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avengers63

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Everything posted by avengers63

  1. I'd not have considered the clamping notch on the inside piece of the mold. Rather obvious in hindsight.
  2. You sound a lot like me. A random, likely bad , certainly bizarre ides wandered into your head. It's so "out there" that you are now you are obligated to make it into reality.
  3. Well, we have the sound clips here, soooooo....... I think they sound 10X better. To my ear, the stock pups were completely unusable. The bridge was bland & dead, and the neck was even tinnier than the bridge.
  4. 2 reasons 1) I'd have to undo all of the wiring going through the hole already. Not that it can't me done, but it'd be a huge PITA. 2) Since I moved here 4 years ago, I haven't been able to find the long drill bits I'd use to do this, and I currently refuse to buy another. 3) If I'm gonna just make another body next year, I don't wanna put any more effort into it. If I don't make another body, I can get a Gretsch White Falcon copy on AliExpress for <$300 and do some upgrades, including these pups. Honestly, this is the most likely option. 4) Frustration leads to rage quitting.
  5. It has to accommodate 2 4-conductor pickup wires, 2 wires going from the individual volume pots to the switch, and another coming back from the master volume. The original HBs were single conductor, so this explains the lack of space.
  6. Before i get going.... I like to put a towel down onto the table before I worn on my guitars. There are several reasons, all of which you can realize for yourself. Tonight I just grabbed the next one out of the cabinet without a second thought. After laying it out on the table.... I don't know what those kids did to it, and I'm better off not knowing. All I know is that it's going straight into the "rags" pile, and that I don't really want to touch it again. So does anyone remember this one? Only the old heads have a chance. It's a copy of the Gretsch Thunderbird. Mahogany body, thin maple cap, chechen neck, cocobolo fretboard, Gretsch humbuckers, There's a 3-way toggle, 2V, 1T, and master V. I was still buying the cheapest hardware available, so it all tarnished from sitting out for prolly 10+ years. A few weeks ago, TV Jones had a sale on their blemished pickups. The TV Classics are normally about @$160. These were @$100. Like any sensible guitar addict, I realized this was finally the time to get the real thing and put them into the Thunderbird. TRUTH: If there was a blemish of any type on either pickup, I couldn't find it. They both came with foam spacers and wood screws for direct mounting, and a pair of tabs and necessary screws for PG/ring mounting. In case y'all were wondering how they worked, here's a couple of pictuires. I also got a pair of rings for them. @$&.00 is highway robbery for pickup rings, but these are the only ones with the opening sized for TV Jones, so I went for it. I made some sound samples of the Gretsch HBs, but they won't be making an appearance today. I haven't picked this guitar up in a while. Like, in several years. Honestly, I'm embarassed by it. It's not that I didn't know what I was doing when I made it, it's that it's REALLY sloppy. I can't believe I had the balls to enter it into GOTM. It was on this first-in-years handling that I decided I was going to have to make another body for it next year. The neck is fine, so it can be kept. Everything else screwed to the body except the jack, switch, neck screws/bushings, and strap pins had to go. So I got the old pups out and put in the new neck. I tested it without strings, and it worked. That's the beauty of a straight pup swap - it's just 2 hot & 2 ground. All the rest already works. When I tried to put in the bridge, it all ground to a halt. The hole going from the bridge pup cavity to the control cavity is just too small. The wire will NOT go through no matter what I tried. Believe me, I tried everything. I've done this dance before and I know all the moves. So f* it. I took the pups and salvageable parts, put them into a box, and closed the door on the whole thing. The body & all the crap screwed to it can go into the burn pile. The rest sits on a shelf, probably until after we move next year.
  7. How thick is the body? It looks like it'll weigh more than a LP.
  8. I actually bought these on Amazon "used". That means they were a return. IIRC, they retailed for over $70, but I got these for around $50. $70 may or may not be right, but we all know Hipshots aren't cheap, so $50ish for a gold set is pretty damn good.
  9. At least now I know not to waste the extra money on staggered tuners.
  10. That's what it's looking like to me too.
  11. A NIGHT TO MYSELF!!!!!! Just me and my guitars. I wanna (emotionally) lay them all out and roll around on them. I don't get out much. Not a lot of human contact. It'll make ya weird. Hipshot locking tuners. No string lock needed. They're also staggered, so hopefully no trees needed either. I'm going to wait and see on whether I need to cut any relied as the strings cross the end of the fretboard. Kahler-like trem from Schaller. I'm only guessing, but it can't be any newer than the 90's. Kahler went out of fashion sometime in there, so the market for similar products would also dry up. I didn't get the original screws so I had to improvise. The rear are brass-like construction screws, The front are gold P90 screws. Use what ya got. Black chrome neck plate and bushing. Glamour shot before I get into the wiring. IDK if I'll be able to finish it up tonight, so this might be all ya get for another week.
  12. I want to hear a "Strat" with 3 Tele bridge pups. BUT..... as it's the copper base plate that makes the magic, a traditional Strat set with baseplates would be just as interesting. Planet Tone said they would make them for an additional $15/ea. A 1/16" copper sheet is <$10 on Amazon. Makes me wanna try it out.
  13. I've come to enjoy Alnico II. V is versatile and a safe go-to, but it's also become generic. And magnetized rubber magnets like you'll find in the cheap Tiescos. They have a really cool vibe you can't get with anything else. Nobody that I'm aware of will use what is equavalent to a refrigerator magnet to make an accurate reproduction. They'll use A-V, but that sounds completely different.
  14. I'VE GONE NUTS!!! More accurately: I've gone string guide. I use a zero fret, so the nut is reduced to a string guide to hold them in proper position. This allows me to make it from wood matching the fretboard. In this case, cherry. Next is to drill the tuner holes and re-oil some bits. Then I can finally go on to final assembly.
  15. For the past couple of months, I've been going further and further down the rabbit hole of pickup theory and construction. The magnet type comparisons have REALLY opened my eyes... or ears as it were. These two dudes have been an invaluable source of information: https://www.youtube.com/@CSGuitars https://www.youtube.com/@DylanTalksTone They both cut through the marketing, voodoo, and various other piles of BS and get to the real, unbiased information.
  16. I accidentally said "series" twice. That one is on me. Just for the sake of being thorough... In order to cancel out the hum of a single coil, you must pair it with another single whose magnetic polarity is opposite of the first. So the middle pickup of a strat set and the second coil of a HB are reverse polarity. A traditional HB is two coils wired in series. The signal passes through one coil at a time before going out to the amp. This produces a more powerful signal with a beefier low end at the cost of some high frequencies. Position 2 & 4 on a Strat has the coils in parallel. This runs the signal through both coils at the same time. This is a less powerful signal but retains most of the characteristics of a single coil. A HB can be wired either in series or parallel. It can also be enacted through a DPDT switch.
  17. That's actually a relief. Based on the lack of responses, I was really wondering if anyone was listening to the sound samples.
  18. Yes it is. But there are two differences. One, the coils are pretty far apart as compared to a HB. This will detect the vibrations at different points of the string as opposed to the two coils of a HB essentially getting the vibrations from the same point. The second is, IIRC, a HB is in series where positions 2 & 4 on a Strat are in series. It's still hum cancelling, but it's a different way of doing it.
  19. I now prefer single coils. I started playing in 1987. I was all abut Hair Metal/hard rock at the time. Hard rock/metal was built on the foundation of a humbucker through a Marshall. This led me to the false mindset that singles had no balls and were the bets-male soy boys of pickups. Teles were for country, which is the antithesis of metal, and were therefore a clearly inferior instrument. I was still in high school: young, still kinda dumb, and extremely opinionated. I'm still pretty opinionated, but I'm now able to hear other opinions with a critical ear. So fast forward 35 years and I'm now heavily drawn to the single coil. The Tele bridge is just the neatest thing in the world. The harder the twang, the better. For harder applications, I'm leaning towards the P90. A HB is still great in the right applications, but those are becoming less prominent. I'm also leaning more towards overdrive instead of distortion. I'll always love the high gain of my youth, but a nice, warm, saturated OD with a s/c just resonates with me at this point in my life. So have any of you older players gone through a similar journey?
  20. HOLY CRAP! Scotty finally proved himself to be human afterall. Welcome to being me, buddy! On a serious note, have you considered making a plug?
  21. SOUND SAMPLES The rig is an Orange Micro Terror head into a Randall 8" cab. It's all recorded as cell phone videos with the audio extracted. Relatively poor quality, but good enugh to get the idea. neck old neck old.mp3 neck new neck new.mp3 neck/middle old neck mid old.mp3 neck/middle new neck mid new.mp3 middle old mid old.mp3 middle new mid new.mp3 middle/bridge old I THOUGHT the old bridge had a coil split in this position. It did not. The upgrade does. mid bridge old.mp3 mid/bridge new mid bridge new.mp3 bridge old bridge old.mp3 bridge new bridge new.mp3 The new pickups made an incredible difference. The side by side really points out how mediocre the cheap replacements were.
  22. As I documented in another thread, I bought a satin metallic pink Ibanez S561. Sometimes you see a thing that is normally outside your normal wheelhouse that absolutely speaks to you. This is one of those things. The original owner swapped out the pickups. This was my plan also, so I certainly can't blame him for the swap. What I CAN blame him for is swapping the cheap stock pickups with cheap Chinese pickups. On a personal note, I've never understood the fascination with Seymour Duncan's Invader. I'm sure it's a fine pickup, but it's just not my thing mostly because of the looks. But then there's the S/Cs that have the big head pole pieces just to ride the coat-tails of the appearance of an Invader.. I just hate these out of principle. That being said, the singles don't sound bad, they just don't sound good. They sound like a s/c should sound, but the tone is generic and a little brittle. There was something else off about them, but I couldn't put my finger on it. More on this later. The HB is harsh, super bright, overpowered for the singles, and overall horrible. At this point Id have laid money on them all being ceramic. Now, there's nothing wrong with ceramic magnets provided you have the right knowledge of how to wind them and the appropriate high gain application for them. As the cheap Chinese pups do not have the first, so the second is irrelevant. So what's the replacement plan? Railhammer Hyper Vintage in the bridge and 2/3 of a MIM Fender Tex Mex Strat set. So I was right - they're ceramic. To make it even worse, the magnet on the middle had fallen off before they were installed. IDK how much the pole pieces were magnetized from proximity with the magnet, but it was enough to make the pup functional. But this explains the weird vibe I was getting. On a side note, I'm curious what the hand written codes on the bottom of the Fenders means. I'm not curious enough to dig into it and find out, but it's still curious. To make the rest of the story short, the original switch was fighting me. Since I had to use a different switch, I decided to replace the dime sized pots as well with full sized pots, an orange drop cap, and a trebel bleed mod.
  23. But this week, I DID finally record some sound samples. I had made some videos on my phone of the old pickups which were completely unusable. A couple of days ado I did the same with the new pickups. Tonight, I figured out how to extract the audio so it can be uploaded here. DISCLAIMER: This is all audio extracted cell phone videos. It's gonna be pretty low quality. but it does give you an idea about what a difference there was with the new pups. Here's the rig: an Orange Micro Terror through a Roland 8" cab. The amp is set right on the edge of breakup. old bridge bridge old.mp3 new bridge bridge new.mp3 old both middle old.mp3 new both middle new.mp3 old neck neck old.mp3 new neck neck new.mp3
  24. A couple of months later, I finally got to the upgrading. I wasn't about to put a pair of $100 pickups into a $120 guitar. At least not this time. I did that several months later. This time, it's Wilkinson tuners and Tonerider P90s in a HB housing. These are never true P90 sounds because the coil is shaped a LOT different. But they DO come really close. My intention was also to replace the tortiose p/g with a black one. I got it all made up in the Spring. I just needed to trim it down a little to fit right between the pickup rings. And that's where it all stopped. I never got around to it, and now I don't know where it is.
  25. Last November I bought an Ibanez AX120 on Amazon for about $120. That was $100 off list price. At least that's how I remember it all going down. It was a year ago, and I'm getting old. I got it as an upgrade project. A cheap ax like that is just perfect for that type of project: take a guitar that costs less that $300, drop a couple hundred at most into it, and have something way better than what you started with for hopefully a fraction of what it now performs like. FWIW: Here are the unboxing pics
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