What's on your work bench?

[jeremyb]

Ahhhh one volume, one expression, two wahs, and a double footswitch

Only two wahs?

He uses them at the exact opposite of each other, at the same time, with both feet, to keep the tone the same

How am I gonna do a clickbait video now that my toan secret is out!

[kdawg2a]

Ahhhh one volume, one expression, two wahs, and a double footswitch

Only two wahs?

He uses them at the exact opposite of each other, at the same time, with both feet, to keep the tone the same

You know, that's exactly how I imagined it. Jeremy standing on his pedal board writhing about for absolutely no tonal gain.

[NippleWrestler]

Someone called Joe requested a tele bridge pickup to better balance the neck humbucker on their G&L.

I like baseplates on teles - they're basically free horsepower boosting inductance by about 0.6h or so and they also attenuate the ice pick somewhat too. I wound this to 9.8k, alnico 5 rods in vulcanized fiber bobbins and cintage correct pushback wire - this should be a big raunchy guy that is unmistakably tele. It's also potted to cut down on noise where I can.

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[ChAoZ]

I posted a while back that I had run out of Jescar gold fretwire and was 8 frets short of finishing the neck
A very generous man in New York sent me some, so I can now complete the second neck

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[jeremyb]

Joyo Voodoo Octave, its a clone of a Fulltone Ultimate Octave, which in turn is a clone of the Foxx Tone Machine... Fulltone stuffed up their copy and got a couple of caps around the wrong way and two of the polarised caps in backwards, so fixing those two issues to make it sound like the original!

[jeremyb]

Ahhhhh that sounds much better now!

[MikeC]

Ahhhhh that sounds much better now!

Go EJ!

[NippleWrestler]

The pickup train rolls on and on.

I had a customer, the same guy who ordered the Grumpy Joe tele pickup above, drop off his g&L for some pickup swapping magic.

These are nice guitars. Indonesian made, nicely done as always. I'm not sure if this is stock but it came with an Epiphone branded neck humbucker.

Either way, what's in there now is so much better. It's an alnico 2, 6.3k neck humbucker, and a 9.8k alnico 5 tele bridge with a baseplate for extra horsepower. It sounds really great tbh.

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[NippleWrestler]

I sent out 2 custom sets today for some lovely folks who'd got in touch over the weekend. We had a bit of a chat abgout what they're looking for and these were the results.

The chrome covered set is a low output smoky number - 7.3k alnico 5 bridge, 6.3k alnico 2 for the neck. That's going to be a nicely smooth tone but will grit up on the bridge if you dig in. Asymmetrically wound with varying degrees of scatter across the coils to make it more interesting.

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This gold covered set is my Valley Girl set, which is my take on a PAF and one I much prefer to my ears. Using a pair of roughcast alnico 5 magnets it's a 7.5k neck and a 9k bridge. Perfect for rock n roll and bluesy. I understand these are going in a LP Custom where the gold was 100% necessary.

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[jeremyb]

Tez, how many iterations has it taken to be able to get the sort of tones you're after? I imagine you have a feeling now for the combinations that will work for a customer?

[NippleWrestler]

Tez, how many iterations has it taken to be able to get the sort of tones you're after? I imagine you have a feeling now for the combinations that will work for a customer?

Yeah I've got a feel for what does what, and it's understanding the whole thing is a series of ingredients you can plauy with to get a desired result, and understanding what does what to influence the resulting sound, then translating what guitar players mean when they say things like "open, transparent, tight, thick, airy," etc into the actual mechanics of a pickup. Seymour and DiMarzio give you the DCR figure and reduce it to that, but there's so much more you can manipulate to get someone what they want, you just have to listen to them to understand what that is which, luckily for me, is the most fun part.

That's not much of an answer, because there likely isn't one - I was messing around with this stuff for years and I remember swapping magnets in pickups about 20 years ago just to see what would happen. That was the entrance to the rabbit hole.

[NippleWrestler]

This was reasonably interesting. Someone sent in a single coil pickup, made sometime in the 70s (it came in a '76 strat). It was dead and wouldn't read on a DMM. Peeling back a few turns of the end wire to reveal fresh copper didnt do much good either so I suspected that the start wire had come disconnected somewhere within the coil. That means a rewind was necessary and the scalpel came out to cut away the old wire from the bobbin. Potted as it was it came out in a reasonably whole piece.

I asked the guy what it used to read and he said around 6k, 6.5k somewhere around there. It's Alnico but I'm not sure what grade and there's no markings or anywhere on there.

Off with the wire.

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Some fuckery later, fresh wire, lightly potted, wrapped and here we are. Should be good for another 50 years at least.

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[ChAoZ]

Got this old Epi Coronet, Wilshire, Crestwood?? on the bench to bring back to life, he wants to keep it as original as possible but function beats form
Replaced the tuners with a Gotoh locking set, this required taking 2.5mm off the back of the headstock
Refret with Jescar jumbo fretwire - originals were jumbo too
Would of had a wraparound bridge, but has been replaced at some point in time, tailpiece was in the wrong position so I had to plug and redrill
Just going through the electronics now, new jack and switch were needed
New bone nut replaces plastic turd, will dial it in over the next week before returning it to it's rightful owner

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[jeremyb]

Sneaky wee blend pedal for playing around with a couple of octave fuzzes I have, had to go to aikido so will have to finish tonight.

[kdawg2a]

Got this old Epi Coronet, Wilshire, Crestwood?? on the bench to bring back to life, he wants to keep it as original as possible but function beats form
Replaced the tuners with a Gotoh locking set, this required taking 2.5mm off the back of the headstock
Refret with Jescar jumbo fretwire - originals were jumbo too
Would of had a wraparound bridge, but has been replaced at some point in time, tailpiece was in the wrong position so I had to plug and redrill
Just going through the electronics now, new jack and switch were needed
New bone nut replaces plastic turd, will dial it in over the next week before returning it to it's rightful owner



ffda9d51-9b66-4797-852f-bd7a1e43b971.jpg

That's one of the 70s Japanese ones. I've always liked this design (Coronet, Olympic, Crestwood, whiltshire), it was epiphones last good design before they became gibson jr.