TuskBuffer

Hey, thanks Brian--great links! Exactly what I was looking for.

I'd like to make some inlay pieces out of mammoth ivory (legal stuff), but I have no idea what the thickness should be. Is there any standard to go by? Any other considerations I should take into account?

Probably tapping both humbuckers into single coils rather than taping only one; otherwise, you'd get some noise is my understanding. The idea with a coil tap is that it's supposed to give you a Strat sound, with the three singles. It really depends on the pickups themselves whether or not you actually achieve the classic sound. In any case, you've at least got more versatility for different sounds and tones. Experiment with it, maybe you can find some different uses for it. If you don't like the tap, you never have to use it. It makes a good selling point if you ever want to get rid of it.

I'm planning on doing a coil tap on one of my guitars with a push/pull pot, along with two new pickups. I don't know what it'll sound like, but I think it's a cool little experiment.

They're both going for the same price on eBay ($58.00 Buy It Now) Here

F-spaced humbuckers, being wider, are made to fit guitars with trems for the most part. The suggested price is the same for both from what I can see (99.00), and the best prices I can find have only a $3.00 difference--$59.95 for regular spaced, and $62.95 for f-spaced. Here's the link:

http://www.zzounds.com/prodsearch?form=pro...dimarzio+bridge

Why do they have it at $3.00 more? Because they can.

Very nice to meet you, Guitarfrenzy! VERY cool guitars, and man, you're not kidding about the LPs weighing a ton!

I've got an Ibanez GAX-75 that I bought new, just to see what I could do with it. I'm going to put new pickups in--Dimarzio Mega Distortion, which is an older pickup, but I hear is pretty comparable to the X2N, and a Duncan Design Super Distortion. I'm also going to install push/pull pots for the dual coil tap and reverse phase. Here's the diagram:

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/diagrams/...ods/lpmod2.html

I've already got a Mammoth Ivory nut on it (I make guitar picks out of the ivory), which is pretty nice. In fact, I just sent a nut blank over to Heritage Guitars along with some picks. You never know, maybe they'll be offering mammoth ivory nuts on their guitars!

So, are the two pickups I mentioned overkill? Should I just replace the bridge pickup with one and put the other in another guitar?

This is going to sound crazy, but would you be willing to trade it for some guitar picks made of Mammoth Ivory? Check out my site http://www.tuskbuffer.com -- Also looking for a Line6 GuitarPort.

Any idea what the resistance is (k Ohms)?

Hello! I've already posted here a couple times before I realized the intr area was here. Man, you guys seem to know what you're talking about and I really appreciate that! Everything I've seen is either right on the money, or is such good BS that I can't tell the difference (I'm guessing the first option)!

I've got a few guitars, and I'm just getting into "tinkering" with them, so I'll probably have a lot of the usual questions that you've all answered a million times--sorry about that. My favorite of my guitars is a '74 Les Paul Custom (20th Anniversary), which I've had since about 9th Grade--over 20 years, yikes! Man, the thing plays like a dream!

Anything else I should mention?

ya, sounds like u don't have a groud running to the bridge, that's why the noise isn't going away when u touch the strings... but it does when u touch the outside of ur patch chord. So if the volume pot is ur common ground, run a wire from that to the bridge.

Thanks for the replies, all! I'm thinking it sounds like the ground to the bridge also. The cavities are not shielded, so I might as well try that also. As far as the phasing, wouldn't that affect the sound/tone of the output?

I recently bought a cheap, POS guitar for the sole purpose of messing around with it, as far as modding and stuff (practicing before I do it for real on one of my good guitars). It's a Harmony Les Paul style, and I put different pickups in it that were pretty hot (around 13k in the neck and 14k in the bridge). I didn't notice it when I first switched them out, but now I've got an annoying hum that only subsides when I touch the metal cover on the cord (doesn't go away when I touch the strings). The jack is nice and tight, and the cord has no slop or anything inside the guitar. None of my other guitars do this, so I think that eliminates the possibility of it being the cord itself causing the problem.

The pickups (humbuckers) that I put in were pretty beat up looking, so I cleaned them up with 0000 steel wool and buffed them to make them look nice. So, do I have a ground problem, could it be that steel wool fibers may be the culprit, or something else?

Hey, by the way, cool forum! I don't even know how I found it, but I'm glad I did!

Just pull the knob off the shaft and spray it down into the pot. You will want to have a towel or clean rag handy to clean up any overspray before it dry's on the body but thats about it. Spray and twist it back n forth...................

Let it dry (happens quickly) and test it to see if it's better.

You might have to do it a few times before it's perfect. I haven't had the problem with the cleaner attracting more gunk, but if it does happen--heck, you were ready to replace the darned thing anyway!

Before you replace the pot, try some contact cleaner! What happens is dust and carbon builds up in the brushes and will cause this to happen. I was ready to change the pots on one of my guitars for the very same reason, and my tech/luthier turned me on to this fix. Worked like a charm!