ShortScale.org

i've got 17 guitars in this room so i voted for the lots of guitars option.
a quick check of the 17 guitars showed that 12 are 6 string electrics. 11 have strings on. 4 are in standard tuning. as the only band i am in now only do standard tuning stuff the other 7 are not used much. 4 of them have non-standard stringing.
most of my non-standard tuning guitars are cheap crappy things or homemade (which for me means the same I think).

here's what i think is the last pic i took of my guitars in a big pile. it was taken in my old house 5 or so years ago.

I have that same Ric 325 copy.

moar pics of the black jagstang looking thang on the left side?

that's a great collection. i love the variety.

I voted Variax cause they're awesome and practical.

Will wrote:I have that same Ric 325 copy.

really? you might not have. mine is an encore vintage.

it looked ok, but i didn't like the sound. at the time of that picture i had added an extra switch to it and modified things so that using the two switches i could select any combination of the three pickups. Since then i have changed the circuitry so it followed the ricky schematics, rather than whatever it was before and replaced the extra switch i added with a little knob that blends things. i liked it a bit more after the later changes than before, but still don't really like the sound. i found a combination of strings and a tuning i liked for a while (really high lowest string Bb highest was a G above normal high E). Last year I put normal strings on it and had it in standard for a while cos i was going to use it as a backup guitar for my standard tuning band, but then i changed my mind changed a string or two and now it's tuned to GBbBbFCEb.

I don't play it much now cos my alt tunings band has not played for years, but it's fun to noodle about a bit every now and again and if we ever start up again it will have a place.

hotrodperlmutter wrote:moar pics of the black jagstang looking thang on the left side?

that's a spazzmaster. i have a couple more pics somewhere. i'll look for them.

i've found a couple of pics from a few years ago - all from the old JS.com days.

i was wrong, it isn't a spazzmaster. here's a spazzmaster......


this was an experiment to see how quickly i could build a guitar from parts i had lying around. from memory the answer is under two hours. the body is made from a piece of wood with two bits of leftover kitchen worktop glued onto it. the shape was made by drawing round the top of a jag and the bottom of a duo II. jazz replacement trem. jagstang hum in bridge with some kind of mounting ring. i can't remember what the middle single coil is now (it's not in the spazzmaster anymore it's in the neck position of my squire venus) i think it was a jag replacement pickup of some kind. the neck pickup is a mini hum from an old (now destroyed) firebird copy. the neck is a left handed strat replacement neck upside down. it's unfinished. the electrics - each pickup has a three way mini toggle - on/off/phase. the cover for the electrics is made from the top of the drill bit box that contained the drill bits i used to make the guitar.
when i first built it it was tuned standard and used as my main guitar for a few months cos i was proud of it (the only change from this pic was that just after taking the pic i added two pieces of black electricians tape along the join lines between the worktop and the wood - they are still there - you can see them in the pic of the mess in the post above) after playing it like that for a couple of months i changed the strings and tuned it to CGDCBB and it's been like that ever since.

the black one may have acutally been unnamed.

i built this from a piece of alder. black plasticote. jag plates. super distortion in the bridge. some kind of replacement LP style zebra hum in the neck in this photo, replaced soon after with a super II. neck is from the firebird copy, stripped and unfinished. switches are on/off for each pickup and a bass cut.

a little before i had made a switchcaster and used it for ages but it confused me too much. it was made from the blue MIM duo you see in that pic. it was pretty much like that but had a 25.5" rosewood neck instead of the 22.7" maple one in that pic. otherwise it was pretty much like that. it had lots of switches and two buttons. there were about 35 combinations of pickups available. it had a coil split for the hum. i could select each coil in the bridge hum (Jb jr) and out of phase or off. the neck single could be in or out of phase or off. each pickup had a bass cut, so i could have pickups or coils out of phase with a bass cut on one pup which meant i could have an out of phase sound, but retain bass tones. the two buttons were like kill switches but were scratchy so i removed them by the time of this pic.

after a while i chaged things a bit and built a complicated switching box slightly separate to the guitar for demonstration purposes. i wired it up so the neck pickup was wired direct to the sitch box. the switch box had lots of switches. it was set up with three different volume pots - 250, 500 and 1meg. the tone pot was switchable between 5 different cap values.
i recorded loads of sound samples so i could demonstrate the difference between vol pot values and cap values to show the difference these made - mainly to debunk myths that were prevalent on the forum at the time, but before i could post them all my HD died and i lost everything. i got pissed off and never bothered again. i still have the bits. if i have a spare month or two i may record them again, though i doubt i'll ever get round to it.

Other guitars i made at the time include...


the duostang.


a knackered 65ish duo II body i bought that had been refinished badly. i stripped it and resprayed it in ford bermuda blue. added silly string thru thing. stang replacement guard. hotrails. ?MIM duo neck pup in bridge. 78 maple stang neck.
Since that photo I filled the string holes in the body. resprayed it a green i decided i didn't like so went back to ford bermuda blue and put a duo bridge on it with compensated brass saddles.


the cardboard guitar.


body made of cardboard. firebird copy pickups. firebird copy neck. bridge and neck were later reused on the black guitar and the pickup is on the spazzmaster. it was fully functional. I had intended to make a wood body version of this, but changed the shape a bit for the black guitar shown above instead. i did cheat a little. there was a piece of floorboard that the neck and bridge are screwed into hidden inside the cardboard. i don't think i told people that before. i think some people really beileved it was all card. i got loads of questions about sustain cos everyone wrongly believes that sustain is directly related to weight. the sustain was fine, cos weight is not the only issue.

woah. i'm regretting i asked you to post pics. lal, j/k.

sounds like a lot of work to go through, just to lose your samples. sucky bawls.

what's with the record cut in half?

i don't remember why the record was cut in half. it was years ago. i may have been intending to use it for a guard or something.

BUT actually just typing this. i think i have remembered why it was broke in half. it was a SLOAN album. my daughter is called sloan, but is not related to the sloan on here. she was about 3 years old at the time. found the record and broke it. she likes the band sloan now. she doesn't know sloan the person who posts here, so probably has no opinion of him.