As much fun as it is to scavenge for vintage parts, there comes a time when everything must be pressed into service. With the impending completion of The Crow, it’s time to gather things together and get ready for assembly.
This is one of the Jensen-made, oil-filled tone capacitors that I’ll be using. I sourced it from my friend Steve at Angela Instruments, and it’s matched perfectly to the single coil Charlie Christian pickups. The idea is to cut some of the highs but not completely kill the wonderful midrange that the pickups produce. I had the reclusive pickup guru John Grail examine the pickups and pots to help me with my decision. John has been restoring vintage pickups for the big boys since the 1960s and he really knows his stuff. True to form, he refused to be photographed.
Here’s the quartet of NOS potentiometers, the caps and the Western Electric wire I’ll be sewing into The Crow. I’ve got a few hundred of the last USA made CTS pots and John and I went through them all to find the matched set for this build.
I made a down and dirty wiring fixture from a scrap of maple that puts all the components in place while I solder everything together. Wiring this guitar really is like building a ship in a bottle—The Crow has no opening on the back. Everything has to go through the small door in the bridge pickup route.
Everything is noted in the journal. I’ve attached some pieces of the wire and pickup insulation tape to the journal page. One of the pots was so far from tolerance that I decided to take it apart to study. When I was done with it, I glued it into the journal.
Of course, during any build like this things will change. In the journal, I’ll just cross out the old entry and make a new note with my thoughts on why the change was made.
Next up, the hardware.
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