Jehle

Tough choise. I have the Seymour Hot Rails in the neck position of one of my guitars. It's okay, but I'm not sure I would get it again. Seymours seem a little more muddy sounding than the DiMarzios. At least, to my ears they do. Given that you are after a metal sound, I suspect that the Screamin Deamon would be the way to go. I've never used one though.

I've been mentioning my favorite pickup for a few posts now and I need to check my history. Basically, this is a DiMarzio Distortion 2 conductor pickup. Now, I had thought that is was called a DS-2 but I can't seem to find that information on the DiMarzio website. At the time they also made a DS-4 which was a 4 conductor version of the same pickup. I, like many other people, converted the pickup from a 2 conductor to a 4 conductor. One other thing, I had also thought that this was just a DiMarzio Distortion, not a DiMarzio Super Distortion. My PU measures only 10k dc resistance, and the DiMarzio Super Distortions measure at a higher 16k or so. Can anyone confirm or deny what I think I know about this pickup? The main reason is that I would like to find more of them for my latest project. Thanks for any help.

I did the pickup modifications (and many others) back when I was younger. The entire wages of my first summer job when I was 16 paid for the floyd rose (recently removed). I probably put the bucker in there when I was around 19 or 20. At 35 now, it's still a great guitar. I'd have another from the same year if I could find one. They were well made back then, not at all like the cheapy feel of the Squires today. I like the looks of the Carvin PU's. I love all the allen screws. I have no idea how they sound though.

The pickups are a mix. Neck: Seymor Duncan Hot Rails. Middle: Stock Squire single coil. Bridge: It was an old 2 conductor DiMarzio distortion (DS-2) which I converted to a 4 conductor. It's actually close to the DiMarzio Fred pickup ohming in at only 10K. I wish I could find more of these old creme ones like this. And the route job. Ah, memories. I did that with a Dremel bit and an electric drill. I used an eraser sheild as a routing guide. The results were okay, but the scratchplate hides all the sins.

I actually did get to meet up with Adrian while I was over there last time. Great guy and a fantastic player. I just finished a tune (still a little rough in a place or two) with this guitar and uploaded it to my site. Have a listen to it if you like. This guitar is really versitile for all the different sounds that it can produce. I could never part with it. It's what I learned on for so long and has that feel of a worn out pair of jeans. Sulciforme Groove Enjoy.

I just finished up the tele kit and have to agree on the tuners and the strings. The rest of the kit is really good. The only thing that I would add is to plug every pre-drilled hole and drill them again to make sure they are right. It seems like every hole in the kit was just a little off here and there. Instead of saving me time, they actually held me back a little. Your mileage may vary, but I'm really happy with the end result and the sound of the guitar. I never liked Tele's before I built one. Now, I'm going to build another!

I should check this thread more often. Here's the link to the neck project. I'm really happy with the conversion. The larger frets took a little getting used to, but what I'm really happy about is the extra fret (Yea!) and the slightly flatter radius fingerboard. It was worth it. http://home.hiwaay.net/~jehle/project-guit...tGuitarNeck.htm

I think in Melvyn's book, that picture is of a ready made 22-fret neck. So, it's on you could just slap on an existing strat guitar. It really would be simple to do that. If you are going to convert a neck properly, you would have to remove the old fret board, and put on another one with the fretboard extension. Seems like a lot of work to me to convert a neck. But, if you are making a neck from the ground up anyway, you might as well put a longer fret board on it. As an alternative, I've seen some of Ron Thal's guitars on his site where he took extra bits of wood to extend the fretboard. It doesn't look as professional, but it does get the job done.

I think my Squire is about a 3 piece body. I can just see the glue lines under the finish. I also, sadly, just missed the GAS fest. Those guys can really play. Having known them all for so long, I'm kicking myself for having lost the chance to jam with them all. :|

You could always go fretless.

Sorry I'm late for this discussion. Just got back from London. I think the 83 Squires were one of the first years that they were made. There were not too many differences from the standard Strat's back then (a slightly smaller upper horn and cheaper electronics as far as I can tell). I've always heard that they were made of Alder. I got my neck from StewMac and it has jumbo frets just like you want. You can use the same 3 screw holes to put the new neck on. BUT, you will have to use a smaller screw for the 3rd hole. I thought about putting on a 4 bolt plate, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that. As it turns out, I was able to use an old tremlo claw screw from my box of guitar junk (everyone has one of these, right?). It was just the right length. Piece of cake to do.

Sweet. I love the finish. Is that a brown stain, or more of a black to grey? Very nice work and I'm impressed. I'm inspired! I can only hope that my next project will be as nice looking.

Do I have broad band, well, yes and no. At home I use an ancient 56K modem that maxes out at 28K. At work I have a T1 so I can do anything there. I've done collaborations before in that way. Record at home, copy to laptop, email at work, etc. That's worked out good in the past. email can be flakey sometimes so it helps to have server space available to act as a middle man. That way, you just send links through the email and you can get the huge sound files when you want them. For recording, I use ACID 2.0 for my stuff. I need to upgrade at least to 3.0 for better mp3 support. I litterally bought ver 2.0 the month before version 3.0 came out. Now that ver 4.0 is out, I should be able to find 3.0 in the bargin bin somewhere. With that in mind, a collaboration sounds fun. Good ear on spotting the Dropped D tuning. I still feel like I should solo over it, but I never got a good solo tone on the guitar. Once I find the right tone I may add one on. Otherwise it's just a pop song waiting for lyrics. I wonder if Chris Cornell is available this weekend?

You can always measure the length from the nut to the 12th fret and double it to get the length of the string. Of course, if you don't have frets at all, there's a bit of math to do there.

First off here's the link to the MP3... Vegetarian Planarian This is a song that I actually wrote for my wife a long time ago. We were not together at the time and I was very frustrated by that. Perhaps the riff shows that. Now, all is well, we're together but I've always had this riff in my head. The new Planarian Jellycaster was perfect to run through the song. I tried every pickup combination and knob twiddle that I could, and used at least 4 different amp settings. One is a little practice amp with a dead battery, you'll hear it, trust me. This song also has the best clean sound that I've ever recorded. I'm happy with it even though there's no solo to speak of. It's just a nice groove. Enjoy it!

I love it! That's totally ace and it's original! I agree, the body should have a star wars theme to it. Maybe with C3PO heads for knobs. I just saw those the other day somewhere...

Those look really nice. I like the blue one most of all. Nice job, eh!

The only thing I would worry about useing a hot melt glue is that you could potentially burn the wood. I did a good job burning the botched veneer when I tried to remove it with an iron. Sure that means that the iron was too hot, but I would hate to think that I could burn the veneer and glue it down to the guitar body at the same time. Eeeek... :o

I like the picture of the headstock that has the Swiss Harm-me knife and cup of coffee on the table. Looks just like my work area did on my last project. Anyway, it's looking really good. Keep up the good work!

Oh yes... sign me up for a RG model too. Sweet!

Show off. Nice work BeAR!

The first place that comes to mind is Warmoth. They can do just about anything from the looks of their site. Warmoth

Well, I was able to cure the problem. I changed to a new set of 9's and used a razor saw to just lower the slot for the 1st and 2nd strings (angled the slot back to the headstock a little too). It took a little trial and error but it worked. Thanks for all the input guys. Now I need to make an MP3 of the planarian for y'all to hear. BTW, this is also the first guitar I've ever played where the tone improves drastically by lowering the pickup. Tele's are an odd beast, but I'm starting to really dig them.

I'm stumped on this one. I think there's a problem with the nut on my new guitar. It plays really well except for one little problem, the open strings appear to be slighly flat. For example, in playing this all the open strings are too flat. |-3------------------- |------3-------------- |-0---------2--------- |------0---------2---- |-----------0--------- |----------------0---- But playing this anywhere else on the neck is perfect. |-4------------------- |------4-------------- |-1---------3--------- |------1---------3---- |-----------1--------- |----------------1---- I originally thought that the action might be too high, or that the nut was too tall. I doubt that, as the action is set nearly to the point where the strings buzz. As far as I can tell, I've got the guitar set up well. I've been doing this sort of set up for years, and this is the first time I've noticed this oddity. Any suggestions?

Pardon the small picture, but I try to squeeze them down to conserve space on my server. I'll have an MP3 of it soon for you to hear. And if you want all the details you can have a peek here. Jehle's JELLYCASTER project