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PeteBuchan

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Posts posted by PeteBuchan

  3. fixing a snapped headstock

    in Musicians' Corner

    Posted

    I snapped the headstock on my Gibson 335 four days after I bought it. The break was almost identical to yours. I took it to Jimmy Moon for him to repair. He quoted £65 for a 'repair' or £250 for 'like new'. Since it was an expensive guitar, I went for the full repair. You'd never know it was ever broken now. He said that since the headstock was still joined (by the fibre board on the top of the headstock) made it considerably easier to fix. If you PM me your email address, I'll send you some before and after pictures. After seeing this repair, I wouldn't go anywhere else if I manage to break any other guitars.

    Pete

    • Upvote 1

  5. Building a guitar amp.

    in Musicians' Corner

    Posted

    Doobie,

    I've used mine on the 18 watt setting with a Marshall 1960 with 2x Vintage 30s and 2x Alnico Golds in a band situation. Other stuff on the go was a 50 watt plexi reissue and an Ampeg SVT Classic with 4x10 cab. It was cutting through no bother at all.

    Triggs,

    I found the build itself to be easy enough. You get a circuit diagram and a layout diagram so between them it's a little like paint by numbers. The problem with this kit is that you don't get the test procedures as it's aimed at experienced amp builders who know how to calculate expected voltages at various points. Barry from ampmaker talked me through the test procedure over the phone/email but it would have been easier with one of the smaller kits where you get a detailed list of expected voltages for each point of interest. The turret boards were easy enough to build but the rest of the build is down to being pedantic and trying to arrange all the internal wires neatly.

    If you want to have a look/listen some time, give me a shout.

    Pete

    • Upvote 1

  6. Building a guitar amp.

    in Musicians' Corner

    Posted

    I built the ampmaker PP-36 earlier in the year. I really should have bought a much smaller one as it's way too loud - even on the 18 watt setting. It has no master volume so it's difficult to get any form of overdrive without silly volumes. The amp itself is really good. I'm pleased with the results, I just think I should have gone with a lower powered one. I'll probably buy another kit at some point in the future, most likely the 4 or 5 watt model.

    Pete

  7. 50p Guitar strings from ASDA?????

    in Musicians' Corner

    Posted

    I was in the 24hr Asda yesterday and after reading this post, decided to have a quick look for the strings. Couldn't see any so I asked a guy who worked there if he know where the guitar strings were. He was stood infront of one of those cage/trolley things and reached out, picked up a packet and said ''I have these''. Even better, he was in the middle of reducing them! What are the chances! If you go upstairs and turn right. Head over towards the random toys/car accessories area and keep going to the very back wall. They are on one of the 'ends' in that general region.

    For anyone interested, here's a picture of them from the manufacturer's website - the rrp is $15.99!! They come with what looks like a terrible plectrum too!

    http://www.burswood.com.hk/upload/product/original/620239077018.jpg

    Pete

  10. The 'wondering about stuff' thread

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Yeah, I was decked when he told me the story the first time. He had another letter written out in crayon for sending in an attempt to get more free Moray Cup, but it wasn't sent. Like I said I will get the full story tonight and add any points I missed.

    I am said mate!

    I shall tell the story from the beginning and add some additional points. It is pretty accurate already but I will add to it anyway :)

    My friend and I indeed wrote a lovely letter complete with our best primary 2 hand writing. This included a fine array of spelling mistakes and we were even sad enough to rub out and rewrite a few of the trickier words so as to make it look like we were indeed 8 and 10.

    As Kieran mentioned earlier, the questions, and answers, are as follows:

    Q - Where are the two lads located?

    A - They are on a tropical island, possibly off the coast of Macduff.

    Q - Why aren't the chaps drinking sang's moray cup? It looks like sang's orangeade to me!

    A - They are! The bright sun is reflecting off the golden sand and this gives the orange colour!

    Poor question (and answer for that matter)

    Q - Why do they have green bits in their hair?

    A - They have been walking through the trees and so leaves have got stuck.

    Q - Since this is a local product, why do the two young gentlemen appear to be of an ethnically diverse nature?

    A - They are not! They are actually heavily tanned due to the hot summer we've been having!

    In addition to these excellent answers, they treated us to a bonus fact!

    Bonus Fact - The sang's moray cup label has been a registered trademark since 1972

    Along with these questions, we mentioned how Irn-bru have stopped making the chew bars and suggested that they could make moray cup bars instead. We also told them how amazing partially frozen moray cup is and asked them if they would make a moray cup slush puppy alternative. Sadly, they never got back to us about the chew bar (so hopefully that is being developed although since this was a few years back I very much doubt it) but they did tell us that they did make the concentrate for a slush puppy but nobody bought it!

    They told us about how our letter had given them many a smile in the office so gave us a crate of moray cup to say thank you! Brilliant! It was even delivered by the sang's delivery lorry.

    After a few months, we thought it might be amusing to write another letter to sang's, this time, we had been having a competition - We both took some paper and a selection of crayons and felt tips and, from memory, drew the moray cup label. As you can imagine, they were terrible and so looked exactly like a ten year old had done them.

    The story this time was that we had been having a drawing competition. ''Mummy thinks my one is best but daddy thinks Greg's is best. Which one do you think is best Mr Sang's? We can't pick a good prize for the competition. What do you suggest Mr Sang's?'' :)

    I forget what other random ramblings we had, but hidden in there was a list of out 'top 5 flavaz' and descriptions. This went as follows:

    At number 5 is sang's fruity - it just tastes so fruity

    At number 4 it's sang's orangeade - we like it better than orange tango

    At number 3 is sang's strawberry cream soda - it tastes like a bowl of strawberries and icecream on a hot summer's afternoon

    At number 2 is sang's cola - it tastes better than tesco cola

    At number 1 is sang's moray cup - it really hits the spot!

    Sadly, this letter was never sent and thus a winner or suitable prize was never decided upon.

    Anyway, that is a slightly more detailed account of what happened.

    Pete

  12. Making Guitars

    in Musicians' Corner

    Posted

    I started with five pieces of wood - one long 'fence post' shaped piece for the neck and centre block of the body, and four long thin pieces for the body wings (two either side of the centre block and one on top of the other). I shaped the wing pieces roughly and hollowed the out with a router before gluing them together and template routing them to the final shape. The top was carved with a plane, spokeshave and a lot of sandpaper! I carved the inside of the top pieces to match the profile of the outer carve in order to maintain a constant thickness. The rosewood stripes are just off cuts from the side of the fretboard glued into routed channels in the top of the body to hide my bad joins. I left the wood out in the garage over night before I glued it, didn't notice it had warped and when it glued, the joins were visible so I hid them. The rest is probably obvious enough.

    Pete

  13. Making Guitars

    in Musicians' Corner

    Posted

    I've built a few guitars from scratch and one from a kit. The easiest way of getting into it is to make a body and buy a neck from intornet or from bruce millers or somewhere. The neck is the hardest part to make well and how well it's made determines how well the thing plays. The body is far less important in my opinion.

    If you want something simple to start with, make a telecaster. Can't get much easier than that. All you need is a router, a drill, some sort of saw and sandpaper or an electric sander (preferably of the belt variety). You could get away without the need for a router if you choose two pieces of wood approx half the thickness of the entire body thickness and cut out holes for pickups and neck in the top one, then once it's glued to the lower piece, it looks pretty much like its been done with a router. A good thing about this method is that you can hid all your wiring channels very easily by routing or chiseling channels into the inside face of either the top or bottom piece and then they can't be seen from outside the guitar which means you don't need a scratch plate to hide everything.

    You can see a few of my guitars here:

    PeteBuchan - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

    The white strat was made from a saga kit and is just used as an electronics experiment these days. It had about 22 different pickup combinations on it at one point. I'd avoid buying saga strat kits.

    The diagonal strat thing which you can see me playing was my first body and has a fender neck. Something like that might be easy enough to start with if you can cope with the additional work of the body contours. It was made using the 'two piece' body method (although this is not the traditional 'two piece' method).

    The telecaster shown with my ac30 was my second build, again using a neck bought from bruce millers. It's semi hollow (much like one of the other pictures showing the inside of a tele which will soon become my P-90 loaded tele). Sounds awesome - I recommend doing something like that.

    The hollow 12 string lezzer was next I think. It's got a through neck and some nice rosewood accent lines. I put 'f-holes' on this one and you can hear the volume difference immediately so I'll be using f-holes on any hollow guitars I make in the future.

    The t-bird bass is also through neck, and has LED inlays with a chaser circuit. Avoid making through neck guitars. They are just to be avoided.....at all costs!

    I have a few others, but they are pretty much different versions of those.

    Pete

  14. Any local guitar refinishers?

    in Musicians' Corner

    Posted

    I've made and sprayed a few guitars before. I only tend to use natural finishes as in dyed lacquer and only tend to use cellulose lacquer. I have all my spray equipment set up at work just now and will be spraying a couple of guitars once i've finished uni at the end of may. I could probably give it a blast then if that's of interest.

    Here's some pictures of some of my finishes:

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/clear.jpg

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/Image009.jpg

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/12str.jpg

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/12StringColoured-1.jpg

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/12StringColouredBack-2.jpg

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/Televox-1.jpg

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/Custom3.jpg

    I've built all these bodies from scratch and sprayed them too. Most of the necks (apart from the hollow lezzer) are bought.

    Here is a 'halfords appliance white' special too:

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/Strat1.jpg

    What sort of finish were you thinking? Something similar to this sort of thing?

    Pete

  15. fret leveling in aberdeen?

    in Musicians' Corner

    Posted

    What you need to get is a nice flat oil stone. That's what's used for levelling frets. Check out:

    Project Guitar.com :: Guitar Project.com

    There's loads of tutorials for that sort of thing on there. It's something I'll be doing to a number of guitar's I've been building recently. Once it warms up a bit outside I can get them all sprayed, fretted, levelled and dressed.

    Here's one of them:

    http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/PeteBuchan/12StringColoured-1.jpg

    It's been coloured but not lacquered yet - and it's been fretted, but not levelled.

    Pete

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