...and the Genesis I that became a project as well.

A Genesis I that I picked up on e(vil)bay came in today and guess what.... not everything was described completely. The locking nut assembly has got a problem. As you will see below, it is missing the square center backing plate which is no big deal, I can machine a new one in about 15 minutes. At left in the pic is the real problem, the chromed assembly cage is soft but those 4 mm screws are hard. You are looking at the thread from the upper tapped hole which secures the low E and the A string.

Seeing as spares is now closed can this chromed piece be found anywhere or am I left to fashion one of these as well? Really an ingenious little design to be sure. Anyone run into this before? I'm thinking that a heli-coil could be a workable shortcut in the meantime as well.



Wiring diagram will be next as the humbucker only works in the "out" position, but at least I knew that one going in.

Steve777 came up with a very elegant fix for just this problem....

http://forum.westoneguitars.net/t464-repairing-lock-nuts

... which reminds me; Steve are you going to post some pictures of this for us??

I've made a whole heap of the little shims as they are indeed quite easy to make and I find making things like that therapeutic!!

Thanks John for the link. We use that type of repair with the hardened inserts all the time at the shop so I knew in the back of my head I had that route available to me. Good to see others have had success in that regard. I will get pics up soon as well in the members forum.

One other option is that the same seller has an xa1330 he was unsuccessful in selling on evilbay and is looking to part it out now instead. My question would be how much of that model can be used for parts on an xa1530? I'm leaning towards offering to buy it whole just to save it from the cannibals anyway. He has already offered to send me the nut plate from that one as a replacement. His starting bid on the xa1330 was $187 w/$249 BIN, so what's a fair offer on one of these? Normal dings, no whammy, no hsc, missing all stringlock hardware but the back plate.

Just a thought, could a small clearance "divot" be drilled into the wood below the clamp bolts? This would allow you to use screws to the full depth (or slightly beyond) the thickness of the baseplate allowing the maximum threads to be utilised without the end of the bolt pushing the whole thing up from the surface.

That thought crossed my mind as well but you can never add material back. I would rather spend 2 minutes at the belt sander with the bolts customizing them. It is a workable fix just abit destructive for me.

Iceman wrote:Thanks John for the link.

No worries...

One other option is that the same seller has an xa1330 he was unsuccessful in selling on evilbay and is looking to part it out now instead. My question would be how much of that model can be used for parts on an xa1530? I'm leaning towards offering to buy it whole just to save it from the cannibals anyway. He has already offered to send me the nut plate from that one as a replacement. His starting bid on the xa1330 was $187 w/$249 BIN, so what's a fair offer on one of these? Normal dings, no whammy, no hsc, missing all stringlock hardware but the back plate.

Sounds a little high for essentially a stripped put guitar.... If it has Bendmaster Deluxe gear onboard - which it does according to the catalogue - then you're golden but I would suspect that the locking base is stripped out if the rest of the gear is gone... if it's in reasonable nick apart from the missing bits, then offer him a reasonably lowball figure and go from there...

Whist stripped out threads are a bummer, the main problem with these lock nuts is the length of bolts they use vis a vis string thickness. Irrespective of string gauge, all the oem bolts were the same length therefore the A/E bolt only catches the first couple or so threads in comparison to the other bolts.

Just make sure that you use three different length bolts if you want to use all of the threads in the holes. Considering the A/E bolt needs to be torqued down somewhat more than the other two, it seems madness to use such a shallow bolt. At least change that one for a longer length to reduce the risk of stripping in the future as this one is usually the first to go.

I'll see what I can do about pics but as the string lock is on the guitar ......

Looks like I may take a throw at machining one of these plates out of 304 stainless as a little "government" project as we like to call this sort of thing. Already have some tooling mocked up and will spend morning break with the CMM to generate a model to play with on the CAD/CAM system.

These 1 mm shims serve what purpose exactly? I am going on the assumption they are wear & tear items designed to be replaced as grooves develop, or do I have that wrong? I'm of a mind to test doing away with them and just milling channels for the strings to lie in, hoping to improve the grip by increasing the surface area each string would be in contact with.

Ideas? Thoughts anyone?

Oh..... my seller is intent on parting out the xa1330 he has. Said he had $150 into it and feels he can do better than $200 with it in pieces. He is sending the plate off that one to me and it has no stripped threads so that's that.

I will be repairing the current one with helicoils tomorrow and most likely will do all 3 bolt holes. The helicoils themselves are chrome coated spring steel so a strip out will become quite difficult in the future. Absolutely FABULOUS neck and playability on this Genesis, had quite the tussle getting my wife's hands off it.

Iceman wrote:These 1 mm shims serve what purpose exactly?

I don't really know why the design opted for those rather than a flat milled base other than the fact that the base is alloy and torquing down the strings into soft alloy is soon gonna wear huge channels into it, hence the steel shims....

Absolutely FABULOUS neck and playability on this Genesis,

Ain't it, though?! Wide, flat and fast, fast, fast...

Thorn made some lock bases a while ago which were resin with a steel insert where the bolts go; they worked very well indeed; lets have a look at the process you're going through to machine them, man - I love this sort of stuff!!

Planning on taking LOTS of pictures and posting a seperate thread when I'm done.

Meantime I am also getting ready to look onto the push/pull knob for the humbucker. Currently it only works in the pull position. Did not see a diagram on our copy of Thorn's archives. Anyone know if one of the other wiring schematics will suffice?

I did see today that there is a schematic for the Genesis II. Does anyone know if that will also work for a model I?

Don't have the wiring diagram, someone must have!!

Have you tried cleaning out the switch?

If it was a Genesis II wiring diagram, then it was mine. I sent it to Thorn about a year or so ago when I was rebuilding my Genesis as pictured in the avatar. To my knowledge, G2's didn't have a push pull switch for coil tap. It doesn't mean they shouldn't though!! However, I not certain of the output of a standard G2 HB as mine came without one. I replaced it with an Artec alnico 5 of some 15 Ohms.

As the SC's are quite powerful in their own right, be careful you don't get a big volume drop when you go to coil tap.

Took a peek inside last night and I wonder if that pull switch is wired wrong. Will post a pic tonight to further explain. The seller had said he had attempted to fix it himself.

Your Genesis I has the same configuration as a Pantera x300 with a tone control.
In which case it is no problem whatsoever

So here is the coil tap switch as it is currently wired...


The red and orange wires lead to the humbucker itself and the blue wire to the 5-way switch. My concern is with the red and orange wires being soldered both to the same post on the switch. Currently the humbucker only works in the out position. Is it possible each wire needs to be on their own post?

Couldn't see a wiring diagram for an x300 on the archive WB, are you meaning to say my wife's x390 would be similar enough for a direct comparison?

What's the black wire doing? is it connected to the switch? Looks like an earth wire?

Take a shot looking directly at the connections, it's hard to see from the side.

Here you are looking down the side of the cavity (90 degrees from the last pic.)


6 connection posts arranged 3x3 (vertically) and 3 connection posts at the lower base of the switch fanned horizontally. The upper left post has RED & ORANGE wires that join a shared shielded gang wire to the pickups. Next post below that a BARE wire that ends soldered to the lower base of the switch. No other wires on the other 4 posts.

The horizontal posts on the lower base have a BLUE wire on the center post that leads to the 5-way selector and a CAPACITOR?? on the outside post that the other end is soldered to the lower base and the BLACK wire you see is also runs from that same solder point to the housing side of the 5-way selector. I think you are correct WB in thinking that is the earth wire then.

Shot the switch itself with contact cleaner so unless half the switch is dead I'm at a loss for what is going on as I do not know the original wiring sequence.

Thanks for the assist.

Remove the orange wire and just solder the red to the switch. same lug.
Is the orange coming from the same p/up?
If so that should go to the 5 way switch


Post a pic. of the 5 way.

Here is the 5-way switch as requested...


8 connection posts arranged radially, 4 top and 4 bottom. Far upper left is RED to neck SC, mid upper left is DARK BLUE to middle SC, mid upper right BROWN to bridge HB, far upper right BLUE from base of push/pull switch and joined at 5-way going to one of 3 connection posts at the base of the volume control.

So the humbucker has 4 wires from it going to the controls as follows...
RED/ORANGE to one connection post on the push/pull
BROWN to the 5-way as described above
BLACK wire to the back surface of the volume control. This is another earth wire, maybe??

Whilst experimenting with the 5-way and what it routes where I did find out that the push/pull does in fact work, TO A DEGREE. It is active in the push position but only generates a small amount of sound and only if the tone is turned towards the bright setting. You can hear a return from about 75% - 100% of the tone knob range. I only realized this when I had my amp post setting up near the max while tapping the pu coils to check return.

Once this is corrected I'm going to write up this schematic and send it Barry's way for inclusion on our archive section. Nobody should go thru this again.

Welcome to the world of guitar wiring

I've sent you a PM

Oooooh, that gives me the willies.