This being my first try, I decided not to go crazy with mahogany and a stunning maple top. Instead, I raided my garage and started pulling out walnut and rock maple lumber that’s been sitting, waiting for a suitable project, for many, many years. This will save both save me a big chunk of change and, by deciding to use walnut, let’s me break out of the traditional LP build mentality that it has to be a perfect replica of a ‘59 burst and try some subtle variations on the theme.

I’ve done some woodwork in the past, but nothing recent and certainly nothing this exacting. I have the typical hand-held power tools as well as a drill press and table saw but nothing more elaborate and may use a nearby rental workshop for some of the build. What I don’t have is a load of spare time, maybe a few hours a week but not much more, so don’t expect this build thread to go too quickly.

As for the name, “goldnut variation #1,” it’s a silly play on words - goldtop walnut and, hopefully, the first of many builds. With apologies to J.S. Bach, here we go:

This evening, I pulled out an 1.5” x 3.5” x 29” blank of rock maple and resawed it down to 1/2” strips for the neck. The center strip is walnut, resawn down to 1/2”. The outer walnut billets were ripped from a single piece of stock, leftover from another project.

I came pretty close, especially considering the fence on my table saw is only accurate to about a yard, so I want to run them through a planer and try to get everything as close as I can.  I’m going to take my time on this one and do it right, even if it takes a while.

But GAS for an R9 proved irresistible. About a year ago, I started trying to hunt down an LP that would get me close to “old wood.” The few times that I found a great guitar, it was snatched up before I could get my act together. When a MyLesPaul.com forum member listed this one on eBay, I jumped. In addition to the old wood top, he thoughtfully upgraded it with all the good stuff—Peter Florence Voodoo ‘59 pickups (amazing), Dr. Vintage ‘50s wiring, Vintage Clone ABR-1, RS Guitarworks tailpiece, Historic Makeovers inlays. This is a great guitar.

Maybe it’s just the honeymoon, but I don’t think I’ve even picked up another guitar more than once in the past two weeks.

I did notice that in addition to what I expect is normal gain-stage noise, there was a fair bit of hum.  Too much.  Poking and prodding the leads going to V1-V3 didn’t seem to have any effect on the hum, so I began to think there was a problem with a ground point.  Up to this point each cap can and the transformer each had their own ground point.  The turret board and input jacks shared a common ground lug, drilled into the chassis between the volume pots and the input jacks (I noticed this on Greg Germino’s amps).  I re-ran the input jack grounds over to the buss bar on the turret board, next to the volume grounds, and then took another lead off the buss bar from the presence end back to the same point the transformer is grounded.  This helped a lot.  There’s still some hum when I start to turn the amp past home playing volumes that I need to work on.  I’ll probably take things apart again and ground each of the cap cans back to the same mounting point, creating a true star ground and see if that solves the problem. 

Othewise, I’m still getting used to the overall sonic signature.  Ch. 1 is a little brighter, and ch. 2 is a little muddier, than I would want individually.  Combine them, however, and things start to sound pretty good.  I would describe it as woody or stringly, but that doesn’t mean much.  Higher gain than I was anticipating, but still relatively articulate.  And I’m enjoying the “kerrang.”  Even my wife noticed the difference and said she prefers the JMP50 over my last build, a Matchless DC30 clone.

What’s next?  I just ordered a head case from Metro and will probably make some minor tweaks before I wrap it all up.  I may try a .022uf coupling cap and different bright cap in ch.1, and some different values in ch.2 to see if I can tame ch.1 and make ch.2 a little more aggressive.  I also want to swap out the 3A diodes for 1A fast recovery diodes and see how that sounds.  I might replace the 10k bulk resisters in the power supply with Vishay/Dales just to be consistent.  And, if I get really adventurous, I may try mounting the 5.6k swamp resistors on the turret board with leads down to V4 & V5, but I’m not sure how I would stake the turrets without taking the whole board out of the amp.  Otherwise, there’s not much else I feel compelled to do other than get some playing time in.

Initial power-on revealed a big problem - no voltage anywhere. No heater voltage, no HT voltage. Nada. I had reversed the twisted leads that run from the on/standby switches to the HT fuse and mains voltage selector. Easy to fix and no harm done. A few minutes later, I had this corrected and began testing voltage.

Almost everything was within normal range for an amp without tubes installed. The exception was V1, which showed nearly 2x the correct voltage on one pin and no voltage across pin 3. This was because in my late-night building, I had forgot to add a jumper between two cathode resistor/cathode bypass cap turrets that are done differently on a typical 1987 build. Again, this was an easy fix once I figured out what was wrong. After that was sorted out, all the voltages were within their normal ranges. I began installing tubes and the voltages all stayed in their normal ranges. So far, so good. When I tried to bias the EL34s with a 47k bias resistor, I was only able to bring them up to about 28mA. A quick change from 47k down to 33k let me bias the tubes at 40mA, so that was good too.

So, how did it work??? How did it sound???  To be continued!

  Sage advise is to build the basic amp first and test it to make sure it works before starting on on the mods.  Did I follow the sound advise?  No, I did not.  I went ahead and added a Lar/Mar PPIMV before firing it up for the first time.  It took a while to get the connections so I was happy with them, but I think it turned out very well in the end.

  The other end of the PPIMV is connected to pin 5 of V4 and V5 where the 5.6k resistors usually go.  I wasn’t comfortable leaving these to hang in the breeze so I put a piece of stripped wire insulation on the resistor leads.  It isn’t a rugged as I’d like, but it’s a good start.

  The obligatory gut shot.  You might not notice, I haven’t installed an indicator lamp yet.  I was going to use a Fender-style jeweled lamp that I have, but that requires a fairly large hole in the chassis so I’m undecided.  I need to take a few more better pictures of the guts so that the components are clearly visible.

  The back.  The transformers are still wrapped in paper at this point to prevent the black paint from getting scratched up.

  This gives a pretty good idea of the wiring.  The power supply end of the board is as the top right of the picture.  Both pairs of twisted yellow wires will connect to the chassis-mounted cap can, the one in the middle of the board goes to the cap can mounted next to the choke.  You should also be able to make out a yellow/green wire at the power supply end; this goes to the cap can that feeds the power supply.  The twisted red leads go to the HT taps on the power transformer.  Black/red leads are jumpers that connect various turrets.

  And here’s what it looks like from the top.  Not as much to see.  The twisted orange/green pair will to V4 and V5, pin 5.  These are usually routed beneath the board, but I put them up to so I can remove them easily when I install a Lar/Mar PPIMV.

  I used 8-32 standoffs from Mouser to secure the board.  Even though there are no clearance problems, 8-32 was probably too big and I should have used 6-32 instead.  And, oh fuck, one of the standoffs broke while I was tightening up the lock nut.

  The leads to the HT taps on the power transformer and cap cans are connected.

You get the idea.

  Here the here the flying leads are connected to the PEC pots.  Notice also the ground wires connected to a buss bar a the back of the turret board.  This idea came from Ceriatone and was necessary because you can’t solder buss bar to the stainless backs of the PEC pots so another grounding scheme had to be used.

  Why did I take another picture of the power transformer?  Because I was tired?

I was verytired at this point.  This was after Midnight, and I had worked on the amp for three or four hours.  My judgment must have been impaired by this point because instead of stopping for the night, I went on and started mounting components in the turret board.  No pictures, though.  (Note to self: stop working on amps when you’re so tired you can’t read resistor codes.)

  I’ve drilled and mounted turrets by hand in the past and, well, they weren’t that pretty.  This time around I used a laser-guide drill press and full-size paper template that I marked up so that all the turrets would line up.  With a guide mounted on the table, all I had to do was slide the Garolite along and drill each hole.  This is the next-best-thing to using a drilling template.

  I’m very happy with how the holes came out—they’re all lined up in neat rows and look very tidy and professional.  One thing I would do differently in the future is to cover both ides of the Garolite with masking tape so it doesn’t show the faint scratch lines you see.

  Here’s the finished turret board.  I used the same drill press with a turret staking tool in the chuck to swage the turrets.  I didn’t take a picture of the process, but it went very quickly—just push the turret into place, put the long end into a small mandrel, and crank down on the drill press.  I think the whole process of cutting the Garolite, drilling the holes and swaging the turrets took less than two hours.

  Underside of the laydown power transformer from Brian Wallace at Marstrans.  The top bell is painted black to match the chassis.

  A close-up of the power tube sockets, output impedance selector switch (left), mains selector switch (right) and HT fuse holder.  I’m pretty happy with how my soldering skills are progressing and the work looks neat and tidy over all. 

You can also see the lock nuts I used wherever possible.  Almost all the hardware is stainless steel. 

  Speaker jacks and impedance selector switch.  Yawn.

PEC potentiometers mounted in the chassis.  The PEC pots are stainless steel and you can’t solder the buss bar to the back of the case like you can with other brands, so I’ll need to change the grounding scheme around a little to accomodate this.

  I spent an hour or two twisting and soldering the heater wires.  I’m trying to emulate the neurotically neat wiring I’ve seen on some Marshall clones.  I don’t know if I’ll be 100% successful, but it’s a good goal.

  I also installed and grounded the IEC plug socket.  Not very exciting, but it felt good to get some work done on the amp while waiting for the replacement power transformer to arrive.

  This is a good shot of the new amp stand.  It’s sturdy, even while working on the amp.  Peek under the amp and you can see the transformer and choke wrapped in paper and taped up—I don’t want to scratch it any more than I already have.

I ordered the transformers and choke from Brian Wallace at Marstran last week and they arrived yesterday.  Brian has a great reputation building first-class iron for Marshall style amps, and he’s a good guy to deal with—highly recommended.  Good thing, too, because I ordered the wrong power transformer.  I thought it was the right one, but his JMP50 power transformer (1202-164) is upright mount so I had to sent the original back in favor of a JTM50 unit (1202-118) which is laydown mount, hence the large gaping hole you see.  It was a bit of a disappointment when I figured out that I screwed up, but I’ve waited a year so another week to get the right power transformer won’t kill me.

I decided to paint the transformer bells and choke frame black before mounting them, just to carry the black theme through the whole project.  I cleaned, sanded and prepped the parts last night then sprayed them with black with a Rustoleum rattle-can. 

  Here’s the back.  You can see the rectangular mounting hole for the IEC power cord socket at the right; this is one of the reasons I like Nik’s chassis.  I alo like having the voltage selector.  Good stuff.

  And here’s the front.  Nice shiny black transformer bell already a bit nicked up because I was too impatient to let the paint dry for more than a day before working on things. 

  Inside the chassis, you can see where I took a wire wheel to remove the powder coating near the socket mounting holes and grounding points to ensure a descent ground connection.  You can also see how I oriented the cap cans and installed the ground lugs.

Oh, well, while disappointing this isn’t the end of the world.  The pickups sound good in a low-output vintage PAF kind of way.  I can either leave them as-is or replace them with DiMarzio DP163 “Bluesbucker” pickups which I’m kind of interested in trying out anyway. 

UPDATE:  According to DiMarzio, the YHNP2BKL may be the stock bridge pickup.  Interesting….

After receiving my new used Yamaha Weddington Classic yesterday, I was eager to see just what the differences are between the Classic and Custom.  They’re both red and have a tuning fork logo on the headstock, right?  So what differentiates the more expensive Custom from the Classic in the Weddington lineup?  Let’s take a closer look (the Classic is on the left in the pictures below).

Starting with the headstock, there are couple of differences.  While both have the Yamaha tuning fork logo and rosewood veneer on the front of the headstock, they sport different flourish inlays.  (Note that neither says “Yamaha” aside from the truss rod cover.  Personally, I like the fact that they don’t have the brand name on the headstock.)  Also, notice that the Weddington Classic headstock (left) in unbound, while the Custom headstock has white-black-white triple binding; this is a difference we’ll see throughout.  You may not be able to tell from the photos, but the hardware is also slightly different.  The Classic uses chrome hardware, while the Custom sports nickle plated.  The tuners are different, too.

Moving down the fretboard, there are more differences.  The Weddington Custom has a position marker in the first position, while the Classic does not.  The Classic uses smaller mother-of-pearl inlays that are bisected with something that looks like black plastic, while the Custom has more ornate mother-of-pearl inlays that are bisected with abalone or pau.  More significantly for tone, the Classic has a rosewood fretboard, while the Custom is ebony.  And, damn does the ebony fretboard look good with the contrasting position markers.  It also feels great.  Like polished glass.  As with the headstock, the neck on the Custom has white-black-white triple binding; the Classic’s neck is bound with single-ply cream. 

The fretboard was very dry in these pictures which is why it looks so light.  I applied several coats of Fret Doctor oil when I changed the strings.  The oil soaked into the wood very quickly and now the fretboard is considerably darker, and feels better to the touch.  Good stuff!

I will also pause and mention that I never paid much attention to the frets on the Custom before.  They seemed kind of wide and flat, but not abnormally so.  Once I started comparing the two, I realized that the frets on the Classic were the original shape, but the Custom had a fret leveling at some point in its previous life.  Hence they felt wider, flatter and lower.  No big deal, they both feel fine.

The bodies are identical on the two guitars, at least as far as I can tell.  The tops were most likely “carved” (routed or milled, actually) using CNC machinery, which explains why there is little or no variance between the two.  You can see the maple cap on both guitars if you look below the binding near the neck joint.  I haven’t tried to measure the maple cap, but I would guess it is around 3/4” thick underneath the bridge.  All Customs had transparent or semi-transparent finishes like red, amber, or burst.  The Classics had either semi-transparent burst finishes or opaque red or black. 

These photos show the difference in the color fairly well.  The Classic has single-ply cream binding while the Custom has the same white-black-white three-ply binding as seen on the neck and headstock.  There is clearly a difference in color, with the Custom being much lighter than the Classic.

Flip the guitar over and look at the back of the headstock and there are a few more differences to be found.  You can see more clearly that the tuning machines are different.  Aside from the difference in finish—chrome on the Classic and nickle on the Custom—the tuning machines themselves are different.  They feel different in operation, too, and I’ll have to investigate this further.  The neck construction is also different.  The Classic has a three-piece mahogany laminated neck while the Custom has is five-piece construction.  Although you can’t tell through the red finish, I think the two strips flanking the center are maple.  At least they looked like maple on my amber Weddington.  The other strips are mahogany.  I should also mention that the neck on the Classic is slightly thicker front-to-back than the Custom; I suspect the Custom is more representative of Weddingtons in general.

Back to the back.  Here again you can see the difference in neck construction—3-ply laminate on the Classic and 5-ply laminate on the Custom.  The neck joint and back carve is the same on both.  Both guitars have two piece backs, though you have to look carefully at the end grain on the lower bout to see this.  Interestingly, my first Weddington Custom had a one-piece back.  I didn’t notice that it improved the guitar in a meaningful way.

That should help anyone who wants to know more about the differences between the Weddington Custom and Classic.  There may be other differences that I didn’t pick up on, but I think that covers almost everything.  Everything except how they feel and sound, that is.  First and foremost, the Classic has a larger neck which I much prefer.  It still isn’t up in the baseball-bat girth like some Gibson reissues, but it is noticeably meatier.  Rich Lasner has said that all the necks were specified the same, but Yamaha may have done some “shop floor engineering” on some of them.  I suspect that’s what happened here since the other Weddington Custom I owned was also very thin.  Another difference I noticed immediately is that the Classic feels lighter by a fair bit.  I don’t have a scale, but I would guess that it might be four ounces lighter. 

And finally, how does it sound?  That’s a good question and one that was ultimately decided by the pickups more that any minor differences between the two guitars.  Whereas the Custom has the original DiMarzio pickups in place, I think the pickups in the Classic have been replaced at some point.  I haven’t pulled them out yet, but I did open up the electronics cavity cover in the back and noticed what looked like a little reworking and new solder joints.  More importantly, the DiMarzios in the Custom are much hotter and more aggressive.  Whatever pickups are in the Classic are much more “vintage” sounding.  They sound good, just not as aggressive.  I’m guessing they’re DiMarzio PAF-style but will need to pull them out to verify.  Stay tuned for more!

Not bad for $50 and a half-hour’s work.  Now the Weddington is much easier to setup and plays better.  I don’t know that I hear a big difference in how it sounds, but the setup is a big improvement.

Despite this, I have always had a weakness for Les Pauls.  They are, after all, a rock icon.  I may not be able to play like Jimmy Page, but at least I can have the same guitar (if you believe the marketeers).  So I look at places like Mark’s Guitar Loft, Guitar Sale, Route 66, and other vendors who specialize in historic Les Pauls.  And I watch eBay.  Despite the sluggish economy, the Les Pauls I’m interested in, the historic reissues, have maintained a solid resale value.  It’s not unusual to see a nice used ‘59 reissue sell for nearly $4k.  Ouch.  But I’ve been mentally preparing myself for this stringed sticker-shock.  In fact, the reason I sold my amber Yamaha Weddignton was to purchase a very cool “old wood” flametop 1958 Les Paul reissue I found at a local retailer.

But things are never that easy. 

I also found NOS Gibson Johnny A. signature model for sale at another local dealer.  I’ve seen this guitar before, too, and just can’t get it out of my mind.  It’s a handsome guitar, to be sure, in “sunset glow” burst with gold hardware.  But it’s not completely over-the-top flame maple.  Like the ‘58 LP, you could say it’s “old wood” cool.  But it has a neck that feels nearly as big as the ‘58 LP—bigger and rounder than the typical Johnny A.  Yeah, this thing exudes cool, and it doesn’t exhibit any of the typical quality control problems I’ve seen in other instruments.  Sure, it could use a good setup but that’s easy.  But the most important thing is the sound, and the Johnny A excel.  It’s 25.5” scale gives it that extra bit of clarity, definition and “percussiveness” reminiscent of P90s.  Very, very cool.  Search the Les Paul Forum, or The Gear Page, and there’s tons of info, and it’s all good news.

Now I’m wrestling with which one of these great instruments is more deserving of my hard-earned cash and if I’m willing to part with something else from my small collection to make room and free up some cash.  Life’s full of tough choices, innit?