x189player

absolutely the players' strat- i just got one and it's awesome- the noiseless pickups are superb sounding and the neck is wonderful- and the price is right! considering many strats are really variable, the players' ones i've played are the good ones. plus, they seem to be disappearing from the shops i've seen and not coming back into stock. that's assuming you want it for playing, not for various other (fashion etc) reasons. i frankly think mine didn't sell at the shop i found it becauser it looked like too much of a creampuff- the gold plated hardware is ridiculous! but it is really a superb instrument.

You left out Tech21, so I didn't vote. That, plus a handful of weird old tube amps, and I'm all set.

check your local electrical supplier for long drill bits. electricians frequently use very long bits when installing wiring in a wooden house.

cool, keep us posted how it goes!

check the schematics posted above too!

shouldn't matter. 500K pots are used with humbuckers not because they're humbuckers, but becasue traditional LP-style guitars are wired with volume controls for each pickup, so the volumes are inhibit-style rather than bypass-style like a single master volume pot is wired. higher value pots give a slightly brighter sound, lower give a slightly darker sound. I use 500K pots for everything, no problem, single or humbucker or P-90. If your pot does not have high enough resistance in my experience you may not have the master volume go all the way down to zero. here's some schematics: T-riffic tele mod for more sounds Standard tele wiring

I agree with the 'diverse pair' idea. In my tele I run a Fender tele pickup in the bridge, and a warm overwound humbucker in the neck (with coil tap). This gives me both tele clank and warm jazz tones, which are what i use most often. Here's the problem though: most tele pickups are pretty low output, and so a tele pickup in the bridge spot is going to be really overwhelmed by a humbucker, especially an overwound one, and especially in the neck, which is always a louder position anyway. When I first went with this combination, the 'both' position on the 3-way might as well have been 'neck only' because it completely swamped the bridge pickup, and no amount of adjusting pickup height would compensate for this. The answer is not only effective, but adds a much larger tonal range: use a blend pot instead of a 3-way switch. That way I can dial in just the amount of humbucker warmth I want- just a shade to add warmth behind the clank, or an equal output to allow phase reverse (I wire my pickups out of phase fulltime) when they're balanced. When I coil tap the humbucker it drops the output from it, and the blend pot allows me to compensate. I use a chickenhead knob on the blend pot, which allows me to set or recall a particular setting visually or by feel. The other addition to this setup which I really like is an inductor-based passive tone control instead of the usual low-pass tone control. At the center detent it's normal; roll it one way and it's a notch filter that cuts out the midrange for an 'acoustic-like' sound; roll it the other way and it cuts the low and hi and leaves the midrange, which is especially good for distorted tone. People put down passive EQ, but it's plenty effective, especially when you step up to more gain at the amp. Pardon my bragging, but all the above makes my tele one of the most versatile and useful guitars I have- not the narrow tone range sometimes associated with a tele.

It's also going to make a huge difference how much amplification you have going. Standing in front of a 500 watt stack, your strings are aching to scream so bad that barely looking at them will give you a power chord. There's a lot of factors like compression and gain that affect the 'touch', not just your technique. I'd say try cranking your amp as loud as it will go and see what difference that makes. You'll probably find that some pedals will help too, especially at lower levels.

Horns look good on a Vee!

I bought my rig on credit when I was a college student with a full-time job. Went to my local bank, got a $2500 loan, bought the gear, played the hell out of it, paid it off. Life went on. Now, the only down side of this is that 20 years later the same rig that I made payments on for years is now worth... well, I bought a couple of em on ebay lately for 100$ each... at least I lowered my overall average cost...

Here's a handful of my faves i've put together into a nice Ellington arrangement. Especially that #11 chord in the last line.

yeah, test it first. inkjet printer ink runs with water, solvent, etc etc...

I'm going to second the comment about the action. Try playing the F chord on a whole bunch of different guitars, see if you have the same problem. A guitar with high action and heavy gauge strings can be the problem, unfortunately many beginners start with instruments that are a challenge for anyone but SRV...

North Dakota? Guitars??? Right on! Little does the world realize that extreme cold concentrates the hipness... -Paul Clark GF Red River class of 81

From what I hear the bridge, and the way the bridge contacts the body, has more to do with sustain that presence or lack of a truss rod. If you're after sustain, go with set neck or neck-through construction.

You gonna draw the line at Rock only? Cause if not, the winner hands-down is Star Dust, by Hoagy Carmichael, with 1800-2300 recordings (and over 500 in the last ten years). If you're talking only rock, that would be "Yesterday" with more than 1600 recorded versions.

love the bound tele with a bigsby... but Godin gets extra bonus points for the original shape.

looks like great fun! as somebody else mentioned, the critical joint is the neck pocket. get that right and all the rest is nice finishing. are you going to bind the edges? nice contrasting white on black is always good, and dresses up a solid paint color. It would be classic on the LP of course, but would look trick on any of the others.

nice work curtis! i always believe that with patience and smarts you can always make something out of very little, and give it the attention to be great!

scrub it with a toothbrush when you're done.

I agree. A great way to warm up for making guitars is to take a cheap one and give it the hours of attention it takes to make it custom shop quality. It's amazing what you can do with so little, and it matters so much less if you mess up! As far as refinishing, there's nothing you can't do yourself with a spray can, and the materials are at every auto parts store. YOu certainly don't need to pay to have that done- give it five or six good coats, block sand it with 800 grit sandpaper, then give it a few more coats with clear, then block sand 800 and then 2000 grit. then polish it out with auto hand rubbing compund, and you'll have a finish so shiny and deep nobody will believe it's a 100$ guitar. And hey, what's wrong with your Explorer? I wish I'd had something so nice when I was 15.

there's lot sof wiring diagrams here: http://guitarelectronics.zoovy.com/categor...pickupdiagrams/ and like he said, you can use pull-switch pots to hide switches in your knobs.

Beautiful work! FWIW< I've used much the same process with water-based polys, enabling good finish even under high humidity (raining, cold) conditions. YOu really can force the solvents out much quicker this way. An old hot rod trick for applying a really good finish with a brush is to set the paint in the oven for a few minutes before brushing it on- I've only done this with enamel myself, I can imagine the flammability hazards of laquer or nitro. But it's a similar idea. Seems much safer to heat it up after coating.

i don't know that brand, but i've used diamond varathane water-based poly clear with good results.

how did you handle teh frequently dismounted neck? regular screws or something else? wingnuts?