What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

@KR Sound — familiar with the Iron Ether enough to know that I'd love to see the schematic when you're done tracing it...


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Replaced the stock pickup with a Chopper T for my bandmate. Also replaced the saddles. New strings and a setup. Just in time for our gig.

The wiring is also my work from last year when we added a 4 way switch.
It's a 90s MIA Tele that had a greasebucket Circuit.
The neck pickup sounds horrible. Had to reuse the existing crappy wires.

Anyway the whole guitar is grubby with DNA. My friend has Alien acid sweat. Everything he touches turns into a rusty mess.
Ewww
 
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Well my strat body finally came in. Took over 2 weeks coming from Texas, no knock on the vendor, they got it in the mail immediately. It sat for 9 days 25 miles from my house.....sigh....gotta love the USPS.

Anyway, this project has a been of a disappointment. This was a cheap body, roasted poplar, should have been lighter than it is. It was also supposed to be Shoreline Gold. Which it is not. It's more along the lines of Aztec and FireMist gold. And it doesn't look the same as the picture from the website.

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Aside from that, the quality of the body is pretty low. Not as nice as some of the other cheaper options like Allen Eden or GuitarFetish. The neck pocket is extremely sloppy and I had to get my rasp out to give the tremolo enough room to pivot. On the positive side, the finish is pretty thin poly.

Here's a pic side by side with my other gold Strat, "Goldie" (on the right). Goldie has a nitro finished relic'd BloomDoom body, rosewood FB and it rocks. I was planning to call this one "Shirley" for "Shoreline" but I think I may just have to call it "Goldie II". They are so very similar in color.
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Now onto the good parts....I've got a set of Texas Special clones in there right now from my favorite AliExpress pickup vendor. WAAH Music.
I've gotten about 5-6 sets of pickups from them now and they have all been superb. Build quality is through the roof. Really well made pickups and they got most of the more popular Fender Custom Shop pickup styles.

Goldie II is playing like silk and SOUNDS fabulous. For @SillyOctpuss , I used a Music Lilly tremolo with a brass block. Replaced the stock saddles with a set of Highwoods. Also used a set of Raw trem springs. But most importantly, I used a set of these.
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These are PRS style tremolo screws with the notch in them to stabilize the trem. These are fantastic in making an inexpensive tremolo perform way above its price point. I may wind up eventually replacing the mounting screws in all my Strats. so between using these screws, making sure the nut is cut and polished to gnats ass perfection, I've also started using nut lube with every string change. I'm really happy with the results and the tuning stability of my vintage style strat tremolo's right now. Definitely see no reason to spend $250 on a Wudtone trem.

Couple more glamour shots.
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MichaelW said:
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Well my strat body finally came in. Took over 2 weeks coming from Texas, no knock on the vendor, they got it in the mail immediately. It sat for 9 days 25 miles from my house.....sigh....gotta love the USPS.

Anyway, this project has a been of a disappointment. This was a cheap body, roasted poplar, should have been lighter than it is. It was also supposed to be Shoreline Gold. Which it is not. It's more along the lines of Aztec and FireMist gold. And it doesn't look the same as the picture from the website.

View attachment 91571

Aside from that, the quality of the body is pretty low. Not as nice as some of the other cheaper options like Allen Eden or GuitarFetish. The neck pocket is extremely sloppy and I had to get my rasp out to give the tremolo enough room to pivot. On the positive side, the finish is pretty thin poly.

Here's a pic side by side with my other gold Strat, "Goldie" (on the right). Goldie has a nitro finished relic'd BloomDoom body, rosewood FB and it rocks. I was planning to call this one "Shirley" for "Shoreline" but I think I may just have to call it "Goldie II". They are so very similar in color.
View attachment 91572

Now onto the good parts....I've got a set of Texas Special clones in there right now from my favorite AliExpress pickup vendor. WAAH Music.
I've gotten about 5-6 sets of pickups from them now and they have all been superb. Build quality is through the roof. Really well made pickups and they got most of the more popular Fender Custom Shop pickup styles.

Goldie II is playing like silk and SOUNDS fabulous. For @SillyOctpuss , I used a Music Lilly tremolo with a brass block. Replaced the stock saddles with a set of Highwoods. Also used a set of Raw trem springs. But most importantly, I used a set of these.
View attachment 91573
These are PRS style tremolo screws with the notch in them to stabilize the trem. These are fantastic in making an inexpensive tremolo perform way above its price point. I may wind up eventually replacing the mounting screws in all my Strats. so between using these screws, making sure the nut is cut and polished to gnats ass perfection, I've also started using nut lube with every string change. I'm really happy with the results and the tuning stability of my vintage style strat tremolo's right now. Definitely see no reason to spend $250 on a Wudtone trem.

Couple more glamour shots.
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Lovely pics Michael and I still covet your original Goldie. Gotta love a gold strat.

I wouldn't $250 for a wudtone either tbh. I bought mine used but never installed for £80 from another forum. It had been bought for a project but he never actually built it and sold all the parts off. The biggest difference I've seen between the wudtone and prs trem is the wudtone version is in constant contact with the body whereas the prs is only in contact via the knife edges on the screws. How much difference that actually makes though seeing as the prs trem sounds great is up for debate.
 
GT120 progress: I solved my design challenge of where to put the preamp tubes’ hum balance pot. All chassis holes have been drilled (I hope). All turret boards are done and filled.

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Next up, I can do all the chassis wiring apart from the transformers and front panel … but I should probably set the iron down and finalize the art work and apply it. Once the front panel art is done I can mount the front panel, roll cage, and transformers. The transformers are absolute units, so I want to mount them as late as possible in the process.

All and all, it’s going well. I’m very happy how the bias board turned out. It might be hard to see in the pictures, but there are test points with rings that sit proud of the rest to clip multimeter mini hooks to.

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Converting the mid/tweeter top box from this old 15/6/1 bass rig to a standalone bass cab for my weekly bluegrass/Americana jams where I am often the only amplified instrument. Even a 110 combo feels too big in the very modest Reddi Shed jam space. I think I could (just barely) make an 8" driver fit in there, but this time around I'm going to stick with a 6.5" one to make it a little easier on myself. I had great results with a Fishman replacement driver on my last conversion like this, I may easily go that route again. Current plan is to make it a powered cab I can plug my basses right into, but I may just make it a full blown combo with EQ since I have a zillion old onboard preamp prototypes kicking around anyway.
 
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Feral Feline said:
I'd be happy to provide that service, send me the pedal and I'll send it back with a schematic and perf & vero layouts! _𝕞_➿_𝕙𝕟_
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My guess is the three toggle switches access the 8 patches on the eprom - then you’ve got three knobs for fv1 and the. mixer mixing clean and effect… won’t all the magic be digital code on the eprom?
 
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