ShortScale.org

Hi everybody, just joined after being a long-time lurker. I know, I know... thats not the point of a forum. I am going to try to start contributing though. Better late than never right?
Anyway, I was messing around with an amp I had built up several times over the last few years and then torn it apart for parts for other projects. But I finally used it at a band rehearsal (mic'd up of course) the other night and it occurred to me, aside from cables, everything in my rig is homemade, or heavily modified. Just wondering if anyone else out there is playing through a highly "personalized" rig?

Guitar: Built Jaguar from warmoth body blank and allparts neck (built it before I learned how to do fret work... so alas, its not truely homemade). Hand wound the pickups using strat parts from stew mac. AlNiCo II magnets and they measure around 8.15k at the bridge and 6.5k at the neck. No rhythm circuit, just lead (for the time being). No strangle switch, and a gibby style toggle for pickup selection.

Pedals: In the little wooden box is a SHO clone. The toggle is mearly an on/off switch until I get around to putting a TRS jack in for power. The wah was a JH-1, but us now true-bypassed and the sweep range has been modified.

Amp: Its pretty much an AC4, but made more versatile. EF86 front end, 12ax7 for tremolo, el84 power, and EZ81 rectifier. The amp used to be an old, red-face Line 6 Spider that quit working long ago and had been taking up space. That is also why the volume knob's position is a little wonky. I didn't have to drill any holes in the chassis on the face for lazinesses sake. I added a depth control for the tremolo, lowered the rate of tremolo to a much more usable sweep, and have switchable coupling caps between .1, .047, and .02 orange spragues. I also wired the tone control backwards so it behaves sorta like the bigger vox amps' "cut" control. I'll be honest, it was a mistake but I kind of like it. It has a Musical Power Supplies OT, and a PT out of a Crate Palomino v8. There is a 12" Weber Sig in the cabinet. Smooth cone, light doping, AlNiCo magnet. The faceplate is just a piece of veneer I found in the basement. Stained it to match the guitar. Thats what I was doing today which led to this post actually. Its not the loudest, but we have a fairly quiet drummer, so it can keep up dirty, and with a little help from the PA is clean enough. Also sometimes run it in dual-mono with a VJR turned 5e3, or a behringer gx212 turned 18 watt lite.

http://i990.photobucket.com/albums/af30 ... 73ca26.jpg

http://i990.photobucket.com/albums/af30 ... 59e70c.jpg

What else is out there in the DIY rig community?

Beautiful. A matched set?

Cheers,

Nicely Done, here are the pics:

Love that SHO !!

They weren't intended to be a matched set until this morning when I found that veneer and dug up the left-over stain from the Jag. I should probably stain the SHO box to match too then huh? Maybe replace the rubber on the pedal of the wah with some more veneer to match too? I also just realized I wish I had been taking pictures of the building of each of these things. Next time I have any of them opened up I will snap some shots (trust me, it won't be too long. Probably count it in hours)

Nah, I like that SHO as it is...

How did you stain the JAG's body?

I progressively sanded from 80 grit up to 1000. Then just wiped the stain on with a rag. Used minwax red mahogany. The body is alder. I believe I did 3 coats of stain several hours apart. Did a final sand and did 3-4 coats of spray on clear cost, buffing in between each coat.

Super nice set up!

Figured out what to do with the empty upper bout... Two controls and a switch, sounded like a fuzz face to me. So now it has an onboard silicon fuzz face variant. Same circuit, just very different values for caps, trannies, resistors, ect.... One of these days I will record a clip or two and toss them up.

You might need to be able to see the SHO box when you go to step on it, all else is gorgeous.