Guitarists of Singletrack…

I still like the old Gotoh vintage tuners with the slot and hole, they don’t budge. Madame’s back at work so I’m making lots of noise having another go at Pinball Wizard. Two broken strings, a sore thumb on the left hand again, sore index on the right hand and beginning to lose my voice after an hour. I’m trying a slightly bigger pick so I graze my fingers less on the strings.

I like the look of those locking tuners. Very subtle.
I’m just having a bit of a mare finding some 60s original tuners/parts for this beast I’m putting up for sale.
I hadn’t opened the case for a quarter of a century until yesterday.

I quick Google says you might get 4-5k for it if you can get it to mint original. That buys a nice bike or some very nice guitars, amps and pedals in exchange for something of on oddity. Did you master using the organ and guitar together a quarter century back?

Nope. I used it as a bleep making toy instead of a synth into tape delays and filters.
Paid £30 for it in 1971 so it has been worth keeping. All 100% original. Even has the unused original little leatherette strap. Unused because it is about half an inch wide and this guitar is literally 2 Les Pauls in weight.
It won’t be mint though, too many scratches and the like but less significant damage than the one on Reverb has. Just need to crank the electronics into life.

Might be worth getting it to Gardiner Houlgate in Corsham. They’re an auction house that does a specialist guitar auction about four times a year – that would fit right in… The guitar guy there, Luke Hobbs is super knowledgeable too, so I’d ask him what he reckons.

https://www.gardinerhoulgate.co.uk/departments/6/Guitars

EDIT – in fact their June auction has an entry deadline of the end of this week…

Sky’s the limit eh! The guitars with a history I’d expect a premium but a tatty old 63 strat is a tatty old 63 strat and I’d rather have a new Custom Shop for a quarter of the money. Bodes well for your Vox though, Eddie.

Wow, that’s fantastic. 🙂

At a slightly lower price point, I picked up the Bullet Mustang today from PMT in Salford.

For £109, I’m surprised and really happy with it.
Paint is flawless, everything works, it sounds good and was simple to set up.

Flaws? Nothing serious. The tuners were loose on the headstock, a couple of the pickguard screws are katy-cornered and the back of the headstock needs a bit of sanding.

The fretwork feels nice after a quick polish and the laurel fingerboard looks fine after a bit of lemon oil.
Even the plastic nut was cut nicely.

Next?
Sand and oil the back of the neck. Loctite the saddle screws and play the thing. 🙃

Oh dear. I feel this won’t end well:

https://www.musicradar.com/news/is-mooers-gtrs-intelligent-guitar-the-future-of-electric-guitar-design

After fitting the new Tusq nut to my Tele, I’m getting some harmonic/resonance from the G and D string. A lot more so ok the G string.

I’ve got a spare Graphtec string tree, which I’m thinking of installing to get a better breakaway angle – my Tele only has a tree string on the high E and B string.

Before I break out the drill, is there anything else I should be considering? The nut is pre-cut, and looks pretty clean, no pings when tuning.

Could it be the nut is too low, so there’s not enough downforce on the strings?

the grooves the stings rest in should fall away slightly to the headstock and have a sharp edge at the fretboard end otherwise you can get the “sitar” sound.

you can simulate increasing the breakaway angle by pressing with your fingernail behind the nut to see if it makes a difference.

if the nut is too low it will buzz when open and be OK when held at the first fret.

You would normally have to adjust a precut nut a little to get a good setup in any case.

this forum is quite nice

https://www.tdpri.com/threads/basic-setup.952636/

That’s another excellent setup guide. Bookmarked and added to the collection.

Tried another very nice Tele. A cheap Harley Benton that played like a dream. A new nut and tuners (are we seeing a theme here folks/) and a little bit of fret dressing were all it had needed. The owner is now heading down the rabbit hole where his pickups and tuners will cost considerably more than the original guitar. It was one of these and is firmly on my radar now. I mean that is a pocket money price – I could buy two and have one in open tuning FFS!

https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_hbt1952.htm

I needed some Tele spares so bought one of these

https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_hbt30be_egitarre.htm

for bits. I liked the neck and body so much I changed the nut, bridge and pickups and it’s now one of my favourite Teles. The neck is really nice. It was perfectly playable and sounded OK out of the box, but deserved some attention to make it a very pleasing guitar. Check out the reviews, I’m not the only one who’s impressed.

I still needed a Tele for spares so I bought the one you’ve linked, Eddie, and it was not as nice so got cannibalised for spares. The neck has sharp edges, the frets are poorly finished, the varnish is yuk. I think there’s a bit of a random factor with Harley Benton Teles, sometimes you get lucky, sometimes not.

A few new guitars have appeared over the last few months….

The HB TE-52 is weighty but fantastic value for money, it will get a few minor tweaks and maybe a shou sugi-ban treatment if my experiment works…

The Schecter Nick Johnston traditional is very nice, a modern take on the strat which feels great to play.

The Gretsch G5622T Streamliner is again really good value, lovely and bright sounding. A few tweaks needed to improve the tuning stability though.
IMG_20210519_105616 by David Wadesmith[/url], on Flickr

Finally managed to track down a left-handed one of these… One-in, one-out so my Telecaster has just been sold.

Damnit @chipps – I’d had a flash of inspiration and popped onto the thread to ask a stupid question relating to Jazzmaster wiring – and you’ve sent me down a very pretty GAS rabbithole. That Blue Boy Rickenbacker 360…

However, back to the original query… Recently got my Jazzmaster (bit of a beater, MIJ, no-name Mustang bridge, got a pair of SJM-2’s fitted) out and, unsurprisingly, the controls are still as rough as they were last time I used it. As it probably wants new switches and pots already, am considering trying something inspired by the Rothstein Wiring Diagrams at http://www.guitar-mod.com. Am tempted by dual volumes on the conventional knobs and wiring the roller knobs as a G&L PTB Tone Stack. Haven’t quite decided what to do with the slider just yet – maybe noting, maybe a phase reversal on one of the pickups? The sticky bit is that to get the bass cut working right in the right direction, I’d need to source a 1M reverse audio taper pot – anyone any recommendations for sources of decent quality pots and switches that might have something a little fruity (such as a reverse audio taper)? Oh, and being a MIJ will probably be needing metric threads/shafts because I don’t particularly want to be reaming all the mounting holes etc…

Won’t pots from a left handed guitar all be reverse taper?

I’d never really thought about it, but I guess it makes sense. Which then leads to thinking that if the pots are reverse taper, then the numbers on the knobs would need to go the other way too, so there must be such a thing as left handed knobs (Chippendale! Stop tittering!). A quick Google suggests that left handed knobs are “a thing” this is the case… So, the “reverse taper” bit sounds like it shouldn’t be a major issue – though 1M pots are perhaps a little more unusual. Warrants further digging though…

Well, drilled in a new string tree on the Tele Deluxe. Worked a treat. Sitar noise gone.

I was up in the attic at the weekend, and discovered a Tele-style thinline body I bought very cheap on eBay a couple of years ago.
I’d put it to one side in a case, and forgot about it.
Also in the case was a no name Tele neck bought for another non-starter project ages ago.

The body is a nice wood back, but with an MDF (!) Top and an incredibly thin wood veneer on the MDF. Looks horrible!

I’m thinking that I might spray it up matt black, spray the headstock too, and as I’ve got nearly a full tele worth of chrome hardware (another project, that changed direction!) Fit all that, but with black screws.

So…murdered out matt black thinline Tele, with chrome/black hardware. Will be a standard single coil in the bridge, and a nice HB size P90 in the neck.

What do we think…. dog’s dinner, or potentially cool? 😆

No pics cos I left it in the workshop at school/work after a sand, ready to spray in a primer coat tomorrow.
I’ll take some tomoz.

Won’t pots from a left handed guitar all be reverse taper?

No, because most pots have three terminals – one connected to either end of the track and one connected to the wiper. For reverse operation you just wire up the two “end” terminals the other way around.

Left handed knobs do sound cooler though.

EDIT – yes I get it now – I answered a question above that wasn’t the one anyone asked. Oh well. The knobs would need the numbers the other way around yes.

So – left handed knobs are back – phew.

So…murdered out matt black thinline Tele, with chrome/black hardware. Will be a standard single coil in the bridge, and a nice HB size P90 in the neck.

What do we think…. dog’s dinner, or potentially cool? 😆

It’ll be cool! Barely any sound comes from the body materials. A nice p90 in the neck will sound lovely.

No, because most pots have three terminals – one connected to either end of the track and one connected to the wiper. For reverse operation you just wire up the two “end” terminals the other way around.
EDIT – yes I get it now – I answered a question above that wasn’t the one anyone asked. Oh well. The knobs would need the numbers the other way around yes.

Kinda… Wiring up the pot the wrong way round would be a perfectly reasonable solution if I was after a pot with a linear taper, but unfortunately I’m not. I’m after an audio taper (logarithmic scale). A 250k linear taper pot set at halfway Should give ~125k from wiper to either end. An audio taper pot won’t…

When Madame went to work this morning I picked up the Strat and after a few minutes warm up had another go at Pinball Wizard – it’s clicked, I can place the lyrics on the triplets. I recorded it to check – yeah, the Strat is on the bridge pickup rather than bridge-middle, the amp is on default when I turn it on which is horribly jangly – but I got through it and I’m not going to spend all morning trying to improve it when the swimming pool opens in 15 mins.

Very nice Edukator!

Next on the list for the Tele… fret buzz.

Measured neck relief is spot on, action at the saddle is spot on, as is the radius. But… I’m still getting a lot of fret buzz on anything a little heavier. Is it likely the frets need levelling? Or anything else I should check?

Nice that @Edukator – love the colour (Tidepool?) on the strat.

@rickon
Any shims in the neck pocket? They sometimes get shims to give a little overall back angle on the neck. If overdone, this *can* lead to buzzing from the higher frets when you’re playing further down the neck

@hopkinsgm – nope. I replace the nut, the action at the nut feels about right with my action ruler. Maybe a touch higher that it could be.

I’ll remeasure and pop up my numbers at the 1st and 12th!

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. The Strat is Lake Placid Blue.

The Tele is probably a 9.5 neck radius, if you’re used to 12″ radius guitars it will need the strings setting slightly higher than you’re used to. You can usually find what’s causing buzz by eyeing up the gap between the strings and the frets from where you are holding the string down. If the frets don’t gradually fall away from the string it’ll buzz. You then have to work out what can be done to solve the problem.

That strat is a 9.5 radius. The nut is cut really low. I use old imperial feeler guages with 4 thou as go and 6 thou as no go at the first fret when holding the string down on the second fret. I work down with fret files over a few weeks as it’s easy to take to much off and then the strings clean up the slot as they move through.

At the 12th it’s: 1.9, 1.8, 1.7, 1.7, 1.6, 1.5 mm as near as my old eyes can see with two pairs of glasses. 😉

Put a capo on the first fret and hold down the strings on the 21st/22nd fret then measure the relief. I set using a .6mm pick at the 10th fret.

I can hammer at it (as demostrated) and it still doesn’t buzz.

Measurements!

At the nut / 1st fret:
High E = 0.03″
Low E = 0.03″

At the 12th fret:
High E = 0.06″
Low E = 0.09″

Just been wandering around Farnham to find my way around and called into Guitar Village. First time in a guitar shop in absolute ages…
Too many nice toys and a good range of Epiphones and Squires as well as the Custom Shop and Tom Watson stuff. Seem a decent bunch of guys.
Not too keen on the guys at Hoops cycle shop. Roadies though so what do you expect. Nice Topstone in there.

That’s much higher at the nut than any of my guitars, Rickon. How does it intonate on the first few frets? If you have an accurate tuner my guess is that you’ll find your notes are sharp on the first few frets.

A quick check is a .6mm pick: if you slip it under a string at the first fret the string should hold it in place, if the pick is loose and falls out the nut is cut too high.

Just popped my feeler gauges in there. More accurately it’s 0.7mm at the first fret.

On a slight redirection but still a Fender player Jeff Beck tickets on sale for a year’s time…

Finally managed to track down a left-handed one of these… One-in, one-out so my Telecaster has just been sold

I like it

That’s a lot and you have to set the strings correspondingly higher at the 12th to compensate to avoid buzzing high up the high up the neck. The most useful measure is with the string held down on the second fret. the gap at the first should then be “bugger all”, my preference is 0.12-0.2mm on electrics. This is a much argued over figure as you’ll discover if you start reading guitar forums or watching vids.

Some more guitar setup troubleshooting please!

On my (MIM Baja) Tele I’m struggling with the intonation. I’ve adjusted the bridge and the intonation is now spot-on at the nut and 12th fret. The action feels nice to me, and the neck relief is where it should be, I believe.

However, when I’m fretting anything below ~5th fret (E.g. open chords) the notes I’m fretting are sharp. This seems to be on all strings. From what I’ve read this could be because the nut slots are too shallow? Is there anything else it can be before I take a file to my guitar?

Could it be something simple like needing new strings?

Hmmm. Fretting the 2nd, gap is from 0.10mm – 0.12mm across the strings.

The frets are Fender’s Narrow Tall, so they’re 14mm high.

Perfect, Rickon (I’ve got a guitar that low and it’s fine). If you’ve checked the intonation on the first few frets too and thats OK you’ve eliminated the nut height as a source of buzzing.

Superficial: First check the nut height as Rickon has done. Next look closely at the nut and check the strings are sitting on the nut right up to the edge. Third check the nut slot is in the right place; if the nut to first fret distance is too long then everything you fret low down will be sharp. All this assuming you’re not a gorilla and pressing down too hard on the strings.

Thanks @edukator.

Measuring at the 17th I’m a little above 2mm on the wound strings, and a little below 2mm on the high strings.

Action, relief, nut and saddle feel spot on.

I’m guessing it’s time for a fret level and polish?