thedoctor

Boy, I would be careful and make no changes that aren't easy to remove. Try your tone circuit in a patch cord first because a lot of capsule mics don't take well to any standard capacitor toning. The 500k pot tells me you should start with a really low value (.0047).

For what speakers? What is the desired final result? Driven by what?

WOW!! I love Penguins on the Moon! Most excellent!

Look at a Fender SuperReverb or a Genz 60C. Money cannot be better-spent. Warning: the Super is a BEAR to transport.

Crumple up a small wad of aluminum foil and dip it in water. Keep it wet while you scrub the crud off the polepieces. Let em dry and spray em with clear. Life be good.

If you have active pre's on your mag pickup, you can go to Circuit City, Radio Shack or Best buy and buy a $20.00 FM "bridge". This little POC has a 1/8" stereo jack that you can adapt to your axe and send to ANY FM stereo reciever within about 40 feet. Runs on a 9volt battery. I use them to send the signal from my iPod to the FM radio in my old truck's radio. The fidelity might suck a bit but it don't cost much to try. The stereo seperation is not all that bad.

PaulM. VERY GOOD! Socket-arcing could very well be it. The burnt tracks go up in resistance and start to do their insulating job better. I haven't seen it ever that I can remember but it makes perfect sense. OK, I stand corrected. My bandmaster gave me a nasty little jolt/burn when I was poking around the low-voltage filament circuit and it decided I was the new negative. Forgot about that one. Jumped through about 1/8" of carbon-track to get me but it got me.

There are times when high-res photography gives you WAY more detail than you want or need. That looks like an old open wound that never healed! Yuchhh! I don't see any easy fix that I would trust short of a routed cavity with a piece of harwood glued in. That is DISGUSTING! I don't think any epoxy or wood-chip mix is gonna fix that.

My first guess is a bad coupling capacitor that doesn't like your new preamp tubes. Problem is that it shouldn't go away after a few minutes. Hmmm.

I am with southpa. If you gotta mess with frets and the trussrod has issues, pop the fretboard and do a proper job. Hate to on a vintage but you gotta do what it takes to make it playable.

Greg, I have had, for years and years, a brass nut-spacer that slips over the nut on my J-45 and gets me to slide-action, allbeit without pickup-spacing considerations(hey, it's accoustic) and it works but not very easy to change tunings with. Hipshot makes a alternative-tuning bridge assy. that is cool and cheap(if you're a dealer). Give it a look-see.

Plus, you will still have the tools when you are done.

Darren, I could not have said it better but I should add that he is the most proficient, creative bass-player since Jaco.

WOW, a legit reason to buy a new amp!! Go for it!

I told you guys a while ago that the gorilla-species has a union contract with UPS, FedEX and the airlines until 2016. We will just have to do the best we can till that contract runs out .

Dude, you got what I need. Please PM me. thedoctor

Someone on a different thread said that you should play an accoustic for two weeks and then go back to your fav. axe. I think the same applies to hearing yourself with NO effects and trying to get comfy with the way you sound without. Then turn them puppies back on. Guitars, by themselves, do a lot for the way I play. Amps and effects just kinda raise or reduce the "suck" level!

Kinda like the old lost-wax casting technique. I don't know how fibreglass would sound in a controlled-thickness body but I can tell you that any poly except HDPS will be a floppy pile of crud and absorb sound to no end. Cast glass-filled epoxy would be my choice. Maybe with carbon filament impregnation. I love impregnating carbon!

erik, that be right! You build to get what you want, not save money. If you got expensive tastes, you gonna spend money on an axe, hand-built or otherwise. Very few people can save money building a guitar comparable to an existing factory-build. The best example of that is a Epiphone 335 (?) copy. Try to make that and save a single penny. You build to build.

Let us know when it doesn't.

I don't have a bass boat, 4-wheeler, cabin on the lake, ex-wife, mortgage, college loan, mistress, speeding tickets or dead-beat inlaws. So I can afford a few guitar projects. In other words, I hardly have a life!

I forgot to add that action hieght/nut hieght REALLY adds to the neck stress. Hard slappers and folk that love digging in to pull a string will want a THICKER neck. Finger-played "rumblers" can get by with a thinner neck.

OK, then. Not knowing the age, brand or quality or this particular instrument, I will give you the generic fix. Remove all the strings and take both strips of tuners off. If they are made with simple peened-end tuning knob shafts, check the shafts for loose-fit in the little ears that hold them engaged to the ring gear that drives the nylon. Too much slop will make them bind and you can do very little to fix that. If you find no large amounts of play in those little retainers, simply wax (a candle works well) the ends of the nylons and the worm gear. If your knob shafts have screws that retain them, it gets a little harder to do. You will have to take the screws out, clean them, and put them back it with LokTite to keep them from changing settings. Adjust them while the LokTite is still fresh (no need to have the strings on yet) until they all have a reasonable amount of friction and leave it overnight. Still wax the nylon and gears as they will love you for it.

If you want a real value get the UniversalGems PU0411-023 for $33.00. You can go to TheBassPlace and get BART 8S for around $90.00. Tough call but you said you want deep/low. Stay with them two.

Maiden might be right but it sounds like you are where you want to be. Cool.