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Vintage Kawai neck-through fix up


Grangur

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The ideal would be not modifying the bass - you’ve got good pickups currently… but it doesn’t work as a system - so I guess my suggestion would be work out the receipy you want to follow and mimic the whole system - rather than just get different good pickups…

 

in my head pickup wise I would be thinking active flat response EMG pickups, or low impedance Barts or something

 and then a twaekable standard preamp or alembic style filter preamp 


or go the whole hog with multi coil pickups and filters á la Wal… 

 

ild not go for anything Fender style response

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35 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Any chance of being able to work out exactly what was going on in the original pickups and then replicating that?

it's some kind of proprietary active circuit, with the controls linking back to it, sealed in Epoxy. I searched the web for hours when I had the chance to buy one of these and there a lots of people with dead pickups, and no ones managed to get in and trace/measure to make a replica

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The pickups are out of the bass and sent Special Delivery to Martin.

With any luck they will be there soon.

Checking the neck pickup, before sending: When connecting the pup to the socket directly,  the pup seemed to work on the G and D, but not the E and A. That was odd.

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That's what happens to a lot of Aria MB pickups from the 80's. They're split coil, like a precision, in one pickup housing. Frequently one of the coils dies. Perhaps as the epoxy ages it shrinks and rips the wire in the coil. Either way, it's not an unfamiliar problem with Matsumoku epoxy-sealed pickups from the 80's and it's very hard to find something which sounds the same.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The latest update is I ordered a template for routing the pickup cavities to suit the MM style humbuckers.

Mick ordered the Wikinson WSME4 pickups. They were delivered to me and the work has begun.

There really isn't much wood to remove, but it's still slow work with a Dremel and the small router attachment and small router bits.

Initially I thought it's burning more than cutting. The truth is the cut away wood is that fine it's like smoke. Definitely a situation for wearing a mask to protect the lungs. I don't know what the wood is, but some exotic woods can be killers in the lungs.

 

The inserts cut need to be cut deeper. But this is as far as the Dremel router bit will reach. The next stage will be cut without the template in place.

20230209_135928.thumb.jpg.baa4cc550bb7a2a987dd4a246bfb3c51.jpg20230209_220310.thumb.jpg.14d6bade368bd9c42cdfa302f54644e2.jpg

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That bass is an awesome looking axe.  !!    Be great to see it  back into it's finished state

 

Going back in the thread re. soldering, i've had a WEP  937D +   for many years and it has never failed. It comes with a host of different tips too.

 

It's a 75W machine, though there is WEP 937D  ( not the + model )  at 40W.

 

https://botland.store/soldering-stations/1025-soldering-station-wep-937d-75w-5907558240764.html

 

 

 

WEP.thumb.jpg.98d9e762ba3bb83017dff939f40f6571.jpg

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Today a pupil cried off with a sick wife he cares for. (I'm a driving instructor.) So I cracked on with some more routing and drilling of the pickup screw holes.

 

For drilling the holes for the screws I used a pillar drill as this makes sure to get the holes put in vertically. A significant concern, when drilling is also to be certain that I'm not going to drill right through to the back. So I used a Vernier to measure the body to be 42mm thick and the pickup pocket to be 25mm. That leaves 17mm of wood available for the drill hole. I drilled the holes to be 10mm deep.

 

I hate screwing the pickups in place. What really bugs me is the pathetically soft metal they make the screws from. I made a mistake of not drilling one of the holes deep enough and due to this the screwdriver, which isn't a great fit in the tiny screw head, chewed the life out of the cross-head of the screw. So I fitted another screw.

 

After fitting the pickups I've now re-fitted the bridge and strings. Then gave it a preliminary setup, so the neck is back under tension.

 

Next stage is to solder the electrics. Then intonation and the final setup.

 

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The white stuff you can see is where I did have 2 sided tape holding foam in place for the pickups. In the final assembly I've now used springs.

20230215_133121.thumb.jpg.e249b2388020e00c3e33e1df383080e8.jpg

 

 

Edited by Grangur
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All soldering done, pots and knobs fitted. 

 

Both switches are as per the specifications by Leland Sklar, "DFA" functionality!

 

Set up and ready for return.

 

Strange as it may seem... The bridge saddles may be straight, but the intonation seems fine like this. This has been checked as far up as the 17th fret.

 

20230215_213041.thumb.jpg.7f411a7b8e27e194e0e87c6babc58c58.jpg

 20230215_213030.thumb.jpg.06c387f03ced575d2aa71399a64114d9.jpg

 

 

Edited by Grangur
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