Strat-o-tomfoolery - Part II - Firemist Gold 8-17-23 New demo added

[SillyOctpuss]

That's a fantastic colour Michael. Honestly the whole build looks great. If you use 5 springs do you deck your trems and just set them to dip only?

 

[Cybercow]

Ok, I’ve pretty much got her out together today but not without some hiccups.

The set of temp GFS pickups sound pretty darn good for $23 pickups. BUT, QC remains an issue at that price point. The bridge pickup has a broken coil wire somewhere. It’s totally dead. I had another GFS bridge pickup laying around that I put in for the time being. A temp bridge pickup for the temp bridge pickup if you will hahaha.

They are also noisy as hell. I’m not sure if I have ground issue, I might. Makes my red strat sound like i’m using noiseless pickups in comparison. ALSO, I have a bum Switchcraft jack, sigh….first time that’s ever happened but it’s intermittently dropping signal, that’s after resoldering it twice!

Having said all that, it’s sitting under tension right now and I’ll give it a couple weeks before the final setup. I may need to deal with a couple high frets. I can already tell this is going to be my favorite strat. The neck profile is just a skootch fuller than my red strat. I absolutely love how it feels and plays. And it actually sounds pretty darn good with the frankenstein set of pickups in it.

I have a couple pedal build reports to post and will, try to do a demo with the “Firemistress”.

Love the look of this!

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I used a set of the Xotic Raw tremolo springs.
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There’s some cool and interesting figuring on the rosewood board.
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My “Wall ’o Strats”….
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Dayam! That sure is one purdy Strat! Nice work!

 

[MichaelW]

That's a fantastic colour Michael. Honestly the whole build looks great. If you use 5 springs do you deck your trems and just set them to dip only?

No, I've got it floating by about 1/16th inch right now. Feels right to me. I don't like them too floppy.

Jury's out on the short trem arm. Somehow the angle isn't quite right for me. I may need to try adjusting it a bit.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

No, I've got it floating by about 1/16th inch right now. Feels right to me. I don't like them too floppy.

Jury's out on the short trem arm. Somehow the angle isn't quite right for me. I may need to try adjusting it a bit.

Not sure I could use a short arm either tbh. I tend to have mine floating about 1/8 off the body with 3 springs. I like to be able to pull a note up by about a whole tone.

 

[MichaelW]

Ok, so I mentioned that the GFS bridge pickup that I got as a temp set for this guitar was DOA.

I took a closer look and saw the problem. So instead of getting it replaced, I decided to just repair it.
First time doing surgery on a pickup!

You can see the coil wire coming to the ground eyelet was broken. Hard to say if it came this way or I was a little rough handling it during the install. It's quite possible I did that.



I gently heated up the wax potting with a heat gun...then cleared the eyelet of any solder and coils of wire originally there.


I would up just very gently unraveling one turn of the wire while the wax was still hot.


That gave me enough length to re-attach the wire to the ground eyelet and voila, works like a charm now!




I melted a little more beeswax onto the wire to hold it down to the fiber baseplate. This is a pretty hot pickup.
This is part of their "Premium Hot Texas" set. Vintage output on the neck and middle with a way overwound bridge.
The bridge measures 9.5k. Neck and middle are 5.4k and 5.6k respectively.

With the hot bridge there's noticeable less quack in 2nd position (middle and bridge) but overdriven it sounds pretty cool.
I generally don't use positions 2 & 4 for heavily overdriven sounds but with this setup it works pretty well.

I recorded another short clip with the repaired pickup installed. Now the waiting for the final set of pickups begins heh. I have no clue when to expect them, but I'm digging this guitar with these "cheap" pickups in them. I continue to be impressed with some of the GFS pickups.

 

[MichaelW]

Well I got tired of waiting for the Onamac Windery pickups I ordered for this thing. According to his website it takes 10-12 days to ship. It's been over 5 weeks. And he totally ghosted me. No response to emails, Reverb messages. I even tried calling and his phone was disconnected.
I opened up a case with PayPal to cancel the transaction.

So I went back to the loving arms of my beloved Lollars and ordered a mixed set.
It's a 50's style neck (Vintage Blonde), a 60's style middle (64/Blackface) and an overwound bridge (Special S).

Aaaaandddd.....of course the day after opening the PayPal dispute, Onamac messages me on Reverb saying he's been busy and apologizing for the delay. And something about how Western Washington has had internet and phone issues. (For 6 weeks????)
Anyway, my pickups are supposed to ship today. But I am so over this guy. Doesn't matter how good the pickups might be. One thing I simply can't abide is lack of communication. If he'd sent me a short message saying they would be late, I'd have been fine waiting.

Anyway, I installed the Lollars yesterday and it sounds exactly how I expected. Which is KILLER.
I added a steel baseplate to the bridge pickup. I'm really liking how this sounds!

I'm calling this one DONE! (..........maybe)

 

[SillyOctpuss]

Damn that's a great looking strat Michael. Any chance of some more pics? You've got me gassing hard for a gold strat now. If I wasn't so attached to my red one I'd be seriously contemplating selling the body and buying another in gold.

You and Mick Taylor are enablers of the worst/best sort.

 

[MichaelW]

I just added a full pick guard shield and it's quieted things down considerable. I'm installing them in my other Strats as well. Since going back to playing amps again, 60 cycle hum has become an issue with singles and the proximity of my amp heads and where I sit to play.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

I just added a full pick guard shield and it's quieted things down considerable. I'm installing them in my other Strats as well. Since going back to playing amps again, 60 cycle hum has become an issue with singles and the proximity of my amp heads and where I sit to play.

What did you have before? Just the shield at the pots? That's all my strat has and it can be a bit noisy at times.

 

[MichaelW]

What did you have before? Just the shield at the pots? That's all my strat has and it can be a bit noisy at times.

I usually just use foil tape.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

I usually just use foil tape.

I shielded the cavity of my strat with copper tape once and ended up taking it back out because it reduced the noise but also cut some high end.

 

[MichaelW]

I shielded the cavity of my strat with copper tape once and ended up taking it back out because it reduced the noise but also cut some high end.

Yah, I find the same when I shield the whole cavity with foil tape but for some reason the shielding paint I use doesn't do that.
But I still tape my pickguards. The full pickguard type shield doesn't impact tone.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

Yah, I find the same when I shield the whole cavity with foil tape but for some reason the shielding paint I use doesn't do that.
But I still tape my pickguards. The full pickguard type shield doesn't impact tone.

I also sliced the crap out of my fingers getting the copper tape out. I had really stuck it down good

The guys at feline guitars use shielding paint too. I'm pretty sure that's what they put in my tele when they put it together.

 

[MichaelW]

I cut myself dinking around with the shield hahaha

 

[SillyOctpuss]

I cut myself dinking around with the shield hahaha

The problem with those types of tape is that you cut yourself and then don't notice it for a while. In my case I'd cut myself a bunch of times before noticing and then it hurt like hell

 

[MichaelW]

Yah just wait till you go squeeze some lemon on your salmon....

 

[MichaelW]

Ok, final set of pickups from Planet Tone that I recently got in my order.

I've mentioned earlier that I tried a set of the Gilmour Tribute pickups from Onamac Windery. I was pretty disappointed with that set.

Not that they sounded bad, but just not what I was hoping for. That particular set was wound to 50's spec in the neck and middle and a whopping 14k in the bridge. For me, the bridge was just too hot and didn't have much character.

I decided to try once again with a set of Gilmour tribute pickups from Jose at Planet Tone. It's basically the same concept, with a vintage output neck and middle and a hot overwound bridge. This set sounds a lot better to me than the Onamac set but to be honest, they're not knocking my socks off like the other pickups I've gotten from Planet Tone.

I installed them in this Gold strat and I currently have the Onamac set in my Red Strat so I can do some side by side comparisons.

At this point I still like my cobbled together set of Lollars pictured earlier in this thread. So I'm not completely sure if these will be staying in.

It may be that I just don't like such a hot bridge pickup. (13k).
But, I'm leaving them in long enough at least to do a demo of them. Who knows, I may warm up to them.
One thing for certain, I'm a picky bastard when it comes to Strat pickups hahahaha.
To me, the perfect set of Strat pickups is the Lollar Dirty Blonde set.

But that hasn't stopped me from experimenting and trying different pickups







I added a steel baseplate to the bridge pickup for a bit more bass.

 

[MichaelW]

Ok, yet another demo of this guitar with a different pickup set.

These are the Planet Tone "David Gilmour" tribute set.