Custom HotRod Strat Build.

Machine Head was one of their best albums and I also love Fireball too. Great examples of the Ian Gillan & Roger Glover MkII era.

Interestingly under Zandit's Zodiac post from left field it would suggest I transition from Aries to Pisces?

The mother of one of the drummers in an early line up was into astrology big time and was fascinated that her son being pisces and me an aries could get along well with one another as that was not typical. She then dug a bit deeper into what time of day we were born as that had something to do with the 'house' we were born in, blah, blah, blah and it was through this analysis that she discovered a common thread that linked the two of us as compatible companions, something about both of us having sagitarius rising, whatever? Needless to say he was an awesome drummer and the best I have ever played with. Left handed too but played with a right hand setup thus giving him the benefit of a massive snare beat from his dominant hand. God knows where he is now. He was that good he could have been a session muso.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

Machine Head was one of their best albums and I also love Fireball too. Great examples of the Ian Gillan & Roger Glover MkII era.

Interestingly under Zandit's Zodiac post from left field it would suggest I transition from Aries to Pisces?

The mother of one of the drummers in an early line up was into astrology big time and was fascinated that her son being pisces and me an aries could get along well with one another as that was not typical. She then dug a bit deeper into what time of day we were born as that had something to do with the 'house' we were born in, blah, blah, blah and it was through this analysis that she discovered a common thread that linked the two of us as compatible companions, something about both of us having sagitarius rising, whatever? Needless to say he was an awesome drummer and the best I have ever played with. Left handed too but played with a right hand setup thus giving him the benefit of a massive snare beat from his dominant hand. God knows where he is now. He was that good he could have been a session muso.

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One of my best mates is a Pisces, he and I get along really well, I've also got another great friend who is a Sagittarian, for some strange reason, I find I tend to get along really well with most Fire signs, me being a Virgo, I'm an Earth sign.


In Astrology, each of the twelve Astrological signs are grouped together so that there are four groups of three Astrological signs associated with the elements, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, here are the four groups:


Air:

Aquarius, Gemini, and Libra.

Fire:

Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius.

Water:

Scorpio, Cancer, and Pisces.

Earth:

Capricorn, Taurus, and Virgo.



My mum is an Aries, she and I get along really well.

All I know is that male & female Gemini are slightly different, thankfully as most of the female kind I have encountered (my mother and eldest sister) have had very strong opinions, fairly quick witted, and quite intuitive. Thankfully the males I have known (my youngest son and plenty of other band mates & work mates) have been quick witted and intuitive but not as strong or domineering with their opinions thus easier to get along with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wazkelly

All I know is that male & female Gemini are slightly different, thankfully as most of the female kind I have encountered (my mother and eldest sister) have had very strong opinions, fairly quick witted, and quite intuitive. Thankfully the males I have known (my youngest son and plenty of other band mates & work mates) have been quick witted and intuitive but not as strong or domineering with their opinions thus easier to get along with.

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I've got one mate who is a Gemini, she tends to be quite talkative, although she reckons that she has a lot of trouble expressing herself.


My godmother is a Gemini, and she is a really nice lady.

Sounds like you may be more compatible with them.

Update:


I've managed to make quite a bit of progress with my HotRod Strat, and I'm about to do all the final wiring-up prior to testing to see if all the electronics work, and then stringing/setting up, if things go well i might see if I can record a quick and dirty demo of the guitar for you, stay tuned.




Update 2:

All of the electronics test out as working, next step is to install strings and do a complete setup of the guitar.


Update 3:


She hasn't been properly set up yet, but, she sounds surprisingly good, considering that the pickups I installed came from a cheap electric guitar i bought from my local Cash Converters store, it has the typical Strat tones, and the overall tone is pretty warm, but I'm hearing it through my Audioline powered monitors, will be interesting to hear how she sounds after a good setup, but she is making sound at last.

Great news Doc.

Hurrah! And twice hurrah!

Cheers guys, I tried the guitar through my Marshall amp's clean and overdriven channels and it sounded pretty good, although one of the pickups might be slightly microphonic, the installed pickups will do for the time being till I can afford to buy a good set of Seymour Duncans, or DiMarzios.

Have you tried any of those Tonerider pickups? I haven't but I often use Irongrear pickups in my guitars. They are a very similar concept to Tonerider - UK designed but built in China, and I've seen very similar comments about both of them on UK guitar forums in the past. There are certainly better pickups, but it's that question of paying three to five times more for maybe a 10% improvement. And sometimes it's not an 'improvement' but just 'different'.

The Irongear 'Blues Engine' PAF-style pickups I put on my Flving-V to replace the nasty Gibson ceramics are just the job for that guitar. I'm also got covered versions of those to put in my ES-3. The vintage Tele types of theirs I put on my Mexican Tele when the pickups on that (TexMex models) went very microphonic, sound slightly better to me than the originals, and the neck pickup sounds really nice and full, and not weak as some Tele neck pickups can do. I did fit a set of the Irongear vintage Strat types to a friends cheap Squier, which sounded just about OK, rather than the change I was expecting, but it might simply have been the guitar. Some guitars just seem to sound bad whatever pickups you put in them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Have you tried any of those Tonerider pickups? I haven't but I often use Irongrear pickups in my guitars. They are a very similar concept to Tonerider - UK designed but built in China, and I've seen very similar comments about both of them on UK guitar forums in the past. There are certainly better pickups, but it's that question of paying three to five times more for maybe a 10% improvement. And sometimes it's not an 'improvement' but just 'different'.

The Irongear 'Blues Engine' PAF-style pickups I put on my Flving-V to replace the nasty Gibson ceramics are just the job for that guitar. I'm also got covered versions of those to put in my ES-3. The vintage Tele types of theirs I put on my Mexican Tele when the pickups on that (TexMex models) went very microphonic, sound slightly better to me than the originals, and the neck pickup sounds really nice and full, and not weak as some Tele neck pickups can do. I did fit a set of the Irongear vintage Strat types to a friends cheap Squier, which sounded just about OK, rather than the change I was expecting, but it might simply have been the guitar. Some guitars just seem to sound bad whatever pickups you put in them.

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Haven't tried the Toneriders yet, but I'm definitely interested in giving them a go in a future guitar build, might even get a set of Tele Tonerider Pickups to go in the 51 Tele kit that I want to order soon.

Was readjusting the PUP heights on the EX-1 yesterday that has Tonerider Alnico IV's installed and once I had finished they sounded equal to or possibly better than the Epiphone Ceramic Plus ones in my Slash AFD Les Paul. I then compared them back to back with the Entwistle Dark Star Ceramics installed in my Son's Hot Rodded Strat Copy in a H-S-H setup and found them very trebly and almost too bright & brittle but the Toneriders had all the right midrange tones you expect from a hot humbucker and also had better single note articulation. Stands to reason that if spending 50% more you should end up with something better and that truly is the case in this instance.

Cannot comment on their single coil guitar PUP's as I have Wilkinson's in my Tele.

Wilkinson single coils have a good reputation over here too. I have friends who swear by them. My only gripe is that their moulded logo on the plastic covers (or bobbins or metal covered pickups) means that they really need replacing if you want smooth covers. I smoothed their logo off the bobbin coils of a Vintage (brand) LP copy I bought on eBay on behalf of a friends' son, but it's hard to do it 100% invisibly.

I have a dislike for ceramic pickups. They are fine if you want a high output pickup for metal and aren't going to be playing anything that requires a nice clean tone, but I normally want something more versatile. Though I do have an Ibanez RG where the bridge pickup is a Kent Armstrong M-Bucker double hot ceramic pickup. 27k dc resistance! My mate Max (who is an out and out shredder) got Kent to make him up a four-bladed humbucker when Max was a Fender UK demonstrator and Kent was doing some design work for Fender. Kent liked the result so much that he then put them into his standard pickup line. Max fits them to all his Ibanezs.

Almost all digital amps don't have enough headroom to cope with the output, so you get nasty digital clipping as a result (not nice). We tested it recently on a Kemper Profiler, and found that this does have an input gain attenuator, which on its maximum setting, didn't clip.

It's rather too full-on for me, and I'll probably swap it out for something quite less extreme, but it's saving grace is that it's four coils in one pickup, so you can tap it down to a single blade if you want to, though you need a whole lot of mini-switches (or switched pots) fitted to do so.

I hear your point Simon and yes I did coil tap both PUP's to give a bit more flexibility. Amp settings can tame these wild beasts to a certain degree and I have other axes for more mellow sounds if these ones are cooking too much for any particular setting or genre.

Update:

Next fortnight, I'm going to be looking at ordering a set of new pickups, pots, etc from Realtone Music for my HotRod Strat, I was thinking of ordering a couple of Kent Armstrong Dual-Blades to replace the neck and middle Single-Coils, and a Tonerider Rocksong to replace the Bridge Humbucker, do you think these pickups will work fine together in my HotRod Strat?, the Dual Blades are Humbuckers (i.e. noise-cancelling) in a Single-Coil sized package, the pots currently being used in the HotRod Strat are a set of 24mm 250kA (log) CTS pots, I'm going to be replacing the 24mm CTS 250k Log volume pot with a 500k Log mini CTS pot, and the two 24mm CTS 250k tone pots with two 250k log mini CTS pots, reason being is that the body-routing clearances under the scratchplate are pretty tight, I had to shave off some of the body wood in a couple of places, just to be able to get the scratchplate installed.


I want to install noise-cancelling pickups in the neck and middle positions so that I don't get any hum when those pickups are selected, also, I want those pickups to be a bit more beefy compared to standard Single-Coils so that they balance well with the full-sized bridge-humbucker, I'm not too worried about losing some of the Strat tone cause my Marshall is a bit bright in the Overdrive Channel anyway.


Here's a pic of my HotRod Strat, all up and running in a playable condition, it is leaning against the front of my Marshall amp, on top of my amp is my SLO50 amp chassis that I'm working on building:


Attachment 14998

Het Doc, that came up looking good and has a Floyd style trem too.

Cannot comment on PUP compatibility other than blades do have a beefier sound than stock single coils and have one in the middle of my son's H-S-H hot rodded strat and it actually sounds better than the bridge humbucker.

You could go Kent Armstrong all the way and fit an M-Bucker Cool Blades in the bridge position. This is still a very powerful pickup, but having two x four-wire leads (it's basically two dual-blades on a common base) you would have the ability to select just one of the dual-blades if you wanted to match the sound and output of the middle and neck pickups, and then select both of them for a louder output. You'd need to add some mini switches or some switched pots to do it, but it can be done.

I have Armstrong blades in the Community Prototype build I did, just one of the doubles (humbucker size) and a single size, I used a freeway 6 way switch and a push/pull to give me 7 combinations. I think it's too much, they sound great on their own but start mixing them or hit the ALL combo and ...I can't think of the words to describe it...overpowering? If I was a shredder who loved gain and drive in bucket loads I might like it but they don't suit me, not in this combo anyway. I think I'll replace them with Toneriders or similar and use them in 2 separate axes further down the line.

Doc, the strat looks great, well done mate!

I know what you mean about too many options. The RG I've got the hot M-Bucker in also has a SD P-Rails in the neck (which has single coil, P-90 and humbucker configuration options). My friend wired it up for me but it's all a bit of a mystery as to exactly what each combination is, and two of them sound exactly the same. To get better options I'd need to add some mini-switches. I think I'll take the M-bucker out, fit a standard humbucker in the bridge and just have the switching controlling the P-rails options.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dedman

I have Armstrong blades in the Community Prototype build I did, just one of the doubles (humbucker size) and a single size, I used a freeway 6 way switch and a push/pull to give me 7 combinations. I think it's too much, they sound great on their own but start mixing them or hit the ALL combo and ...I can't think of the words to describe it...overpowering? If I was a shredder who loved gain and drive in bucket loads I might like it but they don't suit me, not in this combo anyway. I think I'll replace them with Toneriders or similar and use them in 2 separate axes further down the line.

Doc, the strat looks great, well done mate!

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Cheers mate, at least one of my guitar builds had to go according to plan, and I had a feeling it was going to be this one...haha.


The action on it is pretty low, I have it set up pretty close to Fender Strat specs, and I think it plays pretty well, the tuning stability is pretty good, if any of the strings do go out it is only by a very minute amount and it only takes a small tweak of the micro-tuners on the bridge to bring them back into tune, and the return to pitch after a dive-bomb or pull-up is better than what the bridge on my RG350DXZ is capable of, I'm happy with the guitar, but the current pickups need to be changed out for better quality ones.

Hi Doc, great news and really happy for you.

You need to do a Photoshoot for this one Doc, that's a serious bit of gear you've built! Great job!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FrankenWashie

You need to do a Photoshoot for this one Doc, that's a serious bit of gear you've built! Great job!

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Cheers mate, I'll see if I can do one when I've got the new pickups I'm ordering next fortnight installed in the guitar, I also want to do a demo soundclip so you guys can hear what it sounds like, I can't wait to see how the FrankenWashie turns out, if it ends up looking anything like how I'm picturing it in my mind, it'll look cool.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrNomis_44

Cheers mate, I'll see if I can do one when I've got the new pickups I'm ordering next fortnight installed in the guitar, I also want to do a demo soundclip so you guys can hear what it sounds like, I can't wait to see how the FrankenWashie turns out, if it ends up looking anything like how I'm picturing it in my mind, it'll look cool.

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Nothing like the weight of expectation eh? I seem to be making some steady progress with it, so I'm hopeful of a result in the next few weeks. Got a Batchelor week coming up so there'll be some concentrated building effort going in.

Update:


Next Tuesday, I'm going to be ordering some new bits and pieces for my HotRod Strat from Realtone Music, here's a list of what I'm going to be ordering:


* 1X Black Tonerider Rocksong full-sized bridge humbucker.

* 2X Kent Armstrong Dual Blade Single-Coil sized Humbuckers (one for the neck position and one for the middle position).

* 1X Set of Chrome Gotoh 6-In-Line Tuners.

* 1X Chrome Gotoh R2 1inch & 5/8 Locking Nut and mounting hardware.

* 1X 500k Log Mini CTS Pot (for volume control).

* 2X 250k Log Mini CTS Pots )for the two tone controls).

* 1X Black Bee .1 uF Oil Paper Capacitor (for the tone cap).


There's a couple of reasons why I'm going with the Kent Armstrongs, firstly, I haven't tried using any Kent Armstrong pickups before, secondly, I was after a couple of single-coil sized humbucking pickups so that I could get the single-coil tone without the hum, I had tried noiseless pickups before, but, I had some issues with the pickup routes not being deep enough to accommodate the pickups, with the Kent Armstrong Dual Blades, the two coils are mounted side-by-side rather than one on top of the other, I'm replacing the existing tuners with some new ones because one of the existing tuners is feeling a bit gritty when I tune the strings up to pitch, the existing tuners are a set of Chrome DR Parts Tuners that I bought for $26.00 from one of my local music stores, I bought them mainly to get the guitar up and running, same thing with the Eston guitar I bought from Cash Converters, now that I know that my design-concept for the HotRod Strat works, I can go ahead and upgrade any parts that need upgrading.

I'm ordering the Mini CTS pots because there's not enough clearance between the existing pots ( three 24mm 250k Log CTS pots), and the side of the body routing in some places, I literally had to use a sharp Stanley-knife blade to shave off some wood in strategic places in order to be able to fit the scratchplate to the body, the new Mini CTS pots will provide better clearance, with a reduced risk of shorts to ground to the copper-foil shielding tape I used to line the body routing, although no shorts to ground have occurred, I'm also changing the value of the volume pot from 250k Log to 500k Log so that there's less loading on the pickups (the pickups will sound a bit brighter as a consequence, but I'm fine with that cause they are all going to be humbuckers anyway, and they will all benefit from the slight extra brightness, besides there's the two tone controls I can use to take off any excessive brightness, so it's a win-win situation all around).

I'm going to be replacing the existing Chrome Schaller R2 Locking Nut with a Chrome Gotoh R2 Locking Nut because I found that some of the strings (particularly the high B and E-strings) tended to buzz a bit like a Sitar, I traced the cause to the notches in the existing Locking Nut, where the strings pass through, as it turned out Schaller made the notches a bit too wide when they manufactured the nut, so the string tends to vibrate against the side of the nut when plucked, I had the same issue with my white RG350DXZ guitar, which I fixed by swapping out the locking nut for a Gotoh, Gotoh seem to make the notches a bit narrower so that the strings fit better.

I'm going with a .1uF Black Bee paper-in-oil cap for the tone cap simply because I've never used them before, you're probably wondering why I'm using a value of .1uF, rather than the more common .047uF value, it's because I've elected to wire-up the tone controls using the Eric Johnson (currently my favorite, cause it makes the most sense to me) wiring system/scheme, here's a comparison of the wiring schemes of Fender's Standard Strat wiring, and the Eric Johnson wiring system/schemes:

Standard Fender Strat (Neck, Middle, and Bridge Single-Coil Pickups and two 250k Log Tone Pots):

Position 1= Neck + Tone 1.

Position 2= Neck + Middle + Tone 1 + Tone 2.

Position 3= Middle + Tone 2.

Position 4= Middle + Bridge + Tone 2.

Position 5= Bridge.


Eric Johnson Fender Strat (pickups and tone controls as per a Standard Strat):

Position 1= Neck + Tone 1.

Position 2= Neck + Middle + Tone 1.

Position 3= Middle.

Position 4= Middle + Bridge + Tone 2.

Position 5= Bridge + Tone 2.


Notice how in the Standard Strat wiring that there are two tone controls active when position two is selected?, to me that's a bit like overkill and you'd end up with a very muffled tone if you maxxed-out both tone controls, that doesn't really make much sense to me, especially when there's no tone control active when position five is selected, that's just me, others may be perfectly happy with the Standard Strat wiring though.

On the other hand, the Eric Johnson wiring looks a lot more versatile, you do lose the ability to have a tone control active in position three, but really to my ears it's not a major issue at all and I think the tone I get with just the Middle-pickup selected is quite perfectly useable, I even think the guitar, on the whole, actually sounds better, maybe crisper and brighter, you don't necessarily have to use a .1uF tone cap, you can use any value that you see fit, smaller values of tone caps will roll-off less of the highs in the tone you get when the tone controls are maxxed-out than larger values, the useful range might be from maybe .01uF to something like .15uf or maybe greater, the idea is to experiment with different values till you find one that you personally like, and works for you, you might be using a set of pickups that are exceptionally bright, so a larger value of tone cap may work, sure, I could have just used a generic .1uF greencap bought from my local Jaycar Electronics store, and it'll work fine, but I elected to use something a bit more high-endy, and go for a paper-in-oil cap, there's nothing wrong with trying something different just for fun anyway, that's what guitar-building is supposed to be all about, right?

I checked out a youtube demo clip of the Tonerider Rocksong in action and I liked the tone, it has the midrange tone I'm after without too much bass ( I found out the hard way that if a pickup has too much bass in it's tone, it tends to make my Marshall's overdrive and boosted-overdrive channels fart-out a bit in a harsh way, the overdrive and boosted-overdrive seem to like pickups with a bit of midrange in the tone a lot better, maybe that's a quirk of my Marshall (it's a 100 Watt all valve 2 X 12 inch combo amp).

Once I've done the upgrades to the HotRod Strat and I know it's working well, I'll get on with doing a demo clip for you guys.....stay tuned.


By the way, I'm still very happy with how the Metallic Blue body finish turned out, considering how much trouble I had with the Gold Strat, I'm still debating in my head whether to apply a few coats of clear-coat or not.



Update 2:


I've decided to add a set of three new Stainless Steel Trem-Springs to my shopping list, they are only going to cost me $2.00 each, so why not.

The tone control on the bridge pickup is a common mod these days. Certainly with a bridge humbucker, it makes sense.

Don't forget that you'll be needing the wider Fender/Floyd spacing for your bridge humbucker.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

The tone control on the bridge pickup is a common mod these days. Certainly with a bridge humbucker, it makes sense.

Don't forget that you'll be needing the wider Fender/Floyd spacing for your bridge humbucker.

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Yep, a very good point, I'll just check that the Tonerider Rocksong has the Fender pole-piece spacing, the spacing is not really an issue with the Kent Armstrong Dual Blades though, since the pole pieces are blades that span the length of the pickups, and as it turns out, the Tonerider Rocksong is indeed set up with it's pole-pieces F-Spaced, it is specified as being suitable as a Bridge pickup, the DC resistance is 12k, so I'm assuming that it is a medium-output pickup, the Kent Armstrongs have a DC resistance of 8.8k, hopefully that means they will be a reasonably good match for the Rocksong, the humbucker I currently have installed in the bridge position is one that came out of my PRS SE Custom 24, it has a DC resistance of 14.9, I think it is a bit too much for the other two pickups, cause the middle plus bridge pickup selection (position 4) is real thin and harsh sounding, all the currently installed pickups are going to be replaced anyway though so I can live with it till the bits arrive in the post, hopefully the guitar should sound great when I've finished doing all the upgrades to it, it's sounding pretty good as is though, just not when switched to position 4.


Last night I tightened up the truss-rod a bit to get the neck relief set to Fender's spec of .010 inch at the 8th fret, this also brought the action down a bit and it's about 2mm at the 17th fret, I'm not getting any fret-buzz at all on any string all the way up and down the neck, and the 1st fret action is pretty low and buzz free too, feeling pretty pleased with that.

With Fender style guitars, I tend to set them up using Fender factory specs whenever I can.

I looked on Tonerider's UK website, and over here it comes in 50mm and 52.4mm versions. So as long as you've got the F-spaced version, that's fine. http://www.tonerider.com/rocksong

I've never bothered with factory settings, and always just adjust the neck/saddles/nut until I've got it as low as I can go without buzzing. I may then take it up from there (as I have a habit of setting my action too low for good practice). These days I may also try stoning/re-profilling some or all of the frets if it's obvious there's a small problem area.

I've now got a better set of nut files, (my old ones were cheap and variable in their cutting power) but just taking the nut-slot cutting a few strokes too far is probably my biggest error, requiring either soma CA + baking soda filling, or fitting a new nut (and hopefully not repeating the process).

Here's Realtone Music's specs for the Tonerider Rocksong pickup they sell:

http://www.realparts.com.au/toneride...ker-black.html


Here are the specs for the Kent Armstrong Dual Blades:


http://www.realparts.com.au/kent-arm...kup-black.html


Hopefully they'll turn out to be a good match.

Yes, that's the right Tonerider.

It's very hard to tell from specs what a pickup is going to sound like. The dual blades aren't going to sound quite like vintage Strat pickups, due to the ceramic magnets and the much higher inductance figure of 7.69 Henrys (which will change their resonant peak compared to the lower inductance figures of more vintage voiced pickups). But they probably won't sound like more traditional mini-humbuckers like the SD Little '59 or JB jr. But they do have 4-conductor wiring, which means that you have series and parallel wiring options for the two coils, plus a coil tap option for a much thinner sound if you really need it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Yes, that's the right Tonerider.

It's very hard to tell from specs what a pickup is going to sound like. The dual blades aren't going to sound quite like vintage Strat pickups, due to the ceramic magnets and the much higher inductance figure of 7.69 Henrys (which will change their resonant peak compared to the lower inductance figures of more vintage voiced pickups). But they probably won't sound like more traditional mini-humbuckers like the SD Little '59 or JB jr. But they do have 4-conductor wiring, which means that you have series and parallel wiring options for the two coils, plus a coil tap option for a much thinner sound if you really need it.

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I'm actually not too worried about the Dual Blades not sounding like vintage Strat pickups, I can easily live with that, I'm more concerned about eliminating hum-noise, and if they don't sound like traditional mini-humbuckers I can live with that too, I might consider adding the coil-splitting options at a later date, so I'll keep that in mind, I'd only have to replace the pots with switching push-pull pots to implement the coil-splitting options, which will be easy enough to do, cheers for those suggestions, much appreciated.

I was just thinking that if the normal series mode did sound a bit thick, you could try just wiring them in parallel, which should still be hum- cancelling (I think) but get you closer to a true single coil sound. Obviously, having the two modes switchable gives you more options, but sometimes I find its easier to stick with basic sounds and swap to another guitar if I want a different one (also give you an excuse for having a lot of guitars). My Jimmy Page model LP has 21 possible switching combinations, but I've only ever used seven of them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

I was just thinking that if the normal series mode did sound a bit thick, you could try just wiring them in parallel, which should still be hum- cancelling (I think) but get you closer to a true single coil sound. Obviously, having the two modes switchable gives you more options, but sometimes I find its easier to stick with basic sounds and swap to another guitar if I want a different one (also give you an excuse for having a lot of guitars). My Jimmy Page model LP has 21 possible switching combinations, but I've only ever used seven of them.

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I guess the sky's the limit when it comes to series/parallel pickup wiring, my mate's Bird guitar has tons of options with regards to pickup wiring, he got me to replace a 4PDT toggle switch on it for him, that was a job and a half, fortunately I had the foresight to draw a wiring-diagram before de-soldering the switch, otherwise it would have been a nightmare to sort out, my LP Studio has coil-tapping incorporated in it so that when you pull the two volume control knobs up from the body, the two humbuckers become single-coils, to my ears the tone becomes a bit Fender-like, but what is surprising is that there doesn't appear to be a substantial drop in signal-level, which I would have expected.


I think my white Ibanez RG350DXZ incorporates Series/Parallel pickup wiring in some of the selector-switch positions, they sound a little different to the stock Fender tones, I think it's more a case of experiment till you find something that sounds good to your ears, but the thing is, what sounds good to one person may not sound good to another, but that's the great thing about our modern society, no two people will like the exact same thing, just imagine how boring the world would be if we all liked the same thing?, that's basically my attitude, besides, it's way more fun coming up with your own sound anyway, Brian May did it really well with his home-made Red Special, funny thing is, the guitar was made of bits and pieces he and his dad managed to scrape together cause he couldn't afford to buy a factory-made guitar, and now commercially made copies of his Red Special go for a fair few pounds, he and his dad obviously got something right, I always wondered how he managed to get that tone out of those Bourns pickups on his Red Special, he was obviously a smart cookie, and I think his dad was an engineer.


The next thing I'm going to have to figure out is how to make a headstock logo for the HotRod Strat, been looking in a few places in Darwin for the Waterslide Decal film I need for printing-out custom decals, no luck so far, but I'm not about to give up yet.

I buy most of my stuff like that off the web these days. This is such a relatively small island that delivery from almost anywhere can be next-day if necessary.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

I buy most of my stuff like that off the web these days. This is such a relatively small island that delivery from almost anywhere can be next-day if necessary.

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I wonder how big the UK is in comparison to Australia, in terms of land-mass, that is, my mum was originally from the UK, a place called Nottinghamshire, which is well-known for being Robin Hood country, it would be cool to come to the UK and visit the place where my mum came from, she reckons that one of her ancestors had ties to Royalty, whether that's true is open to debate, I have met my mum's sister and her daughter, they were nice people from what I can remember, my Dad was originally from Budapest, Hungary, and he told me once that the family surname comes from a village where he was from, my family surname has been Anglicanized from it's original spelling.

Well a web page says Australia has 34.1 x the area of the UK. And that includes Northern Ireland, so the main island of (now not so) Great Britain, is even smaller. It's got crap politics and mainly bad newspapers (though that seems to be pretty universal these days), in most areas the roads are over-crowded, and there are far too many people all trying to live in London and the south-east. But there's a lot to like about it too (especially when the sun is shining). Obviously it's got a lot of history to it, lots of historic buildings, loads of quaint villages with olde-worlde looks and thatched roofs, lots of green rolling countryside, lots of quite quickly changing countryside. All the designated 'national parks' are great places to visit. Wales has lots of rugged countryside hills and mountains, The Scottish highlands have lots of rugged hills and bigger mountains and big lochs and some quite spectacular views (especially when it's not raining or foggy). East Anglia is generally flat farmland, but has a beauty of its own, especially around the coast (and especially North Norfolk) and rivers (the Norfolk Broads are great to explore by boat). The south-west, Devon and Cornwall are less densely populated than a lot of the country but are very beautiful with sometimes very rugged coastlines and open moors. Small fishing villages located up winding creeks or in small valleys in the rocks. But as a result they become very busy indeed during the summer.

Basically, the really nice places to be are either full of 2nd homes or holiday cottages and it now costs a fortune to live there, or very remote with few facilities and not much work. Most towns are mainly of bad post-war construction (an awful lot of town and city centres got bombed during WW2) but rather than redesign whilst they had the chance, kept the previous chaotic road systems, so that most places now take a long, frustrating time to drive through. They almost all have the same chain stores, so you could easily interchange most town centres and no-one would know the difference. But there are some lovely exceptions, made lovelier by being different.

And of course in Guildford there's Andertons (though you'll rarely see Captain Lee or Chappers or Rabea there unless they are making a video) plus a few miles away there's Guitar Village - a super guitar-only shop set in a really old building in the generally lovely small town of Farnham.

The weather is generally variable, we don't often get the same conditions for more than a few days (unless you go to Wales or Scotland on the north of England where it does rain a lot). It rarely gets very cold (except up in the north of Scotland and other mountainous areas), -4°C would typically be a very cold day in winter, though winters are normally on the cold site and damp or wet. Summers can be pretty hot at times - maybe up to 32°C on a few days, though it's generally in the low-mid 20's.

My wife is from Lincolnshire, which borders Nottinghamshire to the south-east. Nottinghamshire is a place I've travelled through, rather than travelled to. It has some nice countryside and towns mixed-in with some less-pleasant and more industrial areas. I'm from Surrey, which is a mixture of bland interconnecting commuter towns coupled with some amazingly lovely green areas. There's still a lot of the UK I've yet to visit myself and keep finding nice surprises where ever I go.

Yes the UK is certainly worth a visit, it's just a long trek. The main reason I've never made it to Australia, even though I've got quite a few friends over there (and I could never persuade our Sydney office that they wanted me out there that badly). To make it worthwhile, you need at least three weeks, which isn't always easy to organise with work.

Plus, we've only got one (rare and not that deadly) poisonous snake and no poisonous spiders!

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Plus, we've only got one (rare and not that deadly) poisonous snake and no poisonous spiders!

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That's why I love to go home to NZ, you can crash about in the bush and you don't really have to worry about anything killing you apart from your own stupidity. I always love going to The UK, the fact that you can sit yourself in an old pub and have a pint in a place that has been serving beer longer than the combined settled history of both the countries I call home puts a great perspective on things.