Adrian Belew Project - Help Everyone

[Browndog Owner]

Hello Everyone,

I have decided to take the plunge and make my own Adrian Belew Parker for the fun, challenge, and heck of it. I am going to be using a Parker Dragon Fly as my base. It’s a single, single, humbucker Volume, Tone, Tone, 5 way switch.

Today a Variax 6 guitar that I bought on eBay arrived, and I am going to order a Sustainiac system in the coming days.

My first question is, I suppose that I would need to order the single coil version of the Sustainiac for the neck, as I can’t fit the humbucker, and having said that, what do you guys suggest as the single coil pickup that I should put in the middle position?

Also, does anyone have a schematic of the Belew so that I could follow some sort of road map on this project?

Thanks (in advance) everyone!

[mmmguitar]

I’m afraid what’s in this manual is the most info we have:

_files/Manuals/Parker_Belew_Fly_Handbook.pdf

If you can track down Dennis Anesi, he may respect your endeavor enough to share some info.

Which model Variax? If it’s 1.0, then I think I recall the 300 and 500 boards requiring more modification to fit than the 600 and 700 parts.

Any thoughts on reverse-engineering the tone pot with the end-of-travel SPST detent? Also, are you going full-on RMC Polydrive as with the original, or trying for the Graphtech circuitry?

FWIW, I’m working on my own Belew Fly projects, minus the Variax (I scratch that itch by owning a JTV 89F). One of these years, I’ll finally get around to posting stuff to do with it.

[Browndog Owner]

Great info and questions. Thanks. Lots I have to think about. I’m thinking of keeping my root beer dragonfly as is and using a Nitefly with custom drill holed pick guard (WD Music) to make it look clean and professional with controls in the appropriate locations. This will also give me the option of installing the sustainiac humbucker in the neck as originally planned.

The RMC option sounds pricier than the Graphtech option. Any suggestions? The jury is out on this one lol

I couldn’t get what you meant by reverse engineering the tone knob(?) This is all new to me. I was a literature major in college.

I don’t know what Variax I have yet, but I’ll let you know. I hope that I have the 500 or 600 as you mentioned. How can I identify if it’s a 500 or 600?

Thanks for all your help guys.

[Browndog Owner]

Mmmguitar, tell me about your Belew project.

[mmmguitar]

In case you haven’t read, I ramble quite a bit in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=140

The Belew tone pot is/was a common DPDT push-pull to turn the Sustainiac feedback on and off (by connecting a wire to ground with one side of the switch), somehow modified to have an end-of-travel detent that acted as a SPST to connect two wires for the sake of activating the octave-up Sustainiac feedback mode. The pots used for the Belew model were initially parted together by Axel Rudich (for the prototype), then fabricated by Dennis Anesi following Axel’s unfortunate death.

I don’t recall if it was @Dayn who put a Variax in a NiteFly, but someone on the old board did. I started a Variax 300 transplant into an Ibanez in what must have been 2011, but couldn’t tell you where in the continental US any of that stuff may be, now. I’d like to attempt a JTV transplant eventually, but I have…*looks over at room piled with guitars* a few projects ahead of such ambitions. I’m very much looking forward to discussing your project along the way.

@jb63 was going for a Belew-style project involving the RMC saddles and preamp, but I haven’t exchanged emails with him for a few months to know if he ever got around to buying or installing them.

The short of my own Belew project is that I have four Flys, and am gradually turning each into a Marc signature Fly (heavily inspired by Ade’s). So long as the brand is dead, I’ll claim to be a signature artist until someone from Exertis|JAM demands I stop.

I work at a pretty slow rate, in an attempt to avoid burning myself out on the hobby. Pictured (in the midst of restringing) is a Supreme I’ve been tinkering with since 2020, alongside the next patient* (routed for the Sustainiac driver, with far more work to go). Forgive the horrible lighting from my trying to find a place in my house to lean them against a wall, at night. Because I tend to never want to see another guitar again once I’ve finished putting the labor into one, I’ve been working on other projects before I resume the Fly ordeal.

The Supreme's control layout is
-dual gang master volume for magnetic/13 pin signal,
-push-push tone for Sustainiac feedback on/off,
-Freeway selector switch for humbucker/single voicings,
-Sustainiac normal/mix/harmonic mode toggle, and
-mag/mix/midi toggle for the 13 pin cable.

The rear cavity cover has a battery on/off switch, like the Belew model. If I ever get around to building or obtaining a Belew tone pot, I can replace the Sustainiac mode switch with Graph Tech's program up/down momentary toggle. I’m foregoing the headaches of Variax installation due to not being thrilled with how they were incorporated into the Belews, in the first place (my Roland gear covers most of the same guitar modeling ground, and the 2.0 Variax I already have sounds better, anyway).

*If anyone's wondering, that messed up part of the tangerine Fly's bridge pup rout was done by a previous owner. It looks like they routed half a channel for the Roland GK internal wire snake before they realized it wouldn't work.

[Fly Rod]

@ Browndog Owner where you able to get that Neck From Mark @ Maxwell's House of Music??
Just wondered
Can't wait to see what you have cooking

Need to get back to routing the top of the Deluxe
Very Soon!!
Gary

IIRC He was interested in this NECK
That Middle pickup might also be of interest TOO!! Hmmmm??

Maxwell's House of Music
# 812-283-3304
Or email Mike
[email protected]
Mark Maxwell Owner

[Browndog Owner]

Hello Fly Rod,

Thanks for asking. Yes, I called them up and the woman on the phone (acted?) didn't know what I was talking about. "A Parker neck? We don't have any. Where'd you see this?" etc. I was almost expecting them to ask me "What's a Parker guitar?" lol If you know them, could you contact them on my behalf? Maybe I got the wrong salesperson?

[Fly Rod]

You Did For Sure get the wrong Person
It might take a trip over there to talk to Mark Maxwell
When I do I will get better pics & see what he wants for the neck & middle pickup
He has a Fly unfinished body hanging way up yonder that I was told had a crack in the neck
Don't think it ever got the fiberglass carbon fiber put on, Must have happened when the truss rod was being installed

[Browndog Owner]

Thank you. Please let me know what transpires, and tell him about the staff personnel who wasn’t able to assist a customer out of ignorance.

[Browndog Owner]

Does anyone know why Parker went with an RMC (piezo?) saddles on the Adrian Belew model rather than the cheaper Ghost saddles? I'm trying to build one of these guitar.

[mmmguitar]

Does anyone know why Parker went with an RMC (piezo?) saddles on the Adrian Belew model rather than the cheaper Ghost saddles? I'm trying to build one of these guitar.

The surface-level reason is that the Fly Ghost saddles didn’t exist at the start of the Belew’s R&D period.

When I talked with Adrian about his sig guitars in 2013 (not long after the DF842AB started getting some marketing behind it), he was unaware the Fly Ghost saddles existed. The impression I got was that he carried the RMC saddles and PolyDrive board over between sig iterations because 1. he was sticking with what he knew, and 2. USM sort of strong-armed him into putting his name on the new line as some weird credibility stunt they felt he owed them after the company had spent so much money making his first sig model.

The under-the-hood reasons for the RMC saddles is that the PolyDrive preamp is the heart of the Belew sig; and removes the need for separate buffers driving the acoustic, 13 pin, and Variax boards, all while being powered through an outboard supply for the sake of isolating the 9 volt battery driving the Sustainiac. I’ve read that the RMC saddles ended up demonstrating a higher failure rate than the Graphtech ones, but have no firsthand experience. Regardless, anyone hoping to reproduce a Belew either has to go with the RMC PolyDrive or else re-engineer the entire thing to get the separate circuits and power supplies to play nice with one another.

This linked post of mine goes a bit more in-depth on the topic (though unfortunately isn’t as technical as we’d all like it to be):
viewtopic.php?p=681#p68

Scrolling down to the YouTube vid of Dennis going through the guitar also sheds a little more light on how all the boards work together.

[Browndog Owner]

Excellent info. Thanks. I wrote to the people at RMC and they said that the RMC pieces that I need to build my own Belew is as follows:

1 set PBPF14-6 Pow'r Bridge PF 6-string 14" leads $ 349.
1 P-D 1 K Poly-Drive 1 miniature poly preamp $ 379.

A bit of reference for you.

[mmmguitar]

Thanks, @Browndog Owner. I’ll add the parts numbers to my own Belew thread.

[Browndog Owner]

Nice

[mmmguitar]

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned elsewhere that there’s a Belew Fly variation very few people seem to know about: Adrian replaced the Variax in one of his Flys with the Antares ATG luthier kit (perfect intonation, rather than onboard guitar modeling). If you end up having to go off the beaten path for whatever reason, tracking one of those kits down may be enticing to consider.

[Browndog Owner]

Good to know. I had no idea about this. An ideal, cheaper combination would be a Fernandez sustainer in the neck position, Ghost saddles w/Hexpander, and Variax 6. I'm thinking about using this combination in my build. I'll pass on the Roland GK-2 pickup. What do you think?

[mmmguitar]

An ideal, cheaper combination would be a Fernandez sustainer in the neck position, Ghost saddles w/Hexpander, and Variax 6. I'm thinking about using this combination in my build. I'll pass on the Roland GK-2 pickup. What do you think?

I had a bad experience with Sustainiac circa 2011, but still ended up going with it for my 2021 projects over Fernandes because it’s simply a better product in every respect (particularly in the matter of taking up less crucial space in the Fly control cavity). If you’re going with Fernandes because you already have the kit, it will require more upfront work. I’ve had a Sustainiac install guide for the Fly that I typed up a year ago, but I’ve been holding out on posting it until I get another sustainer project done. If you do end up going Fernandes, I’d love to see the work documented.

Unless you’re careful to use only one circuit at a time (such as with a power toggle switch), you’ll need to tap off the Ghost saddles and fabricate a buffer circuit to drive the Variax and Hexpander inputs simultaneously (which is what the RMC PolyDrive preamp essentially does). If you want a circuit that can run 13 pin and acoustic sounds simultaneously, Graphtech has that covered with the Hexpander/Acoustiphonic boards piggybacking on each other in parallel - But you may want to bite the bullet and go all RMC if you’re incorporating the Variax.

I recall some people at VGuitarForums and the Line6 board having used Ghost saddles to drive a Variax in parallel with the Hexpander. Your best bet is to ask at VGuitar and get the thoughts of an expert such as Elantric:

https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?board=136.0

Like you, I prefer the clean look of using saddle elements instead of a GK pickup. But the GK is, in fact, the better performing of the two; due to piezo-driven hex systems having inherent crosstalk issues (Richard McClish’s saddle elements and PolyDrive are designed around minimizing this through mechanically decoupling the elements and highpass-filtering certain subsonic crosstalk frequencies; and is likely the first reason why Axel Rudich went with RMC when designing the Belew circuitry). Honestly, the function-over-form approach is to drive the Variax circuit with the saddles, have the mag/Sustainiac circuit feed into a GK pickup-fed 13 pin system, then use two nine volt batteries to power the Variax and Sustainiac. But form over such function is exactly how Axel Rudich ended up arriving the Belew design compromises.

Edit: Here’s a rambling project diary by someone with similar Belewminded ambitions:

http://lazlotronic.com/blog.html?fbclid ... hW0_7HkmuY