What’s on *YOUR* workbench?

Stickman393 said:
Yeowza. I had no idea.

Got this one in progress: bought an agile multiscale 8 string a while back. Stripping the finish off cause they absolutely fucking choke the shit out of their instruments with the layer of polyurethane finish on there.

Even with the power sanders and 60 grit...taking *forever*.
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Finish aside, how's the build quality? Their price points are intriguing
 
jwin615 said:
Finish aside, how's the build quality? Their price points are intriguing
Click to expand...
I had a 3000M (Les Paul with thick maple top) and an Ad2200 (junior DC before Gibson go mad at them).

The price to performance couldn’t be beat. I am kicking myself for letting the 3000M go, but wasn’t playing enough to justify it. Thing was a tank. The DC was great, but I think it needed a few tweaks (bad tuner, bridge was literally screwed down).
 
jwin615 said:
Finish aside, how's the build quality? Their price points are intriguing
Click to expand...
Honestly?

Don't recommend. At a similar price point you can get an Eart or NK guitar or MC tang. Better fit and finish, better fretwork, better QC. Agile in my experience has always been super spotty.

This one, for instance, had some real fretwork issues. High points, sprout, yeesh. Couldn't get her to play well. Plus the aforementioned choking of the instrument by putting like a half millimeter of clear coat on there. Fretboard was...just...*way* too black dyed. Made it look more like richlite than ebony.

Oh. And the bridge hardware was *garbage*. I'm gonna be replacing the original bridge solo saddles too. Three of the four were longer than the others, and I tend to replace anything zinc/die cast on my guitars ASAP because I'm a little superstitious. Zinc lied to me once about being good at preventing colds, and I haven't trusted it since.

I made a couple of prototypes on a mini mill back before I got my CNC machine...basically, the idea was to use flat brass 1/8" thick plate and match the existing mounting and string through holes on the body. Then...use an m2.5 screw and a 6mm OD washer to act as a fixing screw to secure a saddle stolen from a wilkinson tremolo.

Gonna be using a helicoil on the threaded m2.5 hole in the brass plate to guard against stripping. Makes for a design that's easy enough to mill up on a 3 axis CNC machine.

I refretted her with some SS fretwire, stripping off the finish now...going into my third day of stripping. Woof.

It came with EMG 909s...which are not the business. Hate those pickups. Blah sterile ohh look at me I have too much bass. Fuck off EMG.

So...the plan is to get it sanded nice and smooth, apply some hard wax oil, and wire it up with some lace deathbuckers.

Now...I don't know if I'm *actually* gonna like the instrument when I'm done. I've used six string deathbuckers in the past and immediately gutted em and returned that trash to Amazon. Cause fuck Amazon.

But...8 strings are unique. Who knows. Maybe I'll like em more in this one. If I do, I'll keep it around, if I don't I'll probably sell it. Before...I would have taken a little bit of a bath on it cause I woulda had to have called out the issue with the fretwork. This way I get a canvas on which to experiment and hopefully it'll turn out cool. *Then* I can take a bath on what I sunk into this fucker.
 
@Stickman393 One thing I will say is if you ever get the wild hair to try something with EMGs the 57/66 set at 18V sound amazing for being active. I have the 57/66TW set in my Schecter E1 SLS Evil Twin and the single coil mode with both pickups on through a JC-120 just has a special chime that I love.
 
Might eventually, but honestly I've found a nice handful of pickups that I tend to use as go-tos. For HBs, at least.

First choice -> planet tone. Dudes make great pickups for dirt cheap. I use their "dissident", which is *perfect*. Alnico 8, 15.5k bridge. Love that thing. Fat and thick and focused and *sweet* on the high end, not brittle. Only available in a 6 string, but its about as close to perfect for what I'm looking for as I've found.

Duncan Sentient/Pegasus combo is my go-to on sevens...mostly because they're available and not terribly expensive.

Dimarzio Fortitude is about the only pickup from that company that I can stand. And I actually quite like it. Little less compressed vibe, clear and open and neat.

Bkp? Hard to go wrong. Crawler, Nailbomb, Black Dog, Rebel Yell...shoot, even their true grit series..all good. Don't much care for the holy diver. Aftermath is OK, but has that fucking brittle ass high end that it seems to me that *all* ceramic pickups have.

This just turned into stickman's pickup reviews section. Hi folks. I'll be here all week being oddly specific about what I do and don't like.
 
Just finished up some mods for my Schecter E-1 SLS Evil Twin. I have always wanted a Bigsby on an explorer shape. I'm using a Vibramate adapter to mount it so I don't have to drill into the body. TonePros roller bridge to help with tuning stability. EMG 57/66-TW, the bridge is very PAF like in tone but with a modern edge and the neck is very smooth with clarity. I have the HB/SC modes on separate switches so I can select between 4 tonal options. Upper knob is volume and the bottom knob is an EMG ABC active balance control. I decided on that since I am a bassist, so I'm already used to using it. I installed an LED since I'm using a phantom power setup from my pedalboard interface so I know it's receiving power.
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Schecter guitars and basses are such excellent players instruments, I kind of have to force myself to play the other brands I own if I need a different tuning.
 
Working on a toy for the kids. It’s really just an astable multivibrator with LEDs with a tunable oscillation frequency and a switch for the LED color. Plus two more LEDs for good measure. I bought Tayda’s ridiculously large “aircraft switches” (basically a massive SPST with an LED with internal CLR and a safety cover: the kids love those). I’m gonna p2p wire the whole thing and then put it in an enclosure with a laser cut faceplate I’m working on (currently building this on a plywood faceplate prototype).

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