Last one for sure?

[Tgraham]

There’s always another guitar calling for attention so here is my (last) hahaha build. I’m thinking light blue on the top of the body to show up the quilted maple, neck and headstock will evolve after I see what the top looks like. I have had access to ekamant sandpaper but now I cannot find it anywhere, it’s really good paper but where is it, any ideas?

[fender3x]

In my experience, it's hard to tell the difference, at least in the moment, between the "last one" and the "latest one."

I had never heard of Ekamant, but it looks good from what I read. I saw it on eBay but it was pricey. It looks like all of North America is served by an outfit just outside NY City. I can't find a distributor in Australia, although there is one in NZ.

https://www.ekamant.com/contact-partners/

[Tgraham]

Thx fender

[Trevor Davies]

Ahh yes. I recall saying "last one" about 24 guitars ago! Light blue can look very nice.

[Tgraham]

Looks like this “last” is now the latest one, I found a burl top Htl that grabbed my attention, omg it is a serious disease. You boys warned me.

[fender3x]

Looks like this “last” is now the latest one, I found a burl top Htl that grabbed my attention, omg it is a serious disease. You boys warned me.

It's a lesser known variant of Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

[Tgraham]

I’m thinking of upgrading pickups on this build, hopefully without breaking the budget, what have others used and or recommendations please.

[fender3x]

I haven't gotten far on my build yet, but I got a set of the Pearly Gates clone from Dragonfire pickups with covers.

https://tntcustomguitars.com/product...s-color-choice

I was looking for a lower output, Alnico II that would be sort of in that Pearly Gates or Seth lover range...but did not want to pay SD or Gibson prices.

These are designed as clones of popular US pickups but made in Asia...I *think* maybe by Artec? Toneriders and GFS use a similar approach and are pretty popular with PB builders.

[Tgraham]

Thanks Fender, yeah some are way out of my budget range

[fender3x]

Nice to see someone here after my own heart (or wallet?). I mostly replace hardware like pickups, tuners, and sometimes bridges. What you do, depends a bit on what you like. The cheapest "upgrade" might be to just swap out the ceramic magnets that the kit pickups come with for Alnico II or V (the most common "vintage" magnets). I tested the pickups that came with my kit for resistance and inductance,* and thought they might still be wound a bit hot, so I took a chance on the next cheapest option: A set of no-name "57 classic alnico II" pickups on ebay. The seller put the resistance and inductance specs up, and they were similar to the SD pickups. However, they were two conductor pickups, so I would not be able to coil-split.** That may not be a big deal with low output humbuckers since their single coil output may be really low...but I wanted to be able to experiment, and so opted for the next cheapest approach: Find a pickup importer who designs, or buys designer pickups from an Asian builder. That is what led me to Dragonfire. I have purchased from the owner before, and know him to be knowledgeable about the products he sells. I told him what I wanted and he made a recommendation. I ended up spending just under US$100 for both pickups. That's about 2x as much as the no-names and 3-4x as much as replacing magnets. There is a 4th (relatively) cheap option... Which is to buy from a small winder. This can be a nice way of getting a custom pickup for much less than SD or G prices. In the US it's still $100 to $160 per pickup, which is more than I wanted to spend, although it's been my go-to approach for singlecoils and bass pickups.

You can get Wilkinson pickups for about the same price as the no-names, or less, but they are Alnico V and hotter (I think). They seem like a good deal to me, but it depends on the sound you're looking for. A hotter PAF style alnico V pickup seems to be the most popular...and more mfgs = better prices ;-)


*My understanding is that this gives something of a comparison of the relative "hotness" of pickups that are otherwise similar to each other but the comparison is only "ballpark". I don't have the equipment to test for anything more sophisticated and probably would not understand it if I did. Please defer to Weirdbits or Doc who actually understand some things about electricity.

** Speaking of Weirdbits, somewhere here he wrote a post about how to turn a two-conductor humbucker into a 4 conductor humbucker. I actually tried this with one of my kit pickups some years ago and managed to turn it into a paperweight. My soldering skills have gotten better in the meantime, but those wires are so small! I haven't tried again ;-)