Harley Benton SC Guitar Kit - MOD Ep 13

Welcome to the Next Project!
This is the 13th installment of a rather large modification project. In this episode, I'll be continuing the modification process of the Thomann/Harley Benton SC Guitar Kit.

0:05 - project intro

I need to complete this data... hang on!


Filtertron Pickup Kit:
https://www.amplifiedparts.com/produc...

or

https://www.tubesandmore.com/products...

Filtertron 1/4” Alnico 5, Rough Cast Bar Magnet:
https://www.philadelphialuthiertools....

Remington Industries Magnet Wire:
https://www.remingtonindustries.com/m...

Where do I begin?
I’ve had 2 Filtertron pickup kits on hand for about a year at this point, I have built a pickup winder (another project), then kept putting off actually winding pickups. I did a couple initial test runs, wound a couple pickups… then did some modifications to the pickup winder to help it function better, but that’s another story.

For this guitar kit mod, I was torn between winding P-90 or the Filtertron pickups. There are so many LP style guitars with P-90s, I decide to go with the Trons.
Not having much winding experience, and no real knowledge of the filtertron wind count or wire choice, I set out to do a bunch of reading. Problem was, there wasn’t/isn’t that much out there on winding FilterTrons.
The bulk of the info that I gained was from the TDPRI.com forum. Those folks share a lot and my hat is off to the info and data they had posted.

Back to the garage!
I use the FIltertron Parts kit from amplifiedparts.com, and a replacement magnet from Philidelphia Luthiers Supply. The winding wire is from Remington Industries, I’ve purchased a lot of other wire from them.

The bobbins needed to be prepped, edges smoothed and burrs removed.
Once the bobbins started spinning, the process went really well. I put 3600 winds on each bobbin for the bridge, and 3400 for the neck. Time will tell if a greater variance is needed, but for now I’ll roll with what I have.

Soldering the lead wires and getting everything under the covers was really much harder than winding the bobbins, not what I expected.

With the covers soldered on, I dunked the pickups in a mixture of metaled paraffin and bee’s wax. Sealed the jar and drew a vacuum using a brake bleeder hand pump. I had see/read about this on the TDPRI forum, and seen it on Will Gelvin’s YouTube channel as well. The process went well.

On to the wiring of the guitar.
I found a wiring diagram for 2v, 1t and a 3way switch online, and started prepping parts.
I don’t know what capacitor I’ll used yet, so I bypassed the capacitor for the meantime.

With all the wiring in place, I strung up the guitar and gave it a very-rough tuning.
New string blues, as they are stretching, also I think the absence of a back on the body is impacting tuning stability, but I just wanted to see if it would make noise, and it does.
I have yet to actually mount the pickups in the body, as they are taped in place at the moment… tacky, I know.

Please be sure to Ring the Bell and Subscribe so you are notified when the Build Video drops, and leave a comment. I greatly appreciate feedback.

I probably should state the obvious, so here it goes. There is no good reason to do any of the things you will witness in this video.

I hope you enjoy the video, and stay tuned for SC Kit mod videos - Coming Soon!

NOTE: This is for entertainment, this is not a training video in any way, unless you are looking for the wrong way to do most things.
Enjoy at your own risk. Cheers!

#diykitchallenge22 #diykitchallenge #harleybenton