And this new lousy photo IS lousy, but at least you can get a better sense of how good the Gibson Heritage Cherry finish turned out - nice raw-steak IMHO…which, I suppose in this case, is the only O that matters!
Thanks - and I agree. What’s that line from the Big Lebowski? How the carpet really brings the room together?
And I hear you about solder - and I have no problem with the fact that I blew a joint and need to re-do it. What I can’t handle is that, to revisit what should be an hour-long fix-it session, I have to wait a week or more…especially when it feels like I am getting close. I can get sound out of the new bridge pickup; I can just tell I don’t have a solid connection. But what I hear sounds like it has possibilities. Oh well, I’ll find out in a week or two - argh!
The pickguard is much better, in fact I agree with squeegee that it’s perfect, and the finish looks beautiful. I’m surprised we’re even allowed to look at it.
Thanks to you and everybody. And yeah, it feels great - especially if I was correct in how I adjusted the pickup to better balance with the mahogany body (when I finally get around to being able to fix my solder joint!). Knowing that I can trust my ears - and design a guitar that I want to perform a certain way - and it *actually does *- is really very cool.
Yeah, the finish looks really nice. It looks more brown than cherry, but I blame the photograph - flash photography really screws up colors sometimes. I await better pictures, please post when you get some!
Dude, maybe you’d have fewer issues if you stopped blowing joints when you work on your guitar.
Hey, WordMan, I was curious what your guitar would look like with binding, so here’s an attempt to add it digitally. I just did the neck; I tried adding binding to the body as well, and couldn’t come up with a convincing image. I can’t tell if I like it better with neck bonding or not; I suppose I’d need to see the whole guitar to really get a good impression. FWIW, I also corrected the white point, and the guitar finish looks much more cherry.
Jeez, how cool is that? Gotta love technology. There are websites that allow you do design guitars using a simple CAD/CAM type of program - but not as cool as what you did with a real photo.
fwiw, I am happy with how this guitar turned out looks-wise; I am cool with no neck binding (never a big fan anyway) and will almost definitely go with binding for my next project guitar whenever that is - will most likely be a semi-hollow Tele Deluxe type with an F-hole on one side and the body binding…
Yep - that’s one. There are a few semi-hollow Tele designs with a variety of different pickguard shapes to go with the pickups - some semi-hollows have that standard Tele pickups and others feature humbuckers, etc…
I don’t think this is too old to be zombified yet…
Well - it’s done. I was able to re-do the solders for the new bridge pickup and get the old school, oil-and-paper capacitor swapped in place of the ceramic one I put it while tweaking the circuit. I had Steve move the string tree (so now the first screw-hole looks like a little bullet hole on the peghead - I will likely not fix it…), and also cut down one of the height-adjusting screws on the bridge so it doesn’t dig into the palm of my picking hand.
I love it - it turned out perfect. It is basically a Gibson sounding instrument that has the simple control layout, sensitive Volume and Tone controls and articulate string response of a Tele - just what I wanted it. Real Tele lovers won’t like the fact that it doesn’t have much twang, but it’s exactly what I was trying to accomplish. I spent a little time on both my gig amp and my Tweed and it was great with both - I hate to sound like a wine weenie who comments about how little stuff like the cork or bottle size affects how a wine ages :rolleyes: but that little, expensive oil-and-paper cap seems to have really helped - combined with the lower-output pickup, I get a rich distortion that sounds warm and pleasing to the ears, not harsh and biting. Yay. And when I select both pickups, and set the fancy P-Rail neck pickup to P-90, I get a full “Keith Richards hitting the opening chords to Start Me Up” kinda tone - big, but not loaded up with gain like an AC/DC chord…
Okay - I will get to work on photos and sound samples - given my work schedule that may take a few weeks - and then I will post a final thread and shut this project down. Mission accomplished.
I’m glad for you that it all worked out. I don’t claim to understand even a little what you did with the pots and capacitors that made all the difference, but its great you got what you wanted. Congrats!
Insert usual request for pix and audio samples, but it’s been done to death. Please remit (smiley).
Yeah - sorry about the geekery; all I can say is that the difference between Keith Richards’ riff on Start Me Up vs. Malcolm Young on Highway to Hell is how much there are mids in the tone - Malcolm has more. Keef is known for studio work through a Fender “Blackface” Deluxe Reverb amp - Fender’s Blackface circuits are described as “scooped mids” tone because they push less on the mids when you overdrive the amp vs., say, a Marshall. Having less mids leaves more space in the tone - which is why with the Start Me Up riff, you hear each note almost like he’s playing an organ, not a guitar.
There are a lot of ways you can vary the amount of mids - the materials and parts on the guitar, the amp you use, how you set your tone controls, etc. I wanted something that sat in the sweet spot of that Keith <–> Malcolm spectrum, where I could use the Tone and Volume controls to get me from one end of the other based on how I set them. The first circuit I set up was just plain wrong because I missed some things when I mentally fused two schematics together. Once corrected, the basic sweet spot was pushed too far to the mids-heavy side - and overloaded mids sound - well, there was that U2 song off of the (somewhat failed) Pop album - it starts with the Edge playing with a super-compressed tone - sounds like an angry wasp. THAT is a way-too-mid-heavy tone. In listening hard to it and reading up on line, I decided to swap in a lower-output pickup - lower output puts, you guessed it, less emphasis on the mids. And it worked.
The capacitor - well, supposedly; even though I think I clearly prefer it, it still feels a little pretentious - basically you put a capacitor between the Volume and Tone pots, right? And when you dial down the Tone control, you, in effect, turn on the capacitor to suck part of the signal into its storage capacity, right? Well, near as I can tell, the old oil-and-paper cap does this in a gradual way - as you are dialing, it gradually creeps us, grabbing more signal - whereas with a modern cap, it is much more efficient - it absorbs a more clearly defined spectrum of the signal. So the oil-and-paper cap’s inefficiency sounds more rich and full and less like a tone with its highs just lopped off cold - kinda like wood grain looks more natural vs. a plastic finish - there’s imperfections that our eyes appreciate. Which I could do a better job of describing it but the notes sound more organic and full…
rolleyes: