bowyn
Meter Reader 1st Class
That boy ain't right...
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Post by bowyn on Aug 28, 2012 11:41:50 GMT -5
Here's my Blue Strat with a Brian May style switching scheme and GFS Brighton Rocks pickups:  Just a note: This was never an attempt to sound like Brian May. I honestly wouldn't know where to begin with that, as it's more than just the guitar that defines his sound. This was done out of a desire to implement his pickup switching scheme + I had a very pretty blue strat body and I've already got a traditional strat set up, a singlecoil-sized humbucker strat set up, a David Gilmour style red strat with active pickups, and the stuff to build a David Gilmour style Black Strat, so I wanted to try a different sounding set of SC pickups. I've been drooling over these Brighton Rocks pickups for a while now, admittedly based on the looks.. half metal cover and BIG FAT pole pieces on black... very distinctive looking. This seemed like the perfect project for them. Brighton Rocks pickups:  This was built with: - Blue (Daphne?) Strat body (MIM, I think) - Guitarfetish.com full brass block tremolo bridge system (using 4 springs) with U.S.A. spacing. - Custom made Strat replacement neck, kind of a C profile.. very comfortable to play and a little chunky, which I dig. The finish needs some wearing-in, but otherwise it's quite nice - dragonfireguitars.com Sperzel-style locking tuners - GHS David Gilmour Blue signature string set - Custom cut pickguard from guitarfetish.com - Chromed brass knobs with MOP inlay from guitarfetish.com - Brighton Rocks calibrated pickup set from guitarfetish.com - 250k quarter sized pots. - Misc bits from all over I've only been doing stuff like this off an on for about a year, so I try to keep my expectations realistic... but this guitar, from the moment I plugged it up, has just blown me away. The clean sound is a bit abnormal, probably due to the oversize polepieces, which can be a bit off-putting at first. It's a thicker darker sound, kind of like a humbucker, but with the 3 pickup settings and phase switches, it's fairly easy with a bit of adjustment to get a great clean sound... however, where this thing has blown my socks off is with a little gain added... I've tested it out with the gain jacked up some on my amp (Bugera vintage 22 tube amp) and on the clean channel with an overdrive pedal (and both combined) and it just begs you to keep playing it. I can turn on the neck and bridge pickups together and it just seems to hit all the right peaks and valleys tone-wise. It's hard to describe other than to say it's got all the right meat and potatoes to make me happy. Another favorite is all three on and either the neck or bridge out of phase. It's an OOP sound, but with a lot more meat to it. Again, hard to describe... I might come out of my sound hermit cave and post a sample. That's how nice this thing sounds. Here's a pictorial of the build for anyone who might want to see more: www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.458685357495700.102495.100000627188063&type=3&l=9fc3c54f24 |
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Post by sumgai on Aug 28, 2012 15:58:45 GMT -5
Here's a pictorial of the build for anyone who might want to see more:
Guitarus prettyus, linkus non workum.  |
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Post by cynical1 on Aug 28, 2012 16:02:01 GMT -5
Nice looking guitar. Very clean looking...sort of like a stealth bomber...
Have you got any pictures out there for the few of us remaining souls in the world that don't Facebook?
HTC1
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col
format tables
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Post by col on Aug 28, 2012 19:16:57 GMT -5
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bowyn
Meter Reader 1st Class
That boy ain't right...
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Post by bowyn on Aug 28, 2012 20:37:21 GMT -5
Yep, looks like I fudged the link. I was using the public viewable link for the facebook photo album, which I did have some reservations about (not privacy wise, but with regards to those who don't have facebook accounts or who simply do not like facebook (which I can certainly understand). I think I'll just make regular posts from now on. Being a little new here I was concerned about making big giant picture posts  |
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bowyn
Meter Reader 1st Class
That boy ain't right...
Posts: 85
Likes: 0
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Post by bowyn on Aug 28, 2012 21:06:55 GMT -5
(EDITed by sumgai to remove the gawd-awful underlining!) Here's the stuff, more or less. The body is, to the best of my knowledge, from a Fender Standard Stratocaster. ==============  Due to a measuring mistake (either on my end or GFS's... I'm not totally convinced it was an error on my end, but it's certainly possible) my bridge mount screw holes didn't quite line up. GFS is great about working with you if you order the wrong part and they're great about responding to emails... still I'm impatient and didn't want to wait another week and a half to send it back and get another... so I did the ol' fill and drill. ==============  Here's the pickguard with the switches mounted (but not wired, yet). ==============  Back of the pickguard, starting to wire the switches. At this point there's just some bus-wire connecting the on/off switches. This is the first time I've done done any work on this kind of switch (though, honestly, a dpdt on/on switch is pretty much a dpdt on/on switch). It's dauntingly tiny, though... very VERY little room between the lugs and zero room for soldering errors. ==============  Pre cut me some tiny little jumper wires. I've never had a lot of luck with strippers (WIRE strippers) so I use a X-acto knife and trim the ends up clean. These little things were a pain. ==============  Red wires connecting on/off switches to the phase/out-of-phase switches. the black wires will be soldered crossing each other so that the phase switch will swap the Lead and Ground wires when switched. ==============  Got it all soldered down, switches on the right, volume and tone pots on the left. Black and white wires entering from the bottom are the pickup wires. ==============  Meet Mr. Brighton Rocks: www.guitarfetish.com/Brighton-Rock-Pickups-Calibrated-RWRP-Set-of-three_p_1521.html==============  Here are the pickups in the pickguard from behind. ==============  All wired up and somewhat neatly arranged for installation. ==============  Front of the now-loaded pickguard with chromed brass knobs attached. ==============  Back of headstock with locking tuners installed. ==============  Big brass block tremolo bridge with all the trimmings. ==============  Neck attached with custom neckplate. ==============  All put together. Switched the tip on the vibrato bar to black and installed the output jack and plate. ==============  Front of headstock with roller string-tree installed and strung with GHS Boomers ==============  Angle shot, cause I can. I love a maple fretboard. ==============  Full frontal. ==============  Full backal.
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Post by sumgai on Aug 29, 2012 0:18:52 GMT -5
col, C1, you do not need to be logged in to view those facebook images. It's been my experience on this particular internet that one does indeed need to be logged into Facebook before one can view anything. Their thinking is, if you want to see something posted by a member, then you'd better bend over and grab your ankles.... and they don't even provide the KY!  This is not a valid link, no matter what Facebook says. My advice, besides using a real hosting service, would be to highlight and copy the actual address bar contents, and not rely on some twit's idea of a fancy-shmancy doo-dad that alleges to copy the proper link to your clipboard. Although it wasn't you that first posted the link, but you did perpetuate it, so 5 lashes with a used high-E string for you! ;D ~!~!~!~!~!~!~ bo, Yep, looks like I fudged the link. That's one way to describe it!  That's public for all Facebook members, as versus private, meaning that they can be viewed only by those (Facebook members) to whom you've granted permission. It's not public as in, the rest of the Internet. I think I've already made clear my views on this topic, eh? As it happens, it wasn't too long ago that we removed any size limitations that were in place since the Forum started. A script that runs every time the page loads will automatically re-size those images that exceed 800 pixels in width. Feel free to have at it! ;D HTH sumgai |
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bowyn
Meter Reader 1st Class
That boy ain't right...
Posts: 85
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Post by bowyn on Aug 29, 2012 11:54:26 GMT -5
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Post by cynical1 on Aug 29, 2012 12:18:36 GMT -5
Well, whenever I follow any of these links they want my Farcebook login credentials. I generally avoid social networking sites as they require you to have friends in order to be useful.
The pictures you did post show a very clean and tidy job. Guess I need to pull out the old +1 for you on this project.
And whenever you have a chance to post some sound samples that would be cool. It's always a help to people that come here...and haunt around here...to actually hear what these mods sound like.
Again, nice job.
Happy Trails
Cynical One
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col
format tables
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Post by col on Aug 29, 2012 23:11:55 GMT -5
col, C1, you do not need to be logged in to view those facebook images. It's been my experience on this particular internet that one does indeed need to be logged into Facebook before one can view anything. Their thinking is, if you want to see something posted by a member, then you'd better bend over and grab your ankles.... and they don't even provide the KY! This is not a valid link, no matter what Facebook says. My advice, besides using a real hosting service, would be to highlight and copy the actual address bar contents, and not rely on some twit's idea of a fancy-shmancy doo-dad that alleges to copy the proper link to your clipboard. Ahum. You misquoted the link I posted. Nor is it the link from the OP (which was identical to my own). The link I posted works fine, and takes you to publicly accessible images at Facebook. Facebook should not use ampersands in their URLs, but they work fine in all browsers I know of. I don't why else you would feel that the Facebook link is not valid. I note that the Proboards software truncates long URLs, but he anchor is unaffected. Obviously, URLs (long URLs at least) are transformed into into textual links with a href tags at these boards. Because the original link posted was truncated too (but working), I either right-clicked the URL, or took the URL from Facebook (don't recall now). Either way, I used the correct URL or it would not work. I don't understand the confusion or what you are seeing. |
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Post by cynical1 on Aug 29, 2012 23:25:29 GMT -5
Just to revisit the "Beating a Dead Horse" department one more time, what I see is a totally blank page asking me to login or sign up for Facebook when I click the link in your first post. The pictures you posted worked fine, so no worries.
HTC1
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col
format tables
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Post by col on Aug 29, 2012 23:54:40 GMT -5
Hi C1,
I don't understand what's occurring there.
The links are identical.
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Post by sumgai on Aug 30, 2012 0:51:54 GMT -5
col, You may well be correct, the error may rest with ProBoards and their method of displaying links. However, when I look at the source code of what comes down the pike from ProBoards, it says, and I quote verbatim: http://media/set/?set... yada yada yada There are no other characters that are coming into my 'puter, and then failing to display - what I saw is what I got, from ProBoards. From my perspective, you, bowyn and others have all posted the same link, that which is minus the TLD identifier. And unless I miss my guess, I'd lay good money on a bet that what you and the others have posted is not what you saw in your browser's address bar. That's where the rubber meets the road, the address bar. Unless you're getting smacked by phishing links.....  I'd try really hard to copy that address, in toto, and then see what happens when you paste it into a message here. If, upon previewing/posting the message, it doesn't look the same as what you copied, then we can take it for granted that ProBoards and Facebook aren't playing nicely with each other. NON-EDIT: (continuation, after a short break): It occurs to me that it's entirely possible that your browser has been suborned by Facebook, essentially giving it a "Mother of all shortcuts" directly into Facebook's site. I envision this "Browser Helper Object" looking over your shoulder at the address bar, or at links within the HTML/javascript, and when it sees something it recognizes as Facebook material, it correctly provides the requisite TLD info, thus sending the browser to the desired page. Child's play to make this happen, and seeing as how the alleged techno-watchdogs have let everything else slide that Facebook has ever done, I don't imagine that this would've been any different. Come to think of it, Google does do exactly this.... but I've never inhaled. All interesting, but of little to no value for us as a Forum of Nutz. Photobucket and the like are out there for a reason, and they work as advertised. 'Nuff said. HTH sumgai |
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col
format tables
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Post by col on Aug 30, 2012 12:13:16 GMT -5
Hi sumgai,
I don't think this occurs because of a Facebook 'Browser Helper Object'. I did not copy the link as it appears in the opening post, and I'm 99% sure I copied it from the browser bar at the target page. It is possible that I right-clicked the link here and copied the link that way, but I do not recall doing this, and it is not how I would usually go about it. I certainly visited the facebook page, so I had the full URL to hand.
The reason your BHO suggestion does not appear to explain what is happening is because in your post (reply #1) your link appears to me as you described it - truncated, bereft of the TLD. I would expect the BHO to have added the Facebook TLD there too, not just in the opening post and my post. Though, yours appears in a quote, so a test might help to determine if this affects the BHO.
I certainly wouldn't have allowed such an object to be added to this computer. I'll carry out some checks and searches on this matter, but it does not fit what I am seeing. I might go through the source code too to see if there is anything there.
This is certainly quite odd.
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Post by sumgai on Aug 30, 2012 13:12:39 GMT -5
col, As you said, it's "very interesting", but it's not something that's mandatory that we get to the bottom of the quandry. After all, there were guitar players before Facebook, and there'll be even more guitar players after Facebook, so in the grand scheme of things.... I'll go along with the non-BHO train of thought, you sound to me like you understand pretty well how all of that works. As for my quoted link not working directly for you, I can only say that ProBoards displays a quote as a bordered table (actually, a three-levels-deep nested table). Perhaps this might trip up some scripts, I dunno. But again, is it worth testing? Well, I can only say that I'm willing to let it go. But if you're itching to put paid to this condundrum, then by all means, don't let me stop you! ;D HTH sumgai |
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col
format tables
Posts: 468
Likes: 25
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Post by col on Aug 30, 2012 13:47:08 GMT -5
Hi sumgai,
I am more interested to make sure that I don't have a Facebook 'helper' object installed. I'm not very up on Linux, but I'm running Firefox on Xandros - I would probably know if I installed a BHO. Certainly, none are listed in FF add-ons.
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Post by sumgai on Aug 30, 2012 14:05:10 GMT -5
I am more interested to make sure that I don't have a Facebook 'helper' object installed. I'm not very up on Linux, but I'm running Firefox on Xandros - I would probably know if I installed a BHO. Certainly, none are listed in FF add-ons. You're correct, insofar as I know, FF (on all platforms) shows all helper objects, nothing is hidden from the user. That's probably not the cause of the issue at hand - I was just grasping at straws.  |
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