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D.I.Y Guitar gear


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Aye. Put a Les Paul through one of these fuckers and it'd look like the WI-24:-

washday_010_mid.jpg

It's basically the guitar I learned to play on, but I haven't touched it in a few years. Not a bad beginner's guitar, but it could be turned into something sweeter. If I screw it up, doesn't really matter as it's been sitting in a cupboard at my parents' house for years. It's covered in crappy stickers, has a completely horrible fretboard and rubbish pups. Thanks for the inspiration.

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Gonna go home and put another coat on the body tonight. If any body wants spare pots, pick-ups or the whole pre-wired pickgaurd give me a shout! The volume pot needs a wee fix but asides from that its good to go. Pickup wise there is a bridge humbucker, a middle single coil and a neck single coil. Black covers on the coils and its a black open humbucker. Had to do a wee rethink as i thought the Black Dove pickups were HB sized but they're not. Gonna have to measure the route to see if I'll be able to squeeze it in. It also means I'm going to have to cut my pickgaurd myself which may end in disaster.

I fucking love DIY!

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Painting went a dream so now it just needs a coat of lacquer and its good to go. Measured the routes in the body and I'll be able to fit the Black Dove pickup in it :D

Means I'm going to have to get an uncut pickgaurd though and from Axesrus oddly that means I get less choice of colours. Nevermind cos tortoise shell is available and I well prefer that to aged cream. If anyone else knows where else I could get a guard from feel free to give me a heads up! Gonna to have to get some practice in with the jigsaw before I cut the guard for real. I think the last time I used a jigsaw was in school!

Toying with the idea now of putting a short scale neck on the finished article. I had a shot of a mustang at the weeknend and I bloody loved the neck. Chords that my pinky used to hate suddenly became a breeze. It had a lovely glossy finish, rosewood fretboard and a nice vintage tint. I feel a wee bit in love with it. For some reason I had my heart set on getting a vintage style one piece maple neck for it but now I'm not too sure. I've never seen a strat with a short scale neck though and it might look a bit odd. Is Warmoth the only real source for a decent neck? They seem to get mentioned an awful lot in forums and the like.

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A mustang neck wont work on a strat body as they're two different scale lengths (24" and 25.5"). In order to get it to work, you'd have to move the Strat's bridge towards the neck by an inch and a half.

Allparts do great necks, that's what is on my Jazzmaster.

I thought there might be problems doing that. Cheers for the advice. I'll check out Allparts as well.

Could you not just get a stratchplate with just a humbucker cavity in it?

Aye but the P90 will be too big for the cavity. I think it would be easier just to cut one hole than much about trying to make the Humbucker cavity larger.

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I was up at my Mum's uncle's last night and had a blast of some of his very large guitar collection. Made me want a lot of things. He has a twin p90 tele which is awesome. A 60's p90 SG that made me about greet. However the daddy of the lot was a Clapton Strat with lace sensors. Wonderful tone and it was a total dream to play.

I was telling him about my strat renovation and he was quite against having only one pickup. I explained that I would probably only use the one pickup and he quickly shot me down with 'You used every pickup on every guitar you just had a shot of, you also don't seem to use the bridge pickup very often!'

Mmm way to scupper my plans Uncle Charlie!

After looking into it last night I'm now torn between getting a set of lace sensors or some decent single coils and my original single p90 idea. Maybe even a two p90 set up might be a shout. I'm also now leaning towards just getting a humbucker sized p90 either a SD Phat cat or a Gibson P-94.

I fucking hate decisions and I hate my Uncle Charlie sometimes.

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This fucker is definitely getting a makeover:-

Ap4ig1kCMAE9sMQ.jpg

It's in terrible nick, which is probably something to do with the fact that it's been sitting in a cupboard for five years. Dust all over the place, and the fretboard is disgusting. I've no idea why it only has four strings on it, and I can't remember where the bridge humbucker came from either. I'll dig a little deeper later on, but my immediate thought is that the stickers are gonna be a bloody nightmare to remove...

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Not 100% sure yet. The stickers are obviously coming off, and most of the hardware is pretty rusty so I'll probably replace a lot of that. The neck is actually a lot better than I remember, but it's in horrible condition. I'm hoping it can be salvaged, but I'm not averse to replacing it. Other than that, the pups will be replaced, the wiring will probably be redone (I don't remember installing the bridge pup... but Jesus, what a mess), and I might even re-paint it. I imagine the finish will be a bit guff under all those stickers, but it was never a particularly nice looking guitar anyway.

All depends how ambitious I'm feeling. I might completely gut the thing, or I might just replace some of the hardware and bung some new pick-ups in there. We'll see.

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Stickers are a piece of piss. Peel off what you can, and let white spirit/turps or lighter fluid take care of the gum/residue. I put white spirit into an old empty bottle of cleaning spray like Flash or something, give the body a good spray over, leave it for 15 minutes, and then just give it a scrub with a scourer. It just crumbles.

Then again, I once had this NOFX sticker on a guitar, which was a standard black sticker with the classic logo in bright green. I peeled it off the guitar, and it left a super thick, gloopy neon green residue behind, in the exact same rectangle shape of the sticker. It was just impossible. I doused it in white spirit and bleach, and it started to dissolve really slowly, but it also reacted with the chemicals and started to turn into sticky, skin-burning foam. Infact, no, not foam. TOXIC WASTE. As it foamed, it actually multiplied, and I ended up with more green foam than there was gum originally. It took over my bedroom and burned the fuck out of my hands. As it dried, it turned to a rubber like texture. I found it all over my bedroom for months afterwards. I've never experienced anything like that before. I should have written a letter to Fat Mike with a note saying "Thanks for nothing you fat cunt" with a bullet selotaped to the paper, the little shit.

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