AcousticSmash

Ibanez has never used toggle switches on their solid body guitars, at least none that I know of. It had a 5 way switch, now I am installing a 3 way blade switch but I haven't the slightest clue how to solder the pickups to the darn thing which is what I am trying to find out.

Bump

Sorry, I forgot to mention that it only has one master and one tone for controls.

Wouldn't it be safer to have two individual grounds for both guitar and bass?

Alright, I have not posted in here in a dogs age but here is my story.

I am beefing up my Ibanez RT650 with a DiMarzio Super Distortion in the neck and a Seymour Duncan SH-5 in the bridge, however I am rewiring the guitar with a 3 way switch since the original one was shot, but the switch is a Fender Telecaster style one, not a Gibson and the tone knob is a push pull for coil splitting. I have searched all over the internet and the only diagrams that come close are ones with volume pots as the coil split instead of the tone knobs. Can anyone help me out here? I can wire it no problem so long as I have a proper schematic to do it, cause I am not shelling out 50 bucks to get it wired for me since this is also a learning experience for me.

I would rather just wind my own pickups though, if you do your research then you will find out how to make pickups to fit your tonal specifications. Say you want a 50's Strat sound, wind a single coil pickup at least 7900 times, the more winding you do though the fatter the sound will be. If you are looking for a nice clean tone ala Eric Johnson or Albert Lee then you would want it wound to the minimum of 7900, but the more wire on it the fatter the tone.

The Dimebucker is a nice pickup, my guitar teacher has one in a guitar of his. If you are into high gain stuff then it is worth the investment, however DiMarzio Breed are good as well, the Evolutions are a bit smoother though and are not as heavy as the Breed pickups.

Well recently I have had an interest in making my own pickups for electric guitars, mainly vintage style single coils and humbuckers. Anyway I am not sure where to start exactly. I know you need a pickup winder but I have seen around the web that people have used sewing machines for making pickups, however I do not know how reliable that is exactly in terms of making proper electronics. I have seen the price of the pickup winder on Stewmac and I darn near crapped my pants (what with it being almost 400 CAD) so is it possible to get one cheaper then that or are there any good online indepth tutorials on how to build your own winder?

i thought the "mirror" jem used the same material for the top as well as the pickguard, i dont know how large you can buy sheets of that material but its the best way to get a mirror finish that will last, however you say your guitar is a strat style so you may have problems with the radiused edges. there is a guy here that was making a mirror jem but i cant remember who they but they were building another guitar ay the same time if that helps

Charvel Strat style bodies arent rounded on the edge though, at least mine isnt. Like Ibanez RG's really. I would imagine its possible to put a thin piece of glass on it, 2 pieces though cause you have to regard the pickup cavities and bridge as well and you would essentially have to cut the whole body layout in half in order to make pickup and bridge slots, unless you can route a mirror so to speak, plus holes would have to be drilled for the pots and pickup switch.

Is anyone ever tryed powder coating a guitar and if answer is positive how cool it turned out and + vs -?????

I dont even know if that is posible ('cos of static electriciti and so on)

←

You need a metal surface for powder coating, so a guitar body won't work. Also, the heat needed to cure it would probably cause the wood to crack, if not when it gets hot, then when it cools down and the powder coat would flake if you could even get it to stick at all.

What if you had sheet metal cut out and conformed to the body by a really strong adhesive of some sort? The metal would get really hot though and still crack the wood I would imagine.

Would it be possible to get a mirror that was tinted for colour and thin enough to apply to the top of the body by means of a adhesive? The trick would be that it would have to be split in half though to cut out the pickup cavities and bridge as well. I know there are a couple of companies around here who deal with glass and mirrors that can probably do something custom for me, although the glass would have to be really thin, like 2mm or so and it would be very fragile. Even so the electronics cavity would have to be routed a little more so the pots stick up enough for the knobs to fit properly.

Sorry for bringing this thread up, it should be pinned. Kinda answered some of my other questions though.

I dont expect the guitar to around forever, I only paid 200 bucks for it and its a fairly solid axe, however I dont think I will be keeping it forever. I want to do something with it though, a solid ocean blue colour doesnt look great for me. I forget where I read it but there was a tutorial on how to do the mirror effect like what Ibanez does with the JEM's but I do not remember where I found it. However I recall there was a flaking technique or something like that and the reflective stuff on the body was tin foil ironed onto the body or something along those lines.

I am interested in finishing a Charvel Strat copy that I bought recently. It has two humbucker pickups and a Schaller Licensed Floyd Rose bridge with locking nut. Anyhow I am going to strip off all the pain and finish and redo it in a mirror finish, just like the Ibanez JEM77BRMR or the Bad Horsie JEM (probably in a different colour than either of those two guitars). Anyhow are there any tutorials on how to do a mirror finish that works well and will last a long time.

I first learned on a recorder, twas my first instrument. I started playing clarinet just before I started highschool, just working on playing the thing before learning the fingerings. I picked up the alto sax the same year. I played the tenor sax as well during grade 11 in prep for a local theater production that I was in the following summer. In grade 12 I picked up the oboe as my minor instrument for the music class. I picked up the guitar after I finished grade 10 and have played it since. I major on alto sax and clarinet. I played the bari sax for my senior highschool band in my extra year of school.

ok thanks guys. I live in Guelph so Cambridge is closest for me actually.

Matt what kind of store did you buy that wood from? I need some Alder, preferably something that can be aged for me. I dont know anyone who could do that for me though and I dont know where I would find Alder wood in the first place.

5 way switch. the tone pots get wired to the bridge and neck pickups instead of the neck and middle pickups.

is there anyone in Canada that deals out wood for building guitars, Ontario mainly? I have gotten a bunch of tools that I can use for building a guitar and am going to make a Strat copy, using the specs from my own cheap Strat to do so but with numerous modifications that fit the original 1954 Strat design such as shallow pickups, Alder body, quarter sawn maple neck V shaped like the 57 Strat neck as well as a few electronic modifications that are used on Fender's Eric Johnson signature models. Hopefully doing so will give me the tonality that I am after, especially with my 65 Deluxe Reverb reissue amp that I have now.

hey bison looks like im not the only person from GTU on here lookin for help. but yea the necks on almost every Tele I have ever played are completely aligned with the bridge. I doubt anyone would be impressed with a offset neck now would they? then again sometimes things can warp so it could offset the neck but thats if the strings are all loose.

it seems so wrong to put 12 strings on a Telecaster im sorry but it is. I have seen a 12 string Les Paul sunburst copy on ebay before and even that looked pretty aweful

Ok a friend of mine wants to put a Bigsby tremolo on his Epi Les Paul and he was wondering if it will just fit in with the stop bar tail piece or not and if you can see where the old studs from where the stop bar used to be from?

anyone know if you can rewire a amp to make it louder. I read that Jimmy Page had a 100 watt amp rewired to 200 watts but how he did it is a mystery to me. anyone know if its possible to rewire a 15 watt to a 30 watt amp without ripping it all to shreds and ruining the amp.

yea sheilding is the best way to fix the hum from the amp. I did it meself today and works like a charm

both a good for different things. strats are sissy for playing hard rock and roll with distortion or metal music. I own a strat but dont like it as much as the les pauls that i have played. strats = blues, jazz etc, les pauls = rock, metal, instrumental rock and stuff. the pauls are too heavy though and single coils are a pain for feedback problems with high gain

anyone know where I can find a tutorial on building a hollow/semi hollow bodied mandolin. thanks

oh ok thanks guys. I just wanted to make sure cause when i start working the neck I have to make the little curve where the fret board ends and the head stock begins. I know a lot of guitars used to have flat headstocks that were even with the fret board making the action high and i dont want that

what is the neck angle on a Strat headstock, I need to know for my planning process