GST-1 'Hexacaster' build

[Simon Barden]

Well it all went together again, and the GK pickup side now works.



But it's all got to come apart again. The coil split brings the screw coil, not the slug coil into play, and that's too near the bridge and too thin sounding.

Also, only the outer 'E's sound properly. The inner strings sound really thin and 'crackly'. I can only think that as the coil is next to the hex pickup magnets, there is some interference going with the magnetic field so that the strings aren't being read correctly by that coil, though the GK pickup seems unaffected by the humbucker. But the GK magnets are higher up than the humbucker magnet, which may be why, and so it's just the field near the strings that is going wonky and fighting the field at the bottom of the humbucker coil.

This thinness is also affecting the humbucker sound, as although the full humbucker doesn't have any noticeably weak strings, overall it sounds a lot less powerful and less full sounding than you'd expect it to.

Off to do some research now, as I only want to take the effing thing apart and put it back together again one more time and for it to be perfect after that.

Oh, and the probably reason the Gibson humbucker sounded 'meh' through my HT5 was the fact that the HT5's definitely not well, probably with a dying power valve. Well it was from the very first batch back in 2008, so not too bad for an amp that's had a lot of use. But the Rocksong looks far better and sits flat, so as long as it can be made to work, it's staying.