Lets look at our guitars thread

[OldSkoolRS]

Nice work HighwaytoHull.

I was going to mask off my pickup, etc routes, but looking at original 1960s Strats they didn't bother, so I just masked the base of the neck route and also a patch under the trem cover, so I can put the build date and then clear coat over.

I used to spray cars at home about 25 years ago, using nitro, so it's taken a little while to get back into it. Made a few silly errors like not thinning the paint enough and being lazy cleaning the gun out, but at least nitro is easy to sand back and rectify mistakes.

I think I'll put this neck on my 1982 Squier Strat while I sort the body out as I'm itching to try it out (it's a really fat 1" thick neck and I love the fat neck I put on my Esquire build last year).

Don't forget to post back with finished pictures.

[tuscaneer]

Ronstein said:

Ovation 12-string
Early 70's Arbiter Les Paul copy
Squire Strat copy (my niece's)
Cheapo Stagg nylon string 3/4 acoustic
Ibanez bass
'70's Ovation 6-string

how do you get on with the ovation round back pal? reason i ask is i bought one last year and it is an absolute pig to keep in tune....tone is great but i just can't play the thing as it won't stay in tune, it's even hard to get tuned in in the first place.....i detune everything a half step then do the "dropped D" thing so my low string is actually in C#..shouldn't matter though and certainly doesn't bother any of my other guitars!

my martin is perfect, even my basic crafter plays better than it!

[Sporky]

HighwayToHull said:

Finishing is great fun, it's my favourite part of the process!

It's my least favourite bit - probably because I'm rubbish at it and a bit impatient. For me the best bits are the design, and the adrenaline/terror hit when the machining starts.

Would anyone be interested in a builds thread? Might be nice to see peoples' different approaches, and I'm loathe to fill up this one with pictures of things going wrong.

[Ronstein]

tuscaneer said:

how do you get on with the ovation round back pal? reason i ask is i bought one last year and it is an absolute pig to keep in tune....tone is great but i just can't play the thing as it won't stay in tune, it's even hard to get tuned in in the first place.....i detune everything a half step then do the "dropped D" thing so my low string is actually in C#..shouldn't matter though and certainly doesn't bother any of my other guitars!

my martin is perfect, even my basic crafter plays better than it!

Not had that issue with either, to be fair so it may be a string issue?. The 12-string has a build in tuner, which helps!

[tuscaneer]

Ronstein said:

Not had that issue with either, to be fair so it may be a string issue?. The 12-string has a build in tuner, which helps!

ah ok good to know... i restrung it when i got it so i'm guessing its the tuning pegs themselves... i'll get it looked at as it's a real shame it just sitting there

[OldSkoolRS]

I’d put money on it being the nut/ nut slots. It nearly always is the root of tuning issues. Very rarely the tuners.

Properly fitted and stretched strings would be a close second too, provided I’m not teaching you to suck eggs.

[rsbmw]

Sporky said:

It's my least favourite bit - probably because I'm rubbish at it and a bit impatient. For me the best bits are the design, and the adrenaline/terror hit when the machining starts.

Would anyone be interested in a builds thread? Might be nice to see peoples' different approaches, and I'm loathe to fill up this one with pictures of things going wrong.

Build thread would be cool, might be a pretty quiet thread though! I've built I think 3 guitars so wouldn't add a great deal, but I do like reading build threads.

I recorded some random noodling on the koa superstrat, for anyone who might be interested. https://soundcloud.com/rsbmw/koa-superstrat-noodli...

[OldSkoolRS]

Impressive noodling RSBMW.


I received my 3" wide padded blue strap from Pinegrove: I discovered them at a guitar show 18 months ago, so it's nice to support a small UK company. They do different lengths too, so I don't need to have a great long loop of extra strap since I'm short, so they fit me nicely.

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Friday 23 April 08:06

[Don1]

What are peoples takes on pedal orders...?

[HighwayToHull]

Don1 said:

What are peoples takes on pedal orders...?

In my case, graphic equaliser, compressor, overdrive, tremolo, flanger and phaser. (Right to left.)





Not pretending it's correct, just the way I do it. Also never sure whether the delay has to go before or after that lot.

[Don1]

That's a cracking setup.

[OldSkoolRS]

There's lots of opinions about orders, so sometimes it's a matter of trying them out to see if you get the sound(s) you're after. Some like to put a Phaser/Flanger/Chorus before an overdrive/distortion for a 'messier' sound, others prefer them after. I've seen people get quite heated about whether a compressor should go better or after some other pedals too; can get a bit silly on certain forums though. I think there are some general 'standards' such as putting the tuner at the front, maybe the fuzz as some don't like being after buffered pedals. Compressor nearer to the guitar as well, but as above, not set in stone.

I'm still messing about changing my order, but this is the current (right to left).

Tuner, Fuzz, Compressor, Clean boost (to boost solos when playing clean/with Compressor or to push the pedals that follow, so they distort more), Distortion, Fender style overdrive, light 'transparent' overdrive, Marshall style overdrive and Klon style pedal:



I have a separate board that goes in the loop of my amp, right to left:
Organ sound (gimmick that I hardly use!), Chorus/Flanger/Vibrato, Tremolo, reverb, echo and another clean boost for solos if I'm only using this board and the amp overdrive/clean channels:



Having done all that, I sometimes play our set list and just use the 3 settings on my amp for clean, crunch and overdrive. To be honest I could probably get away with using that, so maybe I didn't need to buy all those pedals after all...

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Friday 23 April 08:11

[gazza285]

Our rehearsal room is in walking distance of my house, so I take a guitar and a lead. Carrying anything else is quite awkward, but I can manage one more bag, so it is a choice of pedals or beer.

I spend my time riding the guitar controls and drinking.

[tuscaneer]

OldSkoolRS said:

I’d put money on it being the nut/ nut slots. It nearly always is the root of tuning issues. Very rarely the tuners.

Properly fitted and stretched strings would be a close second too, provided I’m not teaching you to suck eggs.

yeah i always stretch the strings in properly but hadn't really considered the nut being the root of the problem tbh pal..... do you mean the nut slots may not be wide enough for the gauge of string i've put on?

[BuiltnotBrought]

Treated myself to my first PRS albeit just an SE



Slightly upgraded with locking tuners and lampshade knobs, really impressed with it, unbelievable quality at this price range.

[Don1]

Beautiful colour.

[Don1]

My current setup... Playing with stuff.

[OldSkoolRS]

tuscaneer said:

yeah i always stretch the strings in properly but hadn't really considered the nut being the root of the problem tbh pal..... do you mean the nut slots may not be wide enough for the gauge of string i've put on?

Could be badly cut, or not wide enough as you say. I also find that the strings sometimes are too 'deep' in the slots, so they are buried which adds to the friction (so I sand the top down to remove material). A quick check is to try some 'nut sauce' in the slots and see if this helps. If it does, then take it somewhere to get it done properly. Once I've done mine I never need to use nut sauce anyway, but it's a quick fix, or you can just keep putting it on I suppose.

[Sporky]

This was mine - now gone Helix and not regretting it at all.



Chain order was:

Variax interface
Stuart Castledine wah
EHX POG (just for octave down - I did a lot of looping)
Zoom UltraFuzz
MonkeyFX Valvesporker (self-made, tubescreamer style gain stage with two sets of diodes to choose from, Bug Muff tone control, sag and feedback controls, blah blah
Subdecay Liquid Sunshine
Keeley compressor
EB Vol pedal Jnr - feeding the TurboTuner
TC NovaModulator
Akai Headrush E2
Boss RE-201

[Shappers24]

JaymzDead said:

Kneedragger95 said:

I wouldn't necessarily say it easier to play, at my level you could give me the best guitar in the world and I'd still strum the wrong strings or mute strings by accident .

One thing I will say though is that it sounds great, especially on overdrive. My first guitar struggles to create that typical distorted rock sound for one reason or another (Single coil pickups perhaps?) whereas this the SG has no issue at all.

If you want to play hard rock or metal then I'd say that a guitar equipped with at least one humbucker is a must! (although there are obvious exceptions such as Hendrix and Iron Maiden!). To illustrate: In my pre/early teen years I had started to learn to play on an accoustic guitar at school but I had got bored learning to strum chords along to '60s pop hits and I really wanted to play electric, unfortuantely my parents were unsympathetic to this and declined to buy me an electric guitar. Fast forward a few years to me by now a metal-obsessed teen with a paper round, my best mate was a couple of years older than me and had Squier HM superstrat and Peavey amp and had started to teach me to play Metallica and Slayer songs. I decided that I wanted to be James Hetfield so with my hard earned money I decided to buy a Squier Strat pack (including what I now know to be a stty practice amp). I could never get the strat to sound much cop and although I got to know that a massive part of the problem was the amp, after some research into the guitars my heroes used I found that the vast majority used Humbucker equipped guitars. By this time I had started my first full time job and I had been eyeing up the ads in the back of Guitar magazine for Percy Priors Music in High Wycombe (now sadly defunct) who I believe were the first UK distributor for ESP guitars, with an early pay check I put in an order for an ESP Grassroots EX200 (basically a Korean made version of Hetfield's pre-lawsuit ESP EX Explorer. Having purchased this I plugged it into my mate's Peavey and thus found the missing tone, total overdriven metal nirvana! I was still average at best back in those formative years but at least I could now get a sound close to my heroes, doubly so when I managed to get a Marshall Valvestate amp!

Iron maiden swap out their single coils with Seymour Duncan hot rails (amongst other SD pickups), which give the sound of a humbucker in a single coil slot.