crafty

**** you! No, off "5150"

I just wanna play "Summer Nights" without having to buy a vintage Steinberger for 3 to 5 bills!

Honestly, what is all this bitching about? It's a system that doesn't require any major modification to the instrument, it's completely by-passable, and it appears to work well. Prior choices have been the unelegant Transpeformance system that requires major guitar surgery, Hipshot's expensive mechanical transposing system, and Steinberger's clunky and junky TransTrem. I'd love to have this system just for the gig factor. Never having to tune again plus the ability to transpose on the fly without having to hack apart my guitars? Awesome.

Guitarbuildingtemplates.com has a full set of templates for the Wolfgang, and there's a pretty good forum on eddievanhalen.com that'll have some plans and ideas for you too.

$900 is also a lot cheaper than a MusicYo Steinberger with a TransTrem. I like how Gibson is ripping on Fender because the VG Strat doesn't have the same kind of system, yet Tronical makes a version for the Strat!

Your first choice of pickups would probably suit you best for what you are playing, but I'd also skip the middle pickup and just run a switch for series/parallel on the neck pickup instead. Nobody else makes piezo Floyds except for Ibanez, so the GHOST is about as good as it gets. None of them are particularly stellar, so for actual recording a real acoustic is still your best bet. GHOST is great for live performance without switching guitars and MIDI work.

Warmoth is so stuck on their Fender-standard heel designs that they have no imagination for products outside of that realm. If you aren't comfortable making your own neck, consider either a local reputable luthier or hang out here for a while and check out some of the pro's work around here.

Looks like ground loops galore. They also installed 500k ohm pots, too. The MIM Strat comes stock with 250k's in S/S/S configuration. Time to get your hands dirty and redo it with the proper switch and pots. Honestly, I'd just get a pre-soldered kit and use that for less hassle.

The stock "American Standard" trems from Fender have a cold-rolled steel baseplate. The saddles and block are powder-cast stainless steel.

No offense taken. My point was that it takes a lot more than gear to sound like most of these guys--Dime included. I would agree that I'm 100% sure that I would never be able to reach his skill level or match his tone, but I really wouldn't want to anyway. While I'm not the ultimate Pantera/Damageplan fan, I respect who they were and what they did and Dime's overall musicianship over the course of his career. Dean was effectively DEAD when Pantera hit it big. So was Bill Lawrence USA. That's why Dime signed with Washburn and later Seymour Duncan. Only in recent years and just before his death did Dean make their comeback and that's when he went back to them. Krank and Duncan haven't been as bad about it, but I just find Dean and Bill Lawrence USA's trodding on his corpse to be more than a little distasteful. But that's how it goes with endorsements, and if you wanna make money, some times you gotta be that way.

Most of Andy's best-known guitar work was recorded with nothing more than a bone-stock Strat, with few exception. Just need a nice clean amp and a good set of fingers to nail that tone.

Um, with those problems you're describing with the PAF Pro you have, it sounds like you might be closer to Ed's tone than you think! His original pickup is famous for confusing multimeters and being quite a pain in the ass to replicate. The key to the brown sound is the amp, effects, and most of all, fingers. Might try a warmer pickup like the Dimarzio PAF, PAF Classic, or Duncan '59 or Seth Lover. GFS pickups are okay for what they are, but nobody's saying they're better than the big guys yet.

What's funny about this whole thing is that you can spend a fortune on titanium and cryogenically-treated hardware, but if all you're going to do is play a hack version of "Smoke on the Water", who cares?

+1 on the re-cap and 3-wire grounded cord. The caps in that thing are probably more worn out than the tubes, and that'll affect your sound more than 30 year old tubes that are still serviceable. The new cord is a no-brainer. Also, it's a good idea to pick up a wall outlet tester from the hardware store and use it every time you gig or plug your amp in to any outlet. They can save your life and gear!

It's really kind of funny. People have come out of the woodwork like crazy over the last couple of years trying to sound like Dime. Both Dean Guitars and BL-USA have cashed in like crazy on that guy's dead rotting corpse. It's really quite simple. Buy a crappy off-brand guitar, throw a crappy off-brand pickup in there, plug it all into a crappy off-brand solid-state amp, and you're good to go! Oh, other than the 12 hours of practice everyday and the sheer skills you'll need to even come close...

That's what happens when you let the helmet kids form their own band...

It depends on who you are. If you're the guitarist from Coldplay, you're gonna pay whatever you're worth. If you're average joe looking for a good deal, I wouldn't pay more than what you can buy a reissue for. They aren't the most highly sought after guitar because Fender made waaaay too many of them to make them worth that much, and they suffer from some bad CBS era gremlins. It's not 1987 and it's not a 1959 Les Paul. About the only things sought after on that guitar are the Seth Lover-designed pickups. Throw those pickups in a brand new reissue and you'll have a guitar that's better than either the original or reissue.

Any standard panel-type 1/4-inch mono jack will work. It doesn't have to be japanese, but I do recommend either Switchcraft or Neutrik.

Order of quality: 1. Wilde L-500XL, made by Bill and Becky Lawrence. 2. Seymour Duncan Dimebucker, a reverse-engineered version of a custom-made L-500 for Dime. 3. Bill Lawrence USA L-500XL or XL-500, made by a company claiming to be the original Bill Lawrence pickup company with a questionable record of quality. The Wilde pickup costs about half as much as the Dimebucker, but it'll take you longer to get it. The BL-USA is also even cheaper, but the quality can be inconsistent.

EMG's have a very low internal resistance and low magnetic pull on the strings. The Lawrence L-500XL uses blades to minimize dropout and even the response of every string, as well as being a very refined design. These characteristics lend both pickups to easy pinch harmonics.

Hey! People pay BIG BUCKS for relic'd guitars straight from the Custom Shop! Why bother cleaning it? Anyway, the flaky stuff on the frets is actually the clear finish they sprayed on the neck after the frets were installed and leveled. A fret grind/polish should remove it and restore your worn frets. Dunlop 65 polish should remove whatever gremlins are tarnishing the finish on the body and neck. If it's nitro and it's checking, not much you can do but appreciate it. Metal tarnish can be removed with a silver polishing cloth or a buffing wheel on a Dremel. You may be able to buff out the scratched-in name with the buffing wheel and some red compound, too. Again, I like my guitars to look lived-in, especially vintage-reissues, so I really don't see much of a point in shining 'em up. You should deal with the worn fretwork, but I say let the girl age gracefully. She's a cougar now!

Ah, yes. I forgot that the electronics were Low-Z, but not active. Duh. That's easy to forget. Gibson had a celebration for Polfuss' 90th birthday and Henry J. gave him a new custom LP. To which Polfuss responded, "I knew I should have gone with Fender." Prolly wound up at Gruhn's.

He plays an old walnut recording model from the '70s with active electronics. Polfuss has never been much for distortion, much like Leo Fender, so he plays the cleanest sounding equipment he can find. Occasionally Gibson will "present" him with a "new" Les Paul at award and trade shows, but he never plays 'em. He considers them to be antiquated technology.

I've never had an intonation problem with any Fender at the 12th fret, unless the guitar wasn't set up properly and I took the time to adjust the saddles...

Well, Dan Torres is "famous" for his shilling for EZ Wajcman, so the whole neck screw thing is hardly a surprise. Nothing like running your business on the "there's a sucker born every minute" philosophy.