Rocktober Telescapades! 11-3-23 New pickups Installed
- Thread starter MichaelW
- Start date
Harry Klippton
Not Interested
Well that makes one of us
Coda
Well-known member
Everybody knows tone is in the imagination…
MichaelW
Well-known member
Ok, decided to string her up, do a full set up, cut a bone nut today.
Also noticed some "hmmmmm........" issues on my neck. (see pics)
Cut a bone nut and dressed it up fancy......I normally don't on F style guitars.....maybe I should. I like it
BUT.....notice the crack in the finish......
I think that this neck was from when I was having such a hard time earlier in the summer with shooting nitro in the Florida humidity.
Everything was blushing like crazy and I wound up thinning out some nitro and getting this one done. But I obviously was not paying enough attention to how MUCH finish I was putting down.
It was thinned out almost 1:1 and I misted every coat with blush remover. But all these cracks, the checking, and the chips where the tuner bushings went it are signs of too thick a finish on the headstock.
I'm not SUPER bothered by it, since the whole rest of the guitar is somewhat relic'd.
I've been playing it a bit today to get a feel for the neck and so far I'm liking how it plays and the frets are behaving themselves.
I'll probably leave this neck on for at least the first iteration of this guitar. The new neck I got is not roasted maple but rather has a vintage tint.
So it may come down to purely aesthetics, which I like better, the roasted one or the tinted one. We shall see.
All that's left is to install the pickups and wire her up. According to tracking my pickups have cleared customs in Miami.
Today was a postal holiday so not sure if it made any movement, but I'm looking forward to the pickups arriving sometime later in the week.
Woot! I'm pretty stoked about this guitar.
More to come.
Also noticed some "hmmmmm........" issues on my neck. (see pics)
Cut a bone nut and dressed it up fancy......I normally don't on F style guitars.....maybe I should. I like it
BUT.....notice the crack in the finish......
I think that this neck was from when I was having such a hard time earlier in the summer with shooting nitro in the Florida humidity.
Everything was blushing like crazy and I wound up thinning out some nitro and getting this one done. But I obviously was not paying enough attention to how MUCH finish I was putting down.
It was thinned out almost 1:1 and I misted every coat with blush remover. But all these cracks, the checking, and the chips where the tuner bushings went it are signs of too thick a finish on the headstock.
I'm not SUPER bothered by it, since the whole rest of the guitar is somewhat relic'd.
I've been playing it a bit today to get a feel for the neck and so far I'm liking how it plays and the frets are behaving themselves.
I'll probably leave this neck on for at least the first iteration of this guitar. The new neck I got is not roasted maple but rather has a vintage tint.
So it may come down to purely aesthetics, which I like better, the roasted one or the tinted one. We shall see.
All that's left is to install the pickups and wire her up. According to tracking my pickups have cleared customs in Miami.
Today was a postal holiday so not sure if it made any movement, but I'm looking forward to the pickups arriving sometime later in the week.
Woot! I'm pretty stoked about this guitar.
More to come.
MichaelW
Well-known member
Well. my MadLove pickups from Australia have been sitting in Orlando "processing" for 4 days now. Not sure what's taking so long. They cleared customs in Miami so it's not a customs issue. Sigh.....
But in the meantime, the spare neck I ordered for this guitar came in.
I wasn't sure I was going to use it, but holding it in my hand, the quality is so far above the Chinese Ebay neck that I already installed.
I think I'm going to have to use it.
It's a gorgeous 1 piece maple neck with a nice FULL profile. (.87 under first fret).
This is the same neck that I used only 50's Strat and the Tele version on all my Tele builds.
I'm just flabbergastedgasted at how good these are. Larger frets, which I also prefer.
So I guess I'm swapping necks. Since I don't have any pickups yet anyway......
Got my decal on and first coat of nitro sprayed.
But in the meantime, the spare neck I ordered for this guitar came in.
I wasn't sure I was going to use it, but holding it in my hand, the quality is so far above the Chinese Ebay neck that I already installed.
I think I'm going to have to use it.
It's a gorgeous 1 piece maple neck with a nice FULL profile. (.87 under first fret).
This is the same neck that I used only 50's Strat and the Tele version on all my Tele builds.
I'm just flabbergastedgasted at how good these are. Larger frets, which I also prefer.
So I guess I'm swapping necks. Since I don't have any pickups yet anyway......
Got my decal on and first coat of nitro sprayed.
benny_profane
Well-known member
The light aging looks great. What’s your process there?
MichaelW
Well-known member
PCB etchant. (ferric chloride acid)
I've been experimenting with different strengths (mixed with water)
Different length of time of letting it sit on the metal (usually a few minutes will do)
As well as how much "scuffing" to do with the metal first.
For this bridge, I did zero scuffing, just aged it straight from the bright finish.
I use a single ply of tissue paper cover the piece on a paper plate, then use a q-tip or small brush and apply the acid.
The idea behind the tissue is that it keeps the acid on the part evenly but you have to make sure there's no ripples or folds in the tissue when wet or it will transfer that pattern to the metal.
I think I left it on for about 30-45 seconds, then dunked everything into a bucket of water to stop the process. Rinse well with water then dry well, (I use my heat gun).
I like how this bridge came out.
MichaelW
Well-known member
Well, my freaking pickups are still in limbo. I have no idea what's going on. They've already cleared customs in Miami, and they've made it to Orlando distribution center and left for my local post office. That was on the 11th. They've been somewhere between Orlando and my local post office for 6 days now, sigh. I have a feeling they lost the package.
I'm getting very tempted to order another set of pickups from somewhere local (to me). But of course once I do, they'll show up, bah.....
In the meantime, I finished the new neck and installed it. Man, I like the neck profile much better than the original neck.
The original one had pretty much a spot on modern Fender C shape. Which is usable for me but not my preference.
This one is a bit more beefy. Kinda like a 59 LP carve. Just feels great. With the jumbo frets with a nice high polish it plays like buttah.
I also think the vintage tint looks better on this guitar than the roasted finish. Note I said "roasted finish" as opposed to roasted maple. I've recently found out that on some of these cheap Chinese necks, the roasted maple is actually the finished being roasted and caramelized. Not the wood itself. Sand a bit too much and you're into plain old maple.
On the Chinese neck the skunk stripe was not completely even with the neck and I'd need to scrape it and sand it flat. I'm hesitant to do that because who knows what the color underneath will be.
The MIJ neck from Guitar Flow is perfectly made. The skunk stripe is nice and even. So it plays better, feels better in the hand, better frets, and looks better. No brainer, except I still have a couple of extra Strat necks lying around and buying a new neck isn't helping......
Patience is wearing thin with our Postal Service......
I'm getting very tempted to order another set of pickups from somewhere local (to me). But of course once I do, they'll show up, bah.....
In the meantime, I finished the new neck and installed it. Man, I like the neck profile much better than the original neck.
The original one had pretty much a spot on modern Fender C shape. Which is usable for me but not my preference.
This one is a bit more beefy. Kinda like a 59 LP carve. Just feels great. With the jumbo frets with a nice high polish it plays like buttah.
I also think the vintage tint looks better on this guitar than the roasted finish. Note I said "roasted finish" as opposed to roasted maple. I've recently found out that on some of these cheap Chinese necks, the roasted maple is actually the finished being roasted and caramelized. Not the wood itself. Sand a bit too much and you're into plain old maple.
On the Chinese neck the skunk stripe was not completely even with the neck and I'd need to scrape it and sand it flat. I'm hesitant to do that because who knows what the color underneath will be.
The MIJ neck from Guitar Flow is perfectly made. The skunk stripe is nice and even. So it plays better, feels better in the hand, better frets, and looks better. No brainer, except I still have a couple of extra Strat necks lying around and buying a new neck isn't helping......
Patience is wearing thin with our Postal Service......
ITG6
Active member
I didn't realize this was what they were doing with a lot of the cheap Chinese necks until last week when I was looking at GuitarFetish for some parts. I noticed they had necks with "Roasted Maple" in quotes.
"Real USA Hard Rock Maple - with a unique "Roasted" Maple finish. We spray on a sealer coat and actually "Roast" the finish at high heat. The finish browns to a unique "1950's" look, and then we put one coat of satin clear over the top."
MichaelW
Well-known member
Yup, at least they say it.
MichaelW
Well-known member
I talked to my mailman today, he said that usually means, it's stuck in a machine, or got damaged or the label damaged.
I went ahead and ordered some Fender CuNiFe Wide Range Humbuckers. I shied away from them initially because of the price. ($500/set). But I've since found them Reverb significantly discounted, so I said "screw it" and ordered a set.
Hopefully they'll get here next week.
In the meantime I also emailed with Michael at MadLove Pickups, He's opened an inquiry from his side. Sigh.....
MichaelW
Well-known member
Yah, it looks more "proper" with the vintage tint vs roasted maple.
MichaelW
Well-known member
Well, my Mad Love pickups are still lost in the mail.....sigh.....some USPS worker is probably rocking out on my Wide Range HBs in his Tele Deluxe......
In the meantime, the replacement set of Fender CuNiFe WRHBs, I wound up ordering the neck and bridge from different vendors to get the best price.
The bridge showed up today. And the neck is slated for delivery Monday, woohoo! Looking forward to finishing up this project!
In the meantime, the replacement set of Fender CuNiFe WRHBs, I wound up ordering the neck and bridge from different vendors to get the best price.
The bridge showed up today. And the neck is slated for delivery Monday, woohoo! Looking forward to finishing up this project!
MichaelW
Well-known member
Ok my second Fender CuNiFe pickup showed up today and I was FINALLY able to get this puppy wired!
(My original set of MadLove Pickups is still sitting in the lost world of USPS machinery, quite likely literally, it's possible the package is stuck in a sorting machine somewhere, who knows. Tracking status is still the same, hasn't changed for 12 days now. )
I wasn't sure how I wanted to wire this guitar up having no experience with Tele Deluxes so I went with vintage 72 Fender Deluxe wiring.
The only thing I changed was I added my treble bleed circuits to the volume pots. I even used .022 tone caps instead of my usual .015/.033 for dual humbucker wiring.
So after playing it a while today, I don't like the wiring. I'm going to re-wire it to Gibson 50's wiring with my custom tone cap values.
I don't like the way the tone controls taper and I don't like how the controls interact (or don't interact) like 50's wiring does.
As I mentioned this is the first time I've installed Wide Range HB's and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But I was a bit surprised that the neck pickup is warmer than I expected. Not quite PAF warm but warmer than I expected. I also haven't done much to dial in the pickup heights or screw heights yet either. Just my baseline starting point adjustments so far.
So it's definitely a different sound than standard humbuckers. All the clarity, note separation, blah blah blah is there.
The bridge pickup sounds like a hot Tele single coil and has a lot of push.
On my set of pickups the neck measures 10.3k and the bridge 10.5k. So it's right in there where it's supposed to be for these pickups.
One other thing that surprised me was that in the middle position, I'm getting a volume drop and almost an "out of phase" kind of tone.
I KNOW that the phase is correct but it just sounds a bit quacky, which is interesting.
I had some fret buzz on the A string that I had to chase down and wound up doing a partial fret level. It was JUST the A string, which is another oddity. But it's all fixed and plays well now.
One thing I don't like about the hardtail bridge is the vintage spacing. I prefer modern 2 1/16" string spacing at the saddle.
Vintage spacing (2 7/32") puts the E strings a bit too close to the fingerboard edge for my liking. But on a Strat style hard tail with individual saddles there's really no way to adjust it as the through body holes dictate the spacing. All the MJT bodies come with vintage spacing.
This is definitely the lightest solid body guitar I've ever owned. The body itself was under 3lbs and I'd have to say all in it's under 7 lbs.
Very resonant body, I dig it!
Aside from re-wiring the guitar to Gibson 50's wiring, I'm also toying with the idea of "aging" the pickup covers. They're super shiny.
My preference is raw, un-plated steel as I prefer the look and raw steel tends to be more tonally transparent than hard chrome or nickel plating.
Here's the Vintage 72 wiring scheme. I even had a pair of Sprague Vitamin-Q PIO tone caps that I've been hanging onto in .022!
CTS 500k Audio taper pots. The treble bleed is a 680pf Silver Mica cap with a carbon film 150k resistor in parallel.
I love the look of the guitar, even though it's very much NOT period correct.
Note how close the E strings are to edge of the FB with the vintage saddle spacing.
So I've got some demo's to do, between this guitar and my new P90 Stratosonic. Stay tuned....!
(My original set of MadLove Pickups is still sitting in the lost world of USPS machinery, quite likely literally, it's possible the package is stuck in a sorting machine somewhere, who knows. Tracking status is still the same, hasn't changed for 12 days now. )
I wasn't sure how I wanted to wire this guitar up having no experience with Tele Deluxes so I went with vintage 72 Fender Deluxe wiring.
The only thing I changed was I added my treble bleed circuits to the volume pots. I even used .022 tone caps instead of my usual .015/.033 for dual humbucker wiring.
So after playing it a while today, I don't like the wiring. I'm going to re-wire it to Gibson 50's wiring with my custom tone cap values.
I don't like the way the tone controls taper and I don't like how the controls interact (or don't interact) like 50's wiring does.
As I mentioned this is the first time I've installed Wide Range HB's and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But I was a bit surprised that the neck pickup is warmer than I expected. Not quite PAF warm but warmer than I expected. I also haven't done much to dial in the pickup heights or screw heights yet either. Just my baseline starting point adjustments so far.
So it's definitely a different sound than standard humbuckers. All the clarity, note separation, blah blah blah is there.
The bridge pickup sounds like a hot Tele single coil and has a lot of push.
On my set of pickups the neck measures 10.3k and the bridge 10.5k. So it's right in there where it's supposed to be for these pickups.
One other thing that surprised me was that in the middle position, I'm getting a volume drop and almost an "out of phase" kind of tone.
I KNOW that the phase is correct but it just sounds a bit quacky, which is interesting.
I had some fret buzz on the A string that I had to chase down and wound up doing a partial fret level. It was JUST the A string, which is another oddity. But it's all fixed and plays well now.
One thing I don't like about the hardtail bridge is the vintage spacing. I prefer modern 2 1/16" string spacing at the saddle.
Vintage spacing (2 7/32") puts the E strings a bit too close to the fingerboard edge for my liking. But on a Strat style hard tail with individual saddles there's really no way to adjust it as the through body holes dictate the spacing. All the MJT bodies come with vintage spacing.
This is definitely the lightest solid body guitar I've ever owned. The body itself was under 3lbs and I'd have to say all in it's under 7 lbs.
Very resonant body, I dig it!
Aside from re-wiring the guitar to Gibson 50's wiring, I'm also toying with the idea of "aging" the pickup covers. They're super shiny.
My preference is raw, un-plated steel as I prefer the look and raw steel tends to be more tonally transparent than hard chrome or nickel plating.
Here's the Vintage 72 wiring scheme. I even had a pair of Sprague Vitamin-Q PIO tone caps that I've been hanging onto in .022!
CTS 500k Audio taper pots. The treble bleed is a 680pf Silver Mica cap with a carbon film 150k resistor in parallel.
I love the look of the guitar, even though it's very much NOT period correct.
Note how close the E strings are to edge of the FB with the vintage saddle spacing.
So I've got some demo's to do, between this guitar and my new P90 Stratosonic. Stay tuned....!
fig
Village Idiot
So close....Mt Dora!
MichaelW
Well-known member
Ok, maybe not as done as I thought.
So after playing it a while I just didn't like the E strings so close to the edge of the fretboard that the vintage spacing is giving.
I've been mulling over how to "convert" a vintage spacing hardtail to modern (narrow) spacing (2 1/16).
On Strat bridges it's easy. Most tremolo makers will make a "Hybrid" spacing bridge where the pivot screws are vintage spacing but the trem block and saddles are modern spacing. This is what I've been using on all my strat builds (WudTone).
For hard tails with individual saddles it's a bit more involved since the string through holes dictate where the saddles must be.
So here's what I came up with.
First I ordered a new bridge, another Callaham, but narrow spacing this time.
I gave it my "patina" job.
See how it lines up? (or doesn't)
First thing was to widen the string through holes to 3/16" (from 1/8"). I didn't want to pop the string ferrules out and risk chipping the finish. The pine body is not as durable as alder or ash so it takes some care. I decided to free hand drill them instead of setting up the drill press. I could run it down and just kiss the ferrules and back off.
This gives the strings enough side to side slant to meet the narrower spacing on the bridge. But notice the mounting screws don't match either, sigh....I wasn't expecting this.
Plugging the two outer mounting screws.
Re drilled and installed.
Ahhhhh......string spacing is MUCH better. The low E is still pretty close but that's not the important one for me, it's the high E.
This gives me more room for vibrato on the higher frets!
So after playing it a while I just didn't like the E strings so close to the edge of the fretboard that the vintage spacing is giving.
I've been mulling over how to "convert" a vintage spacing hardtail to modern (narrow) spacing (2 1/16).
On Strat bridges it's easy. Most tremolo makers will make a "Hybrid" spacing bridge where the pivot screws are vintage spacing but the trem block and saddles are modern spacing. This is what I've been using on all my strat builds (WudTone).
For hard tails with individual saddles it's a bit more involved since the string through holes dictate where the saddles must be.
So here's what I came up with.
First I ordered a new bridge, another Callaham, but narrow spacing this time.
I gave it my "patina" job.
See how it lines up? (or doesn't)
First thing was to widen the string through holes to 3/16" (from 1/8"). I didn't want to pop the string ferrules out and risk chipping the finish. The pine body is not as durable as alder or ash so it takes some care. I decided to free hand drill them instead of setting up the drill press. I could run it down and just kiss the ferrules and back off.
This gives the strings enough side to side slant to meet the narrower spacing on the bridge. But notice the mounting screws don't match either, sigh....I wasn't expecting this.
Plugging the two outer mounting screws.
Re drilled and installed.
Ahhhhh......string spacing is MUCH better. The low E is still pretty close but that's not the important one for me, it's the high E.
This gives me more room for vibrato on the higher frets!
