Guitars¶
Les Paul¶
Theres a youtube video I cant find right now where a guy proves factually that solid guitar bodies make no difference. He did this by taking every piece of hardware in a guitar and using two tables as the headstock and bridge, so it had a body made of air. It sounded exactly the same. Note You can absolutely bore holes in a guitar body to get it to resonate like crazy, to the point where it influences the pickups. But as far as "magic tonewood" goes, you're getting swindled. fretboard woods matter for if they're hard and oily, and the neck needs to be sufficiently stiff along with the body itself, beyond that you're playing on a brick.
I bought an epiphone lp custom pro before I knew anything, which was a nice waste of money. I opted to "upgrade" it instead of starting from scratch since I'd never done this before and I had no idea how specific anything was.
Hardware Specs¶
- Grover tuners
- TUSQ nut (planning on carving a PEEK one)
- Faber hybridge + saddle
- Gibson 57 neck pickup
- Brandonwound T-type bridge pickup
- Elixir strings
I use normal springs on the pickups since they're a lot more gentle and reactive than silicone tubing.
Some of the original hardware was reused after the gold plating was buffed off of it. The sticker is hiding a massive gouge I made with my polisher. I started this project with the mindset I was working on junk, and I'm too lazy to buy and apply nitorlack. There are some other scrapes and dents on this body too that I've hidden with random black inks. Keeping with the Ken sticker styling, I labeled the pull functions on the knobs in rose-handwriting-style. I used stickers otherwise I'd have to get clear nitorlack to protect handwritten or stencil sprayed labels. The off-color black on the stickers is because I need to work out my ecotank's settings better, and nitorlack colors are insanely vibrant (in this case ultra black).
The strap buttons are "special" too. I used a very large one on the neck side and a small one on the bridge side. I like the bottom button to be low profile, and the top one is always what gave me trouble anyway. The strap itself is a something and woven, not straight leather. I did try a leather one but it is very grabby. This strap is nice and heavy duty for a heavy guitar.
I blended the pickup types to closer match Ken's 1978 LP, which according to the history books, should have T type pickups. T types are very bright and energetic. I kept the Gibson 57 neck pickup in because it just sounds too pretty.
Electronics specs¶
- Switchcraft switch + jack
- CTS 500k PP linear pots (all of them)
- 0.1uF alu + teflon USSR tone caps
- ~700nF (total) Dublin silver mica treb bypass cap stacks
- 150k Dale RN55C treb bypass resistors
- All wiring is stranded silver plated with
- braided shield
- ptfe or kapton jacketing
Switch functions:
- Neck split coil
- Bridge split coil
- Bridge phase
- Neck+Bridge in Series
I have a shitload of ~100nF mica caps lying around (I really do), and thought "hey I can screw with the high pass cutoff and these are high quality and they're free".
Ratocaster¶
The ultimate grunge guitar. This was a refurbish + modding session on a squier strat. I replaced all the electronics, added a push/pull pot to engage the mid pickup when the bridge? is on, which completes the pickup combinations (best part is running all 3 at once). On top of this I added in a tone cap selector 6 pos rotary switch as a 4th control to see if a strat can be forced to doom chug. I think with some quality high output pickups, this thing will probably be insane. I only had one day to do everything so its all pretty rushed.
Sage Notes¶
Wiring pickup polarity correctly (with 4 conductor pickups), is a fucking BITCH. Make sure you read over the polarity rules for neck vs bridge pickups, as well as the NS NF SS SF "pinout" correctly.
Drop some wood glue (like Titebond II) into body screwholes and screw the screw(s) in and it'll basically create threaded inserts so the wood won't get blown out anymore, it also perfectly repairs blown out holes.