And does anyone have a decent beginners guide for refinishing bodies?
So many out there, a few recommendation would be priceless.

You doing poly or nitro?

Poly is pretty straightforward, easy to recover mistakes etc. Nitro is a whole other thing. I love my DIY nitro-finished Strat but I’m not convinced it was worth the weeks (months??) of work it took!

I didn’t find any guides. Just loads of advice on various message boards. As with any paint thing, prep is key, BUT it’s way more essential if you’re doing nitro since the paint doesn’t fill in the imperfections the way it does with poly. Plus nitro is best on bare wood whereas poly can be done over existing finishes.

@theotherjonv

You could just sand it smooth with some very fine sand paper. Go steady.

I’ve sanded one neck and the finish is much nicer than how it arrived.

You could always just play the stuffing out of it and age it the old school way 😉

New guitar day for me 🙂 A 2009 PRS Mira x. It’s lovely, its light, it might be made of basswood. It was the shortest distance I’ve ever traveled to buy an instrument including going “up town” on the bus when I was 15 to buy my first bass guitar

Unfortunately it means I’m two, possibly three over my self imposed guitar limit. Can I interest anyone in a Harley Benton PRS copy, a Joe Doe salty dog strat or an ibanex Js 1000 with dimaizo upgraded pickups? All set up, playing great but gathering dust.

Green Harley Benton

Salty dog

Ibanez

Ah ha, the classic ‘guitars on a sofa’ shot 😎

What are all yours, top left to bottom right?

I’ll do mine later, haven’t taken a group photo in years.

Larrivée super strat
PRS Zach Myers single cut semi hollow
OLP Stingray Bass
Squier Bullet Mustang
Thinline Telecaster partscaster
Fazely single humbucker strat
Custom built (by me) MM Axis/Tele mashup
The Deathcaster – single bridge humbucker Tele with kill-switch (again by moi)
Epiphone SST solid body electro-acoustic classical
Takamine F-400S 12 string (though currently converted to 6)

Aria Sinsonido by Soloette travel guitar (can be nylon or steel string)
ALP AD-80 folding guitar
Washburn Monterey Studio Custom 12 String Electro-acoustic
Hohner SE-400 arch top

Nice collection. Makes me feel better about being one over my limit of 3 (the Strat buyer never turned up and has gone quiet 🤫).
I love that PRS single cut.
If it was pedalboards and pedals I’d be a lot more embarrassed about the stuff I never use.

I also have a PRS SE Zach Myers single cut. Mines ones of the greeny ones. Also slightly modded like @ajantom

bit of a thread crosser but Jack White is playing a ‘secret’ slot at Glastonbury, and twatting about on his new pitchshifter custom Jazzmaster

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/jack-white-custom-fender-jazzmaster-pitch-shifter

@ajantom lovely guitars, especially the self builds 🙂

Mine from top to bottom, left to right

PRS McCarthy dalas shootout. These were the (marketing) test for PRS 58 pickups and supposed to get close to a 58 Les Paul.

PRS mira x. USA guitar built to a lower price point. No birds or fancy tops and the electronics under a pickguard. It plays as nicely as the McCarthy 🙂

Harley Benton PRS copy with bare Knuckle pickups. I liked the look of PRS but wanted to try something similar before buying the real thing. It buzzed badly when it arrived so I used it to learn how to sort frets. It plays great now

Ibanez js100 dimarizo air noroton pickups. I played a lot of guitar in 2009 and was up to 6 electrics. My job changed, reducing time for guitars and this was the only one that survived a full. It’s ace, but I’ve got no need for a locking tremolo. I never use it now.

Harley Benton telecaster copy. Bought on impulse, it is a super guitar. The frets were a bit scratchy, 30 Min of polishing and its great.

Fender 1978 music master bass. I bought it second hand when I was 15. My double bass teacher was horrified. It was massively beaten up and had huge divots in the frets. It would have had relic fans in raptures. Aged 16 I sanded most of the finish off, but couldn’t get the sanding sealant off. So I left it half finished for 20 years. Refinished it in nitro white and dented it in a week 😱

Joe doe salty dog. Thought I’d like a relic strat. I’m not super fussed about strats. Plays well, sounds like a strat but not for me.

Vintage v100 acoustic. £20 as two tuners were broken and half the strings were broken. It’s a great guitar. After I got it I tried a few acoustics up to £1000. I couldn’t hear much of a difference and preferred the neck on this.

Just one new addition to the pack, a Chapman ML3 Bea signature baritone.
28″ scale length and running 12-64 strings in B or Drop A. Sounds good, feels amazing. Makes me work a bit harder at thinking what will work musically.

Very nice.

Physically I looks about the same length.as my short scale bass compared to the telecasters they are sat next to.

Its 2.5″ longer scale but set lower in the body so the overall length is only 1″ longer.

It also has lots of sounds. One amp model, basic drums from the RC5 looper. One inept play through with me seeing what I can get it to do with 3 way switch, coil tap and a Volume and tone control.
Don’t drink and jive guys..

Listen to Bea 1 – 27_06_2022.mp3 by Lipstick on a pig on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/9kxoS

So going to do a Tele build, partscaster thing.

Two humbuckers (possibly Iron Gear) no pick guard, proper pots 500k etc, fixed bridge, string through body…

Looking at bodies and necks at the moment.

All guidance welcome, i have a fairly good set of skills as a mechanical engineer… but i aint a guitar tech.

Forgot to say the bit i am struggling with is how much to spend on a body/neck? If they are matched to a pair of £80 quid pickups?

Forgot to say the bit i am struggling with is how much to spend on a body/neck? If they are matched to a pair of £80 quid pickups?

For a first go, I’d get cheap body and neck off eBay. Means you won’t be worried about mucking it up, or damaging them.
You could spend about £25-50 on each, and get surprisingly good results.

I’ve had amazingly good necks for £25-30. Generally they’ll need a bit of fret levelling, but won’t be terrible.

Bodies are bodies. More money gets you nicer wood and less pieces. But tbh, once painted or finished you won’t notice the difference that much.

I always have assumed that the pickups do most of the heavy lifting.. i can see the benefits of string through body and installing a decent nut and decent locking tuners.

I am reasonably confident about getting a neck and frets sorted.

I have a 1977 fugi gen strat in poor condition that i also want to renovate so the Tele build is a dry run thing.

always have assumed that the pickups do most of the heavy lifting.. i can see the benefits of string through body and installing a decent nut and decent locking tuners.

Yes, yes, and yes 😁 though String through body is nice, but debatable whether it gives better tone.

I just bought a £117 Squier Mustang.
The neck is lovely, pickups are surprisingly nice and hot.
I’ve upgraded the tuners (Wilkinson EZ lock), nut (Tusq XL) and bridge (Wilkinson with compensated brass saddles) and it plays like a guitar worth 4-5 times more now.

@oldmanmtb2 what about one of those Harley Benton kit guitars?

@eddiebaby nice playing. I especially liked the ambient bit at the end. Baritones seem like an interesting n+1…

I fancy a telecaster HH and i can get an HH body easy enough. Will trawl ebay for hardware and try and avoid knock offs

I can recommend Northwestguitars.co.uk and guitaranatomy for bits.

Northwestguitars.co.uk

Yep, Northwest guitars are great.

Axesrus (terrible name, but really good company!)

Warman pickups are very good, and they do hardware.

BooBoo Guitars for good quality seconds of bodies and necks.

This is the wall of shame. Gear that doesn’t get used since I got the Kemper and a Belle Epoch Deluxe.
I’m sticking it up on the Fretboard classifieds but if anyone is interested I’ll post them on the classifieds here at a discounted price…

So string spacing,bridges and pickups..

Is it always a compromise?

So string spacing, bridges and pickups..

Is it always a compromise?

In what way?

Most electric guitars have standard(ish) string spacing (by manufacturer – it does vary by brand a bit), so most nuts and bridges will work.
That’s not to say there aren’t differences, but look up the type of guitar you are working on and you should be able to find what you need.
You can cut/file your own nut to fine tune string spacing.
There are pickups with slightly different pole spacings – but that’s more aesthetic than functional… you want the string to be directly over the pole as it looks nice.

I’m in no way a trained guitar tech, so I might be talking total guff. This is just from my experience 😉

Hey proper guitarists, particularly those at the low end of the frequency spectrum.

I’m learning mainly on bass by either picking out a bassline (I’ve got an OK ear, not as good as it was though) but also by looking up tabs on t’internet. So today’s dumb question is

open string vs fretted equivalent. Sometimes on a tab it’ll suggest notes fretted at 5th fret or above when to me moving round the fretboard moving strings and playing open or lower fretted makes more sense. And indeed sometimes v/v. I guess that’s down to ability and taste, but I’d say different on the open vs 5th fret equivalent.

No matter how well I fret the note the sound seems a bit deeper and warmer (not in pitch, in tone) vs the open equivalent which rings brightly. Is that imagination? It is a substantially heavier string vs the fretted equivalent? Or dampening effects no matter how well fretted? Is there a knowing nod and a wink by which proper guitarists spot a novice by their use of open strings or something as they rarely seem to be included on tabs?

No matter how well I fret the note the sound seems a bit deeper and warmer (not in pitch, in tone) vs the open equivalent which rings brightly. Is that imagination? It is a substantially heavier string vs the fretted equivalent? Or dampening effects no matter how well fretted? Is there a knowing nod and a wink by which proper guitarists spot a novice by their use of open strings or something as they rarely seem to be included on tabs?

Generally speaking playing an open string does indeed sound different to the same note fretted. Playing an open string also means you have to do more to prevent unwanted resonance once you move onto the next note, unless of course you’re going to fret the same string you’ve just played.

There are no hard and fast rules, but, again, generally speaking you tend to learn most scales, riffs, licks and fills in patterns and boxes, and once you’ve got those under your fingers you can repeat them all over the neck, whereas using open strings doesn’t have quite that same repeatability/transposability.

And so yes, I suppose you can tell a bassist that’s “playing in the pocket” from a novice who uses the first notes that come to mind down at the nut. Tab is personal preference, a guide only. I play a lot of accompaniment from notated music scores, and will always look for the most logical place to play any particular note, and that’s down to the way my mind and fingers work.

Soundcloud wtf?
You could bang the sound of a toilet flushing on the get likes and followers.

eddiebaby
Full Member
This is the wall of shame. Gear that doesn’t get used since I got the Kemper and a Belle Epoch Deluxe.

Good lord, don’t sell that lot!

Everyone seems to come back to pedals at some point and that’s a nice little collection.

And prices are only going one way…..

Mate, they’re just the ones I’m selling. The Revival Drive, Cali76 Stacked and Belle Epoch Deluxe are staying, but the digital stuff can be done by the Kemper.
I may keep the APE and almost certainly will keep the Trelicopter, the Spark does great stuff but I can get that from the Belle Epoch or the APE.

The Kemper Digital stuff is pretty good. Here us the seriously cut down stuff I posted from the baritone noodling yesterday.

Listen to Short Baritone Tone by Lipstick on a pig on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/7xDGK

I might be a couple of years behind the curve here… but is anyone else playing through a Strymon Iridium or a similar ‘amp in a pedal’?

I’ve just got an Iridium and an FRFR speaker, and have been well impressed how easy it is to get tones that I love. My wife usually tunes out my guitar noodling, but she even remarked how good it sounded yesterday.

Boss Katana is now up for sale. As flexible and good sounding as it is, I kept finding myself going down a rabbit hole of tone fettling, rather than just practicing.

I’ve got a Helix and a Yamaha THR10. Both are modelling amps, but of course the Helix is 10x more powerful. There’s definitely something to be said for simplicity though – I can pick up the Yamaha and get a great noodling tone within a few seconds of turning it on. I keep thinking I should sell one of them…

I did look at the Strymon Iridium but the lack of reverb on the Iridium was a deal breaker for me since I often use headphones and I went with the flexibility of the HX Stomp (then upgraded to a full Helix).

Wow, things have certainly moved on!

I had a Vox Valvetronix AD50 for ages and tbh, it sounded excellent.
I only got rid because it was too heavy to take to jams.

Went to pedals and an Orange Rocker 15, which does sound much better and is much easier and intuitive to use and dial in the sounds I like.

I have just picked up a Fender Micro headphone amp and have to say I’m very, very impressed.
It sounds far better than I expected and I can be up and running in seconds.
Great fun.

I might be a couple of years behind the curve here… but is anyone else playing through a Strymon Iridium or a similar ‘amp in a pedal’?

I use a Tech 21 Flyrig 5 live (and for recording).
It’s a amp sim + plexi overdrive + boost + delay + reverb.

I have used it once or twice straight into a PA, but normally it goes into a Vox MV50 AC + 2×12 Celestion cab.
Sounds great, is a really versatile and easy to dial in a lovely tone.

Personally I love the simplicity of it, I’m not a massive fan of modellers with 100s of settings (I used to use a line 6 floor POD – too many options!)

As with Superficial I have my ‘big’ modeller but I find myself playing the THR10-II a lot as it is always there and I have a £30 wireless system to make things even easier.
That and a looper and I’m sorted.
Oh,and WAZA Air headphones as well.
Of course that doesn’t stop the urge for N+1..

I was tempted by a HX Stomp, but thought I would end up with the same fettling issue as with the Katana. Maybe I’ll try one at some point…

I have a £30 wireless system to make things even easier.

Which one and how does it compare with a cable? I always turn anti-clockwise and have to unknot the cable after a few numbers.

How to buy a guitar remotely?

I’ve found a guitar I need. Trouble is, it’s a private seller on a forum I don’t frequent and it’s 200 miles away so I can’t go and see it. FWIW there are people on that forum that vouch for the guy, but I’m not that trusting.

What’s the best way of purchasing this safely? I’m tempted to ask him to list it on Reverb for me to buy – there’s good buyer protection and the fees are better than eBay I think (Reverb total fees = 7.7% vs a whopping 12.8% for eBay).

Or is Paypal safe enough these days (Fees = 2.9%)? I’ve been burnt by them in the past so I am skeptical.

Guitar is ~ £1500 so whichever way I do it, the fees are significant.

I’d offer to pay a small deposit, and then go and collect it for that kind of monetary value…

If you’ve asked for all the pictures you can think of, and the seller’s willing to knock off ebay/Reverb fees for a collection, then it has to be time for a road trip!

What’s the guitar?