[PirateMetalTroy]

I decided it would be better to wait until I was less hammered to do this. No idea how I managed to come to that conclusion as I don't even remember going to bed. Regardless of this, Yesterday was supposed to be my drunken cleaning day. I definitely got drunk, and managed to wash some dishes before the inevitable distraction happened. However, this distraction was FUCKING AWESOME! Last week sometime I ordered a bunch of parts for my black RGT off ebay and began the wait...until yesterday.

Wandered down to the check for mail and found this!

What's in there, you figure?

Crumpled paper?

Not just ANY crumpled paper, though. This paper has Sharon Hennessey on it :shrug:

Oh wait, it actually appears to be my pearloid topped knobs! Sweet.

...and a set of 6 in line Sperzels without the funny lookin' buttons

Here's the the real steal of a deal, though. $50 for an edge pro II? YES PLEASE!

ALL HANDS TO BATTLESTATIONS! The internet is serious business.

Spoils! A good day all in all. Also, yes, that bottle is empty but it was already half empty when I started.

All in all, not a bad day, even though my house is still a mess. Haha. I still have a set of Duncans and a black locking nut from ebay that have yet to arrive, as well as a killswitch and copper shielding tape from Darren, and I still have to go find myself a push/pull pot so that when everything arrives I can actually start doing this shit. I just changed my strings not long ago, so I'm not gonna change any of the hardware out until I have all the parts ready. I'm on the fence about new strap buttons, too. I'd like straplocks, but I'm not sure how bad I wanna put holes in my guitar to have recessed ones. The non recessed straplocks are pretty cool since you can still use any strap with them, they're just not as secure as the regular ibanez type without the locking ends.

For a little bit of post pic story info, I decided that since no matter what guitars I own or plan on owning my black RGT seems to ALWAYS be my main player and VERY few guitars I've seen have ever played better. So I said fuck it. Upgrade the shit out of it and bring out it's full potential for awesomez.

Basically it's going from this:

To this:

or like this:

I can't decide whether I want black or white pup rings. I think the ducans coming from evilbay may come with a set of black pup rings, but I'm not sure. We'll see what happens. I'm leaning towards sanding and spraying my old rings white since I want metal ones but no one has them in white.

This thread will be updated as more of my parts arrive and eventually will close up with the final assembly picstory and a rundown of my entire rig as it currently stands. Lots of work to get done, but first....More waiting!

Until next time...

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Not a bad choice in vodka, either!

It's only a couple bucks more than Smirnoff here in Ontario, which makes it a VERY good choice for the price. $25 for a 750ml bottle of that quality is a tough thing to find.

Anyone had any experience with the Floyd upgrades brass sustain blocks for ibanez bridges? I wouldn't mind trying one if I had a little more knowledge about the ibanez specific ones. Seems like I'd have to remove the red inserts on the underside of this bridge to get one of those on. So if anyone's tried them with and edge pro, let me know.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Funny story, i just took the edge pro apart to clean it up and the block was HILARIOUSLY loose. No wonder they were selling it for $50. They probably thought it was broken. I can only imagine how bad the tuning stability was on this thing. Hahaha.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

White with Zebra pups(or pup stickers)? Honestly though the flat metal colour looks the best.

Did you even look at the OP? Pup RINGS man. RINGS!!! Personally I hate the flat grey, which is why I spent $300 getting rid of it. The pickups are white, BTW.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Haha, that's the best. Gotta love it when people selling something cheap cause they don't know/care to fix it :yesway: Pics when all is said and done, sir.

Really, eh? Honestly, this has been the easiest $200 I ever saved. An hour with q-tips and a microfiber cloth later, I can has sexy marcos! :yum:

Probably gonna order up a brass sustain block and some Gorgomyte from floydupgrades. I've already gone this far, so I might as well just go balls out. I'm gonna stop before I get it re-fretted with stainless steel frets tho. hahaha.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Yeah. Subtle, but nice. Definitely worth the cost.

Nice. That order may have to happen in the very near future.

On a more differenter note, I was looking around for a 3 ply white/black/white truss rod cover on the evilbay, and nothing was coming up. Then i remembered I'm a HUGE nerd and have a bunch of plasticard lying around from building Warhammer 40k scenery. Another quick dig around for some thin black plastic revealed an old dvd case. I traced out the original cover a few times, cut em out, glued 'em together, and cut/filed the angled edges.

Looks like this:

I nicked the edges a bunch of times with the files, cut too far in a couple places, and well as got some superglue on the display face of it. Makes me kinda sad...

Still not bad for my first try. It's a touch thick though. The dvd/cd case I used was much thicker than the white plasticard. I will find better supplies for the next one.

It's a touch too small with the beveled edges anyways, so I may just make another, slightly larger one. If anyone wants a step by step tutorial, I can do that for #2. I might even take a stab at engraving this one with the dremel since it's pretty much trash anyways.

Yay for proof of concept!!!

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

I read it :lol: I was just offering an option. The rings are out. I was just saying that Zebra Pups would look cool imo :shrug:

That makes much more sense. I saw an MTM2 with a zebra CL/LF set and I thought that looked kinda cool. Not really what I'm after with this one though.

MY MIND CONTROL IS WORKING

Unrelated: Pretty slick job on the truss cover dude. Get a prettier top piece for attempt #2 and file the edge, and you'll be :winning:.

I got the second truss rod cover all glued up but STILL managed to get superglue on it. Maybe I should glue the rough shapes together and cut the final shape after it's dry instead of being stupid. :rofl: The sides are a lot straighter this time thanks to my little modeling saw but I don't see it coming out much better than the first, aside from being slightly larger. Oh well. More test pieces for the engraving process!

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Good luck finding flat, non-tapered white pickup rings. If you find some, definitely tell me, I really want one for my strat.

My 800 grit sandpaper and rattle can of white enamel spray paint say otherwise. Also, you have been informed as to where to find your desired pickup rings.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Well I went on a mission today and grabbed myself a 250k push/pull pot, and a 3 way blade switch. Funny story here, apparently switches no longer come with switch tips. You'd think charging $15 for $0.15 of materials was a big enough ripoff, but now you want another $2 for a $0.01 piece of plastic. What the fucking fuck is going on here? Seriously.

Side note...Is there a non intrusive way to increase the friction on a pot shaft? I like to have my volume at 10, or zero and the peace of mind I get from not having to constantly check if my volume is up is well worth the tiny extra effort to turn my volume down/up.

Anyways, along the way I also grabbed some 60/40 rosin core solder and some extra wire so that I can actually solder everything up once it gets here. I'm just waiting on Darren's shipment of killswitch and copper tape, and my last 2 ebay purchases (hopefully all arriving by the end of next week) so I can begin assembly!

OH! I almost forgot. I also ordered in a bag of carbon fiber max grip Jazz III's as well as another bag of the trusty Ultex Jazz III's. Always wanted to try those carbon fiber ones, but was never able to order them because apparently Canadian retailers know less about the availability of the products they sell than their customers.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Wirelessly posted (Only Chris cares about this ->: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'll get that switch in the mail on Monday.

Looked at the tracking page. Apparently the expected arrival date it thursday next week. Seriously? I wish I had known about this, because it would have been a LOT simpler (and faster) to just pick it up in person when I'm in Mississauga for the weekend. Why is it that nothing I do can ever go perfectly?

That said, my pups showed up yesterday and I got MOST of the hardware all in the guitar. Fuckin' SD pup rings are just a smidge too big, but the black looks okay. I wanna see how the white rings look tho, just for fun. Obv, nothing is getting wired up until all the parts arrive...

waiting, waiting, waiting...

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Wirelessly posted (Only Chris cares about this ->: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

Check again. It says May 2, which is Monday. Still ridiculous when it's a 2-hour drive down the 403.

Checked it out and sure enough it changed from the 5th to the 2nd. Hopefully that date keeps shifting forwards so that I can get it and sodler it up before leaving for the GTA.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

LOL. Yeah it's here. Looks killer too. I'm also glad to see someone else who writes in all caps. Seriously, you have some impossibly neat/tidy writing. Most girls I know don't even have writing this neat.

Thanks man, that completes my parts since my locking nut got here today as well! I'm off to assemble stuff and take pictures. See you guys in a bit!

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

DOUBLEPOSTAN!!!

Ok, all done.

More pics later when I charge up some batteries. Probably tomorrow morning.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

That looks aces. :yesway:

Wait 'til I can take a few REAL pics of it. I'm lucky i got that one. I literally turned it on, took a picture, the flash went off and it died. The lens is still extruded because it doesn't have enough power left to retract it. But yes...There will be many high-res pics and a couple videos coming down the pipe tomorrow, for everyone's viewing pleasure.

STAY TUNED!

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

I've got a couple other songs that might be worthy of a video like this. I panned on making a new youtube channel for my guitar stuff so this may be a good opportunity to give that whirl. Time will tell.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

I'm not gonna lie, I can play that entire thing and I've jammed along with it about 50 fuckin' times. :metal: :lol:

I am glad to see that someone appreciates my music. Even if the last chorus(es) drag out WAY too long. Anyways, I'm gonna be late for work. <vanish>

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

Wait, I have been? I looked through the thread and didn't see anything, did I miss something? :lol:

Yeah I mumbled something about white spraypaint. Basically if you want white metal pup rings, you're gonna have to do it yourself.

 

[PirateMetalTroy]

I think it looks great as is. I think white rings would be overkill.

Agreed. That is why I will not being doing white rings.

Id avoid the white pickup rings, those would be overkill. What i would do, is maybe paint the straplocks white, fine tuning screws white, etc. space the white out a bit. Maybe faux bind the body with pinstriping tape.

Agains, I'm not gonna do the white rings anymore. I was, but now that I have the black ones on there, i think it looks pretty good. Funny story, the black rings on there are actually the old grey ones. I sanded them down, scuffed em up and put a couple coats of my GW black primer and matte clear coat. We'll see how well that clear coat hold up once I start sweating all over it.

I'm ordering black straplocks (or at least some strap buttons) for this thing real soon. Probably gonna get some sort of tremstop device and a brass big block from floyd upgrades just so I can say I've upgraded everything on the guitar that I possibly can. The big blocks seem to get good reviews too, so it's worth the $40 investment to at LEAST try one out.

For now though, the guitar's done. It need to be intonated so bad it hurts, and could do with a little more neck relief, but it's playable and that's what counts. I'm on a major Yngwie kick right now. his economy of motion is just stupid....