Jester700

I got a Breedlove Atlas. $640 for an auditorium sized cutaway, electronics, and solid rosewood back. It ROCKS and is head & shoulders above the Ibanezes I tried. I have a Taylor 412ce also, but I was looking for a smaller-than dread body that also had cutaway and (the hard part) a 1 11/16" nut. Most smaller guitars are now 1 3/4" like my Taylor. There are lots of good midrange asian axes if your needs are more "normal" - Yamahas, Carvin's Cobalts, Samick's Greg Bennett models, as well as LaSiDo's Canadian stuff (Art & Lutherie, Seagull, Simon & Patrick). But the Breedlove was the only one that fit the bill for me. I put $240 extra in it with a PUTW #54 pickup and a LR Baggs onboard preamp, and this puppy SINGS. Anyone want a Taylor 412?

I just got a Breedlove Atlas import (SR25). $600 for solid front & back (rosewood back) and electronics. This thing is awesome for the price. It even sounds better than my Taylor 412 because the body is bigger. It's tough to compete with Korean guitars at the low price points. As for REAL cheapos, the "Greg Bennett" Samick was the best $100 3/4 size student model I've seen.

Carvin uses graphite rods in all their necks. They used steel for one year, but I think they found the steel too heavy. My Carvin necks are very stable and fairly thin. I think the idea is, the rods flex but they flex less than any wood, plus they don't warp on their own. Their default is set to "straight". The stiffest, straightest necks I've ever seen were Steinberger, Modulus, and Moses, so there must be something to it...

Good luck, bro. From all I've read, I wouldn't deal with him if he gave it to me...

Try Rich at Ibanezrules, Brian at UniversalJems, or eBay. These are kinda hard to find, being a semi-custom color (though I've seen similar on other brands).

Go to both places. You never know what's on sale or a blowout, but more importantly, it's a learning thing. You want to play as many as you can get your hands on, to see what's out there. Also, CG might carry JUST THE THING for you while sammy may not.

No, you could use a push-pull switch to split both pickups. Or separate push-pulls if you want the flexibility of using one bucker and one single. There are other possibilities, but those 3 are probably the most popular.

Normally, pickups are wired in parallell. A humbucker is like two sc-pickups wired in series. Sounds cool when the two coils lie close to each other. Although I'm not sure that wiring two or more coils far from each other in series will sound good. You might get some weird cancellation effects. Try it. No, it's usually warmer and louder. I have a few combos on my guitar that I can do series or parallel, and the series is always warmer & louder. A regular strat could get pretty close to a humbucker sound this way.

He was on the first one - Lonesome Crow, but I think more well known for Lovedrive. Who knows what really happened? If he'd stayed with Scorps, maybe it wouldn't have been that way. Maybe he couldn't work as a team player; many guitar gods are temperamental diva types. If so, he sure paid for it. Or maybe it was all just rotten luck and he deserved much better.

Yeah, but in the US you can get a new one for that. If he needs the money, he needs to offer a deal.

He was never a big influence for me, but he *is* very good & tasteful. I got the essential UFO & MSG CDs because I was a big Vandenberg fan and had heard that they were similar. Yup. They are. I still prefer Vandenberg, because IMO the rest of the band, the songs, and the production are better; Michael's had some spotty sounding records. But the "essential" stuff at least is a "gotta have". Makes you wonder what it woulda been like if he'd have stayed with Scorpions. But then, I like Jabs, too (in fact, most people think I LOOK like Jabs!) It's a shame what happened to him, but artistic people often aren't very money savvy.

I have an Ibanez proline with the push buttons, and another push button assembly that I saw someone at a shop throwing away! I saved it and it's going on a guitar I'm making. It doesn't let you choose coil combinations, but you can preset a pickup combination. With 3 pickup buttons you can do any combination and also preset tapping the bridge pickup. So you could go from, say, bridge hum w/middle single to bridge single w/neck single. Or from bridge hum to all three pickups as singles. A little off topic, but I also wanted to ask, what are you trying to do? Maybe there's a way to do it without 3 poles. Is that a 1770? Those are nice. I look for them occasionally; the bound ebony sorta-ultra neck gets me going... Is the 3 pole question for me or musmanjam? I've settled on a double-barrel switching setup combining a standard 5-way, a 4-pole 5-way rotary, and a push-pull dual coil splitter. That'll probably happen this weekend... http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/doublebar...arrel/index.php

Actually, wouldn't it rock to have a small switching board that allowed you to hook up up to 6 coils and then connect them any way you wanted? Maybe even program the most used ones into user banks... I DID see an electronic switch some time ago, but it was very limited it what it allowed you to do.

I only have one reinforced neck (that I'm aware of); a Carvin (graphite rods). I LIKE that "solidness". In reality, it wouldn't be the deciding factor for me on a neck, but I do like that neck. It's not a better/worse thing for me, it's a "different" thing. Of course, if I were going for a vintage vibe it would not be as desirable.

yeah i have had that happen before...i believe it to be due to humidity and the effect of it on the speakers...no proof of that it just seems that way.here in central texas the humidity varies alot and i find sound is better on a dry and warm day.. Your explanation could well be true. It's another one of those durn near impossible to figure out things that you just have to take a best guess at.

I started a new thread, because I hijacked this one royally. Didn't mean to, but... http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...t=ST&f=2&t=5606

where is the proof... saying"it has been proven" is not valid without actual proof. if "auditory memory" is so poor,even amongst musicians who hear for a living,then how come some dick can change one knob just a little on your amp or eq and not only do you notice it,you go crazy trying to find the knob they touched. Several David Clark authored tests in Stereo Review articles in the 80's, at the least. I can dig for stuff on the net if you want. But it's accepted policy in listening tests to use ABX setups for the 2 reasons I'm talking about - auditory memory and mental coloration (listener bias). Tone knob switching *can* be a more obvious thing. Or not. And I'm not saying slight changes aren't perceptible; only that they're not necessary reliable. Another side of this is the scene where the sound you get doesn't turn you on like it did the previous day, even when you KNOW nobody touched the amp. Mental coloration. Or am I the only person that ever happened to?

Yeah, it's true. Less caffeine for me. That is one of my buttons, probably due to the many conversations I mentioned. But really, this kind of thinking is necessary IMO, because sometimes there's more going on than we sometimes recognize. Be well, and again, no offense meant to anyone.

For the record, I HAVE guitars that are similar but different mounting setups, and I HAVE changed the mounting in guitars (including the plastic to metal ring change). And I have not noticed a difference in any of them. The reason I'm being so vocal is that I've been in similar discussions before concerning stereo gear, and the common assumption is that the guy who can't hear the difference has lesser hearing acuity. I'm pointing out that it has been *proven* in the past that some people who have heard an obvious difference have been shown to be wrong about an audible difference existing. I'm not claiming that that *is* what's happening here; it could be that I'm nearly deaf or maybe my guitar/pickup combinations just don't show the effect. I am just pointing out that there are other possibilities so that people can better make up their own minds.

No excuses, West, I'm just presenting one side of the story, and a valid one. So are you, and everyone reading this forum should make their decisions for themselves. If they decide to ignore my words, I have no problem with that at all. It's very possible you heard a significant difference. It's possible that that difference is particular to your guitar, strings, pickups, and hardware. Or maybe it's generally applicable to a lot of people. Or maybe your perception was colored. The point is, there's no way for ME to know for sure what YOU experienced is valid. And vice versa, of course. But that's a great benefit of a forum; people can get lots of opinions to help decide. But one thing's for sure. Some of the stuff discussed here is theoretical, but limitations of auditory memory is not. If there is a delay of one single minute between trials in an ABX test, the test is pretty much considered invalid from a scientific standpoint. Of course, the bigger the difference, the longer the time; if you're comparing speakers and one set has blown tweeters, you could distinguish THAT over days! But IMO people need to understand these things when discussing subtle differences, because audiophiles have long convinced people of some goofy stuff and people actually perceived it. I use to use techniques based on these facts to sell stereo gear. No, I'm NOT proud of it... Now in reality, this can be a problem. Hypothetically, it doesn't let me just "believe you" when you say a bridge bucker sounds different from a neck single, which would of course be obvious. And in reality I'd trust you on this. Likewise if you were describing your opinion of, say, a PAF vs. a JB. But as the differences shrink, my skepticism rises. For everyone, not just you. I hope this discussion isn't pissing anyone off; I find it pretty interesting...

yes...that is exactly what i did with my vee tonally the difference was minimal... but for note definition...the steel mounting rings were infinately superior. keep in mind for what i play note definition is incrediblly important try playing "alter of sacrifice" sometime with poor note definition...it will make you think you are the worst guitarist in the world This is gonna sound harsh, so please try not to take this as a personal attack... It has been proven that human auditory memory is, in a word, poor. The time it took you to change the mounting in the same guitar invalidates the test all by itself, and since you say there was no tonal difference but one of definition, I think we're talking subtle changes here. Tests of stereo equipment (where I am more familiar) have shown that often people can CLEARLY hear differences between certain gear (say, an amp) and describe them eloquently. But when ABX tests were done (same gear, same subject), the subject could not even reliably identify which amp was being used. Why? The subjects had no reason to lie, and common thinking is they weren't, but the mind plays tricks on us, and the mind is half of the hearing equation. This is why examples are as flawed as theory - perception is fallable. I still think anecdotal evidence like yours is valuable. Since the tests are so tough to do, it's often all we have to go on after all. I just don't take it for gospel; I count it as one more data point. In our current example, I might specify direct mount pups on a new guitar, partly for looks and partly because it *may* help with note definition. But I wouldn't retrofit an existing guitar because there is more inherent risk in the procedure, it won't have the same visual improvement, and the sonic benefits *may* be nonexistant.

Do they really label these differently, if they're the same pickup? I mean, on older Gibsons & Fenders, the pups were actually the same exact thing, so would they really go through the hassle of making sure the writing was correctly oriented when you took the guitar apart? Of course, on newer guitars where the pups are different, I can see this being the case.

Sethmetal has some good info. But F spacing in normal humbuckers isn't a biggie, even in the bridge position. Humbuckers have a softer magnetic field, and less focused. I've never had issues with regular spaced buckers on floyded guitars, even at the bridge. Of course, it LOOKS a little funny. And if you have a single coil or the odd humbucker that uses magnets as polepieces, I'd stay with a F spaced.

Many people think there's a difference. A few think it's a big one, but most who think there *is* a difference think it's a subtle one. I think it's VERY subtle; so much so that I'm not sure that it really exists. The pickle is, there is only ONE way to truly verify this, due to the MANY variables in guitars & amps used for these things. Record a guitar onto a high quality medium, change the pup mounting in the *same* guitar and match the height that they were, and then use the same gear to record the new setup. Then compare the recordings, preferably with an ABX setup. Even THEN, there are variables you don't get when comparing recording & playback gear, MP3 codecs, etc. - because you could play the samples slightly differently each time. Of course, AFAIK nobody has done this, so we're all limited to anecdotal evidence. And most of that involves different guitars, different pups, amps, cables, etc. AND our notoriously poor human auditory memory. If you have to "remember" a sound to compare it to another one - even for just a minute - the test is pretty useless unless the change is a BIG one. And I don't mean the kind of change we're talking about here. So, mounting style is no big issue for me; I like the look of direct mount, but I'd certainly never change an existing guitar for it.

Remember the metal band Cinderella? They used to do it together - 2 guitars & 1 bass - synchronously, and in both directions (I think the video for "Save Me" has this). Seems silly now, but it was a "wow" when I first saw that. I think you need a slippery strap; 3 1/2" unfinished rawhide prolly isn't the best bet.