Hardtails and all that...

Its a headache...within a few weeks I'll have a tele body routed for a tvjones with a neck. As they came from the same origin they will be drilled for exact fitment between body and neck, and the tuning holes are to be drilled out to 10mm as opposed to std size.This is purely down to the fact that I have an awesome set of vintage Sperzels which will suit the birdseye neck. I have to watch the budget and want to use as much as possible that I have lying around. I have two 78 tele knobs that will do as well, not too bothered if its a gold, nickel and chrome mix to be honest..Then I have a 77 hardtail bridge with saddles and thats a crux..
I'm worried about the spring spacing from bridge across poles..so I've scoured the web and can't find much info..the pole to pole on a powertron is 2 1/32". I'm hoping a deluxe/thinline may assist the issue.

The hardtail issue has taken quite a bit of time, I suppose another way around it is to get a TV savalas bridge tail and cut it back, however that has the 4 holes for the bridge and not 3...we shall see..

If the strat hardtail bridge does the job, the shopping list isn't too much. I'm also considering staining the body as opposed to spraying the body..
The powertron bridge plus has to be purchased of course, but not sure if I want flatpoles or not. String ferrules.
I save on tuners, decent tuners as well, which will do the job on a fatback neck..
pots of course,,500s, 250s...not a grease bucket set up, probably go for a noload 250 cts and 250 volume..

I'll post some pics this weekend of the tele now the brass series parts have arrived...

makes ya think...

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing.
Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built.

I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work"

WG on songwriting

and his copyright..

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

on its way with a bone nut....."fat back"

inbetween brass nuts, motherboards and "the rest"

..and the Winter Olympics..awesome performances by the Swedes and more Team Sweden Hockey to be watched 06.00...


News flash: Sweden beaten by Slovakia.As they say in Sweden, "pinsamt"...

Doesn't work so take it and have a go..

Despite having just had a macbook pro 13" from work..that is for work..(shame as its awesome)



however, read on...

One step closer...one of the benefits of being a Team Leader for NetOps Europe SV is that your never afraid of looking into what most are feared of, computers. Been there and never received the preverbial t-shirt, but maybe should have..
So its mentioned at work that some of the older units are being chucked..off we go for a wee spy..and of course , the one thing that Apple do very well is design their boxes well.This Mac Pro G4 caught my eye. I believe its the 2003 FW800 series as it has three firewire ports of which 2 are std and 1 is 800.If so Im lucky, as these are well good enough to use for what I have in mind.
Then of course, came the bad news.."she won't boot up..tried the memory..something 'aint right, don't think you'll get her started but have a go.."...its always a case of mission impossible.."your mission Jim" and "this message will self destruct in 1 minute"...
With a dual processor and a max of 2 GB DDR Ram, and the 80GB drive, this was spot on.This model was intro'd in jan 2003 and discontinued july 2003..apparently the most powerful of all the G4s.
After swapping, checking, double checking and testing..she fired up for the first time tonight and the software finally took grip on a verified and erased HD. Tomorrow an upgrade to OS X Tiger is in line.
So, a few checks left..as u know..the shop can have a closed sign on the door in a flash..but things looked stable this evening.
So, next in line is a TC electronics set up I think..its all good fun..



Specifications
Processor: PowerPC 7455 v3.2 or 3.3 (G4)
Number of Cores: 1
Processor Speed: dual 1.25,
Benchmarks: 1.0 GHz: 551, dual 1.25 GHz: 1048, dual 1.42 GHz: 1159
Cache: 64 KB L1, 256 KB L2, 1 MB or 2 MB DDR L3
System Bus: 133 MHz (1.0 GHz)
Hard Drive: 80, 7200-rpm
Media: 12x/32x/10x/32x DVD/CD-RW or 4x/8x/16x/8x/32x DVD-R/CD-RW (4x SuperDrive)
Peripherals: Apple Pro Keyboard, Apple Pro Mouse
Weight and Dimensions (US): 42 lbs., 17” H x 8.9” W x 18.4” D
Weight and Dimensions (Metric): 19.1 kg, 43.2 cm H x 22.6 cm x 46.7 cm D
Original Mac OS: Mac OS X 10.2.3 (6H58)
Later Mac OS: Mac OS X 10.2.4 or 10.2.6
Maximum Mac OS: Latest release of Mac OS X
Hardware Test: AHT (Power Mac) 2.0.1
Firmware: Open Firmware
Firmware Update: None
Logicboard RAM: None
Maximum RAM: 2.0 GB
Type of RAM Slots: 4 - PC2100 (1.0 GHz), or 4 - PC2700 (dual 1.25 GHz+) 2.5v, unbuffered, 8-byte, nonparity 184-pin DDR SDRAM
Minimum RAM Speed: --
Interleaving Support: No
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce4 MX, GeForce4 Ti, ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, or Radeon 9700 Pro
ATI Card Model: ATY,RV250 (9000 Pro), ATY,R300 (9700 Pro)
Graphics Memory: 64 MB (GeForce4 MX), 64 MB (Radeon 9000), 128 MB (GeForce4 Ti), or 128 MB (Radeon 9700)
Built-in Display: None
Display Modes: Dual display extended and video mirroring
Display Connection: 1 - DVI, 1- ADC
Expansion Slots: 4 - 64-bit 33 MHz PCI, 1 - 4x AGP
Expansion Bays: 4 - internal 3.5” ATA drive bays (2 - ATA/100, 2 - ATA/66), 2 - optical drive bays
Hard Drive Bus: 1 - Ultra ATA/66 (ATA-5), 1 - ATA/100 (ATA-6)
Large Drive Support: Yes (128 GB or larger per drive)
Optical Drive Bus: EIDE (ATA-3)
Backup Battery: 3.6 V 850 mAh Lithium (922-4028)
Max Watts: 360 W
Line Voltage: 100–125V AC or 200–240V AC
Liquid Cooling: None
AirPort: Optional AirPort Extreme card (802.11b/g)
Bluetooth: Optional Bluetooth 1.1
Ethernet: 10/100/1000BASE-T (RJ-45)
Modem: 56k v92
ADB: None
Serial: None
SCSI: None
USB: 2 - 12 MBit/s
FireWire: 2 - 400 MBit/s, 1 - 800 MBit/s (15W total power)
Audio In: 1 - 3.5-mm analog input jack (16-bit 44.1 kHz sample rate)
Audio Out: 2 - 3.5-mm analog output jacks, 1 - 2.5-mm Apple Pro Speaker minijack, Built-in speaker (16-bit 44.1 kHz sample rate)

”Ich bin ein Berliner”.....

Whilst having a chat at work today with a mate about how frikken great Slayer are, I remembered another band that was a real breakthrough if you were a metal head back in the early eighties..in fact, this is the only band that I had to sleep rough for,
Kreator, live at Newcastle Hall.Think it was them anyway...or maybe Helloween with Kai hansen on lead vocals..still got that tour shirt as well..good quality back in the day..
Anyway, as I was saying to the bloke, back then the heaviest was Motorhead, Accept and such, but nothing came close when Kill em all or Chemical Warfare came to town.
Then Kreator released "Pleasure to Kill" and Fakk me mate!No holds barred, pure speed adrenalin junky , to the point where even the band felt the drummer had "overplayed" his part on the album..."terrible uncertainty" was released and they proved that the first wasn't a fluke.
watching them live was a wake up call...so go on, treat yerself and take a listen..toxic trace a favorite..
Keep in mind...as they say in Scotland when it comes down to musical tastes..
"you've got to "Get" it, if you get it"!

call cards, fret files and a ton of snow...

so its still snowing, we're up to 3 meters but it kinda goes well with the Winter Olympics and Sweden are doing really well across the board.Ironically as I write this on my new Macbook pro the swedes are getting stuffed in the curling by canada.

Down at the only music shop in town today (well, worth going in to!) and I managed to get a loan of some very good japanese fret files. I'd had enough of the brass nut in the latest creation.Using my company cards and a set of verniers, I measured the first fret to string height as 2mm...too much.

Okay, if you get this wrong your basically donald ducked...raising a nut is not an option..so its patience and cunningness like a weasel that works. Carefully I got to work on the nut and taking that 2 mm down to what I felt was acceptable before breaking a sweat. Without readjusting the truss rod (its a Warmoth pro remember, adjuster on the side), I measured the string height after a retune to circa 3mm.Took the saddles down so were down to around 2. something at the 17th fret and then felt that was enough at this time.
Then , the harmonic on the fret12 and fret note on 12 to do the intonation..well, 4 outta 6 needed the saddles pulled back.No real surprise.Its not rocket science and at the same time its probably not what a luthier would be happy with, but good enough for me and a huge difference to what it was before I started.Makes a huge difference to make the effort. Obviously if you start mucking about removing corian nuts for brass (which was glued in a bit too much imo..) then you have to make that extra yard.

I'm really enjoying this guitar despite the fact that its not quite right...like the E's been outta sink with the string lines..but the 16.8k of the DF assists...the magnet could be used as an evil weapon in a spiderman movie..its thats strong! And lets face it, an original Gibson Dirty Finger has form! As mentioned previously, I could stick in a seymour 59 or a special rewound gibson classic 57 which has juice..we shall see.

Next two days will be interesting...

Glass sculpture

...found this on the Experia, totally forgot I'd snapped these the last time I was up in Stockholm..On sale and for more money than a nice guru, the Glass makers of "somewhere in Sweden" have a collection of full size guitars ( unplayable of course) in glass..very cool, lotsa love and work, however with a sale price of 39,000 skr I'll pass ( but only as I couldn't afford one even on sale, otherwise it would be a great thing to have in the livingroom!)

oh yes....

Rare Thunderbird for 18K

Win the lottery and buy this beauty found on ebay.An early 60s 1 pup thunderbird..
Maybe this is the true origin of the 1 pup orgy of american guitars that came later..

mebbe.....

You know the story, a mate comes back from the NAMM show and tells you about an awesome new fender thats made by the custom shop.CS equals bucks, big bucks.
So as usual, I started looking around for gear and came across a few items that were close to building a copy of the CS, after a few mails and questions the resulting body I was after suddenly appeared.

Fender CS


Rear mounting electrics and ready routed for a TVjones...


tele birdseye...

Hur bra som helst!

chisel please...

..Pickguard arrived today, so it was out with the chisel and work on the route to ensure everything fitted.
I know that Gibson pups don't get in line with vintage fender bridges, but as its a Dirty Finger , you'd never notice.

I like!!!
It was late so I plugged thru the Tascam guitar trainer on Destortion+reverb, this was of course after setting the pitch and checking out the set up (part one, u know how it is..)..I wear a hat so my ears dont melt down from the sounds.

I also decided,as it is an early 80's DF pup, that I'd make the one pot wonder a 1 meg cts audio. Works a treat, and added a heavy duty fender brass series knob.Its just wired through with vintage cloth, simple and effective.
Its a mix n match whic is basically why it came out as a Mary Kaye Blonde n gold special as thats what I had lying around.Good quality american deluxe bridge and srv goldjack setup.The neck is a Warmoth pro with a birdseye maple back and Brazilian rosewood fretboard with the addition of a Fender Malsteen upgrade brass nut.Strap buttons also sourced from fender brass series.
Whats interetsing so far is the way the volume pot effects the sound, which I feel will be positive when I actually plug into the Marshall.
It was an interesting read that EVH used lower outut pafs, as I have one which is based on a 57 Gibson classic but rewound and slightly hotter at 8,5...maybe in the future ..
As I said, I like.

comme ci, comme ca

Snow falling again in Gothenburg..they reckon we're gonna get three days of white powder...so what better than to lock the doors and listen to some good tunes and play some toons (notice the lack of "good..")

Looking around the Youtube I always make sure I read the comments, its worth a craic..in this one you'll notice somebody wrote "Clapton should have been on that helicopter.." haha..of course the reply mentions SRV and the christian faith which tends to be the deal with most of the comments with SRV..

Anyway, here we go, it does get to some "livets ord" preaching, however we'll forgive the rant and his beliefs as he's fucking awesome!Incidentally, I just joined a group on facebook called "jesus loves you, but I think your a cunt"..I was prompted by my 13 year old to join the group..makes you think..

Can't really see what the big sign reads..something caravan..anybody?

If you've read the interviews posted from Eddie you'll notice a lot of artistes talk about tone and fingers etc..the old plug it into a potato chip and sound the same..
However, SRV's tone did change slightly as he changed guitars, here seen with the lipstick pups on the guitar which is built by the guy who he's singing about, yep, dedicated song to a guitar builder..anyway, the facts are that even his number one got a newer neck as it was worn down, and he used otehr guitars which did have him sound slightly different.Just as awesome, but a slight difference in tone.dare I say it, more "mature" sound.Only my opinion however. On a personal note I think his later songs were great and that hís progression was , as they say, a positive progression.

yes yes..but awesome machines...

...............

From the Sublime...



to the ridiclous..

Awesome...

Birdseye of all Birdseyes...

Nice Birdeye ( to say the least..) which is set up to strap onto a Charvel pocket..







Been looking at some vintage charvels and kramers, as well as reading up on the man himself Eddie van H. Here is a great interview from '79, nice to know he also thinks you should get out and build..(also helps to have his talent..)

http://www.vhlinks.com/pages/interviews/evh/gp122979.php

wot a mess......

Santas Grotto never gets this bad...I need to hire some of his cleaners..
But sometimes it leaves a good picture behind of a mix and match of guitar parts from the 50's and upwards..

Butcher baby..

Everytime I take this tele apart I think "butcher baby"..the soldering has been done by a butcher, the routing...butcher...but the guitar is amazing once its togther and the Bardens are now in and amazing! I understand the hype now.
You'll notice the middle pup is actually a different style stratocaster bridge Barden which was made smaller for the option of using a cover.Works a treat as a mid pup in the Nashville..

"Fixxa bitza"

A while back I decided to buy an SQJV 83 body.A 62 body with a three screw fixture.
At the same time I bought a trem block from the same period and apparently from a jV series.I built up a guitar and...wheres the tone? something wasn't right..bit like having a cylinder thats missing..so I ripped her apart and measured the trem block , only to discover it was smaller and lighter than the gold fender deluxe trem block I had on sami Mk1.
Feeling gutted at the amount of time and effort , the parts wandered elsewhere and I was left with a really nice relic in olympic white.
After a trip down to the Silv I looked at all the guitars and we discussed the EVH charvels, kramers and his own..
I tried again with the body..stuck in twin 78 dimarzio sds 1s and the warmoth birdseye pro neck..sounded awesome!

But once again pots were removed to finish another project etc..
So, I'm left with a bitza and now its on its third rebuild, bit of a scrap yard challenge bit with some nice parts.
I have an original Gibson dirty fingers pup thats going in the tail.Fantastic pup that I originally had in the Gibson les Paul.I really like the mint green on white so I scoured the net and finally found one in mint green with a humbucker route and 1 hole for a volume pot.I have a 500k pot which should do the trick.Neck wise and its between 2 rosewood necks , one of which needs a fretting.

The ultimate in bridge pups imo.This one is ink stamped and sounds amazing!


So, once the guard is here its out with the chisel again and take out the right amount of wood.I wouldn't do this if it wasn't for the fact that I've already worked on the sqjv body.Its got the classic toothpicks and glue mod after I made it a 4 hole, but it will work well.
I'll put some pics up once its done.