LawDaddy
Well-known member
A good friend of mine is starting an '80s tribute band, hoping to get casino bookings. To complete the look, he bought a pointy-headed guitar off Craigslist. He brings it over to my house to have a look, and the stock pickups sound like crap. The stock wiring scheme makes the volume knobs nearly unusable.
Over the years, I've assembled quite a 'junk' drawer of spare parts, including pickups, being the serial modder that I am. I offered to replace them with something if he wouldn't mind. He leaves on a trip for 10 days, and came back yesterday.
I found a '90s Seymour Duncan set of a JB bridge and a '59 neck laying around that I had long forgot about. Perfect '80s rocker set. I installed them along with a push-pull pot for coil-splitting. I re-wired the controls '50s style for better response. I did a full set-up, intonation, etc., Wonder-wiped the fretboard, and of course a new fresh set of Slinkies.
He came by this morning, and was floored. Turns out, he had never had a guitar fully set up with nice pickups and such. I never got along with the JB, but it spoke to him perfectly. He kept playing with the coilsplit - click-click-click.
I watched from across the room while he fiddled with everything, smiling, while he discovered the new tonal pallet available to him. I forgot what it was like to feel nice pickups underhand for the first time.
Call it paying-it-forward, good Karma, whatever, it just seemed like the right thing to do. It was a pain in the a** and a professional challenge to decode the rat's-nest that passes for wiring harnesses these days - but the payoff was all there when he played it.
It is one thing to have a gift of playing music, but today I experienced the gift of enabling another to better utilize *their* gift. I'm sure the folks at EBMM would agree when they see their instruments in action.
Any Knuckleheads have similar experiences?
-Tim
Over the years, I've assembled quite a 'junk' drawer of spare parts, including pickups, being the serial modder that I am. I offered to replace them with something if he wouldn't mind. He leaves on a trip for 10 days, and came back yesterday.
I found a '90s Seymour Duncan set of a JB bridge and a '59 neck laying around that I had long forgot about. Perfect '80s rocker set. I installed them along with a push-pull pot for coil-splitting. I re-wired the controls '50s style for better response. I did a full set-up, intonation, etc., Wonder-wiped the fretboard, and of course a new fresh set of Slinkies.
He came by this morning, and was floored. Turns out, he had never had a guitar fully set up with nice pickups and such. I never got along with the JB, but it spoke to him perfectly. He kept playing with the coilsplit - click-click-click.
I watched from across the room while he fiddled with everything, smiling, while he discovered the new tonal pallet available to him. I forgot what it was like to feel nice pickups underhand for the first time.
Call it paying-it-forward, good Karma, whatever, it just seemed like the right thing to do. It was a pain in the a** and a professional challenge to decode the rat's-nest that passes for wiring harnesses these days - but the payoff was all there when he played it.
It is one thing to have a gift of playing music, but today I experienced the gift of enabling another to better utilize *their* gift. I'm sure the folks at EBMM would agree when they see their instruments in action.
Any Knuckleheads have similar experiences?
-Tim
