crafty

I've never seen a music store that will give you your money back, except MARS or Guitar Center. My local store even has a sign up at the register saying "All Sales Final, In Store Credit on Returns". Sounds like the guy's trying to upsell you on the Fender. There's not much you can do except make a scene in the store, which then you have to balance either making a point or going to jail when they call the smokey. Or you can take them to small claims and see if you can get your money back that way. I've found that it's easier to get blood out of a turnip than to get money back from a small-business. I think the lesson here is caveat emptor, and research before you buy. This is like, the 20th bad story I've personally run across about the MG series amps. I definitely won't be purchasing one for myself. Sorry man.

Don't Feed the Trolls. Here's a bright idea. If he wants to keep creating new accounts and flooding the board with his vitriol, simply stop responding. Wasting time by feeding a troll is a sure way to kill a board by keeping us from focusing on the real purpose here--building and modding our guitars. Filthie--great name BTW, dork--anyway, I'm only going to say this once. Stop posting here. Your attitude and presence are not welcome here anymore. If either of those change, fine, re-register under a completely different name and you'll be welcome back. Otherwise, don't expect anyone but the new people who don't remember you to reply to any more of your posts. If things change, great, but the regulars here have a long memory and I don't think you'll be getting much help from them anymore. Call me out if you want with Filthie #3 or whatever, but I'm through wasting my time with you. I hope everyone else is, too.

I keep checking the Musician's Friend clearance center in KC about once a month for a bashed-up BC Rich or Floyd Rose Discovery equipped with the Speedloader system. I'm hoping that I'll find the whole guitar smashed to bits with the Speedloader components intact for less than the $200 Ed Roman charges for the parts.

Aw, come on. Satch wouldn't come over and scream at you. He's a nice guy. Vai would give you that dirty "Crossroads Battle" look, Page would be too stoned to notice, and Beck would just come up and say Rick Jaymes-style, "What did the five fingers say to the face?" *SLAP* Anyway, I do remember my very first post here and the first response was Perry Ormsby telling me that I was full of the brown stuff and little else. I almost just said forget you and this forum, but I chose to defend my position and stick around anyway. It's been fun and I've learned a lot from mostly people like Kevan, Perry, and Drak (I wish I knew his real name). Hell, even Kevan helped me work through some stuff in my Trademarks class last fall, too. These are all good guys, and this is a good forum. And I'll paraphrase Harry Truman: "If you're looking for a friend on the internet, buy a dog." Let's all lighten up here.

That trem from Guitar Fetish is nothing at all like the speedloader system. It's designed to use regular ball end strings with a locking nut and regular tuners at the headstock. The real Speedloader, which has NOT been licensed to any other manufacturer yet, uses proprietary double-ball strings that have been pre-stretched and lock in at the nut and bridge. There is no need for tuners at the headstock and the fine tuners on the bridge are used to adjust the tuning a little once the strings are stretched and locked. I played a guitar equipped with the system yesterday. It is adequate, but not perfect, especially with the cost of the strings. It's a nice setup, though.

<Chappelle as Rick Jaymes> What did the five fingers say to the face? SSSLLLAAAPP!! </Chappelle as Rick Jaymes>

It's about to get worse... <sarcasm> Are you kidding me?! The Dimebucker is PURE CRAP!!! Sure, I don't own it and I've never installed one, but I can tell you it's NOTHING like the XL500--The REAL Dimebag Darrell pickup!! Even the L500XL being made by Willi Stitch, formerly known professionally as Bill Lawrence, is nothing compared to the Real Dimebag Darrell pickup--the XL500 made by the REAL Bill Lawrence company owned by Jzchak Wajcman!! </sarcasm> If you've never heard of the Lawrence v. Wajcman soap opera, check out the stories on both www.billlawrence.com and www.billlawrenceusa.com. It'll make this thread look like an episode of SpongeBob. BTW, Bill and Becky Lawrence are the good guys...Wajcman is a wanker.

Sorry, but that's just not entirely correct. Especially in the field of manufacturing custom guitar pickups. For all intents and purposes, neither the Dimebucker or the L500XL are really hand-made. Both are made using machine winders with humans at the controls. What you'll find that's different is the attention to defining, measuring, analyzing, designing, and verifying that Bill Lawrence puts into his manufacturing operation versus what Seymour Duncan puts into his operations. I'd be willing to bet with the insane focus Bill puts into eliminating "eddy currents" in the design and the individual testing of each pickup, BL is probably much closer to the Six Sigma goals than SD can possibly be.

Definitely buy the Bill Lawrence-made pickup, the L500XL. Dime probably never actually used the SD Dimebucker on his actual guitars, anyway. It was just a shameless attempt at marketing a cheaper-made pickup at a higher price. You'll pay about 50% more for the machine-made Dimebucker than the hand-made L500XL. The only bummer is that you may have to wait a few weeks to get the L500XL. You could probably walk into any SD dealer and pick up a Dimebucker tomorrow. Also, your Santana SE isn't a bad guitar at all. True, the stock pickups are nothing like what you'll get in an American PRS, but it's not a bad axe to start out with. Even if it's Made in Korea, I'm sure you could still do some good damage with it.

Any authorized EMG dealer should be able to special order the Ivory or White pickups for you. My local dealer had some of the White and Ivory single-coil models in stock, too.

Check out Morgan guitars. Their founder, David Iannone, apprenticed under Jean Larrivee. A few years ago I went into the music store with my heart set on a Taylor 814CE, which I still consider THE standard, but the salesman suggested I try a Morgan Concert C. Blew me away. Almost bought it on the spot, but I wound up putting it off and never got around to buying it before returning to school. Dang. The new soundboard tranducer system in the new Taylors is pretty sweet, too.

Actually, surprisingly I would put the Tallboys above the QPs. QPs have been my fave passive single-coil for a long time 'cause their cheap (relatively) and have a nice heavy sound. But I did play a Strat loaded with the Tallboys a few months ago and I was converted. Good stuff. I still bought a set of EMG-SAs for my personal axe, though... It's all subjective, though. Some people dig the cheap MightyMites and some people won't even consider going active. Some people think boutique pups like Kinman are the only game in town. I say, figure out what you're going to be playing, how you're going to play it, and what you need to get the sound you want. I went active because I use mostly digital processors now for effects and usually go direct without an amp. My SAs give me the cleanest and strongest signal through the loop. If I wanted an old-school axe and didn't care about excessive 60-hum or signal consistency, I'd probably spec out either Tallboys or QPs and a nice Boogie Heartbreaker.

I smell GOTM for April...

Try the EMG VG-20 system. It's actually the Vince Gill setup, but it might be a good bridge between Stevie's and Dave's sounds. It'll give you a little texas to go with your progressive. The EMG-S pickups are a little hotter than the EMG-SA set in the Dave Gilmour setup, but the system does not include the EXG mid-boost that the DG setup includes. Keep in mind, Stevie's sound came from fat strings, fat amps, and a lead belly from drinking whisky spiked with cocaine. Stevie could pick up a bone stock '05 Mexican Strat (if he were still with us) and it'd sound almost indistinguishable from Number One. Hot pickups will get you about 15% there, the rest is up to you.

You got it right. Just make sure you have the pickup oriented the right way. The "V" shaped part of the baseplate should be "pointing" towards the bridge.

Pull the jackplate out with the cord still plugged in. If it looks like the contacts are making full contact with the plug and there's no oxidation, I bet it's your cable. Take apart the plug and see if the braid and conductor are making contact at all. It sounds to me like that might be the problem instead of the jack on the guitar.

I like the design. It probably won't be as easy to play sitting down as a regular Rhodes V, but shouldn't be any tougher than an original V. The upside-down look makes it look like it's taking off or something. Very cool.

Decreasing, although the Tex-Mex pickups are still very good pups for the money. The Texas Specials are not the same as the custom shop Tex-Mex pickups. I don't know if they're still available separately but they're stock on the Jimmie Vaughn and SRV strats.

1. EMG-SA, Rio Grande Tallboy, Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder, Fender Tex-Mex, in that order of quality. 2. Yes. Just wire each pickup to its respective volume pot, common ground, then to the switches. It would be super-svelte to use push-pull pots for each killswitch, that way you wouldn't have to drill more holes in the pickguard. 3. No, unless the pickguard was poorly shielded to begin with.

That has to be the shag-nastiest 80's necktie I've ever seen. Blegh. It just screams "I want to be like Miami Vice but I didn't know Crockett and Tubbs don't wear ties".

If you haven't cut the wires up too badly yet you can still trade your LiveWire back for another Seymour Duncan model. You could trade it back for a JB or a Duncan Distortion. Lovekraft, I see where you're coming from on the higher output. I always thought that the higher-value pots had more to do with the peak frequency of the output rather than peak voltage. I would still be concerned with using higher-value pots in a system that's designed for low-impedance, especially with preamps built into the pickups themselves.

How is a higher-value pot supposed to boost output when it's at near zero ohms at "wide open" just like it would be with a lower-value pot? That doesn't make any sense. The problem with using the higher-value pots is the taper, just like EMG says. EMG uses 25K pots, SD uses 100K, according to their wiring diagrams. You put a 500K volume on there and the output will cut off the moment you move the knob. Remember, these are low-impedance pickups. They're designed to work with low-resistance pots. RRV, for the amount of experience you have right now, I'd stick with either going totally active or totally passive. Adding a preamp to allow you to combine a passive with an active will increase the price of the project more than it would have been if you'd just go totally active. I'm assuming you're using the SD Hot LiveWire humbucker for the bridge, so just drop in a Classic LiveWire for Strat in the neck. It will save you a lot of wiring hassle. I've tried passive/active blending in the same guitar and it's more trouble than it's worth. Just wire it up like a stock Tele setup and just substitute the 250K pots for 100K and remember to connect the battery wire to the pickups.

Hold on, Smokey. Those active pickups use lower value pots--100K for SD's LiveWires. You put those 500K and 250K pots on there and you won't hear a thing. Also, is your neck pickup going to be active or passive? If it's passive, you'll need a preamp blender to combine it with the bridge pickup. Other than that, your wiring isn't different than a bone stock Tele with the exception of different value pots, a battery for the active pickups, and a stereo jack to turn the system on and off.

You know, I suppose it depends on how much business you want to have. If you have serious takers, you could stand to make some serious bread. I would write a basic message you could auto-reply to each of those leads. Simply respond that the basic prices are listed on the website for instruments, inlays, and custom finishing. You will not build from scratch any instrument that is a copy of anything mass produced or trademarked by another company. If you have a serious inquiry, please make a list of your needs and call this non-toll-free phone number between 8:00AM and 12:00PM.

Oh, I agree entirely. I just remember back in high school my friends use to build boxes for their car speakers and most of them sounded horrible. They just didn't have any idea how to design a good box. I was just a little concerned when Bill-Murray said he was just going to "slap something together". Even if you want to have the highs and lows attenuated, good planning and construction will help get you there. Throwing a Celestion inside a plywood box without any sort of consideration of the speaker manufacturer's recommendations is not.