Drak

I do it here and there but I don't make a religion out of it. If I'm really having trouble sorting something out, sometimes a swap makes the difference, it's happened a couple of times. About the neck, there is a pretty easy fix for that, maybe you already know it. To put a cap in series w/ the neck pickup hot lead, it eliminates the bass/bottom/boominess. I think usually a .001uF is where most people start, you can Google it 'neck pickup bass cut cap'. You can slide it either way depending on what you hear. That's way faster and easier to do than magnet swapping and I think more effective.

Thanks! Well, I did do the top 'finish' repair, and it came out flawless. However...I noticed when I removed the Fishman pickup, there is a hole drilled in the bridgeplate. That allows the pickup braid to come up and through to sit under the saddle. And that hole lines up Exactly with the crack, ...so they are related. And I suspect a patch of some kind will be needed underneath or it will most likely re-appear someday. No worries, I have a guitar tech I take anything I can't handle to, and acoustics are not my forte. I know my limitations and gladly work within them and seek more superior assistance when it's called for. He'll be having a professional look at this one sometime soon.

If I was actually 'doing and Eddie', I know where I'd start. Based on what I said above about the Custom Custom and what I heard out of it, and it being A2... I'd pop a UOA5 in any of the Duncan Customs (they're just different magnets) it and start there. That would be my Eddie 'starter program' w/o a doubt. I mean, I wasn't even looking for 'that sound' and it just popped out of the guitar. And a UOA5 is kinda like an A2 'with a little bit more', not so spongy, a little firmer. When I finished my car stereo ground-up w/ new sub rebuild last year and finally got the amp tuned... The first tune I slapped in at window shaking full tilt was Mean Street. I f-ing love that song. Carry On!

I cleaned up the fretboard as I normally do, Naptha scrub followed up with fretboard finishing oil.

So, what would kick the hell out of that color combination even further and sexy it up a little bit more? GOLD.

So now we have a yellow-ish top, red-ish brown back and sides, a sparkly silver rosette, and a sexy green leopard pickguard. Hopefully you can see I'm steering this thing out of the land of the mundane acoustic look and into Drak-Land. So...I ripped out the stock cheap Fishman Sonitone undersaddle pickup. This is going to have two pickups, one a much better version of the Fishman. The other is a Lawrence soundhole pickup. This will plug straight into my pedalboards, so I can add chorus, delay, reverb, etc. I'm going to wire it into a separate jack as it will be a semi-permanent install and I don't want the cord drooping out of the front of the guitar. The old ones, the early ones (for about a year)...were red. Bullseye! More color to my color scheme.

So, I had 'the plan' pretty well formed in my head before I even got started. I knew the red, I knew the yellow, and I knew what the new pickguard was going to be to kick off those colors. So I designed the pickguard shape I wanted, made a router template, and cut it out. Hello sexy green leopard!

I have always had the weirdest mental issue w/ Metal and Maple necks. I typically will only use them for a blues or country oriented guitar, and usually a Tele. Which is completely ridiculous, and I know it. I have come close on occasion tho, I was building a Timmons thing with a Floyd about a year ago. And I got the 'OK" from the Inner Voice to use a Maple neck for that, haha! But, well, that's more harmonic-fusion-instrumental, now, isn't it? Looks great, loving it.

A quick second post. I was doing this at the same time I was doing this here other acoustic re-hab, the LaPatrie nylon string that I 'Cowboyed' up and distressed. So I found a place on-line that sold slide-on rosette decals, which I did to the one above, and this one. See, in this pic the yellow top doesn't look as flagrant as the pic above, I think this would have been after the color coats and 3-4 clearcoats, but before the final clearcoats, so its in a sanded/prep state So the yellow isn't quite smacking you in the face as hard. Now it's got a little jazz going on, yellow, red, flashy rosette, with more coming. The slide-on decal went right over top of the original.

This will be a relatively quick thread. The guitar is nearly done, I'm up to 2400 MM now. It's actually been done for probably almost a year, it just needed the finish finished and put back together and I've been either too lazy or otherwise focused to finish it up. So, this is an Eastman HE-222 CE, which is basically a re-named Eastman AE-222. There's not much info out there on the strictly HE, so I need to jump you to the AE for more exposure. The single only difference is the pickguard, the AE came with a Tort guard, the HE came with a solid Ovangkol guard (which I hated and threw away immediately). I also ripped out the cheap on-board electronics as I have a much better system ready to be installed. I got this at a steal of a price, I should be held in shackles for what I paid for it. The issue was a crack running down the top from the bridge to the edge, and the owner was honest enough to post very clear pics of it up front, so it wasn't moving for him. Acoustic owners are basically scared shitless about these kinds of things, and I know that. I lowballed an offer and he took me up on it, done deal, no case. They can sell used for ~$700.00, and in this comparison YT I'm posting, against a Taylor 314, which run about ~$1000.00 used. So if you don't hear a difference in the comparison YT listed here, or even like it better, let's just say I got a $1000.00 guitar for $300.00 shipped. -Ish. With license to do as I pleased to it, which I most certainly have done. Here is a YT of my actual stock model: Eastman HE-222 Here is a YT of an AE-222 (same thing) vs a Taylor 314: Eastman AC-222 vs Taylor 314 So there's them basics. OK, on to the pics, there won't be too terribly many. As on arrival and just unboxed. Is that pickguard ugly Or What? The Crack (Oh My!) Pre-Surgery Most of the finish removed from the back, pretty much raw wood now Ready to shoot (I didn't bother taping off the binding, I'm a very good binding scraper, and lazy too) HEY! What happened to That Crack? Hahaha! Oh damn, looka-that! I sprayed 2, maybe three coats of straight pure lemon yellow transtint on the top. Not too heavy-handed, and not so light as to not make the effort worthwhile. The back and sides got (IIRC) 2, maybe 3 coats of red. Again, not so heavyhanded as to look stupid overbaked red, but it doesn't look pure brown anymore either. The concept was to take a bland-looking tan-over-brown and make it cosmetically sexy yellow-over-red. Because...well, there are other accents coming.

Approval factor...10.

For the Love of God man, stop overthinking this and BURN IT! Where's the passion...where's the FIRE? I like the one in the first pic at 6:00pm, the most charred one, no holds barred, a committed BURN job. I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE

Carving Spruce compared to Maple, or Purpleheart, or Oak, is like a hot knife through butter, easy-peasey. OK, I think I can call it done now for the most part. Teflon taping the studs seems to have eliminated the severe buzz...but 'something' is still 'stealing' energy from the high E string. All other strings ring out beautifully, and the high E sounds plinky in comparison, Oh well, I'll chase it down and figure it out, maybe a nut issue, maybe it needs a string retainer, maybe harmonica bridges just suck in the end. It went through four completely different pickup changes before I finally figured everything out and circled closely back to the original idea. The final answer was to bring down the 'heat' a few notches. The Lawrence L500 series are known for volume and clarity and holding it together under volume, they don't really compress much or dirty up too easily, that's what they're known for, so I thought they would work here. But there was just too much boldness and warmth. For Jerry-Tones anyway. So the final answer was to eliminate the bridge pickup (12k), move the neck pickup (8k) to the bridge position, and installed a real P-90 (6.3k) in the neck. The P-90 is a Zhangbucker Jazz 90. NOW it has Jerry-tone in all positions, in many flavors, and it 'is' what it was meant to be all along now.

Wow, I can't believe you said that, I was thinking the absolutely exact same thing. Classic influence, yet also modern at the same time. Those very words were going through my head, a 1960's/1970's kinda vibe.

Pete Thorn has been obsessing over the VH tone lately, he's got a few YT's you might find interesting if you haven't already seen them. Here's one that just came out, very VH guitar related. 23 Different Pickups

So, the thread is not quite 'dead' yet <get it?> I changed the thread title to Althea, as it has formally been re-named now. A few things after setup and playing it in has caused me to once again rip it down to fix/adjust a few things. Which is not abnormal, really. The cool thing is all I had to do was loosen the strings, pull the neck screws, and remove the tailpiece and that whole 'assembly' came off as one, saving the strings. So the neck, strings, and tailpiece are all sitting off to the side for the moment, still together. There was a severe buzz in the TOM area when the high E was played, anywhere along the path. So I removed all four studs (TOM and tailpiece) and teflon taped them with a few wraps. I have a feeling it was the bridge side TOM stud vibrating inside the insert, but I did all four of them anyway. Also, I wasn't comfortable with the pickup height adjustment (as I stated earlier, you only get 3/8" travel, that's IT with P90's) And they were a little too close to barely being screwed in at proper playing height. So I made a pair of 1/8" spacers and glued them to the bottom of the pickup cavities which should be within a comfortable range now. Next, the pickups just weren't hitting 'The Jerry' tone, which I have really zeroed in on in the past few weeks, watching Mayer playing various guitars including Wolf, and learning Althea. My ears are really dialed into that tone now. So I looked through the drawer to find something more to the point. The neck was a bit too big, fat, and warm (even at 8k) and the bridge didn't have enough top and bottom clarity, it sounded all mids-y. The neck pickup I now chose is nearly the same resistance of the neck pickup in Angkor (7.3k) but a totally different pickup by design. Its another Vintage Vibe pickup, but this one is a P-90 sized pickup (obviously), but designed far more like a single coil, as it has a double row of alnico rod magnets, like a standard SC has. But its a HB pickup. So that should bring the clarity with depth and warmth I'm looking for. I did a little 'pickup rehab' job on the VV neck, as years previously I had sprayed the top gold. I'll post a few interesting pics shortly when its put back together.

Another thread closure post, the Dead Machine is strung and done. Can you hear me Jerry, can you hear me playing Althea? I think I'm going to re-name this one Althea, no offense to Robin Trower, better than the Dead Machine I think. Two down, two more in the corral, ready to go.

Yup, Warmoth. Nearly all my necks are Warmoth with a few exceptions here and there. In 30 years I have never once had a desire to build a neck, and still don't to this day. Just no interest, its a dead fish for me, always has been. AAMOF, a great and kind soul sent me a care package many years ago with all kinds of neck building supplies in it. Everything a guy could need or want to build necks. I never used any of it, so when Shad Peters lost his workshop to a fire that took everything many years ago, I sent him a care package with everything that had been given to me for neck building in it plus some other things I didn't need at the time to help him get his workshop re-started again. Better in his hands than mine., Further up the page you can see where I added the 'eagle beak' to it before the veneer. The side adjusts only come with the double-expanding truss rods. And those are always substantially heavier than the single-adjust rods. But once you get it on the guitar with everything else accounted for, I don't think many would notice. Thanks!

For some reason I can't picture in my head taking a vinyl decal, submersing it in lacquer thinner, and it dissolving. I would think you're safe with that. Awesome work on the cutout, I would never have the patience to do that, they'd be pulling parts of me off the walls. I haven't seen a Young Ones episode in probably over 20 years, used to watch that shit all the time.

OK, these are the finished pics, consider this thread wrapped. Everything adjusted, minor fiddly stuff done, its complete, sounds great, love it. Slurpy Lizard, rock on.

HA! I was watching an episode of Ancient Aliens and out of nowhere (Constellation Codes episode) They say that Angkor Wat is aligned with the constellation Draco. WTH? That it is a 'star mirror' of the constellation Draco. Hilarious. "In Roman mythology, Draco was one of the Giant Titans who warred with the Olympian gods for ten years. He was killed in battle by the goddess Minerva and thrown into the sky, where it froze around the North Pole." And I've been calling it a 'slurpy lizard' lately (dragon, snake). Strangeness is afoot... I couldn't make this up if I tried...

Wellsir, Thank You as always. Unfortunately, its already done, I wasted no time and just ripped it apart again and got to it yesterday. Its all put back together now and intonating fine, all saddles have travel both ways so I'm 'in the pocket' now. I cut the pocket back about 3/32". I had to remove everything (again) as I had to have clearance for the router in the bridge pickup area since I re-routed that too. There's really not much to tell except I use a neck pocket router template and a 3/8" pattern bit, which cuts very cleanly. I just had to be really careful when clamping it down that I didn't mar or scratch the finish anywhere, which I didn't. I also routed the bridge pickup to be a full-size HB, so the same basic operation with the same router bit. Due to the top being arched, re-cutting the bridge pickup was dicier than re-cutting the neck, the neck went pretty easily. I took a razor blade and just very lightly went around the edges to clean up (shave) any tiny paint burrs that were proud. Still a few small details to attend to, but that's just normal fine-tuning for a new build. The one thing I forgot about were the neck screw holes, they didn't match up anymore. So I had to fill in the old holes and re-drill new ones. Electronics: The black/white neck pickup is (was) a SC, its a Vintage Vibe Charlie Christian Mini (not humbucker) from a set I have. The neck measures 6.2k, the bridge 7.2k. I decided to keep the 500k volume pot and just 'up the heat' for pickups to see if that would even things out. So I replaced the 6.2k neck with its bridge version (7.2k) hoping that would add a little girth (it did, perfectly) And I decided to use an 'average heat' HB, so I used a DiMarzio P.A.F. Pro (all white w/ black hex heads) for the bridge. What a difference! I really didn't like anything I heard the first time, now it sounds great, totally love it, full and warm and girthy now. The old Ibanez Super 70's red sparkly mini-hum will just have to wait for some other project. I was definitely shooting for a 'Garcia' tone with both of these. Not Tele twang, not hair-metal hot, just full, clean, and girthy.

The things that need attention: I always slide my TOM's back a fidge so I don't run out of adjustment room on the low E. Instead of over-angling the low E side (which I think looks stupid), I move the entire thing back a tiny bit, but I over-did it here. It's intonated and you can see the high E saddle is completely forward and its still intonating slightly flat. You can see all the saddles are sitting really forward. So, I can't move the bridge, but I can re-cut the neck pocket a smidge forward, that will fix that. The other option is to slice about 1/8" off the front nose of the neck, that will move it forward too. But this neck is bottom truss-adjust...if it was top-adjust, I would just do that. Also, I built this thing 10 years ago, I thought everything was Kosh, but its not. The angle of the neck pocket isn't high enough for the TOM, even decked, so I had to use a small shim to bump it up. I have no problem with shims, but since I'm going to re-cut the pocket forward a snatch, I can adjust for that at the same time. So that's that. So, on to the electronics. I have a 460K volume pot in it, the neck is 6.2k, the bridge 7.2k. And it sounds like a Tele, which is not what I want, so I probably need to swap in a 250k volume pot in it. Also, the red sparkle Ibanez pickup sounds weak (distant) compared to the VV neck. I think its the distance of the coil from the strings when you take into consideration that plastic cover with the red sparkle on it. It would probably be fine in the neck, where there is more string energy and available volume. Cosmetically I like it just as it sits, but it's not working out so something will have to change.

So it's put together, and I love it, but I found multiple issues that need addressing. Will need to be ripped apart again to do all the finesse fine-tuning adjustments it needs. But for the time being...here are some pics. I still can't believe I got this by wiping pure blue dye on this thing...crazy. No, the neck is not just barely hanging on the joint, that's a reflection...threw me for a quick second there...

Holy Shit I Love that color and the specific figure. That's a Wowza in my book any day. Purple is hard to 'get right', and although there are several shades to play with, you nailed what I call 'grape'. Retarder is all about humidity and dewpoint, not temperature related at all. And I only use it if the dewpoint/humidity calls for it, never otherwise. The 'retarder rule' is 20 degrees differential dewpoint. If the dewpoint is 20 degrees within the current ambient temp, you gotta break out the retarder. So, if ambient temp is 80 degrees, and dewpoint is 55 degrees, you're safe. If ambient is 80 degrees and dewpoint is 65 degrees, you may need a little retarder, its 15 degrees within ambient temp (under 20 degrees). And when I'm shooting, I'm always checking current weather conditions in my area, always, like religion always. So that's retarder...but dewpoint aside, the warmer the temp., the more 'fluid the fluid' (viscous?), one could say. So the warmer it is, the more product I can spray at the same given pressure.