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blakeish

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Everything posted by blakeish

  1. For the alder body that I have sanded down to 220 grit, I plan on using Target Coatings, Inc. line of products, since a large thing to take into refinishing consideration, as I've read, is compatibility. So here goes... 1. I plan on using a universal white sealer over the guitar to build the white color coats onto. 2. When the sealing and sanding and etc are taken care of, I am going to use the GOLDEN line of acrylic pigments to build color coats of titanium white to the guitar's body. 3. using the same liquid acrylics, I am going to hand paint, using a brush, the web design where needed on the guitar. 4. for the clear coats I am planning on using the EmTech 9300 water based urethane, to build the finishing coats. I assume this is an optimal plan, keeping in mind that all products will be ordered from the same company, are industrial/commercial grade products, and are listed as compatible with one another. The acrylic pigments I thought were a nice find since I really don't want to invest a whole lot of money into a summer 'experiment' of sorts, i.e. paying a body shop to paint and finish my guitar for me. I am afriad it's just not in the cards, although I understand an 'automotive poly' finish and paint on job on a guitar would be nothing short of great. I am also going to search and see perhaps if I could find a good stenciling material to cut and adhere to the guitar to make the application of the black graphics a nice fluid process as well. thanks so much to those who have contributed their ideas and advice to my earlier posts. peace.
  2. I'm wanting to paint a weblike design on the guitar I am repainting as olympic white/ and refinishing with a water-based poly.....but the design in my own work, and here's a phot about as good as i could get for pencil/sharpie on scrap mdf.....the squared area with the screw in it is the bridge plate, so you can get an idea of the lvl of detail: I'm not completely done doodling all over it, but i plan to keep the colors simple. white guitar, solid black webbing. I'm wondering if it's possible to use a fine detail brush to block in the color before applying the finish coats....I'm aware that I'll have to use a larger number of topcoats to level everything out. But I'm curious, waterbased acrylic paints? or some sort of enamel? a passing thought was to use model paint, like the toy car kind....::shrugs:: just need some confirmation before i get all my materials together. thanks in advance to anyone who can throw me a bone on this one. peace. EDIT: I'm going to use the rattle cans from reranch (olympic white) to paint the guitar and a water based polyurethane (non yellowing) for the final finish. thought i should add that.
  3. thank you all, for your replies and information. I will put in some inquiries to the manufacturer, and see what turns up. When I mentioned the product to the guy who sprays our stuff at work, he seemed very curious about it, but not in the "that's going to possibly kill me if i spray test pieces for you blake" kinda way. I'm not sure if i should start a new topic or just ask this here......here would save some space i think.... but my plan for the body of the guitar. I want to hand paint a solid black spiderweb design on the front, and not just your standard straight lined halloween-decoration style one either....more like the tod mcfarlane spiderman stuff.....for example... (random webbing btwn the lines, although mine is far less uniform than this cover....) so i couldnt just mask it off really, and paint it.....well i could, but, that would take far more time than i think i could commit....maybe. so my question really is this, after applying the coats of white, to a point where the guitar is basically ready to finish, is detailing in, with a brush, a weblike design, an okay idea? I assume if i use a paint that the finish is able to go over, or a paint that is the same makeup as whats in the rattle can possibly.....then I could just throw on some black and call it a day, then move on.... again, thanks to any who can affirm my plan of action. hope im not asking anything silly heh.
  4. Hello, I am seeing alot of discussion against water-based, nitrocellulose(sp?) laquers. My original "plan" was to use the finishing tutorials/ schedule found on Stew-Mac. The guitar I am planning to refinish was some cheapo I grabbed in an Ebay auction, you know, in case I ruined it completely The body is alder, and I just wasn't able to hang with that puke yellow butterscotch blonde color, otherwise, its an okay playing/sounding Tele. after disassembling the new toy, i discovered some of the best that budget factory guitar bulding has to offer...epoxy paste in control cavities so screws shot through wood into the body could serve their purposes, the string ferrules in the back....yeah, not a straight line. etc etc. best part is the neck holes are each drilled twice? for what rason im not sure.... anyways, i ramble..... i used Stripeeze to take off the paint, and hopefully the finish. and my only guess is that what didnt come up, was the hazy sealant under the top/ color coat. Im planning on painting this thing stark white, white as snow, pearly whites, could white, you get the idea. I sanded off the sealer (difficult. and i later learned, unneccessary?) and now I am at the bare wood all over. I lost minimal/no dimension because thankfully im very careful and meticulous when i sand. I keep reading about polyurethane. I am assuming what thegarehanman keeps referring to (as far as danger is concerned) is an automotive grade clear. I picked up a tip on a certain poly that apparently someone uses to make their costly mandolins... EmTech 9300 Polycarbonate Urethane: Gloss (as I've read) is "Formulated as a final topcoat for high-end applications such as yacht interiors, automotive interiors, fine tabletops and musical instruments." So does a poly like this carry the same striking dangers and an automotive top coat? I'm assuming if it's used in furniture building and etc, then perhaps the 15+ year old booth at work would suffice?(its very clean and the filters and fans are always kept up, maetenience wise) no full body suits at the shop, but there's a good respirator and nice gun. and as far as the painting process goes im going to probably re-seal (*sigh* silly me for sanding it in the first place) the wood with epoxy and start building my white coats. I'm going to safely assume I can just coat, sand, recoat as needed until a nice shiny white is on the guitar.....and then start applying (spray sand buff etc included) the poly coats? I guess, after all this rambling (my apologies) I'm mainly wondering....certain type of paint to use? reranch rattle cans would do the trick? I shrug my shoulders, and leave it to the forum. again sorry for such a huge post hehe. thanks to anyone who can shed some light. cheers and everyone have a good one.
  5. Not sure why anyone would care, but I'm a left hander that plays guitar left handed. Just kinda happened that my 1st guitar I got from my parents when I was just learning was a lefty, so I guess that ruined me, haha. Kinda wish I would have learned right handed though, come to think of it. Woulda saved me some major money in the way of buying new electric guitars.....ahhhh well. I say, if your bud feels comfy playing lefty, and you feel like re-working your righty for him, go for it, it's all in the nam of learning and doing! Good luck to you man. But first sit down with him and beg him to learn to play right handed....lol
  6. Hold the press. Disregard that last post. It seems that the interference was mainly because a) didn't have the backplates shielded, which meant the plastic was just lettin all kinds of stuff in there to rape any bare wires showing......also, I dont think i did a good job of taping up that large chunk of penny/solder where the grounds were..... So after taking a wood rasp to my bridge pickup cavity, I got the EMG to fit in'ner......little boogers are a bit larger than my mighty mites..... And being in the basement of my house when i plugged into my brothers amp.....got me thinking......we have alot of surround sound wiring and cable/ phone wiring around, and not two feet from where amp was sitting, the fusebox for the entire house.....so i plugged in upstairs after shielding and wiring in the new pickup and such..... virtually no hum, I almost cried when it was nice and quiet..... sweet mother of god, I was so happy.... so yeah, there's that. this is off topic, but i hope this happened to someone else somewhere along the line or does in the future. this tv station that my mother's friend works for was throwing a guitar away in the trash, a fender strat apparently, and so the lady was like "it doesnt work? well i'll give it to my friends son, maybe he can play with it." so a freee guitar.....can you say 'oh hell yes'? 'night all.
  7. thanks for the replyyyyyyyyy. yeah, i do understand that high gain really brings out the best of the best in terms of hum and buzz from a pickup. although, in defense of my situation, my brother has two factory installed (old and cruddy looking too, the pole pieces on the top of the pickup actually have rust around the edges) seymor duncans on his ESP Ltd. explorer pre lawsuit, its not horribly old, but im guessing its had its fair share of beatings, paint chips and the vintage white paint job is a bit more yellow than it should be.......but ANYWAYS when he plays through his amp, theres virtually no hum, as compared to when i plug in, and clean or crunch, the hum, even when both p/ups volumes are completely cut, is louder than any hum ive heard from anything, guitar wise, ever. no buzz, like from a ungrounded part or whatnot, but just this hum that's almnost louder than anything my guitar produces at full volume, like i have to try to play through a wall of humming. just an annoyance really. like lovekraft stated, ive played some beater pawnshop p.o.s's and some have been quiet as a mouse for probably being entiely koren or mexican made, with no name whatsoever on the pickups........and the instrument cable is a fairly new one from guitar center or sam ash, i cant recall but yeah, in general, my brothers electric produces almost none of the hum that mine does, even loud as hell with the modern grainy crunch allllll theway up. i plug mine in, and i have to cut the volume even with pickups off to keep the hum from hurting my ears. the hum isodd, its almost feedbackish, but its not feedback im pretty sure. so yeah, maybe a rewire and reshield is definitely in order. but ithink ima throw in the EMG regardless, i cant see why it would hurt, its not like it's a downsize from the mighty mite, im sure.
  8. Well playing my guitar on a Fender Princeton 65 or whatever it is sounds okay, the hum is almost manageable. Now when I hook it up to my brother's Peavy Ultra something or other, 100Watt head with very high gain modes, the hum is louder than most anything else. So I'm ripping out the wiring and doing it all again, reSHIELDING the cavity and taping up any bare wire I see, anywhere. Also, this will give me the opportunity to correct the upside down and backwards controls..........knobs turning op directions and flipped from the bridge/ neck positions i wanted originally. so it was alllll great until i plugged into a nicer amp. then i just got angry and p*ssy. So i bought a EMG Select from stewmac for the bridge.........depending on how the holidays go, i'll buy one for the neck, or a bit pricey-er one and then just replace both, yes. I figure my current mighty mites are bottom of the barrel.....i doubt any part of them is shielded at all, anywhere. So if reshielding the cavity (yes gregP, i know, i shouldnt have ripped it out in the first place, hehe) and throwing in a pickup "shielded and epoxy sealed for microphonic free performance" would probably get rid of a hum that overpowers most of the volume of the entire guitar on a gain channel. hell on that amp even the clean channel had a good amount of hum. no buzz, just big thick monotonous hum. sound like a plan fellas? a reshield, pickup replacement, and rewire. that's my plan. (also, think I could somehow shield that other mighty mite myself somehow? disassembly and tweaks?)
  9. Well, it's wired up.......and..... IT FRIGGIN' WORKS. :craps pants: No more shielding in the cavity, as far as foil goes.....and soldering about 13 or so ground paths to one penny and then adding electrical tape was......interesting, to say the least. But at least re-wiring everything according to GrepP's and Lovekraft's advice was a nice and smooth ordeal. As for the selector switch? Yeah, I'm so un-attentive to detail it makes me sick....2 lugs for hot wires and one for ground? No, blake, retard.....lo and behold, I wandered into stewmac's page (where i got the switch from) and what do i find? a WIRING diagram showing me those 'two' lugs are actually four seperate soldering ears......so that was embarassing/humbling. Lovekraft was right from the get-go, lol. The sound is nice, coming through my firend's fender (although i loathe fenders with a passion, too warm and muddy and just not.....to my liking) and since i can blend the pickups when the selector is in the middle position, i can get some neat sounds. the tone pots arent as articulate as most guitars ive played, but their changes they apply are apparent enough for me, I tend to have them adjusted to the brightest setting regardless, anyways..... So things sound good, and the cavities are covered, hopefully to seldom be opened again.......so glad to have the wiring of the guitar behind me. So thank you to all who posted, particularly GregP and Lovekraft, your patience with my questioning, and your diagrams and added advice/direction was priceless. Now it's on to final set up...intonation is....well it's a new post all it's own in the other forum. But thanks again! Rock, the eff, On.
  10. Thanks for posting Greg, I'm currently in the process of using the extra wire i cut from the length of the pickup wires to 'extend' what I had in the cavity......a tedious process that could have been avoided had I not tried to keep everything neat and tight within the realm of wire length.......oh well, that's what I get for jumping the gun. I'll post back when all is hooked up and wired in. thanks again.
  11. Okay, well, I choseto disconnect everything from everything else, so that I could wire the pickups directly to the jack and whatnot. Then I realized, the only thing I have in my house to measure anything, is a multi-meter, an instrument cable, and a Korg electronic tuner...... After getting out the multimeter, I found that apparently the red wire, assuming blue is still hot, then red is ground. I found on the multimeter that my bridge pickup reads at 8.0-8.1K touching the red and blue wires on the respective tips of the multimeter. The neck pickups reads in around 4.0-4.2K. This leads me to beleive that perhaps these pickups are far more quiet than they should be? generally speaking? Before moving forward, I want to know if I am going to need to actually be ble to hook the guitar up to an amp, and pluck the strings, or does the use of a tuner (still plucking the strings, which I realize now needs to be done if I'm going to measure if any 'sound' is coming from the pickups) stand in place of an amplifier? coupled with the fact my pots are 250K, does this mean that these seemingly quiet pickups are going to be barely audible? Also, after tearing (gently tearing, heh) everything out, I decided to unshield the cavity.......sorry GregP . I'm still going to use your 'star' method of grounding, so your advice and help was no wehre near in vain thanks to anyone who can offer advice.
  12. Although I'm going to get some sleep. I feel I must say this. GregP and Lovekraft. I love you two. You know, in a completely heterosexual, online discussion forum kind of way. All joking aside, thanks the world over. I duely appreciate it. I'll get some time set aside here in the next couple days to post back on any progress......progress, mmmmm such a nice sounding word.
  13. Alright, I'm going to throw my guitar out of the window.....I really think I am. So instead of re-wiring ten times, I'm going to work on a nice big post.....yay, heh heh okay, changed some things around, still I have no output to anything from the pickups, none, no sound whatsoever......I'm going to LINK to the picture from mighty mite.com on their humbucker wire color codes..... Mighty Mite's TINY AS CRAP picture for wire diagrams.....dolts. That is how I have had the pickups wired since the get-go. While searching their forums of grand technical prowess (total sarcasm) I get about eight different combinations of wires and colors and whats hot and whats a ground. So....being near the end of my rope, I tried THIS combination: BLUE = HOT Red & Bare= GROUND Balck & White = Solder 2gether. (sorry for the number, I'm sleepy ) I'm assuming, since my blue is still hot on both wire combinations....I should be getting SOMETHING in the way of a sound...... I'm thinking at the very worst, something is broken, is it possible to 'fry' a vlume or tone pot while heating it up to solder? Could mighty mite's pickups just be total horse crap alltogether? I'm thinking even the shoddy-est pickups would produce sound, albeit fuzzy or hissy......hell, I'd love hissy or fuzzy, as opposed to silence Here's what my wires looks like........... so hopefully someone can tell me something. If not, that's ok. I appreciate anyone's help from here on out, and greatly appreciate those whove taken the time to reply already.
  14. I'm actually considering rewiring most of it to match this picture: http://www.has-sound.com/wiring_diagrams/lp_2pu.jpg and you're right lovekraft, i apologize for this hasty 'plea' for help, i suppose after all things considered my post was rather hasty and not very.....practical. i do appreciate the replies that are here, and i do apologize for not giving all the information needed at the time of the post. again,thanks and sorry for posting such a shot in the dark.
  15. ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLrighty,here's a picture doodled from looking at the guitar......hopefully this helps? I dont have my camera handy at the moment....
  16. Okay, so i followed the wiring diagrams on guitar electronics.com to a T, and I double checked everything. Its a les paul with independent volume controls. 2 HB, 2 Vol, 2tone, 3 way switch, mighty mite buckers in'nere I still need to ground my 3way selector swtich. an oopsy I overlooked. The control cavity is sheilded with that foil shielding tape, it comes in contact with the pots via a little tab on the top of the pot facing the underside of the maple top. it isnt grounded specifically, there's no wire running from any of the shielding to the ground point (the back of the tone pot for the bridge humbucker) so im thinking alot of the insane hum is coming from the non sheilded.....sheilding......and the non-grounded switch. also, I have what i beleive are ground loops...........a wire from back of the volume for the neck pickup jumps to the tone for the neck, and is wrapped into the ground for the jack, and then those are wrapped up with the wire jumping from the bridge pickup volume wire i soldered on as a ground, and ten wrapped with the ground from bridge, all wrapped to one, and then soldered to the back of the tone pot for the bridge pickup. i basically have 3 or four wires coming from pots/etc to get all wrapped up and grounded......but i used little hookup wire to connect bridge volume pot to its tone, and the same was done for the neck pickup......... also, the hotwire from the neck pickup hits the center ear on its volume pot, and the selector switch wire hits the ear above it, to the left, let's say.....for example. on the other pickup the selector swtich wire hits on the right ear.....should they be hitting the same ear on each of their respective volume pots? i didnt think it mattered...... so basically i have a huge humming noise and next to no output on either pickup.....very very low volume...almost inaudible. if someone needs a picture, i'll get them one, but if anyone could shed some light on any error somewhere, lemme know please, sorry if i wasnt clear enough....
  17. thank you greg, although i still have to keep constantly re-reading that because im a complete novice about wiring, its still impartial information explained in a way that is far easier to understand (i think) than any 'understanding wiring and curcuits' site that ive read through. thanks again! i'll let you know if i dont die or explode!
  18. The screw was out.........because not only did curiosity kill the cat, it apparently leads blake to play with machine parts. the horribly pathetic thing is i knew how a tuner worked. bah. and i thought as i unscrewed it "blake, stop this, it serves no purpose....."
  19. You know, when I found the missing screw, which was misfiled into a smaller bag full of mounting screws for this and that, I totally forgot about my post..........so thank you to all, I appreciate the advice. hey, maybe now i'll lose one on purpose, haha.
  20. I really like that grain pattern, wow. It's gorgeous! Good luck, on whatever you decide to do with it
  21. Thanks Tex (if i may call you that?) that was alot simpler a reply that what I expected from anyone, althoug what i expected was a "dont touch your guitars wiring, for gods sake! save yourself AHHHHH!" yeah, i apologize for all the lines and whatnots, I've seen old LP's with the ground point being something metal in the middle of the control cavity, so maybe I'll try that, who knows?
  22. So what I did, was I took what information I got from mightymite.com (cheap-ass pickups which will work for now....) and guitarelectronics.com (les paul wiring, independent volumes) so it's obviously a 2HB, 2Vol, and 2 Tone with a three way switch from stewmac. I drew up my own mock diagram, with some questions, and also the toggle is drawn pretty spot on....as far as what i can solder to. SOOOOOO anyone wanna check my plan? I would SEVERELY APPRECIATE IT. thanks. if you've looked at it and think "this guy doenst know his ass from his ear as far as guitar wiring....." then you just might be dead-on.
  23. Hey, this thread has it all, flaming hot original guitar design and construction, off topic flaming posts, and even a bus with flames, who'd have thought? anyhow, That guitar looks amazing to me, I'm always fascinated by such radical designs! Really neat, seriously. I will say I enjoy the color scheme of UPS myself, heh heh. I didn't notice if it's been asked yet, but that guitar looks a bit beefy/ heavy to hold? what's it weigh in at?
  24. Yeah, I also really enjoy that finish, very interesting look to it!
  25. Okay, here's a pic, I'm pretty sure you're right, the shaft and all matches my schaller style non locking on my old cheap-ish acoustic, and the screw in those (shorter silver one) actually fits the black tuning key, but it's a hair shorter, seems to do the trick though, so maybe a schaller button purchase is in order?
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