de afwerking mk5-4f - blablas does another build diary

[blablas]

Update time!

I never developed a affinity for the mudbucker bridge pickup, whatever I try it stays a muddy sob and I can not get a sound out of it I like.
A couple of weeks ago I finally decided to replace it and started a search for a pickup that could fit underneath the mudbucker cover because I did not want to spoil the current appearance. In the end I went for a Chinese toaster replica which it arrived today.

Fresh from the box.

Removed the toaster housing, it's a genuine dual coil.

It should fit underneath the existing cover without any major problems.

 

[Hopkins]

Cool, I have epoxied a couple of Jazz coils under a mudbucker before, then glued some screw heads over the holes. It sounded way better and still looked right. I'm glad I am not the only one that can't abide a mudbucker. I have tried wiring them in parallel, but they get very weak and thin sounding. I have even rewound them to a much lower resistance which helped, but I still couldn't brighten them up enough.

 

[blablas]

It already fits inside the existing cavity, that's something I didn't count on!

Mounted in place and wired up properly.

The muddiness is gone! This pickup sounds way more to what I want then the sidewinder.

@ Hopkins - I did consider doing the same with 2 Jazz pickups but since I mounted this mudbucker at an angle it wouldn't work, the strings would not cover the pole-pieces the way I wanted. And I was also curious how these Chinese toasters sound .

As you can see in the picture above I'm not going to bother to fake the screws, the black plastic top that's on the taster is covering the holes nicely and I actually like the way it looks.

 

[blablas]

Last week I finally found the last Gremlin that was hiding in my mk5-4f wiring.
The neck pickup was dropping out every once in a while and there was a crackling noise with all the pots.
Tried all sorts of things over time, replaced the secondhand neck pickup with a new one - problem still there!
It must be something else, replaced the balance pot - no luck, still there!
Checked the soldering connections but they all looked okay, as a last resort took a closer look at the jack - and there it was!!
I used a mono jack with three soldering eyelets, it looked like two were attached to ground and one was hot. Upon closer inspection, and after measuring the resistance, one of these two ground eyelets wasn't as attached to ground as I thought. Three guesses which one I used for ground, the bad one, re-soldered the ground to the other eyelet and now everything appears to work like a charm - no more crackling or dropouts!

Moral of this story - blablas doesn't know much about electronics but in the end he will solve it!!

 

[Beej]

Excellent hiding job there blablas, I can't stand mudbuckers either - no better way to lose definition than a mudbucker...

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Another amazing build! I always loved the SG body shape, but didn't like the mudbuckers, as others have said. Thanks for posting all this, still reading through all your other builds.

 

[Korladis]

Even in the bridge position the mudbucker stayed muddy?

 

[blablas]

Yes, mud all over the place, it lives up to its reputation.

 

[Brad_Pearson]

I just noticed how flat the fingerboard is. No radius at all?

 

[blablas]

No radius, I like flat fingerboards.

 

[Brad_Pearson]

Cool!

 

[blablas]

This was the last of my old build diaries that needed the pictures to be updated.