1997 Peavey Wolfgang amber quilt

Not just a looker.
Whatever you've heard or read about these guitars is true.In a positive way of course!
necks brilliant, nice body weight and when its plug n play time it sounds huge when you start winding up the gain.
Beautiful guitar and apparently quite rare as it's a pat pend first year quilt which apparently had curly maple tops and very uneven quality with regards the dying process and quilt quality. I think the very fact that all the guitars differ slightly is appealing.
But, at the end of the day, its how she runs, and she runs smoothly!

To be or Not Jv, that is the question..

Reluctantly I took the JV back to the local Music shop today.
Amazing guitar to play, light body, 9,5 radius rosewood neck...not sure why, and as silly as it sounds...the fact that it was a second generation JV, which is to say that it doesn't have the "made in japan" on the headstock..and the fact that I felt the body was poly coated and not nitro like the 85s and 115's..and the fact that the pups had been changed ....well..who knows.
Such a light guitar that the question is if its a sen ash body.Does it matter...well, probably not actually. In fact, the most annoying facts are right there...none of the above should be annoying at all. Its got a new nut and refret and carries a really slick neck.
I'll probably regret it one day...
Took out an old favorite, the 77 strat with the 73 body.

The only draw back are the frets that have been dressed and are really down to the already worn maple neck. I thought the best thing would be to get a refret as soon as possible, as other than that shes a really nice player.
Every thing was sweet until I noticed this advertised....been talking about EVH peaveys this week and the hardest ones of all to grab , suddenly came up on a local "for sale" board.
First year pat pending quilt.

These guitars are pretty rare and having read some sites , have an extremely good reputation of all being slightly different in appearance but at the same time , very good guitars. This one is a 1997 example.
Gonna have a look at it on sunday, so we shall see.

Fender JV 83

Heres a guitar I borrowed from the local today.
Its got a JV plate, but you'll notice it doesn't have the made in japan on the neck decal.That dates it to the middle/late 83.It does have the pencil mark on the base of the neck and looking at the electrics they look original.

pots and cap look original, pups don't..or, after searching the web I can't find any info about them.Marked SD 2 83 and with a sticker A1 R on all of them except the bridge, there are some questions on some forums but all unanswered..maybe they are original and only found on these early years..?
The neck and mid pups have vintage style wiring but not the bridge , which has the more original normal wiring found on the earlier models..There is some poor soldering on the volume pot so you can hazard a guess that these aren't original..
Poly or nitro? hard to say..with the lack of "made in japan" under the fender decal, this would make it slightly less appealing as a collectors piece, however this doesn't take anything away from the fact that its an awesome guitar! the neck is a cracker , i would guess its a 9,5 radius and not the 7,25.
The light weight could be the fact that its sen ash and not alder..

well, we shall see.I'm not a collector. I was gonna say I'm a player, but I'll change that to "i'd like to be a better player"..
This is a guitar to be enjoyed and played and it's impressive...just gotta decide by how much to warrant the cost...
The pup marking:

Now here comes the hard part of today..
..as I walked out the local , the owner mentioned he had a real 62 in the office...
he took me up and showed me the guitar...my god..it was soooo light...100% original and used and abused..amazing...

Scrapyard Challenge prt 2..Bridge Pick up

Must have been about 04 in the morning when the idea came to me to squeeze a Dimarzio sds1 into the bridge on the SC. Tools down and wait till tomorrow was the right idea.

Obviously these types of pup don't just drop into the area supplied by a tele body, so my plan would have to be as cunning as a weasel to get it in without completely ruining the pup and making sure it would work.

Looking around the case I sourced a 1 meg pot that was meant for the D Gatton replica with Bardens but never used and some thick foam to get some height under the pickup.

Out with the solder and off we go...still think there seems to be too much buzzing...an earth or two have to be reinforced or added..maybe from the bridge..basically it's wired up with 2 volume pots, front for bridge running the 1 meg pot, and 1 500k running the neck pup.No caps, no switchs, just wired straight through to the jack. 

As I've still only got 3 strings (the 4th B broke..) I haven't been able to give her a full test drive but apart from the buzzing issue she sounds and plays a lot better than I could have imagined , considering the quality of the neck.

With a 77 hardtail body and other parts lying around..the next challenge is set.As the body is a 3 bolt neck I will have to source a 3 bolter ( which I have..) and there is already an original 77 pickguard and some pick ups ready to go..what be as much as a scrapyarder as this one.

Theres also a rather nice neck that is fretless that requires life...rosewood board and sold as a schecter...not sure if it is, but that may find itself on the "freedom" kids guitar as it has a proper 4 bolt setup for a neck and a hardtail in place.

Right then, make sure I don't miss the bus tonight to go and finish off the ZXR!

Note: the buzzing was reduced dramatically by a proper earth added from the Bridge to the pot.

Scrapyard Challenge!

The initial plan tonight was to head down and finish up the wiring on the ZXR. Not much left to do so I thought I'd keep up on the roll I was having from the other night...
..having missed the bus by 30 seconds I decided 20 minutes was too long to wait for the next one and due to the weather being the absolute worst for walking anyway, ie black ice due to 2 days of rain on 3 meters of snow and then freezing again..I came back home and set myself a wee challenge..

I have a case of parts from all the previous projects and collected junk I haven't used for others, parts purchased from ebay that I felt were total crap for what I required at the time and so on and so forth..

The neck, for one..is a right interesting piece...can't remember why I bought it..no idea what make it is..some lunatic went to a lot of bother anyway to relic it..its got official fender decals including official custom shop and srv signature decals on what is a very thick and solid maple cap neck..the same guy even went to the bother of penciling a '62 neck date...despite the allen bolt for the truss adjustment..Anyway, the other neck in the yard has no nut or frets...so this was gonna be the starting point.With the size of the tuner holes I thought I'd be stumped until I noticed the MIC freedom kids guitar could help me out..ok..it looks crap..but it works and was in the general rules of the challenge!

You'll notice the poor attempt at a custom shop decal...ah well, at least the tuners follow the same color tops as SRVs...pearloid..
The only option for the body was an item I purchased a while back from Canada. Once again, no idea of the make but a nice slab of wood and nice grain.Fitting the neck to the body isn't as nice as I would have hoped..I had to raise the neck at the front bolts to get the string clearance, but it worked out and I'll have to sort something if i want to make it look a wee bit better.

You'll notice the gap between neck joint and body to fully appreciate what I mean..

The bridge is a three screw affair. I think the body was originally a top loader as I have a top loader bridge, but it had been drilled for strings thru the body and I drilled the 3 screw modern style and purchased for "string saver" poly saddles which lined up with everything. No bridge pickup so that was that.
Neck pup is a no cover Rio Grande Vintage tall. I have to say I've never seen a pickup that was made for such large adjustment screws! Fortunately these had been saved in my case of screws and misc parts as well as springs.I bored out the rather odd sized pickup guard that I got with the body and used a tap for the screws and kitchen knife to get it to fit around the strat(?) neck. I have bags of relic screws and new screws , so fitting was easy after the mods. I fitted up  string to check if it was gonna work and had to modify the neck and check the truss rod to get anything to sing from the strings. After a few times on the truss, the height adjusters under the neck and the string height adjusters on the saddles, we were in business! It was gonna be a seasick Steve guitar and probably suit 3 or 4 strings more that 6..with a mud slide!
I found parts in the case..like the strap holders that I bought as "original prototype Gibson" bla bla..but never used..the volume cap had been around for donkeys and fitted perfectly..think it came off my Univox flyer which ended up in Brazil to a Ramones fanatic..
jack output was sourced from the kiddies guitar which has all grown up sized parts on it!
Solder came out after 2 hours, I strung up with 4 strings which is all I had to spare, plugged in and to my delight she buzzed up and made some noise! basically got E,A,D and a B...so far! probably could do with one more earth...but wtf, 2 hours and I've cleaned up some crap to make a Scrapyard Dog that works and sounds good!

weathers getting worst! Only one thing for it...

With more snow followed by more wind and rain followed by warm weather...then cold weather...then fucknose what kinda weather...you kinda have to look forwards to the bike season and in order to have something ready you gotta take a walk down to the project...which is exactly what I did , once I'd seen off my two sons after a two week seasonal holiday..hence the minimal amount of work on the zxr.

Last time I was down I managed , with the help of my eldest, to get the engine back in the new frame.Then all came to an abrupt end when I realised I'd need verniers to make sure the engine was square in the chassis.

So tonight I went down, sorted out the distances and bolted her in, good and tight.
I'm pleased with the 6 pot conversion up front.The gold calipers work with the carbon fibre mudguard.
I started about refitting the wiring harness, rad, exhaust and finally carbs and airbox. The left lower rad mount was off a tad after the crash , so that needed some assistance..

Heres a mix of pix of where we are...unfortunatly I'll have to stick to the stock exhaust until after the special mot the bike has to go through due to the german frame.

Just to note that when I first took the bike apart , the electrics were already a bit of a mess.This wasn't a show room bike on the inside and had been used as a track bike imo or at least a cafe racer on the streets of Japan. I couldn't care less, but I'll try and clean up a bit better than I found it.
I'll list the changes tomorrow.

The Pauls n friends!

Left to right:

Vintage Iroko Schecter /srv neck/59thinskins

88 Heritage CM140V / Zakk Emg kit/kk distortion switch/phase Switch/Tone pros/

2002 R9 / Sliders Scatterwounds/Russian PIOs/ 

Early Fender Eric Johnson strat that is reliced 

78 telecaster / Weapon Weight/ Andy Summer Brass bridge/Sliders Broadcaster pups/

71 Gibson Les Paul Custom / 68 pafs/61 bridge/63 tail/59 Grovers/bumble bee caps/

xx Fender telecaster /Vintage Barden pickups (3) / 

Whats on the Tele...... open C ,std tuning and open G tuning.