.

There are no stranglecaps on my '60 Capri, but I had a '59 X-175 that had weird stacked dual-pots for the volume controls and 2 additional caps in that arrangement... I never did trace that circuit out, but you could see the extra hardware through the f-hole.

This has been a very interesting thread! Has anyone ever tried to replace the 50 year old cap with a new one of equal value to see what it sounded like? I know caps degrade and can eventually fail - at least in amps. Just curious if the original sound form the early 60s is what i is being heard in 2010.

That's a great question cc. In this case, I think Guild's intention was to emulate a dark jazz guitar sound, or even provide facility for playing bass lines using the neck pickup. I don't know that for sure, but the early Tele had that setup as well so it's reasonable for Guild to follow suit. I think the capacitor in my guitar was working as expected, and I would anticipate the same result (mud! haha...) if I replaced it with a new one.

valcotone said:

That's a great question cc. In this case, I think Guild's intention was to emulate a dark jazz guitar sound, or even provide facility for playing bass lines using the neck pickup. I don't know that for sure, but the early Tele had that setup as well so it's reasonable for Guild to follow suit. I think the capacitor in my guitar was working as expected, and I would anticipate the same result (mud! haha...) if I replaced it with a new one.

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That's a good point! I'd forgotten about the funky tone circuit in early Teles and Esquires.