axo151

yeah i hear his pickups take 3-4 months to ship though.......i just need a good humbucker for the bridge, and don't feel like waiting

do you like your pickup?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...mMakeTrack=true

I can't tell if that's one of those stewmac knockoffs or the real thing.......the seller was very sparse in information given, he didn't even say if it was for the neck or bridge, let alone output etc. Anyway, can anyone tell? Furthermore, has anyone had experience with those pickups? Thanks

hey guys, thanks for the support. at the moment, i don't have a lot of free time on my hands. i'm a sophmore in highschool near boston. the northeast has some great schools, and i got tossed right in the middle of it.......i go to a very good private school which requires a lot of my time (school starts at 8, i'm rarely home before 6, sometimes not even till 10, and then ive got hours and hours of homework -- and im slacker by their standards!). i've got a girlfriend too, that takes more time. i still manage to squeeze 2-3 hours or so of guitar playing in every day (theres always a guitar on my knee as i work or sit at the computer). i've had a lot of interest in guitar building for about a year, and i messed around this summer with stripping an old guitar, taking it apart to look at how it was put together, etc. i love old guitars and old amps, and i love guitars that feel great. the desire to have a guitar that felt great AND played great is what lead me to guitar building. anyway, eventually i will get around to building a guitar, and i think starting from a kit sounds like a great idea. thanks for all the ideas and support, maybe i'll find time after christmas to start reading up on this stuff. if i could get to the point where i actually know how to build a good sounding and playing guitar, i would be overjoyed. anyway, keep up the good work everyone, and thanks for the tips.

yeah but just a ballpark number. 200 dollars? 500 dollars? 1000 dollars?

edit: just saw the second half of your post. thanks, sounds good.

alright thanks guys iw ill do that. before i start doing this though, what sort of price am i looking at? assume that my pickups cost 150 bucks together. everything else will be standard good quality hardware. and nothing special with the wood, ash and maple.

i've never built a guitar. i have a fairly extensive knowledge about most of the harware and materials used to make a guitar (wood, pickups, fretwire, tuners, etc.). i want to try and build a tele. i own a strat and les paul, so this should be a nice addition, and i've heard that telecasters are easy to build. i'd probably go ash body/maple neck, nothing really special. anyway, how hard is this to do? i imagine that building a neck and getting the radius right must be pretty hard, inserting a truss rod seems like a tough task as well. maybe i'd buy a premade neck from stewmac or warmoth or something, but i'd sort of like the satisfaction of doing it myself. i realize this is a very general question, but could you give me a few answers to the effect of how hard is this to do, what type of tools will i need, how much will it cost me, can i get a nice playing guitar my first go around, etc. thanks

yeah that has to be awful for the neck. i don't think i would want something that strong anyway, can you imagine doing truss adjustments?

yeah i knwo the bardens are very different. if i had my way, i would put more bardens in my strat, but they are going for too much on ebay. i'm looking for a bridge humbucker and a middle position single coil, that will run me something like 300-350 on ebay, and i'd rather save 100 bucks and go with fralins, regardless of the fact that they are very different. vintage is what im looking for, this strat is a blue machine with balls (hence the bucker). it's got great attack and sustain which is nice to have in a strat. anyway, thanks for the reviews, i appreciate them

anyone have experience with fralin pickups? how do they compare to bardens? i want to get some fralin 'blues special' single coils for a strat, and then one of the 'unbuckers' to use as a coil tapper. anyone used them?

yeah i think i might stay away from throwing that microvibe in for a while. the other stuff will run me quite a bill. as far as replacement bodies, im not so sure, i like the one ive got. its not a looker, but the guitar plays nice, i dont want to screw up that. i wish there was some easier way to do it, but it looks like fitting an effect in their is really tough. any other ideas are welcome, thanks.

my blues band concert is friday, and after that i'm going to town on my strat. i need some explicit instructions on how to do one of the mods though, could someone please type some out? you'll be my hero forever. i know there are people on here that know how to do it.

first i'm doing these two mods (see links right below this paragraph), hopefully by myself. i'm pretty much no good at electrical anything. i can solder input jacks and stuff, but i've never done anything on this scale before. do you think i could just bring them to a tech printed out and be like "do this!"?

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/shielding/shield3.php

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/stratlovers.php

i'm replacing the middle pickup with a lindy fralin blues special, and the bridge pickup with this http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW

. i'm going to bring it in to have the pickups switched and the thing coil tapped, as i have no idea how to do that. i'm going to have a little switch put on the guitar, i'll be using all three pots as push pull ones later......when its in i always want an onboard preamp installed. they aren't too pricey and its a nice boost for soloing.

if all this works out and i'm not broke, i want to put this bridge on http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bridges,_tailp...ail_Bridge.html or something similar (non string through, hardtail). the trem is already blocked. i would then completely clear out the trem cavity. here is where i need the help. i want to buy this http://www.zzounds.com/item--VDLMICROVIBE in the trem cavity. i would take it apart, and just put the elctronics in the trem cavity. i think that i'll be able to fit it, but who knows. since i'll already have some little switches on the front of my guitar, i'm not going to mind another one, so if it can be wired so that theres an on off switch right on the front, that would be great. the two control knobs on the pedal could be wired on the front of the guitar (one on the middle tone pot as a push pull, the other would have to be fit somewhere on the pickguard, and i'd put a standard fender knob on there). anyway, does anyone know who to do this?

and thats about it. if i do all that it's going to cost something like 500 dollars. i think it's worth it as long as my tone doesn't start to deteriorate from all the crap that will now be in my signal chain. i can sit aroudn jamming, turn on my uni-vibe clone to trip out a solo, boost my guitar for a solo, or change the sound with all those pickup selecting options.....it's going to be very very cool if it works out. anyway, any help, comments, or info on what of this is easy to do, and what should be done by a tech would be appreciated. thanks for reading.

ok cool thanks. im really at a loss for understanding this, my knowledge of electornics is not good at all. i've got to do some cosmetic work on my strat first, when i get around to this i'll start another thread. thanks in advance though.

what is a TL061 opamp?

could you give me a link to this runoffgrooves stuff? i cant find it........thanks

actually i just took a look in the trem cavity. its pretty small, not big enough for a board i think. i might need to cut it a bit bigger. anyone got any idea how to do that?

im not experienced at all with this stuff so it may be an adventure. if it works out it should kick ass though. this strat is going to be a super frankenstrat. heres a brief description of whats going on......

the strat was 375 dollars used. its a '57 RI American Strat, retails for 1300. the neck pickup was replaced with a really nice joe barden s-deluxe. the middle pickup is stock. bridge is one of those mini humbuckers. i'm planning on refinishing it in a 2 tone sunburst. i then want to replace the middle and bridge pickups with some really twangy lindy fralin strat replacement pickups. im going to do a bit of modification as listed on www.guitarnuts.com. theres a mod for shielding and reducing feedback of your strat which i'll try. if that works out well i'll do the 'Strat lover's' mod. it basically puts a push/pull on the volume knob that activates the bridge pickup and puts it in series with whatever else is on so you can do weird pickup combinations, and there is a push/pull pot on the first tone knob which puts the neck pickup out of phase. after all this i'm going to try and put an overdrive pedal in the guitar (tubescreamer or OD2, or something that doesnt kill batteries), then i'll get it set up and have my frankenstrat.

with all that said, where i insert the overdrive pedal into the circuitry? right before the output jack? thanks

whatever has longest battery life, and the OD2 is cheaper. it looks like its a bit of a stripped down tubescreamer, so i assume it wont eat batteries.

yeah i would like a switch. do you think i could use a push pull pot, or do i need a real switch?

alright im still a little unfarmiliar, ive done next to no wiring in anything (aside from reapairing an input jack), but thank you. i think i'll look into trying this out, i'm just a bit worried by battery life.

i'd probably just replace a tone knob with the gain knob,a nd leave the other ones inside the trem cavity. i dont want to put a ton of knobs on the guitar. i liked the OD2 from guyatone because it seemed simpler. it got good reviews. and whats this about a stereo jack to disconnect the ground when i unplug....what?

i was just wondering how hard it is to actually do, and how useful it is. i would love to build a tubescreamer into my strat and mess with the gain knob. it would be great to be able to boost yourself and dial in a bit of overdrive without bending over and adjusting knobs or finding the pedal. how hard do you think this would actually be? do tubescreamers have boards in them? What other OD pedals get a nice tone with long battery life? If I install a bridge into my strat that has no trem, could I put the box in the trem cavity? Thanks

edit: how about the guyatone OD-2 overdrive?

someone has a signature handle thats longer. chet atkins maybe? its all on elderly, they are the best supplier, cheapest too.

here's an update.....

that liquid kutzit wasnt doing anything. i went to home depot to look for airline stripper or whatever, there was none. i ended up getting Klean-Strip's Strip-X for stain, varnish, and paint. It's a big jug of the stuff and I'll go to work tomorrow. Anyone used this stuff before? Any suggestions on use? Thanks

http://www.elderly.com/accessories/items/B500L-BLK.htm

http://www.elderly.com/accessories/items/B700L-BLK.htm

who's the man? this guy.

retention bars are somewhat useless, they only delay the thing going out. have it professionally installed by someone who knows exactly what they are doing, its worth it.