Post by myranda on Feb 7, 2007 13:55:30 GMT -5
Ok I have a few projects on the go and want to upgrade parts here and there, but I'm finding it rather difficult to get subjective comments on parts, so thought I'd try somewhere new.
Project 1 - a Tanglewood Tomkat (prs copy). Suprisingly for a cheap copy it looks great and has a nice amount of sustain so I'd like to make the rest of the guitar as good as the bodyNow it has a Wilkinson floating vibrato unit (I think its the VS or VG 100 if that helps) which holds a tune so well I've always wondered why people say vibrato units make guitars go out of tune all the time, but it's beaten up and batter so I want a new one. The pick-ups are not so great, and they definately need to go. And the Machine heads need replacing.
So
a) Should I go for a straight swap for a new identical vibrato unit, or are there better ones than the wilkinson? only other type I can find information on is the Floyd Rose which everyone says onl really suits maybe 1% of players and if you're not them, they're more hassle than they're worth. And I can find no other information about other units that doesn't come from a web shop trying to get my hard earned cash.
b) Who makes GOOD machine heads - what do you look for in a machine head that's not attached to anything yet? How do you know what's good if all you have is decade old bad ones as your experience?
c) Nuts! The nut on this guitar was well cut and lasted well, but it's time for a new one. I quite like the look and what I'm hearing about the Fender LSR Roller nut, though one website (and I'll ad ONLY one) mentioned that most angled headstocks are more than 10 degrees different from the neck, and so are unsuitable - is this true? Are these nuts worth the extra work or should I just buy a graphite nut and what it straight on?
d) Pick-ups - two nice big humbucker holes will be waiting for new pick ups, I like to play old school classic hard rock (Sabbath, Deep Purple, AC DC), more modern-ish metal (metallica, GnR, etc) some blues-y stuff, and occasionally some fairly up beat rocky/punky stuff like The Offspring. Now manufacturers for some pick-ups have a "sounds like this" track playing, but it's always on different guitars a different song by different artists, so it's not really a good comparison. how about a short list of pick-ups ideal for that?
Project 2 - make an Encore fender copy sound good. For this project everything must go... the only thing staying is the body - and that only so I can say it's a modded encore (though if it still sounds cr*p I'll think about replacing that too). descision wise I'm pretty much sorted -except for the pick-ups, this guitar will be used for twidly stuff, I'm wanting crisp clear sustained notes probably from single coil pick ups... which ones should I look at (or listern to)?
Project 3 and 4 - Scratch building...
With these two guitars I want to play and see what is possible with some determination and some cash for parts. I'd quite like to make a hard tailed floyd rose speedloading guiar for one... but there will be a few practice models so I'll be playing around with woodss, pick up configurations etc, so the only question here is - where to look for suppliers of floyd rose hard tail speedloading bridges (and nut), fret wire, fret board inlay materials of varying colours and any luthier-ing specific tools within the UK
Sorry my first post was a biggy, but I have a lot of questions in my head - I just hope that I made sense in the writing of them - I'm dyslexic so typing out long things isn't always easy. Thanks.
Project 1 - a Tanglewood Tomkat (prs copy). Suprisingly for a cheap copy it looks great and has a nice amount of sustain so I'd like to make the rest of the guitar as good as the bodyNow it has a Wilkinson floating vibrato unit (I think its the VS or VG 100 if that helps) which holds a tune so well I've always wondered why people say vibrato units make guitars go out of tune all the time, but it's beaten up and batter so I want a new one. The pick-ups are not so great, and they definately need to go. And the Machine heads need replacing.
So
a) Should I go for a straight swap for a new identical vibrato unit, or are there better ones than the wilkinson? only other type I can find information on is the Floyd Rose which everyone says onl really suits maybe 1% of players and if you're not them, they're more hassle than they're worth. And I can find no other information about other units that doesn't come from a web shop trying to get my hard earned cash.
b) Who makes GOOD machine heads - what do you look for in a machine head that's not attached to anything yet? How do you know what's good if all you have is decade old bad ones as your experience?
c) Nuts! The nut on this guitar was well cut and lasted well, but it's time for a new one. I quite like the look and what I'm hearing about the Fender LSR Roller nut, though one website (and I'll ad ONLY one) mentioned that most angled headstocks are more than 10 degrees different from the neck, and so are unsuitable - is this true? Are these nuts worth the extra work or should I just buy a graphite nut and what it straight on?
d) Pick-ups - two nice big humbucker holes will be waiting for new pick ups, I like to play old school classic hard rock (Sabbath, Deep Purple, AC DC), more modern-ish metal (metallica, GnR, etc) some blues-y stuff, and occasionally some fairly up beat rocky/punky stuff like The Offspring. Now manufacturers for some pick-ups have a "sounds like this" track playing, but it's always on different guitars a different song by different artists, so it's not really a good comparison. how about a short list of pick-ups ideal for that?
Project 2 - make an Encore fender copy sound good. For this project everything must go... the only thing staying is the body - and that only so I can say it's a modded encore (though if it still sounds cr*p I'll think about replacing that too). descision wise I'm pretty much sorted -except for the pick-ups, this guitar will be used for twidly stuff, I'm wanting crisp clear sustained notes probably from single coil pick ups... which ones should I look at (or listern to)?
Project 3 and 4 - Scratch building...
With these two guitars I want to play and see what is possible with some determination and some cash for parts. I'd quite like to make a hard tailed floyd rose speedloading guiar for one... but there will be a few practice models so I'll be playing around with woodss, pick up configurations etc, so the only question here is - where to look for suppliers of floyd rose hard tail speedloading bridges (and nut), fret wire, fret board inlay materials of varying colours and any luthier-ing specific tools within the UK
Sorry my first post was a biggy, but I have a lot of questions in my head - I just hope that I made sense in the writing of them - I'm dyslexic so typing out long things isn't always easy. Thanks.
