75 Music Master project guitar

Haze · Post by **Haze** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:53 am

couldn't agree more with you on that one. I couldn't bring myself to tampering with someones work like that, especially abagail who has spent the better part of her life doing this!
Sadly, she might not be making these pickups much longer and i'd see it as an honor to have her hard work a part of my music as it has been for thousands and thousands of others in the past.

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:53 am

robroe wrote:wonder how many fish i could catch in the canal this summer using this as a jig ??

please elaborate on what this is / how it works / what it does

It's an LC network - a type of passive EQ circuit. It uses an inductor, capacitors and resistors to EQ the guitar signal, as opposed to the standard passive tone control that you'll find in most guitars, which uses a variable resistor and a capacitor to shunt just the high frequencies to ground. Basically what it does is to allow you to roll off midrange while leaving the highs and lows relatively unaffected. They make various versions of it... some with a push / pull pot that work like a standard tone control in one switch position, but as a midrange control when in the other position.

You can check out their site here. Torres and others sell similar products, and they're fairly easy to design / build yourself - assuming you can find an inductor of the right value somewhere, know basic electronics, and know how to solder.

robroe · Post by **robroe** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 6:13 am

ok i just read all about it. understand it. it has its place.

just for lulz check this out.
on the complete opposite side of the "tone" spectrum meet my duo caster creations.

size .13 flatwound strings that go plunk
2 volume 0 tone knobs
none of that silly middle pickup tone nonsense
none of that 5 way selector witchcraft
played thru 2x15" PA speakers that go thunk

► Show Spoiler

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 6:23 am

Those look really cool.

Got any clips of them that I could hear?

I've mostly used roundwounds on my guitars for the past 30 some odd years, but I do have one bass with flatwounds on it, and some of my musical heroes used flatwounds on their guitars, at least earlier in their careers. I should probably dedicate at least one guitar to using them - it is a unique and cool sound, and in my line of work, I like having lots of different tonal options available to me - actually, that's the main reason why I have as many guitars as I do - sonic options.

I've noticed you have several guitars too. Do you tend to set them all up similarly, with the flatwounds, or do you have different guitars for different things?

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:05 pm

Anyway, continuing on with my saga, my original plan was to get a replacement / reproduction decal of some sort for the current neck, then do a satin lacquer finish on it. We had a fairly long discussion over on HCEF about what I should have for the decal - some suggested a mid 60s style Musicmaster II or Duo Sonic II logo, others thought I should stick with a 70s era Music Master logo, and others thought I should get a bit more creative and go with something "made up" but still Fender-esque, like a 70s style logo that said Duo Sonic II on it, or something totally made up like "Duo Master". I never did make a final decision on that. Two of the tuning peg button arms are bent, so even though they do work, I planned on replacing those two units with vintage units from ebay or wherever... but other than that, it's a decent neck and has a nice feel to it, so I figured I'd be good. And I could have been.. but then I saw this incredibly clean 1965 slab board Mustang neck...

The seller rated it as a 9.5 / 10 in terms of condition. It looked so clean, I just had to get it. So I'm going to have a hardtail Mustang... or a Music Master with a Duo Sonic pickup configuration and a Mustang neck. A partscaster that I won't quite know what to call.

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:12 pm

A few more pictures of the incoming neck - it will probably arrive in about a week or so.

At $400 BIN / shipped / insured, it wasn't cheap.

But OTOH, it comes with the tuners, I won't have to get a decal for it, and I won't need to bother with refinishing it. Plus, it's a slab board '65 neck.

It might even be Brazilian rosewood... and it sure looks incredibly clean to me.

I'll get pics up of it once it arrives and I bolt it on... then it's just a matter of refinishing the body. And I am nervous about doing that - this will be my first refinishing job.

Haze · Post by **Haze** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:34 pm

Not cheap but thats a great looking neck. I was under the impression that they didn't make slab boards after '62. [the vintage erra at least

stewart · Post by **stewart** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:39 pm

Haze wrote:I was under the impression that they didn't make slab boards after '62. [the vintage erra at least

nah, they used them again for a while in 65/66 on shortscales for some reason.

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 5:53 pm

Haze wrote:Not cheap but thats a great looking neck. I was under the impression that they didn't make slab boards after '62. [the vintage erra at least

They didn't - at least not for the regular full scale line. According to Dennis, my '62 Strat is one of the last of the slab boards. However, my understanding is that Fender was so backlogged on the student models in the mid 60s that they reverted to using slab board construction for a while in order to try to catch up on the production numbers. Slabs require one or two less steps in the woodworking process, and although they use a bit more in terms of materials, they're faster to build. Or so I've read / been told. Apparently there was a period from around September 1965 until October 1966 where some of the necks are slabs, although many others are the usual veneer. The neck date on this one falls right into that range. I'll definitely have Dennis authenticate it when it arrives. It's nice to have a friend who works as a CS Master Builder. I'm pretty knowledgeable about older Fenders, but he really knows this stuff backwards and forwards.

robroe · Post by **robroe** » Wed Mar 24, 2010 6:18 pm

Phil O'Keefe wrote:Those look really cool. Got any clips of them that I could hear?

I've mostly used roundwounds on my guitars for the past 30 some odd years, but I do have one bass with flatwounds on it, and some of my musical heroes used flatwounds on their guitars, at least earlier in their careers. I should probably dedicate at least one guitar to using them - it is a unique and cool sound, and in my line of work, I like having lots of different tonal options available to me - actually, that's the main reason why I have as many guitars as I do - sonic options.

I've noticed you have several guitars too. Do you tend to set them all up similarly, with the flatwounds, or do you have different guitars for different things?

they all have 13's on them. some work better with roundwound than flatwound. for example my comp stang RI has flats on it with SJAG3 pickups and my mustang 65RI has roundwounds on it with the stock pickups.

i don't change my strings very often....round wounds about once a year and flatwounds hardly ever-never. so after i experiment with what works best i stick with it

stewart · Post by **stewart** » Tue Apr 06, 2010 2:09 pm

phil, regarding your neck problem- it might be worth trying a japanese jaguar neck, they're not particularly chunky, from my experience. it'd just be a case of perhaps refinishing the headstock with a duo-sonic logo or something if that bothered you. i think there's more standardisation with recent japanese products, certainly vintage necks seem to vary wildly in feel through the 60s and 70s.

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 8:06 am

stewart wrote:phil, regarding your neck problem- it might be worth trying a japanese jaguar neck, they're not particularly chunky, from my experience. it'd just be a case of perhaps refinishing the headstock with a duo-sonic logo or something if that bothered you. i think there's more standardisation with recent japanese products, certainly vintage necks seem to vary wildly in feel through the 60s and 70s.

I don't care very much what it says on the headstock as long as there's a Fender logo on there. I don't like "naked" headstocks... but as far as the "name" it could say Jaguar, Mustang, Musicmaster or Duo Sonic and I wouldn't care. Thanks for the Jag tip thogh - I'll definitely try to check one out.

If I can get caught up on all the editing and mixing stuff I am in the middle of, and all the HC 2.0 forum testing work and meetings, I am going to try to run over to Fender and see what Dennis has to say, then either try some guitar necks while I'm there (assuming there are any 24" MIM / CIJ necks there to check), and run by Guitar Center and try a few 24" scale guitars out - assuming THEY have any in stock...

Post by **Mike** » Wed Apr 07, 2010 8:32 am

I remember you took a picture of that board of necks, I'm sure they have a bunch of stuff for you to check out, although maybe not any CIJ stuff?

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Thu Apr 08, 2010 12:31 pm

Yeah, they have a massive wall of neck samples over in Corona, but IIRC, they're all vintage and MIA stuff; I don't recall seeing any CIJ or MIM necks there.

HC 2.0 goes "live" tomorrow night and I have sessions all weekend long, so it will probably have to wait until sometime early next week.

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 9:28 am

Just a quick update... obviously the HC 2.0 stuff didn't go nearly as well as any of us would have wanted, so I have not had a chance to run over to Fender yet. I did go to a couple of local big box guitar stores, and played a CV Duo Sonic and a couple of different Fender Classic Player Jags. The Jag necks were a bit more to my liking than the CV Squier, which I found to be (somewhat similarly to the vintage Mustang neck) a bit thick in the shoulders, but even the Jags were just a touch thicker than I would ideally want. Unfortunately, they didn't have any CIJ / MIJ Jags in the stores.

Someone on HC has a 66 Duo Sonic (or was it a Musicmaster?) neck they might want to consider swapping for the Mustang neck, and I'm going to try to contact them in the next day or so and see if they are still interested. He said it's fairly thin. If that doesn't work to both of our satisfaction, I might just have Dennis reshape the back of the 65 neck for me. It's not something I would really want to do in a "perfect" world, but OTOH, it's already separated from its original guitar, and once properly shaped to my preferences, it wouldn't be something I would ever plan on selling... and if you're going to mod something like that, having a Fender Custom Shop master builder do it is about as "legit" as you can get.

Now if it would actually stop raining, I might be able to consider doing the finishing on the body...

Haze · Post by **Haze** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 4:31 pm

I'm in favour of you doing the finish yourself. The first refinish I did myself was far from perfect but I love that guitar even more for it.

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Mon Jun 07, 2010 6:31 am

Haze wrote:I'm in favour of you doing the finish yourself. The first refinish I did myself was far from perfect but I love that guitar even more for it.

I'm going to give it a try and see how it goes. I wouldn't want to do it on the 71 Compstang, but on the 75 Music Master (now a Duo Sonic), it's a little different.

An update on the neck saga - I found a '94 MIJ Mustang RI neck that is absolute butter, and I have put that on the Duo Sonic project guitar. I have a bunch of stuff on order from ReRanch, including two cans of sea foam green, so as soon as it arrives, I'll be starting the painting part of the project...

Haze · Post by **Haze** » Mon Jun 07, 2010 1:09 pm

Be sure and take pictures of the process if you're able. My musicmaster body should be landing today and I have all my supplies from ReRanch. I'll start my refinish as soon as this dreadful rain ceases.
Here's to a sunny California!

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Tue Jun 08, 2010 8:00 pm

Haze wrote:Be sure and take pictures of the process if you're able. My musicmaster body should be landing today and I have all my supplies from ReRanch. I'll start my refinish as soon as this dreadful rain ceases.
Here's to a sunny California!

Here here.

I'll probably have an article or a thread about it over on Harmony Central, but I'll make sure to post pics and stuff over here too. I'm hoping everything I ordered from ReRanch is in stock and that they're not gone on a tour or something... assuming the best, I may see it arrive by this weekend or maybe by the middle of next week... should be relatively soon...

Phil O'Keefe · Post by **Phil O'Keefe** » Fri Jun 11, 2010 12:36 am

Well, my ReRanch order just arrived - props to Bill for the speedy service.

I ordered:

2 cans of sea foam green nitro
2 cans of clear nitro
1 can of tinted nitro (in case I decide to "age" the SFG a bit)
1 can of Blush Out
1 bottle of Finesse It
1 pack of fine grade sandpaper (I already have some here).

I'm hoping that will be everything I need to get the job done. I already have more sandpaper, as well as a couple of cans of B-I-N shellac that I'm going to use for the primer coats...

I'm really looking forward to getting this started - the sooner I do, the sooner I'll be able to finish and start playing the guitar again - and I have not even disassembled it yet because I wanted to keep playing it for as long as possible. I've got several guitars, but this little project guitar is rapidly becoming my favorite to play... it's going to be tough to be without it for a month or more...