I began by spraying a few extra coats of paint on to the body. While waiting for these to dry I soldered the wires on to the four touch pad connections to allow these to be connected to the serial connector in the guitar.
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| Touch pad connections soldered to wires ready to be put in to the guitar |
I also cut a front mount to hold the touch pad in place on the guitar body. This was cut from a plastic box but may be replaced at a later date if a stronger and/or more attractive material is found.
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| The front mount cut for the touch pad |
Once the paint was dry, a chisel was used to carefully level off the top ridge of the support for the touch pad and two additional pieces of wood were screwed in to either side of the kaoss pad cavity to brace the touch pad against the front mount.
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| Touch pad cavity with supports on three sides and a small section filed out at the bottom to allow space for the ribbon cable to fold own in to the hole. |
Some parts of the outside edge of the guitar body would not allow the paint to stick and so have been left for now so that the electronic side of the project can be completed. I will most likely come back to these after the project is finished.
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| Part of the body where the paint would not stick. |
Next the various parts of the guitar electronics were added to the body. The bridge and tailpiece bushings were hammered in to place as the holes drilled were a very tight fit. Then the pickups, selector switch and volume and tone potentiometers were put in to place with wires fed through to the various cavities.
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| Pick-ups and 3-way selector in position with wires fed through the cavities to be connected |
The Pickups were then soldered to the pots. The main problem at this stage was that the wiring provided had already had some of the soldering completed but what had already been done did not match any wiring diagrams that I could find, however I managed to combine information from several to complete the circuit.
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| Volume & Tone Pots in position and wired up |
Then the three-way selector was wired up. This was difficult due to the fairly low quality of the wires that came with the guitar body.
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| 3-Way Selector Switch connected up |
While the volume and tone pots were being connected up, the hold button was also put in to place and the wires connected to it fed through the additional hole drilled for the kaoss pad wiring.
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| Hold Button in position between the volume & tone pots |
The pickups and pots were then all connected up the the input jack which was screwed in to place.
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| Input Jack Connections: 1 = Hot, 2 = Ground, 3 = Input Jack Tip |
The two wires for the hold switch were then connected to the serial port. Once all of this was complete the touch pad was put in to the guitar and wired through to this same serial port.
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| Hold Button connected to serial connector |
To ensure that the various kaoss pad connections matched to their original locations, the serial port on the guitar was wired identically to the one on the kaoss pad using the arrangement shown here:
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| 1-4 = Four Touch Pad Connections, 5-6 = Hold Button, X = Unused |
Finally, the tuning pegs were attached to the headstock of the guitar and the kaoss pad connection was tested.
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| Tuning Pegs attached to head |
The remaining steps should be completed tomorrow. These are as follows:
- Cover the back of the kaoss pad cavity
- Glue nut to the headstock
- Add scratch plate to the guitar
- Put strings on the guitar and test the pickups/pots/selector switch
- Attach strap buttons
- Cover the hole in the kaoss pad & attach the serial connector to the cover.
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