chennik

Most of the wizard necks are actually made of maple, though lately Ibanez has been making multi-laminate necks (including bubinga and walnut and maybe a few other woods), particularly for neck-thru guitars. Alot of these though, are the wizard II, which is thicker and about comparable to other manufacturers 'slim profile' necks. I have an 87 rg550 and a buddy of mine has an 89, both of which have one piece, flat-sawn wizard necks, and I do find it odd that they did not use quartersawn for these, given the additional stability that it would have imparted. Personally, I think a wizard neck made up of maple and wenge laminates would look killer, and the multiple laminates would add to the stability, though the only concern I would have would be ensuring the truss rod fits into the center laminate entirely, otherwise the you may not have enough glue joint surface, given the fact that the truss rod eats up so much of the profile on a neck this thin. I wouldnt want the truss rod popping out the back of the neck or cracking a glue joint, but I guess this might happen just as well on the wood itself anyhow.

Hugh, I gotta hand it to you, the idea of doing the contour setup with modified pots like that never occurred to me. I'll have to experiment and see if that works, that might be a nice alternative to using the push/pull pots. Given that I generally use 500k tone pots, i could use 1 meg linear taper pots for this and it would still give me the effect of a 500k pot to either side... from a 'switchology' perspective, that might be a bit more user friendly than the push/pull pots given all the bells and whistles worth of switches I want to incorporate in this design. I'll have to play with that when i get a chance and see how it works.

I've got a new, albiet rather complicated and cluttered wiring plan in my head for the new axe. This is how it goes. 2 Humbuckers with 3 way switch 1 master volume(value TBD) 1 blend (500k) 2 tones on 500k push pull pots, idea is to use the push pull pot to vary the cap value, when down it is a brigher cap, when up, a bit darker (.022/.047 for neck, .01/.022 for bridge) I also want to incorporate a separate DPDT on/on/on for each pickup for series/split/parallel, and another DPDT for phase switching. Now, I know this sounds like an awful lot of wiring and switches (which it unabashedly is) but this combines pretty much every wiring feature that I've come across and liked. My question is this, for all of this wiring, am I better off using a 1 or 2 meg pot for the master volume, or would the difference between a high value pot and a 500k be barely noticable? I generally use 1 meg pots if I can to keep the overall sound bright and crisp, but I have used 500k for push/pulls and blends, since that is generally the highest value available. Do you think with all this wire, switches and all these 500k pots there is anything to be gained by using a higher value pot for the master volume? I'd like to know everyones thoughts, particularly if any of you have tried a setup similar to this before.

I have a an Ibanez RG (basswood body, maple neck) with an L500XL in the bridge and a Flying V (mahogany neck and body) with a Dimebucker in the bridge (Basically the same thing as a L500XL). For both of these guitars, I have a Duncan JB as the neck pickup. I heard once upon a time that a Duncan JB makes a good hot neck pickup to balance a really hot bridge pickup, particularly the super high output passive ones such as the L500XL and the Dimarzio X2N. Since I had a JB in the bridge of one of my guitars and didnt like it as a bridge pickup, I tried it in the neck on the Ibanez with the L500XL (which I wanted to try for some time). The V I bought used, and it came that way (someone else thinks along the same lines as me). Anyhow, bottom line is, this combination works really really well together. The body wood affects the tone somewhat, I can actually get a thicker tone with more bite out of the mahogany V than I can with the basswood RG. The neck pickup tone is pretty similar between the two however, on both it's loud, full, and gets decent jazzy warm clean tones and incredible hot lead tones distorted. I can get pinch harmonics and blazing legato runs with that pickup distorted. Best of all, JB's are pretty common and easy as hell to pick up used (since they are probably the most common aftermarket pickup out there). Also, with coil tapping, both of these pickups sound pretty good and flexible, and make an even match for each other in every situation I've tried. Oh yeah, another thing that works pretty cool with them is running both pickups with a phase switch. I can get great bright lead tones running them out of phase, they seem to change the EQ, but not really drop in volume like most pickup combo's do out of phase.

Well, I purchased the fretboard today. I decided to go with a slotted/radiused madagascar ebony board from LMI. I got it slotted for 30" scale with a 16" radius. I went with the "2nd grade" board because it's on a discount, and from what I've seen of the LMI 2nds, they seem to have a pretty interesting grain to them, if they arent very dark. My wife is a fan of the way they look, so I decided to go with that. She and I were contemplating purpleheart, but LMI doesnt have it available, and I wanted to get something pre radiused and slotted. I'm thinking that using an ebony board should help to brighten the tone as a counter to the shorter scale. I'm trying to figure out if I should look into getting something like ebony (or another very hard/dense and dark colored wood)as a center/wing border laminate to contrast with the maple. I was going to use walnut, but I'm thinking maybe something denser to brighten the tone might not be a bad idea. That said, i'm not really sure of walnut's tonal properties, particularly how it would affect the sound being used just as a 1/4 or 1/2" contrast laminate in the neck. Of course, if I use something very dense and hard as the contrast laminate, I'm going to run into workability problems. Trade offs...

The sawmill I get the wood from kiln dries everything, and so far I've had pretty good luck with them. While they sell alot of green lumber to pallet makers and barn builders, they do a decent amount of business with musical instrument makers, boat builders and furniture builders, and have higher standard lumber for higher quality demands. I've gotten some 8/4 sugar maple, sycamore and cherry from them and had no problems with warps or cracks at all. If the neck through construction is going to have more effect than anything on the tone, do you think I would gain a brighter tone from acquiring something more dense than walnut to use as a contrasting neck laminate, such as ebony, rosewood or purpleheart etc...? Southpa, I have to say, I'm intrigued with your use of holly. Personally, I have no experience with it, but I've been told it's like "white ebony". I'd be really interested in seeing some pictures of that project of yours when you get it closer to completion. So far, I've been purchasing pre-radiused and slotted fretboards, but eventually, I'd like to try that myself with some less than typical woods. I've heard of people using holly fretboards, but I've never seen one.

If your pickups sound like a wah when they are both on, they are out of phase. Reversing the ground and the lead on one pickup will fix it. I got a used no-name ax that had that same problem, but the pickups were different enough that they didnt cancel a whole lot of signal and ended up with an awesome tone. Ever since, I've been putting phase switches in all my axe's. It's exceptionally versatile when you have separate volumes and tones for each pickup because you can get some very unique tone shaping out of it, but again, this is something I never would have discovered had it not been for a used axe that I got with the pickups out of phase.

Even though I don't have a single completed build of my own done yet, I'm naturally thinking about the next dozen or so builds that I'd like to do. Anyhow, I had this idea to build a bass for my wife (who has never really played but can pick up a bass and knock out a decent bassline like a pro). The problem is, she's on the smaller side and has small hands and short arms and the like, and my 34" scale bass is bigger than she is. I'm thinking a 30" scale bass would probably be a good match for her. That said, I know that the shorter scale bass is reputed to have "dull and lifeless" tone. I've been thinking of ways to get around that and I'd like to know what everyones thoughts are. The idea I have is a Maple/Walnut/Maple neck through with possibly maple wings. That would make it rather heavy, but chances are she'd be playing it seated anyhow. For pickups, I was looking at a P style neck pickup with a Stingray style humbucker in the bridge, reason being that both she and I are a fan of the Stingray sound, and the P bass sound, so why not combine the two? I'm looking to get something with a relatively bright and punchy tone. Does anyone have any ideas for what might help in this with regards to hardware and electronics? I'm considering hotter versions of the pickups as one option that I think might work, but beyond that, I'm not sure what to do. Another consideration are the body wings, I was thinking possibly silver maple for the wings, since it is easier to work, slightly lighter and readily available at low prices to me. Problem is, I'm not really sure how that sounds as a tone wood, specifically for bass. I could go with hard maple for the wings, like I am doing for the neck, but I dont know if the difference is really worthwhile. More importantly though, I could be overlooking some other wood for the body wing that may be better suited that I'm not thinking of. I am trying to keep most of the construction being north american hardwoods, since I have an abundant supply of those at the sawmill that's 10 miles down the road from me. I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts and suggestions.

As far as the F vs Standard spacing for pickups, my experience has been that neck pickups generally work better with standard spaced, unless you have a wide nut (1 3/4) or greater, but with a floyd, you will be under that. If you use an F spaced pickup in the neck though, it will not be too much of a difference, so either will work, really. At the neck pickup the strings are vibrating somewhat wider, so the the strings cross over the pole pieces pretty well with either spacing. As for the bridge, I've found the difference to be much more noticable, but your style has alot to do with it. I play alot of metal riffs where I'm looking for that palm muted chunk, and if I have a standard spaced bridge pickup in a floyd guitar, that slight difference in alignment with the pole piece and the string will cause you to lose some of the meat in your tone and the impact will be somewhat less (similar to if you lowered your pickup to be a little too far from the strings). However, if you are playing more on the middle strings, or playing a style that is generally a little less demanding of the maximum impact on the outer strings, then you probably wont notice that much of a difference, and it might work for you. For instance, I've had the standard spaced Super Distortion bridge pickup on a guitar with floyd and I've never been satisfied with the "metal" (Megadeth, In Flames, Slayer etc) tone out of it, but the tone for say a 70s rock style song (Kiss, Mountain, ACDC etc) has always been more than adequate. I switched this for an F Spaced, and the metal tone drastically improved, while the classic rock tone improved some, but was generally in the same ballpark. If you haven't installed the pickup, most stores and suppliers are usually willing to let you do a swap for one spacing vs the other, as alot of people make the purchase and they realize the other would be more appropriate.

Well, a week into contemplating this, I think I'm going to use a trem on this one. With most of my playing, I do tend to use the trem quite a bit, but that is mainly on my many superstrats with floyds. I figure with this one, I want to build something that is a bit simpler and something that I dont already have. With this guitar, I probably wont use the trem much, but I think I would like to have it for the occasional light use. The more I think about this one, I'm trying to get something that's part tele, part strat, and part my own. Taking into account the fact that a cheap trem is probably not going to hold up under alot of usage, I still ended up getting one that I got dirt cheap ($10), since it was someone else's leftover. But, that said, I did some planning and figured out that the footprint will be small enough that if I don't like it and want to change, I can go back and put a tele bridge and custom shape (yet easy to make) pickguard over it and convert it into something like a regular tele, down the road with no problems other than some empty trem routes. (that's what my friend did with his, and got this trem lying in his parts bin in the first place) I'm going to try and build this guitar using as many leftover parts as I can and keep it low in price. That way, I can take the budget and the lessons learned from this one and put them into build number 2. So, in the end, keeping with that theme of using leftover parts, I guess someone else's leftovers will add to the first build soup. Thanks for the suggestions.

Well, as i'm reaching the (maybe) halfway point of my deployment to Iraq, i'm starting to think about what to do for the first build that I'm going to do when I get back. I go on R&R in a month or two and I'm about to start purchasing the parts now and doing some measuring and basic design when I'm on R&R. Initially, I wanted to make a neck through superstrat, but given my inexperience (and the fact that I already have more than a few superstrats) i've decided to scale the project back to something a bit simpler for a first project, and build something that I don't already have. I've decided to build something of a hybrid between a strat and tele with a few of my own touches, this is what I'm thinking: Ash body, tele shape but with some strat style contour cuts, no pickguard. Maple neck w/ strat style headstock Maple FB (probably to be purchased slotted and radiused to 12") with extra jumbo frets Two strat style pickups, one bridge, one neck master vol, blend, and master tone Gibson style 3 way (I prefer these to the fender blade style, and its easier to I can pretty much build the above guitar from parts and pieces I already have sitting around, with the only purchases being the truss rod, fretboard and bridge. I plan on making this my "learning experience", since I can make this guitar for less than $100 out of pocket. The only thing is, I cannot make up my mind as to whether or not to build this guitar with a two post strat style trem or a hard tail. Obviously, the hard tail will be a much easier build, but I could stand to benefit from the experience with installing a trem, given that I want to build a superstrat down the road. I'm on the fence with this one. I'd like to ask everyone's thoughts on the overall concept for this guitar, and what your thoughts are for which you think fits the concept better. For those of you with experience building, what your thoughts are on going trem vs hard tail, problems and difficulty vs experience to be gained etc. Thanks.

I'm in the same boat when it comes to basswood, and poplar for that matter. I've had guitars made of both, an Ibanez and a Jackson (when I was in college and playing parties and such) and I can say that they damage and dent INCREDIBLY easy, more so with basswood but i've gotten poplar to do the same. Aside from the fact that basswood is about as bland a wood as you can get to look at, I'm personally not a fan of the tone it creates, and I find poplar to be similar. Now keep in mind, the majority of the style I play is hard rock and metal, though I enjoy messing around with blues and jazz from time to time as well, and I generally demand alot of versatility from my guitars (even though I have enough of them I don't need to). I did manage to pick up an Ibanez RG a few years ago (a body style that I love, made out of a wood I cant stand) at a pawn shop with a perfect body, no damage at all (which is rare for a used RG. Extremely rare), and I threw in a Bill Lawrence XL500 (bridge) and Duncan JB (neck) pickup combo, which sounded good, but couldnt quite achieve the low end heavy metal bite that I intended it to. It has a very warm tone, that seems to be consistent all over the fretboard. But, it just didnt have what I needed, especially for rhythm tone, the tone was almost "blurry" if you will. Now, I also have an Epiphone Flying V with a floyd that has the same pickup combo. The V has a body and set neck made of mahogany, as opposed to the maple bolt on and basswood combo of the Ibanez, so I'll say its a decent comparison for tone of the wood(pickups, bridge, fb are all the same) and the V just blows the ibanez out of the water. It has well defined clarity even under heavy distortion, and has an all around much more aggressive and meaty tone. Now, onto Poplar, I had a Poplar bodied Jackson dinky from the 1990s that had some of the same tonal qualities as that RG. I had a JB in the bridge and two stock singles, and no matter how I sliced it, I couldnt get good tone out of it distorted, though clean tone was a different story. I will give it credit, as the single coils clean had a wonderful sound, very jazzy and well rounded for singles. I ended up replacing this guitar with a dinky from the 1980s that I found used, which has an alder body. I put a DiMarzio Super Distortion in the bridge and two Bill Lawrence singles in it, and it has similar, albiet somewhat brighter clean tone the poplar dinky did, but it has wonderful tone when distorted. Distorted, there is good chunk and clarity that I would look for in a rhythm guitar, and good single note definition for leads. Again, these two guitars are similar with the major difference being the body wood. Based on these personal experiences of mine, I'm in that same boat of disliking basswood (and poplar)

Given that I have about 15 guitars with various versions of floyds, I may be able to offer some insight on this. There are several decent Floyd copies out there, of course, the schaller ones are practically on par with the originals, some people like them better, but they are expensive. The same goes for the Ibanez Edge which is also of very good construction, but again you will have to pay for that, and those are all about on par with the price for an original floyd, if not more. That said, there are some decent inexpensive copies out there, I have a Music Yo Kramer Striker that was only a $130 guitar, but it has a licensed floyd that is take on the schaller floyd copy (i've also heard the term "floyd II" though I've never been too sure what that means) and is of pretty good quality. I compare that to a 1980s jackson Dinky that I have that has an actual schaller, and through heavy use, the only differents I can tell is that the studs on the jackson have held up slightly better with wear and tear, but not much difference. Compared to most licensed floyds, this design has hardened semi-circular knife edge inserts. Inevitably, the hardened inserts on the bridge plate will eat into the studs some with this design. In this pic, you can see how there is an area on the bridgeplate just behind the stud that is cut out, with the insert being the part that actually makes contact with the stud. I occasionally see this type on ebay for $50 or so but i have seen some copies of this design done poorly, such as a Jay Tursner copy of an ibanez RG, but generally I've seen more consistent good quality in this general design. http://www.blazingentertainment.com/Kramer_Baretta_06.jpg The other, more common design is like this, http://www.aampselectricguitarstore.com/im..._floyd_rose.jpg This design has the base plate itself machined down to form the knife edge for the studs. These are generally not hardened, or at least not as much, and alot of times, the studs end up eating into the base plate with heavy use. I have generally found that this type and the license copies of this general design (close to the original floyd) wear much more than the schaller based ones I mentioned above. With the wear, it's important to note that worn studs can generally be replaced cheaper than a worn bridge, so I prefer those that fit into the first group I mentioned. The ones guitar fetish sells fit into this category. Also important to note is whether or not you want a double or single lock floyd. The guitarfetish ones are single lock, which means that the ball end of the string goes through the bridge. These are generally less expensive and much easier to string up, but they dont stay in tune as well (esp under heavy use) as the ones that you have to clamp the string end into the bridge, like in both of the posted pics. The easiest way to tell is the peices that protrude under the fine tuner knobs. If they are hollow and you can run a string through them, they are the single lock type. If they are like a bolt/screw with an allen key adjustment, then it's the double lock type. I hope that helps some.

It looks like I may get a few free Duncans, a friend of mine asked me to install EMGs in his Jackson RR, and he told me for doing the work he would give me the old pickups, both Seymour Duncans. He got the guitar as is, and whoever put these pickups in put a standard spaced JB in the bridge and an F spaced Custom Custom in the neck, which strikes me as backward, but the Custom Custom seems somewhat more mellow than the JB and I guess that was why they did it. Anyhow, I'm planning on using those pickups in some guitars in my arsenal and I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the Custom Custom. I've wanted to try this pickup for awhile, but I never got my hands on one. The only Duncan that I really have much experience with is the JB, which I can't stand as a bridge pickup, but I've found it's a good neck pickup when you match it with a really high output bridge pickup. I've done it with a Lawrence L500XL/Dimebucker with good results, and I'm going to use this JB to try in combo with a Dimarzio X2N. Does anyone know a good neck humbucker to match a Duncan Custom Custom in the bridge? I'm planning on using it in an ash bodied guitar to play some Van Halen-ish classic rock, but I like having some tonal versatility and be able to use it for alot of clean/lightly overdriven neck pickup stuff for Jazz and Blues that I occasionally play. I definitely want something with 4 conducter wiring, since I like being able to split humbuckers and I'd like to get possibly another Duncan for aesthetic reasons, so that both pickups look uniform. I'm currently contemplating the Jazz model or the 59, but I don't really know which would work better, or if there are some other good alternatives from another brand that match it well. Anyone have any thoughts?

One of the things that I'd like to see is more instruments made out of alternate materials. Alot of guitars are made of the typical maple/mahogany/alder/ash types of woods, but there have to be alot of alternatives, and not just woods. Steinberger started alot of the carbon/graphite thing, and I know that Kramer originally started making aluminum neck guitars. When i first started playing in high school, I had a friend who's dad was a machinist, and he made an entire guitar out of aluminum and gave it a polished finish. It was a really unique instrument with a long (probably like 30-36 fret) neck that was ridiculously thin and ended just before the one bridge pickup, and it had a scalloped fingerboard that was machined out of aluminum. It was almost like he machined it out of a solid peice of aluminum, but it had to be chambered or something because it didnt seem to heavy. I didn't realize how unique of an instrument that was until years later, after my friend had moved away and I hadn't kept in touch with him, but I'd love to know how that guy built that thing. It had an incredibly bright tone and it seemed almost too easy to play. I'd love to know how he ever came up with that thing though... i've never seen anything like it since.

I've had experience with a few poplar guitars. I once had a jackson HSS with a poplar body, which for a long time was my only guitar. Personally, I was not a fan of the tone at all, It was similar to basswood only, which I don't like as a tone wood either. To me it was kinda dull and actually had a rather "blury" sound with distortion, like the notes mashed together without much distinction or clarity. On clean settings, it had a similar but more "honking" effect. At the time, my style was very much hard rock/metal ala Van Halen/Guns&Roses/Megadeth, though I would occasionally play some more classic rock stuff with it as well. It did sound pretty decent when playing fuzzy 70's style rock, and it would work for a warm jazz tone if you rolled back the vol and tone some, but the tone did not cut it for much else in my opinion. Now, I also picked up a few peavey preadators (strat copy) real cheap a few years back and I was told they were poplar bodies, and the tone on those was much better, with more clarity and brighter. Then I stripped one and used it for a custom refinish/rebuild, and it looked as though the body was not poplar but alder, but at the time I was not well versed in determining what wood it was, so I could be wrong.

Given that it is plywood/laminate of some sort, you will probably want to stay away from anything transparent, although, if the plywood is of a nice grain, I have seen sunbursts finishes work on plywood guitars, that is what my very first beginner guitar was, a plywood with a sunburst, but I didnt know that until I had the thing for years. One note about that, it does get tricky when you get to any contoured part of the body, as the laminates will show through unless the finish is opaque at that point. If it's a strat, then that beveled corner of the body for your picking arm will be an issue. If it's a tele, you can pull off a normal looking sunburst with no problems. I did a total refinish/rebuild out of what was left of a Peavey Predator (strat copy) and some strat style parts I picked up for $50 a while back. It sounds like what I did is pretty similar to your project and I figured I'd share the lessons I learned. I ended up stripping the paint off the body with a chemical stripper, and found to my dismay that the wood grain was quite bland. My intention was to do a transparent royal blue finish (using a stain made from artist oil paint). Now, like Mickguard said, the sealer will play a role in what you can actually do. In my case, the sealer kept much of the stain from being absorbed. In fact, the stain would not absorb into the wood and would actually dry on top just a touch of absorbtion. Once it was dry, the stain would wipe off the surface and leave the wood a pale turqouise green at most. Acetone, Lacquer thinner, stripper, sanding etc etc wouldnt remove it. Even still though, the grain was still not quite interesting enough for what I had in mind, since the grain lines were few and far apart and rather subtle, and I was hoping for something with a "tighter" pattern. What I ended up doing was rubbing on a layer of the artist oil paint directly from the tube, and running it in lines and patterns with a balled up rag to create a fake grain. Overall, because it is really a thin coat of the artist oil paint, it was semi transparent. You could still see some of the grain from the wood, but most of what you see is close linear streaks due to the application of the paint. I had to let that dry for about a week though, artist oil paint is very slow to dry, even in thin applications. Just figured I'd throw that out there, its something I learned the hard way.

That's good to know, not something I really thought about too much since I was more concerned with the overall shaping and sanding, I didnt really think about the removing and reseating the frets. How does maple compare in that respect? I've refinished maple boards but I've never had to do any fretwork on one. I personally don't like the feel (or the look) of rosewood, and part of the reason why I decided I wanted to get into building was that couldn't find too many existing guitars that were what I was looking for (I generally am a superstrat kind of player) and had fingerboards other than rosewood. Right now, I'm working on building a "mockup" out of some pine and fir that I can easily get my hands on here, and i'm thinking of using leftover parts I have to make it into a full blown, if not exactly high quality, instrument. That way I make most of my first time screw ups on something that doesnt really matter too much anyhow. For that mockup, I was contemplating using maple instead of spending the money on an ebony board. But, again the whole point of the mockup is to learn as much as possible from the hands on experience. Any thoughts on rosewood or maple being a better learning experience to move up to ebony?

Thanks for the insight, from reading everyone's post I'm definitely going to go with a radiused board... especially for a first build. I knew ebony could be pretty hard to work with, but from the sounds of it, it's enough of a pain that it makes sense to spend the money on the radiused board. I think I may look into the lmii.com route, especially if they offer that kind of flexibility, I'm sure its worth the extra cost.

I’m starting to plan out my first build, and one of the things I’ve considered doing to save myself from screwing it up is purchasing a pre-slotted fretboard. I’d like a 24 fret ebony board with a relatively flat radius (14” or 16”) but I’m running into problems finding what I’m looking for. Scale length is not important yet since I’m still in the early stages of planning and can shift the design to accommodate, and I’m comfortable playing with pretty much any of the common scale lengths. I figured that for a first build, it would be easier to use a constant radius fretboard, but the preslotted boards that I see Stew-Mac selling are either 12” radius (a bit too round for my taste) in both Fender and Gibson scale length or a compound radius (10-16”) in Fender scale, which would work with my playing style, but I have no idea as far as how to do a good job of fretting and leveling frets on a compound radius board, and I’m not sure if that’s a good idea for a first build. Beyond that, I haven’t found much in the way of pre-slotted boards out there. Does anyone know where I can find slotted 24 fret ebony boards either unradiused or 14” or 16”? Or, as another alternative, is it worth the effort to buy a board with a 12” radius and sand it down to a flatter profile with say a 16” radius sanding block? Or is that one of those things that can be done but it a bit too much of a hassle? I know doing so makes the fretboard thinner and ebony isn’t known for being the easiest wood to work with. I’d appreciate anyone’s thoughts and suggestions.

I have a H-S-S guitar that has a blade style, single coil sized humbucker in the middle position. I’m not really a huge fan of that pickup combination since I almost never use a middle pickup (except occasionally the middle/neck combo), but I’m trying to explore some possibilities to get more use and a unique sound out of it. I’m wondering what it would sound like to use the bridge and middle pickup in series, instead of the standard parallel circuit. I’m wondering if this might provide a thicker, slightly bassier sound than just the bridge pickup, or the two in standard parallel circuit. I'm not a big fan of the bridge and middle with the current setup because it seems like the middle pickup just mellows out the bite of the bridge pickup, but if they were in series, might it give the output a boost in the same manner running both coils of a humbucker vs a single coil? Considering this is one of my "metal" guitars, I'm trying to get the thickest, heaviest tone out of it that I can. Has anyone out there tried this? Any thoughts on this idea? I’ve done more than my share of pickup configurations and different wirings and options (coil splits, phase switches, on/off switches to turn one a pickup to get combinations not possible with the 5-way), but I’ve never tried this. But, before I try it, I figured I’d ask around and see if anyone has tried it, or has any thoughts on how it might work.

I've been wondering myself about the Khalers. I have an Aria Pro II Blade Runner from the 1980s that I bought a few months back that has one, but it didn't come with the bar and I only played that guitar a few times before I put it in storage. (I'm deployed to Iraq now, so pretty much all but one travel guitar in my collection got packed up and went into storage). So, I've never really used a Khaler to know what they're like. When I get back, I'm planning on building myself a neck thru superstrat, and I've been considering buying one of the Khalers or a licensed floyd... though the khalers more expensive new than that entire Blade Runner was for the whole guitar. From what I've heard, the Khalers are sort of like a Bigsby on steroids, versus a floyd that is more of a fender style trem on steroids. I've heard that the Khalers are much smoother for subtle vibrato and fluid fast motions, but the floyd's beat them when it comes to the extreme dives and pull ups. Anyone else think that's an accurate assessment?

I appreciate the advice, based on what you all have said, I think I am going to do several practice runs first. Even though my goal is to build a neck through guitar, I'm going to take Cherokee6's advice and do a few neck projects (bolt on style first) to get the feel for it. I'm probably going to try my hand at building a body as well for the same reasons, then move up to eventually building a complete neck through mockup. MiKrO also got me thinking about that one... I was just going to do the one single mockup, but if I do a few practice necks/bodies/and maybe practice something akin to attaching the body wings and doing the heel carving, I might as well make the mockup something worth holding on to and try to make it playable a little later on. I saw a post on here from Melvyn Hiscock using Douglas Fir for a neck, which is what alot of the lumber here is, if I can find a decent piece, then it might be worth trying to make a playable instrument from it. I just got back from a mission to another base, and when I was there, I had a small find. Across the street from the chow hall was a bunch of busted furniture going in the trash. I managed to get a nice bed post that's about 3" square by 36" long, I think it's beechwood which I have no idea what it would be like as a neck but should be easy enough to carve for practice. As far as the rest of the project goes, I really don't have any good fretboard or fretting and hardware stuff to work with here. I'm going to do some practice with making a fretboard out of some generic scrap of hardwood(again from busted furniture), but I think I'm going to do the mockup leaving some things blank until I get back to the states and then finish it then, doing the routes for pickups, truss rod, holes for the the machine heads, bridge, and the fretboard and fretting. The only router I have here is an amazingly low quality one that somebody bought off the local market years ago and has been passing it from unit to unit here, so I probably will refrain from doing any precision work with that one. I guess this will work out being a good way to get rid of some of the excess parts I have lying around too, old stock pickups that I upgraded and so forth. Does anyone know if this beechwood bedpost would be worth saving for the full blown mockup or its it just worth practicing my carving skills? Thanks.

Hello Everyone, this is my first post to the Project Guitar forum, I found this site about a year ago when I first started getting into working on guitars and have found this site and the forum to be a tremendous help. So far, I’ve redone almost all things electronic, refinished guitars, replaced machine heads, refurbished tremolos and such, but I haven’t done much on the wood construction side of the house. I have done a kit assembly project, but so far nothing with actual woodworking aside from some neck pocket adjustments and shaping headstocks. Right now my woodworking experience has been limited to construction and building things like picture frames or the occasional simple shelf or cabinet. Now I’ve reached a point where I want to go to the next step and build a solidbody from scratch, after contemplating the idea for years. I’ve done a lot of homework and read a few books, including Melyvn Hiscock’s, and I’ve already got the ideas for not only the first, but a few follow on projects as well. The first one I’d like to build is a neck through superstrat style, but before I start, I wanted to ask the advice of some of the forum members. I’m currently serving in Iraq and won’t be able to start the project (aside from planning) until I return home, which is still almost a year away. However, here I do have access to a reasonable workshop, a decent supply of tools, and most importantly, down time in between missions. As far as wood goes, we have tons of pieces of fir and pine leftover from construction projects that is of decent quality, plus some hardwoods left over from old furniture. My question is this, do you think it would be beneficial for me to build a practice “mockup” guitar out of this leftover wood so that when I return home I will already be somewhat familiar with the wood construction? Or would this be a waste of time? I know that working with these woods will obviously be different than what I plan on using for the real guitar (maple and cherry), but I'd rather have a little first hand experience before I start working on the real deal. Also, since I really want to do a neck through design, I feel like I should get some practice in since it seems to be a little bit more difficult construction than the bolt on's that I'm used to. Does this sound like a worthwhile idea, or are there any other ideas that I can use to get some practice in? I would like to hear anyone's ideas. Thank you.