It’s cut out of vinyl sticker. It does not scratch or peel.
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What's On Your Workbench?
- Thread starter HaMMerHeD
- Start date
I intended to be working on my build-off project today, but instead my workbench is occupied by an end table that my klutzy dog ran into at full tilt and broke the leg off. Obviously not the first time it's been broken - I've taken out two screws and a square nail. And now that I look at it, the other legs are kind of wobbly too, and the top is half unstuck from the frame, and, and, and...
My little bench has been moved into the finishing department
That table has seen its fair share of klutzy dogs.
A friend brought me his old college days guitar and asked me to resurrect it for him, it's a Schecter C-1+
He said it needed cleaned up, and to have the bridge pickup put back in. I said no problem, sounds easy enough right?
So I get this thing home, opened the case and swear I cried a little when I saw the guitar. The pickups were dull and pitted and bridge pickup was hanging on by one screw that was the wrong size.
The fretboard was crusty an I swear pictures don't show it enough but the frets were green.
Now all that looks OK, a little steel wool on the fretboard, some silver cream to clean up the pickup covers, a new set of screws...
Then I took the control cover off
At some point, for some completely unknown reason (and the guy swears it use to work ok) someone wired two 9volt batteries into these Duncan Designed pickups, not to mention I counted at least four bare unconnected wires
One coil read 2.1 ohms, the other three read zero. My guess is someone heard about active pickups and thought all pickups could have a battery (or two) added to them.
Other questionable hacks were the removal of the push/pull pot for the coil tap, and the pickup selector had one pickup connected to the center luggs, and the output wire connected to an outside lug.
So, I had him order new pickups off ebay, I gave him several options to choose from and he chose a decent budget set.
Meanwhile, I cleaned up the fretboard and conditioned the rosewood then polished up the frets.
Last week he brought me the new pickups, which brings me to today. Pulled out all the electronics to make way for all new parts. I wired it back to Schecters specs, including the coil tap.
I even had a brand new set of pickup rings that I threw on since the old ones were beat up.
Plugged it into an Amp and it was dead quiet
Held it up to another guitar just to make sure everything worked and got some really nice sound out of those low dollar pickups.
Tomorrow I'll string it up and set the action and intonation. I think he'll be happy
He said it needed cleaned up, and to have the bridge pickup put back in. I said no problem, sounds easy enough right?
So I get this thing home, opened the case and swear I cried a little when I saw the guitar. The pickups were dull and pitted and bridge pickup was hanging on by one screw that was the wrong size.
The fretboard was crusty an I swear pictures don't show it enough but the frets were green.
Now all that looks OK, a little steel wool on the fretboard, some silver cream to clean up the pickup covers, a new set of screws...
Then I took the control cover off
At some point, for some completely unknown reason (and the guy swears it use to work ok) someone wired two 9volt batteries into these Duncan Designed pickups, not to mention I counted at least four bare unconnected wires
One coil read 2.1 ohms, the other three read zero. My guess is someone heard about active pickups and thought all pickups could have a battery (or two) added to them.
Other questionable hacks were the removal of the push/pull pot for the coil tap, and the pickup selector had one pickup connected to the center luggs, and the output wire connected to an outside lug.
So, I had him order new pickups off ebay, I gave him several options to choose from and he chose a decent budget set.
Meanwhile, I cleaned up the fretboard and conditioned the rosewood then polished up the frets.
Last week he brought me the new pickups, which brings me to today. Pulled out all the electronics to make way for all new parts. I wired it back to Schecters specs, including the coil tap.
I even had a brand new set of pickup rings that I threw on since the old ones were beat up.
Plugged it into an Amp and it was dead quiet
Held it up to another guitar just to make sure everything worked and got some really nice sound out of those low dollar pickups.
Tomorrow I'll string it up and set the action and intonation. I think he'll be happy
On my workbench today, a shipment from cook woods containing some nice delicious looking Macassar Ebony.
My brain has the hardest time saying that word.
It's spelled "macassar" but it's pronounced "stripey"
That's way better than my brain always reading it as "massacre".
My brain wants to say Madagascar.
Macassar is a new word for me and I'll be honest, I'm not interested in learning it.
I have a hard enough time remembering half the words I do know.
Macassar is a new word for me and I'll be honest, I'm not interested in learning it.
I have a hard enough time remembering half the words I do know.
I've done some amp repair and found that I was basically putting a guitar on my messy bench in a sort of dangerous, haphazard way. That's not ideal!
So I decided to build this thing as a tool to have on the bench:
It's a 1-string, ultra-short-scale lap steel!
The pickup is a random single coil I had from a parts box, under the duct and aluminum tape. Ran that to a jack, strung it with a piece of string (yeah, string thru body), single tuner, and some saddles to make it slightly more effective.
It doesn't qualify for the build-off, unfortunately.
So I decided to build this thing as a tool to have on the bench:
It's a 1-string, ultra-short-scale lap steel!
The pickup is a random single coil I had from a parts box, under the duct and aluminum tape. Ran that to a jack, strung it with a piece of string (yeah, string thru body), single tuner, and some saddles to make it slightly more effective.
It doesn't qualify for the build-off, unfortunately.
What's the weight? Any neck dive? Man, if it only had one more string it would be on it's way to me.....I've done some amp repair and found that I was basically putting a guitar on my messy bench in a sort of dangerous, haphazard way. That's not ideal!
So I decided to build this thing as a tool to have on the bench:
View attachment 4536845
It's a 1-string, ultra-short-scale lap steel!
The pickup is a random single coil I had from a parts box, under the duct and aluminum tape. Ran that to a jack, strung it with a piece of string (yeah, string thru body), single tuner, and some saddles to make it slightly more effective.
It doesn't qualify for the build-off, unfortunately.
You should have just put the tuner, pickup, jack, string, and saddle on the edge or leg of your actual work bench. Then it would never fall off.
I mean, I have long screws, magnets, hooks... I can make something like that happen, for sure.
This way, I can bring it to gigs though...
As for best metal mule...
You know, what you've just done reminds me of what Leo Fender did once. He made a test mule to test pickups for acoustic guitars. It was a piece of wood with some strings. He did not consider it to be a guitar because it had no soundbox. When he found local musicians were interested in borrowing that piece of wood for gigging, that gave him the idea to develop a soundbox-less guitar, which ultimately became the Telecaster.
- Jul 1, 2005
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