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!
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?
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.
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.
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:
Last edited by DrNomis_44; 09-12-2016 at 07:24 PM.
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.
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.
Last edited by DrNomis_44; 09-12-2016 at 09:26 PM.
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