TB Guitar Thread....No Basis Here...

[Blazer]

Here's everything I have.

First row from left to right: My 1989 Squier Strat "The Veteran", My Heavily moddded Peavey T-15 "Yoko", My 2012 Squier VM Jaguar and My 1995 Gibson Les Paul Studio.

Second row: My Son of Fido, My Fido 3$ (Triple buck), My Fido double buck and My Scarlet Fido

Third Row: My Blazer Tele as signed by former Iron maiden singer Blaze Bayley, my Fido Tele, My "Big Red Explorer and my TelePaul

Forth row: My mid eighties Aria Pro2 classical, My Recent Alhambra Classical, my late eighties Sigma DR18H herringbone and my recent Greg Bennet.

Fifth row: My mid eighties Vester Stage series bass, my "WestRay" fretless mutt bass and my five string Jan Knooren Custom bass.

[BillyB_from_LZ]

Originally Posted by Blazer

...

Second row: My Son of Fido, My Fido 3$ (Triple buck), My Fido double buck and My Scarlet Fido



....

I saw those and thought "Holy Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush!"

[Blazer]

Originally Posted by BillyB_from_LZ

I saw those and thought "Holy Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush!"

I have a thing with making SG styled guitars with Fender attributes. Here's the Scarlet Fido after I finished her, she's amazing and I can't put her down.


And this picture shows off the grain to maximum effect.

[EagleMoon]

Originally Posted by BillyB_from_LZ

I saw those and thought "Holy Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush!"

That's what I thought too.

[MarkMgibson]

SG body with a Fender style headstock? Mmmmm...

[Megas3300]

On the far right, my MIM strat, for messing around with my tube projects

[NG51]

Here's my Baker B1 with my Jazz:

[Blazer]

Originally Posted by MarkMgibson

SG body with a Fender style headstock? Mmmmm...

Gibson did it themselves.

[MarkMgibson]

Originally Posted by Blazer

Gibson did it themselves.

True, but they always look weird to me. Each to their own though.

[BillyB_from_LZ]

Originally Posted by Blazer

I have a thing with making SG styled guitars with Fender attributes. Here's the Scarlet Fido after I finished her, she's amazing and I can't put her down.


...

Please tell us (or me) more about the electronics. Is the little switch for the middle pickup or some other function?

Also, are you able to stay in tune with the vintage style tailpiece? It always amazes me that Yngwie seems to...

Great color too!!!

[Blazer]

Originally Posted by BillyB_from_LZ

Please tell us (or me) more about the electronics. Is the little switch for the middle pickup or some other function?

Also, are you able to stay in tune with the vintage style tailpiece? It always amazes me that Yngwie seems to...

Great color too!!!

Both switches are three way toggles, the little one lets you switch between the neck and middle pickups or both and the output of that switch goes into the the "Up" position of the big switch.

so we have in essence:
Big switch up and little switch up: Neck Pickup
Big switch up and little switch middle: Neck and Middle Pickups
Big switch up and little switch down: Middle pickup

Big switch middle and little switch up: Neck and Bridge pickups
Big switch middle and little switch middle: All three pickups
Big switch middle and little switch down: Middle and Bridge pickups

Big switch down: Bridge pickup, the little switch completely bypassed.

Which makes for a very versatile set up. I actually already had this first with my previous Strat-SG "Son of Fido"


As for the vibrato unit: setting it up properly is the key here, I have since removed the second string tree at the headstock so that strings won't catch behind the nut. Of course I don't do the kind of stuff that Malmsteen does with his whammy bar so I don't have to worry that much about the guitar going flat.

And seeing as how my "Son of Fido" has a Kahler double locking unit, I don't have to worry at all about it going flat.

[BillyB_from_LZ]

Originally Posted by Blazer

Both switches are three way toggles, the little one lets you switch between the neck and middle pickups or both and the output of that switch goes into the the "Up" position of the big switch.

...

Thanks...makes perfect sense!

Little switch up = Status Quo (large switch functions "normally")
Little switch middle = Add Middle pickup to Neck pickup
Little switch down = Replaces Neck pickup with Middle pickup.

On one of my Strats, I have the 5-way switch wired normally and then have a pull pot on the neck's tone control to add the neck pickup to the bridge pickup. That allows Neck + Bridge and all Neck+Middle+Bridge tones too.

The other thing I did was to use a pull pot on the Middle pickup's tone control to move it to the bridge pickup. I really like the tone of a Strat's middle pickup without the highs being affected by the tone control (and sometimes it is nice to have a tone control on the bridge pickup, which a traditionally wired Stat does not).

[spade2you]

My Stambaugh Tele has the 5 way+2 wiring. I'm surprised it's not more popular or standard. Covers a heck of a lot of tonal ground.

I kinda wish I had a 2 position tone knob on the Tele. Usually I have the tone knob all the way up for maximum twang.

[BillyB_from_LZ]

Originally Posted by spade2you

..
I kinda wish I had a 2 position tone knob on the Tele. Usually I have the tone knob all the way up for maximum twang.

What positions do you want? One can get a "no load" tone control potentiometer that essentially disconnects the tone circuit when the control is turned all the way up.

[spade2you]

Originally Posted by BillyB_from_LZ

What positions do you want? One can get a "no load" tone control potentiometer that essentially disconnects the tone circuit when the control is turned all the way up.

Whichever ones Taylor uses on the T3 sound good to my ears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0BfFqVGngI
Starts at 2:30

I'd like to get an ES335-ish Stambaugh some day with this type of tone pot.

[Blazer]

Well it's almost four years ago when I started working on a guitar in the style of a Les Paul Junior. The idea however was for it to have a single bridge humbucker, a body from pine and a Fender scale length.


But I happened to be in a terrible state of mind while I was working on it and made a lot of silly mistakes with it. My personal life was very much falling apart during that time and sadly that is reflected in the way that guitar was build.


Here's the guitar from the side, look closely and you'll see that the hole for the jack is drilled offset, also I routed the neck pocket angle too shallow for a Tune-O-matic to work.

This picture shows the Headstock face and that the piece of wood I used wasn't long enough to cover up the full length so I added another piece.

In short, I wasn't fit to build that guitar, it pretty much reflected my level of confusion and anxiety.

So for almost three years after I started building it, it hung in the spray booth at our workshop with a layer of primer. Other projects and builds demanding our attention until finally a couple of weeks ago I decided to take it home with me so I could finally close this chapter off.

So I bought a couple of nitrocellulose cans of vintage white and finished it off myself, unfortunately because of us having a really cold winter, it hasn't really cured all that well, giving it a rather worn and yellowed look.


The pickup is a Duesenberg mini humbucker Gretsch Filtertron style, so I hope that once I hook the thing up, it'll at least sound good.

This guitar was a labor of pain and confusion and sadly it shows.

[MarkMgibson]

Man, I wish I could build a guitar - any guitar! I have 2 of those Gretsch pickups laying around (from a broken corvette) doing nothing. They're really nice pick-ups for sure. If you need a couple for another guitar, let me know and they're yours.

[EagleMoon]

Just picked this up tonight. It's a discontinued model so I got it for cheap. PRS SE Singlecut. I don't usually like red instruments, but this is more of a wine red, not quite as bright as it looks in the body picture. But after trying out several other guitars this one just spoke to me. Just playing it unplugged it resonated like crazy. Sorry about the slightly out of focus iphone pics.

[TolerancEJ]

Originally Posted by EagleMoon

Just picked this up tonight. It's a discontinued model so I got it for cheap. PRS SE Singlecut. I don't usually like red instruments, but this is more of a wine red, not quite as bright as it looks in the body picture. But after trying out several other guitars this one just spoke to me. Just playing it unplugged it resonated like crazy. Sorry about the slightly out of focus iphone pics.

PRS SE are actually very good instruments. I love their singlecut guitars. That's why I'm hoping the new PRS basses are successful so they might launch an SE version within the next few years.

[EagleMoon]

Originally Posted by TolerancEJ

PRS SE are actually very good instruments. I love their singlecut guitars. That's why I'm hoping the new PRS basses are successful so they might launch an SE version within the next few years.

Yeah that would be cool. I hope they do well too.