The Great Ongoing Guitar Thread

Cafe Society
1802

Anyone know anything about Ukuleles?

The reason I ask is that a few weeks ago, I got tired of my toddler smacking my guitar while I was playing it. So I bought him a ukulele. Something cheap, (about $30) that he could smack, carry around with him, drop, leave outside, etc. Well, I tuned it, and the next thing I know I’m saying to myself “Hey, this is lots of fun!”

I mentioned this story to my cousin, and she said her mom (my aunt) still has my great-grandfather’s ukulele. She dug it out of the attic and sent it to me. She said it looked to be in good shape, but it has no strings. Supposedly it still has Bumpy’s felt pick in it.

I’m now waiting for Bumpy’s ukulele to arrive. I have no idea what kind of ukulele is it, or who the manufacturer will be, or really, what the exact condition it will arrive in.

What should I do first? Should I take it to my local music store and see if they can give it a tune up and cleaning? What kind of strings do I need? I’m not even sure how to re-string it, although I assume it’s a lot like a classical guitar. How often should I re-string it?

I’ll take some pics and post them when it arrives. If it’s a decent instrument, I plan to pass it along to my son someday, and he’ll be able to play his Great-Great-Grandfather’s ukulele. How cool is that?

1803

If you have decent photos, I can likely help - my mom is a uke player and collector; has over 40 vintage ones. I suspect she’d know something.

1804

Old thread on Fender’s and Gibson’s lines: Please explain today's Gibson and Fender guitar lineup? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

Old thread on Strats: Tell me about Stratocasters - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

Old thread on Teles: Fender Telecasters - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

1805

E, the Pocket Rockit V2 arrived today, and when D handed me the package, I liked to have fell getting to my accoustic electric and plug it in and try it. Then I went and got a new 9 volt to put in it, and then I played it . I LOVE IT AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! I especially like the onboard tuner, reverb and delay.

I haven’t tried out everything it has yet, because I wanted to stop and write you this note of thanks. You don’t ever have to worry about me selling it, because it came from you, a fellow Doper and I appreciate it so much!

Thanks!!!

Bill

1806

I can’t believe it actually got there over the weekend. Be vaugely careful, it may, at any moment, spontaneously decompose into plastics and fiddily bits of metal.

Anyhow, I’m glad you like it. I re-discovered that I just don’t like headphones when I was messing with it. They make me feel like I’m about to drop something, or whack into something.

So it’s been just sitting on my dresser.

http://www.pocketrockit.com/pdf/OwnersManual_V2_PR9017.pdf

Here’s the manual if it didn’t show up. Save it somewhere.

1807

I got the opportunity to take a flyer on a MIM Fender Blackout Telecaster. Three pickups, all black, maple neck…

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/telecaster-discussion-forum/158247-fender-deluxe-blackout-telecaster-vs-standard-telecaster.html

$550 I can’t really afford. 2009, underused. Any thoughts on it? It’s very nice… but maybe not necessary.

1808

So basically it’s a MIM Tele with three pickups and Strat switching? That seems like sole difference vs any other MIM Tele. I’d personally want to pick one out from a pile of MIMs and find the good one in the pile, guitar build variance being what it is. Have you hefted one?

Also, I love the Fender marketing oxymoron: “Vintage Style Single-Coil Tele® Middle Pickup”. Yeah, vintage middle pickup, uh-huh.

1809

Have not, no. Yeah, no bridge and neck setting on the switch, either.

1810

Yeah, I read the thread you referred to (and the thread it referred to) and I have to say I wasn’t aware that a Strat had such a setting. I thought the Strat selector lineup was basically: 1, 1+2, 2, 2+3, 3. Which is five positions, so I’m not sure where bridge+neck happens on that five-way switch.

Another thing missing might be out-of-phase pickups (or “fake humbucker” as I like to think of it), but on a 3 pickup guitar can head toward madness very easily.

Sabs: what do you think of the description of the neck as “modern C shape”? This sounds fairly different than the Xaviere guitar you own, but I don’t recall off the top of my head what other axes you own and are fond of.

1811

I have a rotary selector switch on my Strat (in the place of one of the tone pots) so I can get the neck+bridge combination (and all three, which sounds pretty useless) and do series/parallel switching, which is probably what squeegee means by “out-of-phase” - you don’t want to hear Strat/Tele pickups that are really out of phase. The in-between settings (switch positions 2 and 4) on a Strat get called “out-of-phase”, but not by people who know anything about electronics.

Standard Strat and Tele wiring has the pickups wired in parallel. A humbucker has two coils in series. So putting two Strat/Tele pickups in series gives you a sort of “fake humbucker” sound. It’s a useful option; it’s slightly louder than parallel and the midrange gets a slight boost. If one pickup is RW/RP, series wiring makes it a true humbucker; not just noiseless but with the volume and midrange boosts that are characteristic of a standard humbucker.

I’m not a big fan of the standard parallel in-between sound on Strats. The “quack” doesn’t do much for me. With the wiring I have installed, I can get the standard parallel quack sound or the more-useful-to-me series fatter sound. None of it, however, is out-of-phase. There’s a reason why true out-of-phase wiring is pretty rare on guitars.

1812

Hmmm, on reflection, maybe what squeegee means by “fake humbucker” is the in-between setting on modern Strats and Teles, in which one pickup is RW/RP.

There’s nothing fake about it, that’s a humbucking setting; it sounds different to a standard humbucker because it’s usually in parallel, not series. And because the coils aren’t right next to each other like they are in a standard humbucker. And because Fender-type pickups usually have rod magnets and not a bar magnet like in standard humbuckers.

I’m just talking gibberish here, aren’t I?

1813

Bridge+neck doesn’t happen on that five way. That’s what people seem to be complaining about, because you can do it on a normal tele.

You’ve got a point about the neck. I think that’s probably a bit thicker than I’m used to. The JT90 is the thickest neck I own on a guitar I enjoy… both the Malden and the 585 are thinner.

1814

I got the uke in the mail today. It’s a Kay ukulele with a plastic!!! fretboard. I’ve never seen a plastic fretboard on anything. The tuners good good, if a little loose and the fretboard is also a bit loose. I’ll post some pics later.

1815

Here’s some crappy photos taken with my iPod touch.

Imgur

1816

I’m not sure if you are, and perhaps I am. I think what I meant was reverse-polarity, where one pickup’s output leads are the inverse of another pickup’s leads, wired in parallel. Which I’d thought had somewhat of a noise-cancelling effect (thus “fake humbucker”) but perhaps I’m mistaken.

Looking at it further, I guess the pickup windings need to be in the opposite direction, and wired in series to be a humbucker? Is that right? Are there multiple-pickup guitars that simulate this using two pickups not in close-proximity?

And can you please clarify what is wrong with using out-of-phase pickups. And just what you mean by that phrase? Also, I take it “RW/RP” means “reverse winding” / “reverse polarity”, right?

Lastly (this is directed toward the group, Clanger) what exactly what is meant by a “Bridge+neck” setting on a Strat? Is it literally that one of the positions on the pickup selector is just the bridge and neck pickups, no center pickup? Or does it mean something else? If so, what pickup combination (of neck, middle, bridge, neck+middle, middle+bridge) on the Strat five-way switch is sacrificed to make way for this setting? Or is this an “in between” switch setting?

1817

Sorry, I meant Shakester. Apologies.

1818

I’ll try to keep it simple: Basically, pickups are magnets + wire. The wire is wound around the magnet(s) in a coil.

A single coil pickup is just that: a single coil of wire around either magnetic rods (Fender) or steel screws that connect to a bar magnet (Gibson).

Vintage Fenders have single coil pickups that are all wound the same way: the magnets are aligned in the same direction, and the coil is wound in the same direction. All early pickups were made that way.

Then Seth Lover at Gibson figured out that if you put two coils together and reversed the magnetic polarity and the direction of the wire coil on one of them, you got a pickup that didn’t hum. The shorthand version of that is RW/RP: Reverse Wind, Reverse Polarity.

Meanwhile, back at Fender, they stuck with single coils. Most Fenders have two s/c pups, the Strat has 3. Vintage Fender wiring has all pickups wired in parallel.

At some point in the 80s (I think) Fender decided to change that and nowadays many Fenders have one pickup RW/RP to the other(s). Middle position (both pups on) on the Tele, Jag, Jazzmaster, etc, and positions 2 and 4 on a Strat. That means that those positions are now humbucking. They’re still wired in parallel, which means they sound like two single coils, not one humbucker, but the hum is bucked.

It is possible to wire a Fender-type guitar so that you can switch between parallel and series, which means that, in series, positions 2 and 4 on a Strat sound more like one humbucker than two single coils. Not exactly the same, but closer.

It’s also possible to switch between series and parallel in a humbucker. That’s also a useful sound, a humbucker in parallel is lower in volume and has less of a midrange spike. To my ears, that’s a much more useful option than splitting (or, as it’s usually and incorrectly called, “tapping”) a humbucker. Half a humbucker does not sound like a good single coil pickup, it sounds like ass in my opinion. But a humbucker in parallel sounds less “humbuckery” and more “single-coily” and has the extra benefit of still not humming.

On most Gibson-type guitars, the two humbuckers are in series within themselves but in parallel with each other. That can also be modded.

The reason why genuine out-of-phase options are rare is that it sounds like ass. Thin and “plinky”. There are a few people who like that sound and find it useful, but most players find it useless. Two humbuckers out of phase can sound OK because humbuckers are usually fat and loud enough to compensate a bit. Two Fender-type single coil pups out of phase is a very thin sound with a big drop in volume compared to the normal in-phase sound that some people (very incorrectly) call “out-of-phase”.

Two single coils in series but out-of-phase is a little more useful because series wiring gives a bit of a volume boost, but it’s still pretty bad sounding. I’m not just repeating things I’ve read here, by the way, I’ve experimented with all this stuff myself.

Hopefully that should give you a better understanding of how pickups are wired and what the various wiring options can do.

1819

Now, the other question: On most Strat-type guitars, the bridge + neck combination is impossible. Which is a pity, because it’s a useful sound, comparable to middle position on the various two-pickup Fenders. You also can’t get all three at once, which is an interesting idea that’s sadly disappointing in practice.

There are various ways of getting those two “extra” options on a Strat-type guitar. The simplest is to replace the 5-way selector with 3 on/off switches, one for each pickup. That’s a bit fiddly and you have to either hack up your pickguard or get one that’s made that way.

Another way to do it is to replace the 5-way selector with a 3-way, and convert one of the tone pots to a volume control for the third pickup. That way you can combine the 3rd pup with the other two in whatever way you want or turn it off by reducing the volume to zero. The disadvantage to that is that to use the 3rd pup by itself you have to reduce the other volume to zero. So, no fast switching.

The way I do it is by replacing the middle pot with a rotary selector switch. Mine is actually a three way selector which, in combination with the standard 5-way switch, provides all the series/parallel options as well as all pickup combinations. But you could use a simple on/off switch to get the basic 7 combinations available on a Strat (the standard five, 1+3, and all 3.)

1820

Also, converting the middle pot on a Strat to a selector means you convert to a master tone for all 3 pickups, instead of one tone for the neck pup, one for the middle, and none for the bridge, but that’s no great loss in my opinion. To my ears it’s an improvement, actually, since it mellows out the bridge pickup slightly.

1821

Which is why the five way switch on that Blackout Tele with the three pickups is not so good: the bridge and neck tone is a classic Telecaster tone, and you can’t get it with that wiring.

Still, nice guitar.

Today, I learned about Hello Music.
http://www.hellomusic.com/ec/Home.aspx

It’s like www.woot.com except for music stuff, I guess. They sell a limited number of things at a good discount till they’re gone. That Les Paul Ultra II is nice. And two hundred off street.