A mate of mine gave me an electric guitar, for nothing!

Hey Everyone,

You wouldn't believe this, but a mate of mine gave me an electric guitar, for nothing, I thought that members of the Pitbull Guitars Forum community might be interested in checking out some pics of it, so I decided to start a new thread about it, so here we go......

Rightio, I'm guessing you all want to know what kind of a guitar it is?, well...it's a Peavey Generation EXP Telecaster, it has a set of conventional passive magnetic pickups, plus a set of 6 piezo-electric pickups.

The conventional magnetic pickup configuration is a single-coil neck pickup, a single-coil middle pickup, and a full-sized humbucking bridge pickup.

Each of the 6 piezo-electric pickups are mounted in the string-saddles, there's a circuit board in the control cavity route that contains all the preamp circuitry for the piezo-electric pickups, the circuit board is powered via a standard 9V battery.

Okay, so what about the controls then?

There is a master-volume, master-tone, and a master-volume for the Piezo-electric pickups which enables you to blend-in some of the Piezo-electric pickup sound with the passive magnetic pickup sound, there's a 5-way pickup switch for the passive magnetic pickups, and a small 3-way toggle switch that gives you three options, Piezo only, Piezo+Passive magnetics, and Passive magnetics only.

Stay tuned for some pics of the guitar.


Here we go, some pics of the guitar:

Attachment 42753

Attachment 42754

Attachment 42755

When I got the guitar it was missing the plastic nut that normally would have been glued in the nut trench, after some debating in my head, I opted to install a Fender LSR nut, which got the guitar in a playable condition, one other thing I noticed was that the bridge plate appeared to be in the wrong position to enable each string to be properly intonated, each of the six string saddles ended-up hard up against the back of the bridge plate after I went through the process of adjusting the intonation, most of the strings are almost spot-on with the G-string being the worst offender, I've got the G-String set as far back as it can go and the intonation appears to be still sharp by about 5 cents, I'm guessing that the bridge plate needs to be moved back from the bridge pickup by about 5mm or so in order for each string to be correctly intonated, they are all as close as I can get them to being properly intonated, there's a problem with setting all the saddles hard-up against the back of the bridge in that it makes it hard to push the strings through their holes when installing new strings, my guess is that someone messed-up their maths when designing the guitar.

Anyway, I tried playing the guitar through my Boss Katana amp and to my ears it is a very bright sounding guitar, the body is made from a few pieces of solid-wood, I'll have to do a quick google to find out exactly what kind of wood was used to make the body, but it is definitely solid wood and not plywood, my guess is that the neck is Maple with a rosewood fingerboard, but again I'll have to do a quick google to be sure, the piezo pickups do have a kind-of Acoustic vibe to them, I was surprised at how high the output level was from them, if you blend the Piezos with the Passive pickups you get some pretty interesting sounds.

For the time-being the tuners I have installed on the guitar will do but I'm seriously thinking of replacing them with a set of Steinberger Gearless Tuners when Stewmac have them in stock, hopefully sometime this year.

Update:

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to forget about buying a set of Steinberger Gearless Tuners for this guitar, apparently they aren't being made anymore which is a shame.

On the upside, after some debating in my head, I think I figured-out how to fix this guitar's intonation issues and still be able to retain the piezo-electric pickup saddles, I was considering buying a standard Tele bridge with a cut-out for a humbucker as a replacement for the stock bridge, it would most likely fix the intonation issues, but I would have to lose the piezos in the process, next-time I go to string this guitar up, I'm going to see if I can move the bridge back from the bridge humbucker by at least 5mm or so without having to drill new holes in the body to re-locate the string ferrules, if so, then it'll just mean plugging the old bridge mounting screw holes and camouflaging the plugs with a black sharpie, and drilling four new ones.

Thomann in Germany have the black Steinberger ones in stock https://www.thomann.de/gb/steinberge...ner_set_bk.htm. But at £99+ postage, I personally wouldn't bother. The chrome ones are cheaper at £83, but won't be in stock for 'a few months' - if at all if they are stopping production.

There will be a lot of Gibson Firebirds that may become unplayable without serious modification in they have tuner issues then. My mate's son has a Firebird that's two years older then mine and has them (mine has standard Grovers). And one tuner on that felt very dodgy indeed.

Gibson do sell them, so you may be able to get them from Gibson direct (or a Gibson dealer) https://www.gibson.com/en-US/Gear/Tuning/PMMH-ST/Chrome. No indication they are discontinued.

But I'd probably fit Korean-made locking tuners if it was mine. Decent and do the job. But I'd try and sort that bridge out first otherwise it's not really wort doing much to it. But you've got two sets of holes to worry about, the string-through ones and the Graph tech Ghost saddle holes. Definitely looks from the holes for the GraphTech saddles that it was designed to sit further back with the saddles sitting further forwards and mostly covering the 'racetrack' holes.

Plug the existing string-through holes and redrill? Will look a bit messy from the rear, but at least it will work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Thomann in Germany have the black Steinberger ones in stock https://www.thomann.de/gb/steinberge...ner_set_bk.htm. But at £99+ postage, I personally wouldn't bother. The chrome ones are cheaper at £83, but won't be in stock for 'a few months' - if at all if they are stopping production.

There will be a lot of Gibson Firebirds that may become unplayable without serious modification in they have tuner issues then. My mate's son has a Firebird that's two years older then mine and has them (mine has standard Grovers). And one tuner on that felt very dodgy indeed.

Gibson do sell them, so you may be able to get them from Gibson direct (or a Gibson dealer) https://www.gibson.com/en-US/Gear/Tuning/PMMH-ST/Chrome. No indication they are discontinued.

But I'd probably fit Korean-made locking tuners if it was mine. Decent and do the job. But I'd try and sort that bridge out first otherwise it's not really wort doing much to it. But you've got two sets of holes to worry about, the string-through ones and the Graph tech Ghost saddle holes. Definitely looks from the holes for the GraphTech saddles that it was designed to sit further back with the saddles sitting further forwards and mostly covering the 'racetrack' holes.

Plug the existing string-through holes and redrill? Will look a bit messy from the rear, but at least it will work.

---

With the bridge positioned where it is, the front-edges of the saddles are very close to where the scale-length ends up, the guitar uses Fender's 25.5 inch scale-length, I found this out by getting my 600mm steel ruler that also has inches marked on it, and I used my Fender Stratocaster to mark the spot where the middle of the 12th fret ends up on the ruler, next I used the ruler to do the same on the peavey's neck and the mark ended-up exactly in the middle of it's 12th fret.

Next, I got my roll of blue painter's tape and put some tape either side of the Peavey's bridge, and used my ruler to mark where the scale-length ends, turns-out I was right, with each of the string-saddles adjusted back as far as they could go against the back of the bridge-plate there was about 2mm or so between the end of the scale-length and the front-edge of the saddles, no wonder the strings always played sharp at the 12th fret, I'll post a pic here tomorrow so you can see what I mean, I have the intonation for each string on the Peavey adjusted as best I can, but the low E-string, and G-string (the worst offender) are both still reading sharp even though both are adjusted hard up against the back of the bridge, the high E-string seems close to perfect with the b-string, the D-string and A-string still a bit sharp.


I wonder what kind of finish Peavey used on these Generation EXP guitars, if they used a lacquer-based finish, maybe I could order some finish touch up from Stewmac that's compatible so I could cover-up any hole plugs to make them invisible, then I could easily fill-in the old holes and carefully drill new ones.

I'm convinced that the bridge being wrongly placed is a mistake that occurred while the guitar was being manufactured, and my guess is that someone didn't pick it up during their Q.C. inspection, so a huge batch of these guitars were made with the same manufacturing mistake....well, my theory anyway.


I did notice that if all the string-saddles were adjusted so that they covered the racetrack holes, then each string would play horribly sharp at the 12th fret.


Here's my understanding of correct bridge positioning with regards to good intonation adjustment, the bridge needs to be positioned so that the scale length can be easily lengthened in order to compensate for the string-tuning's tendency to go sharp when the string is fretted at the 12th fret due to the increased tension on the string, you should never have to shorten the string so it is shorter than the scale-length in order to compensate, unless the bridge is too far back from where it should be, or there's some issue with fret-placement, or the neck has a twist or some other fault.

Yes, the bridge needs to be moved back before the saddles could be moved forwards to cover the racetrack holes and your understanding of bridge positioning is correct.

You could got a faulty string where its been over-stretched in one small area so you've got a much thinner section, which would throw the normal intonation out.

I'd have thought it would be a poly finish. Very unlikely to be nitro lacquer unless it was a US-made Peavey custom shop guitar.

I recently mended an Ibanez acoustic that had a side-mounted jack socket that had been ripped out when the guitar was dropped with a jack plugged in. I mended the hole with a mixture of wood and resin, then sprayed the repair area with black auto paint and clear auto acrylic lacquer. After sanding and polishing, it was just about invisible. I fitted an end-pin jack instead - much stronger!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Yes, the bridge needs to be moved back before the saddles could be moved forwards to cover the racetrack holes and your understanding of bridge positioning is correct.

You could got a faulty string where its been over-stretched in one small area so you've got a much thinner section, which would throw the normal intonation out.

I'd have thought it would be a poly finish. Very unlikely to be nitro lacquer unless it was a US-made Peavey custom shop guitar.

I recently mended an Ibanez acoustic that had a side-mounted jack socket that had been ripped out when the guitar was dropped with a jack plugged in. I mended the hole with a mixture of wood and resin, then sprayed the repair area with black auto paint and clear auto acrylic lacquer. After sanding and polishing, it was just about invisible. I fitted an end-pin jack instead - much stronger!

---

Cheers Simon, good to know that, it proves that I wasn't imagining things, I've currently got a set of fairly new-ish Ernie Ball Super Slinkys in 42-09 gauge on the Peavey, which I strongly suspect is one not made in the US, so it could very well be a poly-finish, I'll have to do some googling tomorrow to find-out for sure.

Of course I know that occasionally I may get the odd faulty string in amongst sets of known-brand strings, that reminds me of some brand-new DAddario strings I once bought that had black corrosion on them when I opened the plastic bags they were sealed in, these were brand-new never opened before strings.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Thomann in Germany have the black Steinberger ones in stock https://www.thomann.de/gb/steinberge...ner_set_bk.htm. But at £99+ postage, I personally wouldn't bother. The chrome ones are cheaper at £83, but won't be in stock for 'a few months' - if at all if they are stopping production.

There will be a lot of Gibson Firebirds that may become unplayable without serious modification in they have tuner issues then. My mate's son has a Firebird that's two years older then mine and has them (mine has standard Grovers). And one tuner on that felt very dodgy indeed.

Gibson do sell them, so you may be able to get them from Gibson direct (or a Gibson dealer) https://www.gibson.com/en-US/Gear/Tuning/PMMH-ST/Chrome. No indication they are discontinued.

But I'd probably fit Korean-made locking tuners if it was mine. Decent and do the job. But I'd try and sort that bridge out first otherwise it's not really wort doing much to it. But you've got two sets of holes to worry about, the string-through ones and the Graph tech Ghost saddle holes. Definitely looks from the holes for the GraphTech saddles that it was designed to sit further back with the saddles sitting further forwards and mostly covering the 'racetrack' holes.

Plug the existing string-through holes and redrill? Will look a bit messy from the rear, but at least it will work.

---

Interestingly enough, Gibson state that those Steinberger Gearless Tuners require no modifications to be made to the guitar in order to install them, but that's actually a lie, you need to drill a small hole for the short locating pin near each of the larger tuner mounting holes, on the front of the guitar headstock, which marrs the finish of the guitar.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Simon Barden

Yes, the bridge needs to be moved back before the saddles could be moved forwards to cover the racetrack holes and your understanding of bridge positioning is correct.

You could got a faulty string where its been over-stretched in one small area so you've got a much thinner section, which would throw the normal intonation out.

I'd have thought it would be a poly finish. Very unlikely to be nitro lacquer unless it was a US-made Peavey custom shop guitar.

I recently mended an Ibanez acoustic that had a side-mounted jack socket that had been ripped out when the guitar was dropped with a jack plugged in. I mended the hole with a mixture of wood and resin, then sprayed the repair area with black auto paint and clear auto acrylic lacquer. After sanding and polishing, it was just about invisible. I fitted an end-pin jack instead - much stronger!

---

Hey Simon,

I'm currently working on my Peavey guitar as I type this, things are really looking-up with regards to re-positioning the bridge, as luck would have it, I'm not going to have to drill a whole new set of string holes in the body of the guitar, all I will need to do is plug the existing bridge mounting-screw holes (5 in total), and drill new ones on the front of the guitar body, and that should fix the intonation issue for good, leaving me with plenty adjustment for lengthening each string, the six existing string holes all line-up with the holes in the bridge for the piezo pickups, so all I need to do is re-locate the bridge about 5-6mm back from it's original position.


Only two of the original bridge mounting-screw holes will be visible after the bridge is re-located, but if I use a black sharpie to camouflage the plugs, it should look almost invisible.


Here's a pic of the bridgeplate in it's original position, the pen marks on the blue painter's tape indicate where the scale-length ends:


Attachment 43397


Here's a pic of the bridgeplate moved to it's new position, the end of the long holes in the bridgeplate end-up right over where the string holes were:

Attachment 43398


Note that the row of small holes in the bridgeplate are where the strings would normally pass-through, hopefully that should fix all the intonation issues with all the strings for good, allowing me plenty of adjustment-range for lengthening the strings to compensate for any of the strings playing sharp at the 12th fret, the low E-string and G-string being the worst offenders.

All looking good. Sharpies are wonderful things for covering up small marks and repairs. I use them all the time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Barden

All looking good. Sharpies are wonderful things for covering up small marks and repairs. I use them all the time.

---

One other thing I did notice was that a surface-mount capacitor had literally fallen-off the piezo-pickup preamp circuit board from where it was supposed to be soldered, at first I thought it was just a small glob of solder, then I did a double-take and realized what it was, I think I have a conventional capacitor I can use as a replacement, I'm wondering if that's the reason why the piezo's were a bit horrible-sounding because that smd cap had fallen-off the circuit board....hmmmm....I'll have to wait and see, the piezos did sound a bit harsh and metallic to my ears, maybe this is why.....hmmmmm.....


The loose smd capacitor:

Attachment 43399


Where the loose capacitor was soldered to the piezo preamp board (where it says C13):

Attachment 43400


Update:

I had a look at a magnified view of the pic of the piezo pickup preamp board, and it looks like some of those other smd capacitors have dried-out/leaked a bit, so, looks like this whole fixit-job just got a bit more complicated, I think I'm going to have to replace every single one of those smd capacitors with conventional ones, fortunately I have a good supply of conventional ones on hand......down the "rabbit-hole" we go.


Don't you just love it when what should be a simple job, turns into something more complex?

It was ever thus! :D

[QUOTE=
Don't you just love it when what should be a simple job, turns into something more complex?[/QUOTE]

This is the way.


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