thedoctor

OK. My turn. Westheman, do you see the irony in the third post on this topic? lol 1) I prefer archtop accoustics but Telecasters make me ***** 2) I own or posess 22 3) I have Gibson J-45, Hamer Strat, Epi El Capitan, Epi Allen Woody, Gibson 335, Epi PR-5E, 1937 Epi Deluxe, 1966 Epi Casino, 1966 Fender Jazzmaster, 1966 P-bass, Martin LT-18(?), 1967 Guild Starfire 6, 1965 Gretch Country Gentleman, a wonderfull LTD H-50(I know), and about 14 hand-builts. 4)Most of my older instruments were bought from music stores that are now out of business. The newer ones were all bought from internet order music blobs. Except the beloved H-50 that I bought used (no less) at Front Row Center Music in Benton, IL. Ask for Kelvin! 5) To play, the Epi Deluxe and the PR-5 for guitar. The Wasp and the Studio for bass(hand-built). 6) Yes 7)1968 VOX SuperBeatle, 1967 Fender Bassman, 1972 Sunn 200S, 1966 Twin Reverb, 1969 Pro Reverb and several gig-racks. 8)60, 40, 100, 60, 40, 160, 320, 400. 9)44 10) As a player, 7 on guitar, 8 on bass. As an owner, 10 on both. I love guitars!

Yes, the effect of a Varitone is accumulative when two are wired together but there are options. Put one on each pickup and they are added together only when the selector switch is in blend. Put them on the 2 and 4 position of a 5-way and you can pick which one is in effect. Put them both on a 2-way mini switch before the output jack and you can select the desired tone regardless of the selector switch position. Lovecraft could tell you about 500 other ways to do it.

The adjustable and non-adjustable Wellers are excellent irons. I also prefer the medium chisel-point for almost everything. However, when I do shielding or have to remove back-of-pot connections I like a digital Xytronic iron so I can see the temperature drop as I apply the iron to the part. If it drops too far or too fast I raise the output. I know! Fussy, fussy! Just don't want to overheat stuff. Makes for a messy job. I really think any iron is great as long as you know how to solder. Buy an iron and practice till you know what it will do.

genbloke, would you send me that PM also? I have the same interest.

I have taken on an electronic project that is going to require a Tele body and neck to test. I would like to find a body that doen't deserve any better than temporary service. Neck is optional because I will probably have to build one rather than taking one apart to do all these horrible things to it. Whatever, there. Cheap is good. Of course, will pay for quality. It might survive the torture and become a decent axe. No electronics, tuners, etc. needed.

OK. Who wants to go first? I know what he is doing and he needs a LOT of input. Help a boy through school!

I looked up the specs on that PG52 drum mic and it should be a WHOLE lot better at rejecting other signals. Good choice.

Primal, I agree with all the above. The 57 is hard to beat. You would think a large-capsule ele would be better but the boogers pickup everything else. Stinks live. I might reccomend you try a cheaper copy of the 57 because I can't tell the difference between them and the AKG 8000 for bass. And that is just one of the cardoid copies. We have four Nady(bad choice) look-alikes that hadn't been used for years and now our conga player has one of them at the bottom of each of his "tube-things" (a highly technical term). If he's happy, I'm on to other things.

I have one of these I use to test repairs with. Had it about 3 months and used it twice at practice. I am very impressed with the value. That Jensen kicks butt, for what it is. Noisy effects, 20 second warmup time and single input are my only complaints, so far. I bought it cause it was CHEAP!

It is strong, needs no finish, it is heavy, it is a BITCH to work and it is worth using. Don't know about how a body would sound but it makes fabulous necks if you keep it out of excess compression with the right trussrod. It's hard and very coarse.

12AX7s are a great little tube but I get one out of, say, twelve that sound like CRAP! Test fine but sound horrid. That is one tube to keep a couple of known-good spares around for. Some of them are just plain noisy but pass a leakage test. What's up with THAT?

I downloaded Audacity (free, open-source) and found it to be a very stable, easy recording program. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about this. This is the same free, do-what-you-will kind of software as Mozilla and AntiVir. I am impressed.

genbloke, I can see the problem and it would be a booger to fix! If I had a problem like that with one of my guitars I would either fix it or mark it down to experience and live with it. Haven't had to so far but it's just a matter of time. I HAVE built some stuff that I wouldn't play but the person paying the bill would and like it. To be honest, I'm not all that fussy.

1.5 mm.

Unless I am mistaken, and many people say I am, rail pickups don't care how many strings you have as long as the string width is covered plus about 1/8". I love rail pickups for their output and complete coverage. I use them exclusively on 12-strings and Tele bridge position for that very reason.

In my humble opinion, there is nothing special about the Tele single pickup that you can't get out of any other pickup unless you want to cram a Hot Rail Bridge Tele in there. Lots of extra routing and the Hot Rail Strat unit is probly just as HOT!!! Oddly, I haven't put a Hot Rail in a Strat-style yet so I can't say for sure. The neck pickup is definately nothing to write home about. Just a good rythym pickup.

The name for that is an "adjustable saddle". The part that sits in it is then called an adjustable saddle "insert". If it is a wierd or noname axe, I end up having to make them.

Perhaps, for the benifit of those of us who don't know Cobain's axe, you could fill us in on what the total package is going to be when you are done. One extra volume control for a total of how many? Tone controls? Any splits or tapping? Or just a Jag with one more volume control? It will help us help.

Yeah, OK. I remember it was real watery, thin stuff we used to glue the wood to the acrylic but it'll take me a day or two to find out what it was. My hyper-ugly HotRod bass has 16 HO leds installed in four stainless-steel exhaust pipes and now that I think about it they should have been acrylic pipes to make the effect even better. See all the work you're gonna cost me?

Just wanted to refresh this post once to see if anyone can help. If it sounds the same, that's cool but I want it to look very EB-3ish when I'm done.

Hey, Blackburn! I could never get prices from Pete. What do you do to find out how much his stuff is? His overwounds are what THEDOCTOR(get it?) ordered. But not till I know the pricing.

Yes. I forget which glue you use to bond the two but I remember making very durable, routable bowls out of acrylic and hardwood in shop class in the late 50s. You might want to add HO LEDs in the body to illuminate the wings, also. Back then, we used grain-of-wheat bulbs and 1.5 volt batteries to make the bowls light up. Pre-drug era but not by far.

Now, that is the kind of iron you can do some quality work with! We use digital irons for PCB rework and they are INCREDIBLE! You set the tip temp according to how big the joint is going to be (the temp drops instantly) and come up with perfect results, after practice. If you have a large chisel in it, the temp won't drop as much so you run a lower temp. If you are soldering the back of a pot, start at 740 degrees and it will drop to 540 in a heartbeat. WAY cool! If you are doing wire to foil or foil to foil, set it at 560 with a smaller tip and you won't hurt the board.

I just have to throw this in. In 1962, I HAD to have something to make noise with and it had to be portable. My brother and I took the radio out of a '47 Buick and screwed around until we fould a place where we could hook the cord from my microphoned banjo (I know, shame,shame) to it and run a hifi (remember hifi?) speaker from it for a college party. 6-volt battery lasted all night, the next night and still started the car. Sounded like.......well, an electric banjo, need I say more?, but it was stupidly awesome! I really don't know what voltages were involved but I sure wish I still had it to find out how "close to greatness" we might have been!

He woke up!! With the pickup sitting like it would in the guitar and the slight bow pointing DOWN, you have 4 solder ferrules. Top left and top right. Bottom left and bottom right. Top left is hot out. Bottom right is signal ground. Tie top right and bottom left together. Realise, this is for straight HB output. Please be very careful when you solder to these little ferrules and insert your wires. The winding wires are almost invisible but they are in those ferrules as well. Or SHOULD be. Did I mention before, I LOVE this series of pickups! Best of luck!