TLLL (The LewnWorx Ludicrously Large) BB TCML Rebuild Redux

Joined: 02 Dec 2003 Posts: 2705 Location: Dallas, TX

By Request...

This is a "reprint" of the article I wrote in November 2002, on my mods I do to equip my guitars with GK13 drivers for use with the Roland (and every body elses) Pitch to Midi converters, as well as the VG (VG88 & soon VG99) products.

This was the first guitar I did this too, but have done several others since with various refinements along the way. It's by no means the last, in fact the recently aquired 2002 Blue HT is the next, and the first that I will attempt a total stealth install on.

At any rate, here it is, in it's entirety..

Introduction

BraveDave who runs the Dean Owners of America Club and I had some email correspondence a while back about my Blueburst Timecapsule ML #6.

Essentially I’d described the complete rework of the electronics I’d planned, and he’d said that when I got it done it’d make for a neat bit on the DOA Newsletter.

Well, I finished the rework a while back but had been too busy working (and playing) to getting around to writing it up. Having read the last couple DOA newsletters, it became a bit apparent that Dave could use some material besides his latest acquisitions. (drool).

Dave attempted to post it on the DOA forum newsletter, but it was too large to fit.

So here goes. Notice: This is going to be long and somewhat geeky!

Background: For all the gory details you can read the “letters to Dean” on the main Dean site. Mine is the hideously long one. Just scroll down, you can’t miss it.

In a nutshell, I’d asked the Z man if it was possible to get a custom built Dean ML, mainly so I could equip its electronics to drive my Roland VG-88 and GR-33, which require a Hex Pickup. Dean replied that they were too swamped to get to it for some time, so it was time to punt.

I’d already installed the Roland GK2AH pickup and horrifically ugly guitar mount electronics wart on my 82 ML, but really wanted something a bit cleaner.

Shortly after the Letter To Dean, I bought the BlueBurst ML, TC#6 and my first thought was how to get it to drive my rig.

For those unfamiliar with the VG-88 and GR-33 here’s what they do in a nutshell:

Both the VG-88 and GR-33 use a hexaphonic pickup (one pickup for each string). This allows them to process each string separately.

The VG-88 is the guitar modeler to end all guitar modelers. You can build anything with this box. Accoustics, Banjos, Tele’s, Strat’s whatever. It’s really an amazing widget.

The GR-33 is a guitar synthesizer. It takes the audio from the strings and converts it to midi, allowing you to use the guitar to control a midi device. It’s onboard patches are pretty crappy, so my main use for it is to get midi out of my guitar. I then use the midi out to feed to my Logic Audio rig in order to drive software samplers, synths and whatnot.

As a result, I have to have a Hex pickup of some sort to drive the whole rig. Drilling holes was out of the question. No way. I did a bunch of research and found all the critical components to pull this off.

The main part of the electronics comes from RMC Pickups in California. Richard McClish (ergo RMC) makes Piezo equipped replacement saddles for a Tune-O-Matic bridge, as well as a nifty little onboard electronics module (PolyDrive 1) which makes the whole thing work.

The only problem with the PolyDrive is it has the standard GK connector which is this huge 13 pin DIN connector on it. The intent is that you blow a 1” hole through the side of your axe in the connector compartment. That obviously wasn’t going to work.

Furthermore, the jack compartment on the ML is dinky. There was no way to fit the Polydrive in it, even if I removed the 13 Pin DIN connector. What I was going to have to do is remote the connector and put the PolyDrive in the main electronics compartment.

What I needed was a replacement jack that I could put in the existing 1/4” phono jack plate that would carry all 13 conductors for the Hex pickup, as well as a few spares so I can also install a sustainer in the front neck pickup position.

What I found is connectors made by Hirose. More on these later.

Without further ado:

16 Steps to Hexifying A Time Capsule

First, I removed the strings, unsoldered all the stock electronics in the ML and removed them.

Next I removed the Bridge pickup.

Next I removed the existing saddles from the stock bridge, and replaced them with the RMC replacement Piezo equipped saddles. It became apparent I’d need to be able to tell which was which once I got the lines back in the guitar, so I took out a sharpie marker and put dots on each of the lines from the saddles (1 dot for string 1, 6 dots for string 6, etc).

The next step took a fair bit of figuring out. The replacement saddles needed to move back & forth so I could set the intonation, but they have these coaxial cables wired to them.

Obviously the cable itself would need to move along with the saddle, and not bind up. My first thought was to blow a single hole in the back of the rear pickup ring, but it would bind. What I settled on was a separate hole for each RMC pickup cable going into the ring. Then I’d bring the lines through the already existing internal routing on the ML back to the electronics compartment.

Now the tricky part would be how to get the lines back to the controls compartment without the 6 RMC cables binding on the two existing pickup cables. What I needed was to have the pickup cables come through closest to the top of the guitar face, and the RMC Cables under them. The solution turned out to be pretty simple.

I propped up the existing pickup cables with a foot from a stomp box so I could thread the RMC lines through under them. It was a little hairy handling the rear pickup upside down and backwards at the same time, while making sure that the RMC lines still could move without binding. This part took about 20 minutes.

Ok, now we have the lines through from the pickup cavity. While I was in there, I replaced the existing 3 way pickup selector cable with a new one (the original wouldn’t have enough length to hook up to the new electronics. It’s the fat grey line in the picture. The short thin black line is the ground, and the two somewhat fatter lines at the bottom of the cavity (the top of the guitar, as it’s on it’s face now) are the front and rear stock pickup cables. Once I’d checked that each of the RMC cables were free to move, I temporarily taped up the whole mess with masking tape (DO NOT USE GAFFER TAPE!) and flipped the ML back over.

Having done that, I could now reinstall the Rear pickup and put the Bridge with the RMC saddles in place. At this point I did some rough height setup based on measurements I’d taken before I removed the bridge in the first place. It’s worth noting here that the RMC saddles stand a bit taller than the stock saddles do, so you’d need to drop the bridge down a bit to compensate.

Now for the really gory parts:

Ok. Here’s the “these people are professionals. Do not attempt this at home” disclaimer.

Modifying the RMC Polydrive probably voids your warranty. Furthermore, it requires circuit board level solder work. In short, if you don’t know what you’re doing at this point, hire someone who does.

That said..

What you don’t see in this picture is the original Polydrive with the 13 pin DN GK connector on it. That’s because I wasn’t going to try doing that at home. I took it to work (we’re an electronics manufacturer) and used our professional desoldering station (it’s got a built in vacuum, digital temperature control and 1/4 second heatup) to remove the original connector. You can see the outline of where it was in the picture (it’s the white line on the PCB).

Next I had to find a cable that could get from the controls cavity all the way back to the jack cavity on the far end of the lower V wing on the ML. This was easier said than done. The existing routing hole is pretty small. What I needed was a 16 conductor + ground and shield cable that would fit. This is not exactly a stock item. After scouring the web for hours I had the following options:

1: Buy a 500’ reel of 16 con + shield wire for $680 (I need all of 2 feet).
2: Find something else.

Fortunately, one of our QA guys was around and found a simple solution. Computer printer parallel cables have 25 pins, and are shielded. So I found one, and lopped the ends off. I then pulled out 9 conductors to get down to 16. It also works out that they have the right AWG for PCB work.

Next, I spent 2 hours soldering the 13 pins onto the PCB. Note for you old pharts (like me): Your vision isn’t what it used to be. Get one of those tabletop magnifying things. Drink only enough coffee to stabilize the “haven’t had any coffee yet jitters. This is really dinky stuff, as you can see in the inset picture where my thumb is.

At this point, I mounted the replacement pots for the RMC Polydrive (it comes with 3, and a switch. I skipped the tone pot since there’s only 3 holes in the ML). I also ran the replacement cable from the 3 way switch cavity at this point. Finally I threaded the butchered parallel printer cable with the soldered on RMC Polydrive module back to the jack cavity. The easiest way to do this was to fish a single conductor through, then duct tape that to the parallel cable and pull it back. It’s a good idea to leave yourself some slack at both ends.

The next bit of soldering consists of connecting the RMC Piezo Saddle cables to the RMC Polydrive module. The 12 pads you see in the picture here are where they go. I put a towel on the back of the ML, set it in my lap, and put the soldering jig on top the towel.

Here we have the coax lines from the saddles attached to the polydrive module. You can see my cheezy sharpy dot labeling trick on the lines in this shot.

Okey Dokey.. The hard part is done. What was left in the control cavity was to split up the ribbon cable on the RMC Polydrive module and solder it’s various conductors to the 2 pots and 2 way momentary switch. I also wired the stock pickups to the 3 way selector switch, then connected it’s output to the magnetic pickup input on the polydrive. I taped up the slack ribbon cable with some masking tape, then mounted the polydrive in the control cavity with a couple drops of hot melt glue. I chose this because if for some insane reason I want to take the ML back to stock, I can do so without leaving a single mark inside or out.

What you see here is the back end of the Hirose 1/4” jack. It’s got 16 pins, plus ground in the exact same hole size as your garden variety 1/4” phone jack. The penny under it gives you an idea of how tiny this thing is. Those solder cups are 1/2 of 1 mm apart. This thing was probably the nastiest soldering job I’ve ever attempted. Soldering this jack to the other end of the parallel printer cable took me the better part of 2 hours.

Ok. I managed to get that in place and remount the jack. As you can see in the photo the connector holes are tiny. I probably should have wiped down the connector before taking the picture, but I was just glad to have the thing in place.

Here you can see the plug end of the Hirose. It’s 1/4” at it’s maximum diameter. The notch makes the connector keyed, and the rather clever design makes it impossible to plug it in wrong and bend the extremely tiny (and fragile) pins. Once you mate the plug end with the jack end, the outer part of the case screws down onto the threaded part of the jack giving you a rock solid connection. The screws on the jackplate will come loose before the connector will.

Then I took an existing stock GK13 cable and lopped one end off. After metering out the pinout color code I was ready to solder the plug end on the cable. I’ll take back what I said about the jack being the nastiest bit of soldering. This was far worse. I made 2 of these cable assemblies (one as a backup) and if I ever need to do it again, I’ll hire some 20 year old PCB production kid with eagle eye vision and rock steady hands to do it. This was truly not fun.

Ok. So here we have the finished product. The front knob controls the 0-5VDC control signal to the Roland stuff. The middle knob is a center detent blend control, which allows you to send either the stock pickups or the combined mono output of the RMC Piezo saddles to the Roland stuff. The little switch is a momentary 2 pole with center off that you use to change patches on the Roland stuff. You can see the modified GK cable with the Hirose connector on it at the top right.

Project Summary

• RMC Piezo Saddles: $350
• RMC PolyDrive I: $250
• Hirose Connectors: $200

• Not having to blow holes in my baby: Priceless.

Joined: 29 Nov 2003 Posts: 7639 Location: Florida

I always enjoyed this write up - good to see I can find it again.

Hey Mark - what's the story on the 2 spalted Caddies from DOA 2004?

Joined: 02 Dec 2003 Posts: 2705 Location: Dallas, TX

transblueZ wrote:

I always enjoyed this write up - good to see I can find it again.

Hey Mark - what's the story on the 2 spalted Caddies from DOA 2004?

Can we say "apparently indefinate hold"?

I was awaiting a CNC programming change that's prolly not gonna happen.

No worries. Since I've become such a Hardtail Hore of late, the direction I wanna go will involve HT's anyway, and I'm actually going to solve the bridge issue the Caddies were going to solve another way, which may even prove to be retrofittable. If so, I can do it on any axe and won't need a custom route anyways.

Joined: 31 May 2007 Posts: 1814 Location: Anywhere

this is a really amazing review, i always love reading these.

plus the pictures keep me entertained also. Laughing

if there were no pictures i wouldn't read them. Laughing

just kidding. thanks for posting this up.

Joined: 19 Jan 2007 Posts: 3200 Location: UK

Nice post thats the most complicated mod ive seen on a guitar involving electronics.

Good use of pinter cable nobody uses that serial cable no more, not sure if this would work but you might be able to use STP cable which is shielded but comes in 8 wires so you'd need to use two cables but its wrapped like a USB so it will save you alot of room (i think it is usb wire).

Is the pick up saddle contraption going to the VG-88 or the GR-33 this is whats confusing me, also how do these unit work with the guitar IE what sounds does it make?

Man so many questions to ask last one for now, with the midi out you can punch in lights efects on certain chords if you had it set up like that right ?

Great post as always your attention to detail makes a complicated post interesting !

Joined: 22 Nov 2005 Posts: 5299 Location: Central IL

Thats uber complicated! I wonder how it sounds...

Joined: 29 May 2007 Posts: 5911 Location: ill-adelphia

thanks for digging this up.
i'm saving the write-up and pictures for when i get my stuff together for my own MIDI conversion project (hopefully next year).

Joined: 04 Jun 2007 Posts: 205

Very cool guitar! Love that finish. Not sure if I would want the piezo system but at least you installed it cleanly. Smile

Joined: 02 Dec 2003 Posts: 2705 Location: Dallas, TX

BUCKETASS wrote:

WHO THE HELL WANTS PIEZO ON A METAL GUITAR? Laughing

I do. =).

Then again, I took the time to actually learn what one can do with this stuff.

Quote:

I GUESS I WILL SEND YOU A PM IN 20 YEARS TO GET THIS WRITE UP FROM YOU WHEN I'M ROCKING IN STARBUCKS!!! Laughing

Hey, don't knock Starbucks. With the recent price raises on the super double half caff with a twist of lime, it probably would pay 3x what The Sets does, and since they don't serve beer, you'd actually play faster on house drinks (Quad Expresso).