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Customising one's axe with inexpensive parts

2K views 17 replies 12 participants last post by  Stezzo Gray 
#1 ·
Is anyone else here not satisfied wi' their guitar/bass? I feel that my guitars, especially, are not yet specific enough to my tastes in sound and ways to control and shape it on the fly.:wallbash:
 
#12 ·
In terms of the OP. A guitar pickup is like, 5 cents in materials to make. It's tech over 120 years old.

Some people have no sense of humor about it, and there are certainly a ton of parts where you get what you pay for, trem knife edges and all that.

But knobs and shit? Nah. Bakelite is bakelite.

There are also plenty of cases, kind of like generic meds vs name brand prescriptions, where it's just the exact same thing in a branded package. So those aren't worth worrying about.

Not all parts by any means, but there are a lot where you should be aware of that. Like zippers on a jacket or pants or whatever. The $10 Wal-mart jacket and the $400 high tech goretex shell both got their zippers from the same place. YKK makes like, 80% of the zippers in the world.



That's an essential skill for anyone knowledgeable about gear. Know which bits involve you actually paying for quality and craftsmanship, and know which bits are paying for a name and branding.

All the "licensed knobs" and shit are like that. Exact same knobs, fancier packaging, huge upcharge.
 
#14 ·
Also, people can say what they want about Amazon Prime, monopolies are bad and all that, but it's made guitar accessory buying 100x easier. It's also driven down some of the more ridiculous upcharges in some cases. Because obviously when someone types something in and the first two results are a product for $20 and a product for $3 that look the exact same they can put two and two together.

For knobs and shit, you can just type in what you want, the first result will be the Chinese company that sells the knobs to the company you were thinking of buying from they throw in branded packaging and put an upcharge on, it will be at your door tomorrow.

Yeah, Amazon is plotting world domination and all that, but I remember paying $12 in shipping for shitty parts around 2008ish. Fair trade. Yeah, Amazon dominating shit isn't good, but it's also democratized shit and cut out some of the more obnoxious middlemen in many cases. I don't have to go through some asshole "licensed dealer" to special order a part and wait three months and have the licensed dealer guy insinuate he is way smarter than me at every turn giving shitty advice he is pretending is chapter and verse and all that.

Unless it's an EBMM part of course. Can't Amazon Prime those. :lol:
 
#16 ·
Things I'd like to change/add to my guitars to make them more "me"!

I'd like to put a Stetsbar trem on my cream (gradually painting it sky blue, and would like to strip the paint off the back of the neck) Aria, adding locking machine heads too (with keystone knobs, please), and a GraphTech nut; the pickups on it sound very good, but I'm not deep into their look (cream-and-black zebra coils; I'd like to get some lime-green plastic pickup mounting rings and bright-blue solid plastic pickup covers).

My other six-string electrics: two Tele-style jobs-- the blue one an original I was given by a friend of a friend I knew from church, the natural-finish one a JD Luthiers, both have the traditional single-coil pickups; I wanna put a stacked humbucker in the bridge position and a side-by-side one at the neck on them both, the same brand trem, etc --oval-knobbed locking machine heads will do on these-- a new, 22-fret, reverse-headstock Tele neck on each, and swap the gold hardware on the blue one out for chrome-plated hardware. Also a general overhaul of their electronics.

My 1986 Onyx 1030 (a Mosrite copy with humbuckers) needs its electronics overhauling, and a Stetsbar trem, etc, as I'd like on the Aria. The 1930's double-black-coiled humbuckers look good to me, but they'd sound more to my taste if I could get the phase switch working properly-- anybody got an original wiring diagram for this puppy?

Last, for the time being anyroad, but not least, is my old green Casino copy of an Ibanez Soundgear four-string bass I played several years back in a band called Lunadenta, which has fully enclosed PJ-style pickups; this just needs the electronics overhauling. (With all of these, I include in this process getting new output sockets put in). :metal:
 
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