Saber

Here's another debatable topic. Some would say after the distortion but I think most including myself would put it before the distortion. When I use a wah I use it in place of the pre-distortion EQ because if you add wah on top of EQ, then you're giving the wah less to work with. By allowing the full frequency range of the pickup to go through your wah, you give it more to sweep through. Some guitarists even use the wah as their pre-distortion mid boost by leaving it in a fixed postion like Satch sometimes does during his leads, but I prefer a more subtle mid boost. I think the main thing is to experiment with the EQ-->Distortion-->EQ concept and understand how it affects tone so you can find your tone. But be aware that your metal master may already have a lot of its own "EQ-ing" compared to a more generic pedal like an MXR Distortion+.

Maybe you can do like in Brian's tutorial for 3D inlays. Use transparent acrylic. But instead of adding vinyl inserts, paint the undersides of the acrylic whatever colour you want... lime green, metalic green, whatever. Does that make any sense?

I agree that you wouldn't boost mids for a clean sound. It would sound too nasal. Well who knows how your distortion pedal equalizes the guitar's raw signal before adding distortion? But my educated guess is that the circuitry is voiced so that lows are a bit attenuated to reduce muddiness, followed by distortion, and then it's scooped post-distortion.

For heavy distortion, I've always boosted the mids of pre-distortion EQ and scooped the mids of the post-distortion EQ. That combination gives me good note separation, and aggressive sounding chords and lead tones with very little muddiness. I rarely play metal though, but my music does get quite heavy at times. To sum it up, scooping is mainly for post-distortion EQ. You might be interested in these and other articles from the very informative www.amptone.com: http://www.amptone.com/truesecretofamptone.htm http://www.amptone.com/2eqswithpowerattenuator.htm

I wouldn't mind trading hot licks with Nancy Wilson.

Johnny was my first guitar hero ever since I heard his version of Jumpin' Jack Flash!

For "normal" sound, the bridge pickup should be in phase with the neck pickup. For your model of pickups, it means that for the bridge pickup, the red and white leads are connected together, the green lead goes to ground, and the black one is the hot. It's the same for the neck pickup except that you have to reverse the black and the green wires. (Physically reversing your pickup requires reversing the wiring to maintain the phase relationship between the two pickups.) Since they are both humbuckers in themselves, they will be humbucking whether one pickups is connected in phase or out of phase with the other. Connecting them out of phase would make the sound "thin and nasal" in the words of the SD website.

The only way to connect the 2 coils of the same 3-conductor pickup in parallel is out-of-phase. In other words, the guitar signal of one coil would pretty much cancel out the other while their noise would be added, which is exactly the opposite of what you would want. Depending on the pickup, it's sometimes possible to go under the tape and find the wire ends of each coil but it can be risky. Connecting two 3-conductor pickups in series would also be a problem because you need at least one pickup whose shield is not connected to a coil lead. Coil tapping is possible though.

One small note: if you turn your pickup around, you will have to reverse the wiring also if you want your 2 pickups to be in phase when they are both on.

Kirk Hammett and Eddie Van Halen? I would never have guessed that these two even owned tap shoes in the first place. Sorry. I couldn't resist.

As to the choice in pickups, that's never an easy question to answer because of all the variables involved including personal tastes, amp, effect. As for the tone control, I don't use one because I use EQ in my rack for that. As a test you could try wiring it with only a volume control, and decide then if it needs a tone control. I'm not familiar with the details of the Clapton circuit but in the link that you gave it specifies a 0-18dB boost but doesn't mention if you can choose what frequency band you're boosting. At least the EMG-VMC allows you to choose the center frequency and whether you want to cut or boost it by 12dB. And by setting it at 3000Hz and cutting 12dB it would more or less do what a tone control does. The only other thing you have to consider is whether you mind having a battery in your guitar.

I think this is what Andy Summers played: http://www.novaxguitars.com/Pages/Sales_Ex...sion_frame.html While searching for it, I came upon this: http://www.littleguitarworks.com/about_gui...uitarworks.html

I would bet that it is playable because the frets are progressively angled (for the lack of a better word) so that the fretboard scale is correct for each string length. In other words the 12th fret is exactly at 1/2 the string's length for each string. P.S. Didn't Andy Summers play a guitar that had the frets sort of "fanned out" in an ergonomic fashion when he went solo after The Police broke up.

On my guitar, I replaced the 2 buttons by 1 toggle switch that has a spring-return to the center. For the other toggle that switches between conventional guitar and synth, I got a switch that's identical in appearance. The kit you're talking about wasn't availabe when I installed it so I used the guts of the outboard model.

As far as how it will sound, the only way to know for sure is to try it. Have you thought about replacing the tone pot with one that has a push-pull switch? That way you could use it to turn the neck (or bridge) pickup "ON" no matter what position your pickup selector is in. When pulled out, it would simply add the neck (or bridge) pickup to whatever is selected on the pickup selector. That would give you every parallel pickup combination possible including neck-bridge and neck-middle-bridge. And it wouldn't change the guitar's appearance.

Both pots will sound identical at the full clockwise and full counter-clockwise positions. The difference is that the log pot will have more variation near the CW end of the pot's travel and less at the CCW end compared to the linear pot. In other words the mid-point of a log pot can be at 3/4 or more of its full travel. It will still work but you'll have less precision at the CW end of the travel but it probably won't matter once you get accustomed to it.

This can be settled with a simple test. Hold your strings and knock on your guitar. You will hear the knocking through your amp speakers because the pickup is picking up the wood vibration. Even if you remove all your strings, you will hear the knocking and it will most probably be louder if the pickups are direct mounted. Whether direct mounting sounds better or not depends on a lot of factors like pickup type, type of wood, etc... etc.. etc...

I also find that solidly mounting the PU to the bottom of the pickup cavity gives a fatter, fuller, richer sound than on the mounting rings (though the placebo effect might account for a bit of it). If you consider that the pickup signal is a result of the string's movement through the pickup's fixed magnetic field, or the string movement relative to the pickup, it's also logical to say that the signal is a result of the pickup's movement relative to the guitar string since it's all... relative. So any vibration that the wood imparts to the pickup will be added to the pickup signal. And I think that solidly mounting the pickup to the back rather than having it suspended on 2 spring-loaded screws will allow it to pick up more wood vibration. If it's good enough for EVH...

I'm going Friday at the Bell Center in Montreal.

I got the Varathane aerosol at Canadian Tire. I've only tried the satin finish though so I don't know how the Varathane gloss finish would turn out.

You have the right verb but "n'est pas" means "is not" whereas "N'est-ce pas?" means "Is it not?" or "Isn't it?" To get back on topic (I'm starting to feel guilty about contributing to the hijack), I'm planning on trying the Varathane Diamond clear finish on the back of a maple Ibanez Wizard 2 neck that I reshaped to my liking (I'm too used to the original thinner Wizard neck). It's not supposed to yellow like the original Varathane Clear satin finish that I used years ago on a Fender maple neck and even that finish came out quite nice and durable. I also scalloped the Wizard's fretboard thanks to Brians excellent tutorials (that's what I got this neck for in the first place). I've finally tried playing a scalloped fretboard after all these years of wondering what John McLaughlin was making a fuss about. Initially it felt kind of strange but after a few days I'm starting to love the wide effortless vibrato that it allows. There's no friction to impede the exact expressivity (I think this is the word's correct use but won't guarantee it ) that your brain wants your fingers to convey. Oops, am I hi-jacking? I'm incorrigible.

Being from Montreal, I must say that your french is good, but who said Derek was trying to write in french.

I wrote "bending wood" (with the quotes) in Google and the first search result was this: http://www.megspace.com/lifestyles/njmarine/Steam.html

I think it's not just a matter of having mic pre-amps but also the type of mic pre-amp that you use. If I remember correctly, balanced pre-amps that use an input transformer sound better than ones using electronically balanced (semiconductor) input curcuitry. That's why some recording engineers use old (vintage) pre-amps even in state-of-the-art studios. Tube pre-amps are supposed to sound warmer too.

I removed my tone control years ago to replace it with the level control of my GK-2A pickup. My guitar signal first goes through a Parametric EQ in my rack to shape the raw signal before going through distortion and whatever effects I need.