crafty

Yeah, but I also have about $150k in student loans...plus comfort in the knowledge that once my parent's retirement plan runs out, I'm the "successful" son that gets to support them in their elder years. I'm still waiting on the "successful" part to kick in. Don't laugh. I have a friend who does wedding photography, usually two to three weddings a week. He actually has had several loss-leader clients who don't make it long enough to get the pictures printed out--and that's with modern digital photography. Most of the time it's not even worth his while to go after the couples because they're still tapped out from the wedding and he'd never see the money anyway.

Awesome, dude. So hot and clean you could eat a plate of fajitas off of it! Mad props

What kind of bridge, nut, and tuners did it have? What kind of amp and effects were you playing through? I'd be willing to bet that the guitar was just a dud not only because of the wood, but because it was just a dud. I've played several guitars over the years that just plain suck, and then picked up identical guitars that play and sound just fine. My LP sounded terrible with a set of SD '59s, but sounds awesome with a pair of DiMarzio PAF Classics. There's more to a guitar than wood, Wes. I know you of all people know that.

A couple of years ago my parents offered to buy a new guitar for me as a gift for graduating from law school. I narrowed it down to either a Gibson Les Paul or PRS Custom 22. Both are heirloom quality instruments and the pinnacle of production guitar quality. I chose a Les Paul Classic because it had the look and feel of what I wanted and I replaced the ceramic pickups with a pair of PAF-style pickups more suited to my style of playing. Opinion time: the question you need to ask yourself is, what could possibly equal the gift of endless unconditional love for the rest of my life? No guitar can ever reflect that. No guitar could ever match the gift of my parents supporting and encouraging my quest for understanding and education over 20 straight years of formal education. The ring you give your wife for the engagement and marriage, and the ring she gives you on your wedding day, reflects the infinite circle of love being shared between the two of you. A tit-for-tat gift of a guitar in return does not represent anything but an attempt to match a "gift" you have given her in an engagement ring. An engagement ring is NOT a gift, even in the traditional eyes of the law, but a symbol of a promise to share your life and love with hers to you. I'm not trying to be disrespectful or judgemental, and I hope you don't take it as such, but I think an engagement "guitar" is a poor choice of use of resources and stewardship for your nuptials. Of course, this is all coming from a pathetically single, 27-year-old criminal defense attorney living in a brown hole of a small town in the bootheel of Misery, so YMMV.

Um, just for the sake of asking, is there a dull plastic film covering the pickguard that easily peels off? If so, remove that and I'm sure the static will go away.

My MIM Strat has a five piece poplar body and sounds just fine. Parker Guitars uses poplar extensively in their high-end guitars and those guitars seem to do very well, too. Guitars are the sum of their parts and if you use cheap components on a guitar made of "premium" hardwoods, it's gonna sound much worse than using quality components on so-called "cheap" or "commodity" hardwoods like poplar.

Me either. I think they're TOO popular, although I know our adored Seymour would disagree, I'd rather use something different than the mainstream. Everybody makes so many damn good pickups it's almost just a roll of the dice anymore. Anyways, on my Les Paul I have a set of DiMarzio PAF Classics installed. I wanted a more vintage tone and look with the covers, but a wearable nickel finish and Alnico V magnets that don't lose their magnetism as much over time. These delivered. One set of pickups I think look interesting are the new DiMarzio Activators. High output with a relatively low resistance may be a good choice for the swamp-ash EBMM EVH I'm planning.

Stock tuners on a CS Les Paul should last for 30-40 years with no problems. I agree with Setch--take the guitar to a good tech and get the nut checked out. If it's older than an '05 model, you might look into getting the guitar plek'd and a nice bone nut made for it. Gibson started factory pleks with the '05 CS models and it's a worthy upgrade. If you really do want to change the tuners out, check out the Les Paul Forum and see what people there have done. I know people have had good luck with Grovers, but a binding nut is still going to knock you outta tune no matter how many other parts you throw at the guitar.

The bodies of the switches need to be grounded too, preferably to a common point or "star". If you're using single-coil pickups then it's not surprising that you're getting some hum when you're not touching the strings, but it sounds like you have some major ground loopage going on if the bodies of the other switches and the pots aren't grounded.

It really won't matter. I ran an Alnico II Pro bridge pickup on my Strat for years without any problems and it wasn't F-spaced. Maybe EJ can notice difference, but I sure couldn't.

Man, I think Svento set a new record for fastest wigging-out by a new member. Seriously, Svento--put down the Stradivarius and pour yourself some cognac. Lighten up! You can't expect people to help you out if you aren't willing to explain why you want something to be different. You say you want someone to wind up a pickup with the coils between the strings because you think it'll be better for sensing vibrations unique to a violin. Okay, great. What impedance are you looking for? Do you know what size of magnets or even the type this project will need? These are just a couple out of many questions anyone here would ask about the project. Maybe you're trying to patent whatever ideas you have. Good on you. But coming in here and acting like a princess and then deleting all of your posts because someone challenged your assumptions is just whack. Grow up, dude.

Um, $100k in Pennsylvania is considered "loaded"? Where exactly in PA is this place? I don't know how many people here have actually worked in a corporate manufacturing/services environment, but you can't order a small box of paper clips for less than $20 in a big business. You gotta pay your secretary to fill out a form that you also paid for to go through your mail room staffed with more employees who put the form in a box you paid for a courier to loan to the company so they can charge you to take the box with all your PO's over to SCM who will then order the box of paper clips to be delivered via air freight to SCM which will then use the courier service to deliver the box of paper clips to your building where the mail room staff will sort out your box of paper clips to be delivered to your secretary who will then place them in the supply closet for everyone else in the office to steal and take home and when you need a paper clip to attach the new cover sheet to the TPS report for Bob, there won't be any and you'll have to order more paper clips that you'll never actually receive and Bob will keep bugging you about you failing to clip the new cover sheet to the TPS report from now on. It's a vicious cycle. That's big business. If you think long enough, you can imagine the kind of crap Ibanez had to go through to put out a new collectable acrylic JEM.

Just don't ask him why he wants it built differently than any other magnetic pickup out there...short fuse.

Why do I need to explain this? I play violin and I've tried different kinds of PU:s. Others have too and they've made experiments. To pick bowed tones (where the strings don't move much vertically) the PU must be optimized to pick vertical string movements. No coil must cross two strings.Individual coils placed between the strings. I'm not particularly interested in the theory behind it. This is how it works and I'm in a need for a PU. Guitar type constructions don't work. Once again: I'M TRUELY SORRY HAVING THE BAD TASTE OF BRINGING THIS SUBJECT UP. PLEASE GO BOTHER SOMEONE ELSE. I JUST WANT TO FIND SOMEONE TO MAKE A PU FOR ME. CASE CLOSED. With that kind of attitude, I seriously doubt that you're going to find anyone that wants to do anything for YOU.

I'm still not understanding what you mean by the pickup not being able to pick up horizontal movements of the string. The Hall Effect isn't determined by horizontal or vertical movements. It just "senses" or generates electricity when a metal object moves in the field.

What kind of purpose ARE you looking for? It's a guitar. You beat it and play music with it. Are you planning on adding the Salad Shooter option or what?

Um, well... Just about all the major winders have really cool websites that'll give you sound clips and advice on what to put in your specific guitar. Duncan, Dimarzio, EMG, Bill and Becky Lawrence, Lollar, Fralin, WCR, Rio Grande, and yes, sometimes GuitarFetish GFS are kind of the big names. Of course, for the money you're paying for GFS you could spend a few more dollars and get Duncan, Dimarzio, or Lawrence pickups. Classic combo is the Duncan JB bridge, Jazz neck combo. I think you can get a bundled set for about $130.

*SNIIIIFFFF* Oh yeah, it's about to get deep in here...best put on your waders and grab a sponge mop.

Gotta schedule and plan things out like that, man. If the finish turns out to be a turd, then you gotta be willing to put in the time to strip it and redo it right. If your "trained professionals with digital spray guns" didn't know enough to tell you that the new finish wasn't going to hide a bad old finish underneath it, you need to figure out another way to finish the guitar. IMHO, the finish makes or breaks the guitar. If it doesn't look better than a finish coming out of the Cort or Samick factories in Asia, then it's not worth displaying. This is one I'd strip down and redo. If you're client is fine with it and doesn't care 'cause he's going to burn it up with cigs EVH-style, that's one thing, but if your rep's on the line, I'd take the time to redo it.

Only authorized installers have access to the material and it's incredibly expensive to purchase from one of them. You can cut and shape it using most normal woodworking equipment. The nice thing about it is that it's the same color all the way through and you can buff out scratches with sandpaper. Problem is that it's also fairly heavy. An entire guitar made out of corian would be very heavy, but the fretboard idea sounds cool. You'd have to bond the frets to the material with epoxy, though.

+1 You gotta warm up and stretch! And of course it's going to hurt if it's been five months since you last played! I usually do the Hammett warmup, which is using all four fingers on a chromatic scale starting on the third fret, low E, moving up to the fourth fret, A string, moving up one fret for each string. Then reverse it from the top E down. That way you cover the whole fretboard and it really loosens things up. Now that you mention it, I was watching the Satriani Live in San Francisco DVD the other night and part of his thing is avoiding cramping up. Playing leads for nearly three hours straight will kill all but the most seasoned pro's hands too.

This guitar isn't designed to be sold to someone who isn't willing to pay $6000-$7000 for a collectable guitar. It's marketed to collectors only and window dressing for the aging JEM line.

+1 I really like that body design too. It looks more comfortable than an Explorer and less annoying and pretentious than a Kelly. It deserves to be done right, and without biscuits

Um, well, it's different... Tegro, you've just had a couple of the best builders on this site give you some advice, so I'm not going to throw more gasoline on the pyre, other than the fact that you probably need to start over or try to redesign and salvage the wood you have. Glueing on the "pointy-bits" is actually quite the old inside joke around here and I almost can't believe I'm watching someone try it, but the way you have it just isn't going to work for very long. You really need to re-work and re-think how you're going to do this build. Your teacher is a dumbass if he's encouraging you to include as many joints as possible in your project just to get a higher grade. My shop teacher taught us the KISS method, with an emphasis on the last S because he'd throw a hammer at you if you did something stupid and wasted the school's wood. I can guarantee you that any guitar you build is going to be a lot more complicated than the roll-top breadbox I made in shop class, and I got a B on that because I almost didn't have enough time in the semester to finish it.

I also can't figure out why people rag on '70s Les Pauls, too. Whether you have a Kalamazoo guitar or a Nashville guitar, they're still pretty good players. Sure, they're not as ornate or maybe as high quality as the vintage or more modern LP's, but they're still damn good guitars. I do like the snap of a maple-necked Les Paul and the only way to get that is to get a late '70s Les Paul--or a Gibson CS Zakk Wylde model for $4,000! If the pickups aren't doin' it for you, just replace them too...