rockabilly69

A few days ago I replaced the single coil Nocaster Cavalier Holy Grail pickup in the partscaster Esquire that I built with a Seymour Duncan Billy Gibbons BG-1400. I love having a great sounding single coil sized humbucker in it, especially because it's humbucker quiet! The Nocaster Holy Grail was great sounding too, but I hated dealing with the single coil noise when recording by my computer monitor. And just last night I replaced the 5-way switch in my PRS Custom 22. I never liked that switch, as I never knew what position I was in. And grasping the 5-way switch with sweating hands while under the stage lights was a pain! Fortunately there's a company "Free-Way" that makes a great 6-way toggle switch that is fairly straight forward to install. I used model Number 3X3-08 Here's the guitar with the Free-Way switch installed... The switch has 2 banks of pickup selections. There's a left and right side of three postions each... Left Side position 1: neck pickup (coils in parallel) position 2: neck and bridge in phase (coils in parallel) position 3: bridge pickup (coils in parallel) Right Side position 1: neck and bridge (in series) position 2: neck and middle (in series) Out Of Phase position 3: neck and middle (in parallel) Out Of Phase So here's a demo of the Esquire as the rhythm guitar, and my PRS with me switching through the switch positions starting with position 1. I'm also playing bass, snapping my fingers, and I mic'd the floor so you can hear me tapping to the beat:)

congrats, nice looking combo and great sounding amp!

I just blew it up in Photoshop and that definitely looks like a crack. I would like to look it over very quickly and I would ask how that happened.

There are so many good companies that make pedal boards, power supplies, gig bags or hard cases for them etc. It's hard to give advice when we don't know what's floatin' up in your noggin. When I start building a new pedalboard, I think of the job that it is going to do, and then I build to that. I needed a very simple board as a backup for my main acoustic board just in case it goes down, and knowing I was going to use 4 pedals, it wouldn't need to be very big. So I figured I could make one from parts I got at the local home depot. I used some black paint, simple shelving, aluminum from the metal stock, and screws and handles from the fastener section. The only thing that didn't come from home depot was the rubber feet which I already had here. I power it with a one spot to the tuner. And the tuner powers everything wlse from it's convenience 500mv 9 volt DC outlet. It has all the pedals I need for my acoustic guitars that are equipped with magnetic pickups: volume, tuner, EQ, reverb and delay. The beauty of building your own board is that you can make it the exact size you need it. After I built mine, I did a google search and found a company that had a gig back that would fit it.

Well it looks great. I know that building guitars can stir up the dust, but when I looked at pictures of the old shop before the new guard came in, it just looked gloomy and a safety nightmare. And it seems to me that the quality of the new guitars coming out of Heritage has improved. I have played quite a few of the new Heritages, and I've been impressed with all but one of them (a H530 that just wouldn't intonate and the aging was way over the top).The rest of the new ones that I've played had properly cut nuts and nice fretwork, whereas all of my "golden years" needed work in those areas. And I liked that the few H150s that I played were reasonable weight, surely not boat anchors. I'm sure Heritage lost a lot of their archtop building expertise, with the retirement of Marv and Ren, but hopefully, Pete can train some of the new guys and they can rebuild their archtop line.

Man, that Eagle that Rich plays the song on at the end of the video sounded unreal. Makes me want to learn a song in that style. It has just the right balance of string to wood in the tone WOW!

In watching that video I couldn't help but notice how clean the shop looks, and the paint booth looks great.

What I know about Jazz guitar playing could fit on the head of a needle, but I love watching those Rich Severson videos. He does great demos, and gets some great tones out of those jazz boxes!

That is really a cool pic of him holding one of his creations!

I've always found this to be true. It's worth it to spend a few bucks to see what your guitar likes. Recently I went through that with my Martin HD28, and I didn't like 13's. so I knocked it back to 12.5s and found a happy medium between tone and playability. But I can without a doubt that when it's time to record I won't use any coated strings.

I've always found this to be true. It's worth it to spend a few bucks to see what your guitar likes. Recently I went through that with my Martin HD28, and I didn't like 13's. so I knocked it back to 12.5s and found a happy medium between tone and playability. But I can without a doubt that when it's time to record I won't use any coated strings.

I've always found this to be true. It's worth it to spend a few bucks to see what your guitar likes. Recently I went through that with my Martin HD28, and I didn't like 13's. so I knocked it back to 12.5s and found a happy medium between tone and playability. But I can without a doubt that when it's time to record I won't use any coated strings.

I've always found this to be true. It's worth it to spend a few bucks to see what your guitar likes. Recently I went through that with my Martin HD28, and I didn't like 13's. so I knocked it back to 12.5s and found a happy medium,

Pickguard ON! Always! It protects the wood from crazy picking, and helps me anchor my hand for fingerpicking!

After playing our first few gigs with 50 watters (Marshall Plexi and Mesa Fillmore 50) Ryan, the other guitarist, and I went down to 22 watters (Deluxe Reverb and TopHat Club Deluxe). Our stage sound is much better. It feels like it does in our rehersal room. It also made it easier for me to get a good acoustic sound on the few songs I'm playing acoustic or resonator. And people in the audience LOVED the sound. And bonus, the vocals came through even louder with less work for the soundman. Tube amps forever, screw modelers!

And never once have you regretted it! I'm with you all the way! The best and most simplest option. I think Heritage should just ship there guitars with FABER hardware.

My friend Troy has that '52/54' set in his '56 Goldtop reissue. He went through the stock pickups, Lollars, Tyson Tone Labs, and then the Throbaks. He LOVES them, and that is his number one gigging guitar along with his ES330 reissue. He plays that guitar straight into a 1959 5E3 and his sound is perfect for his blues band. He has some great sounding humbucker reisses (two particularly sounding good sounding R9s), and a 1964 SG Jr, but he favors that Goldtop with the Throbaks the most. When he was going through those sets though, I LOVED the Tyson Tone Labs, but he said they were a bit too high in output for him. In my R4 and my Special I like the stock Gibson pickups, they just sound too good for me to replace them. I wish I could use P90s more, but they just make too much noise for when I'm recording by a monitor.

great looking guitar!

I think the Duncan Stack pickups are probably closest to the Area T DiMarzios

Did you try Throbaks in the Collings???

That's exactly what I thought of their P90s and I tried muiltiple winds. Too polite, too hifi! I like Gibsons too, and Wolfetone Mean and Meaners.

I know crazy resistance values, but the output doesn't reflect that. It's more of a medium output due to the stacked coils and different size wire than a conventional humbucker.. I have side by side coil humbuckers with much lower DC resistance and a much hotter output. I would like to try the Hot Chicken bridge pickup. I think I'm going to put one in my custom shop Deluxe Tele which currently has a BG1400 in it. I think the Hot Chiicken might blend better with the Duncan "Vintage Stack" I have in the neck. The Vintage Stack isn't hot enough to get a good middle position with the BG 1400. And since I have the BG1400 in two other Teles, I think it would be nice to have a slightly lower output in one guitar. Beside I can stick the BG1400 I pull into the Esquire that I built:) They do sound like a single coil, but I'm more of a fan of the Duncan's tone for getting the Tele tone. I do like the Area T DiMarzio stacked humbuckers which I think get great Tele tone.

I have given them a try nice pickups! The CC pickup in the neck position is a particularly cool pickup. I'm not a fan of Lollars across the board, but they make certain pickups that do it for me. The Heritage H535 P90 that Kuz sold me has a particularly good set of Lollar P90s which generally I never liked before, buit these pickups changed my mind about Lollar P90s... My Teye La Perla has custom made for Teye Lollar low wound Imperials and I LOVE them... [img]https://i.imgur.com/HMAEORY.jpg[/img]

Must be a pretty stiff neck to jump two guages without a tweak. Fantastic.

Did you have to tweak the truss rod?