I see, mad science guitar hacking time!
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I see, mad science guitar hacking time!
Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankenWashie
Yep....hahahaha....mad?....mad?......truly he was mad, and mad was he, he, who was mad, we shall see.....hahahaha.
*Starts babbling-away incoherently, while laughing manically*
Marthter, thall I pull the thwitch!? hehehehehehehe!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankenWashie
*Spoken in a very exaggeratedly accented germanic voice*...Ja...Igor, pull zee svitch now und ve shall schtart zee experiment.
I just did a tap-test of the newly-installed Entwistle HV58 pickups, and they both seem to be both working, furthermore, they seem to have upped the coolness-factor of the guitar, I'll post a pic of it after it is all re-strung and tuned up.
Update:
Just done a quick play-test of my Headless Guitar with the newly installed Entwistle HV58 Silver PAF Pickups....and.....they sound really good in the guitar, so, I think that they are keepers, the HV58 have really fattened up the guitar sound, I'm not getting the annoying boomy-ness that I was getting with the Infinity pickups, best way I can describe the sound I'm getting is a lot like the tones you get out of a Les Paul guitar, crunch tones sound wonderfully midrangey and fat, cleans are good too, so, I'm happy now that I have found the perfect set of pickups for my Headless Guitar.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I also changed the gauge of strings from a set of 42-09 to 46-10s, maybe the thicker strings also helped to fatten the tone up, I dunno, all I know is that my ears like what they are hearing, I'm playing the guitar through Bias Desktop which is an amp modelling VST plugin made by a company called Positive Grid, definitely worth getting.
And here's what the Headless Guitar looks like now, with the HV58 pickups installed, I think that the HV58 pickups have definitely upped the Coolness-Factor of the guitar:
Attachment 15627
And yes, it will Djent too, just trying it out tuned down to B, the strings aren't too floppy cause they are 46-10 gauge.
This is a seriously cool build Doc. I didn't think i'd like one of these guitars but now yours looks really great.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy40
Cheers mate, I think it'll look even better once the body has been spray-painted Dark Metallic Blue, like the HotRod Strat, I'll be doing the spray-painting over the Christmas break, I might even record a demo track of the guitar too.
I did notice that Pitbull Guitars do stock a Headless Guitar kit amongst the other kits on offer, I think you'll find it in the Misc Kits section, would you ever consider doing a Headless Guitar kit in the future?, if you do, I'll be only too happy to help you out with your build.
Good progress, Doc. Have you cut out the wood blank for the middle pup cut-out yet? And are you also going to fill in the old 5-way switch slot, or maybe cover it with a scratchplate?
Sticking with .010"s on any Gibson scale guitar is always a good move. Once you get used to them, .009"s seem so flimsy.
Those Ibanez INF 1 & 2 pickups are pretty basic pups and not great sounding - certainly a bit muddy. One of the first things to replace on the lower-end Ibanez guitars IMO. I had some on my RG-08. Not sure if the newer INF 3 and 4 models are any better as I haven't heard any of them. But the IBZ pickups (made by DiMarzio) normally fitted on the next step-up Ibanez models sound pretty good indeed. If you are thinking about getting an Ibanez, then paying that little bit more for one with IBZ pups is well worth the extra cost as you won't need to replace the pups unless you really want to.
Okay, I can't resist it any longer, I'm going to record a quick and dirty little demo of my Headless Guitar so you can hear what it sounds like, first half will be a clean sound (Bias 67 Blackface Duo Preset), and the second will be a crunch sound (Bias 69 Super Lead Preset), stay tuned.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Haven't cut out the wood blank for the middle pickup route yet, I might do it this weekend, the original 5-way pickup switch slot is going to be filled in with wood too, the Headless Guitar actually uses the Fender 25.5 inch Scale length, and the fretboard has 24 frets on it, at some stage later on, I'll have to do some fret-leveling work on the neck, as it happens, I have a white Ibanez RG350DXZ which I'm considering swapping out the Infinity pickups in it for some other pickups, maybe two Tonerider Rocksong full-sized Humbuckers (Neck and Bridge), and a Kent Armstrong Dual Blade (Middle).
Maybe I should have guessed the Fender scale from the original HSS pickup arrangement!
I'm starting to fit .010"s to my Fenders now as well as my Gibsons. If the action is low enough, then even .009"s feel too light on my Strats.
Good luck with the pickup upgrade. Hopefully it should sound great!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
I'm actually wondering if the original Fender Teles and Strats came from the factory with something like 52 gauge strings on them, the reason I'm thinking that is because Eric Johnson (a well known Strat player from Austin Texas) uses 52 gauge strings, or is it 56 gauge strings on his Strats, I think 42-09s were installed after Jimi Hendrix experimented with lighter gauge strings.
Anyway, I've done the demo recording and will be posting a link to it shortly.
And here it is, a rough demo of what the Headless Guitar sounds like with the two HV58 pickups installed in it, enjoy, and let me know what you think:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...s%20Demo_2.mp3
They certainly all came with much heavier gauge strings than they do now. Certainly with wound 3rds - which is why the vintage polepiece stagger heights aren't optimised for today's lighter strings. It was only after people started fitting a top banjo string as their top E and moving the other strings down one, that the string manufacturers (Ernie Ball was the first) started making the lighter gauge strings. Whilst the strings weren't original gauged (one size fitted all), something around 0.012"-0.052"s for the strings fitted to '50s Fenders seems to be the general consensus. And it still resonates today in the current string thickness descriptions on packets, where a 0.012" set is described as 'medium' - where you'd really think that 'medium' should be the average player's choice, so maybe 0.010".
Hendrix's later guitars were found to be strung with .009" to .038" sets - which is pretty light. The reverse stringing required by the upside down Strat probably added a bit more tension to the bottom strings than if strung normally, but conversely made the top strings feel a bit looser.
Sounds good. Lots of depth and overtones to the clean sounds, driven sounds nice and meaty without being flabby. A slight AC/DC influence there Doc?Quote:
Originally Posted by DrNomis_44
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Yep, I'm a big AC/DC fan from way back, my mum is in her 60's and she has always been a big AC/DC fan too, I'm really liking the tone I get with those Entwistle HV58 Silver PAF pickups, they sound so much better to my ears than those Infinity pickups did (they were too boomy in the low-end to my ears, and the output of them was way too much), I've found myself gravitating to a midrangey kind of tone like you get with Les Paul guitars played through a Marshall, and I have also found myself gravitating to the Marshall sound as well, so those two HV58 pickups are keepers, I'm thinking that they should sound great through my Marshall amp, I'm unable to try it though because a mate is borrowing my Marshall in order to be able to play some gigs while his amp, a Fender Hot Rod, is being fixed (it needs a replacement speaker cause the original one sounds sick and it measures like a dead-short on my digital multimeter).
If the speaker has shorted then it's might have taken the power valves and the output transformer down with it (or at least damaged them). Better than an open circuit, but not that much. Let's hope it's just the speaker - though they don't often go wrong these days unless there's something wrong with the amp.
Glad to know you're the sort of chap who's happy to lend an amp out to a mate in need. :cool:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
I actually tested the amp with a known good speaker (a Jensen C10Q), and was surprised to find that the amp was working fine, so that meant that the power valves, and the output transformer were all good, I let the owner of the amp know about my findings and he was pretty relieved, he managed to order a replacement speaker for the amp.
Cheers, at the time, I thought that lending my Marshall amp to my mate so he could play a few gigs while his amp was being fixed, was the right thing to do, I think Australians have had a long tradition of helping their mates out in times of need, it's certainly a part of our culture anyway.
Here's a pic of the amp itself, a Fender Deluxe Hot Rod, the light-green tape on the tolex is to remind me not to play through it till it is fixed:
Attachment 15629
I had a tweed covered version with a Jensen speaker, and a matching extension cab. I gave it to my guitar-playing nephew. Nice clean amps, just a shame about the over-sensitive volume knob. Anything above about 2.5 out of 12 just added more compression with very little extra volume and 2 was just not quite enough to get it working.
It was all contained in that small sector of the volume control. Which is why there are so many external volume control knobs available designed to go in its FX loop and make it far more controllable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
One thing I've noticed about Fender-type amps, is that their clean sounds are good, but their overdrive sounds tend to sound a bit too bassy and compressed for my liking, also, the tone doesn't seem to change much no matter what you do to them, I came to the conclusion that it's all to do with where they put the 3-band E.Q. in the preamp, they tend to put it right after the first 12AX7 Triode gain-stage, and then put two gain-stages after the E.Q., I came to that conclusion after I experimented with a Boogie Mk I Preamp circuit, on the other hand Marshall-type amps, like the one I lent to my mate, tend to have the 3-Band E.Q. placed right at the end of the preamp, the 3-Band E.Q. tends to be a lot more effective that way, I studied the schematic for my Marshall amp and the interesting thing is that the Clean channel is like a Fender amp, but with a Marshall 3-Band E.Q., the Overdrive channel is like a modded Marshall, with a bit of Soldano-influence thrown in.
That's not to say that I'm criticizing Fender amps, just an observation I've made, I like the cleans you get from them, and I'd love to own a good Fender Twin, whether I'd bought it or made it myself.
I'd certainly not use the drive channel on my HRD for anything than a slightly dirty clean sound. Pedals for the rest. Though the Bassbreaker versions of the Hotrods with EL38 valves (lower powered amps) and EL34 valves (higher powered amps) in sound a lot better when driven.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
I've been really getting into the sound of EL 34 power valves, my Marshall amp uses four of them (Groove Tubes branded EL 34) to produce something like 100 Watts of audio power, a good mate of mine seems to prefer 6L6, KT66, and EL84 power valves, the 6L6 power valve has a more "American" sound to it whereas the EL 34 power valve has a more "British" sound, the EL 84 power valve can be though of as a lower powered version of the EL 34 (they are both Pentodes), and the 6V6 is like a lower powered 6L6 (both are Beam-Power Tetrodes), the Pentode and Beam-Power Tetrode incorporate different ways of eliminating a shortcoming of the Tetrode valve.
The EL84s sound pretty close to 6V6s at times. I had a Hughes & Ketner Statesman 2 x EL84 combo prior to my 2 x 6V6 Two Rock and both can give that 'chimey' sound that's hard to get with other valve types. The Vox AC30 is the epitome of the EL84 sound, though with different circuitry, it can make all sorts of different noises.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
The contemporary music department at the Charles Darwin University here in Darwin, has a Vox AC30 in it's storeroom, I played through it and thought it was a pretty cool sounding amp, it was one of the reissues with all the circuitry on a PCB, I've got a lot of respect for the Vox AC30, the Beatles used them, I wouldn't mind building one for myself, but build all the circuitry on Turret Boards, next year I'm going to start ordering all the bits I need to re-build my Sloclone 50 Amp Head, I'll be documenting the build process as I go.
The two people who started me off playing guitar both had 1960s AC30s - one was a combo, one a head and cab. But mid-late '70s, they were cheap amps - old and very few people wanted their sound at the time (apart from Brian May). They were very loud and it was rare that you could turn them up enough to get them really singing. Even though they were transistor amps, a lot of people were using HH combos because you could get a distorted sound at any volume.
Master volume valve amps were just coming into fashion, but being new, they were relatively expensive, and you still had to turn them up to get a good sound out of them that wasn't all fizzy. Most were 50W or 100W amps, so pretty loud. But this was before the days of decently powerful portable PAs, so in bigger venues, you needed the amp power. Great fun, but the cause of a lot of hearing damage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
I think I can remember playing through a couple of HH amps, they definitely have a distinctive sound which is very 70's, Marc Bolan from T Rex used an HH Solid State preamp as part of his stage rig, this one time I was asked to play bass guitar for a mate's band that was playing an after-wedding gig, anyway, I needed an amp to play through and ended up borrowing an HH amp head, I managed to get a pretty good tone out of it, which is interesting because I seem to recall that they used LM741 ICs in the preamp circuitry, and the LM741 wasn't known for being a good Op Amp IC for Audio, but somehow they seem to work pretty well, HH amps have a certain kind of warmth to them that's kind of like a valve amp, the distortion sound wasn't that gainy, it basically added a slight fuzzy-ness to the sound.
I've watched some youtube videos of Vox AC30s being overdriven with a Rangemaster Treble Booster, I though that the tone was pretty unique so I ended up building a Rangemaster pedal, I used an AC128 PNP Germanium transistor in it if my memory serves me right, it seemed to work pretty well, I've got quite a few old 60's Philco Surface Barrier transistors, which I bought on eBay, I weeded out all the bad ones and put all the good ones in a cardboard box so I could use them to build some vintage Fuzz pedals.
The '70s was a time when things were changing quite quickly on the amp front. At the start, valve amps were coming back in fashion again after the manufacturers' general move to solid state for cleaner sounds during the late 60s, whilst some of the amp makers were trying to get their transistor amps sounding more valve-like (and never really succeeding). With the exception of modelling amps, the amp scene generally settled down by the mid '80s and hasn't really changed since (well, maybe since the once-fashionable rack systems died out by the early '90s). Now, modelling provides a way for a cheap light amp to sound good, and for expensive modelling units to sound very good indeed. But I'd still prefer to use a good amp and some pedals.
Update:
I went to the Top End Pro Music shop today to make the first of two payments on my new BC Rich Joey Jordison Warlock II Guitar which I have on layby, while there I decided to buy a set of Ernie Ball Strap Locks for my Headless Guitar, just about to install them on the body, since we're getting some wet weather at the moment, I'm going to wait till the weather dries up before doing any more work on the Headless Guitar, it'll give me a chance to go over it and make sure there's no other issues I need to fix prior doing any of the finishing work on it.
Update:
Just got my Marshall amp back from the guy I loaned it to, and thought I would try playing my Headless Guitar through it, well.....it sounds pretty meaty through it, I am really surprised just how good those Entwistle HV58 pickups sound through the Marshall.
If anyone are looking for a good sounding set of pickups to put in their LP or SG guitar builds, I would like to highly recommend giving the HV58's a try, they sounded good for me, they may sound good for you too.
nice one Doc, there are a few HV58 models on the PBG website, which one have you put in ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wokkaboy
I put the two Silver PAF style ones from my Chibson SG in it, funny thing is, they seem to be so right for the guitar even though the body is made of wood that looks a bit like Ash, and the scale is a Fender 25.5 inches, but it sounds like a Gibson guitar.
so this one Doc in the neck ?
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/shop/p...p-alnico-neck/
still loving the Dr Evil avatar suits you to a tee Doc. You are almost 3000 posts which is 60% the way there to a GAStronomist mate !
Quote:
Originally Posted by wokkaboy
Yep, that's the one mate, I think they are great sounding pickups if you're after that PAF tone, I have to admit that the Dr Evil avatar has really grown on me, what started out as a bit of a joke by DB, has turned out to be something pretty cool, I was seriously thinking about changing my avatar but couldn't really think of anything that would look better, thankfully DB stepped in and helped us all out...hahahaha.., I'll keep boxing-on and we'll get to the magical 3000 posts, it's been a real fun ride so far mate.
Are you working on any builds over the Christmas holidays?, I'm going to be working on finishing the Headless Guitar body soon when the weather dries up cause we've been getting a lot of rain lately.
And then there's the Sloclone 50 Amp that I'll be working on next year too, soon as I get the chance to start ordering all the new bits and pieces for it, I'll start documenting the build process with pics too, I bet Lozza will take a pretty keen interest in it.
I'm currently chilling-out and kicking back with some nice cold Arc Valley premium light beer, since it's the Christmas season, it's a pretty nice tasting beer, never had it before so it's a new one on me.
The guy who borrowed my Marshall while I fixed up his Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, gave me a six bottle pack of the beer in exchange for me fixing his amp, he asked me how much I was going to charge him for it and I said I'd make it a freebie for him since it was the Christmas season, he seemed pretty cool with that.
I made the first payment on that BC Rich Warlock guitar yesterday, and I've only got one more payment to make and it'll be home, I'll be making the final payment on it next fortnight, I'll post a pic of it once I've got it home and I might see if I can record a demo of it being played through my Marshall.