bluesy

wsc sell them, don't know about the quality though?

wsc website

cheers

darren

Nah, the dimensions are too large, and they look like surface mount. I bet they are more Music Man replacements.

Thanks anyway.

I have ordered an EMG bass humbucker from a local store that I think will even fit inside the old pickup cover. That and a new mounting ring, and I should be set.

It was probably a foam mute like you see on Jaguars. Maybe the bridge buzzed and the owner's solution was to stick foam under there. Or he just wanted a muted sound...who knows.

Are you going to refinish it while you have everything off?

I haven't decided how much refinishing to do. If I wanted to restore to new condition, I'd need to get the gold hardware replated, but, as many people here have suggested, the aged look of the pickups etc might be a look to preserve. Hey, they sell reproductions of rock stars guitars with the scratches all faithfully reproduced!

The back of this guitar had started to come away from the edge at the bottom. I think the wood has suffered a little shrinkage. I have reglued it, and need to smooth the edge where the finish has all worn away. I was thinking of respraying just the edge and various chips to seal it, then see how it looks after cleaning and polishing.

I know this is a little off topic question but is the bridge held in place just by string tension?? I ask because the tailpiece looks like it has been move a little to the treble side of the instrument. Whatever you decide to do with the pickup please keep those pickup covers.

Yes it's a fully floating bridge, just like a more normal archtop (did I mention this is a full hollowbody as well?). A lovely big solid chunky thing it is too. One thing about it that is odd, is a little metal 'shelf' under the strings just forward of the slanted bridge saddle. I think you can see it in the photos. It looks like it used to have something stuck to it. I was thinking it might have been a foam damper or something, but if so, I can't see any mechanism to switch it in and out. Any other suggestions on what it is?

I noticed it was a little bit to one side also (judging by the alignment of the strings and the pickup poles). The strings are stuffed too, so I will give it a full setup and reposition the bridge when I have fixed the pickup.

Carvin make bass pups with a similar mounting alignment, you might want to look into those?

Yes they look like the Music Man pickups. They are bigger, and surface mounted.

Slightly off topic, but you should try and reuse those pickup covers. You can't buy aged like that.

(and maybe even pole pieces if it's possible to screw them out and put them in the new pickup? I have no idea, never seen it done)

Yes, aged is a good word for the way they look If it will fit, I'll definitely put the cover on the new pickup.

I pulled the faulty pickup apart and it's completely dismantleable. There's a frame under the cover, and 2 separate interlocking magnets with pole pieces. The coils (in plastic formers) just slide off them. They were originally stuck with what looks like contact cement (which has hardened and largely let go). I guess I could get it rebuilt - or at least just send the faulty coil away for rewinding - if I was determined to restore this to complete originality.

Why not bolt a small plate of metal to the ear of the replacement humbucker through the centered hole, and then drill and tap two new holes on this plate spaced appropriately to match the mounting rings?

Or, what about replacing the pickups *and* the mounting rings?

On the Rio Grande Pitbulls - I couldn't find anyone who could actually get those when I wanted a set. I had them backordered for over 6 months from two different places. You may be able to order them direct from Rio Grande, I can't remember if I tried that or not.

Great ideas. If the mounting rings fit, that's the easiest solution. If not, the adapter plate would work well too.

I appreciate all the ideas....

Thought I'd post a picture or two, as it is an interesting old guitar. You can see that the two mounting lugs at the top of the humbucker are quite far apart, so I don't think I can use the pickup you posted the photo of (guess I'll drill the mounting ring to take something more standard)

and this is the headstock with the machine heads I mentioned in my other question

Are you asking if a normal humbucker will fit or if it's advisable to use a guitar humbucker on a bass?

Sorry to be unclear. I guess the first question is if these 3-lugged pickups can be purchased anywhere, but as they might be expensive anyway, should I use a normal bass humbucker that will fit with just the small mod I suggested to the mounting hole.

I never thought about the possibility of using a normal humbucker from a 6 string - will that work - it's only a 4 string bass)

I am restoring an old bass and the machine heads are kind of unusual. The shaft comes in from the side, and the strings go into slots in the headstock (like a classical guitar). I think they will work OK if I take them out and lubricate them. What is the right type of lube to use do you think?

I am restoring an old bass guitar. The pickups on it are humbuckers, and I need to replace one of them as it's coil is o/c (or I could rewind it I suppose), but instead of the usual single screw at each end for height adjustment and mounting in the rings, these have 2 screws at one end, and one at the other. The size seems to be about standard (70x39mm). The only other 3 lugged pickup I can find using google is the larger Music Man type.

I guess I can just drill a hole in the centre of the mounting ring at the end where there are 2 at the moment, then use a normal humbucker?

The surgical tubing idea is new to me. Are you referring to the tubing used to supply oxygen, or used for a drip, or something else?

Hmmm

Being a true hollowbody the top is going to vibrate...I'm not sure that it is the ring itself as it is presumably held down by 4 screws to the body. Was the cardboard stopping vibration of the ring or the pickup in the ring? Hard to picture.

Anyway...i suspect it might be the pickup itself as this is only loosely in there on springs. If this is the case, perhaps something a bit more solid is required. Perhaps something like surgical tubing, or even som PVC cut to plength (kind of stuff for fish tank air hoses) and screwed in tight. Or...maybe adjust the pickup to the height required and then tak off the ring and pickup and apply liberal amounts of PVC tape (electrical tape) under the pickup to make sure it's not vibrating.

If it is indeed the ring (seems odd to me) then filing it is probably a good option..and or, PVC tape under it to provide a cushion (cut away so you can't see it) and screw it down to that. But, it does seem like the pickup in the ring (reading your description again) and so a new ring or filing it down will have no effect at all on the symptom and the above suggestions should fix it (or something better you might think of!)

pete

Thanks for your thoughts.

The cardboard was jammed between the side of the chrome pickup cover and the inside of the black plastic ring, so it would prevent both the pickup, and the cover from moving.

The ring is held down by the usual 4 screws, but as I removed the cardboard, I noted that the thin (long) side was very flexible and easy to move. Maybe it's just a cheap ring.

Anyway, like a lot of things, I will just have to experiment I guess.

I was a little annoyed to find, on a brand new guitar that I had purchased, that someone had stuck a bit of folded cardboard down between the side of the pickup and the plastic pickup ring (on the neck pickup on the side furthest from the neck). The guitar is a Washburn J3 (Gibson ES175 copy) hollowbody with 2 humbucking pickups.

I removed the cardboard and soon found out why it was there. When you play rhythm on the guitar a nasty noise is heard through the amp, which turns out to ne vibration - of the pickup ring, I believe. The cardboard was preventing it vibrating. Has anyone experienced this before. I wonder if it's vibrating against the guitar top or against the pickup?

So, how would you fix this? Should I replace the pickup ring (maybe for a better made one), or maybe file the bottom edge a bit to see if it was vibrating against the guitar top (and this might provide enough relief to stop it).

http://fittell.id.au/piezo/ Haven't tried this yet but seems pretty simple.

They look ideal to put under the bridge on my floating bridge archtop. I am going to try it.

good one dpm99 but i have not pick a pair of pick-ups yet say that fast five times but really i am try to get a older sound vintage any ideas

If you mean that older, clean, jazzy sound, you might try one of those floating neck pickups that strap onto the end of the neck, or there's another type that mount on the pickguard. These leave the guitar's top intact (no holes or extra mass) for maximum acoustic sound which when amplified via a floating pickup, gives a distinct authentic sound.

Well mine has turned out great too. I havn't played with oil finishes yet, but I know I should. Anyway, seems the common theme here is 0000 steel wool. Very handy stuff!

I have just reshaped and thinned a neck I made a while ago, and I wanted to try a nice matt, natural feeling finish. In this attempt, I have used a light matt polyurethane (3 coats). It has dried and feels very nice, except for a few little imperfections that I suspect are bits of stuff that stuck to the poly as it was drying. I was thinking of using 0000 steel wool for a final smoothing. Would this work?

Also, what finish do you use for the most natural/wood/matt feeling neck?

The classic guitar for rock-a-billy is a big ol' full body f-hole Gretsch.

Anyway, the 35" scale five-string bass I'm working on for my brother; it's got quite some relief in the neck. I did a quick fret level before stringing it up the second time, and with the action set medium low, there's annoying buzz in the upper register.

That's exactly the problem I was talking about in a recent thread of mine about a method of optimising the setup for low action, while avoiding the problem you describe. The buzz in the upper register, for me, was caused by setting the action while the neck had too much relief. The upper register does not have much, or any, relief, because the neck is thicker and/or bolted to the body. Hence, you have no choice but to set the bridge high enough to avoid the buzzing. To get the action back down, you need to get rid of the excess relief. I haven't adjusted many basses, so I'll let someone else advise on how much you can/should torque the truss rod on yours.

My son got a double neck guitar kit off ebay, the SG style.

He has inserted the necks into the body and they are seated very tightly, and the angle of both necks are less than a 1/2" above the body.

The problem is the tail end of the fret board is not touching the body, it is approx. 1/8" off the body.

Should he remove more of the base of the neck to lower the tail onto the body, or will it not effect the sound quality?

Thanks in advance.

I don't know about SGs, but the fretboard on Teles doesn't touch either. Maybe that's the way it's meant to be?

I set the relief first -- I place a capo on the first fret and hold the string down at about the 14th fret with a finger while I measure the gap.

In other words, bridge height has nothing to do with this step. Neither does the nut height -- but I've always used preslotted nuts, so they're already approximately at the proper height (I adjust the slots after I've set the relief).

I agree, bridge height has nothing to do with relief setting. That's why I can set it first, and you can set it second. The key point for me was setting the bridge height to suit the high frets independently. Once that is done, even if you set too much relief, you won't end up with notes fretting out at the top like I was getting (although you're action may be a tad high with too much relief).

That looks cool...I was thinking of taking an old computer and going linux on it one day...maybe that could be the motivation.

Audacity is still incredibly basic no nonsense and useful...

As far as reaper...I didn't see that trial thing...I saw a $50+ download thing...still it might be worth it...

But...getting the sound into the computer is an important step and as GregP says, with even an entry level audio interface you will get a "lite" version of a major program to get you hooked. Even so...I still often find audacity easier and less cluttered and confusing to use for a lot of things. Plus, you have to consider computer power and memory...audacity tends to be lighter on the resources because of the simplicity.

I have a Digitech multieffects pedal that has a 96kHz sample rate stereo audio to USB interface built in. Ardour recognised it automatically (as well as the midi control interface). I made some test recordings, multi-track layer upon layer as you do in home studios, as was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the sound I got.

You are right about resources required, and that's yet another reason to go to linux.

I'm having problems with a set neck electric that I recently got. When I tune up and play fretted chords, it plays fine. However, open chords are way out of tune. For example, when I play open A5, it sounds horrible. In order for it to sound right, I have to play 5th string open with 4th string on the 1st fret and then slightly bend the 4th string 1st fret up. Same with all open 5th cords.

Any suggestions on how to fix it? It has a tune-o-matic bridge if that helps. Thank you in advance.

Sounds like a problem with the nut.

Those of us in the linux world are really lucky to have Ardour. There's even distributions like Ubuntu Studio that come with it pre-setup, and it is really great software. It's a full Digital Audio Workstation

http://ardour.org/

not how i would do it but if its working for you who can say its wrong.

I take each element at a time and make sure they are correct, i do it in this order:

Frets levelled and strung up to pitch

Nut height

relief

Bridge height

Intonation

I do not use relief to set action, i will say that i personally think its wrong to do so in most cases.. although sometimes its needed for more extreme set-ups/playing styles

Thanks for your response. I am not only using relief to set the action btw. The action is largely set, to the lowest possible, when I adjust the bridge to just make the high notes playable. If the relief was correct at that point, I'd be finished and the action would be nice and low.

I had read, and tried doing the setup in the order you use. The trouble was, there are varying opinions about relief, and I had not read anywhere of the problem that too much relief can cause. So by setting the relief, just a little too much, and then adjusting the bridge to set the action at the 12th fret, I ended up with trouble at the high frets with the notes buzzing and even fretting out completely. We even had a discussion here about tapering high frets off.

The only thing I am really doing differently is to determine the minimum bridge height for playability at these high frets. You can do this because these frets are typically in the part of the neck that's clamped to the guitar body, or near it, so the string tension and truss rod don't put any relief into them at all.

Funnily, I purchased a cheap secondhand archtop acoustic a little while ago, and someone had attempted to set it up, and ended up with the exact problem I described above. The high frets were all buzzing and fretting out. So I quickly set the bridge a little higher to stop the buzzing, then a quarter turn on the truss rod brought the action back down and the guitar is one of the lowest action acoustics I own