avengers63

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?

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 new

neck/middle old

neck/middle new

middle old

middle new

middle/bridge old      I THOUGHT the old bridge had a coil split in this position. It did not. The upgrade does.

mid/bridge new

bridge old

bridge new

The new pickups made an incredible difference. The side by side really points out how mediocre the cheap replacements were.

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.

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 

new bridge

old both

new both

old neck

new neck

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.

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

So I know what I'm gonna be doing tomorrow! Working on the Kelly and putting these into the pink Ibanez.

I'm not one to overpay for Official Fender pickup covers for Official Fender Pickups. because only Official Products can ever be used. Pickup covers are pretty standard. And yet I bought some for the Kit Bash project that didn't fit. I wanted to be sure they would fit, and they were only $3 more for the Fenders.

As I'll have the bridge pup left over, I'm planning on getting a set of Fender Tex Mex Tele pups and doing a mod project sometime next year. 

8 hours ago, henrim said:

And it is on it's way from Germany!
Thanks again, John! I didn't know these pickups before and they are just what I need right now. Mainly speaking about looks, but I'm eager to try one out to hear it too     

This is why I like to share just everything here. You never know what someone is going to be able to use. I'm glad I could accidentally help.

Pickups in place. The bridge isn't screwed in yet, but y'all know how hard it is to resist a glamour shot that has a reflection of your dining room chandelier.  If I had the pickups to order again, I'd have gone with a chrome cage, zebra coils, and cream rings. 

Also, this will just about be a first for me. It's straight wiring. No splits, taps, series/parallel, phase, or anything else. Just 2HB in series, a 3-way toggle, 1V, 1T. The closest thing to fancy wiring will be a trebel bleed. A Kelly with Bill Lawrence/Wylde L500s is a hard rock/metal machine, so no bells & whistles this time.

Side dots

I couldn't find my old side dot rods, so I had to buy a pack of 25 white & 25 back off of Amazon for maybe $10. I'll never have to buy them again for the rest of my building career. Unless I lose them.

I had to sand and rebuff the neck, then re-oil it. So that's about it for this week.  

In other news.... I got a slightly used matte metallic pink Ibanez S561

The idiot who owned it replaced the cheap pickups with... wait for it... cheap pickups. 

Now, I was going to do a pickup upgrade anyway. BUT, if you're gonna do it, don't replace cheap with other cheap. FWIW: The singles actually aren't horrible. They're just poser wanna-be's riding on the looks of the Invader. That simply won't do. The bridge HB is super harsh/brittle/bright. I'd bet real money that it's a low-end ceramic P.O.S. 

I've been debating on what to put in it for several weeks. I want something a little generic yet versatile: something that can handle everything from mellow/clean through classic rock and into hair metal. The serious contenders were DiMarzio mega-drive/true velvet, Lace Sensors, or EMGs. When it came in, the EMGs were eliminated immediately because there's no room in the cavity for a battery. I was right on the lip of pulling the trigger on the DiMarzios when inspiration (and cost effectiveness) hit me...

In the world of pickups, nobody EVER says that Fender makes bad pups. Folks might prefer other brands, but nobody seriously craps on real Fender pickups. There are Strat sets from Fender in the $90-$120 range. I listened to clips of several of them and landed on the Tex Mex set for $100. This would leave me a spare bridge single for potential later use. That leaves the bridge...

RailHammer Hyper Vintage. A slightly suped-up PAF that just plain looks kewl. If things go even moderately to plan, I'll be swapping pickups next week, and maybe even assembling the Kelly.

"Because I like it that way" is all the justification we need. Rawk on!

With a tenon that long you might just as well made a neck-through

5 hours ago, woodfab said:

That is some nice looking wood!

That's what she said

Now you have to make a video using it to play this......

I haven't toughed the neck. Not sure if I'm gonna. I have too much on my plate to spend any mental energy on it.

But I DID finish polishing up the back of the Kelly, drill for the jack, and prep the cavity to receive the pots & switch.

It's been so long since I made one that I forgot to do some things, like drill for the jack and the wiring channels. And of COURSE I had 4 going at the same time so that I could forget it on all of them.

That's not buffing scratches. It's water streaks. Something dripped onto the top.

The more I look at that burl, the sicker it gets. 

And yes, those are Marshall amp knobs. They're different and a good size.

On 10/7/2023 at 3:51 AM, henrim said:

Machine head square. No matter how simple it is, every tool you make makes the day worth living.

OMG!!!!!  I need one of these.

All Spring and Summer, I've been quietly working on a guitar with the sole intention on giving it to my church. Here's the rundown: chambered ash body w/ bubinga center stripe, bubinga neck & fretboard, Kramer alnicoV HSS set, Wilkinson hardtail & vintage style tuners. The top is flamed maple with a 3-tone dye/sandback, 5-ply binding with a recon turquoise line matching the fretboard inlays.

So Why am I going public with it now? Because this is the night everything went wrong.

I started doing the assembly tonight. As you can see, it'll look pretty tasty when it's done.

Except that the screw holes for the bridge were a shade too tight and I twisted the heads off of EVERY SINGLE SCREW. And yes, the hole for the ground wire is ugly.

So that's fixable. I just have to have the time in the garage to set up a one-off MDF jig to drill out the screw shafts, dowel the holes, and re-drill. It's just time.

Then I deepened the holes for the tuner bushings. I was going nice and slaw, but it didn't matter. The drill press grabbed the hole, jerked it straight up onto the bit, and cracked the headstock down to the fretboard.

This is actually the 2nd neck I made for it. I don't remember what happened to FUBAR the 1st, but it wasn't useable. And I'm out of bubinga. I MIGHT have a fretboard, but I don't remember. What I know is that I have to start over, and that I'm REALLY not happy about it. 

FWIW: Here's the fretboard inlay. It says Yeshua Hamashiach, or "Jesus Messiah", in Hebrew. It turned out pretty decent.

3 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

That's like @ScottR was making a 3D model of the @avengers63 Mucha theme on steroids.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! I don't have much thunder. Don't steal the little I have!

At least the first step in the upgrade anyway.

So this past Spring, I got me a metallic pink Firefly LP with the intent of upgrading just everything. Why metallic pink? Because I grew up with HAIR METAL, BABY!!!!!!  

So tonight's project was the first step in the upgrade process. I also took this as the opportunity to do an in-depth inspection under the hood. I fully anticipated that the woods were NOT as advertised, the standard LP recipe, and that all of the electronics would need to go straight into the bin. This is a $200 Chinese knockoff afterall, so I'm wasn't expecting much. 

I'm not planning on bothering with the tuners. They turn smoothly and hold tune. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm positive they're actually crap, but they work, soooo.......

To start with, the thing actually plays really nice. If y'all have looked at reviews of these, I can verify that the fretwork is WAY out of it's price range. It really is better than any factory guitar I've ever seen. IDK if I can believe that the pups are alnico, but I can say that they don't sound like crap. They're not stellar, but I've heard a hellofalot worse - like on the Ibanez AX I got last November. Those were completely useless. 

Anyway, a Hair Metal LP HAS to have a DiMarzio Super Distortion in the bridge. A LP with a SD into a Marshall is the sound of hard rock & first wave metal, end of story.  I went with a DiMarzio PAF Pro in the neck. All of the greats who upgraded their bridge to a SD left the PAF in the neck, so this seemed the logical choice to me. The PAF Pro is a little hotter than standard, so it matches power with the SD. Also, the SD is ceramic, so the A5 neck will make a warm balance.

In the semi-disassembly, I saw how cheap the bridge is. I haven't been playing it much - like maybe 3 hours total - and the "gold" is already wearing off of the saddles. A Gotoh is only about $40, so that's next on the list. When I do that,I'm wanting to replace the TP with a fine-tuner setup. I don't really need it, but it's a classic 80's thing. 

I was all prepped and ready to replace the whole wiring harness. These $200 cheapies have to cut costs wherever they can, and the pots & switch are always garbage. I was also ready to put a push/pull in it for either coil tap or series/parallel. Much to my surprise, when I got the cavity cover off......

FULL SIZED POTS!!!!!!!!  Now I absolutely HAD to check the switch......

AND IT'S A GOOD ONE TOO!!!!!!!!! Holy crap on a stick! Not only that, but it's been shielded! This is better than the $150 Kramer VT and the $220 Ibanex AX. They were both dime pots with no shielding. So far, this Firefly is beating the crap out of established name brands of comparable price. So that settles that - I didn't change one single bit of the wiring except for the pickups. Again, if it ain't broke...

After I un-soldered the pups, they came off and gave me more surprises.  The neck is 4 conductor, while the bridge is 2. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but whatever. What impressed me, though, was that they're wax potted. The neck is sloppy and has wax drips, but at this price point, so what.  A great many of the cheapies aren't potted and HIGHLY microphonic.  At this point, I'm starting to believe they might actually be A5, not ceramic.  Even the pickup cavities are shielded!

I took a file to the corners of a pup cavity and the control cavity. I wanted to see what the wood looked like. I didn't remove enough to confirm that it's a mahogany body & maple cap, BUT I can confirm that it appears to be the same colors.  It's hard to see in the pics, but here they are anyway.

So it might not me maple/mahogany, but it is entirely possible that it is. I can neither confirm not refute, but it appears to be so. WOW!!!! I didn't expect that one either. 

I decided to wire the pups in parallel according to DiMarzio's instructions. These are hot pups, so there's room to lose a little power. What I gain is a little bit of twang. I exchange power for character and brightness.

As I was just replacing the pups, the soldering was as smooth and clean as I've ever done. 

Now I don't have to tell y'all that the pups sound magnificent. I'll have to play with the height and pole pieces to dial it in, but that's nothing new either. I'm not going to bother with a full setup until I swap the bridge and TP.

So overall, the job is nothing interesting, but I thought the examination might prove useful just in case any of y'all were curious about Firefly. I can testify that it's a wonderful mod platform that punches WAY above it's price point. Seriously - $200 for a finished body & neck with amazing fretwork is well worth it.

Ya know..... technically, GOTM is open to mods, not just scratch builds. Just sayin'.

9 hours ago, mistermikev said:

i saw this on facebook... and it was my understanding that this was 3d printed... which is confusing cause it sure looks like wood.  I know the guy was saying his brother used to carve these... maybe I misunderstood.  that is a rediculous amount of details... but if anyone could pull it off... it'd be @ScottR !!

It's just as possible that I mis-read it. In any event, I'm laying down a double-dog-dare for Scotty to rise to the bait  

Your next project. Test those carving skills.

Well, I use thinned down hardware store lacquer. So there! 

The intention was to have a 24 fret neck. I NEVER make/use a 24 fret because I just don't go up there. I have absolutely no use for it. So when I laid out everything, I went on habit and set up the pickup holes for my normal 21-22 fret. WHOOPSIE!!!!! So now it's a weird looking 23 fret. It's just as well since I put the last marker in the wrong place. 

Two months later.......

My weekends are now Wed/Thur. I'm still on overnights, but the work is steady & predictable. I basically work free-range, with little to no supervision. Nobody micromanaging you is a good thing. I can go in, do my work, and go home without being bothered. It's pretty kewl.

Last weekend I sat down and re-sanded the Kelly & the church guitar. Tonight I managed to hit them with Maguiars & a buffing sponge on a drill. No obvious lines, but clear mirror reflections. Not perfect, but a hellofalot better than they were.

Unfortunately, a couple months ago my beloved tried to help me "clean up". She stacked the bodies, Kelly on top, and set them aside. The finish was either not 100% cured or I "re-opened the wound" when they were first buffed. They stuck together a bit. There are 3 small divots in the church body. Not deep enough to go clear through, but too deep to buff out. I decided not to try and repair them. Life goes on.

Tomorrow I intend to dress the frets on the necks for both of these bodies. It's a good way to keep my hands busy while I'm watching football & wrestling with my buddy.

I know EXACTLY what you're feeling right now. I did my last bandsaw upgrade ever earlier this year. Yes, it's lots of fun. It's damn satisfying to have a high-end tool with all the bells & whistles to screw around with. 

{jealousy} Now you're just showing off and rubbing it in. {/jealousy}

I think I have the exact same thing. I'm sure the "brand name" isn't the same, but we all know that doesn't matter with Chinese stuff. Once I started using it, my rough end grain disappeared.