crafty

Okay...anyway, you say you've got an RG Standard, but you didn't give the model number. I'm going to assume it's a "value" RG and came with the two-post, standard-style, non-locking trem instead of a Floyd-copy. Since you're refinishing, it probably won't be a big deal. Put the Wilkinson in position and see if it will line up with the old studs. If not, take out the old studs, plug with dowels, drill new holes for the Wilky studs, and refinish the guitar. Keep in mind you'll probably have to do some routing if the trem block is bigger or in a slightly different spot than the old one. Probably nothing you can't handle. The Wilkinson is a fine upgrade if you already have a two-post knife-edge trem setup. Fender used to offer it on the old US Strat Plus models, too.

I was just thinking. Embedded pickups aren't such a bad idea, anyway. Look at the Yamaha Billy Sheehan bass or Uli Jon Roth's Sky guitar. Honestly, I don't know why people think that the pickup needs to be 1/8 of an inch from the strings. The L-500XL is a hot enough pickup that it doesn't need to be so close. I'm sure that most pickups don't need to be, either. Besides, the way I see it, the chances of the pickup going bad are reduced by having it sealed away from sweaty hands, spilled beer, and picks. With the quality of a boutique pickup like a Lawrence, it'll probably last the life of the whole guitar.

Tiger and Wolf were two of the guitars built by Doug Irwin for Jerry Garcia. They are one of a kind and were at the center of a long, drawn out legal battle over Garcia's will. In Jerry's will, he specifically devised all of his guitars that were built by Doug Irwin to be returned to him. Garcia's family, and the band (except Phil Lesh), wanted to keep the guitars because Irwin was going to sell them. Irwin wound up settling with the estate and receiving only Tiger and Wolf. You could probably look up Doug Irwin and see if he'd make some pickups for you, but the guitar would probably be quite pricey to build with no plans or measurements. Also, Jerry was a good guitar player, but you'd probably have to drop acid everyday for 30 years plus have three strokes and learn how to play the guitar all over again each time just to come close to his tone

*jaw drops to the floor* That guitar reminds me of the first time I saw Giselle in a Victoria's Secret commercial... Magnificent.

Nah. I'd fill 'em only if they are visible and you don't like seeing the holes. On a standard Tele, it's probably nothing you need to worry about. But before you fill them, test fit the new tuners--they might want the stud holes there too. On drilling larger holes for new tuners, it really isn't that difficult. Just get a drill press and chuck it with a bit that's the same size as the stock holes. Use this as a guide to align the first hole with the drill bit. Clamp the headstock in place and replace the bit with the 10mm bit for Schaller or Gotoh. Drill out the hole. Repeat process for next five holes. Should work everytime. As for the quality of the old tuners, you are probably right to install new ones. Fender usually uses Ping tuners and bridges. If you upgrade to Schaller, Sperzel, or Gotoh, you are going to gain tuning stability and better metals used in construction to enhance your tone. I love my locking Schallers and wouldn't trade them for any other tuner on the market.

The top on a regular LP is carved so that it is arched. What they do is glue a maple cap on a mahogany base and then carve the maple top. You could probably find a swamp ash veneer but it'd have to be paper thin and purely cosmetic to fit the existing carve in the top. It would add nothing to the tone. The black base/red grain filler finish is very cool, though. I've been wanting to purchase a swamp-ash tele body for a long time now and do the same thing. I'd probably wind up putting several coats of clear on it just to keep it from wearing, though.

ZiKi, Looks like you did a great job getting the body prepped and painted. Already looks worlds better than what you had to start with. Stay patient and keep it up! Your hard work is going to pay off big time now. I can already hear X2THAZ Xzibit saying "you got pimped!"

That sounds like what I read in Guitar Player a couple years ago in their Les Paul 50th Anniversary issue. I wonder how he'd like the ESP Viper since it's an asymmetrical cutaway and neck-through design? In my opinion, that's what the SG should have looked like and been constructed like the whole time.

I don't think Les Paul would have hated the design of the SG as much if they had done two things: 1. Made it a neck-through design and 2. Made the horns softer. I think he liked the flat-top design because he has said that he never really liked the arched top on the original guitar and had Gibson make several guitars for him that were flat-topped. I also think he assumed the SG would be a neck-through design. Les Paul was a connoiseur of neck-through guitars. He had proven to himself, and the rest of the world, that one solid chunk of wood would increase sustain over any other design out there. Les actually still uses his original Log guitar from time to time. At the time of the great Les Paul/Gibson schism, Les' star was fading fast. He was becoming viewed as an "old man" by the new rockers and his popularity with the old crowd was fading because of his divorce from Mary Ford. He pushed Gibson to be innovative and Ted McCarty shut him down at every turn. When they came out with the second-generation Les Paul, with an unstable, half-ass designed, glued-on neck, that was the last straw for Les. So he broke his endorsement deal and demanded they take his name off the guitar. When Gibson brought back the original Les Paul model, the Les Paul Recording was also introduced a couple years later. I personally think this was a compromise with Les Paul to get his blessing to reintroduce the original. Not a neck-through design, but it did at least incorporate advanced electronics onboard and low-z pickups for going direct into the board. Les is all about the clean tone and innovation, after all. The SG is most definitely a different animal than the original Les Paul. The SG plays faster and in stock form has more powerful pickups. BUT, because of weakenesses in the design, the original LP has a bit more sustain. When you put two radical cutaways on either side of the neck and remove so much wood mass from other areas of the body, you'll lose sustain. The benefit to the SG is playability and lighter weight. Keep in mind, the two guitars in modern form are almost totally different than when they first came out. The '52 LP was so bad that nobody wanted it, that's why there's almost none out there from that year. P-90s and a trapeze tail, I'm surprised Les even played it. It was like the original Corvette until Zora Duntov came and put a V8 in it. Seth Lover saved the original Les Paul with the PAF humbucker. The '61 SG had a neck joint that wanted to fall apart and a cheesy tremelo system that didn't even come close to Fender's quality or stability. Today, the two guitars are excellent instruments and have benefited from 50 years of research and evolution, especially the SG. I would gladly add either to my collection now.

Yeah, you saw X2: X-Men United, right? You know, where Magneto grabs the excess iron out of the guard's blood and uses it as projectiles to kill the same guard and escape from his acrylic prison. Rare earth magnets are powerful, but there's not enough iron in your blood to make a clot big enough to feel. If it did, you'd have bigger problems that an aching leg. But hey, I'm no physician...I just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

The one thing I gotta give Peavey credit for is their customer service and parts avaliabilty. I've always had good luck with getting replacement parts easy and fast. Having said that, I like the XXX and the new JSX, but the XXL has got to go. Also, I know I'm going to piss off a lot of Van Halen fans out there, but if you like Ed's tone since 1995, well, I guess you'll like the 5150. He uses so many digital effects now that it really doesn't matter if his amp sounds good or not. *ducks* Okay, since I've managed to insult my favorite guitarist's tone for the last ten years, except for Humans Being, I'm more of a Marshall and Mesa kind of guy. I like the clean tone of the Soldano, but for rock it's gotta be a Marshall and for gritty blues and nu rock it's gotta be the Mesa. You know, I used to think that you needed a big amp to really stand out, but I really think most of us can get away with a 25-40 watt combo for club-sized gigs. Just mike it and run it through the house speakers. It's sooo much easier to control and it'll sound just as good too. If you want a super clean sound, I like the Roland Jazz Chorus. Just so you know, Angus Young has all those Marshall stacks on stage, but only one of 'em is turned on, and it's set really low. The sound to the house actually comes from a JTM45 in a road case under the stage, cranked to the max and miked to the house.

Maiden69, What are they going to do? Sue you for exposing their false advertising and lies to the public? If they do, you can find the ACLU in your town and they'll take your case like no tomorrow. But that's not what Gibson/Epiphone are really worried about. If it becomes general public knowledge that the Epi Les Paul is not made of the same material as the Gibson AND people perceive it as being a significantly less quality instrument, then there's a good chance that Gibson's litigation against PRS and other companies for trademark infringment could be in trouble. It's a complicated rule, but it's there. Show us the letter! Or just give us a general idea about what it said in reply...

The cleanest and simplest bridge is probably just a regular Fender-style hard-tail bridge. Best thing about it's the fact that it is much lower profile than a TOM bridge and doesn't require any neck angle with only the fretboard itself higher than the body. However, it won't really work well on a carved-top body, so if you've done that, ce la vie. But if you're building a flat-top, it's the simplest and cleanest way to go.

The AC30 is really a Class AB amp? Hmmm. For some reason I always thought it was a Class A. I stand corrected, now that I look like a complete POS jerk. As for my original post, I screwed up some phrasing, as usual. When I said "the reason why tube amps sound louder", I should have said "the reason why Class A amps sound louder at lower volume levels", or something like that. There's no real good way to explain it, but you're just pushing the Class A harder at lower volume levels because the circuit is running "hot" for 360 degrees constant. There is no difference in actual acoustic volume put out for a given watt output. Class A will CONSUME more wattage than a Class AB/B, but the output wattage is not going to be any louder with a tube vs. transistor setup. I agree, PMPO is fiction. RMS is the only reliable constant way to rate wattage.

MightyMite has had a good rep in the past for quality parts. I haven't heard anything real bad about 'em. They're probably a little cheaper because they don't say "Seymour Duncan" or "Gibson USA" on them. They may be a little more microphonic or a little noisier, but for the price you probably can't beat 'em. As for impedance, it's not always going to measure how hot a pickup is going to be. Higher impedance pickups tend to put out more power, but they can be very bassy and sound kind of woolly. Lower impedances, like the Alinico II Pro, tend to not put out as much power in volts, but are highly revered for their clarity and "clean" distortion.

Stunning guitar. Can't beat the price for that quality and obvious care from the previous owner. I'd agree with BeAR, though. The plastic knobs are okay for Strats, but on a fine guitar even Jackson or Ibanez puts metal dome knobs on the guitars. Cheap upgrade for a cleaner look. Putting plastic knobs on a Wolfie is like putting plastic hubcaps on a Vette. What was Peavey/EVH thinking?

Yeah, it's known as "dehorning"... You could call it the "Steerocaster" since you removed the horns.

I think all this solid state wattage vs. tube wattage hubris is getting pretty thick in here. There are four basic kinds of amps. Class A, AB, B, and C. There's supposedly a new class D/T, digital amps, but we won't go there since we live in analog right now. Class A: The transistor amp conducts for the entire cycle of input signal. The conduction angle is 360 deg on the waveform. These amps run hot, as the transistors in the power amp are on all the time, but the upside is high sound quality. You will see only 15-35% efficiency of power here. Class B: In this amp, the positive and negative halves of the signal are dealt with by different parts of the circuit. The output devices continually switch. These amps run cooler, but the sound quality is not as pure. Class AB: These amps work by biasing the transistor amp at a non-zero DC current much smaller than the peak current of the signal source. The second transistor conducts during negative half cycle of waveform and the currents from the 2 transistors are combined at the load. A compromise between sound quality of Class A and efficiency of Class B. Most modern amp designs employ this method. Class C: Not suitable for audio amplification, mostly RF and industrial control. The key to all this hubris is that a Class A amp, like the Vox AC30, whether it's valve or transistor, is going to sound "louder" at lower wattage because the valves are being driven constantly at peak current. You'd have to drive a Class AB/B at full (100 watts) in order to get the same sound at 15 watts in Class A configuration. The sound is never going to be as smooth, though, because of the switching effect in the push-pull section. Okay, so why do transistor amps sound different? Physics. Transistor-based amps process a signal as clean as possible until they start to clip at high-voltages. Tube amps are always putting unclean signals and spurious voltages into the signal path. We call it warmth. But the tubes are also capable of handling higher output without clipping, therefore the "distortion" is always going to be "cleaner" with a tube amp.

I'd just leave it in the original packing and put the box in an area with stable humidity. The neck will only warp if you don't finish it before you start playing the guitar, but even then it will probably take a while for that to happen, if it ever does. Just don't take it out and lean it against a wall or something

Yeah, people forget that guitars can be good investments, too. Everyone's heard the stories about going to an old lady's garage sale before she goes to the retirement home and buying a mint '57 Strat for $10 that belonged to her son who was killed in Vietnam and kept under the bed in it's case since 1965. Honestly, though, I've never seen it personally. A friend of mine I used to gig with has a nice mid-'60s Gibson SG with P-90s and the Lyre vibrola tailpiece. He thought it had been stolen when his apartment was robbed 20 years ago, but somehow he found it in his basement after four moves! Anyway, before he mentioned it to me, he took it down to the music store to see about getting it set up. After all, it hadn't been played in 20 years. The repair guy was like, "Okay, I will set it up for you right now while you wait, because I don't want to be responsible for some chucklehead stealing it if you leave it here." My friend had no idea that something like that could have actually appreciated in value, even with a lightly checked finish. He gave like, $100 for it back when he was in college because his friend needed the money. The SG still plays great, didn't even need a trussrod adjust. Pots weren't scratchy, either.

I don't know about you guys, but it seems to me that the Wolfies don't hold their value very well, for some reason I don't know. They're killer guitars, though. Like you paid $680 US for a top-shelf model, but I've seen several Specials around here in the Midwest US for as little as $300. On the other side, I see the old EBMM models still fetching quite good prices upwards of $700-1000 US. That's for 12-year-old, beat-up guitars, too! I guess it must be that the Peaveys, while not necessarily much lower in quality, must be more plentiful than the old EBMMs. I suppose that would fit in with what Eddie wanted when he went to Peavey, which was a guitar that his fans could afford AND actually get their hands on without having to wait 6 months for EBMM to build it.

All this drama over a piece of fine mahogany...I love Internet forums

Yeah, at least Charo is hot for a 50-year-old chick. I saw her on the MDA telethon a few weeks ago and she's still smokin'. Cootchy-Cootchy-Coo! I don't think anyone would say Esteban is a bad guitarist, I would say that he's probably the most shameless self-promoter since Garth Brooks, though. Three words: All Wood Construction.

Nah, I'm not pissed that anyone started this thread. What I'm pissed about are people who know some good sources for wood where these guys live and don't feel like it's worth their time to share the wealth. I can understand wanting to make someone put some effort into finding their resources, but I also believe that asking around is a great way to find those resources. C'mon, guys. It's not like he's trying to mooch some wood out of your own shop. But my previous post still stands. I'd personally make a couple of prototype bodies out of some less-expensive and easier to find wood before I put the saw to the mahogany. Don't let some of these guys get you down, man. They're just doing it because you're new.

As you'll find out, there's no "better" way to build a guitar or bass anymore. When Les Paul designed what he thought was the "best" way to build a guitar, he chose a neck-through design. He stretched piano wire across a railroad tie and figured out that one solid piece of wood would give better sustain and volume for each note. When Leo Fender designed what he thought was the "best" way to build a guitar, he chose a bolt-on design. The idea was that the design was simpler to manufacture and the neck could be quickly changed if warped or otherwise damaged. This was important to the early Broadcaster/No-Caster models because they didn't have a trussrod. When Ted McCarty designed (*ducks*) the Gibson "Les Paul" Model, he chose a set-neck design similar to what Gibson had used for years on their old archtops and hollow electrics. Les Paul is said to have not really liked the design because the pickups were weak and noisy (early single-coils), the arch-top was not as comfortable to play as a flat-top, and the set-neck design killed the sustain. The second-generation "Les Paul", better known as the SG, was supposed to have corrected those issues but they used a set-neck again. The problem in the SG was that it was designed to be a neck-through, so when they went with the set-neck the joint was too small, weak, and unstable. Les Paul became frustrated with Gibson and they with him, so he cut his endorsement deal and the new Les Paul SG became just the "SG" model. In the end, it all depends on the kind of tone you want. Play a real neck-through BC Rich, a Strat, and a Les Paul, and you'll see what I mean. There's no "best" way to do it. It's all about personal preference in tone and ease of playing. Parker Guitars uses a neck-through design for what is probably the most versatile guitar made today, but still offers a bolt-on model. Also, if you're going to be thrashing the guitar around, keep in mind that neck-through guitars are almost impossible to repair if you break the neck from the headstock down.