'72 tele custom style butterscotch/blackguard

James · Post by **James** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 12:21 pm

william wrote:
James wrote:A horizontal scroll bar? I'm not interested in that at all.
what?

because of my LANK? mine formatted fine. are you running 640x480 or sumthin?

1280x1024.

luke · Post by **luke** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 12:24 pm

James wrote:
william wrote:
James wrote:A horizontal scroll bar? I'm not interested in that at all.
what?

because of my LANK? mine formatted fine. are you running 640x480 or sumthin?
1280x1024.

Get Firefox, that's the resolution I use and it looks fine to me.

william · Post by **william** » Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:16 pm

i was joking. 640x480 is like, commander keen 2 res.

yeah, firefox is badassed at formatting and avoiding horizontal scroll bars. however, i dont mind horiz. scrolling as much on this mac, with two touch scrolling. super smooth and natural. all touchpads should have this.

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 12:37 am

$50 GFS/Xavier neck arrived.

Pros:
glossy
tinty*
nicely finished, graphite (allegedly) nut
appears to be a decent enough neck

Cons:
*yellow as fuck
Cheapstratâ„¢ headstock

The yellowness of the vintage tint is a double-edged sword... next to my AV '57 strat's neck it looks silly but on the tele body it's just fine.

BobArsecake · Post by **BobArsecake** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 12:40 am

Very shiny :D

william · Post by **william** » Fri Feb 06, 2009 3:13 am

its almost like the neck is butterscotch. looks nice on, does it say "xavier" on the headstock?

how is the fretwork on those?

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 1:57 am

It doesn't have any logos or screwholes (no heel or tuner drilling, just tuner pegholes), and the fretwork is very well done... it may require a bit of buffing and levelling but the edges are super clean and comfy, and the space around them is pristine, very neat installation and basic finishing.

Anyway today a whole bunch of parts arrived so I drilled for and installed the tuners and layed everything out on the body again. Some of the pegholes in the headstock were a bit too large for a tight fit of the ferrules. The vintage style ones were half alright, but 3 kept falling out, I checked with other ferrules I had and determined they're just a bit sloppy. I Krazy Glued them in and now they don't budge. I drilled pilot holes and screwed the tuners in without any trouble, easy-peasy but it was my first time doing that to a fresh neck so I was pleased with myself.

Anyone have any reccomendations for a bridge pickup? I love the whole classic tele bridge thing and know they're fairly bright and midrangey by design, but I wanna make sure I get as much low-end oomph as I can squeeze in there. I'm not overly concerned with a hot output either, as my amps tend to take care of any shortcomings.

Also I'd ordered a circular string guide for the headstock but ended up nicking it for my AV Strat to more closely resemble the look of '54-'55 strats, I've always liked the look of the circular retainers more than the butterfly string trees for some reason.

The only downside to all this is my guitars are getting too sexy for their shirts and/or your party (depending on the way they're disco dancing).

My next project has already begun too. After finding an old sunburst strat body in the garage, and buying an MIM classic 70s re-issue neck, I decided to make my AV's more rawkin' and promiscuous sister guitar. Mini toggles, big headstock, F tuners, bullet truss, 3-bolt neck and lots of other kinky shit.

william · Post by **william** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:46 am

many times, hotter=darker, so you might end up with both, whether you need it or not.

ive always found that teles have great low end. bright, yes, but that low end is where its at. no other guitars have that, to me. id say a slightly overwound bridge pickup would be the ticket.

if you wanna splurge, ive always heard that fralin's were the shit, and they will overwind to your specifications. and they look nice.

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 3:23 am

william wrote:many times, hotter=darker, so you might end up with both, whether you need it or not.

ive always found that teles have great low end. bright, yes, but that low end is where its at. no other guitars have that, to me. id say a slightly overwound bridge pickup would be the ticket.

if you wanna splurge, ive always heard that fralin's were the shit, and they will overwind to your specifications. and they look nice.

Yeah I know about tele low-end chunk, it's what I like about 'em. I'll probably just go for a GFS and try another one if I don't like it.

william · Post by **william** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 3:32 am

paul_ wrote:
william wrote:many times, hotter=darker, so you might end up with both, whether you need it or not.

ive always found that teles have great low end. bright, yes, but that low end is where its at. no other guitars have that, to me. id say a slightly overwound bridge pickup would be the ticket.

if you wanna splurge, ive always heard that fralin's were the shit, and they will overwind to your specifications. and they look nice.
Yeah I know about tele low-end chunk, it's what I like about 'em. I'll probably just go for a GFS and try another one if I don't like it.

gfs is ridiculous. cheapest awesome stuff ever. how does he do it?

Mages · Post by **Mages** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:15 am

william wrote:gfs is ridiculous. cheapest awesome stuff ever. how does he do it?

http://www.artecsound.com

Reece · Post by **Reece** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:25 am

aye they're all rebranded artec pickups.

Post by **Mike** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:22 am

paul_ wrote:The only downside to all this is my guitars are getting too sexy for their shirts and/or your party (depending on the way they're disco dancing).

ROPLF

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 12:02 am

So it's not quite "done", but I've had it playing for a few days, was majorly set back by an entire Strat project I've been mentioning recently.

The GFS bodies and necks I should give an update on: the ones I got at least were not that great. They need work to accept... well, just about anything. String ferrules, jack cup, bridge pickup at least. All routes needed enlarging. The neck pocket was not straight at the bottom of the heel, and the pocket was slightly too wide for the neck, leaving gaps (while they state on GFS it should be a match made in heaven). I'm pretty sure these are factory rejects for Xaviere guitars, i.e. they couldn't make a guitar with the appearance of having great QC with this pair of bits. Having said that, still a pretty good deal given that you can make it work and it's the right basic dimensions.

Luckily, the pickguard covers the worst of the gappage, and I was able to drill the neck on straight using clamps and a pair of strings to set the allignment. I drilled pilot holes in the neck through the body holes. You can see the gaps after [almost] proper neck allignment in the first pic.

I used a dremel with router and sander attatchements for the smaller stuff and the big handheld router I used on the switch/widerange/control cavity routes was also employed to widen the bridge pickup route. It was my first big routing job so I'm glad I didn't make a COMPLETE mess of it, though it is very crude and I took a chunk out of the lacquer around the switch route (covered by the pickguard)
Here was the first, shallow pass at all the bucker route, not even down to the bottom of the original pickup route (it's long but a memory now).

I've wired it ass-back-to-front, not sure how I let myself do that on the second LP harness I've wired in the past couple months. It was pretty late and I'd been routing/drilling all day, also poorly translated the GFS wiring diagram that looks like a medical pamphlet (called "...So you're the hooptiest electrician alive...")
I'm going to re-wire later this week, I've buggered up the grounding checking out my other mistake now.

But yeah, it's not bad. Feels cheap with the neck, but perfectly playable. It's heavy. Really heavy. A wonky enlargement on the route is sending the bridge pickup off-course in it's mounting, so I have to nudge that over as well, the bass string polepieces aren't lining up as well as they should. The bridge plate was initially set at a very small tilt due to the crapness of the neck pocket (as in first pic and probably one or two others), so I filled the left 3 holes and rotated that... this is probably why the pickup route requires more work.

It sounds like it's supposed to, so I'm happy about that. I'm going to try a few different components and bridge pickups in the future... Though it does get that signature sound, and with a tweak of the amp it's just right too. One day I'm going to get a nicer neck for this thing, most likely eBay a Mexican classic 50s or thinline RI neck.

Speaking of which, here it is mid-build with it's sister project, my $250 Classic 70s strat... while it's yet to be further upgraded, this thing sounds and feels fucking amazing, which was a huge surprise. It does everything my AV '57 strat doesn't do that I like in a Strat. I'm on the lookout for nicer pickups for this for sure, but the 500k pots do a good job with the current ones.

Tele:
GFS body "trans-honey ash"
GFS neck maple/maple for tele
GFS vintage style tele hardware and kluson style tuners
GFS Les Paul wiring kit (500k vol, 250k tones, .22uf)
GFS authentic 60's tele bridge PU or whatever the shit it's called
Fender Mexico Widerange neck RI
Fender Mexico '72 Tele Custom pickguard

Strat:
Fender Mexico Classic 70s Stratocaster neck RW (converted to 4-bolt)
Squier Made in China Stratocaster Bullet Series sunburst body, swimming pool route, complete with bridge assembly
GFS prewired pickguard electronics and middle/bridge ceramic pickups
GFS full-size steel block for import strats
Had the mint covers from ages ago
Fender AV '57 trem arm (my spare, steel block takes an american thread arm)
Squier neck pickup (ceramic, non-staggered polepieces, lower output to even out the sound with the 500k pots).
Huge balls

Post by **Mike** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 9:44 am

Looking fierce.

Thomas · Post by **Thomas** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 12:19 pm

What's with the angle of the Strat bridge pup?

Post by **Mike** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 12:54 pm

Dinosauria wrote:What's with the angle of the Strat bridge pup?

I believe it's a Dick Dale thing, a bunch of people do that reverse angle thing.

Noirie. · Post by **Noirie.** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:11 pm

Mike wrote:
Dinosauria wrote:What's with the angle of the Strat bridge pup?
I believe it's a Dick Dale thing, a bunch of people do that reverse angle thing.

Its also a hendrix thing

Don't ask...

BobArsecake · Post by **BobArsecake** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:12 pm

It makes more sense to have it like that surely? Based on the same principle of why you angle the height of your pickups. I never understood why Fender have it the other way.

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 5:07 am

I did it for fun/looks. I also was partially inspired by that Voodoo Strat Noirie posted. My friend was left-handed and flipped this body at one point, plus it has a swimming pool, PLUS the neck I got is CBS stylie, so I went to town.
Honestly the best excuse I gave myself was to further distance it from the other one. I've always been curious to the sound difference but as it sounds so different both acoustically and electronically to my other strat as is, I can't tell right now. I have a regular guard I'm going to A/B with it on a recording or something.