Post by andy on Jul 19, 2008 8:17:31 GMT -5
I've been meaning to post these for a little while now. Having owned many, many guitars along the way, plenty of them being at one time, I decided it was time to streamline the operation. My wife encouraged me to do so of course, but for all my mysoginistic humour on this site, she is the one thing in my life which takes precidence over music, and quite rightly so, in my opinion! 
Anyhow, on to the good stuff, these are the pair I hope will serve my every need for years to come!
Clearly, both are abominations of classic two-pickup designs, having an imposter shoe-horned into the middle position.
The Tele is a Nashville Deluxe Telecaster, with an ash body, and has Dimarzio Twang King pickups bridge and neck, and a Seymour Duncan JB jr. in the middle to take up the slack for the purposes of rock! I wired it backwards to how I intended, but by simply switching the middle pickup wire with the bridge one, the five way selects Neck, Neck and Bridge, Bridge, Bridge and Middle, and Middle. It covers the classic Tele tones, and the JB gives a chubby, grainy power- classy sounding, but also a bit 80's in the same breath. Here's a close up...
The SG is an Epiphone SG Custom, with three Kent Armstrong P.A.F. style pickups. They all have an impedance of about 10kOhms, but the neck unit has an Alnico magnet and (gold plated) nickel cover, the middle is Alnico without the cover, and the bridge Ceramic, again coverless. The idea here was to 'grade' the pickups neck to bridge, so the neck has a sweet, warm tone, nice clean and with a broad, detailed driven tone, the middle has more cut and 'crunch', but still warm and 'fat' in the attack, and the bridge is chunky and cutting, with a powerful hard rock tone. In hindsight, I could have gone for a slightly hotter wound bridge pickup, as alongside the other options it will never be used clean, so might as well have had a bit more push to it, but it can make its way into metal territory with little trouble as it is. I did plan to remove the toggle switch form the circuit but left it in for the moment- it selects Neck and Middle, All Three, and Bridge and Middle, meaning that turning off the middle volume gives the standard Neck, Both, Bridge arrangement. That switch messes with the sound a bit, any selection sounding fuller when up or down than in the middle so I am wary of losing the full tones by removing it and having all pickups in the circuit all the time, but either way, it will need a full rewire soon enough, as the switch sometimes doesnt connect and the pots are starting to crackle a tiny bit and bleed a little sound when supposedly 'off', which is only really apparent at ridiculously high gain. Minor issues for now though. And a closer look...
I have to say that it feels good to have a simpler choice to make between guitars now and these fellas should cover me for most possible situations to come. I still dream of a Gretsch one day, but it's probably worth more to me as a dream than as a guitar in many respects (or that's what I keep telling myself!
). A rock monster with unreasonably high output pickups and a floyd rose would be a lot of fun too, and could be picked up on the cheap, but that would sort of defeat the point of having this clear-out for the time being.
My wallet will never be able to stopping watching its back though!
Anyhow, on to the good stuff, these are the pair I hope will serve my every need for years to come!
Clearly, both are abominations of classic two-pickup designs, having an imposter shoe-horned into the middle position.
The Tele is a Nashville Deluxe Telecaster, with an ash body, and has Dimarzio Twang King pickups bridge and neck, and a Seymour Duncan JB jr. in the middle to take up the slack for the purposes of rock! I wired it backwards to how I intended, but by simply switching the middle pickup wire with the bridge one, the five way selects Neck, Neck and Bridge, Bridge, Bridge and Middle, and Middle. It covers the classic Tele tones, and the JB gives a chubby, grainy power- classy sounding, but also a bit 80's in the same breath. Here's a close up...
The SG is an Epiphone SG Custom, with three Kent Armstrong P.A.F. style pickups. They all have an impedance of about 10kOhms, but the neck unit has an Alnico magnet and (gold plated) nickel cover, the middle is Alnico without the cover, and the bridge Ceramic, again coverless. The idea here was to 'grade' the pickups neck to bridge, so the neck has a sweet, warm tone, nice clean and with a broad, detailed driven tone, the middle has more cut and 'crunch', but still warm and 'fat' in the attack, and the bridge is chunky and cutting, with a powerful hard rock tone. In hindsight, I could have gone for a slightly hotter wound bridge pickup, as alongside the other options it will never be used clean, so might as well have had a bit more push to it, but it can make its way into metal territory with little trouble as it is. I did plan to remove the toggle switch form the circuit but left it in for the moment- it selects Neck and Middle, All Three, and Bridge and Middle, meaning that turning off the middle volume gives the standard Neck, Both, Bridge arrangement. That switch messes with the sound a bit, any selection sounding fuller when up or down than in the middle so I am wary of losing the full tones by removing it and having all pickups in the circuit all the time, but either way, it will need a full rewire soon enough, as the switch sometimes doesnt connect and the pots are starting to crackle a tiny bit and bleed a little sound when supposedly 'off', which is only really apparent at ridiculously high gain. Minor issues for now though. And a closer look...
I have to say that it feels good to have a simpler choice to make between guitars now and these fellas should cover me for most possible situations to come. I still dream of a Gretsch one day, but it's probably worth more to me as a dream than as a guitar in many respects (or that's what I keep telling myself!
). A rock monster with unreasonably high output pickups and a floyd rose would be a lot of fun too, and could be picked up on the cheap, but that would sort of defeat the point of having this clear-out for the time being.My wallet will never be able to stopping watching its back though!
