mledbetter

Cool. Yeah i look at those things some times. It's funny, i used to be proud of the fact that I never took lessons. But i wish I had.. I'll play a solo or something and get all kinds of compliments but I know it could be a whole lot better. Now i don't memorize licks.. I play everything improv and never the same way twice.. but i'm locked in a box. But, i can play and it's brought me 15 years of enjoyment so i can't knock it..

The other option is to just wind your own It's on my list of things to do.. i have all the parts for my winder.. but i haven't invested in the startup supplies to get going.. i.e. wire and bobbins, mags, etc.. Wire is EXPENSIVE and people want you to buy 5 lbs of it if you want the good stuff.

learning to play.. (i'm an ear player.. no lessons) my brother taught me the pentatonic minor scale and spent about 10 mins showing me how you could listen to practically any rock/blues/country song and overlay that pattern in there. And with the exception of the progressive stuff, it's still true today. Just to get a quick start.. if you like to figure things out for yourself, learn the pentatonic minor shape and then learn a pentatonic minor run.. Now, i pretty much can solo anywhere on the board, using segments of the run to get from point a to point b and generally know how the shape morphs as you change positions.. It just kind of grows on you. A buddy of mine too from a theory based teacher and had great results.. you really need a teacher to learn it that way though IMHO. He learned scales first, then chord theory based on those scales, and he can play just about anything after a year of lessons. and he was 30 like me.. it's hard to learn new stuff the older you get

I disagree - the noise is noise, and interferes with the reproduction of any vintage tone your Tele may be producing. That's like saying the squeaking of the leather strap on that bass drum pedal is what gave John Bonham his distinctive drum sound. There are plenty of vintage-style single coils that don't hum or buzz if they're installed correctly. I'm not a big fan of Fender's Noiseless pickups, but it's because they don't really sound very good, not because they're quiet! Life is too short to play a noisy rig! (As always, feel free to ignore anything in the above that makes you feel uncomfortable.) ← LOL.. hey.. to each their own. I am a freak about shielding. I dont' like excessive noise.. but to me it's kind of like when you throw noise reduction (i'm showing my age here) on an audio track.. You lose some of the dimension. Digital is great but there was a warmth to analog that had a lot to do with the peripheral noise.. It's just a personal preference. I never play my strat in hum canceling position. I love the overwround neck pup. Noise is bad.. but a single coil sounding like a single coil should is all i'm talking about. Most folks seem to think that in the effort to make the VN pups noiseless.. they lost a lot of tone along the way. I guess they were whittling away components of the sound that weren't noise after all.

I'm 2 for 2 on tearout in swamp ash projects.. I think the layers of grain just want to peel up and separate. It's a neat wood but man it's fussy to work with.

Right.. the noise is part of the sound. I thinnk the flock to noisless has people realizing that the little bit of hum you get out of the old fashioned single coils is kind of like vinyl noise is to LP afficionados.. It's the soul. Anyway.. an unsolicited recommendation.. I bought a set of premium boutique overwound tele pickups from GuitarFetish on ebay. They are absolutely top notch in every way. They are wound overseas but designed by this dude and the build quality on them is absolutely amazing. I have tested them some in the sound department and the sound very nice.. Haven't done any full out playing of them yet.. I've heard nothing but good things about his product though. I think I gave 85 bucks for the two. The i30 model and the i31 model Ask the guy questions.. he's very helpful. I'd experiment with these any day over paying 300 bucks for a custom set. Unless you just have that kind of money to burn. The bridge pickup is built like a freakin tank.. They are extremely high quality construction.

i'm surprised by now that someone hasn't made a modular tele bridge.. 2 pieces.. the bridge and the pup plate.. then you could put it together however you wanted.

wow.. nice looking stuff... as always..

no to mention heavy as hell. Now one could do a Dano thing and make an MDF frame and put a top and bottom on it. Like their melamine capped waffle bodies.

Yes tele neck pups are much smaller than a standard single coil. If you want a similar looking single coil size you'd have to buy a lipstick tube style pup.

Check out harmony central and look for reviews on pickups. There are a ton on there. Most users of Fender Vintage Noiseless seem to be in agreement.. that they don't like them.. that they are sterile and uninspiring. It all depends on your style. Rio Grande has some great tele pickup options. If you want powerful, the Muy Grande line is the ticket.

I read somewhere.. may have been here even that european sycamore is more along the line of our domestic maple.. Our sycamore is something different. That may be total hogwash I have no idea. But a ton of european manufacturers use sycamore for necks and tops. My dad just had two sycamore trees removed.. perfect 3ft plus diameter trunks with no rot. Would have been beautiful wood but by the time I learned of it the neighbor that removed had run it all through the log splitter. We have a sawmill near here in Rogersville that specializes in qartered sycamore or furniture builders. It's pretty stuff.. Kind of a poor man's lacewood.

If you have any trouble with the seam.. you could try the same thing but with a spiral wrap.. Replacing the abrasive on a drum sander is done this way.. it's a spiral wrap (like unpeeling a can of biscuits ) You just do a strip of abrasive, spiral it around the drum, trim the ends and use your adhesive. Nice thing about the spiral is the sanding action won't pull up the paper. The only places you need to anchor are the ends and a couple of small wide rubber bands would do that beautifully as long as you can put them out of the spindle travel where they don't hit your wood. The drum sanders you don't glue.. you wrap, pin the ends then wrap strapping tape around each end. Same concept.

is it a painted guitar? or a trans finish? If painted.. then you can glue in a block of wood, fill, and paint over. If it's trans.. there's not much you can do.. Unless you figured something decorative you could do with the hole.. Like Greg was saying.. pickguard material is not hard to work with. You jsut need a template then you can route just like you do the wood. It bandsaws very easily too.

Cool.. I may just have to do that. What did you notch the feeler gauges with?

Slotting a nut is usually a 20-40 dollar fee at our guitar stores. It's truly not rocket science.. but you do need to have the right tools. I have bought pre slotted the first few times because I don't have the 60 bucks to throw down on the file set.. But i will certainly do that as soon as I can free up the cash.

I bought a set of premium overwound tele pickups from guitarfetish and so far they are awesome. Limited tests as my build isn't completely done yet. The quality of them is superb though. My tele bridge pup is real forbon bobbin, 43 awg enamel wire, beveled pole pieces, cloth leads.. and the coil is actually wrapped in cotton cording. With the baseplate the thing feels like a tank. I want to do a tele copy with a set of GFS liverpool filtertrons. Those things look cool and the sound clips are nice as well. I don't think you can go wrong with the GFS pup. I talked to the guy for a while about them. He said he experiments with windings and stuff.. then specs it out and has it wound overseas for mass production. His price on alnico HBs though is very good as well. I'm wanting to build a walnut guitar soon too. Id' like to know how it comes out. Did you just use regular walnut? I want to do as much as i can with local woods. I'm wondering too about doing a top with some quartersawn sycamore. It's beautiful stuff.

I used a sansamp GT-2 for a long time.. was my "direct in" system when I played out. You can dial in some killer sounds. Occassionally i could get lucky enough to find the perfect combination where I could roll off my guitar volume and have the sansamp clean up a little bit.. One of the better quality distortion pedals definitely. Especially when you don't want a boatload of other effects.

I want to see that PRS thing you opened up the post with.. That was lookin pretty sweet.

Do the EVH thing.. buy a strat copy.. rip it up and outfit it with one humbucker and volume knob. Or better yet.. a single p90 or fat bastard.. If he wants to make his own.. hit WD Music and you can get a 1 HB strat body for 199 retail.. throw a neck on there and some basic electronics and that would rock. You have to do the eye bolts for strap locks.. Get some obnoxious stickers.. etc..

Dino.. you're absolutely welcome here and if you have information to share, that's what it's all about. Probably a lot of people misunderstood your reason for posting. It's like "hey look at this.. cool paint job.. shiny object.. wanna know how I did it??... .. you can buy the book here from this guy for a mere 19.95.." This forum is about sharing information, and you're posts looked like textbook guerilla marketing techniques - so i would imagine that people perceived that you were pushing this guys book rather than offering helpful advice.. fair or not, that's kinda how it seemed. Maybe it's because in about every post you keep using the buzz words like "factory Finish" and "amazing" and in a couple cases, the website... Do I expect you to spill the info from the book here? no.. you paid for it and the guy selliing it probably wouldn't appreciate it. I haven't bought the book because I figure the tutorials are no different than ReRanch or any other places that teach you how to do a good rattlecan finish. The bodies look amazing, however. Thanks for sharing the pics.

LOL.. i'll remember that.. Yeah, it's a little wolfy.. no i am not going to leave it that defined.. I'm headed out to buy a spoon plane this weekend and will smooth it all out. Too hard an edge.

in fairness to greg.. his words were "in some cases.. it can accomplish the same goal" Different people have different threshholds for tolerating improper intonateion. If a zero fret makes their guitar play "in tune" to them then it has accomplished that goal. Maybe they have only played guitars woth poorly cut nuts.. bottom line was he sais "in some cases" so jumping on him doesn't make sense. Not when there are people like MM on here who so perfectly deserve our scorn You seem rather hostile whether you mean to or not and for pete's sake.. it's just a damn nut. I don't like zero frets, i'll never build one and I said several posts back that a perfectly cut nut and a zero fret do the same damn thing. Honestly, i don't even need an earvana. I have gotten by fine without it. I thought this post would have wrapped up after we proved to MM that a compensated nut BEHIND a zero fret is ludicrous.. Anyway.. cheers to all, have a good evening and laugh a little.

I don't know man.. it says right here in my physics bok that.... That is a very fair statement and I agree completely.

erik.. here is a supplier in the states. Don't know anything about his authenticity.. but I heard about Kauri a while back and looked around myself. Interesting looking wood. I guess you could jsut warn him that you are a geologist and have the equipment to carbon date the stuff and ask him if it's really going to check out http://www.ancientwood.com/