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Here are some guitars that I used to have but sold or traded in order to finance another gear purchase!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOLD 3/22/07 to help finance the Gibson Firebird V

Mfr Date:  I built it in May/2006.  This is why it's just called "red".

Body:  Body is from a 1999 or 2000 Fender Lone Star Strat.  It's Candy Apple Red and has the swimming pool routing.  I bought the body complete with everything but the neck, so I had the stock pickups, guard, wiring, etc.

Pickups: This guitar body came with factory installed Texas Specials, but I've already got an SRV Strat with them so I decided to change them out.  I had a set of Fender Custom Shop '69s in a drawer so I installed 'em here and sold the Texas Specials to a buddy to put in his Squier.  I love these pickups.  They are what a Strat is supposed to sound like!

Neck:  I bought this neck on eBay a couple years back.  I really was in love with the V neck on my 57 RI so I decided to try to find a similar neck to put on my SRV Strat.  At the time, I just wasn't into the wide-but-flat feel of it similar to a Gibson slim taper neck.  So I got really lucky and got this online for $350.  It seems kind of high, but the neck is from a Fender American Deluxe V Neck strat and is of very very high quality.  I like this neck a lot and I've seen them bring $500 alone, so I think I did OK.  It's got the V profile, obviously but has a modern radius on the front and jumbo frets.  What could be better you ask?  I don't know.

Hardware:  Bridge & tuners are vintage style Strat replacement, actual Fender parts.  Saddles are stock.  I got the neck without tuners and the headstock was fitted for modern tuners, which I don't like.  So I bought a set of vintage tuners and retrofitted them.  These holes are too big, so I took the bushings and wrapped them with thread tape so that they'd fit.  Then you just drill the holes between each one.  If I put modern tuners back in the vintage holes would probably show.  But the modern holes don't show with the vintage tuners in. 

Electrical:  This guitar like most of my Strats uses a 250k ohm linear taper volume pot and (2) 250k ohm audio taper tone pots with a standard 5-way switch.  Nothing too exotic here.

Mods: 

  • Added Schaller strap locks, May/2006

  • Rewired everything under the hood and shielded per the "Quieting the Beast" mod and changed the pots to 250k Linear taper CTS pots.  But this doesn't work with the tone pots.  They don't have enough roll off to them, they just go all at once, so I changed 'em back to the stock audio taper ones.

 

SOLD 10/13/07 to help finance the Gibson ES-333 Project

Mfr Date:  Spring 2003

Color:  Goldtop (Officially called "Bullion Gold")

Pickups: Sold with 490R and 498T from my ES-333

See Gibson's Page here.  Note this model was discontinued in 2005.

Mods: 

  • Added Schaller strap locks, 7/2006

  • Volume Pots changed to CTS 500k Ohm Linear Taper, 8/19/2006.  However, Gibson or CTS don't make a 500k ohm long shaft linear taper pot.  So I bought a short shaft linear taper and a long shaft audio taper and took them apart and made a frankenpot.  Worked like a charm.

  • Also installed a new tone pot.  Used an audio taper DPDT push/push pot and switched it so that it does phase reversal on one of the pickup.  This gives this guitar a cool kind of Freddie King meets Jimmy Page sort of feel.

  • I should also note that when I bought the push/push pot I was under the impression that it would need to be "long shaft" as well.  But nobody made them.  So I set out to make another frankenpot and bought a long shaft push/pull and a short shaft push/push that looked very similar.  I spent a couple hours taking them apart.  I could have made it work but I would have had to put the shaft in a lathe and spent more than it was worth to make it happen.  Then to my amazement when I gave in and was just going to put the long shaft push/pull in there I noticed that there was a lot of length leftover.  So I tried the short shaft push/push and it was plenty long!  It seems that the guitar's top is considerably thinner by the location of the tone, so I was good to go........  It worked almost like I planned it that way.

  • Removed the GFS Mean 90's in favor of a HB sound over the P90.  They sounded good, but just weren't really "me".  So I bought and installed Gibson Burstbuckers (#1 -neck, #2 - bridge) and love them.  12/13/06.

  • Potted the Burstbuckers a couple times to avoid the microphonic feedback I was getting.  Jan 2007

  • After doing an A/B comparison of this to other guitars, I went back to the long shaft Gibson 300k volume pot.  I still also may put a higher value cap in here to take out some of the brightness.  Took it out to a gig and it still seems a little bright.  2/9/07.

  • 03/31/07 - Swapped the pickups with the LP Classic.  I wanted to get an idea about what was so bright with this setup, the pickups or the guitar.  So I took the Burstbuckers out of this guitar and put in the 496R/500T factory pickups from that guitar.  I also removed a resistor that I had put across the lugs of the tone pot to darken it up and switched the lugs on the tone pot's cap.  Not sure why it would matter which lug you used for ground and which for the cap, but when I redid the wiring, it didn't seem so bright.  The BB's sound great in the LP Classic and these aren't doing too bad here.  It was probably just the wrong pickups in the wrong guitar.

  • 9/28/07 - Removed the pickups that were in here (496R/500T) and installed the stock pickups from the ES-333 (490R/498T) at the preference of the future buyer.  Selling this to finance the ES-333 and mods.

 

SOLD 5/9/08 to finance the Gretsch G6199 Jupiter Thunderbird Billy-Bo

Mfr Date:  February 2006

Color:  Metallic Red (Discontinued Color)

Pickups: Stock Ceramic Humbuckers from Gibson

See Gibson's Page here.

Mods: 

  • 2008-01-19 Overhauled the wiring a bit for more functionality.  Installed (2) RS Guitarworks Super pots for the Neck and Bridge volumes.  Installed a CTS 500k linear taper pot for the middle volume and a CTS 500k audio taper pot for master tone.  Used a single .015uF Sprague Orange Drop cap.  Also installed a regular 3-way SPST pole right angle toggle switch by Switchcraft that I got from RS Guitarworks.  Used this drawing from GuitarElectromics.com. 

Sold 9/25/08 to Finance a Gibson Flying V

Mfr Date:  Received new 2/2006

Color:  3-tone sunburst.  There were a couple other unique colors with stripes and such offered when I bought this, but I opted for the old school finish.

Pickups:  Stock "Big Dipper" pickups, which are in my opinion the real money maker on this guitar.  They're a very traditional Strat tone, with less mids, which is what I like.

Neck:  The neck is very much like a '62 reissue, but with jumbo frets.  Wide and chunky.

Hardware:  Stock tuners and bridge are vintage Strat style.

Electrical:  The only unique thing electrically on this guitar is the wiring of Tone #2.  It controls the mid and bridge pickups.  Tone #1 is neck only, as usual.

See Fender's page here.

Mods: 

  • Added Schaller strap locks, Feb/2006

  • Changed the pickguard to a '62 RI mint green guard and changed all the white plastic parts to aged white.  2/9/2006.

  • Added a treble bleed circuit right after I got it.  The tone really darkened a lot when you turned down.  This helped.

  • I had a problem with breaking strings at the bridge.  Added Graphtech Ferraglide saddles and haven't had a problem since.  3/25/2006.

  • Changed the volume pot to a 250k ohm linear taper pot and removed the treble bleed circuit.  9/22/2006

  • After reading about (and listening to) the benefits of the mod, I moved the T2 control to the bridge pickup alone.  Read about it and see it here.  11/16/07

 

Sold 3/2009 to pay for a Gibson 1961 Reissue SG with Lyre Vibrola

Mfr Date:  Spring 2003

Color:  Heritage Cherry

Pickups: 490R (neck), 498T (bridge)

See Gibson's Page here.

Mods: 

  • Added Schaller strap locks, 5/2003

  • Wired to "modern" Les Paul wiring, 7/4/2006

  • Volume Pots Changed to CTS 500k Ohm Linear Taper, 11/9/2006

  • Caps Changed to Sprague Orange Drops.  Used a 0.015mf on the neck and 0.033mf on the bridge, 11/9/2006

  • Added knob pointers, 11/9/2006

  • Replaced the Neck tone pot with a DPDT push/pull switch that does phase reversal on the neck pickup, 1/8/2007

  • Redid all the wiring just for a general cleanup and removed all the "piles" of solder left from Gibson.  Also moved the caps around to wire them 50's style.  Made a stack of cardboard pieces and put under the neck humbucker to get it level with the strings rather than level with the pickguard.  11/25/2007.

 
     

 

 
 

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This page was last updated 02/15/10