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Monday, December 28, 2009

Best, bestest...The most Famed Mosrite?



If you wind back all the way to the near beginnings of this blog you'll find a few pics of my first Univox flyer which I stuck a dimarzio fs 1 reissue into the tail.
The univox guitars are okay, but to be honest they feel as if they're made of balsa wood and you can use the neck as a whammy bar...

The real mcoy..well here is my favorite of all Mosrites and I'm currently in the chase for a rep...found one..but the piggy bank is bare..

Despite the fact that JR had a minibucker in the neck, he unplugged it..and if you listen to the Ramones last gig " we're outta here", his sound is massive!

Yowza! its the real relic deal....




Loks like a white over sunburst as well....

If you found one, buy it!



I'll be the first to admit that I'm a person who will try and avoid anything and everything that is Made in China.It took me long enough to realise that the Japanese can actually make fine musical instruments, but otherwise I'm more old school conservative thinking were buying Euro gear and some items from the USA come first and foremost.
So when I heard this Hayden and I heard it was PRC I was a bit surprised. I did some research and discovered that Hayden was in fact a British company who had jumped on the band wagon and moved some building rights deep into the PRC but also retained a custom shop and UK based plant.hand wired point to point amplifiers.
The sound of these amplifiers is almost a slap in the face to the high end priced amps.I cant really describe it, I suggest you give one a shot.You'll be surprised.
A friend who is a very good guitarist put guitars from budget to high end fender custom shop thru the test and they all sounded great.
Okay, my Marshall Silver Jubilee is an awesome amp, but you just cant get the same warm sound out of it that you get from the Hayden and of course not for the price.
try one, you'll not be disappointed.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Tone Quest..don't forget the Caps!













hours upon hours of reading through peoples experiences with caps, different pickups and of course the tone yer looking for.Clapton used 0.015s @ 100v, SRV apparently last used 0,22s, normal set up from fender went from 1.0 down to 0,47 in 1997.
You gotta keep your eye open for @ volts as well..decisions, decisions...keeping it low and your up to a brighter tone..Think I'll go for a Vintage Cap running at 047 or 022...but with a master tone running on a no load pot, I could use a 1.0 vintage copy and still open wide on 10 missing out the cap completely...then the question of a blender pot...

Friday, December 25, 2009

Eleven Rack


Probably a wee bit too over the top for my ambitions, but interesting all the same.
Now i'm reading about different software for guitar and it gets a bit over the top.
Basically all I want is a line to a mic to record live from my marshall or any other cab as opposed to plugging into a pc and using software cabs and effects.

On the cards is guitar rig session which gives me that ability.Basically a soundcard and a mic with some recording software, which i believe is cubase for the guitar rig.

Project Schecter a step forwards..

We're here:

Schecter iroko strat body
Schecter maple neck or unmarked schecter strat style rosewood neck
Fender brassman tremelo block
Fender malmsteen brass nut
Gold Schaller vintage tuners
Brass claw and "silent" trem springs.
Fatboy Mint green pickguard 62ri plus covers

So basically theres enough material to put together 2 complete projects here.
With the 83 JVSQ white body waiting for a neck, and with the beautiful iroko orange/red nitro schecter body waiting for a neck, the question is which one goes where.

I'm thinking the maple neck will move onto Sami MkII to make her Sami Mk III

JVSQ will then inherit the SRV Signature neck with the relic mint green 62ri parts and retain the JV trem block.This will be more reliced than the other 62Ri

The schecter will inherit the Schecter AG neck with all brass parts as they were back in the day. saying that it will only be brass parts through the string line, not the pickguard which will end up being a white single play 57 I think.

we shall see..the options are all there.I'll update once the parts arrive.

Fender CS '59 thin skins...


The quest doesn't stop for the next build and once again I managed to find a set of pretty rare pups that had been ripped out of a Fender Stratocaster 59 "thin skin" custome shop model. Apparently these pups are only available in these limited models and I was happy that the middle mup was not reverse wound as I already have that set up in my SRV Slider vintage scatterwounds.
The outputs are;
neck 5.9/
Mid 5.9/
Bridge 6.1

Now the idea is to set up a wiring diagram which will have a mastertone and tone blender for neck and bridge pups (you can find that wiring diagram in the blog).
I'm not 100% yet on this as I may also buy an srv cap and just set up normally.
Regardless, these were a very good purchase!

Saturday, December 19, 2009

just had too..schecter custom shop.....









Apparently a certain mr Billy Gibbons handed a schecter neck to a certain Stevie Ray Vaughn who stuck it on his "Lenny" guitar..This neck was apparently built by the same custom shop...I just had to get this for the schecter body...

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Mr Horsepower meets Andy Summers Bridge!






Amazing quality brass bridge like the Andy Summers bridge.
Mr Horsepower, already a heavy beast, has now become even heavier but she needed a looking over anyway as something wasn't well with the electrics.
So now she has two 77 pots wired up and a more solid Gibson style jackplate as the other simply fried my mind.

mixing it up...




The 62ri that I put together was disappointing for several reasons.
But as I had a few bits n bobs hanging around I decided to stick a 77 fender pickguard with knobs and switch , together with the MasterTone set up I had on the 62RI pups, but replaced them with a coupe of 78 Dimarzio SDS 1s.These original SDS 1s are fantastic pickups and despite their hot output can be used for any style.

One problem is trying to match them up with other pickups, so I didn't.I went the Richie Blackmore way and simply left out a pup, although his guitars had dummies, I used black tape.
I also realised the tremelo was badly setup as I had to raise the height of the strings to clear the taller than normal Dimarzio and I didnt want to remove wood.

The result is awesome! I'm more and more understanding that as opposed to buying other players signatures, you should build your own from parts! This one has gone up in my estimations.
Parts are: 84 jv/sq 62 ri body
Warmoth pro rosewood/birdseye AAA neck
Vintage Dimarzio SDS 1s
Fender 77 pickguard and plastic
Master Tone setup

Saturday, December 12, 2009

thats the savings gone then...








With the advent of the awesome Iroko bodied Schecter body purchase, I started looking around for parts for a craic..
At the moment the guitars are all getting chopped and changed...with the white olympic coming any day and the ivory reliced fatboy gear stripped to put on the 3,15 body , the next to be moved would be the slider 59 SRV pups and the SRV signature fender neck. I'm going "all-in" with the Olympic and the Eric Johnson body will have to be put aside for just now.

Whilst browsing I mananged to pick up a Schecter era neck that requires a nut and frets, but will do the job.Whilst looking at the neck and the original Schecters,I realised that Brass was a main ingredient to the sound.To my delight and surprise I found an original Fender Brassman series vintage tremelo block.That,together with a brass nut in the Schecter should make an interesting sound.Add to that to gold shaller tuners complete that will drop straight into the neck..this will be an interesting project for sure!

Apparently Fender pickguards fit straight onto the body, but by all accounts its a 57style due to the amount of screws..Have to look around a bit more.

Friday, December 11, 2009

..'cos this aint...





I had too...sometimes you just see a colour and see the grain and have to buy..in this case it could have been any manufatured body, but its not, its a IROKO wood with a thin nitro skin and weighing in at 3,5 Lbs..The history of these guitars is interesting of course, with the old Van Nuys build USA guitars bringing in top money.
This was advertised as a MIJ Schecter body from around '84...however reading the history of the guitars I'm not so sure.Who cares, with the rarity of the wood and the weight, I can't wait to put my 22 fret rosewood AAA birdeye neck onto this beauty.This is my x-mas present for 2009.

Monday, December 7, 2009

is this "shite"? or not....




okidoki..
sometimes I go out on a limb..but 40 quid and I had to give this a shot...if it has a boat shape and works then 'm laughing..

lightest yet..."all change"





Ok, I admit how disappointed I was when I finished my JVSQ white 62RI.
I picked up Sami (Ej body/srv neck/sliders 59ers) and it just melted down the jap bodied item into plastic.Not sure why...could be the neck, or could be the basswood body...the trem setup could also come into play...regardless, I wasn't happy at all!

Then this came into view...the weight..3,15LBs...62RI, alder body...must have..
So, all change! This is going to get the SRV neck, fatboy plastic and Slider 59ers.
I have a custom shop trem block complete set up, so we shall see what goes where!
But its time for all change..

oh...some other things also on the way...keep ya posted