What a crazy mission to transplant a Variax system in a Musicman Petrucci ?!

That is just what we decided to do with a french talented luthier Thibault Lecherf from Reims.

JANUARY 8th 2005

Let's begin. The Musicman & the Variax are at the luthier store now.

My original EBMM Petrucci 6 strings is a non-piezo version with no matching headstock, Pearl Redburst color.

We have settled all the last details. We have found the definitive color for the project. It’s a color based on the BMW Z4 roadster called Merlot rot (see photo).

MARCH 1st 2005

After two monthes of intense study of the variax circuit, we can say today that we see the end of the tunnel.

The guitar was damaged some monthes ago and and we decided to repaint it entirely. The finition is actually closed to the initial pearl redburst. All the holes were made in the body to welcome the variax circuit and all fits in !! We have just decided not to include to the battery cavity (We don't need some batteries !!!)

I installed one year ago a piezo bridge in the musicman, it was a LR Baggs X Bridge vintage. We decided to modify it to be compatible with variax circuit. But after some monthes, i managed to drill holes in the Musicman bridge for the piezo saddles. Now the Musicman bridge is back !!

The main challenge was the electronic stuff. How can we manage to mix variax & musicman circuits ? Teleplayer Jeff Miller opened some doors and proved it was possible, but there was still problems to use both systems (Varaix and Di Marzio at the same time.

Nickname in the Line6 forum helped us a lot explaining more accurately the Variax circuit. Thanks again bro.

The secret is to mute when we want the audio signal of the variax. The only way is to mute the V+ wire of the variax volume pot. The 3rd wire from the right when the neck is turned to left.

Moreover, I installed a Jack output only for DI MARZIO and i kept the Variax Jack stereo output only for the Variax system.

We have a special 3 way/12 PIN toggle switch that selects the system. This switch is identical to the EBMM Petrucci pickup selector.

The basic principle is that the 2 systems are always working. The special 3 way/12 PIN role is just to cut the hot wire of one system or another.

Position 1 : Jack : Di Marzio ON & Variax V+ wire muted

Position 2 : Jack : Di Marzio ON & Variax ON

Position 3 : Jack : DI Marzio Hot wire muted & Variax ON

Thanks to that I can use the Di Marzio signal and the Variax signal at the same time !

Photos were taken by the Luthier for each step of the conception.

Thanks to François for his precious help.

Djemass